The End of the Wasp Season

by Denise Mina

  At first the beam of light from her torch caught a slab of roughly cut plywood. It was sitting on the two struts of the table legs, balanced there, looking like a shoddy repair job. But she saw something on top of it, sandwiched between the top of the table and the rough wooden plank, pink as a flesh wound.

  “Let’s get that out.”

  She shuffled back up onto her feet as Gobby and Harris stepped forward and bent down, taking an end of the plank each, sliding it out so that Harris could hold one end until Gobby came around and helped him. It was heavy and they worked hard not to tip it or move the money around.

  They sat it on a worktop OK’d by the SOCO and looked at it. Morrow smiled: purple and purple and purple, like a patchwork quilt, the blocks of notes next to each other echoing the pattern over and over.

  The money had been laid out carefully in the middle of the plank. Sarah must have set it out before sliding it under there but Morrow could see that the bundles around the edge were messy, as if Sarah had developed the habit of kneeling down and shoving the bundles in as she got them, fitting them in blind.

  A great purple delicious flurry of money. Morrow realized that her mouth was hanging open, she was salivating. The currency being unfamiliar made it seem infinite, how money looks to a child, and the notes were large, almost the size of a paperback book.

  “You,” she barked at no one in particular, “who’s keeping the book on this?”

  Gobby grinned. “No one yet.”

  Morrow looked along the plank. It was four feet long, the bricks neatly stacked in six rows, eight columns long. She tried to work out how much was there, to remember how many zeros there were in a million.

  “Gobby, you’re not getting paid to just stand here. Start the book and put me down for a tenner.”

  “What’s your guess?”

  “Could be nearly a million.”

  Gobby licked his pencil tip. “Is that in euros or quid?”

  Harris was suddenly animated. “Let’s make it the value in sterling, the exchange value on the day we get the count.”

  Morrow nodded. “Yeah, I’m changing mine then: make it seven hundred and fifty thousand quid.”

  Gobby jotted it on a receipt he had pulled out of his pocket and Harris watched. “Yeah, put me down for six fifty at a tenner.”

  Gobby frowned at the plank. “Right, I’ll take the bald seven.”

  “Yeah, yeah, good, OK,” Harris was smiling. “How soon will the count be?”

  She had never seen Harris so abruptly animated before and knew the look of a gambler. “Probably tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow, right.” Harris nodded to Gobby. “See who else is up for it, yeah?”

  Gobby had noticed as well. “You’re not having a Gamblers Anonymous slip here, are ye?”

  Harris flushed a little. “Don’t know what you’re on about.”

  Gobby grinned as if he’d found a cat to torture.

  The sight of the cash had been so distracting that Morrow had to start from the beginning again: they came in through the window, over the draining board, checking the different doors. The doors all looked the same size, all blank paneled on the back, a sixties improvement to the doors in old houses to stop them gathering dust, make them more hygienic. They’d tugged the plug of the radio out and listened, hadn’t seen the money—

  “Ma’am.” It was Tamsin Leonard at the back door. “DCI Bannerman—” She held out the phone and Morrow heard Harris give a dismissive little grunt at the name.

  Morrow turned and gave him a reproving look, making him cast his eyes down. Gobby raised his eyebrows innocently, as if it was nothing to do with him.

  Slowly, she took the mobile from Leonard’s hand. “Sir?”

  “What’s going on over there?”

  “One dead householder, stacks of cash hidden in the kitchen. Lots of oddities about it—”

  “Like what, like what?” He sounded excited. He wouldn’t have sounded like that if he’d seen the woman at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Face smashed in, obliterated really, clumsy break-in, not professional at all—”

  “Someone who knew her, then.” It was obvious. Detection 101, obliterating facial injuries usually meant the assailant was known to the victim, but Bannerman wasn’t showing off to her, he was using her to rehearse his conclusions for the bosses.

  “Well…” She watched Harris order Leonard to make a bet on the tally, explaining the rules of currency exchange. Leonard seemed reluctant. “Still piecing it together really.”

  “Sex murder, then?”

  “Still gathering evidence, sir.” She liked the idea that he’d be jealous of her, being there, seeing. “There’s a shitload of money. Cash. In euros. I don’t know if it’s real or not but we need an armored car to come over here and take it away.”

  “How much?” He sounded disinterested, implying that a lot of money to her might not be a lot of money to him.

  She could already see Bannerman at the photo op with a table full of purple money, looking solemn but handsome. “I don’t really trust my maths, sir. Are there six zeros in a million?”

  “I’m coming. I’m bringing an armored.” And he hung up.

  “Goodbye,” Morrow said to no one, out of habit. She was a bit dazed herself. She handed the phone back to the copper and caught Harris’s eye, holding it steady as she gave him the news. “Bannerman’s coming.”

  “Fine. Fine by me,” he said, keeping his face neutral. “Is he a betting man?”

  EIGHT

  Goering loomed over Thomas’s shoulder as they walked the dark corridors to the residents’ block. He stayed in Thomas’s blind spot, his face a soupy blur, down dark corridors, into a part of the building forbidden to the boys during school hours. His presence was well meant but a portent of disaster, like a bodyguard.

  Thomas tried not to think, just to walk, one foot, then the next, open a door, one foot, then his father hanging from a beam, then a woman’s vagina and scarlet blood splashing onto Squeak’s shin, turn the corner, open the fire doors, a heel crushing a nose, the bleached white cartilage and scarlet freckles. He wanted to stop and concentrate on breathing, to get into a scorching bath and slough off the oily slick, but he kept thinking of Stander. Stander in the showers, not of his erection but his face, young, spotty, dismayed. One moment of weakness stamped onto you forever. Thomas should just get home. Swallow it down and not think until he got home.

  A connecting corridor to the dorms, a long cold strip of concrete floor with windows on either side. Glancing up he saw into the science labs, a group of boys in safety glasses gathered around Mr. Halshall. A face looking at him, mouth open, eyes warped by the thick plastic lens. Toby was in the year below them but he was an altar boy with Squeak. Toby’s magnified eyes strayed behind Thomas to Goering: it must have looked as if Thomas was being frogmarched to his dormy.

  He walked through the fire doors, punched in the code to the security door and onto the nylon carpet that sparked against slipper soles in the dark. Up three stairs, past four bedroom doors to his own room. He opened the door.

  It smelled funny. He always got a waft of it when he opened the door and he was aware that it was his own smell, the smell of his body and his hair and his habits. He usually liked it but now that Goering was here he was suddenly conscious that it was disgusting and pathetic. The cleaner hadn’t been yet so his bin was full of wipes and they looked like tissues he’d been wanking into. He glanced back as he walked in and snapped on the light. Goering had no expression on his face but he knew he was taking it all in.

  “Just the basics, Thomas. The plane will be ready to take off in half an hour.”

  Goering held the door open, fitting the rubber doorstop under it. School rules: the door was to be left open if more than one person was in a bedroom. Failure to comply meant instant suspension and it applied to staff and pupils. They were always watching.

  The room was tidy, the bed was made, nothing was out that shouldn’t have been
and yet Thomas felt naked. He pulled out his desk chair and stood on it, reaching up to the top of the cupboard, yanking at the canvas handle of his duffel bag and dragging it over the edge, pulling a shower of dust on himself. He stepped down and threw it on the bed.

  Goering leaned over and undid the zip, quite tenderly, sitting the bag open as Thomas watched. Thomas looked at him and Goering almost smiled.

  “Now you can just put your stuff straight in,” he said.

  Suddenly Thomas couldn’t remember what they were doing here, or what the stuff was or why the dormy was so quiet. He looked at Goering for guidance.

  “Get your underwear from your drawer.”

  Thomas did as he was told and Goering pointed him at the bag. He put in the pile of pants and vests, still stiff from the laundry, still with their scratchy ironed-on identification tags on the front.

  “Now toiletries.”

  The bathroom was at the foot of the short boxy bed. Thomas opened the door, felt for the light switch and found himself startled by a blaze of white light from the bare light bulb above, as if he had woken in the dark, come in for a pee and blinded himself. He shut his eyes and opened them to the mirror. An angry kid with wide eyes, flushed. Vulnerable, Stander. He hadn’t been able to look at himself this morning. It wasn’t psychological, it was a physical inability to raise his head and look at himself. But now Lars was dead and he was looking at himself. He blinked, looked again and found his stance improved: harder, cold, mouth tight, better.

  “Toiletries.” The edge was back in Goering’s voice.

  Thomas reached forward and grabbed his toothbrush, his soap, his spot cream, the inhaler he never used. He walked out of the toilet and dropped them into his bag.

  “Books?”

  “No,” said Thomas firmly.

  Goering was surprised by the change in him. “Games? Address book?”

  “No.”

  Goering hesitated. “OK. You have a look around and see if you want to take anything else with you. I’ll go and get your mobile phone from the housekeeper.” He stepped out of the room, taking out his own phone, walking off down the corridor with a little tinny ring tone sounding from it. He was calling ahead, calling a car, making some arrangement. Thomas wished he hadn’t gone. The fire door slapped shut behind him and Thomas was left alone in the hissing quiet. He looked at his bag. Jumpers.

  His home clothes were in the wardrobe. He heard his father’s voice angrily ordering him to put his home clothes on. Thomas stood still, staring at the floor. Lars had killed himself. He couldn’t give orders to anyone anymore.

  Thomas looked up at the window and his throat let out a tiny squeal of joy.

  Across the gray concrete forecourt, in the gathering dark, stood Squeak. Thomas had his eager hand on the window before his eyes adjusted and he saw Squeak properly, the stern look on his face, the clenched fists at his sides.

  Squeak must be between classes. He’d have skipped off from the crowd of boys meandering slowly through the school, he’d be late but say he’d gone somewhere for something, wouldn’t be missed. He must have heard that Thomas had been taken out of Library. That was all he knew, Thomas had been frogmarched out of Library and Goering took him to the dormy. He must be shitting himself.

  Without a signal, Squeak bent over, running but keeping below the windows of the long corridor, his fingers touching the ground, galloping on all fours like a gangly monkey. He skirted the building, keeping low until he reached Thomas’s window.

  Thomas saw Squeak’s crown appear at the edge of the rectangle of light on the concrete, stop, look up. Thomas broke eye contact immediately but reached over to the window latch, unscrewing the lock and swinging it open as little as possible, flicking the lock on to let Squeak know he couldn’t come in.

  “Goering about.”

  He reached under the sill to the books on the shelf and lifted them out, putting them on the sill and separating them into two random piles, pretending to choose between them.

  Thomas and Squeak spoke then, simultaneously, in the same mumbled undertone. “My dad hung himself and I’m going home.” “I won’t tell what you did to her.”

  Shocked, Thomas looked up.

  Squeak was on all fours below the window, leaning on his fingertips, looking up at him, a dog ready to spring. His lips were damp and slightly parted. He looked as if he was smiling.

  Squeak was a complete stranger to him. Thomas knew him as well as he would ever know another human being and yet he didn’t know him at all.

  Now Thomas stood with a book in each hand, poised over the meaningless piles of meaningless books and looked down at the corner of the window. Staying out of the rectangle of light from Thomas’s room, Squeak craned his neck up and met his eye.

  Thomas looked out and saw the dog that he was bonded to, wet-lipped and smiling up at him out of the dark.

  NINE

  Kay was almost finished. She was catching up on the twice-a-year jobs, the washing and buffing of glassware that was never used. To her almost certain knowledge Mrs. Thalaine hadn’t touched these wee red vases in three years. But she’d been given them by one of the kids, and she liked them. Kay pressed them down into the hot water and watched the grease lift and the sheen return to the glass. Her hands were pink to the wrists. She smiled at the steam settling on her face like artificial perspiration, cooling her down before her body had time to respond to the need.

  The doorbell rang all the way across the house. Kay turned to see who it was. The kitchen window looked out onto the courtyard and the front door.

  A man and a woman stood looking at the door. Both in suits, but not sorry the way salesmen were. They looked confident, weren’t swinging their briefcases nervously or letting off weak practice-smiles.

  Mrs. Thalaine’s lady-trot clip-clop hurried to the hall followed by the sound of her unlocking and opening the door. Kay turned back to the sink and her washing, taking the vases out, putting them on the draining board, her meditation broken by curiosity. She craned to hear the muted conversation in the hall.

  The man and woman introduced themselves. Kay couldn’t hear the details but Mrs. Thalaine mumbled some questions and then she heard footsteps coming this way. She resented it because she still had bits to do and then she’d promised herself a smoke and a sit on the bench before she moved on to the Campbells’.

  Margery Thalaine sounded nervous, her voice high and a little shaky. Whoever they were, if they were hassly salesmen, she would surely know to bring them into Kay so she could tell them to fuck off. They came to this area every so often because of all the money and the polite old people. It took the staff to tell them where to go.

  Sure enough, steps through the hall, low voices making conversation but now Mrs. Thalaine quite chatty, not sounding irritated the way she did when she was being made to do something she didn’t want to.

  A pause outside the door and then it opened. Mrs. Thalaine stood there for a moment, the suits behind her, and Kay read her face for clues. Calm. A little excited. She wasn’t supposed to get excited.

  “Kay? These are the police.”

  At that Kay turned towards them, looked them up and down, getting their measure. The man looked back at her arrogantly, tipping his nose up, squaring up to her. The woman leaned forward and held her hand out.

  “I’m DC Leonard.”

  Kay would not shake hands with a police officer. She held her hands up, wet. The female dropped her hand. Kay didn’t respect many people and the police were low on her count.

  Her wet hands dripped suds onto the floor she had just cleaned. Another thing to do. “You want me to…” She sounded cross, she knew she did, and she didn’t want to upset Mrs. Thalaine.

  Mrs. Thalaine smiled weakly. “If you wouldn’t mind…”

  Kay dried her hands, knowing she looked cross and promising herself she’d come back and explain on her way to the bus stop, that she didn’t like the police or trust them, that she’d had trouble with them.

&n
bsp; She softened her voice. “Well, I’ll just leave it there today, if that’s all right with you.”

  Mrs. Thalaine’s chin twitched anxiously so Kay touched her forearm as she passed on her way to the door, letting her know she wasn’t angry with her.

  “Actually,” Kay turned back at the sound of Margery’s voice and saw that she had been comforted, “could you take the recycling with you?”

  Suddenly angry, Kay pinched her mouth. “Can’t you take it round yourself, Margery?”

  Margery pinched her mouth back. She didn’t like Kay calling her by her first name in front of visitors. They looked hard at each other for a moment until Margery broke off and sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. “I’d rather you took it.”

  Kay left the room and slammed the door behind her. She stomped through the long living room. Bright sun streamed in the long wall of small windows, hitting her pupils like a series of slaps.

  She opened the door to the hall cupboard. There was the bag she had set out nicely for Margery: a bag for life, Waitrose, to take the poor look off her. Kay had set it there for her, near the door, handles up, ready to go.

  Kay always arrived half an hour early, thirty minutes that she insisted she didn’t get paid for, just to listen to Margery moan and weep because she was lonely and so much had gone wrong and she couldn’t talk about her worries to her clubhouse ladies because none of them ever admitted to having troubles. And this morning over those stupid wee cups of tea that wouldn’t wet a mouse’s tongue, it took her twenty minutes to get Margery to promise she would leave the house at least once a day, and today’s expedition was to the recycling bins a hundred yards away.

  Kay felt foolish and tricked, as if all the intimacy they had shared meant nothing, as if she had been kicked back into her place. But her sadness was too deep and she knew it was really about Joy. She didn’t love Margery. She was trying to replace Joy, that soft, kind intimacy, sometimes mother, sometimes child. Looking at the bag of recycling, she remembered a tiny withered hand touching her forearm. She had to clear her throat to chase the tears.