by Jill Mansell
“Ex?”
She nodded again.
“Dumped you for another woman?”
“No, nothing like that! We just aren’t seeing each other anymore, that’s all.”
“And sitting in your car in the middle of the night looking at his house makes you feel better, does it?”
“Well, yes,” Maddy admitted wretchedly. “Yes, it does.”
“It’s all right. I know.” Now it was the gangly policeman’s turn to nod. “I’ve done it too.”
“Have you?” Heartened, Maddy gazed up at him.
“God, yes, loads of times. Practically every girl who’s ever chucked me.”
Yikes.
“In fact, every girl.” He nodded vigorously. “The last one was only a few weeks ago. She swore she wasn’t seeing anyone else, but I caught her out.” Smugly he said, “I’d drive around to her place at four o’clock in the morning and feel the bonnet of her car. If it was still warm, that meant she’d been out with some bloke, see?”
“Um…yes…”
“Ever tried that?”
Maddy swallowed. “Well, not really, no.”
“Should do. Handy tip, that. And if you’ve still got a front door key,” he went on eagerly, “well, you can do all sorts. Tap their phone, fit listening devices, anything you like. I can give you the address of a shop that sells all that stuff, if you want. Best in the business and very discreet.”
“Gosh, um, thanks. Actually”—Maddy checked her watch again—“it’s getting a bit late. I really should be making a move—”
“Hidden cameras, they’re good.”
“I don’t think I need to—”
“Hey, this could be fate!” The gangly policeman’s pale-lashed eyes gleamed in the moonlight. “I’ve just split up with someone. You’ve just split up with someone. How about we get together sometime?”
Urk!
“Well—”
“D’you like pizza? We could go out for a pizza.” His Adam’s apple bobbed eagerly. “Tomorrow night? I’m off duty tomorrow night. I can tell you how to send anonymous letters without getting caught.”
“Look, I’m sorry,” Maddy blurted out in desperation. “I’ve got to go!”
As he watched the girl speed off, the gangly policeman smiled to himself before heading back to the patrol car.
His fellow officer, who had been listening to every word, chuckled. “Poor kid. You frightened the living daylights out of her.”
Helping himself to a Snickers bar, the policeman said, “I did the girl a favor, brought her to her senses. Besides”—he broke into a grin—“anything to brighten up a dull shift.”
* * *
Esme Calloway owned and ran Dartington House Nursing Home. When Kerr had first met her, he’d prompted himself to remember her name by recalling Cab Calloway’s song “Minnie the Moocher,” from the Blues Brothers. Sadly, all this had succeeded in doing was making him think of the name Minnie every time he saw her. It was only a matter of time before he accidentally called her that.
But this wasn’t likely to happen today. Esme Calloway had asked him to visit her in her office and the news she had for him wasn’t cheerful.
“I’m afraid your mother’s condition is deteriorating, Mr. McKinnon. The doctor came out to visit her again this morning. The results of last week’s blood tests aren’t too good. Her liver function is, as you know, already poor.”
“I know.” Kerr nodded. It had been poor for years, but somehow his mother had survived. Liverwise, she was Ollie Reed in a dress.
“But this time it’s serious,” Esme Calloway went on, “and Pauline is aware of this. All we can do now is to keep her as comfortable as possible.”
“That’s fine.”
“One more thing,” said Mrs. Calloway. “She’s concerned about her other son. He’s in Australia, I believe.”
Kerr shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. He could be anywhere. We haven’t seen him in years.”
“So I gathered.” Mrs. Calloway rose from behind her mahogany desk, to indicate that the interview was at an end. “Well, I’m just letting you know.”
* * *
“Not long to go now,” said Pauline McKinnon, putting it rather more bluntly than Mrs. Calloway. “Few more weeks and that’ll be it. Did you bring me anything?”
Kerr shook his head. She asked the same question every time she saw him and each time he shook his head, because what she wanted him to bring was a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey. Not that she went without. His mother was known for lavishly bribing the poorly paid domestic staff to smuggle regular supplies of alcohol into the nursing home for her. It was an open secret among everyone who worked at Dartington House.
“Oh well. Down to business.” Pauline McKinnon ran a trembling wrinkled hand over her mouth. Dwarfed by the armchair in which she was sitting, she looked frailer than ever and there was an unmistakable yellow tinge to her skin. “I need to see Den.”
Kerr shook his head. “I don’t know where he is.”
“Then you have to find him. He’s my son and I need to see him again before I die.” Vehemently Pauline said, “It’s important.”
Of course it was. Den had always been her favorite son, and he in turn had been devoted to his mother. Kerr hadn’t been jealous; their closeness had simply been a fact of life.
“I’ll try,” he said now. “No guarantees, but I’ll do my best.”
Pauline dug down the side of the armchair and with difficulty pulled out a silver flask. Her bony fingers shook as she unscrewed the top, raised the flask to her pursed lips, and took a gulp.
“And don’t look at me like that,” she told Kerr coldly. “Why shouldn’t I have a drink if I want to?”
“It’s your life.” He rose to leave, keen to be out of this stuffy overheated room, thick with lavender air freshener and alcohol fumes.
“Just find him,” his mother said brusquely. Fumbling for a tissue up her sleeve, her eyes unexpectedly swam with tears. “Please. Find my boy before it’s too late.”
Chapter 35
Back at the office, Kerr dealt with a stream of phone calls before turning, without much hope, to his computer. This wasn’t the first time he’d tried to track down Den. His last unsuccessful attempt had been just before Christmas.
Dennis McKinnon. He typed the name into a worldwide search engine and scrolled through the list of matches, most of them familiar to him from previous searches, none of them his brother. Kerr knew; he’d checked out each and every one.
There were two new entries. The first was a seventy-six-year-old man from Louisiana. The second sounded fractionally more feasible, a member of a brass band in Wellington, New Zealand. Mentally crossing his fingers, Kerr clicked onto the brass band’s home page. Could this be Den? Had he moved to New Zealand and taken up trumpeting in his spare time? Anything was possible.
Scanning the page, Kerr clicked “photos” and waited for them to pop up on the screen.
The third one down on the left was a photograph of Dennis McKinnon playing his trumpet. Black, bald, and in his fifties, he looked like Louis Armstrong. Oh well.
Kerr exhaled wearily and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes and rubbing his hands over his face. Everything that had happened was starting to catch up with him. Sleeping had never been a problem before, but these days it was beyond him. Tormented by wakefulness, he was unable to stop himself thinking of Maddy. When he did finally manage to doze off, he dreamed about her, but the dreams never ended happily, and when he woke, he felt worse than ever. More exhausted too, which made it a struggle to come into work.
Forcing himself to get a grip, Kerr sat up again and opened his eyes. Life went on because it had to go on, but it wasn’t easy pretending everything was fine. His mother was dying, his brother was unreachable, and he missed Maddy terribly, more than wor
ds could—
“Kerr? Catch.” The door swung open and Sara, the receptionist, lobbed a cellophane-wrapped sandwich through the air at him.
Kerr caught it and looked at the label.
“It’s egg and lettuce. I didn’t ask for egg and lettuce.” More to the point, how could anyone in their right mind possibly want egg and lettuce?
“Yeah, well, too bad. None of us got what we asked for.” Sara’s tone was as pointed as her pink Faith stilettos. “But we just have to make the best of it, don’t we?”
The Happy Hamper was supplying their sandwiches now, and happiness was in short supply. Aware that his staff all blamed him and were becoming increasingly mutinous, Kerr said, “OK, but they’re better than Blunkett’s.”
“And that’s supposed to cheer us up? They’re not a millionth as good as the Peach Tree.” Sara was looking as if she might be on the verge of stamping her pointy-toed foot. “The thing is, Kerr, we’ve done nothing wrong. I don’t know what happened between you and Maddy, but the rest of us liked her a lot, we liked her sandwiches even more, and we really don’t see why we should have to miss out just because you two have had some stupid little falling out.”
A stupid little falling out. If only that was all it was.
“And I’ll tell you something else,” Sara said accusingly, “the accountants from the second floor aren’t happy about it either.”
Kerr sighed. “The thing is, there’s nothing—”
“You can do about it. Yeah, yeah, you say that, but we’re the ones who are suffering here and it’s all your fault.” Sara fixed him with a look of disdain. “Which is why we’re strongly suggesting you sort it out.”
The door slammed shut, Sara flounced back to reception, and Kerr returned his attention to the computer screen. Ordering himself to concentrate, he tapped his fingers against the mouse and gazed at the trumpet-toting Dennis McKinnon on the screen in front of him. With his shiny black face and dazzling white grin, he looked happier than Den would ever look. Throughout the grim years of visiting him in prison, Kerr had never once seen his brother smile.
Forget Dennis. Returning to the search engine, he typed in the words Den McKinnon instead.
Last time he’d tried this, the reply “no match found” had flashed up.
This time the search engine came up with a lone match. Kerr clicked onto the site, belonging to a rugby club in Sydney, Australia.
There was the name again, Den McKinnon listed as fly half for an amateur rugby club. No photographs. No further clues. Had his brother even enjoyed playing rugby at school? Kerr couldn’t remember.
It was a long and flimsy shot, but he may as well give it a go.
Emailing the club secretary, Kerr wrote:
Dear Sir,
You have a Den McKinnon on your rugby team who may or may not be my long-lost brother. Could you please pass this message on to him, and ask him to reply letting me know either way? I urgently need to contact my brother as soon as possible. My address and phone number are…
Many thanks.
Kerr McKinnon
When it was done, Kerr pressed Send and envisaged the message popping up in the inbox of a computer in an air-conditioned office somewhere in sunny Sydney, Australia. After years of emailing, it still never failed to impress him that it was possible to make instantaneous contact in this manner, across the world.
Whether the reply would be instantaneous was another matter. Would he even get one? What if the club secretary mentioned it in passing to Den McKinnon, a grizzled sheepshearer from the outback, who said, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll give the guy a call and tell him it ain’t me,” then promptly forgot all about it?
“Right,” Sara abruptly announced from the doorway. “Got it.”
Kerr heaved a sigh. “Got what?”
“That little convenience store on the corner of Tapper Street and Marlborough Hill, where I buy my paper every morning. The bloke who runs it is really friendly and nice.”
“So?” Kerr pictured Den McKinnon scratching his big grizzled head, going, “Strewth, mate, what’s an email when it’s at home?”
“So,” Sara repeated with exaggerated patience, “I’m going to ask him if the Peach Tree can deliver our order to his shop every morning, and if he can look after it for us until one of us pops down there before lunch to pick it up.”
Kerr forced himself to pay attention.
“Won’t that sound a bit weird?”
“Of course it’ll sound weird. We’ll just have to tell him the truth,” said Sara with a shrug. “That you broke the deli delivery girl’s heart and that’s why she refuses to bring us our sandwiches anymore.”
“I didn’t break her heart.” Kerr imagined his brother shaking his head, snarling, “Why would I want to speak to that asshole when I haven’t even seen him for years?”
Sara gave him an old-fashioned look. “Of course you didn’t. Anyway, I think the convenience store bloke will do it. We’ll have to pay him, of course, but you can do that. So shall I pop down now and ask him or—”
Kerr’s cell phone began to ring. Snatching it up, he glanced at the caller number on the screen and felt his heart beat faster.
“Hello?”
“Kerr?”
It was Den. It was weird, hearing his voice again after so long.
“Yes. Hi. How are you doing?” Kerr’s throat tightened. This was his brother. He was also the reason why he and Maddy couldn’t be together.
Kerr waved Sara out of the office.
“I’m OK.” Den sounded wary. “Jed from the rugby club just gave me a ring and passed on your message. What’s this about?”
“It’s our mother.” God, it sounded so cold, so formal, but Pauline had never wanted to be called Mum. “She’s dying.”
Pause. Then, from ten thousand miles away, Den said, “And?”
“She wants to see you.”
“Really? And what would be the point of that?”
It was a chilling response from a son who, prior to his spell in prison, had been utterly devoted to his mother.
“She’s desperate to see you before she dies,” Kerr persisted, “and she doesn’t have long. She begged me to find you.”
“I don’t know. It’s a long way to come.”
“She’s in a bad way, Den. I had to move her into a nursing home. Look, I can wire you the money for the plane ticket—”
“No need for that. I’ll think about it. I may come or I may not,” Den said defiantly.
“OK.” This was a step up from an outright refusal. “It would be good to see you again.” As he said it, Kerr wondered if he meant it. In truth, his feelings toward Den were very mixed.
“Would it?” His brother’s laughter was hollow, tinged with bitterness and doubt.
“Are you married?” It was odd to think that Den could have a wife and children, a whole family they knew nothing about.
“Married? No.” Den paused. “You?”
“Me neither.” Thanks to you.
“Not even seeing anyone?”
Kerr wondered how Den would react if he were to tell him who he’d been seeing up until last week. It wasn’t the kind of discussion you could get into, under the circumstances. Aloud he said, “No.”
“Haven’t met the right girl yet?”
Oh, I’ve met her, all right.
“Something like that.” Kerr’s tone was brusque.
“Right, well. Have to go now. If I decide to come over, I’ll be in touch.”
“Shall I send you the money for the plane ticket?”
Pause.
“If you want,” Den said awkwardly.
“Give me your bank details then.” If he wired the money, maybe Den would feel morally obliged to fly over.
“I haven’t decided yet. I’ll be in touch when I do. Is the house sti
ll there?” Den asked abruptly. “I mean, still in the family?”
So that is what’s interesting him, thought Kerr. Hillview was worth in the region of three quarters of a million pounds.
“It’s still in the family.” Drily he told Den, “Don’t worry. As soon as she dies you’ll get your fifty percent.”
There was a stunned silence, then Den said, “Fuck off, Kerr,” and hung up.
* * *
“All sorted,” Sara announced.
Miles away—over ten thousand miles away—Kerr looked up and said, “What?”
“Jameson’s Convenience Store. The bloke who runs it is Mike Jameson,” Sara patiently explained. “He’s agreed to do it, take in our sandwich delivery and keep it in his back room until one of us arrives to pick it up. He’s charging twenty quid a week, which you’ll be paying because this whole thing’s your fault.”
“Fine,” said Kerr.
As she closed the door behind her, Sara thought, Damn, should have said forty.
Chapter 36
Marcella had cut down on her hours at Dauncey House, which suited Estelle down to the ground. With Will staying, acting normally around her family wasn’t a problem, probably because in their eyes she was the least likely person in the world to be indulging in illicit naughtiness. But Marcella was a different matter, altogether more observant. Not much got past her. Estelle, terrified of letting her guard slip, was finding it increasingly difficult—but at the same time oddly exhilarating—to maintain an air of normality.
Luckily Marcella had other things on her mind to distract her.
“She’s not eating. I took one of my casseroles over to the cottage last night and Jake says she didn’t even touch it. And the weight she’s lost—you don’t think she’ll make herself ill, do you?”
“Of course she won’t.” Estelle’s tone was comforting. “Girls break up with boys all the time and get over it.”
“I know Maddy’s unhappy,” said Marcella, “and I hate to see her like this, but what’s done is done. It isn’t as if she can blackmail me into changing my mind, because how can I? She can’t carry on seeing him and that’s that. Now, give me that cup.” She reached across the table for Will’s empty coffee cup. “And as soon as I’ve loaded the dishwasher I’ll be off.”