The End of the Wasp Season

by Denise Mina

  Harris sat forward. “Mr. Scott, things being expensive is just about all we can imagine.”

  The two of them smiled and Scott feigned confusion again. Morrow found it an interesting tactic. Telling.

  “Yes,” he said, when the moment had passed, “it was Sarah’s sole aim to meet her mother’s desire to stay in Glenarvon and die there, which she did. I wasn’t tricking money out of Sarah, I had the greatest admiration for her. She was an amazing young lady.”

  Morrow watched his face. “Did she live off family money?”

  “There was none,” he said, seeming sad for Sarah.

  “None?”

  “I’m afraid it had been a sizable estate but the three generations before were rather feckless. True what they say: we can’t choose our ancestors…” He smiled at that, as if it was a pleasing cliché they had all employed at one time or another when referring to their own diminished estates in the colonies.

  “What’d she live off then?”

  “Sarah had to work, I’m afraid.”

  Harris affected a mock gasp.

  “What did she work at?” smiled Morrow.

  “Financial management. Gave pensions advice and did consultations on investments.”

  “For a company?”

  “No, she was a consultant.”

  “Who for?”

  “Big companies.”

  “Mm.” Morrow felt suddenly very tired. “I’d like to ask more about that but you’ve been so bloody long-winded, I’m afraid to ’cause I want to get home tonight.”

  Scott smiled at that, taking the suggestion that he was combative as a compliment. It wasn’t meant that way. It was difficult for police and lawyers not to get on, they shared so much of the same world view, but Morrow gave it another try: “Were you tempted to rip her off over the carers for her mother as well?”

  But Scott had unilaterally decided they were getting on well. “I handled the carer payments and most of the arrangements, if that’s what you’re asking me.”

  The twins were tickling her lungs, just gently, and she found herself smiling. Back in the real world Scott smiled back and she had to make it look deliberate. “Was it all through the books?”

  “Absolutely: Carers Scotland is a certified company, all the payments and payroll done through the books. It all came out of the same account and she paid it all faithfully.”

  “We’ll be looking at those accounts.” She meant to sound threatening but she was still warm from her dip into the other world.

  Scott nodded. “You’re welcome to. I’ll happily make them available to you. And the bills for the settlement of the estate, if you wish. I have nothing to hide.”

  “Yeah, fine.” She took a breath and whipped the carpet out from under him. “Sarah had about seven hundred thousand quid in cash hidden in the kitchen.”

  “Maybe nearer six and a half,” muttered Harris.

  She watched Scott pale. He struggled to speak. “In the kitchen?”

  “Yeah. On a false shelf under the table.”

  He looked to the right, thought his way back into the room. “The small table…seven hundred thousand?”

  Harris chipped in playfully, “Possibly six and a half.”

  But Morrow was serious. “You didn’t know she had that kind of money?”

  “No. I didn’t know that.”

  “Where do you think it came from?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why didn’t she put it in the bank?”

  Scott swallowed hard. “Don’t know, I don’t know, maybe she was avoiding income tax on it? She was careful with income tax.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Well, we had conversations, professional conversations about income tax…”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh,” he shook his head and she knew he was going to be vague about it, “just, you know, what was deductible, what was an allowable expense, stuff like that.”

  “See, that’s odd.” Morrow flicked through her notes. “Because as far as we can gather Sarah had never paid income tax.”

  He considered it for a moment, sitting very still, and then shook his head. “No. That’s wrong.”

  “I can assure you it isn’t. We used her passport number and got her national insurance number from it. She wasn’t even registered.”

  “No, sorry, but she did pay income tax. She paid me to give her advice about income tax, specifically about what was and wasn’t deductible from income tax. She sat in front of me in the office and listened for forty minutes just a year ago. If she had told me she wasn’t paying income tax I’d have been obliged to report her…” His voice trailed off as the alternative explanation occurred to him.

  “Hmm.” Morrow nodded at him. “Who initiated that meeting?”

  “I did. I said, you must ensure that you are maximizing your income. She had so much to pay out for the care plan, for her mother. She didn’t understand taxation, she said. Bewildering, she said it was. Why would she…?”

  “She was a financial consultant who didn’t understand income tax?”

  He could see how stupid it seemed now. Sarah had let him lecture her, paid him to lecture her about income tax to stop him prying into her affairs. “She sent me a Fortnum’s hamper to thank me for all my help…the money in the kitchen was in cash?”

  “In euros,” she said, watching his face to see if he registered the significance. It didn’t. “We may have missed her tax records, she could be under another name. Did she use any other names?”

  “No.”

  “Never married…?”

  “No.”

  “Why would she not bank the money?”

  Scott had paled. “Dunno,” he said, looking distant.

  “You look worried.”

  He cringed. “Maybe she knew something we don’t know?”

  “About the financial situation? What could she know? That we’re all doomed? It’s not a secret.”

  Scott looked genuinely haunted. “Sarah, she knew people, a lot of people, she gave me tips sometimes…”

  “Like shares tips?”

  “No, no, no, deals. Money deals, buildings going up, where to buy flats for resale, things like that.”

  Morrow was looking at his mouth. The accent was so well hidden she had missed it until now. She mouthed the give-away word to herself. “Dee-uulz,” working class, South Sider. Not deellz, not middle class, not the world he professed to be of.

  “Dee-uulz,” she said, watching his expression wilt as he realized he’d given himself away. “Mr. Scott, where is it you’re from?”

  “I live in Giffnock.”

  “No,” she said carefully, “where is it you’re from. Where did your parents live when you were born?”

  “South Side.” He blinked.

  Morrow cocked an ear. “Priesthill?”

  “No,” Scott said carefully, “Giffnock.”

  “Aye,” she nodded, “Priesthill.”

  He sat back, his mouth twitching with disgust. “Giffnock,” he said quietly.

  She put a consoling hand on the table. “Listen, we won’t tell anyone, ye don’t need to lie to us.”

  He chewed his cheek unhappily and Harris added, “We can find out…”

  “Kennishead high flats,” he said quietly. They would have laughed at him but his shame was so raw that it took the fun out of it. “What’s that to do with anything?”

  “What university did you study at?”

  “Glasgow Uni Law School.”

  Morrow nodded again. She’d been to the Law School to interview someone once. If she’d been a student there she’d have lied about her background too. “Sarah was as posh as you can get, wasn’t she?”

  He blinked defensively at the table top, adopting his posh voice again. “As I say, she was a well-bred young lady.”

  Morrow watched discomfort and conflict ripple across his face, as if his idea of himself was melting. “Sarah asked for you specifically?”

&
nbsp; “Yes.”

  “D’you think she knew you were a bit impressed by how posh she was?”

  “I was always respectful—”

  “No, no: d’you think she spotted you passing for white? Knew she could intimidate you?”

  Scott sat back in his chair and glared at her. His eyes flicked to the cassette tapes whirring in the recorder and he narrowed his eyes and mouthed at her—fuck off. A criminal lawyer would have known not to do that.

  Morrow looked hard at him. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Scott, could you just repeat what you said for the benefit of the tape?”

  “Didn’t say anything,” he smirked.

  Slowly Morrow raised her hand to the corner of the room. He followed the trajectory of her finger and froze when he saw the red light on the camera.

  Morrow leaned across the table to him. “Did Sarah Erroll seem bright to you?”

  “No,” he told the camera quietly, “not really.”

  “Violent?”

  “Violent?” Still looking at the camera. “God, no.”

  “Talk to me, please, Mr. Scott.”

  He turned his remorseful face to her but his mind was on the watcher. “Sarah was harmless. Horsey.”

  “We found a taser gun in her house disguised as a mobile phone. The initial forensic traces suggest she carried it in her handbag.”

  He forgot the camera then. “A taser gun? What, like an electric shock gun?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s dangerous.”

  “Nine hundred thousand volts,” said Harris and left it hanging in the air.

  Scott shook his head at the table. When he spoke his voice came from the high flats, “I’d her down as a diddy.”

  Morrow watched him, reading his confusion, seeing him rerun every meeting with Sarah Erroll, looking for clues, wondering if he could have known. She watched him and saw yet another person lose sympathy for Sarah Erroll.

  She watched him until a tiny heel, no bigger than her thumb, karate-kicked her heart and stole her away from the world.

  SIXTEEN

  Moira and Thomas were in the big freezer room below the kitchen. Neither could remember the last time they came in here. Usually the kitchen was full of staff, or the threat of staff, and had been a public space, but Moira had dismissed almost all of the live-ins.

  She had kept Nanny Mary on for Thomas’s sake but they talked about it and Thomas said she needn’t have. He didn’t want her anymore. As he said it Moira watched the curl on his lip, not his eyes. He couldn’t be certain that she knew about Mary’s midnight creeping, but she agreed and called Mary in and said they couldn’t afford to employ her now. Mary seemed relieved, said she’d pack and be gone in the morning before they woke up. Then she shook both their hands, cold and professional, not searching Thomas’s face for anything or trying to look him in the eye. He watched her leave the room, her buttocks pert through her silk skirt, and he was struck suddenly by the impression that his father had ordered Mary to fuck him and she was glad it was over too. He did think it odd that she didn’t ask for references.

  Jamie had taken two grand cash as an ex gratia payment. Moira hadn’t mentioned the choking incident and Thomas felt she probably wouldn’t now.

  So the hall, the kitchen, the whole of the house was empty. They hadn’t had any supper and Moira had suggested an expedition to the kitchen.

  The freezer room was warm and windowless. The whir of the motors bounced off the subterranean walls. It took them a while to find the light switch, a cord hanging down at the very bottom of the steep stairs in the pitch dark. Three big sarcophagus freezers purred quietly. One of them was padlocked shut. Moira went straight over and fingered the lock.

  “This must be the meat freezer,” she said.

  Thomas thought suddenly of a bed of meat, of a body in the locked cabinet, but it was just a spooky, unfamiliar room. That was all it was. It was dark and quiet and spooky.

  He lifted the lid of the freezer next to him, looked down and found the contents were well ordered. Clear plastic tubs full of handmade gourmet meals prepared by their cook before he left, individual portions, each dish marked clearly on the lid in thick curly writing.

  Moira had opened the other freezer and found it crammed with loaves of different kinds of bread, ingredients, frozen herbs and cheese, frozen juice. She held up a frosted cylindrical bag triumphantly by the tail. “Look!”

  Mini pizzas. Cheap mini pizzas. “This must be what they eat,” she said, “the staff. Let’s have them!”

  “What do you do with them though?”

  “Put them in the oven.” Thomas was impressed until Moira explained, “It says it on the packet. I can do it.”

  She hurried past him, up the stairs to the kitchen proper to cook a meal for him and prove she was able. But she had left the freezer lid leaning against the wall, the smoky cold crackling out of it into the warm room. Thomas waited until her ankles disappeared up the steps into the brightness of the kitchen then stepped over and shut it. She heard it slam and bent down to a crouch, smiling. “Sorry. Fell at the first fence.” She stood up and vanished into the kitchen.

  Thomas looked at the locked meat freezer again. There was no one in there. Sarah Erroll wasn’t in there. Ella wasn’t in there. It was just a spooky room.

  He took the steps up to the kitchen, emerging to find Moira with her head in the oven. For a moment he thought she was trying to gas herself, in an electric oven, thought of her gone and he found he didn’t move to yank her out.

  “Oh, there it’s…” She pulled the top of her head out and smiled at him. “Electric. Silly me.” She pressed the button and turned the knob.

  Thomas considered himself with a kind of horrified wonder, his capacity for callousness, and then changed the subject. “Mum, where did Cookie keep the keys?”

  She pointed to a small metal cabinet on the wall behind the kitchen door. He opened it and found six key hooks, each occupied, each labeled. “Freezer 3” had a small key on a loop of pink string. He took the key, stepped carefully back down the steep steps to the freezer room and looked across to the padlock.

  Small. Brass. He didn’t want to open it. Never wanted to see a mess like Sarah Erroll again. But the longer he left it the more frightened he became. Forcing himself to walk over, he stood in front of it, looking down at the white coffin. Blindly, he fumbled the tiny key against the hole, feeling for the lock, missing, feeling there was something sexual about this and it was terrible and soiling and filthy, but making himself go on because not knowing was worse and he wouldn’t sleep for thinking about it.

  The padlock sprang open and dropped into his open hand.

  He flicked the hinged shackle up, stood, looked and lifted the lid. A bed of frosty meat. Steaks, chops, venison, joints. A giant leg of lamb. No bodies, no blood, no dead Ella.

  “Meat?” Moira had followed him down.

  “Yeah.” He slammed the lid shut. “Just meat.”

  “Did you think he’d hidden money in there or something?”

  “No, I just…I wondered.”

  As they waited for the pizzas to cook he cracked open a beer from the fridge and they enjoyed the quiet of the house. Moira explained that Lars’s business collapse had left them with no more than three hundred thousand a year. They’d need to sell the house and live somewhere else. The ATR-42 was owned by the business, as was the house in South Africa that Thomas had never even been to because they always went in term time, and most of the cars and the central London office space and the Stamford Bridge memberships, so they wouldn’t be seeing them again. Thomas didn’t care. He didn’t even like football much.

  She took the pizzas out and put them on a chopping board to cut them up. They were delicious.

  Thomas watched Moira eat. “Your mouth isn’t dry anymore.”

  She looked back at him and knew what he was asking. “You’re right. It’s not. I came off them.”

  “When?”

  “Five weeks ago. Your father ha
sn’t been home much.”

  Thomas wondered if she knew where Lars had been. Thomas knew exactly where he had been. With her, the other wife.

  It was the last conversation he had with his father. Lars took him out the day before autumn term started, to Fortnum’s ice cream parlor, where every second table had a distant-eyed father in a city suit escorting an estranged brat. Thomas was older than the other kids, wondered if his father had even noticed how much older he was.

  Thomas looked at Moira. She might know. She might not care.

  “Why did he really kill himself?”

  Moira shrugged. “They disqualified him. I think he knew he’d never be the big player again. He couldn’t live without the game. He’d no friends left, no other interests, I suppose.” She looked dreamy. “You didn’t know him when he was young. He was fun. Funny. He had a sense of humor back then. And early on, we really loved each other. We had friends. We could have been happy, instead of, you know what happened. God…it’s such a lot to squander.”

  Thomas listened, nodding, until Moira looked at him and saw his eyes were red and told him to go to bed.

  “I need a shower,” he said quietly. “I really need a shower first.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Morrow was in the office, pulling her coat on, checking her bag for keys and phone when Routher knocked gingerly on the open door.

  “DCI Bannerman would like to see you in his office, ma’am.”

  “Thanks, Routher.”

  He slipped back into the corridor and she called him back. “Why were you late for the briefing?”

  Routher would never have made a spy: his face was so expressive she could see the whole story unfold in the tiny shifts of his facial expression: eyebrows meeting because he had been late for a good reason and it wasn’t his fault, a sudden recollection that lateness was bad and not being promoted was good, a half smile congratulating himself on being so fly and finally the lie: “Sorry, I slept in.”

  “At five in the afternoon, you slept in?”

  He looked confused. “It won’t happen again.”

  She stared at him, watching him redden. “Get out of here.”