As the dawn came up I gasped in horror, as simultaneously a stab of pain seared straight through my abdomen. My hand clutched vainly at my stomach, but I had white lights flashing before my eyes now. My ears roared, my brain sizzled, my fingers slipped from the back of the sofa, as with a little gasp of ‘Shit!’ I collapsed, insensible, at Baldy’s feet.
Chapter Thirty
‘Best thing you could have done,’ said Hugh, dunking a soldier into his son’s boiled egg.
‘What?’ I raised my head feebly from their breakfast table.
‘Faint like that, last night. Makes it so convincing, so much more obvious that you had nothing to do with it.’
‘She didn’t have anything to do with it,’ snapped Molly, opening her dressing gown and clamping Flora firmly on to her left bosom. ‘What – you think she might actually have assisted in some way, Hugh? Bundled the body under the Aga in a bin bag and arranged the feet neatly whilst Mac and Alf stood poised, ready to pour on the wet cement mix?’
‘Oooh, don’t,’ I groaned, dropping my head like a stone again.
‘No, all I’m saying is that when the police rang and asked us to come and get her, it looked pretty good,’ said Hugh. ‘You were still out for the count, Livvy, flat out on a sofa and completely away with the fairies, whereas poor old Lance and Spiro were shifting about pretty nervously, I can tell you.’
‘I still don’t quite understand how they came to ring you,’ I said bleakly, opening an eye from the stripped pine table.
‘Apparently Lance suggested us when the police said they wanted you out of there,’ said Hugh. ‘Presumably they couldn’t cope with you doing the dying swan all over the place when they had a house to excavate and a body to exhume. I must say I was hugely intrigued. Those guys had bloody nearly shifted that stove when I got there. I reckon she was damn nearly out! I hovered about a bit and tried to play for time by pretending you weighed a ton and that I was having difficulty lugging you off the sofa, then staggering e-ve-rso slo-wly to the door –’ Hugh got up to demonstrate – ‘then coming back for your handbag which happened to be, oops, in the kitchen, then – ooh yes, better pop upstairs and get your nightie, and then, damn it, just as I was popping back for your toothbrush, that bald chap sussed me and hustled me away. Shame. I reckon two more minutes and they’d have had the old bird out.’
‘Hugh!’ Molly slammed a milk bottle down.
‘Well, it would have been fascinating, Moll. I’ve never seen a dead body before, and don’t forget, I’ve been there in spirit. Would have been great for research.’
‘Macabre,’ shuddered Molly. ‘And to think you’d been cooking there, Livvy, and all that time she was –’
‘Oooh, stop it!’ I moaned. I raised my head feebly. ‘I really don’t know how Alf and Mac could have done that to me!’
‘Well, to be fair, Liv, they never meant for you to find out, and as long as you were none the wiser, so what?’ said Hugh, reasonably. ‘They had to put her somewhere, and actually I think it was a jolly good idea.’ He frowned. ‘Can’t help feeling she might have got a bit hot, though. Maybe even gone a bit – you know – whiffy.’
‘Hugh!’ Molly was pink. ‘God, you are so distasteful. Poor Livvy here is distraught, and so would I be if I found a dead woman under my cooker! Christ, it’s gruesome!’
‘All right, all right,’ he muttered. ‘God, you’re so flaming genteel, Moll. I just think it’s incredibly exciting, that’s all, to be suddenly slap-bang in the middle of a murder like this. Talk about street theatre.’
‘I told you,’ I growled, ‘it wasn’t murder.’
‘Well, OK, whatever you call a pissed-off husband knocking off his shrewish wife with a swift hammer blow to the head and then squirrelling her away under some kitchen appliances. Rather an apt ending, I feel, for a harridan of a housewife? Back to her roots, as it were?’ His eyes gleamed. ‘And it gives a whole new dimension to the old Aga saga, eh?’
Molly gave an exasperated little cry and pointedly swivelled round in her chair, turning her back on her husband. ‘Liv darling,’ she said gently, leaning forward and taking my hand, ‘d’you remember much about last night?’
‘Not much,’ I said miserably. ‘Just coming round in the back of Hugh’s car, that’s all … shouting a bit, I think.’
‘Shouting a bit!’ spluttered Hugh, spraying egg everywhere. ‘Jesus, you were screaming blue murder! There you were, flat out and comatose on the back seat, quiet as a mouse, when suddenly – “GET ME OUT OF HERE – DON’T LET THEM PUT ME IN THE BIN BAG – OH GOD NO NOT THE BIN BAG SOMEBODY HELP ME!!!” Then the next thing I knew you were crawling over into the front seat with these mad, staring eyes, like something out of a Hammer Horror movie, trying to get me in an arm lock and turn the wheel at the same time. You damn nearly drove us off the road! Christ, I had to stop the car. I was scared witless I can tell you!’
I groaned. ‘Sorry,’ I muttered, shaking my head. ‘God, I’m so sorry, Hugh, I had no idea. I really wasn’t with it. When I woke up I just couldn’t think where the hell I was!’
‘Of course you couldn’t,’ agreed Molly staunchly, closing her dressing gown and putting Flora over her shoulder to wind her. ‘Frankly, I’m surprised you’re as compos mentis as you are now! If that had been me I’d be on that phone right now, booking myself into the Priory for the next couple of weeks I’d be so unhinged. And what about those two bastards who dropped you in all this? Why aren’t they sharing the angst, Mac the knife and Alf the half-wit? Where are they while all this drama unfolds? On the Marrakesh Express or something?’
‘I don’t know,’ I sighed, ‘and, Molly, I know it sounds crazy, but they weren’t really bastards. Just a couple of hard-working guys who got caught up in a horrific domestic drama and then – well, then did the wrong thing. Ran, instead of facing up to it.’
‘All the best murders happen like that,’ observed Hugh, sagely, wiping Henry’s eggy mouth. ‘Ninety per cent are committed within the family, which makes a copper’s job something of a doddle really, doesn’t it?’ He scratched his head and affected a dim PC Plod. ‘Er, so what d’you reckon, Sarge, shall I ’ave a word wiv the relatives?’
‘So why do they still want to speak to me then?’ I said, suddenly fearful. ‘If it all hinges on the relatives, why ring me here, at the crack of dawn this morning, and ask me to present myself down at the station!’
‘Just routine they said, remember?’ soothed Molly. ‘Nothing to worry about. What time did they say they wanted to see you?’
‘Ten o’clock,’ I said, glancing at the clock. My heart was hammering. ‘In half an hour. I must go soon.’
‘D’you want me to come with you?’ She squeezed my hand.
I shook my head. Gulped. ‘No, I’ll – be fine. You’ve got Flora to see to and your mother’s still asleep and –’
‘Well, Hugh’s not doing anything today. He could easily take you.’
‘No, no really, I’m sure you’re right,’ I said quickly. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.’
I wasn’t entirely sure I could cope with Hugh wisecracking his way to the police station with yet more corpse jokes, because actually, suddenly, I felt very scared. I wished I could just hole up here in Molly and Hugh’s tiny, warm, chaotic kitchen with its airer groaning with bibs and babygrows, and Flora sucking away contentedly at her mother’s breast, and Henry eyeing me carefully from his high chair, thumb in mouth, not entirely sure if I was generally present at his breakfast table.
‘So what happens next?’ said Molly softly, as if reading my thoughts.
I grimaced. ‘You mean, what am I going to do?’
She nodded.
‘Well, sell the house, of course.’
‘Of course,’ she agreed quickly, shooting Hugh a look as he opened his mouth to protest.
‘And move, I suppose, but God knows where. I’ll have to decide soon, though, because Claudia’s term starts in September. You know she’s been offered a place at St P
aul’s?’
‘No! In London? Blimey!’
‘I know. I’d forgotten I’d even put her down for it, must have been ages ago, in an ambitious moment. Haven’t had many of those recently.’
‘But that’s seriously hot stuff, Livvy. Places like that are fought over! God, about two hundred girls going for twenty places!’
I sighed. ‘I know, can’t think how she managed it, although apparently she did rather well at her interview. They asked if she had any hobbies and she said, rather disdainfully, “Certainly not” – you know Claudes. And then they said, “Well, do you collect anything, dear?” And she said, “Yes, money.”’
Molly giggled. ‘That’s my girl. No shrinking violet, eh?’
‘Hardly. But do we really want to live in London, Moll? And a day school too – not really what she’d had in mind.’
‘A brilliant day school, though,’ said Hugh through a mouthful of toast. ‘Hell of an opportunity. She’d probably end up Prime Minister or something equally bloody frightening.’
‘True,’ I sighed again. ‘Anyway, I’m going to have to think about it.’ I hauled myself out of the cosy Windsor chair. ‘Right now, though, I have to gird my loins for my chat with Shiny Suit and Baldy. Perhaps it’ll be Pentonville for me, with Claudia on visiting rights.’
‘Don’t be silly. It’s quite obvious you were just an innocent bystander,’ Molly protested. Nevertheless, I noticed, rather nervously, that they both followed me to the door and that Molly still had her arm round my shoulders when we got there.
‘You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like, you know that, don’t you?’ She gave me a squeeze. ‘A year if you want, whatever it takes.’
‘Thanks.’ I forced a smile. ‘But it’ll only be a few days. We wouldn’t want to cramp your style.’
‘We don’t have a style,’ announced Hugh loftily, sticking his chest out. ‘Makes life so much simpler.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ muttered Molly, ‘I wouldn’t mind a bit of style.’
‘Nonsense, my dear, you’re totally à la mode as you are, modelling for us this morning this season’s must-have basic, the cheesy dressing gown with baby puke down one shoulder and – Oops! There she goes again!’ He caught Flora’s sickly projection and grabbed Molly’s muslin to mop it up as the baby proceeded to do another mouthful.
‘She keeps doing this,’ said Molly anxiously. ‘I’m getting terrible déjà vu. I keep waiting for her to actually take aim and get my mother in the face, like Henry used to.’
‘Henry’s grown out of that,’ I soothed. ‘Flora will too.’
‘Ah, but you haven’t seen Henry’s latest trick,’ said Hugh proudly. ‘Irritated that he can no longer hit Molly’s mother in the eye with a stream of puke, he’s taken to dropping his trousers, presenting dear Millicent with his bare backside, then letting rip with the most almighty fart.’ Hugh sighed, wistfully. ‘Something I realise that I, too, have long wished to do myself.’
‘Hugh!’ Molly scolded.
‘Well, I can’t see this little angel doing anything as gross as that,’ I said fondly, stroking his daughter’s cheek.
‘She’s going to be a stunner,’ he agreed.
‘And talking of stunners,’ Molly rearranged Flora and looked me in the eye, ‘I heard about Imo.’
‘Ah.’ I scuffed my toe on the doormat. ‘That.’
‘Flaming cheek!’ she said hotly. ‘You were well in there first!’
Hugh cringed. ‘Well In There? Is that how you speak of us gentle menfolk?’
I sighed. ‘Yes, but while I was making up my mind, Moll, Imo saw a gap and went for it. And who can blame her?’ I added ruefully.
‘Saw a gap and …? Good heavens,’ gasped Hugh faintly, clutching the doorframe for support. ‘We’re just a mere line of traffic now, are we? With gaps! Whatever happened to romance?’
‘What indeed?’ I agreed ruefully.
‘And, anyway, I don’t know why all this comes as such a big surprise to you girls,’ he went on. ‘If we’re intent on using disgusting analogies, if you ask me, she wormed her way in long ago.’
‘When?’ demanded Molly.
‘Oh, come on, Moll, ages ago, at that backstage party at the Abbey, for starters. And then when I saw her the other day, cosily ensconced at his house …’
They debated on, but suddenly I wasn’t listening. Suddenly I felt like Flora: I wanted to be sick all over someone’s shoulder. Cosily ensconced. Really? For how long? How long had it been going on? I wanted to ask.
‘Livvy?’ Molly was watching me anxiously. I forced a bright smile.
‘Bye then. Wish me luck in the cells.’ I made towards my car, which Molly had driven back last night when I’d been in Hugh’s.
‘Good luck!’ they chorused. ‘As if you’re going to need it,’ added Molly scornfully.
In the event, they were right, I didn’t. Down at the city police station Baldy was conspicuous by his absence, and since I’d clocked him as being the more dynamic of the duo, I relaxed when I discovered that Shiny Suit was going to interview me alone. As I followed her into a little grey room, sat down and regurgitated all I knew, I could tell by her demeanour that although she was affecting high dudgeon, she was actually only going through the motions to scare me.
‘So why on earth didn’t you come straight in and report to us the moment you knew she was dead!’ Her eyebrows shot into her overtreated fringe.
‘I was scared,’ I admitted, with more than an element of truth. ‘I knew I should have done, but I’d never been involved in anything like this before. What Mac and Alf told me terrified me. I shot off to London like a bat out of hell, telling myself it was only what I’d normally do on a child-free day.’
‘And what did you do in London?’
‘Oh, just some shopping, went to a concert, that sort of thing.’
The eyebrows shot up some more. ‘Very relaxed.’
‘Yes but while I was there I realised I’d done completely the wrong thing,’ I added quickly. ‘And – and I decided I’d come in and see you the very next day. I really meant to.’
‘Did you indeed?’ she snorted doubtfully. ‘Yes, well, I could mutter on a bit about the road to hell being paved with good intentions and all that,’ she shuffled her papers sniffily. Glanced up. ‘You know, of course, that I could throw the book at you for sheltering known criminals and withholding crucial evidence?’
I nodded dumbly.
‘Staying silent is as much of a crime as actually aiding and abetting. It’s calculated corroboration.’
I nodded again. ‘Yes, I – I can see that now.’
She sighed wearily. Closed her file. ‘But under the circumstances,’ she said, pushing it to one side, ‘I think it’s fair to say you’ve probably been through the mill enough. It’s not every day you find a corpse under your cooker.’
I gulped. Too true. I glanced up and met her eye. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered gratefully.
‘We will, of course, get them, though,’ she added, fixing me beadily. ‘Your chums, Mac and Alf. There’s no question of that.’
‘Of course,’ I agreed quickly, wishing she hadn’t called them ‘my chums’.
‘Gone are the days of the Spanish being wet about extradition. We’ll put a rocket up their backsides and they’ll deliver them tout suite. This isn’t the Ronnie Biggs era, you know, this isn’t the slap-happy, swinging sixties where anything goes on the Costa Brava.’
‘Oh no, I know,’ I agreed fervently. ‘And quite right too,’ I added toadishly. Just let me go, please let me go.
‘So.’ She folded her arms and flashed me a thin, professional smile. ‘I imagine you’re free to go.’
I sprang to my feet. ‘Thank you!’
‘Provided,’ she warned, ‘that you don’t wander too far afield. We will need you later on to give evidence and I don’t want to find you’ve skipped the country or anything dramatic.’ She got up and opened the door for me, propping it open so I had to go u
nder her arm. ‘Your house has been put back pretty much in apple-pie order, you’ll be pleased to hear. Our boys worked fast last night and Forensics have been in and out already. You’re not even cordoned off, either, because the press don’t know and we didn’t want to draw too much attention to the place, so you don’t have to wait, you can move straight back in.’ She frowned. ‘I’m not sure the cooker is fully operational, though. Some people are apparently coming in next week to fix that, but other than that,’ she flashed me another wintry smile, ‘you wouldn’t even know we’d been there!’
I managed a tremulous smile in return and even muttered a thank you before scurrying away. Wouldn’t even know they’d been there? I thought, bug-eyed with horror as I sped down that corridor in the direction of the free world. Excuse me, but I think I would. Oh, I’d know all right. I’d know every time I lifted the lid to put the kettle on, every time I bent down to take the roast chicken out of the oven. Know? Bloody hell – I’d heave! Christ, I wouldn’t stay in that house now if you paid me, I thought, barging angrily through some swing doors, and she was right, I had suffered enough. So much so that I was having to – Well, I was having to sell up! I stopped still for a moment, shocked by that thought, blinking in horror, and conveniently forgetting, of course, that I’d actually been planning to sell up anyway. Yes, that’s right, I thought, slowly walking on, outraged, I was the victim here. I should be offered compensation! God, I could sell my story to the tabloids, spill the beans for millions! I must talk to Hugh about it. He’d enjoy that.
Once in the car park, though, all thoughts of anything other than the fact that I was a free woman paled into insignificance as I threw myself with relief into my familiar old, boiling-hot sauna of a car. Free, I thought, resting my head back gratefully and shutting my eyes. Thank God. I gave myself a little shake and started the engine, then realised, with a start, that I didn’t know where the hell I was going. I turned it off again. Frowned. Right. So, Livvy. Here you are on your own again. I bit my lip. And what now? Where to? Long term I had absolutely no idea, but more immediately … I narrowed my eyes, frowned into the middle distance, then started the engine again. Yes, yes, I did know, actually. Knew exactly where I was going. Before I could change my mind I reversed at speed – slowing dramatically when I remembered I was still in a police station – then once out of sight, roared off. The house. It had to be Orchard House. Let’s face it, at some point I had to go back because Claudia and I had no clothes at all at Molly’s – as it was I was wearing a skirt of Molly’s to avoid climbing into the disastrous Donna Karan number – so I may as well go and get it over with. I was due to pick Claudes up from Lucy’s this afternoon and if the poor child had neither a father, nor a home to come back to now, she should at least have a clean pair of knickers.
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