The End of the Wasp Season

by Denise Mina

  They stopped abruptly and took Frankie out, and Joe came in and sat down next to her.

  He was feeling insecure, she could tell, because he was doing a charm offensive. He shook hands with both Alex and Bannerman and asked how they were this evening? Alex smiled and said she was fine and how was he? Joe misunderstood the pleasantry and said he was a bit nervous and felt a bit tired after last night. He’d had to come home early from school and he was a bit dizzy.

  They walked him through the same questions as Frankie: Joe knew his own shoe size, a size nine. He’d spent the night with his pals and he had a blue folder full of coached witness statements that might go against him if the case came to trial. Bannerman told him he’d done the wrong thing too.

  “We were trying to save you time,” explained Kay, hoping she sounded reasonable.

  Bannerman was frosty about it, slapped the folder shut and pushed it back across the table to Joe. “Don’t do it again.”

  He’d never been in a gang, his mum would have killed him.

  Morrow asked, “Have you ever been to Perth?”

  He was definite. “Yes.”

  Kay looked at him. “When?”

  “Couple of months ago,” he told her. “An away game for the sevens.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “Yes, you do. You made me sandwiches. Remember we had a fight about the fare because I didn’t book it in advance and there wasn’t room on the bus?”

  “No.”

  “I had to pay the full train fare because I didn’t book it in advance and you said I should have known that I wouldn’t get a place on the bus—”

  “That was Carlisle.”

  “Oh. Was it?”

  “Yeah, that was Carlisle.”

  “Have you been to Perth?”

  He looked to Kay for the answer. She shook her head.

  “No,” he said, “I’ve not been there.”

  “Know anybody there?”

  “No.”

  He’d never been involved in religion of any kind, although he supported the Gers and once fancied a girl who was Catholic, did that count? No, Alex said it didn’t. Joe said that was good because he never even spoke to her and it would be a shame to get done for murder for fancying someone he’d only seen in the street. He laughed, expecting them to join in, and looked sad and frightened when they didn’t.

  Kay sat and listened, touching his arm when he looked vulnerable or worried. Her anger began to recede. She realized slowly that Margery would have turned on her whether or not Alex went to see her; that Margery was a snob and a funny old bird. She’d probably have sacked her soon anyway. She couldn’t afford a cleaner anymore, certainly not five days a week.

  She saw Alex touch her stomach sometimes, saw her sitting over on one buttock and smile to herself when the babies shifted; Kay’s eyes slid across the table top to her tummy. She couldn’t find it in her to hate her anymore. And Joe was right: last night, dropping them home, had been decent of her.

  By the time the interviews were over and they were being shown out of the station and having the bus stop pointed out to them up the street, Kay had decided to go and see Danny the next day and tell him just to forget it.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  They were planning the funeral. Moira and Ella lay on the bed with a throw over their legs, in bed together, but not in bed. Moira with a pen and a notepad balanced on her knees, Ella cross-legged, a giant packet of marshmallows standing upright in the bowl of her thighs. They’d found a dry-store cupboard, big as a walk-in wardrobe, full of food that the family had never even seen and the staff must have been keeping for themselves: cheap biscuit assortments and marshmallows and boxes of Wotsits.

  Thomas didn’t want to sit on the bed with them, even though there was room, it felt wrong, so he wandered around the periphery of his parents’ bedroom, an unfamiliar room, glimpsed through the open door but never explored in childhood. He had never been told not to come in here, and couldn’t have said why he hadn’t. Even now he felt a frisson of fear that Lars would walk in, open his eyes wide wide wide and roar a reproach.

  The big yellow poplar-burr sleigh-bed sat in the middle of the room, the massive window looming behind it like a bedstead.

  Moira had decided to bury Lars in Sevenoaks. It felt a little spiteful to Thomas. He said that maybe Lars would prefer to be buried in town, since they would be moving when they sold up and he loved the city, but Moira was insistent. She said that since he loved this place so much, it was fitting, but she had a smile behind her eyes when she said it. She was trapping Lars in the place where he had trapped her.

  Ella ate marshmallows slowly, getting eight bites out of each, as Thomas wandered slowly around the room, touching things that had belonged to Lars, wondering if he had exactly the same things in his other house. He looked up at Moira in the bed. She was happy, lying there with Ella, jotting notes about the funeral and who should come and what should happen. He felt bad for her, knowing that Theresa would call soon. Moira might already know but she didn’t like facing things. She might start taking antidepressants again and they’d lose her again.

  “Anyone from school you’d like to invite to Daddy’s funeral, Tom?”

  Thomas shook his head.

  “Not Squeak?”

  “No.” He touched a hairbrush. “’S too far.”

  “Hmm.” Another day she might have sent the Piper for Squeak, just so he could be there for Thomas, but this was a different time. They couldn’t afford things like that anymore.

  “His daddy might send a plane for him?”

  “No, I’d rather not.”

  “How about Donny? Did you invite him?”

  “Donny?” He looked at her as if she was mental.

  Moira pursed her lips at him. “Donny, stepdad has cancer, you spent this morning with him…”

  Thomas blushed, felt horrible and sick, but Moira thought she’d tripped him up and smiled, nodding at him as if to say she knew.

  “You could invite her, if you like, your girlfriend.”

  He tutted at her and looked away, embarrassed because Theresa couldn’t be his girlfriend. It was creepy to think about it and yet he had. On the train home he’d thought about little else. He didn’t think about actually touching her. He thought instead warm soupy thoughts, her thick hair, the way she rolled her shoulders when she walked, eating breakfast in the stupid pancake place after a night together. He went to the toilet on the train and had a quick tug, thinking about something else entirely, a film he’d seen, so that he could go back and sit and daydream in safety about her.

  “Don’t you want to invite her?”

  “No.”

  Moira watched him, became serious. “You weren’t meeting Nanny Mary, were you?”

  “Fuck off!” he spat, angry that she knew about that and had mentioned it.

  “Because that woman sold those pictures of your father to the paper.”

  “I’m not meeting Nanny Mary, for Christ’s sake—”

  “She’s a snake.”

  “Fucking hell, shut up about that.”

  Moira read his face and saw he meant it. She turned back to her pad.

  Exhausted by not being the center of attention for a minute and a half, Ella curled up on the giant pillows. “OK, what songs?”

  “Which songs,” corrected Moira.

  “No,” Ella kicked her little heels on the bed, “I think you can say ‘what songs.’ ”

  Now she was being cute, talking kind of babyish. Thomas was staying away from her. She was laying it on so thick he’d found himself on the verge of punching her. Her moods swung around all the time—she laughed during pauses, and she asked stupid questions: will it rain tomorrow, what is that color called.

  He thought of Phils and his sister, Bethany. They’d be cool about this. He imagined himself as sulky Phils, skateboarding Phils, growing-up-in-Chelsea Phils. Thomas tried to imagine an equivalent person in his class at school but there weren’t any because P
hils went to day school and they were always different. And if Ella was Bethany she’d be cool too. She’d be honest with Thomas-Phils. She’d say she was sad that their dad was dead, as well as glad. Bethany probably trusted Theresa, she wouldn’t lay it on with a trowel or copy characters in the movies to know how to behave. Bethany would know already.

  “‘Star of the Sea’?”

  “No,” said Ella, “something…” she couldn’t think of the word but pushed her hands in the air as if she was throwing confetti, “UP!”

  “Rousing,” said Moira.

  “Yes, something rousing. Rousing, rousing.”

  “‘Jerusalem’?”

  “Is that a hymn?”

  Moira wasn’t sure. “He liked it though.”

  Ella nodded. “Rousing.”

  “OK.” Moira wrote it down. “And afterwards. Should we have a funeral supper?”

  “Is that what people do?”

  Thomas didn’t know about this bit, he’d never been to a funeral, so he was actually listening.

  “Well, we can get some caterers. But would anyone come? It’s a diplomatic uncertainty. Daddy was in trouble and no one’s scared of him anymore…”

  Far away, down the stairs, the phone rang softly. Thomas was quick to the door. “I’ll get it.”

  “No.” Moira leaned over to the bedside table and lifted a receiver.

  “Hello?” She listened, looking pleased at first and then puzzled. Thomas’s heart tightened into a fist. He glanced at the bedside clock. It was only six thirty, he’d left Theresa at one. It was only five hours since they’d parted, five and a half hours, and he’d thought of little else. Maybe she had too. Maybe she thought about him the same way and it was meant and they could overcome the obstacles that lay between them, the way she and Lars had overcome his other family.

  Moira looked at Thomas with cold clear eyes. “Just a moment.” She smiled and held the phone out to him. “For you.”

  He took the receiver from her hand and retreated to the other side of the room before he lifted it to his ear.

  A wheezy breath hit the receiver. A man’s breath, not Theresa.

  “Thomas. Is that you?” The voice was slow and tired, a broken man’s voice. Lars, his voice changed from the hanging, calling from the morgue. “Is that you?”

  Thomas walked out onto the landing, shutting the bedroom door carefully behind him. “Who is this?”

  “Thomas, this is Father Sholtham.”

  Thomas caught his breath. The name came from a million years ago. Father Sholtham was the school’s priest. There were rumors that he’d been a drunk, that he’d been in the navy before entering the priesthood, been a boxer, killed a man. He had charisma and didn’t give a flying fuck about Doyle or any of them: Thomas had once seen him, on stage during a parents’ assembly, reach into his trouser pocket and blatantly scratch his balls.

  “Father?”

  “Thomas, are you there?”

  “Um, yeah, Father, I am.” He was flattered that Father Sholtham should phone him. There was a pause on the other end but Thomas didn’t want him to go. “Did you—how did you get my number, Father?”

  “Mr. Doyle…”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Thomas… I don’t know how it is…” The sentence tailed off to deep breathing. He sniffed then and it sounded wet, as if Father Sholtham was crying, as if he was in trouble.

  Thomas didn’t want to speak to him here, on the stairs in the hall, he wanted to concentrate and speak to him without watching the bedroom door. “Father, will you stay on the line and wait for a moment?”

  “I will.”

  Thomas held the phone and ran down the stairs. He knew that voices carried up the hall: he’d heard Lars and Moira say terrible things to each other in the living room. So he hurried into the kitchen, taking the steps down to the freezer room, leaving the light off and sitting in the dark on the bottom step.

  “Father?”

  Father Sholtham was crying now, spluttering like a child. “Tom, Tommy? Can you talk to me?”

  “Father, why are you crying?”

  “Oh, God!”

  Thomas held the phone away from his ear and realized abruptly what it was: the priest was pissed. It was pathetic, disappointing.

  “Thomas,” whispered Father Sholtham, “I know what you did.”

  Thomas froze at that. “Sorry, Father, what are you talking about?”

  “To her, the woman,” he broke off to sob, “God in heaven.”

  “Father, where are you?”

  He was angry about that. “Nowhere! Don’t even think…I don’t want you thinking…”

  He really was very drunk. He’d be easy to confuse.

  “You’re a bit drunk, Father, aren’t you?”

  “I am, yeah.” Big sniff. “I am.”

  “Father, you shouldn’t be talking about it, should you?”

  “Thomas, there are sins…”

  “You could be excommunicated for talking about this, if you heard it under certain circumstances…”

  “I am already lost, Thomas. I’d rather be lost than let you—”

  “OK. Look. I think, drunk or sober, you need some help. I think you need to seek some spiritual advice about this, Father, and you need it soon.”

  The priest caught his breath. “Right, you’re right.”

  “No harm’s been done so far, Father, I’m going to forget this conversation—”

  “No harm?” He could barely speak. “No harm’s been done?”

  “I mean about this.” Thomas was very firm. “About this, the matter of you saying this. You need to see someone and soon.”

  “I was going to, I was waiting—”

  “Until you’d stopped drinking? Well, maybe you won’t stop until you do.”

  Thomas was curled over his knees, pressing them tight into his chest, squeezing the breath from himself, his eyes shut tight.

  “Thomas?”

  “Hmm.”

  “I’m afraid for you.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I’m worried you won’t make a confession.”

  It was laughable. “How likely am I to do it now, do you think?”

  Father Sholtham had nothing to say about that.

  “Father?”

  “Yes?”

  “When did you hear?”

  “Why?”

  “I need to know.” He didn’t seem moved by that, he snorted, so Thomas added, “I’ll confess, if you tell me.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because Thomas, it’s not enough to confess, you have to be truly penitent—”

  “Father, how could I not be?”

  They were whispering now, as if through a confessional screen, as if a chapel full of nosy fuckers were four foot away.

  “I can’t take a confession over the phone, Thomas.”

  “I know, I’ll go down here, I’ll find someone here. When did you hear about this, can you tell me that?”

  Sholtham considered his position for a drunken moment, which was longer than a normal moment. “Lunchtime. Choir meeting.”

  “That’s a Tuesday, isn’t it?”

  “Twelve, yeah, why?”

  “Were you drinking then?”

  “God forgive me, yes. Will you confess, Thomas?”

  “I’ll go to confession if you do.”

  The old man cried at that. He cried for a long time, half reciting stock phrases dredged out from a priest’s trousseau, bless you, God have mercy.

  Thomas talked him down, made him promise to confess and swore he would too.

  After he hung up he didn’t move. He stayed doubled over in the freezer room, looking at the concrete floor, stunned motionless.

  By the time they met on the pebble beach Squeak’d already told Sholtham. He found Sholtham drunk and confessed to him and he’d told him that Thomas killed her. Squeak had always been planning his escape.

  Thomas didn’t want to get caught now, not now tha
t Theresa was going to phone. What would she think if she knew that about him? She’d be afraid of him. She’d think he was a monster and he’d never ever be able to explain what happened in that hall. Not even to her.

  Anyone would do that to you if they got you down, but Squeak more than most.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Brian Morrow was contemplating the back hedge as the washing machine finished its cycle. He’d loaded the clothes in wrong and the final spin was noisy, the weight of the clothes pulling the machine off center, the vibrations rattling the big kitchen window. That hedge needed plant food or something. The leaves were yellowing and it was supposed to be an evergreen. He turned back to his list on the table, found a pencil and wrote “see to hedge” at the bottom. He stopped and ticked off the things he had already done: the washing, sort linen cupboard, eat lunch. He didn’t forget to eat anymore, he just put lunch in there so he would have another thing to tick off, give himself a feeling of accomplishment. The counselor had said it was important to achieve things in the day and advised him to make up a list the night before, a modest list, and then try to fulfill it. It would give him a sense of purpose and accomplishment. He didn’t really need the list now, but he enjoyed it.

  The noisy spin cycle abated and Brian heard the doorbell through the rattle. He put his list on the table and walked out to the hall. A shadow behind the glass door. A man, not carrying a package, not delivering anything. A bulky man.

  Brian opened the door.

  The man was tall, a bit fat, dressed in dark tracksuit trousers and a sweatshirt. “Can I help you?”

  He nodded and Brian suddenly saw his wife’s face in him, the dimples, the chin, the stubbled halo on his head was the familiar honey yellow. It was Danny McGrath. “I’m—”

  “I know.” Brian pulled the door shut a little, letting him know he wasn’t welcome. He had come here when he knew that Alex would be at work, knew that she wasn’t there to tell him off. He knew Brian was at home. He knew, Brian felt, that he’d had a breakdown and was vulnerable. His mind ran through the house: they kept no money in the house, Alex didn’t like jewelry, he had no social security books.