The End of the Wasp Season

by Denise Mina

  Thomas was holding the armrest below the window with both hands, looking resolutely out of the window. He could feel Mary’s presence burning behind him, could feel the vague disinterest of Jamie, his mother’s proxy, in front. He stared at the glass, at his reflection, his round eyes and stupid big Moira-lips, faint over the watermark of Sevenoaks. Mild hills, not rugged or massive like at school. Big houses hiding away down roads, skulking behind trees.

  Moira moved into the Sevenoaks mansion Lars had bought without consulting her and she did it without an objection. She moved miles away from her friends and neighbors and all the shops in north London. It’ll be great, they were told—possibly by her, maybe by him—it’ll be great there because we’ll have acres of our own land and a big fence all around it and a top-of-the-range security system. We’ll have electric shutters and a panic room and a safe.

  They moved, and then Thomas was sent away to school, before he even had the chance to find out what was so great about a panic room. Moira didn’t complain about that either. When Ella’s turn came she fought for her though, insisting she stayed at the local school until she was twelve. Thomas asked her about it, why she fought for Ella and not for him. She got teary, slacking her tongue from the dry roof of her mouth, guilty maybe. Boys are different, she said. That’s all she said. Boys are different.

  Moira didn’t look vacant in the papers. She looked good actually, a couple of the boys had mentioned that she did. She had stayed thin and his father paid someone to come and do her hair a lot, dye it and set it. But even in the papers as she bustled through airports, drove through waiting protesters at the gate, even then he could see the emptiness in her. She was all he had left and there was no one there.

  They were drawing near the turn-off, edging along with the other big cars, Jamie indicating early to let them know he was trying to get out. The sky was dark, the fields were fallow strips of turned mud. There might be nothing on the earth but this strip of tarmac, this line of cars.

  He could hear Mary next to him, thinking of something to say, opening her mouth and shutting it. She kept quiet. She must be worried about her job, they must all have been worried. They couldn’t afford to keep all the staff on. If he met Mary and she didn’t work for them, he wondered, would she be different? He knew she thought things and didn’t say them, everyone did that. Jamie would probably be the same as he was now. The exact same. Silent, pleasant, a bit vacant. Moira loved Jamie for that. She liked him because he had nothing going on either.

  Jamie took the turn, followed the road along to the gates, new gates, faux Victorian; his father loved faux things. Jamie pulled up to them, pressed the button on the dash and the gates swung slowly inward, giving Thomas time to take in all the graffiti on the walls. LIAR, said one. Thomas had seen it before, it had been pictured in the papers. SCUM BANKERS, said another. Ridiculous. He didn’t work for a fucking bank. Other than that the protests seemed to be very mild. A bunch of cheap supermarket flowers had been left propped up with a wooden cross. People knew about the suicide.

  Through the gates, the drive was sheltered from the wind off the hill by a long arcade of gnarled old trees, naked, mournful and looming. The glass roof over the swimming pool looked dirty. Thomas could see dead leaves on it.

  It was a nasty house, an asymmetric façade, plastic Arts and Crafts, supposed to look like a squat cottage with a heavy roof, but much too big for that. It looked like a sports center, had a big hall, big rooms. His father got it cut-price from a bankrupt trying to minimize his losses by selling for cash. The stench of panic clung to the place. Moira had redecorated. In a dry-mouth rasp she ordered the decorator to do it all in frosty blue and white, Swedish, completely inconsistent with the Voysey-esque exterior, but consistently so. Thomas’s quarters were full of spindly-legged tables and white chairs and strings of painted love hearts.

  As they stopped at the bottom of the steps Mary finally thought of something to say. “We are all very sorry about your dad.”

  She watched the back of his head for a reaction but Thomas didn’t move. He was looking at his father’s lawn.

  The house was set up high, not on a steep hill like the house in Thorntonhall, but elevated, with a balustraded terrace along the front of it, stairs leading down at the side, to the top of a long gentle slope of lawn. He was looking at it and his mind was blank. Thomas should get out of the car now but he couldn’t move, his muscles were slack, he was afraid to let go of the armrest.

  “Shall I go and see if your mother is in?”

  If she’s in? She wasn’t even in the house. She’d gone out. Home to nothing. Still looking at the lawn he realized very suddenly that his eyes were dry, they were open wide as if he was being hit. He could hardly draw breath.

  Mary took his silence for a yes and stepped out of the stationary car. She hurried up the steps to the door.

  Thomas’s eyes were on the lawn. His dad loved the lawn. He loved that he owned it and the shape of it, that it dropped at the end so it looked as if it went on forever and he owned it. When they moved in Thomas and Ella wanted to play on it, run and roly-poly down it but Moira said no, it’s your father’s, he owns it, it’s not for playing on.

  He owned it and no one, not Moira or even Ella, was allowed to run on it or step on it and the gardeners were sacked if they let an inch of it fail. Thomas’s nose was hard against the window, it hurt how hard it was against the window, and he looked out at his father’s lawn and pressed harder until his nose clicked and he saw a heel crushing a nose and saw the inside of the broken nose and the blinding white of the cartilage and perfect round bubbles of blood on it and Squeak on all fours, looking up at him with blood running from his mouth, smiling in the dark—

  “You all right, Tommy?” Jamie had turned in his seat, his face a quarter visible, a vague, awkward smile on his face.

  Thomas let go of the armrest and threw both forearms around Jamie’s throat, choking him as he dragged him backwards into the passenger seat.

  THIRTEEN

  Wilder drove Morrow to London Road in silence, and she was glad of it. She kept her notebook on her knee, glancing down at it every so often, pretending she was making sense of the details and time lines. All she could think about was a younger Kay Murray, standing on a street corner outside the AJ Supplies in Shawlands, wearing a lot of lipstick. JJ had just been born and Morrow was jealous of Danny, resenting the tender way he talked about him, the softness in his eyes, his pride because she thought having his own family now meant he would move on from the mess they were born into.

  She felt her phone vibrate before it rang out and fumbled for it in her pocket, pulling it out at the first tone chime. The screen said “Office” not “Bannerman” and she answered with an element of relief.

  “Ma’am, Harris.”

  “Right?”

  “iPhone’s last call was a 999.”

  “Did she get through?”

  “She didn’t answer the operator.”

  “Shit. I can hear the papers banging on about that already. Look into that. Be thorough. OK?”

  “Aye, ma’am, no stone and that.”

  “What else is there?”

  He covered the mouthpiece and asked someone, came back on the phone: “Still looking through the emails and photos.”

  “Any word on Mrs. Erroll’s carers?”

  “Made up a list of names and addys.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” She hung up.

  They could have saved her. They could have been standing outside the door and caught the arseholes on their way out. Or arrived in time, stopped it happening at all. What might have been. She yanked her thoughts away to happier things.

  Kay Murray had children, four children, teenagers. It was jarring. Morrow couldn’t think of Kay as anything other than a teenager herself, even though her face was older and her hair graying, even then she couldn’t imagine Kay doing anything other than standing around lampposts late in the summer, too late for the little s
he was wearing, young enough to suffer high heels bought in a charity shop because she was self-conscious about her stubby legs.

  Morrow looked at her notebook. She hadn’t turned the page for two miles. “How did you get on at the door-to-doors?”

  Wilder had been in a world of his own too and started at her voice. “Sorry?”

  “Door-to-doors, anything?”

  “Oh,” he indicated for a turn, “nothing much. Erroll kept herself to herself. She was selling the house though.”

  “Really?”

  “Big deal,” he nodded, agreeing with himself. “Big deal because they’ve been there for a hundred and fifty years. Neighbors thought it was a big deal.”

  “Bad time to sell too.”

  “And the house is in a mess.”

  “Yeah, she wouldn’t have gotten a very good price for it.” She ran her fingertips across a line of notes. “The woman that we met there in the avenue…”

  “Kay Murray?” He was smiling. “You know her?”

  “At school. Where did you meet her?”

  His smile fell to a smirk. “Down the hill, the old stables is a house now, Mrs. Thalaine. Your pal’s her cleaner. Quite a character.”

  He meant it as an insult. Morrow grunted, smiling on the side of her face that he would see out of the corner of his eye. “Get her address?”

  He shrugged. “In the notes.”

  It would take him a day to get around to writing up the temporary report. She felt suddenly exposed and changed the subject. “Did Erroll have a boyfriend?”

  “Not that anyone saw.”

  Wilder’s shift ended in twenty minutes and she could feel him zoning out.

  “She wasn’t friendly with the locals then?”

  But he was gone, already working out what he’d do when he got home, how he’d get home. “Dunno. Kay might know.”

  She warmed at the mention. “How would she know?”

  “Apparently Sarah Erroll paid ten quid an hour and everyone’s cleaners and staff went to work for her when her mum was ill. That Kay, the cleaner, she worked up there until the old lady died. Then she moved back. Mrs. Thalaine said Kay’s got a lot of problems.”

  “Kind of problems?”

  “Lives in Castlemilk.”

  “How’s that a problem?”

  “Mrs. Thalaine seemed to think it was.”

  Morrow snorted. “She ever been to Castlemilk?”

  “She said she’d driven past it.”

  “Stupid cow.”

  They skirted the grim grandeur of Glasgow Green and Bridgeton and took the London Road down to the station.

  It looked like a normal office, three stories of shit-brown brick, but had the architectural features of a fortress: windows punched well into the façade, buttress pillars all along the front. Two giant concrete boxes full of wild bushes in front of the main entrance, a device to foil spiteful ram-raiders who were more of a threat than terrorists. Around the back a high wall topped with broken green glass formed a yard for squad cars and drop-offs to the booking bar and the cells.

  The street outside was full of cars for the shift change. They were parked along the road and on the pavement, but there was order in the chaos; not one was touching a double yellow or blocking an entrance.

  Because they were in a squad car they had to park in the yard. Wilder drew slowly in, navigating carefully around the vans and walls, around the cells in the middle with their high barred windows.

  He pulled on the handbrake and she opened the door, adding as a parting shot, “Give us Kay Murray’s contact details before you leave.”

  She slammed the door, cheating him of the chance to protest that he had other things to do. As she walked up to the ramp she worried that she was thinking about going to see Kay Murray on her own. No copper should ever go and see a witness alone, not just because they could make allegations against them, Kay wouldn’t do that, but because of the corroboration rule: not a word they told them would be usable in court without another officer there to witness it. Single-​officer testimony was worse than hearsay: it was unprofessional.

  She walked up the ramp to the door, stabbed the security code into the pad and stepped back to let whoever was on the bar have a look at her on the video camera. The door fell open.

  The processing bar was empty but she could hear screaming in the cells, the voice muffled by the door. It was a plaintive scream, a man’s voice worn thin from a rough day and a lot of shouting. John looked out from the back office. “Just yourself?” he said, knowing she never drove if she could help it.

  “Wilder’s out there. Who’s that?” She nodded her head to the cells.

  “Street fight. Off his face. Crack.”

  She frowned—most of the junkies they brought in were there for being a nuisance, for sleeping in the road or incompetent thieving.

  “Had a spate of crack users today. Because of the anthrax.”

  A batch of heroin had been contaminated and users were seeking solace elsewhere. “They causing havoc?”

  John shrugged. “Be more of a danger if any of them weighed more than seven stone.” He glanced at the clock. “You got a briefing to do?”

  “Oh, aye.” She’d been so distracted by thoughts of Kay that she’d forgotten.

  She pulled her coat off as she hurried through the lobby to the CID door. She caught it as Harris was coming out.

  “Ten minutes,” she warned, pointing in at the briefing room.

  “Ma’am, the lawyer who got trapped in the kitchen, Donald Scott, he’s still upstairs.”

  “I know, I know, I’m getting to him. I’ll see him after the briefing. Tell him twenty minutes.”

  “He’s getting arsy.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” she said, and let the door fall shut between them.

  They were gathering in the incident room, the night shift and the eight-to-fives, ready to go home and forget all about it, leave her alone to care about Sarah Erroll. She let herself into the office for a minute, didn’t bother turning the light on, dropped her coat and bag and, standing in the dark, took her personal mobile out.

  Brian answered immediately. “Hiya.”

  “OK?”

  “Yeah, you OK?”

  “Yeah.”

  She opened her desk drawer slowly and pulled out a notepad and a pen, took the lid off.

  “How did the funeral go?” asked Brian after a pause.

  “Well, he’s definitely dead.” She doodled a spiral. “Got any dinner in?”

  “That soup’s in the fridge.”

  “Oh, aye.” Troubled by the trap of the spiral, she drew an outward spiral next to it. “Be a bit late maybe.”

  “Well, I’ll be here.” He was smiling, she could hear it in his voice. “Everybody OK?”

  She touched her stomach. “All fine, aye.”

  In the dark, a mile away from the bustle behind her in the corridor, they smiled at each other down the phone, two people readying for their own year zero.

  She sighed a reluctant, “Bye.”

  Brian reciprocated and hung up.

  She smiled at the phone. He always did that, no see-you-later or messing around. She checked her desk voicemail messages. One. She pressed play. The psychologist had called and left her number. Please call back.

  Morrow had already said no. Smarting at the gall of the woman, she glanced at her watch and found she had two minutes to go. She gathered her papers together, pulled her clothes straight and turned to the corridor, out of the calm dark office, blinking into the harsh stream of noise and light and over to the incident room.

  Chairs were being dragged about to face the back wall, coppers chatting to each other, their voices dropping slightly as she came in and passed them. She saw a few of them drop their eyes to her belly, always the same ones, some disgusted, some wistful, happy fathers themselves.

  She dropped her papers noisily on the table, giving them a thirty-second warning to sit down and shut up. They did so before she turned ba
ck to face them. Seven men, all coppers, four coming on, four going off: one missing.

  She welcomed them, looking over at the door for the latecomer, Routher, letting him know with a twitch of an eyebrow that he’d been spotted. For the benefit of the new shift she gave the rundown on Sarah Erroll and the house and the money. She told them they were looking for two people with black suede trainers but she left out the grotesque details of the injuries, leaving it to ferment as a rumor. They’d see the photos soon enough anyway. The image would lose its power as they walked past day after day, but she was hoping that the shock of it would help them to engage a little.

  The next day would give them a better sense of who the hell Sarah Erroll was.

  Looking around the room as she spoke she noted that a rich woman, just back from a weekend in New York, dying in a house full of money wasn’t eliciting a lot of sympathy. When she told them Sarah had no next of kin to inform she saw the shift about to finish flick their eyes to the clock behind her. Those coming on were listening to her, following her face, not looking through her and imagining how the dead woman must have felt. They didn’t give a shit about Sarah.

  She finished up, handed over to Harris to allocate the night jobs, and looked around the room: the men looked bored, the day shift tired. They were waiting to go home and get on with their real lives.

  The room dispersed and Harris came over, hoping, she felt, that she’d tell him to go home, get a good night’s sleep.

  “I asked around about the footprints. DC Leonard,” he pointed over to Tamsin, “she knows someone at the Caledonian who’s developing a program for something like this. She’s a PhD student on the forensic sciences course.”

  They both smirked. The F.S. courses were churning out graduates, twenty for every vacancy. The C.S.I. effect, they called it.

  “She’s doing forensic mapping of crime scenes. Said she might be able to show who was where doing what if there’s a lot of blood.”