The End of the Wasp Season

by Denise Mina

  Moira stayed where she was on the platform and carried on smiling, baffled that them being here was no reassurance at all.

  Thomas walked down the steps and over to the sister he had hated since the moment she was born. He walked over to her and lifted her off her little feet in a tight hug and said kind things into her heaving shoulder as she hung limp on him.

  “Don’t cry, Ella.” His voice was as flat as a petrol spill. “Don’t cry. I’ll make it right. I swear I will.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  The early morning station was always nursery-warm and Morrow was already tired, sweat prickling at the nape of her neck and her oxters as she dumped her coat and bag by her desk and shut the door behind her.

  She looked at her in-tray, took a deep breath before sitting down and pulling it over in front of her, placing a hand on either side of it on the desk, a pianist centering herself before a recital. Looking down at the neat stack of green and yellow papers she admitted that she didn’t want this case. She didn’t like it. She was losing her compassion for Sarah Erroll, finding her a trickier victim than she’d expected. And she didn’t want to meet the killer.

  She looked up at the room. Ugly brown wood, plain tables, gray plastic chairs. Greasy Blu-tack dots on the wall from absent pictures and posters, an empty desk across from hers. The room felt sterile compared to the garish chaos in Kay’s kitchen, the sink full of squeezed tea bags.

  She began to plow through the reports, planning her morning briefing.

  Prelims on the door-to-doors. She looked through them for the notes of the visit to Mrs. Thalaine’s; Leonard and Wilder in attendance. Nothing of note about money. A small mention of Kay and her promise to come up and identify anything missing.

  Sarah Erroll’s accounts book for the carers: she kept meticulous accounts of wages and expenses. She had written “Mum” on a sticker and put it on the front of the book. Morrow glanced at the total. It came to thousands of pounds a year. The entries weren’t all in Sarah’s writing though, someone else had been filling it in for her, a careful hand.

  Some of the lab reports were in too, photos of the footsteps on the stairs, bloody, but the photographer had deadened the color so that it looked brown. The imprint was distinctive: three circles on the instep, two sets. There were no suggestions for brands on the report but a suggestion as to sizes: one pair an eight and the other a nine or ten. Morrow jotted “Fila?” down, looked at it and then scored it out. She looked at it again, asked herself what her motive was for ruling out Kay’s boys, and then rewrote “Fila?”

  They had fingerprints from the window frame, the iPhone, the banister. Two sets of fingerprints actually, both intruders, although the money in the museum catalogue had no fingerprints on it at all. They had photographs of an unidentified tire mark in the mud at the front of the house.

  They had everything and they had nothing. None of the evidence could be used to find a suspect, only to confirm one. They had no one in the frame yet.

  She could hear the day shift gathering outside, swapping morning greetings with the guys going off. She steeled herself and had a look through the incident photos again and found herself shocked afresh.

  A sharp knock at her door was followed by Bannerman opening it, still coated and scarfed. “Morning.”

  “Morning, sir.”

  “I’m giving them a talk after your briefing.”

  “That’s not necessary, really.”

  He stood and looked at her, raised his eyebrows in a challenge and left, shutting the door again.

  She had to give more than a briefing this morning, it was a sales job: she had to find a way to make them care about a posh, rich prostitute with no living relatives and horrific injuries. And then Bannerman would come in and make them uncare.

  She stood up and opened her office door, shouting for Gobby, and waited, hearing the men pass the order around until Gobby came to her door. She handed him a report from her in-tray.

  “Make ten photocopies of that. Staple them and bring them to the briefing. Harris…”

  Harris was early, always early, and came around the door when he heard his name. “Morning.”

  “Aye,” she said, “good morning, yourself. Get me some speakers for my laptop.”

  Harris huffed helplessly and walked away. Equipment was always a controversial issue. It could either not be found, or made to work, or else the wrong thing altogether had been bought. By the time an officer was senior enough to control the budgets for equipment, they were often hopelessly techno-blind. It was telling that when they talked about the recently acquired computer equipment they boasted about how much it cost, but never what it might be used for.

  It was eight o’clock. The troops were filtering into the incident room across the way. She gathered her papers into a tidy pile, took a deep breath and walked out into the corridor.

  Routher was standing there with a grin on his face that wilted when he saw her. “Get in there,” she said.

  The incident room was small, another ugly room with tables for everyone to hot-desk around, an incident board at one end and a whiteboard on the facing wall.

  The night shift were slumped in the front row, nearest the door, pointedly ignoring Bannerman, who was three feet away from them. He stayed in everyone’s line of sight by the whiteboard, letting them know who was really in charge but he looked lonely and lost over there. He saw Morrow come in and nodded to her needlessly, signaling that she was welcome and might begin. She stopped herself from nodding back.

  “Right,” she said, and they settled. “Sarah Erroll was rich, pretty, young and leaves no family. Who cares? I do, but I think I’m the only one here.” It was an unconventional start, surprising enough to make them sit up and listen. “My job is extra hard today because I have to try and manipulate you into giving a toss.” She looked at them. “That’s annoying.”

  She saw them smirk at the tables in front of them, guilty but honest.

  She clicked her laptop and the picture of Mrs. Erroll came up, sitting in the kitchen in her nightie. “This is her mum, Mrs. Erroll.” They sniggered at that because Joy Erroll looked so old and so cross. “This is Sarah.”

  She clicked on a profile picture of Sarah. She was standing in the street looking back over her shoulder, smiling so the apple of her cheek stood in stark profile, eyes brimming with love. Morrow left the picture there, making them look at it while she rolled through the briefing, telling them what she knew, about her mother’s expensive care plan and recent death. She told them about the sex work but said it had stopped when her mother died, letting them put the two things together themselves, hoping it might prompt a spark of compassion.

  Without warning, she brought up a scene-of-crime photo, watching the eyes widen and the heads tilt, the confusion as to what the fuck they were looking at, the piecing it together.

  Sarah Erroll’s face had been stamped on repeatedly, with the full weight of the assailant on it so that the nose was nothing but a pearly white stub of bare cartilage, the eyes burst black and unrecognizable, the hair a matted mess of blonde and blood. It was more than confusing—the degree of anger that had been spent on the face was repulsive. Someone had stood on the step next to the head and brought their foot down and down until no part of her remained. One ear was missing, the skull was caved in at the mouth and the teeth were jumbled into the back of her open throat. Somehow, her lips had remained more or less intact.

  To give them a moment to hang on to, she said, “Whoever did this held on to the banister for balance, raised one foot and stamped…”

  Then, dispassionately, she began to run through the incident chronologically: two young men came through the kitchen window, went upstairs, checked her purse, found her taser phone. She flashed onto an image of the phone lying in the hall, and then back to Sarah as she told them that all three had come downstairs and the two boys battered Sarah to death at the bottom. No weapons, just feet. She showed them a slide of a footprint, a close-up of the black suede
fibers taken in the lab. She showed them the muddy tire prints from outside.

  Harris was assigned the job of identifying the trainers—she mentioned Fila specifically—and Wilder got the job of looking through all the carers’ names and records. She split the other jobs of the morning between the rest of the day shift DCs.

  DC Leonard put her hand up to ask a question and the men sniggered at her breach of protocol. Questions were usually kept to the end, when the DS had finished rolling through their pre-prepared speech, but Morrow was surprised that anyone was listening and glad of the break. She nodded at her to go ahead, hoping the question wasn’t about the shift rota.

  “How do you know it was two young men?”

  She nodded to Gobby to hand out the photocopies. He gave one to Bannerman who glanced at it and looked up, angry that he hadn’t been asked. Morrow was taking a chance. Someone in the room might go home and tell the wife about it. Someone might have a pint with a journalist that night and let slip important details.

  When Morrow was sure they all had one she called a hush. “OK,” she said loudly, “listen. The last thing Sarah Erroll ever did,” she pointed at the whiteboard and made them all look at the photo, “was call 999. The call was silent and she was put through to the automatic record.”

  They woke up. Suddenly they were being trusted with evidence, facts that needed to be unpicked and pondered on.

  Morrow pressed play, turning the volume up as high as she could without the crackle becoming oppressive.

  Blunted static filled the room: the sound had been enhanced to bring out Sarah Erroll’s voice but it hadn’t been properly cleaned up yet, not court-clean.

  Sarah Erroll: What are you doing in hair?

  They were nervous but they smiled at the typo. The transcript they held seemed to have been made by someone who had never heard an English accent: anything pronounced in an unfamiliar way was written phonetically.

  There was a pause, no movement and Sarah must have turned towards the phone because the next sentence was very clear:

  S.E.: Look get out of my house.

  Annoyed, but not threatened. Her voice was girlish, her accent drawling estuary English, still tinged with a nasal twang of sleep.

  S.E.: It isn’t empty [indistinct] house.

  Another pause but Sarah’s tone was much changed when she spoke again:

  S.E.: My mother died. I still live.

  And then a boy’s voice, broken but not steady and low yet. He sounded loud and he sounded confident.

  Accused 1: Where’s your kids?

  Everyone in the room sat up.

  S.E.: Kids?

  Acc 1: You’ve got kids.

  S.E.: No I haven’t got kids.

  Acc 1: Yes, you fucking have.

  S.E.: You’re in the wrong house.

  Acc 1: No I’m not.

  S.E.: Look you should go. I called the police [indistinct] they’ll be on their way. You could get in a lot of trouble been hair.

  No one smiled at the typo this time.

  S.E.: I know what you’re hair for.

  She seemed to move away from the phone at that point but they could still hear her:

  S.E.: You don’t know who you’re dealing with, you’ve made a mistake.

  Acc 1: Stop. Get fucking back.

  Morrow pressed pause. The men looked around, startled at the interruption.

  “Where’s his accent from?” she asked.

  A guilty silence, an unexpected spelling test when they were all dozing.

  “English?” It was Leonard, new, enough of an outsider to offer an opinion. Everyone around her nodded to show that they had been listening.

  “No,” said Morrow, exasperated, “I’m not testing you to see if you’re listening. It’s a strange accent, it’s a mix. I want you to think about it. Analyze it. See if you can place it or parts of it.”

  She rewound and pressed play again:

  Acc 1: Stop. Get fucking back.

  Now they were really listening, their facial expressions as responsive to the conversation as if they were in the room with Sarah and about to interject.

  Footfalls, dwump, dwump, dwump of bare feet on the hard floor, coming closer to the phone and suddenly Sarah took command:

  S.E.: [shouting] Get out of here this instant.

  Morrow kept her face to the floor but smiled, proud of Sarah. Victims might incur sympathy but they always lost the respect of the officers. Real cops saw it all too often to keep caring.

  S.E.: Who are you? I know you. I definitely know you, I’ve seen a photo of you.

  Acc 1: Photo? [indistinct] a photo?

  They were all sitting upright, a Pavlovian copper response to the strangled, angry voice.

  Acc 1: Showed you a fucking photo of me?

  Acc 2: St [indistinct] Stop, man. [indistinct]

  Acc 1: Fucking [indistinct] phone.

  A pause.

  Acc 1: Speak. Fucking move.

  Morrow watched them listening until the end, saw them cringe as Sarah insisted that she knew one of their dads and called the boys liars.

  She watched them flinch at the crash on the bed, as Sarah shouted out to the briefing to help her, that there were two boys in her bedroom and she knew one of them. Then the line clicked dead.

  Morrow heard them draw their breath, look anxiously around for confirmation that the threat was over. She looked at Bannerman for permission to dismiss. His mouth was tight but he nodded and Morrow turned to the front row.

  “Thank you for your attention, gentlemen. I believe that’s the end of your shift.”

  As they stood up she could see she had moved them, told them a story they could hold on to, given them the excuse they needed to admit they cared—

  “Stop.” Bannerman stepped forward, hand up, lip curled. “Sit back down.”

  He sounded like an angry headmaster. The night shift hesitated, looked to Morrow for direction. She shut her eyes. Bannerman was going to fuck it all up.

  “It has been brought to my attention, men,” he saw Tamsin Leonard and corrected himself, “and woman.” He sniggered at that, for some reason, possibly because he was nervous. “That you are all clock-watching.” He was flicking his finger at them and she could see them withdrawing, all the benefit of her briefing draining away, their eyes retreating to the table tops. “If I don’t see an improvement in your commitment to this case we’ll be looking at transfers and redundancies. Is that clear?”

  No one answered and no one was looking at him. Except for Harris. He was at the back of the room, arms crossed, mouth tight, standing square to Bannerman, meeting him.

  “Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” they answered in a ragged chorus, except for Harris, who said nothing.

  “All right, then.” And he raised his hand to dismiss them.

  “Thanks for your help there,” said Morrow, sarcastic and loudly, before the noise of the chairs had gathered enough to drown the comment out. The men heard her, looked at each other and laughed at him.

  Bannerman gave her a look that was beyond angry. He was going to make her suffer for that and she knew it.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Before they even got to the outside gate Thomas hated Ella again.

  She was working hard to keep crying. Every so often her grief would wane to a whimper, then she would catch her breath, give a forced wail and begin afresh. It was uneven, dramatic and stagy, as if she had something to say and was sobbing so she didn’t have to make conversation.

  Moira stroked Ella’s hair with rhythmic sympathy, hushing over and over as Ella bawled so hard that her voice began to fail. She ran out of tissues. The limo driver from the hire firm handed a box back to them when he stopped in a traffic queue. He avoided Thomas’s eye in the rearview mirror, embarrassed.

  Ella let Moira hug her, which was unusual. She was clinging to her when they stopped outside the house. The driver of the hire limo pulled on the brake and, in that quiet moment before anyone could speak, Ella
lurched across Thomas’s lap for a sight of the oak, shouted, “Daddy, my daddy!” and began to howl uncontrollably again.

  Thomas looked out over the lawn. It seemed familiar: “Daddy, my daddy,” and then he remembered that it was a line from The Railway Children. Jenny Agutter on the smoky platform and her father stepping down from the train.

  He felt a spark of indignation until he remembered the newspaper in his pocket and that he had done things that were significantly more shameful than borrowing a line from a movie.

  The driver opened the car door for Moira and she peeled Ella off her bosom, gently shoving her back into her own seat. Her silk blouse was stained with smeary tears. She got out of the car, put her hand back in to help Ella out.

  It was a telling moment: Ella’s face was convulsed with misery but her eyes were calculating. She looked at Moira, looked at Thomas briefly, and reached over, taking Moira’s proffered hand, leaning heavily as she shuffled out of the car. It was a cold look, as if she was assessing them and chose Moira as the safest.

  Thomas must seem unsafe to her, he must seem like Lars. For the first time he saw how things must look from Ella’s perspective. Lars took him away shopping and to Amsterdam. He ostentatiously donated the sixth-form wing to his school. He even gave him a flat of his own away from the main house, and his own nanny, long after Ella’s had been dismissed. True, Lars and Moira visited Ella at her school all the time, but her school was closer to the house, he was all the way up in Scotland. He had never thought her the loser but it must have seemed unfair to her too sometimes.

  As he watched her scramble along the seat and climb out, he saw that Lars and Moira had set them against each other, not always deliberately, and how it was a shame. She was all he had and they didn’t know each other, had never spent time together.

  Thomas’s door wasn’t open.