The End of the Wasp Season

by Denise Mina

  “Did Sarah like her?”

  “She loved Joy to bits. Even though she was confused Sarah loved her, and that’s unusual. She was an only child, you know?” Kay dropped her eyes, remembering, Morrow thought, that Alex herself was an only child, but that her relationship with her mother had been less than happy. “When it works it really works.”

  “How do you know she loved her?”

  Kay smiled. “Face lit up whenever she saw or talked about her. ‘I’d do anything for my mum.’ She said it over and over. God Almighty, I miss Joy.” She blinked valiantly against sudden tears. “Just—her company, know?”

  “You were close?”

  “Probably not.” Kay smiled at her ashtray. “It’s different with Alzheimer’s. The personality changes. Their family don’t recognize them. But the person she became, with the dementia, I was awful fond of that person.”

  “Did you ever see anyone else up the house? Any pals of Sarah’s?”

  “No.”

  “When did you last see Sarah Erroll?”

  Kay exhaled a stream of smoke and frowned at her. “Hmm. Not being funny, Alex, but that’s a real polis question. Should we not wait until someone else…?”

  “Oh aye, aye. You work in another house there, now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They all rich there?”

  “Not as rich as they used to be…They lost a lot of money—you should ask them, they all had their money invested in shares.”

  “You work for Mrs. Thalaine?”

  Kay shook her head. “See, that’s a polis question.” She looked hard at Morrow. “You shouldn’t have come here alone.” Feeling herself too harsh, she softened. “Tell me it wasn’t a sex thing?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You were asking about boyfriends.”

  “Just for background.”

  Kay nodded at her cigarette. “Good. I’d hate to think she was interfered with. She was a nice person, you know, proper and that.”

  “Proper?”

  “Ladylike.” She touched her wrist. “Always had a hankie…”

  She was lost for a moment, head tipped, eyes damp. Morrow let her find her own way back and wondered if they could be wrong about the sex work. But then being very proper could have been a selling point.

  Kay looked at her hopefully. “It couldn’t have been an accident…?”

  Morrow didn’t answer her. She didn’t want to sound too adamant.

  Kay sipped her tea and they fell silent again. Out in the hall the front door was opened and a boy’s voice called, “Hiya, it’s me!”

  Kay called “hiya” back but the boy who had shouted didn’t come into the living room. Joe and the girl had shouted back too and they could hear the bedroom door open to a rumble of voices.

  Kay dropped her voice and asked urgently, “What are you really doing here, Alex? Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to see ye and everything but you shouldn’t be here on your own and we both know that.”

  Morrow nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Yeah.” Kay tapped her cigarette fast, rat-tat-tat on the side of the ashtray, suddenly very angry. “Yeah, I’m a bit annoyed at you for coming here alone, to be honest. ’Cause if you find the guy that did this, and he gets off because you’ve asked me something here, and there’s no one to corroborate that and then the case fails on account of that—”

  Morrow’s voice was hard and loud: “How do you know that?”

  Kay froze, staring at her. She raised her cigarette and took a draw. Her hand was shaking as she lowered it to the armrest: “I’m the chair of the Crimespotters up here. We organized a campaign. Against the police across the road.” The smoke began to seep out of her nose and mouth, rising slowly up her face, sticking to her wet hair. “They were sending single polis up to interview people who’d been burgled so everyone else on the shift could get their dinner.” She looked at Morrow and narrowed her eyes. “The clear-up rate for burglaries is so low, I don’t think they’d ever have been found out. A lot of the people up here didn’t know that a single copper meant they weren’t going to do fuck all. So I mounted a campaign to tell everyone about the corroboration rule. I leafleted everybody in the block. Go over to the station and ask them about me if you like. They know me.”

  If Kay was right it was an outrageous allegation. It not only meant that the senior officers were giving up the possibility of solving the burglaries, it also meant that junior officers were being put in danger by coming over alone with no back-up. But Morrow had listened to complaints from the public before, recognized the odd sensation of her consciousness retreating slowly away. It was a reflexive familial defensiveness, rehashing worn excuses: they don’t know the pressure we are under, they don’t understand, they-they-they versus us-us-us. She had already chosen a side.

  Kay leaned forward, as if she saw Morrow shutting down. “You better get the guy that killed that lassie.”

  “I will.”

  “’Cause she was a nice lassie.”

  “I will.” She was surprised to hear herself saying that. She had no way of knowing whether she would or not.

  “Ma?” The door opened and Joe looked in. His brother was behind him, a different kind of boy, chubby like his sister but not good-looking, his hair dyed black, several piercings on his ears, a large plug in one, and a black T-shirt with white writing on it. He was shorter as well and smiled at Morrow, nodding a greeting as he looked her up and down. “Ma,” said Joe, “Frank’s bought a DVD, can we use the telly?”

  Frank smiled, proud. “Just been paid.”

  “What is it?”

  “Paranormal Activity.”

  “It’s very late. Anyway, isn’t Marie a bit young for that?”

  “She is a wee bit.”

  “I heard it’s very scary.”

  The girl shouted in from the hall, “I’m not a baby.”

  Kay shouted back, “Aye, Marie, you’re not fifteen either.” She dropped her voice, “Frank, put something else on, there must be something else she can watch with ye.”

  The conversation swirled around her but Morrow wasn’t listening.

  She was looking at the boys’ feet. And she was feeling sick because they had the same Fila trainers on and they were black suede.

  * * *

  It was stupid but Morrow felt as though she was betraying Kay as she drove into the police station across the road.

  She parked around the back and locked the car, walking around to the front. The automatic door swished open, and she stepped in, walked over to the unmanned front bar and rang the bell attached to the desk. They were watching her from beyond the mirrored wall, she knew, so she nodded at her reflection and took out her warrant card, holding it up until the door opened and a middle-aged officer came out and checked it properly.

  “What can I do for you, ma’am?”

  “I’m over here talking to someone. You know the high flats?”

  “Aye.”

  “Kay Murray? Joe Murray? Frank? What can you tell me about them?”

  He raised his eyebrows and kept them there, looked down at her warrant card again and lifted the bar. “You better come in and speak to DC Shaw.”

  He left her waiting in the back bar while he phoned around for his colleague. She found it interesting that, although it wasn’t shift change, he seemed certain Shaw was in the building, as if that was his habit or he wasn’t allowed out. When Shaw finally arrived she found he was old-fashioned police: smart hair, clipped manner, same age as her but less chippy and awkward.

  “The Murrays are a pest. The mother ran a spite campaign to discredit this station, drove quite a wedge between us and the local populous of the high flats. Has taken months to get them back on side.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, quite the rabble rouser.”

  “What are the kids like?”

  “Oh, listen, they were taking the leaflets around for her. Putting them through the doors of the people who—” and here he broke away, look
ed shifty, shuffled his feet.

  He glanced up at her, suspicious, wondering if she was investigating the practices at the station. Morrow let him think it.

  “These CCTV cameras everywhere around here—they all working?”

  She saw his eye flick to the side as he thought through the playback, of the officers being seen traipsing up to the high flats alone…

  “Look,” she said, “I’m going to huckle you up to London Road in a minute if you don’t just answer the question.”

  “Yes,” he said automatically.

  She pulled away from him, opened the door to the front bar. “You worry about the safety of junior officers at this station?” She saw a spark of shame in his eye. “Young, inexperienced officers, out in a hostile environment? Needing back-up? And you’re down here reading The Digger. Even if nothing happens to them, they get to think it’s acceptable practice, then they send coppers out and something happens.” She was getting close to making an allegation so she stopped. “If I hear anything else about this station I will come back and I will fucking huckle you, understand?”

  His mouth tightened when she swore, so she did it again, “I fucking will, as well.”

  She walked off and slammed the door shut behind her, walking quickly through the front bar to the door.

  Outside the air was threatening frost. From the side of her car she looked back up to the high flats.

  Shaw had told her a lot about the Murrays. Everything he didn’t say was a volume. He didn’t have anything concrete to discredit Kay with, the kids didn’t have any previous offenses. She wasn’t in dispute with an ex-partner or neighbors, wasn’t screwing the brew or prone to drunken parties. If she had he would have brought it up.

  The Murrays were nicer than her family anyway.

  TWENTY

  It was freezing cold in the hangar. They were standing with their gloved hands in their pockets, shoulders hunched against the bitter cold, waiting. Morning frost had formed on the floor and the stairs but Thomas and Moira didn’t wait in the office. Instead they stood on the raised platform Nanny Mary had been on the night before, waiting for the Piper to pull in, standing tall so that Ella would see them and know immediately that she wasn’t coming home to an atmosphere. It was Moira’s idea: a show of unity.

  Thomas felt the vibration before he heard the ring. He struggled to get the phone out of his pocket with his gloved hands, smiled along with Moira at how clumsy he was being and finally yanked the gloves off and pulled the phone out. He expected to see “Don McD” on the screen, or “Hamish,” one of the boys who’d be in study hall this morning. It couldn’t be Squeak, he served mass in the mornings. It’d be Hamish, calling to ask him how he was, was he OK, had he fucked his nanny again since he’d been home. The caller ID said “Squeak.” Thomas felt his fingers weaken around the handset. He let it drop back into his pocket without answering.

  “Who was it?”

  “Someone I don’t want to talk to.” He looked away to the hangar door but could feel her eyes still on him.

  His phone vibrated against his thigh and stopped.

  “A journalist?” she suggested.

  “No.” He couldn’t look at her.

  She felt his discomfort and tried to make conversation: “They’ve been phoning me nonstop. I don’t know how they get my numbers.”

  The phone sprang to life again in his pocket and Moira rolled her eyes. “Just don’t answer, Tom.”

  “No, I won’t. Have I got time for the loo?”

  “Hurry.”

  Through the door the office was slightly warmer. A butane gas fire burned close to a man sitting by a desk with his feet resting on a bin. He was reading a newspaper, a red top, a cheap rag, the sort of paper that only did headlines in four-letter words.

  Thomas wouldn’t even have noticed the front page if the man hadn’t blanched when he saw him, sat up straight, hurriedly tucked the paper under the desk and out of sight.

  Thomas held his hand out. “Can I see?”

  The man looked to the pocket with the insistent phone in it. Thomas shrugged and reached again for the paper.

  The man gave it to him.

  The photo was a large white square of gray sky. In the center was a small grainy figure, limp, dangling like a deflated party balloon: Lars hanging from the oak on the lawn. Thomas knew that view of the lawn, the low basement angle. It had been taken from Nanny Mary’s bedroom window.

  He felt nothing at all looking at the picture of Lars, at the limpness of his neck, at his barrel body and thin legs. He told himself that he should feel something but all he could find in himself was a spark of compassion for the oak tree. It didn’t look like Lars. It didn’t look threatening at all.

  Thomas let the paper slide back onto the desk. The man dropped his head and muttered “sorry.” Thomas shrugged.

  Feeling colder than before, Thomas asked for the loo and the man pointed him to the back of the room.

  Through a door to a small room with bare concrete walls that seemed to ooze cold. He locked the door and stood still, looking at the bare damp surfaces.

  The phone in his pocket began to ring again. Thomas reached for the phone. He used a fingernail to pick the back off, took out the sim card to shut the fucking thing up. He looked at the little gold panel and held it away from him, revolted, as if Squeak was in it. He dropped it into the toilet bowl and flushed. The little gold square circled twice and then was sucked down the pipe.

  He was staring into the toilet water when the headline next to Lars’s photo registered in his consciousness. Three words only, all equal size. HEIRESS’S BRUTAL MURDER.

  Thomas stopped still. He shut his eyes tight and tilted his head to the side, as if he could dislodge the words, make them drop out of his ear and stop being on the front page. That’s why Squeak had phoned. It wasn’t to threaten him, he was phoning to say did you see it. He’d gone to serve mass and seen the paper. Father Sholtham served Thursday morning mass and he read the Daily Mail. He must have left it in the vestry. But Thomas was glad the sim card was gone, that Squeak couldn’t phone him. He didn’t care if he never spoke to him again.

  He pulled the door open and stepped into the office, looking at the headline again. HEIRESS’S BRUTAL MURDER.

  Without asking he took the paper from the man’s hands. He turned it around and looked at the words. Full story inside pages 3–7. Thomas opened at page 3. A picture of her, younger, blonder, wearing a red bikini, with a clashing blue sea behind her. She must have been on a balcony, standing with her hips twisted away from her body to make herself look slimmer.

  Sarah Erroll had been at an exclusive girls’ school Thomas had never heard of. An old school friend said something meaningless about her—she was helpful. The article pointed out that she was an only child, had no kids, no husband and had devoted herself to caring for her elderly mother. Brutal, said a senior policeman who looked like a movie star and was featured on several pages. Whoever did this will strike again unless they are found, said DCI Handsome. I have never seen a more appalling crime.

  “You take it, mate,” said the man, “if you want…”

  “Thank you.” Thomas took it, not because he wanted to read it, only because he didn’t want the man to read about her, to have that in his head. But when he got to the door he remembered Lars was on it and Moira was outside. He turned and stopped at the door, looked at the paper, turned back to the man for guidance. “Don’t want my mum…”

  “Fold it up.”

  He did that, but it wouldn’t bend enough so he took out the sports supplement in the middle and gave it back to the man and then folded it small and tucked it into his inside pocket before he stepped out into the cold hangar and shut the door carefully behind him.

  Moira looked up at him, bright eyed, kind and warm. When she saw his face the smile slid from her face.

  “Who was that on the phone?”

  “No, it’s fine.” He craned forward to look for the plane.

 
“Tommy, who was it?”

  “No one. Nothing.”

  “You look ill, suddenly.”

  He reached into his pocket and took out the paper, held it out to her. She unfolded it and sighed. “Oh no. Oh, Nanny Mary, for heaven’s sake, what a snake. Those confidentiality clauses aren’t worth a thing…”

  “She didn’t ask for a pay-out, did she?”

  “No.” Moira examined the picture. “Wonder what else she’s got up her sleeve…”

  It sounded like an insect, an approaching buzz. The plane came into view around the corner, taxiing towards them slowly until they could see Captain Jack’s face in the window and the little bump of Ella’s head in the back seat.

  “Hide it, Mum.”

  Moira folded the paper away quickly, handed it to him and Thomas hurriedly tucked it back into his pocket.

  They watched the plane slow in front of them and Thomas knew it wouldn’t be all right. He thought of Lars in Amsterdam shutting a bedroom door, leaving Thomas with a depressed girl from Kiev. They passed the half hour whispering about how neither of them wanted to be here. Thomas didn’t want to be here either. It felt the same.

  He held on to the railing to steady himself, his fingers clenching the burning cold metal, glad of the searing pain. Sarah Erroll had no kids. She was not Lars’s other wife, not his pride and comfort. She was like Thomas, just a footnote in his life.

  “Smile now.” But Moira was angry with Nanny Mary and her smile had dried on her face.

  The Piper taxied into the hangar, crawling slowly through the open doors and Ella’s little round face appeared at the window, hopeful, looking to see the first signs of how things were at home. Thomas watched her eyes flick from Moira to him, from Moira’s brown lipstick slit of a mouth to his sad and guilty eyes. She slumped back into the dark cabin.

  The plane stopped. Captain Jack waited until the engines had died before he opened the door, climbing down and helping Ella out.

  She was wearing her gray school overcoat and matching cloche hat, little black shoes with beige rubber soles. As she waited for her bag Thomas saw her struggle not to cry, clenching her eyes shut and opening them, fighting the frown at her mouth.