The End of the Wasp Season

by Denise Mina

  “Well, that’s one thing there’s enough of. Has it been tested in court?”

  “No, it’s new.”

  “Oh.” She started to think through other limitations. “If you’re giving her access to any photos make sure she’ll keep it all confidential. No faces. Pictures like that end up on the internet all the time.”

  “There isn’t a face.”

  She didn’t like him joking about that. “You know what I mean.”

  He brushed over the rebuff. “Also, we’ve got the 999 recording. They’re cleaning it up for sound.”

  “Good.”

  “It looks like a big file.” He sounded nervous.

  “She didn’t get through, did she?”

  “Don’t know.”

  They grimaced at each other.

  “Go upstairs to Scott and I’ll be up there in a minute,” she said.

  Harris didn’t voice an objection but his mouth contracted to the size of a penny.

  FOURTEEN

  Thomas felt like an aberration in this grand, pristine room. Two enormous white sofas were facing each other and between them a white table with white things on it and the walls were white and the curtains. Opposite, facing him, Moira had her arms crossed, her skinny legs coiled around one another, her lips thin and twisted. She was sitting very still, staring at him. She stared for a long time before she spoke.

  “I’ll tell you anything you want to know about it and then I never want to speak about him again.”

  Thomas had expected a talk about Jamie. He had prepared some excuses, was going to blame Mary or grief, and was thrown by her opening gambit. “Oh.”

  She ground her teeth. “Ask me.”

  He didn’t want to know, hadn’t wondered about many of the details. It was the consequences he was worried about but he said, “What did Dad do wrong?” Moira rolled her eyes.

  “You said ask anything.”

  “I did, I did.” She took a breath. “He invested other people’s money and they lost it all.”

  “After the market crashed?”

  “No.” She sighed. “Everyone was very angry because the investments he was selling sort of caused the crash.”

  “How?”

  “This is very complicated, Thomas, I meant you could ask me about your father’s suicide, not about this—”

  “I want to know this, I’m reading about it in the papers all the time and I need to know what he did. Then I’ll ask about the other stuff.”

  She cleared her throat: “Lots of people stopped paying their mortgages and the investments failed.”

  “Why did they stop paying?”

  “Because they’re silly. And now everyone’s angry because Daddy’s company bet against them paying.”

  He looked at her. Lies for a child. “The mortgage rates shot up after two years,” he said. “He knew that and bet the houses would be repossessed. Don’t you understand it or do you think I won’t?”

  “Well, it’s terribly complicated.”

  It was fitting that his father owned an empire of empty homes. Thomas recalled walking around the National Gallery, stopping in front of Monet’s Water Lilies: a huge, fluid wall of beauty filling his vision, and his dad behind him, telling him the monetary value. Even aged nine Thomas knew his father was missing the point.

  “Do you have any questions about your father’s death is what I meant.”

  Thomas thought he should ask something. “Where did he do it?”

  “On the lawn.” She gave a bitter little smile, acknowledging the significance. “From the oak. Used a rope.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday at lunchtime, about twelve thirty.”

  She stared hard at him again. Conscious that they weren’t talking about Jamie, Thomas thought he should ask another, bigger question:

  “Why?”

  Moira uncrossed her arms and took a deep breath. “He left a note. Want to read it?”

  Thomas shrugged, though he did want to read it very much. She reached into the pocket of her slacks and pulled out a folded sheet of paper, holding it out to him by her index and middle finger.

  Thomas took the sheet and opened it. It was a photocopy.

  “He left you a photocopy?”

  “No. The police did that before they left. They had to take the original with them.”

  Thomas read his father’s big bombastic handwriting:

  Moira, you bitch. You’ve finally got your way & I hope you’re happy, finally, as if that was possible, you dried up cunt.

  Thomas looked at Moira, sitting placidly on the opposite sofa, watching the paper as he read it. It was Lars all right. It was him angry and a little bit drunk, alternately shouting and hissing at her. They could both hear his fighting voice coming off the page.

  “Are you sure you want me to read this?”

  She shrugged, rolling her eyes back for a languorous blink. “The police have it, they’ll read it, someone will leak it. Everyone in the country will know.” Her eyes reddened. Thomas read on:

  I gave you everything, I worked night and day for you, to give you everything. I was a great husband. And in return you sucked the fucking life out of me. You fucking wizened bitch. I hope you’re happy, L.

  Thomas looked at the back of the page and found it blank, and then at his mother. She was weeping.

  “I didn’t even get a mention,” he said, and let it fall onto the table.

  They both looked at the letter, at the giant hateful letters and sloping lines, at the fury that had made the pen puncture the page at the full stops.

  Thomas started laughing first, a titter, covering his face, and then Moira joined in, laughing and crying, pointing at the note, trying to speak through sputtering tears:

  “Would you…would…would you want one!”

  They were rocking with laughter now, struggling for breath and Thomas stood and screwed his face up and jabbed his finger at her and shouted, “Yaaaw dried up CUNT!”

  And Moira fell face down into a cushion with mock shame, still laughing and crying because he did a good Lars. Then Thomas puffed his chest out and looked down at her as if he was disgusted and, still laughing, used one of his father’s lines:

  “Get out of my fucking sight or I’ll pick you up and throw you out of that fucking window!”

  But Moira had started coughing, choking on her laughter because it had gone too far down and she was red in the face, but still she couldn’t stop laughing and she stood up and pointed in Thomas’s face:

  “You fucking loser prick, I’ll teach you to be a man,” and she faked a wide-armed slap because it was too complicated to mime taking him to a brothel in Amsterdam.

  Thomas stopped laughing at that memory but he wasn’t sad. They were both panting and smiling. He sat back down, falling onto the sofa, looking at the door to the hall.

  “He’s not coming back,” said Thomas simply.

  Moira opened her eyes wide, incredulous at their good fortune. “I know.” She sat back on her own sofa and combed her hair with her fingers, wiggling them through the crunchy hairspray. She looked young and excited and her chest heaved.

  “I watched them cut him down.” She stared out of the window to where the oak was. “His…They cut the rope and held him by the legs and put him on…a bed thing.”

  “A stretcher?”

  “A stretcher, yes, and his hand fell off it—and I jumped!” She mimed a little bunny-hop jump and laughed again, at herself this time.

  Thomas didn’t laugh. “He’s not coming back,” he said again, serious, staring at his hands. He looked up suddenly, realized that the house was very quiet. “Where’s Ella?”

  Moira’s eyes brimmed again, not happy at all, panicked, her head bobbed forwards, and Thomas suddenly knew that Ella was dead and his dad had fucked and killed her and stamped on her nose and left her in her room with her gash on show. He stood up as Moira covered her face and spoke.

  “At school, still, Thomas—”

  But Thomas
’s heart was racing and he couldn’t bend his legs to sit back down. She looked at him with big wet eyes.

  “Thomas, I wanted to see you first because—” and she broke off to sob into her hands again, her fingers curling into her hair. He could see the blood drain from her nails as she dug them into her scalp. When she took her hands away he could see bloody dashes in the parted, unmoving hair.

  “Thomas. I know that sorry isn’t enough, I know it isn’t, but I was standing with that note in my hand and watching them cut him down and all I could think of was you and how you—”

  Again the nails in the head, the shoulders convulsing, silent, like a cat bringing up a hair ball.

  She sat like that for quite a long time. When she looked up her face was scarlet and wet, the wet from her nose running all over her mouth until she wiped it with a bare hand. Her hair was standing on end. She couldn’t look at him.

  “I have always known, Thomas, that I should have protected you and didn’t. And I wanted…” an aftershock shook her chest, “to apologize.” She found her rhythm and caught her breath. “I’m sorry. And I know that isn’t enough but I’ll do anything…”

  Thomas felt nothing. The most vivid emotion he felt was mild surprise at her letting him see her cry, at the mess of her hair. She never came downstairs without her make-up and a full set of matchy-matchy clothes on. He wondered if she was drunk but she wasn’t.

  She looked up at him, a straight stare, not chin dipped down, supplicant and looking for favors. Not mouth twisted and annoyed or reprimanding.

  Moira looked at him as an adult would another adult, with respect and with love and with honesty and she said, “I love you, you know.”

  FIFTEEN

  Morrow stopped at the door to the remote viewing room to watch Donald Scott before she went in to speak to him. On screen he looked perky and restless; he had been there for a few hours now. He had eaten some biscuits, drunk sugary tea and seemed revived, knowing the interview was coming and he’d get home soon. He sat looking across the table at Harris, his briefcase on the floor, his hands clasped on the table as if he was about to start a negotiation.

  His suit was new and smart, charcoal gray wool, his shirt clean. Smaller than she remembered from the kitchen, he was neatly put together, tighter, but she supposed the shock had scattered him.

  The viewing room was empty, everybody busy downstairs, collating the door-to-doors, retracing Sarah’s trip to New York from the documents and the receipts in her bag, mapping her life from the mobile phone. No one was expecting anything interesting to come out of the interview with the person who found the body.

  She turned out the lights in the viewing room and shut the door on the gray glow of the screen, straightening her clothes before she set off for the interview room around the corner.

  Her hand stroked her stomach and she smiled faintly to herself, allowing herself another stroke and a smile before she set off. Four months pregnant and no miscarriage and the scans said both were growing and all was well. She felt happy, content for them all three to stay here together forever on this cusp of disaster and worry and sleeplessness.

  She looked again at the green floor, at the scuffed walls of the corridor where terrified and half-mad men and women had been dragged to interview rooms, angry, sad, kicking against officers, pathetic and passive or swearing revenge. The walls were lined with grief and fright and worry and she felt suddenly that she might be the only person in the short history of the building to find such a measure of absolute contentment there.

  Knowing how few of these moments there might be, she shut her eyes, committing it to memory, before she blinked away her mood and moved on.

  When she walked in and greeted Scott he stood up, formal and polite, smiling, as if noting the details of the day for the story afterwards. He was a frustrated criminal lawyer, Morrow suspected. The lawyers they dealt with were the rock stars of the profession, had interesting lives, knew tasty characters, had stories to tell at parties. Conveyancing and executory lawyers like Scott were heroes to no one except the firms’ accountants.

  She put the cassette tapes in the machine and turned it on, told it who was here, the date and time and gave Scott a prompt for the events of the morning.

  Scott looked at the table top, stroked it carefully with the edge of his hand as if sweeping away crumbs, and began to speak in a strange, distancing form of legalese:

  “This morning, at nine thirty, I returned to my office, on time, to await the arrival of Miss Sarah Erroll. I removed my overcoat, spoke to a colleague, Helen Flannery. Further to this, I entered her office on a matter irrelevant to this matter and returned to my office—”

  Morrow rolled her eyes rudely and interrupted him: “What was she coming to see you about?”

  But Scott wasn’t to be put off. “We were meeting for the determination of two matters: primarily for Sarah Erroll to be a signatory in the finalization of her mother’s estate settlement. Secondly, for her to authorize my firm to handle the sale of Glenarvon—”

  “The house?”

  He brightened. “Yes. The house. Yes. Yes. It was in furtherance of these matters—”

  “‘Finalization of her mother’s estate settlement,’ what does that mean?”

  His eyes slid around the table top, his mouth contorting at the edges. “Just signing some papers—”

  “What papers?”

  “Authorizations.” He smiled, patronizing, and explained, “It’s a technical term.”

  “Yeah.” She looked hard at him. “What does that technical term mean?”

  “In what sense?”

  “Don’t be slippery with me, Mr. Scott, what was she signing?”

  “Finalizing an account. Further to this—”

  “Paying a bill?”

  “Further to this—”

  “Shut up.”

  Scott looked a little stunned. Next to her Harris shifted on his buttocks eloquently. He was right. They’d left him too long and he’d prepared for his interview. “OK,” she tried to reset the tone, “Mr. Scott: this is a murder inquiry, I’m expecting your cooperation. All this ‘further to this and that,’ you’re making it sound as if you have something to hide.”

  He looked very small suddenly. “I have nothing to hide.”

  “You saw the state of the woman. We need to find who did this very quickly. They could do it again, d’you understand?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m sorry.” She sounded formal and blunt and not sorry at all. “For the benefit of the tape could you say that rather than just nodding?”

  “Yes,” he said obediently.

  “How long were you waiting in the office before you set off for the house?”

  “About forty minutes.”

  “After forty minutes you were concerned enough about it when she didn’t turn up that you went all the way from the city center to Thorntonhall to find her?”

  “It’s not that far. It all gets billed to the client.”

  “You went looking for her to pay a bill and were going to bill her for that too?”

  “It’s common professional practice.”

  Morrow looked hard at him. “How much was the bill for the settlement of her mother’s estate?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know. I’d have to look it up.”

  Morrow smiled. She had a knack for smoking out lies. She could read a subtext as well as she could read a newspaper and she knew that spontaneous insistence was a virtual double negative. She sat back and looked at Scott and noted the glint of sweat on his forehead, the rapid blinks.

  “So,” she leaned forward and smiled, “to recap: you were waiting for forty minutes with the papers in front of you and you don’t know how much it was for?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She whispered, “I can find out.”

  Scott smiled unhappily. “Eighteen thousand.”

  “Eighteen grand? That’s a lot of driving back and forth.”

  “Not really.
”

  “When my mum died it didn’t cost anything.”

  He smirked, supercilious, looking at her cheap nylon-mix suit jacket. “Well, no offense, but it’s contingent on the size of the estate.”

  “I see.” She touched her lapel with her fingertips, feigning defensive. “I happen to like this suit.”

  He blushed, uncomfortable at having the unspoken answered aloud. His own suit was expensive and his shirt looked professionally starched. She wondered at him going to all that trouble for a meeting with a client in his office.

  “So, do you get a commission on the estate?”

  “Commission?”

  “A cut,” explained Harris, “like, if you worked at Comet?”

  Morrow smiled but Scott looked puzzled, as if he didn’t understand the reference to the cut-price electrical shop.

  She pressed him. “You don’t shop in Comet?”

  He mimed a thought. “I don’t really think I have…”

  She watched closely. “You’ve never driven past a shop with a big black banner and yellow writing that says ‘Comet’? They’re everywhere.”

  “There’s a picture of a comet above the writing,” added Harris.

  “Well, we tend to go to John Lewis.”

  Scott was pointedly trying to tell her something about himself, something that mattered to him and it wasn’t that he didn’t read shop signs while he was driving.

  She ignored it. “She was planning to sell the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Her family have lived there for a hundred, hundred and fifty years. That must be quite a wrench.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Was she selling it to pay your bill?”

  Scott came out of his corner fighting. “Look, I resent the implied suspicions being mooted here. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. It was a difficult estate to manage, but all of the expenses are documented and verifiable. Her mother needed around-the-clock care. That’s very expensive as I’m sure you can imagine.” He let them sit with that for moment, as if it would take a thirty-second pause for them to comprehend the concept of things being expensive.