Lock Nut

by JL Merrow

  Phil shrugged. In his posh wool coat and cashmere sweater, he’d have looked right at home walking something suitably classy yet macho—a golden retriever, say, or maybe a Great Dane. Me, I could probably just about get away with a Jack Russell. “Come down after dark, you’d be fine. Seen the state of the lighting here?”

  I hadn’t, because there wasn’t any. Which, of course, was his point. “Okay, so you wouldn’t get the lady walkers or the old codgers. And I s’pose runners wouldn’t be too keen either—you’d want to know where you were putting your feet. Still, it’s a risk.”

  “It’s not overlooked, and the boats aren’t likely to travel by night. Plus, if anyone came along, you’d hear them. Sound carries over water.”

  “Cuts both ways, that, though, doesn’t it? Anyone walking along might have heard the splash when Jonny-boy went in, and come running to see if some poor sod had fallen in.”

  “Didn’t, though, did they?”

  I couldn’t argue with that one. Or, at least, Dave’s comrades in arms hadn’t yet managed to find anyone willing to admit to it. Which probably meant they hadn’t, but there was at least a faint chance they were keeping shtum from embarrassment at having witnessed a murder and failed to stop it—that, or they were worried about getting involved in a suspicious death. After all, if their own purposes for roaming lonely canal paths in the dead of night had been less than innocent . . .

  No, in all likelihood, poor old Jonny-boy’s swan song as he did a swan dive had been to an audience of one, i.e. his murderer. Or no one at all, if it had really been an accident, but I wasn’t planning to stake my shirt on those odds. “Why would he even come down here after dark, though? I mean, obviously he must’ve been meeting someone—unless it was an accident—but he was scared of something, we know that, so why not stay somewhere well lit with a shedload of witnesses to discourage foul play?” I blinked. “He must have trusted whoever got him to come down here.”

  “Yeah. Or whoever he thought wanted him to come down here. Maybe he didn’t meet up with who he expected.”

  “Well, if nothing else, we know Lilah couldn’t have done it,” I said. “Physically, I mean.”

  Phil snorted.

  “What?” I asked, narked.

  “Course she could have done it. She’s not that small. And maybe she got him to sit down and then whacked him on the head. Wouldn’t be that difficult—all she’d have to do was say she was getting a crick in her neck talking to him.” He smirked. “You’ve got to be able to sympathise with her there.”

  “Up yours.” I made the appropriate gesture, then shoved my hands in my pockets hurriedly when I realised there was an old dear coming our way with a Yorkie. I hoped she hadn’t noticed, but the quavery “Good morning” she wished us as she passed was a bit on the pointed side.

  Phil sniggered. Git.

  We headed off after that, stopping again on the way to buy a bunch of flowers for the grieving widow. They had some peonies in the florist’s, but Phil reckoned lilies were traditional. I pointed out the pollen stained like mad and was poisonous to cats, if she had any, not to mention the whole eau-de-death thing lilies have going on. Phil looked at me like I’d gone round the bend at that point, but trust me, I’ve been up close and personal with a dead body or two and it’s not a smell you forget.

  We compromised on white roses. I couldn’t help thinking choosing flowers for the wedding was going to be a total bugger if we couldn’t even agree what they smelled like.

  Lilah’s place turned out to be only a hop, skip, and a jump away from my sister’s house. Funny to think of them being neighbours, although they wouldn’t be for much longer. Cherry would be moving into the Old Deanery in St. Leonards with the Middle-Aged Canon as soon as they got back from honeymoon. If they hadn’t fallen off a mountain or been eaten by a wild haggis, of course. Still, I couldn’t see Lilah and Sis leaning over their respective garden gates to have a natter about recipes and/or the latest local scandal in any case. Sis liked to pretend she was above such things as gossip, and Lilah hadn’t struck me as any more of the domestic-goddess type than Cherry was.

  The house was big, but chalet style, with loads of floor space downstairs but the bedrooms all no doubt with low, sloping ceilings. Although I supposed that wouldn’t be a problem for the lady of the house.

  She opened the door to us herself, sporting a dark-grey wrap dress that hugged all her curves and managed to make her look both dignified and hot stuff. Objectively speaking, obviously. Her makeup was perfect—freshly applied to hide dark shadows and swollen eyes? I couldn’t tell at a glance, and staring her in the face would have seemed rude.

  Not that that stopped Lilah, who gave us a wide-eyed once-over that only ended when Phil held out the roses.

  “We wanted to offer our condolences.” He had the tone of voice just right: solemn, sincere and ever-so-slightly detached. It said Sorry for your loss with the merest hint of Don’t even think of blaming us for his untimely demise.

  She blinked and took the flowers with a sad smile. “Tom, Phil, that’s so sweet of you. Come in.”

  We wiped our boots—that is, I wiped my boots, and Phil wiped his posh loafers—on her thick coir doormat. It was printed with the words, Touch me, I want to be dirty, and I wondered if it scared off the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Then again, I was pretty sure Lilah could hold her own against all comers.

  “I’m really sorry about what happened,” I said guiltily.

  “Oi, none of that. You only did what I asked you to. But come on, come in and have a cuppa.”

  She led us to a bright, airy kitchen, rather than her living room which I glimpsed through an open door. With some women I’ve had the dubious pleasure of calling on, this would be their none-too-subtle way of letting you know you’re not good enough, clean enough, or important enough to risk wearing out and/or marking up the soft furnishings. Coming from someone like Lilah, though, an invite to the kitchen was probably a vote of confidence—her saying We’re all mates here, no standing on ceremony.

  Or, of course, she’d picked up some posh habits along with the posh house and lifestyle. But I wasn’t betting on it, especially after seeing that doormat.

  Me and Phil each pulled up a chair at a gleaming chrome-and-glass table set at one end of the kitchen while Lilah hopped onto a step stool by the sink to fill the kettle.

  Glass doors opened onto the garden—or would, if it wasn’t still a bit too nippy—which had a wide decking area up against the house and a built-in brick barbecue. The garden itself was well cared for. There were none of the tatty corners I had at mine, where I’d been meaning to do something about cutting stuff back but had then run out of summer. I wondered who looked after it. Lilah? Unlikely, given the pristine state of her manicure. Jonny-boy? More likely she paid someone to come round and see to it.

  There were no playhouses, trampolines, or abandoned tricycles, despite what she’d said about her kids missing their stepdad. The fridge was free of brightly coloured modern artworks only a mum could love, too. How old were her kids? In their teens, maybe? That’d explain the lack of sight or sound of them—they’d be either out somewhere doing whatever young people did now that Pokémon was old hat again or holed up in their bedrooms with their headphones on, watching anime porn or moaning on about how unfair life was to their mates on Snapchat. At least, going by what I’d been told by the long-suffering Mrs. K. only yesterday as I fixed the kitchen tap her eldest had got a bit heavy-handed with.

  Mind you, Lilah’s kids actually had something to moan about.

  “Tea?” Lilah asked, waving a posh earthenware mug in my face.

  The kettle had boiled already? Time to start paying attention, Paretski. “Cheers, love. Milk, no sugar, ta.”

  “Phil?”

  “Same, please.”

  She made herself one too—black today—and plonked a big biscuit tin on the table before climbing onto a free chair. “Help yourselves, go on. I ain’t eaten a thing since I heard about my poor
boy, but no need for anyone else to go hungry.”

  It’d been a few days, and she didn’t look in any danger of keeling over, so I took that with a pinch of salt. Phil passed on the biscuits. I had a peek in the tin and snagged myself a bourbon cream.

  “We’re sorry for your loss, Mrs. Parrot,” Phil said formally.

  “Call me Lilah. Didn’t I tell you to call me Lilah? Mrs. Parrot just makes me sad. Less than two years we was married, you know?” She sighed and took a sip of her tea.

  I followed suit and scalded my mouth. And my tea had milk in it. Lilah must have lips of steel.

  “It must be an added strain to have the police suspect foul play,” Phil went on. “Have you got any idea who might have wanted to harm your husband?”

  “Oh, I know who done it, all right. Like I told the coppers.”

  “You know who killed your husband?” Phil asked while I was still working on closing my suddenly slack jaw.

  Lilah nodded. “That bloke of his, he’s the one. Couldn’t stand the thought of my Jonny-boy coming back to me, could he?”

  “He came back to you?” I blurted out, having finally got my mouth in gear.

  Luckily, Lilah didn’t seem miffed at my surprised tone. “Course he did. I mean, I hadn’t seen him or nothing, but why else would he be around here? He was on his way home, bless him, and that bastard came running after him. Shoved my poor boy in the canal rather than give him up again.”

  Phil and me exchanged looks. Dave’s brief report on the state of the investigation had conspicuously failed to include the words It was the boyfriend what done it and we got him bang to rights. Phil coughed. “Can you tell us about the man you suspect?”

  “Already told you all I know, didn’t I? If you found my Jonny, you must have found him and all.”

  I blinked. “Wait, do you mean Kelvin, uh . . .”

  “Reid,” Phil put in. “The stallholder?”

  “That’s him. Nasty piece of work.” She shivered.

  “What did the police think of your theory?” Phil went on.

  For a moment I thought Lilah was actually going to spit. “Told me they’d keep it in mind. Bunch of useless tossers. Bet he slipped ’em a bung. They’re all on the take. Always have been.”

  I could sense Phil holding himself in check after this slur on his former profession. Time I took the initiative. “What you want, love, is an impartial investigator. Someone who’ll see justice done.”

  She looked up sharply. “Offering your services, are you? I can’t say you didn’t deliver on finding him for me, but you ain’t gonna solve this one by angling your little dangle and communing with the spirits. No offence.”

  Ouch. She’d changed her tune on my so-called talents. But then I supposed it’d all been good fun before the killing started. Now, if I could commune with the spirits, that’d be a pretty surefire way of solving most murders, but since I couldn’t, it didn’t seem worth arguing the point. “Not my services. Phil’s. He’s a private investigator, isn’t he? This sort of job’s his bread and butter.”

  Well, to be honest, it was more like the posh crackers and whisky-laced marmalade they sell in John Lewis around Christmas as gifts for people who don’t need anything. But the point was, it wasn’t like he’d never done it before.

  Lilah turned to face Phil and gave him a hard stare. “You telling me you can prove he done it?”

  “If he did it. You want to make sure the right person gets punished, don’t you?” Phil gave her a hard stare back. It was just as well they were sitting at opposite sides of a table. Anything that might have inadvertently strayed between them—like me, for instance—would have been fried in the laser beam of their combined glares.

  “Course he done it.” Lilah was wavering. Then she steeled herself. “What have you got that the coppers haven’t, anyway?”

  Phil didn’t give an inch. “People will talk to a private investigator who won’t talk to the police.”

  She wasn’t buying it—or at least, not without checking its dental records. “You reckon.”

  “I know. I was on the force for six years. I’ve seen it from both sides.”

  I’d always thought, technically speaking, the police and Phil were on the same side, with the criminals on the other, but it didn’t seem like a helpful thing to say right now.

  Lilah fixed my beloved with a speculative eye. “Why did you leave?”

  “Creative differences,” I put in quickly. Phil could get touchy about that particular time in his life. Shame, though. Explaining how he’d been suspended for losing it with a wife-beating arse-wipe who’d intimidated his victim into dropping the charges might have given him some extra cred with Lilah. “Tell you what, you hire Phil to get the bastard who killed your husband, and I’ll waive my fee for finding him, how about that?”

  Lilah frowned, then nodded slowly. “You got a deal. But you dig stuff up, you tell me first, you got that?”

  “Course, love.” I darted a glance over at Phil in case I’d gone too far, but he was nodding.

  Lilah flashed us a tiny smile. “Then we’re good. So you’re going to have words with Kelvin What’s-his-arse now?”

  Phil stood up. “It’ll make sense to talk to people locally first, while we’re here. Visit his place of work. And I’d like to have a look at his personal effects.”

  “His stuff? I can show you the things he left here, but anything that meant anything went back to Camden with him.” For a moment she slumped, her face sad and tired, and I could believe Darren and her were the same age. “Didn’t have much, did he? Travelled light, my boy did. Come on, then.”

  She got down from her chair. I cast a regretful glance back at the biscuit tin and followed her and Phil upstairs.

  It was a lot roomier up there than I’d expected, and even Phil didn’t have to watch his step so as not to bang his head. Lilah and Jonny-boy’s bedroom resembled a film set, and I don’t mean a low-budget porno. More like one of those not-very-historical (if you believe Cherry, anyhow) dramas about medieval kings and queens shagging their way through the court. There was the biggest four-poster bed I’d ever seen, and everything was draped in deep-red velvet. A proper old-fashioned fireplace on the opposite wall, which definitely hadn’t started its life in this room, had a top-of-the-range electric fire installed, and what was probably a genuine bearskin hearthrug. Lilah’s skimpy silk nightie lay draped across the unmade bed. I looked away quickly, feeling like a peeping Tom.

  She opened up one end of a vast built-in wardrobe. “This is Jonny’s end.” Then she clammed up. Maybe it’d occurred to her too that should have been in past tense.

  We poked our noses in. The rails were sagging in the middle under the weight of expensive, barely worn suits and crisply starched shirts, with a strong whiff of the dry-cleaners. It didn’t seem like what you’d wear to sell antiques, but then again, most of what I knew about the trade came from dozing off in front of Antiques Roadshow when there was nothing else on the telly. There was a collection of soberly coloured ties hanging on the door, which I gave a quick once-over—and then peered at more closely. Huh. Not as boring as I’d thought: one had a moustache motif, another was covered in little airships, and yet another had discreet little Jolly Rogers.

  “He loved his ties,” Lilah put in sadly.

  At the bottom of the wardrobe, next to half a dozen pairs of the sort of shoes that come in a little bag and with wooden feet in to keep them nice—amazing what I’d learned, peeking in Phil’s side of our wardrobe back home—there was a crumpled stack of faded jeans and T-shirts.

  I was starting to get a picture of our Mr. Parrot, and it didn’t look at all like the image Lilah seemed to have of him. Or, probably more accurately, had tried to mould him into. I wondered why he’d let her. Money? Or had he really loved her and wanted to be the bloke she thought he could be?

  Phil coughed, reminding me to get on with things. I did my best to block out everything else, focus whatever part of my mind was responsible
for the old spidey-senses, and listen.

  Nothing.

  Or rather, there was plenty—but none of it was coming either from or to this little collection of orphaned clothes. There was a heavy background buzz that, as I concentrated, separated into different trails—

  “What you looking for, then?” Lilah demanded, thrusting her head next to mine in the wardrobe and totally derailing my efforts.

  I managed not to yelp in surprise, or swear as I straightened up. “Clues,” I said shortly. Phil quirked an eyebrow at me, and I shook my head a fraction of an inch in reply.

  “What about his other belongings?” Phil asked. “Did he have hobbies?”

  “There’s his golf clubs in the garage. But you might as well finish up in the house first, right?” Lilah didn’t leave us for a second, and she didn’t stop talking for more than a minute at a time, either. Mostly about how much she missed her Jonny-boy, she couldn’t believe he was really gone, and Oi, where do you think you’re going now?

  That was when Phil tried to take a peek into a room near the end of the landing. He got as far as opening the door a crack and letting out a strong whiff of stale air and staler socks, before she stopped him. “That’s Axel’s room. You won’t find nothing in there.”

  “Axel?”

  “My little boy. He’s been devastated by all this. You leave him in peace.”

  He’d been in the room? I sent Phil a questioning glance, and he nodded. I wondered what little Axel had been up to not to add his own protests about being barged in on. Sleeping, maybe? It wasn’t noon yet, so it was still practically the middle of the night for your average teenager.

  “How many kids have you got?” I asked to try to lighten the suddenly frosty mood.

  “Just the two. That’s Lola’s room, so you don’t need to go in there, neither.” She nodded towards the next door along.