by JL Merrow
“I remember your birthday. We just don’t exchange cards. Anyway, there were some interesting legal ramifications, that’s all. I was very into tort at the time.”
Anyone else, I’d have said something like, “Taut abs?” But I wasn’t sure I was feeling up to one of Cherry’s patented withering looks.
Not that she let me get a word in edgewise, anyway. “What on earth are you doing with him? I thought you hated each other. You certainly ought to hate him. We could have sued, you know, but Dad thought they weren’t worth it, living on the council estate.”
I bristled on Phil’s behalf. “Yeah, well—it’s like you said. People change. He’s a decent bloke now.”
Her eyes narrowed. I could practically hear a little voice in her head going, Hearsay! The jury will disregard that last statement. “So how long’s this been going on?”
“Couple of months,” I said, as casually as I could. “We met—met again, I mean—back in November, over the murder in Brock’s Hollow.”
“Oh my God. I knew I’d seen his name somewhere recently. It was in the papers. He was the one who got shot, wasn’t he?”
Um. Maybe there were one or two things I’d forgotten to mention in my not-quite-weekly-all-right-more-like-monthly phone calls to Mum. I rubbed my arm. “Can’t believe everything you read in the papers, you know.”
Especially seeing as Phil and I might just have made a concerted effort to keep my name out of all the stories about the murder. Whoever said “all publicity is good publicity” clearly didn’t work in the kind of business where women on their own, the elderly and the infirm had to invite him and his big bag of tools into their homes on a daily basis.
She ignored my unsubtle hint for sympathy. “You were involved in that as well? Why?”
“Phil was asked to investigate by Melanie Porter’s family. You know, the girl who died. She was engaged to someone we were both at school with—Graham Carter. Remember him?”
“Don’t be daft, of course I don’t. Although I recognise the name from the papers. But how did you get involved?”
I looked over at the window currently being smeared with orange goo by a solemn-faced toddler in a high chair while Mum nattered gaily to her chums. “The police. They asked me to help find her.” The police, now, they’ve always been great about keeping my name out of the news. Probably so no-one knows just how bloody desperate they were, calling in a so-called psychic.
“Oh. You’re still doing that, then.” It was said flatly. Like, say, the sort of voice you’d use to say, No, m’lud, the defendant has NOT ceased his hobby of torturing and dismembering little fluffy kittens.
“Yeah, well, not everyone changes. Take it you’re still single, then?” I couldn’t imagine Cherry with a bloke. She had spinster of this parish stamped right through her like a stick of Brighton rock.
And now she was blushing. “Not exactly, no.”
“Bloody hell, have you got a boyfriend?” I was tempted to check out the window just to make sure there weren’t any airborne porkers flitting past. “Good thing you didn’t take me up on the park suggestion. You could knock me over with a feather—all those Canada geese would have bloody flattened me.”
“God, you sound about twelve. Yes, actually, I have met someone.” Her chin rose, defiant. “He went to Christmas dinner at Mum and Dad’s. Thank you.” She turned briefly to the waitress, who was just putting our plates down in front of us.
“Cheers, love,” I added with a smile. The waitress dimpled and swept away with a swish of curvy hips. “So go on, tell us all about him. Found yourself a bit of rough, have you? Tell you what, I’d have come to Christmas dinner just to see that, if I’d known.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s a canon of the Church of England.” I wasn’t too sure what sort of place a canon occupied in the church hierarchy, but the way she said it, you’d have thought this bloke had Jesus himself looking nervously over his shoulder.
“Is he a loose cannon?”
“Very funny. His name’s Gregory. Gregory Titmus.”
“Rings a faint bell…” Unlike my mate Gary, who’s always been loud and proud about both his camp and his campanology. “You sure he’s not gay?”
She tutted. “Not you as well. Honestly, just because someone’s reached their forties without getting married… People will keep jumping to conclusions.”
Uh-oh. I remembered Cherry was due to hit the big four-oh in a few months. “Nah, that’s not it. Honest. Actually, I dunno where I got the idea from.”
“Well, Gregory’s always been open about his support for gay clergy,” she said dubiously, cutting up a piece of chicken into its component molecules.
I nodded encouragingly. “Yeah, that’ll be it. I’ve probably seen his name in Pink News or something. Being supportive.”
She gave me a hard look.
“What? No, seriously, that’s probably it. What, were you worried I might have met him at a gay club or something? Now who’s jumping to conclusions? Anyway, I don’t even go to any gay clubs.”
“I wasn’t jumping to conclusions! Stop putting words into my mouth.” She frowned at a prune as she prodded it with her fork. “Maybe if you did go to gay clubs, you’d meet someone a bit better than Phil Morrison.”
“Let it go, Sis, let it go.” I forked up some spaghetti and gave it a twirl. “Anyway, I thought we were here to talk about Auntie Lol.”
Cherry sighed. “Don’t you think it’s time you started calling her by her proper name? I assume you can pronounce Laura these days?”
“Bit late now, innit?” I took a swig of Coke, silently toasting Auntie Lol.
“I’d have thought you of all people would have some respect for the dead.”
I jabbed at a rogue piece of bacon. “What’s so bloody respectful about changing someone’s name after they’re gone? And anyway, what do you mean, me of all people?”
“You’ve spent enough time with them. The dead, that is.” I swear I could see the prunes on her plate shrivelling up further under the force of Cherry’s glare.
“Oh, for—you make it sound like every time I step out the door, I’m knee-deep in corpses! Anyway, you’re a fine one to talk, Miss Spends-Her-Days-with-Criminals.”
“I don’t associate with them. I just defend them.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t exactly go down the pub with the dead either.” I paused. “I mean, I would, but they’re shit at buying their round. And they’re always losing fingers and stuff, and it puts you right off your peanuts, finding bits—”
“Anyway,” Cherry interrupted me. “The bequest is a bit, well, strange.”
“Strange? What sort of strange?” God, she hadn’t left me a collection of dodgy sex toys, had she? Yeah, I knew Auntie Lol had a girlfriend, but I was quite happy staying in the delusion that the closest they ever got was a cup of tea and a cuddle. It was like thinking of your parents having sex. Worse. Your grandparents having sex.
“Well, you know what she was like. She never could see the harm in encouraging you.”
“Encouraging me to do what?”
There was a slice of lemon in Cherry’s glass of fizzy water. It was currently curling up and cringing at the sourness of her expression. “You know. Your thing.”
Oh. That. I carefully kept my face blank. “Sorry, don’t follow.”
“Yes, you do. Your finding-things thing.” She pronounced every syllable with the sort of distaste you’d expect if she’d just discovered a cockroach performing unspeakable acts with a maggot in her salad. Then she sighed. “I always thought you’d grow out of that.”
“Well, I’m only twenty-nine. There’s still hope. So are you going to tell me about this bequest, or what?”
She huffed. “It’s so silly. You have to go to her old house in Mill Hill and look for it.”
“Hang on, Mill Hill?” That was north London. “Auntie Lol lived in Scotland. Near Edinburgh. And before that, St Albans.”
“Yes, but after she married Mr. Mora
ngie, she lived in Mill Hill with him, remember? And their son. Until she left him.”
“What? Auntie Lol had a kid? No way. She never mentioned that when she wrote. Nah. Must be some mix-up.” She’d always been so, well, motherly to me. I felt a bit weird about it, to tell the truth. Not to mention guilty. Yeah, we’d kept in touch, but I hadn’t really made any effort to see her after she’d married. She’d visited me in hospital a few times back when I was seventeen—on her own, so I wasn’t sure now if it was before or after she’d married—but after that, I hadn’t seen her again. To be fair, I’d been a bit busy relearning how to walk and sorting out my life.
“He was her stepson. I don’t really know much about him.”
I frowned. “S’pose he stayed with his dad, then.” It still felt funny to think of Auntie Lol leaving him behind. “What’s the deal with the house, then? If it was hers, how come she was the one who left?” Somehow I didn’t reckon Cherry would have said it was her house if it’d been the husband who’d owned it. Who still owned it? This was getting confusing. “Or, you know, how come it didn’t get sold when they split up?”
“I don’t know, do I? You’re the one she stayed in touch with.”
“So who owns the house now? The husband, right?”
“No.” Cherry glared at me. “Actually, you might own half of it.”
“What?”
“That’s what’s so annoying. As far as I can see, she really didn’t have anyone else to leave anything to.”
“No? What about the girlfriend?”
“They split up a while ago.” Huh. Just another thing she hadn’t mentioned. I was beginning to wonder just how well I really knew Auntie Lol. “And she didn’t have any other family. But we don’t have the full version of her will—that’s what you have to find. For all anyone knows, she could have left you anything or everything. Including half of the house.”
“Hang on, though. That’s not how it works. You can’t inherit half a house.” Hadn’t Phil said something about the other half of his flat just going to him automatically when the Mysterious Mark popped his squeaky-clean little clogs? “Doesn’t it all go to whoever’s the joint tenant or something?”
“If they’re joint tenants. But they weren’t. They were tenants in common.”
“’Scuse me while my head explodes.” I guzzled the last of my diet Coke—wasn’t caffeine supposed to be good for headaches? “So you’re saying I might co-own a house with some old bloke who used to be married to Auntie Lol? Or it might all be some April Fool’s joke from beyond the grave?” Actually, I kind of liked the idea of Auntie Lol looking down from heaven and laughing herself silly.
“I told you it was annoying.” She speared the last bit of salad with a vicious jab of her fork. “And I really don’t think she thought it all through. What if her husband doesn’t want you to go rummaging through his home?”
“Oi. I don’t rummage.”
“Sniffing like a bloodhound, then.”
“Don’t sniff either. Course, I have been known to bury the odd bone in the back garden—”
“Very funny.” It was a good thing Cherry had already finished her lunch. The prunes would have shrivelled up into currants at that tone of hers.
“What happens now?”
“Now, we have to speak to Mr. Morangie. And hope he isn’t going to be difficult about things.”
“Is he even still living there? Or, hang on, could he sell up without her, with this common tenants thing? Or—”
“Yes, and yes. Well, theoretically. Although I can’t imagine who’d want to buy his half of the tenancy in common, and of course he wouldn’t have been able to buy a comparable house with the proceeds. He was better off staying in the property, as long as she was happy for him to do so.”
“Could she have kicked him out, then?” Seemed a bit unfair if the house was half his.
“Well, she’d have had to go to court and try to force a sale. It’s what I’d have done, though.”
“Yeah, but court’s like a home from home for you. Not everyone wants to get into all that legal stuff if they don’t have to.”
Cherry frowned. “It still seems odd she never tried. I suppose she mustn’t have needed the money.”
“Maybe she was worried about legal fees, thought she’d end up worse off than she’d started. Or maybe she just didn’t want all the stress. Anyway, so what you’re saying is, Mr. M’s still living there, and we’ve got to go and pay him a visit, right? When’s the funeral, anyway? I know it’ll be up in Scotland, but I’d like to go. Pay my last respects, that sort of thing.”
“Oh.”
I had a bad feeling about that oh. “Oh, what?”
“Well, it was a few days ago.”
“A few days ago? And you didn’t think I might want to know about it? For fuck’s sake! Even if I couldn’t have gone, I’d have wanted to send flowers. Did anyone know? Or did you just tell them to bury her in the first hole in the ground they could find and not bother with a service or, you know, any sodding mourners?”
“I didn’t tell them anything. Mr. Morangie arranged it all with a local undertaker, up in West Lothian. She was cremated. No flowers.”
“Was that what she said she wanted?” Auntie Lol had loved flowers. She’d had a garden full of them back when she’d lived in St Albans, and she used to let me pick bunches and take them back home to Mum.
“She didn’t leave any instructions about the funeral, so her husband did what he thought best, I suppose.”
“He wasn’t her husband. He was just some git she married and then thought better of it. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about it in time.”
Cherry stared at me. “Well, if I’d known you were going to get upset about it…”
“I’m not upset.” All right, maybe that was a lie. “Right. So when am I supposed to be going over to his place for this rummage, then? You coming too? Fancy a good rummage, do you?”
“You’re so bloody childish, sometimes. I’ll set something up. All right?” She pulled out her purse and peeled off a couple of twenty pound notes that looked like she’d ironed them this morning. Nah, what was I thinking? She probably had all her money dry-cleaned. “That should take care of lunch. I’ll call you when I’ve arranged things with Mr. Morangie, but it may be a while. Some of us have work to do.”
Whereas the rest of us, apparently, just mucked about with a set of tools from Toys “R” Us, tinkering with taps. I watched her clump off in her sensible black shoes and sighed.
“Would you like anything else? Coffee? Dessert?” The waitress with the hips smiled kindly as she started to clear the plates.
“Just the bill, thanks, love.”
“Sure? The chocolate-and-hazelnut panettone’s on special.” The dimples were out in force again. “And it’s not like you need to worry about your figure.”
I had to smile. “Sounds great, but I’ve got to get back to work. Maybe I’ll come in for it some other time.”
“I’ll look out for you.” She balanced the plates with practised ease and swept off, swishing back with the bill a lot quicker than I was expecting.
Cherry’s forty quid covered it easy and then some. “Keep the change. Have a panettone on me.” I winked at the waitress.
“I wish. That stuff goes straight to my hips.” She slapped herself on the bum, then dithered a moment, fiddling with the plateful of money. “None of my business, but you could do way better.”
“Come again?”
“That woman you were with. She didn’t look like your sort at all.”
I sighed and pushed back my chair. “Don’t I know it. Cheers, love.”
“You have a good afternoon.” She smiled at me again and wiggled her way back through the tables.
I glanced at the receipt before shoving it in my pocket. It had a phone number scribbled on it in felt tip, and the name “Angie” with a little heart instead of the dot on the “i”. I smiled, and shook my head.
On the way out,
I passed one of the mummies turning a suitcase-size handbag out onto the table looking for something, so, being a helpful sort, I paused to listen in. There. I reached into the recesses of a nappy bag, hoping to God I wouldn’t come across any dirties, and pulled out a mobile phone. “Here you go, love,” I said, handing it to a baffled mum.
“Oh my God! How the hell did it get in there? Georgie, did you put Mummy’s phone in your bag? He must have thought it was one of his toys,” she excused him, turning back to me. “Um, thanks,” she added.
“No problem,” I said with a smile and a cheery wave at a pesto-smeared Georgie, who sent back a rabbit-in-the-headlights look. He knew he’d been caught bang to rights.
Thought it was a toy, my arse. My thing, as Cherry put it, only works for stuff that’s been deliberately hidden. The only reason I’d been able to find that phone was because Georgie had known he was being a little sod when he put it there.
On the way back to the van, I took a detour through the market to pick up a couple of bits for tea. Darren was there on his stall—well, technically, he was on a box behind his stall—and he greeted me with a cheery, “All right, shortarse?”
I never know what to say when he brings out the short jokes. Him being all of four foot six himself. So I went with, “Can’t complain. How’s the fruit-and-veg business going? Making a killing on dodgy kumquats?”
Before you ask, I do actually know what a kumquat is, and it’s not just from watching Masterchef. They sell all sorts in the greengrocers down my way, and they’re pretty good at telling you what to do with the weird stuff.
In the cooking sense, I mean.
Darren leered at me. “Nothing dodgy about my kumquats. Ask Gary. There you go, love, that’ll be a pahnd,” he added to the old dear he’d just handed a paper bag full of mixed veg. He waited patiently as she stowed it securely in one of those wheeled tartan trolley things, then counted out a pound’s worth of change. “You enjoy those parsnips, and if the old man don’t like ’em, you tell him to come talk to me about it.”
“Oh, I will, dearie.” She dimpled and doddered off with a spring in her orthopaedically booted step.