The End of the Wasp Season

by Denise Mina

  Kay heard a bedroom door open in the hall. Marie stepped over to the kitchen, looking away from Kay, as if she happened to be passing. At thirteen, Marie was so self-conscious she was almost housebound. She was wearing yet more nail varnish, blue this time, and a matching hair band. Her cheeks shone, pink circles on her chubby face.

  “Have you got make-up on, pet?”

  Marie was suddenly, inexplicably embarrassed. “Shut up.” And she stormed back into her bedroom.

  Kay bit her lip to stop herself laughing. Marie once cried with shame because Kay said she liked Ribena in front of a boy from her class.

  “Darlin’,” she shouted, “we’ve crisps.”

  Marie hesitated, strode back across the hall with her head down, looking away from her mother. Feeling blindly on the worktop she found the multipack somehow, took out a packet of salt and vinegar.

  “Like your nail varnish.”

  Marie glared at her. “Well, then, I don’t.”

  Kay sighed, “Give us a fucking break, Marie. Or my crisps back.”

  Marie resisted a laugh, snorting through her nose with a bit of snotty follow-through. Shocked, she touched her wet top lip and looked at her mother accusingly. “For God’s sake.”

  She left in a huff, remembering to take the crisps with her.

  Kay took another draw. A bad one, sour, sore. One of the ones that made her wish she didn’t smoke.

  “Where’s my trainers?” Joe was standing in the doorway, his skinny frame in silhouette. “Is that crisps?”

  Without waiting for an answer he padded into the gloomy kitchen, rummaged in the multipack bag and pulled out two packets of cheese and onion.

  “ONE!”

  He dropped one packet on the counter. “Where’s my trainers?”

  “Why don’t you look with your eyes.”

  “Because it’s easier to look with my mum.” He opened the packet of crisps, took some out and shoved them into his mouth.

  Joe was charming, that was his trouble; he charmed people into doing things for him all the time. Kay didn’t want to encourage it. “Fuck off, I’m having a menopause.”

  “Seriously, where’s my trainers?”

  She turned back to the filthy window.

  “Mum?”

  She slumped over the table, defeated. “Where did you take them off?”

  “At the door.”

  “Have you looked at the door?”

  “No. Will I?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He turned and looked at the laundry bin that sat behind the front door. She kept it there to put in all the shit they dropped. It was clear plastic and she could see the trainers smashed into the side.

  He spotted them too, grunted, and padded over to the bin.

  He’d be out for hours now. He was that age where standing on a street corner was irresistible, fascinating, the company of his pals hypnotic. Kay remembered that herself. It wasn’t even that far in the past, four kids ago, but still not beyond her memory to recall the excitement of it, the pull of it. Hormones. Now she had four kids, all steps and stairs, all of them hitting their teens at the same time. They were all bouncing off the walls.

  “Hey,” Joe called to her from the hall. She looked and found him sitting on the floor, pulling his trainers on, legs sprawled.

  “What?”

  “You look fed up sitting there in the dark.”

  Blindsided by his charm yet again, she brightened. “I’m all right, son. Just chilling.”

  “Sure? I’ll bring you in a bag of chips if ye like.”

  “Nah, I’m all right.”

  She watched him pull his jacket out of the laundry bin. He slipped it on in one of his improbable moments of grace, and opened the front door, stepping out to the yellow gloom on the landing, leaving a puff of cold drafting through the hall.

  She liked Joe best. It was wrong to have favorites but she did. They were all teenagers but he was the only one who noticed she had feelings. He tried to cheer her up sometimes.

  Kay took another draw. It was getting dark outside the windows but she couldn’t be bothered getting up to put the light on, so she sat in the gathering gloom, enjoying the quiet pause before starting the tea and the next round of chores. Down on the street she heard the noise of boys shouting and running, the leather slap of a football. She imagined an audience of girls clustered to the side of the concrete. Out beyond that she saw the city, the barrier of tall flats in the Gorbals, the bright city center and the jagged tower of the university.

  The light from the hall caught the side of the ashtray, the red enamel petals glinting, catching the snake of coiled silver wire that master craftsman’s hands had formed in Moscow. She sighed, savoring the colors. Gustav Klingert—she’d checked the hallmark on the internet; 1880-ish.

  Kay sat back to see it better. It was a small bowl, tucked in tight around the rim. The inside was gilded silver, slightly worn so that the watery sheen of the cold silver showed through the warm glow of gold. On the outside the enamel background was yellow, with red flowers and white and blue leaves picked out in wire. A small line of blue dots articulated the rim and base.

  She reached forward and touched it with her fingertip, feeling the rims of the twisted wire around the little pools of luminous enamel. It was the red that caught her the most. The red enamel was clear, transparent, like the inside of a fruit jelly. She didn’t even know how to say the name of the style, Ros-tov fin-ift. She liked that it was unpronounceable. It made it feel as if it came from another universe, like Obi-Wan Kenobi.

  It was not for the likes of her at all. But the patterns of Russian enameling came from peasant embroidery. Poor women had designed those patterns and the color schemes, they sewed them onto their own tablecloths and the hems of their clothes, working hard in cold, dark houses, pricking their fingers. They were poor women with a deep aching need for beauty to keep them moving through the dark, make them feel alive.

  And then, hundreds of years later, jewelers took their designs and made them into expensive things like this bowl, clasps for belts, tea caddies when tea was a luxury, items so expensive the sewing women could never afford them. She was one of those women, those sewing women, sitting in the gloom, and the intricate patterns spoke to her of the beauty to be made from nothing, of the importance of seeing the beauty in things and appreciating it, even through a dirty window.

  Kay knew that of all the people who had owned or used or seen this bowl in the last one hundred and thirty years, none of them had loved it as much as she had, stroked it in the long dark nights when she couldn’t sleep, tracing the little coils of silver wire snaking through the pools of brilliant color.

  THREE

  In the freezing early morning rain Alex Morrow stood by a raw grave, holding the tasseled end of a golden rope.

  The fiction of it bothered her. They weren’t lowering him eight feet down with these curtain ties, the real work was being done by the motorized straps under the coffin. But the funeral director had ordered them in hushed tones to take an end of rope each: herself and Danny, a grizzled man who was her dad’s cellmate for years, two cousins, a childhood friend, and one of the funeral directors. They stood around the hole they were putting her father into and went through the charade, while the other funeral guy operated the machine that actually lowered the box into the ground.

  When the box reached the bosom of the earth they all looked up for guidance. The funeral director at the graveside dropped his rope into the hole sadly, waiting as the rope snaked away and dropped with a dull thunk onto the coffin below. He nodded into the hole, solemnly, as if he had finally come to terms with the death of a man he didn’t know existed until he got the job of burying him. He looked at the other bearers, saw them wondering what the hell to do and swept his hand to the hole, telling them to follow his lead.

  One of the cousins straightened his arm and dropped his tassel straight in, not touching the sides. He watched it fall, his mouth open in a slight smile, enj
oying the drop. The cellmate chucked his in dutifully, turning away before it hit the wood. Danny flicked his wrist, as if he was chucking away a sweetie wrapper, knew littering was wrong but didn’t give a shit. Morrow just opened her fingers and let it fall into the hole, trying to give the gesture no meaning, fully aware that her studied carelessness was an eloquent summary of her feelings for her father.

  Behind her, Crystyl whimpered loudly. She was wearing a gigantic black hat with black silk roses sewn all around the rim, staggering occasionally when her stilettos sank into the muddy ground. Danny was embarrassed by her. She’d never met the dead man.

  Morrow turned to walk away but found herself kettled in by the long mound of loose earth covered over with vibrant green AstroTurf.

  It was a small turnout, pathetic, but more than he deserved. They weren’t there for him—most of them were men and most of them were there out of loyalty to Danny. She despised the lackeys. They dressed like Danny, did their hair like his, supported his team. It was a loyalty born from mutual greed and self-serving ambition. The enmity was mutual: they knew she was a cop.

  Danny caught up with her as she walked carefully through the mud to the path.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said formally, falling into step with her though she was striding fast and brisk away to the path.

  Morrow pulled her coat closed against him. “He was my dad too.”

  “I know, but just—thanks.”

  “Well, you know, thanks for organizing it.”

  “Aye, no bother.” He was shoulder to shoulder with her, walking up the steep hill to her car as if they were together, hurrying over a path deep with black granite chips that demanded a slow gait. Danny wanted something.

  “What?”

  He gave her the look, the heavy lidded watch-your-fucking-step-with-me look. “Brian didn’t come?”

  Danny had never met Brian and she never wanted him to either. “Couldn’t get the time off work.”

  Danny nodded, smiled at the ground. She sensed that he knew Brian still wasn’t working. She had asked Brian not to come. She did it because he was a good person, not fit to resist the snaky charms of Danny. Two minutes in his company and Brian would be doing him a favor, getting sucked in. That was how Danny roped people in: ask a small favor, give a small favor, lend a bit of money to a needy cousin and then, before they knew what was happening, a perfectly good-​living person was driving a car packed with heroin from Fraserburgh. Safe contact was no contact. They arrived at her car, a tired old Honda Brian had bought in a moment of romantic nostalgia for their past, and Morrow fumbled for her keys in her bag.

  Behind them, down the hill at the graveside, Crystyl struggled loudly with her grief, and a henchman of Danny’s, dressed in a funereal tracksuit, stood an arm’s length away and handed her a packet of Handy Andies.

  “Crystyl’s taking it hard,” said Morrow, allowing herself a dig as she pulled her keys out.

  She could see his jaw flex out of the corner of her eye.

  “Alex, a woman’s going to phone you. A psychologist. About John.”

  Morrow stopped and looked at him. John, not Johnny, not JJ, not Wee John. Sunday name. Serious. “You gave someone my name in connection with John?”

  Danny sucked his teeth and looked hard at the granite chips around his feet. John was the son Danny had at fourteen. The mother was eighteen, a sex symbol on the South Side, a trophy for a young thug. Alex remembered hearing about it when she was at school and feeling strangely proud of Danny. She was fourteen herself and someone her age having a baby seemed ludicrously sophisticated. But John’s life had not been a credit to teen parenthood. He grew up fast and brutal.

  “Is he having a hard time inside?” she said, trying to care.

  “Hmm.” Danny was grinding his jaw so hard he was having trouble speaking.

  He looked away and managed to open his mouth. “That thing…​with that woman—”

  “Fifteen isn’t a woman, Danny.”

  He looked straight at her and she saw the hate in his eyes. His breathing was short, fast, as if he’d hit her if he could. “You never fucking stop, do ye?”

  She looked at her car key.

  “He’s my fucking son. Isn’t that why we both hated him”—he pointed back to the dirty hole in the wet ground—“because he never gave a shit about us? John’s my son and I’m fucking trying.”

  The back of his neck flushed pink and Morrow looked away, begging him not to cry. Danny cleared his throat and whispered, “I’m trying.”

  Trying to care about a rapist son who carved open the milk-white thighs of a fifteen-year-old girl with a Stanley knife. At a party. That was the part of the story that the newspapers couldn’t get over: that a party was going on outside the door while he did that to her in the parent’s en suite bathroom. A middle-class girl at a private school. A clever girl who drank too much and let bad boys in. They had run the gamut of social panics: teen drinking, gangs, knife crime, teen sex. It felt as if the story would never run out of juice, until John was arrested and all the coverage became prejudicial to his trial.

  Danny might be trying to help John but he was the problem too: everyone in the city knew John was guilty because Danny was his father. If Danny had a speck of doubt about John’s guilt then the boys who had named him to the police would be missing. The guilty verdict had been a foregone conclusion.

  “Is he going to get help in prison?”

  Danny shrugged.

  “Why did you tell them to contact me? I’m not going to lie about him, Danny. His previous’ll be listed in the trial papers anyway.”

  “It’s not because you’re polis, it’s because you’re family. They want a history, it’s just facts they’re after.”

  Morrow tutted as she fitted her key in the driver’s door. “Danny, we’re hardly a family.”

  He nodded at that. “But you’re all I’ve got.”

  “Can they not talk to his mum?”

  Danny shook his head. “Hospital. Nuts.”

  “What about his granny? She’s alive, isn’t she?”

  “She’s…not keen.”

  “Hmm.” Morrow didn’t say it out loud either: JJ had kicked his granny about and been charged with it. The granny would have even worse things to say about him than Morrow did.

  Together they looked down at Crystyl again, still crying as she was led away from the graveside. The smattering of men standing around looked away, embarrassed, thinking perhaps that even dead psychopaths deserved more decorum.

  “If I speak to her,” said Danny, “it’s going to end up being all about me. I’m trying to stay away from it all, create a distance, or else he’ll get killed in prison by some wee prick making his bones. It’s too messy. The woman just wants a bit of background.”

  “What does she want to talk about?”

  “Background about John’s life. Information about his life. Where he lived and who with and that.” Danny swiveled on his heel, facing away from her, his breathing short and hesitant. “I’m not dodging it, Alex. I’m trying to do the right thing. It’s harder for me to ask you for a favor.”

  She’d slag Danny off. That was what he wanted, it would help John. But most of the information she could offer would be on his young offenders’ record anyway. They must have done social reports when he was charged with assaulting his gran. She looked down at her hand. The key was in the door, her hand was on the key, all she had to do was turn it, get into the car and leave. “I don’t know all that much about his background—”

  “It’s not about treatment, it’s for sentencing—how likely he is to do this again to another lassie. We don’t want him getting out if…”

  Morrow paused for a long deep breath. Danny really knew how to work her: save the girls, don’t kill JJ, be better than our dad. He knew where her buttons were and how many times to press them. For a moment it occurred to her that maybe this time their interests were the same, that it was the reasonable thing to do. She considered it until
the exotic sense of filial warmth set off an alarm. She hadn’t come out of all of that chaos and joined the police by being reasonable. She hadn’t stayed out of it or married a man as nice as Brian by doing what Danny thought would be best.

  She turned the key, opened the door to her own world and put one foot into the car.

  “No. I won’t. And Danny, after this…” She opened her hand, repeating the gesture she had at the graveside, letting the golden tassel fall. She dropped into the driving seat and shut the door.

  Danny looked at her through the windscreen, for just a moment. Heavy set, shaved head and square shoulders, his style was intended to intimidate. And now he stood there with his small teeth bared in a tight slit of a mouth, his chin down, glaring at her.

  She’d never seen that expression on his face before and felt a pang of fear run through her, through the twins in her belly, through her nice old car. Danny broke jaws and slammed car doors on hands. Danny stabbed a man in the face with a bottle. Danny did those things when he felt he was owed or when he wanted something. Alex felt strongly that this was the last time they would speak kindly to one another, and she was aware that the choice to move away had been hers.

  Keeping her breathing steady, she started the engine, and drove past him, carefully taking the high path down the far side of the cemetery, glad when the funeral party disappeared from her rearview mirror.

  She made it to the gates before her work phone jingled a vulgar cheery tune. It was Bannerman. She pressed a button on the hands-free and his voice crackled into the car:

  “Where are you now?”

  No hello, no preliminaries, just a bark. She hadn’t spoken to him yet and he already sounded pissed off at her. “Leaving the cemetery.”

  “Good.”

  “Sir, you need to ask me how it was.”

  “Do I?” It wasn’t a challenge, it was a genuine inquiry. Bannerman had been promoted above her and, though the move wasn’t unexpected, it had a surprising effect on him. They had shared an office for months and Morrow knew he was insecure, she’d guessed that from the phony persona he seemed determined to act out, the tousled hair, the sun-kissed cheeks, from his aching need to be popular and appealing. What she hadn’t expected was for the opinion of those beneath him to mean so little so suddenly. He shed all that, was acting for a different audience now. Now he was angry all the time, was heavy handed, harsh and haranguing. The men on their crew loathed him, a fact which he bore with a degree of pride. Even more bizarrely she had suddenly become very popular with the men, possibly on the basis that her surliness was at least sincere.