The End of the Wasp Season

by Denise Mina

  They showed him their warrant cards and he checked the photos, asked them to take the card out of the wallets and looked at the back, tried to bend Wilder’s to see if it was made of sturdy plastic. He gave it back, seemed pleased with himself. “D’you know how I actually know you’re not journalists?”

  And he waited until they answered. “No, Mr. Fredrick,” said Morrow, burning eyed, getting annoyed, “how is it that you know we are not journalists?”

  “’Cause you’re in charge.” He smiled. “You know, a woman. Pregnant. A pregnant woman.”

  He sat back, very pleased with his deduction, whether it was that she was a woman, or a pregnant woman that made her not a journalist, she didn’t give a flying fuck. Fredrick owned a club people wanted to get into and he spent a lot of time in drinking company. Those twin factors seemed to have prompted him into mistakenly thinking himself interesting.

  “Lars Anderson drank here, didn’t he?” she said, echoing her intonation from earlier to show she was getting impatient.

  “Yes.”

  Morrow looked at him. He looked at her. She would have launched into the details of her day so far, getting up at five for the six-thirty flight, feeling sick, Wilder almost missing the plane because he’d gone to the toilet, the heat on the underground into town, the noise and confusion of rush hour in London, all to get here and be treated as if she’d come from the cleansing department. She could have told Fredrick why he should tell her what he knew, what the consequences would be if he didn’t, but she felt bored even contemplating a rant. So she sat back.

  “Fuck’s sake,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Cough it up.”

  Fredrick liked that, smiled at that. “Him and Sarah?”

  Morrow nodded heavily. “Him and Sarah.”

  “Got on well. Saw his car pick her up from work a couple of times.”

  “She ever say anything about it?”

  “No. She wouldn’t. Discreet. Nice girl.” He nodded approvingly.

  “See her getting picked up by anyone else’s car, ever?”

  He pursed his lips, thought about it. “No. She wasn’t escorting when she worked here.” He read Morrow. “You knew she was an escort?”

  “Aye.”

  “She left here once she started all that.”

  “How did you know that?”

  He slapped the manila file shut. “That’s why she left here. She was in with a girl, Nadia. I knew what she was thinking. I said to her, not here, Sarah, can’t have it. If you’re gonna do that you can fuck off. So she did.”

  “Who’s Nadia?”

  He looked past them to the door, pursed his lips again. “I’ll get her in if you like.”

  “Why would you do that?” asked Morrow, just because she wanted to know.

  Fredrick shrugged. “I’ll always help the police if I can,” he said, but he couldn’t look at her.

  Maggie Back-briefly-behind-the-bar was not upset particularly about Sarah Erroll’s death. Morrow wondered if she’d understood that she’d been murdered, maybe she hadn’t read the papers, but after quizzing her for a bit it became clear that she had. She said the things people say: it’s awful, how terrible, but her expression remained blank and apathetic.

  Maggie had left the job to get married to a businessman she’d met here through the bar. A party had been organized on a boat and all the Walnut girls were invited. He was younger than her by two years and already a millionaire. She really thought he was going to make it. But then the crash came and he handled it badly, didn’t get out and now he had nothing, minus nothing because he was trading with their own money. She was glad to have her job back; Howard was a good friend. She didn’t seem to know it was temporary.

  Morrow asked her how she met Sarah.

  “We were at school together, I was a few years older than her. I met her at my sister’s and she needed a job, looked the part, I knew Howard was looking. I brought her in and got her an interview. She started that night.”

  “What sort of person was she?”

  Maggie looked blank. “Nice, quiet person, worked hard, helpful…”

  “What was she like at school?”

  “Quiet.” She corrected herself. “Actually, I didn’t know her, you’d have to talk to my sister.”

  “Can you give me her number?”

  Maggie had to fish her mobile out of her pocket to find it. After Morrow had jotted the number in her notebook she glanced back up and saw Maggie looking at the back wall of the office—her cheekbone was lit from the side. She had laughter lines, wrinkles on her forehead but they looked stale, unused, traces of facial expressions she seemed unlikely ever to make. It hit Morrow suddenly: Maggie’s face was paralyzed. She wasn’t a cold bitch: she’d had her face pumped full of Botox.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  Very slowly, Maggie’s shoulders rose to her ears. “Twenty-seven.”

  “Very young still,” she said flatly, wondering why she felt such a strong urge to save Maggie from herself.

  Deep in Maggie’s eyes, Morrow thought she saw a twinge of disdain. “Not really,” she said.

  Fredrick was angry with Nadia, very angry. He let her into the office in front of him, jostling her with a prod in her back, curling his lip as he pointed at his desk chair, telling her to sit down. Nadia let him boss her as though it were a sexy game. She looked as if she could buy and sell him. Her coat was blonde mohair, ankle length, her jewelry was spare: matching necklace and earrings in a textured zigzag yellow gold. Her swarthy skin was flawless and her hair was black and chocolate, not cheap-looking or wig-like in the way Jackie Hunter’s hair had been, but thick and rich.

  As she sat down her coat slid open across perfect brown knees, revealing a red woolen dress and perfect legs. She gave Fredrick a reproachful smile.

  “Are you Nadia?” asked Morrow, feeling that they must look very plain to her.

  Nadia turned to her with a practiced smile. “I am Nadia, yes. Howard tells me that you would like to talk about Sarah and her business?”

  “Hmm, did you know Sarah?”

  Nadia looked to Fredrick for direction and he scowled at her. “No, I’m afraid there has been a mistake on Howard’s part, unfortunate, but I didn’t know Sarah.” Her accent sounded Middle Eastern, or Brazilian, Morrow couldn’t tell for sure.

  “He said you did.”

  Nadia looked at him, a smile playing behind her eyes.

  “Fucking stop it,” he said. “She’s only fucking dead. They don’t want you.”

  Nadia conceded flirtatiously. “OK, Howard, I tell it the truth: I knew her, she was a friend of mine, OK?”

  “How did you meet her?”

  She waved a hand over her shoulder. “At a party. She was serving the drinks, Howard, he sometimes give them extra work…”

  They looked at him for confirmation but he was glaring at Nadia. “So we meet, we talk, she pretty and short of money and I say to her, you can set up a business, legal, on the internet, no one know your business, all private dealings. Just for fun.” She emphasized the last part as if it was an absolute legal defense. “Yes? For fun.”

  “How did she react to that suggestion?”

  Nadia glanced at Fredrick. “Very happy about it—”

  “No, she wasn’t,” said Fredrick flatly. “She was in bits.”

  “She talk to you about it?” asked Morrow.

  But Fredrick wasn’t even looking at Morrow. “Nadia has a problem telling truth from fantasy. It’s a big problem.” Nadia smiled sweetly at the desk top. “She don’t know if she’s fucking lying or not, do ya?”

  She gave him a look, so old and knowing that Morrow knew that Nadia had played Fredrick and won.

  “Can we talk to Nadia alone, please?”

  He didn’t like that. Tried to think of a way around it and then pushed himself off the wall with his shoulders, stalked to the door, turned to say something and thought better of it, opened the door and walked out. The door fell shut.

>   Nadia pursed her lips, an echo of Fredrick’s gesture earlier. “He’s a very emotional pers—”

  “Aye,” interrupted Morrow. “Nadia, I don’t give a fuck what’s going on between you two and I don’t give a fuck about what you do for a living, all right, hen?”

  Nadia read her, took in her cheap suit and pregnancy bump, her neat hair and saw that they were so opposite there was no threat here. She nodded softly.

  “I want to know two things: how did she get into it and what Lars Anderson was to her. Clear?”

  Nadia straightened her dress. “He was a friend of hers, Lars, a gentleman friend.”

  “A client?”

  She shrugged a yes.

  “He good to her?”

  She widened her eyes. “Very good.”

  “No, I’m not asking if he paid her well or gave her presents, I mean was he good to her?”

  She shrugged again, ambivalent this time. “He’s a rich man, he’s not so good but not bad. You know men…what they are like…”

  “Misandry,” said Morrow.

  “Miss who?”

  “Misandry. It’s the opposite of misogyny. A blind prejudice against men on the basis of their gender. It’s not healthy, Nadia. It makes for unhappy relationships.”

  “Oh,” she said politely, “that’s interesting. I didn’t know there was such a word.”

  “It’s the long-term damage of your profession, isn’t it?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know—”

  Morrow leaned towards her. “Will you ever trust a man again?”

  Nadia saw that she understood her a little. “You don’t know how the money draws you in…”

  Morrow sat back. “Miners get lung disease.”

  They smiled at each other for a moment.

  “Maybe you’re less damaged than me: I’m a police officer, we don’t trust women either.”

  Nadia smiled, thought about it, huffed a little laugh. “Even girls who don’t do this…Not everyone’s happy in relationships. At least when I’m lonely I’m rich and lonely.”

  “What was Sarah like?”

  “Nice girl. Didn’t want to do it at first. Her choice, but she needed the money very bad. Her mother was ill, she couldn’t afford health care. She asked me how to start. I told her.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  A little regret flickered around her lips. “I invite her to a party, with party girls. She fuck a couple of guys there. Then she get into it.”

  “Was she upset after? Howard Fredrick said she was in bits.”

  “She wasn’t happy but it wasn’t rape. She wasn’t crying. She was fed up afterwards but we all are fed up afterwards, at the beginning. Is a hard job. That’s why everyone doesn’t do it. Is hard sometimes. A lonely job. And it affect you.” She looked at Morrow. “Mis-antry?”

  “Misandry,” corrected Morrow. “Did she come into work afterwards?”

  “For a couple of shifts. She talk to Howard about it. He very angry with me. Tell me to stay the fuck out of his bar after. It’s silly really because I didn’t meet her here, I met her in a party but after he says not more parties with the girls, he didn’t know who they would be meeting, so on.” She glanced at the door. “He thinks they are thoroughbred horses, the way he treats them.”

  “The bar staff?”

  “No, is just…he doesn’t like what I do for a living.” She touched her hair, a self-soothe gesture, and Morrow could tell she cared what he thought.

  “You and Howard…?”

  Nadia frowned quickly and nodded to her shoulder. “We were close for a while.”

  “He’s very angry with you.”

  She looked at the door to make sure it was shut. “They can fuck me,” she hissed, her face hard and angry, “but they can’t own me.” She sat back and smiled at Wilder, resuming her party girl persona. “Drive them crazy.”

  The streets of the City of London were so quiet it felt like Glasgow during an Old Firm Game. A few tourists followed the brightly colored maps in their hands, snapping pictures, filming on their phones. What little traffic there was consisted mostly of buses and black cabs.

  Morrow was glad to get to Heathrow, glad to be sitting in the departures lounge with the other Glaswegians heading home with sunburn and summer clothes on, talking to strangers and laughing with their mouths open, watched by the cabin crew in smart uniforms.

  Wilder sat next to her, reading a tabloid newspaper as solemnly as the Bible, and she sat and imagined Sarah Erroll at a party, on her back and thinking about the money and her mum as a red-faced businessman rutted over her. It was an accident of fate: Sarah needed the money, she happened upon Nadia, she found that she could do it. She might have met a stockbroker and been good at that instead.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Kay wiggled the key in the door but it didn’t work. She tried jabbing it in and out of the lock and blowing on it. It had never happened before: the key did fit into the lock but it wouldn’t turn at all. She wanted to kick the door, punch it and shove it with her shoulder.

  She stopped, took a breath and counseled herself to caution. She was tired from the night before. When they got back she’d gone next door to collect Marie and John, taken everyone home and made them go straight to bed. Then she sat up until five in the morning, smoking in front of the telly. She knew they were lying awake, blinking in the dark. She heard Joe and Frankie whispering when she went to the toilet at ten to four. She sat up smoking and drinking herbal tea, too embarrassed to go to bed, thinking about her family and how they looked to the police.

  She knew they looked working class, herself looked a little disheveled sometimes but she always thought they looked decent. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they looked envious and covetous and low. Maybe she did look 45–60, Frankie seemed odd and John was a rapist in the making. Maybe Marie was fat and Joe was smarmy. She had never had a crisis of faith in her children before. It made her sick.

  To prove to herself that she was decent, she rose after three hours’ sleep and made them all get up and eat breakfast and go to school in clean and ironed clothes. Then she dressed herself, brushed her hair and caught the bus to Thorntonhall. On the top deck she leaned her head on the rattling window, the condensed breath of strangers running into her hair, and vowed to listen to Margery without saying anything about the night before. She would pat Margery’s hand and tell her not to worry. She’d forget herself, do her work well and in good grace.

  But Margery’s key wouldn’t fit. When she opened her eyes again she had taken several deep breaths and relaxed her body a little, twisting at the waist so that she was facing the French doors of the kitchen.

  Margery was watching her. Her arms were crossed. She was wearing her yellow slacks, the expensive ones she regretted buying but loved. She wore them rarely, kept them for special. Banana yellow flares, thirty years out of date.

  Kay raised her hand in a static wave, but Margery didn’t move. She stood perfectly framed in the windows, looking straight at her. Kay waited for her to gesture at the lock or invite her through the French doors. Instead, Margery uncrossed her arms and pointed back at the gate.

  Kay glanced back. The gate was shut, she had shut it properly. Still Margery stood stiff, pointing at it, mouthing “No” or “Go.”

  Someone was in there with her.

  Dropping her plastic bag into the deep gravel, Kay rushed over to the French doors and rattled the handle, pulling when she should have pushed, trying to open it. Realizing her mistake, she turned the handle and shoved, banging the glass door against the worktop inside.

  Margery fell back, clutching the sink. “Get out!”

  “Who’s in here?”

  Kay headed for the living room.

  “No one.”

  She stopped. She listened. She knew the sounds of this house and there was no one here but Margery.

  “Get out.”

  Kay was sweating, panting, felt vulnerable in front of Margery who was standing, cool again
st the sink. “Why?”

  Margery stepped over to the table as if it was a matter of great urgency and adjusted the position of a small crystal vase with a single yellow rose in it, shifting it slightly. She looked at Kay, pulled her lips back in a pitiless smile. “The police have been back. You know why.”

  For a moment Kay couldn’t hear anything in the world but the dull thump of her own blood. She felt the blood in her cheeks, in her eyes, across her face.

  She saw Margery Thalaine, standing in her thirty-grand kitchen, baring her teeth at the help and she understood completely what Margery was seeing: a failure and a mess.

  “You’re wrong,” she whispered when she meant to shout. “That’s wrong.”

  “Get out.” Margery’s voice was flat and she meant never come back, not later or in a year.

  Kay had things to say that could hurt Margery, she could cast up that she had been a friend to her, that she had been needlessly kind. She could cast up that she was owed money for mopheads and detergent. Even, in a weak moment, she could bring up Mr. Thalaine’s flight from Berlin in 1938 and ask how Margery could side so easily with the authorities.

  But she did none of those things because she was too upset to speak. Instead she walked out of the French door and shut it gently behind herself, looking at the handle, not into the room.

  Then she walked over to the front door, slid her hand through the handles of her poly bag, reaching up to her like a child. Kay walked out of the gate, keeping her head high until she reached the bin recess around the corner, and lit up. She turned to the hedge to hide her face as she smoked.

  A deep scratchy breath halted the tears pressing behind her eyes. She had barely exhaled the smoke when she took another draw. The panic was not because Margery had been mean to her or belittled her. The panic was because she now didn’t have that job and she had four kids and they needed shoes and food and the rent needed paid and the fucking council tax. It was just about money. Just money. I can get another job, she told herself, knowing that they were few and far between, that she was being paid well and the hours suited her. Another job would be a night job at Asda, she’d be out all night and the kids would be alone in the house—she wouldn’t even know if they were in or out. Or who was there with them.