Old Bones

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

  ‘Mrs Labadee?’

  The woman was short and wide, light brown, with a handsome face and quick, dark eyes. ‘That’s me. And you would be …?’

  ‘I’m looking for your niece. I was told she was working here.’

  ‘My niece?’

  ‘Shannon Bailey.’

  ‘Your information’s out of date, honey. She’s not here any more. And she’s not my niece.’

  ‘Oh. She calls you Auntie Hallie,’ Hart said.

  ‘Lot o’ people call me auntie. It’s a Jamaican thing.’

  ‘But you know her – you offered her a job.’

  ‘I knew Shannon’s ma way back, that’s all. Are you police?’

  Hart knew better than to deny it to that sharp face. ‘Yeah, but this is not official. I was just worried about her, that’s all. Checking up, to see if she’s all right.’

  ‘That’s nice of you,’ said Mrs Labadee with what Hart took to be irony. ‘Well, I don’t know where she is. I only took her on as a favour to her mum. She worked here for a couple of weeks, slept in the flat upstairs, but her heart wasn’t in it. She moved on. I wasn’t sorry – she was a lousy waitress. And …’ She paused, scanning Hart’s face keenly. Hart returned the look steadily. ‘Are you sure this isn’t official?’

  ‘Swear on my mother’s grave,’ Hart answered.

  Mrs Labadee monitored her a moment longer, then gave a minute nod. ‘Well, I wasn’t sure about her. She was nervous and secretive, like she had something to hide. I’m afraid she was up to something. She said she was going to come into some money. Where’s a girl like that, her age, going to get money? Then one day she said she was off.’

  ‘Did she say where?’

  ‘No. She just packed her bag and left.’

  ‘Did she say anything to give me a clue?’ Hart pleaded.

  The woman shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you any more than that. Now I must get on. It’s getting busy out there.’

  ‘If she comes back …’

  ‘I’ll tell her you’re looking for her,’ said Mrs Labadee firmly, to eliminate the other possibility – that she should call Hart herself.

  That was one smart cookie, Hart thought, and took her leave, out through the throbbing restaurant into the teeming streets. This was the perfect area for a young black girl to hide herself. Without some lead, it was going to be a needle in a haystack search.

  For the supper date that evening, Atherton and Emily arrived separately, and Emily was late, having been caught in traffic coming from the West End.

  ‘I was interviewing that new child star in Matilda,’ she explained. ‘They seem to change every couple of months but this one’s got an interesting background – overcoming hardship on the way to stardom, blah blah blah. So The Sunday Times wants to run a feature.’ She shed her coat and handed it to Joanna. ‘You’re not in Matilda, are you?’

  ‘No violins in it,’ Joanna said. ‘No strings at all, apart from one cello.’

  ‘Oh. I knew you were doing a West End show, so I assumed it was a musical.’

  ‘There’s nothing but musicals in the theatres these days,’ Atherton complained.

  ‘And lots of long-running ones,’ Joanna said cheerfully, heading for the drawing room. ‘The longer they run, the more they want deps. It’s all good.’

  ‘It’s all brain rot,’ said Atherton. ‘Are you not getting any orchestral dates?’

  ‘Not many. I’m afraid I’ve slipped down the fixers’ lists, having had all that time off, first with George and then the miscarriage. Gin and ton?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’m getting a few dates with the Whitaker circus, that’s all.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Hugh Wharton Whitaker. He’s a conductor-impresario who does these Sunday concerts in Aylesbury. Scratch orchestra. It pays peanuts, but it’s all work. We call him Huge Warty Whitaker.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s not much of a revenge, but you take what you can get.’

  ‘Why do you need revenge?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘Because he’s a megalomaniac, and royal pain in the bassoon. And he treats the orchestra as his own private seraglio. There’s always some poor little second flute dashing out of his dressing room in tears.’

  ‘And otherwise it’s the West End? What piece of musical pap are you depping in at the moment?’

  ‘Whistle Down the Wind,’ Joanna said. ‘You can have a lot of fun during dialogue breaks altering the title to Dribble Down the Window. It can be done with satisfyingly few pencil strokes. Mind you, deps aren’t supposed to graffiti the parts, but the regular player is an old mate of mine. He often leaves me scabrous notes in the margin. And one of the keyboard deps does obscene caricatures and passes them round. Which is great as long as you don’t get surprised into a snigger. The MD’s a frightful misogynist, so we girlies have to mind our Ps and Qs.’

  ‘MD?’ Emily queried.

  ‘Musical director. It’s what you call the conductor in a show.’

  ‘This is great,’ Emily said. ‘Background stuff. I’m taking it all in.’

  ‘Well, they’re nearly all potty,’ Joanna said. ‘Conductors in general, but MDs even more so. But don’t say I said so or I’ll never dep again.’

  ‘I should think you’d be happy not to, when it’s wall-to-wall Lloyd Webber,’ said Atherton.

  ‘You’re prejudiced,’ said Joanna. ‘It’s all right. It’s all work.’

  ‘But you must want to play proper music.’

  ‘There speaks a music-lover, not a musician.’

  He bristled a bit at that. He thought of himself as intensely musical. ‘I don’t see the difference.’

  ‘The difference between admiring a horse for its beauty, and riding it.’

  ‘I like that,’ said Emily. ‘Can I quote that?’

  ‘Feel free.’ Joanna turned back to Atherton. ‘You know what a musician really wants?’

  ‘Fame and glory? A solo career?’

  ‘Nah. Just to play – doesn’t matter what. All we want is to play the dots all day, and then have someone say, “Here’s some money, can you come back tomorrow?”’

  Emily laughed, but Atherton said, ‘I don’t believe that. You wouldn’t do it if you didn’t love music.’

  ‘Yes, love playing it, not listening to it.’

  ‘Well, listening to it as well,’ Slider said, in the interests of accuracy. She smiled at him, and went on: ‘I’ll tell you a story. I was doing a concert at the Festival Hall once, years ago, and as I walked over Hungerford Bridge I could hear a busker playing the trumpet. I thought, “I know that sound,” and sure enough, it was a bloke I knew. I used to bump into him doing sessions, or with the orchestra when we did the big brass numbers, Bruckner and Berlioz and so on.’

  ‘Poor bloke,’ said Atherton.

  ‘That’s what I thought. He’d got old, his lip had gone, he couldn’t play professionally any more. I asked him delicately if he was short of money, but he said no, he was fine. He just went down there to play. He’d sooner belt out “Stormy Weather” under the bridge than not play at all. If he took a few quid beer money in the process, all to the good. But it was the dots he missed. Just the dots.’

  Slider saw Atherton was going to argue, and stepped in. ‘Did you really recognize the sound? I mean, you knew it was that particular person?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said in surprise. ‘Every trumpet player sounds different. The same as you’d recognize someone’s voice if you heard it.’ She got up. ‘I have to go and do things in the kitchen. Eating in ten minutes.’

  She’d made goulash, with rice, and Atherton had brought two bottles of a peppery Lirac, which went nicely. While they ate, Slider and Atherton caught the women up on the case.

  ‘It has to be Ronnie,’ Atherton said when they were up to date. ‘The father.’

  ‘I wish I didn’t agree with you,’ Emily said, ‘but on what you’ve told us, it looks most likely.’<
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  Atherton nodded. ‘Those missing times in his day. Suppose he didn’t stop and eat lunch. He was only a mile and a half, two miles, from home. He knew Amanda was there—’

  ‘He knew his wife was there as well,’ said Slider.

  ‘True, but we know Amanda must have left the garden. He could have come across her in the street. Or he may have known where she was going.’

  ‘The lunch break doesn’t give him much time,’ Emily objected.

  ‘But didn’t you say there was some doubt as to whether he did the job in Turnham Green?’ Joanna queried. ‘The old lady who was a bit confused?’

  ‘He probably knew exactly how confused she was,’ Atherton said. ‘After all, he’d been doing jobs for her for years. He may have counted on that. But anyway, how much time did he need?’

  ‘To kill her and stash her somewhere? Quite a bit, I’d have thought,’ said Emily.

  ‘He may not have stashed her anywhere. She may have been in the van all the time. In fact, I think it’s most likely she was. You run far more risk of being discovered if you’re moving a body about from place to place.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ said Joanna, ‘but you haven’t given any reason.’

  ‘Reason as logic? Or reason as motive? Or reason as a way of life?’ Atherton said.

  ‘I think that’s pretty impressive for someone who’s drunk as much as you have,’ Emily said with a grin. Joanna gave them an ‘uh?’ look, and she said, ‘He was quoting. From Tinker Tailor. I was finishing the quote.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Joanna. ‘Well, how about reason as motive, to start with?’

  ‘The obvious one,’ Atherton said. ‘He was working every day in the vicinity, his wife was out at work all day, Amanda was home from school for the summer. He could have popped home any time he liked without anyone knowing.’

  ‘You mean, he was abusing her?’ Emily said.

  ‘That’s a big conclusion to jump to,’ Joanna objected. ‘Why has it always got to be that?’ She sounded angry.

  ‘Not a conclusion, just a suggestion,’ Atherton defended himself.

  Slider, who’d been letting them run to see where they ended up, said, ‘There are some elements that fit the hypothesis. Her school friend said she changed that year, her mother said she’d become more withdrawn and moody. She’d started keeping a diary, asked for one with a lock on it—’

  ‘Every teenager with a diary wants one that locks,’ Joanna objected. ‘I know I would.’

  ‘It’s just something to take note of,’ Slider said. ‘And the diary went missing after her death. It’s possible there was something in it that someone wanted kept out of circulation. And who had a better chance to remove it than the father?’

  ‘The mother?’ Emily hazarded.

  ‘Well, yes,’ Slider conceded. ‘In every case, you have to allow that we only have her word. There are no witnesses, and he’s not here to speak for himself.’

  ‘Doesn’t that rather make the whole thing fruitless?’ Emily asked. ‘If he did it, how will you ever prove it? And since he’s dead, he can’t be punished for it anyway, so what’s the point?’

  Joanna was ready with the answer. ‘He wants to know,’ she said. ‘He always wants to know.’

  ‘You may have to settle for presumption this time round, my dear old guv,’ Atherton said. ‘I doubt we’ll ever get to the truth.’

  ‘Probably not,’ Slider said, ‘but there are a few more steps to take before we stop. Oh, and one other thing to take into account – when she left the garden that day, she didn’t take her purse with her. She wasn’t going out to buy anything.’

  ‘Interesting point,’ said Emily.

  ‘So I’d just like to know where she was going,’ Slider concluded.

  ‘And you’d be satisfied with that?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘I’m never satisfied.’

  TWELVE

  Death and Glory

  Julienne was easy to please. She bounced, Tiggerishly, down the path to meet Connolly, and had to be bounced back inside so that she could be signed out. But the formalities over, she hopped excitedly alongside Connolly with her usual litany of: ‘I like your coat. I like your boots. I like your hair. I wanna do mine like yours. Is that your nachral colour? Where are we going? Is that your motor? Cool! What is it?’

  ‘It’s a Skoda.’

  ‘Oh. Aren’t they, like, pants?’

  ‘Not any more. They’re the same as Volkswagens now.’

  ‘Cool! Can we go for a drive? Like, bomb down a motorway or something?’

  ‘Of course not. I’m a gard. We can’t do things like that.’

  ‘You’re a what?’

  ‘A gard. It’s what we call the police in Dublin. Short for Garda Siochana. Keepers of the peace.’

  ‘What language is that, then?’

  ‘Irish – what d’you think?’

  ‘I never knew you had a language. Say some more in it.’

  ‘Can’t. You hungry? I thought we’d get some lunch. D’you like pizza?’

  ‘Duh! Everybody likes pizza.’

  Julienne was impressed that they went to a Pizza Express, which she said was ‘well posh, posher than Pizza Hut’, was delighted to be told to choose whatever she liked, and was thrilled with her Classic 11 inch La Reine and chocolate milkshake.

  If only dates were this easy, Connolly thought. The skinny little creature opposite chattered like a happy budgie and was in a mood to be pleased with everything.

  ‘So what’s happening with, like, Kaylee and that?’ she asked at length, a slice of pizza in her hand and a smear of tomato on her lips. ‘You know. The bloke that done it. When’s he gonna be, like, up in court, and that?’

  Connolly had hoped that question wouldn’t be asked, but she supposed it was inevitable. ‘There won’t be a court case,’ she said. ‘It’s been shelved.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Dropped,’ she explained, and watched the frown of disapproval arrive on the pale, pointed little face.

  ‘But they can’t!’ she wailed.

  ‘They can. They have. There’s no evidence, you see. We only had one witness, and she’s changed her mind. Withdrawn her testimony.’

  ‘What, Shannon? She’s, like, saying he never done it?’ Julienne asked from the depth of her confusion.

  ‘I don’t know exactly what she said, but basically she’s saying she doesn’t know anything and can’t give evidence in court.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Connolly said. ‘I expect she’s not sure any more. It’s a big thing to accuse somebody of something like that if you’re not sure.’

  Julienne thought about that. ‘I bet she is, but she’s just scared. You’re gonna, like, make her change her mind, aren’t you? Make her do it? She’s gotter!’

  ‘She’s done a legger. We don’t know where she is.’

  ‘Have you looked?’ Julienne asked suspiciously.

  ‘Everywhere we can think of. Apparently she said she wanted to make a fresh start, so she could be anywhere by now. And even if we could find her, we can’t force her to change her mind.’

  ‘But you could try.’

  ‘If we knew where to look. But we don’t. Have you finished that? D’you want any afters?’

  Julienne hastily swallowed the last of the pizza unchewed and licked her fingers. ‘Yeah!’ she affirmed with enthusiasm, and forgot everything for the time it took her to comb the menu and choose a Chocolate Glory, ice cream with chocolate sauce and chunks of chocolate fudge cake. And a chocolate straw. Connolly, blenching quietly, had a coffee. Julienne didn’t do much talking until she was at the bottom of the dish, but she had evidently been doing some thinking, because she said at last, in a voice clotted with synthetic glory, ‘You know Shannon?’

  ‘Ye-es,’ Connolly said cautiously.

  ‘Well, you said she, like, wanted a fresh start?’

  ‘That’s what I heard.’

 
‘Well,’ said Julienne, nibbling daintily on the chocolate straw, which she had saved until last, ‘her and Kaylee used to talk about what they’d do.’

  ‘Do?’

  ‘Like, when they grew up. I heard ’em talk about it a lot. They wanted to be beauticians. There’s this beautician school they looked up – had some funny name with tits in it – the something Academy. They was gonna do a course, and get jobs, and one day they was gonna open their own beauty place.’

  ‘All that’d cost some money,’ Connolly said.

  ‘Yeah, well, they was gonna start with the course and get the diploma,’ said Julienne. She finished her milkshake with a noise like a carthorse freeing its hooves from deep mud. ‘They was saving up. Kaylee was, anyway, and I bet Shannon was. They were, like, getting money from these blokes, weren’t they? So I bet that’s what Shannon’s done, ’f you say she wanted a fresh start – gone to beauty school. I bet she had some money saved up. She’s smart, Shannon. I bet she got out all right,’ she concluded, a touch wistfully. ‘Not like Kaylee.’

  Connolly saw damp eyes and a quivering lip looming on the horizon, and sought to distract her. ‘D’you want to go and look round some shops?’

  She brightened instantly. ‘TK Maxx?’

  ‘Are you kidding me? We can’t go there.’

  ‘But I told you I wouldn’t nick stuff any more.’

  ‘I believe you. But they’ll be on the lookout for you. How about Primark?’ God, I know the way to a girl’s heart!

  ‘Yeah, Primark! Cool!’ said Julienne, appeased.

  Half an hour wandering round fingering things, and the purchase of a cherry-flavoured lip salve and a pair of aubergine tights with the pocket money that was burning a hole in her purse, and Julienne was back on an even keel. It lasted until Connolly said it was time to take her back. Then her face registered instant woe. ‘I don’t wanna go back!’

  ‘Well, you’ve got to. We all have to do things we don’t like,’ Connolly countered.

  ‘I hate it there! I wanna go home.’

  ‘But you can’t, can you? Home’s not there any more. Sorry, kid. Tough break.’