by JL Merrow
Mrs. L faffed around taking her shoes and coat off just long enough for me to get my head back under the sink by the time she padded into the kitchen in her fluffy slippers. “How’s it going, love?” she asked. She was probably around Cherry’s age, but apart from that, she was nothing like her. Auntie Lol would have called her “brassy”.
I stuck my head out and grinned at her. “Have you sorted in a jiffy. Just need to grab a bit of pipe from the van. Who plumbed this in for you? He made a right pig’s ear of it.”
She nodded, folding her arms and hitching up her tits on top of them like a couple of perma-tanned grapefruit on a greengrocer’s stall. “Bloody typical. Wasn’t the only thing he was rubbish at, I can tell you.”
“Let me guess. The late, lamented Mr. L?”
“Lamented, my arse. ’Scuse French. Want a coffee, love?”
“Cheers. White, no sugar, please.” I winked at her on my way out to the van, and she smiled as she put the kettle on.
I’d suggested she fill it before I’d turned the water off. I’m not daft.
I got along to the hospital later that day.
Cherry was in a room of her own, which at first made me think she must be paying for it. But the telly on the shelf was about as old as I was, so I guessed it was just one of those perks you occasionally get on the NHS for no apparent reason.
Odd, though. I’d have thought if anyone had private medical insurance, it’d be Cherry. She looked pale and tired, and her hair was a right mess, but she was sitting up in bed, frowning at a John Grisham book.
“Those American barristers not doing it right?” I asked.
She looked up and actually smiled at me. “They’re not called barristers over there.”
“I do watch telly, you know. How are you feeling?” I handed her the teddy bear I’d bought downstairs—there hadn’t been any flowers in the hospital shop. Maybe they were against NHS policies these days. Or had all been eaten by hospital superbugs.
Cherry grimaced at the frankly tacky toy—there hadn’t been a lot of choice, okay?—but didn’t immediately lob it at the bin. She even tucked it into the crook of her arm. “Horrible. But better. You just missed Mum and Dad, by the way.” That’d explain the discreet Get Well Soon card peeking out from behind her water jug and was another reason to be glad I’d been at work. I wasn’t sure I could have faced one of Mum’s guilt trips today. “They’ve been asking me all sorts of questions.”
“What, Mum and Dad?”
“No, idiot. The doctors. They said the police might be coming too. It’s just so silly.” Cherry sank back on her pillows, and I hurried to take her book from her and put it down on the bedside table. “I mean, you don’t think it was anything except an accident, do you?”
“Don’t know a right lot about it yet, do I? What did the doctors say?”
“Nicotine poisoning. But why would anyone do that deliberately? It must have been an accident.”
“Yeah, but how do you reckon that happened? One of the cathedral ladies had a bit of a senior moment when she was making the sausage rolls?”
“Well, maybe. Some of them are getting on a bit. Maybe one of them got a bit mixed up when she was doing the flowers? Gregory said it was an insecticide.”
I frowned. “He said it used to be. Don’t know if it still is.”
“Oh, you know old people. They keep things forever.” She closed her eyes.
“Er, do you want me to leave you to have a sleep, then?” I said after a minute or two went by.
Which, of course, was her cue to open her eyes again. I was a bit horrified to see they looked leakier than Mrs. L’s pipes. “Don’t go,” she said in a little-girl voice, reaching out for me.
I wanted to run screaming for the hills, but what I actually did was sit down on the bed and take hold of her hand. Should I pat it? Would she think I was taking the piss? “Is Greg coming over again?” I asked. “Soon?”
“I think so,” she said moistly. “I’m just really glad we got back in touch. We shouldn’t have drifted apart like that.” She squeezed my hand. “Promise me we won’t do that again? Families should stay together. No matter…” She trailed off.
“Yeah, promise,” I said and cleared my throat.
We sat there like that so long, Cherry cuddling Tacky Teddy and me holding her hand, I got painfully aware of the tension in my shoulders. My fingers felt like they were about to cramp up any minute too, and my back was aching from this morning. Must be old age creeping up, I thought, because what this moment really needed was another reminder of mortality.
I was just wondering how the hell I’d ever get out without upsetting her when she started to snore.
Thank God. I eased my hand out of hers and legged it.
Chapter Eleven
When I got out of the hospital, I saw I’d missed a call from my old mate Dave. Or DI Southgate, I should say, seeing as he’d had his Old Bill hat jammed firmly on over his bald patch when he’d rung. He’d left a message politely requesting I call him back. Well, sort of. What he’d actually said was, “Get your head out of that bloody toilet and give me a bell, all right? I don’t want to have to send the boys round—you’d bloody enjoy it too much. Call me. You know what it’s about.”
I did. I called him.
Upshot was, I had thirty minutes to shove a sandwich in my gob and get round to his office, otherwise known as the nick. I tried ringing Phil to let him know, but he wasn’t picking up. I texted him, Gon 2 see Dave. If not back by tonite, bake cake with file, and set off.
I was ushered in by a woman PC with a face like granite and, by the look of her, muscles to match. “Cheers, love,” I said as she turned to go.
I probably imagined her snarling.
Dave was on his feet by the window, blocking out most of the light. He turned when I came in. “Bloody hell, I can’t leave you alone for five minutes, can I?”
I glared at him. “Thought you lot had sensitivity training these days?”
He subsided, huffing, into his chair. “So? I thought you hadn’t spoken to your sister for years. Go on, sit down, don’t just stand there giving me a crick in the neck.”
I sat. “Yeah, well. Just because we weren’t speaking, doesn’t mean we weren’t speaking.” I frowned at that myself. “You know what I mean. Anyway, that was before. We’re speaking now. She invited me to her party, didn’t she?”
Dave raised an eyebrow, then nodded.
“What, you thought I’d crashed it? Trust me, if I’d wanted to crash a party I’d have picked a better one.”
“Yeah, sherry with the vicar’s not exactly your style, is it? So you’re getting on all right these days, you and her?” His gaze got a bit more focussed. “What does she think about that bloke of yours?”
“What, Phil?”
I gave myself a mental kick up the bum as Dave went for the predictable response. “Why, how many you got?”
“Just the one. Nah, she doesn’t like him much.” I shrugged. “Came over all big sister, only thirteen years too late.”
“Feeling’s mutual, is it?” His chair creaked as he leaned his not inconsiderable weight back.
“If you’re trying pin this on Phil you can bugger off. He’s on your side, remember? Solves crimes, doesn’t do them.”
“On our side? Pull the other one. You try telling that to anyone else in the force. Now me, I’m open-minded—”
As a bloody clam, I carefully didn’t say. Mostly because I knew it wasn’t actually fair. At least, I knew I knew it when I was thinking straight which, now, not so much.
“—but to your average copper on the beat, private investigators are just one step above ambulance chasers. And cockroaches.”
“Yeah, Phil sends his love to you and all.”
“You can give him this little billy doo from me.” Dave stuck up a finger. “How’s it going with him, anyway? In general terms, please.”
“Fine.” Oops. Said it a bit quick. If you do that, people tend to hear an invisible Not in front of
it. “I mean, you know. Fine. How about you and Jen?”
His eyes went worryingly misty. “Good. Really good. We’re trying for a kid, you know?”
“Hey, that’s great.” I meant it. He’d been a right saddo when she’d left him last year.
“It’s harder work than you’d think, though,” Dave said with a mock sigh that wasn’t fooling anyone. “Since she hit forty, her fertility’s gone right down, she reckons. The number of times she’s rung me up at work to come home for a quickie ’cause she’s ovulating—”
“Yeah, all right, got the picture, thanks,” I said quickly. Nothing against Mrs. Dave, but middle-aged married couples shagging isn’t an image I really want in my head.
Dave coughed, and adjusted himself. “Right. Anyway, I’ve got to ask, has your sister got any enemies? Anyone you can think of who’d want to hurt her?”
“Not really. I s’pose I’ve been assuming it’s to do with her work? You know, the court stuff? Maybe she didn’t get someone off—in the legal sense, obviously—when she was supposed to? Or did, when she wasn’t?”
Dave nodded again. “Yeah, we’re looking into it. What do you know about Gregory Titmus?”
He’s a creepy sod with strangler’s hands? “Um, he seems like a decent bloke. And, you know, there’s the whole man-of-God thing. I only just met him.”
“What, at the party?”
“Well, no. Me and Phil went round to his for drinks a week or so ago. With Cherry, obviously.”
“So you saw him and your sister together before the party? How did they seem?”
I shrugged. “Pretty loved-up. Before and during. And after, come to that. You don’t seriously reckon he did it, do you? What was the point of proposing if he was going to try and off her afterwards?”
“Buyer’s remorse?”
“Oi, that’s my sister you’re talking about, not some bit of tat off eBay.”
“Sorry.” He didn’t sound it. “Partners are always the obvious suspect, though. And most of the time, it’s the obvious suspect who’s guilty.”
“So if I pop my clogs in a suspicious manner, you’ll be banging down Phil’s door?”
“Too bloody right.” Dave rubbed his neck. “Okay. Let’s leave the Right Reverend—”
“Nah, that’s bishops.” I’d looked it up on the Internet. “Greg’s just a Very.”
“Since when are you such a bloody expert on the clergy? Forget about him, anyway. Did anyone else at the party give the impression of not being too keen on your sister?”
“Well… There was this bloke from her old writing group. Fuck, what was his name? Tall old bloke, bit round-shouldered. Looked like he liked a drink or six. Morgan, that was it. Morgan Everleigh or Everton or something. But don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t anything he said. It was just Cherry. She didn’t seem all that chuffed he’d turned up. Said they’d had a few words about something he’d said she’d done, but she said she hadn’t. Done the thing he said she had, I mean, not had a few words.”
“God, I hope I never have a case that rests on getting you into the witness box. So this thing, what was it? And without all the he-said-she-saids.”
“Fiddling the funds, though God knows how much a writers’ circle has in the kitty. Couple of quid and an IOU, I’d reckon. He thought—that all right?—she’d accused him of it. She said she hadn’t.” I shrugged. “He seemed a bit, I dunno, high strung?”
Dave laughed. “That’s rich, coming from you. In what way?”
I ignored the dig at my masculinity. “Well, you know. Just getting a bit hot under the collar when he was talking about stuff. Like it was all a personal insult.” I was starting to feel a bit queasy. “Shit, do you think he did it?” There was something pretty horrifying about having a cosy chat with someone who ten minutes later tried to kill your sister.
“I don’t think anything right now. Except that when we’ve finished this little chat, I want you to go and write down everything you can remember about this EverReady bloke.” He sighed. “This would all have been so much easier if we’d been called in straight away. We don’t even know half the people who were at that bloody party.”
“Hang on, Cherry and Greg must know who they invited.”
“Must know, my arse. We’re only looking at the whole bloody diocese of St Leonards. Your Very Reverend chum put a sodding notice up in the bloody cathedral inviting all comers. And then Facebooked it. He was lucky he didn’t have a couple of hundred teenagers roll up and turn it into a rave.”
“Shit. I thought it was a bit packed. Well, that’s a bugger.”
He smirked. “Takes one to know one.”
“Eff off.” I paused. “Off the record, have you got anything to go on?”
“Officially, I’m not allowed to tell you anything about an ongoing investigation. Unofficially, bugger all. Although we did get a great set of prints off your sister’s glass.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Belonged to one Thomas Paretski. Haven’t you ever watched any cop shows on the telly? Even kids of five know you don’t bloody touch anything at a crime scene.”
“Oh. Sorry about that.” I thought about it. “Hang about, I didn’t bloody know it was a crime scene then, did I? And they’d have been on there anyway. I held her drink for her when she went to say hi to Richard and Agatha.”
“That’s your brother and the missus, right?”
I nodded.
“Get on all right with your sister, does he?” There was a steely glint in Dave’s eye.
“Come on, you can’t think he did it. Bloody hell, am I a suspect too?” I held out my hands, wrists together. “It’s a fair cop, guv. You got me bang to rights. Me and Richard were in on it together. That’s the last time she’ll cheat us at Monopoly.”
“Don’t be daft.” Dave looked out the window, and I got a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was about to say something when he turned back to me. “Tell me more about this drink, then. You were holding it. Put it down anywhere?”
I thought back. “Well, yeah. I left it on the table when I went over to grab Phil and take him to meet my brother. Shit. Is that when someone poisoned it?”
“Never said it was the drink, did I?”
“Well, was it?”
“Maybe.” He sighed. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to leave drinks unattended?”
“If we’d been in a pub, I wouldn’t have, all right? The place was full of bloody church types. I wasn’t expecting anyone to get roofied.” My guts twisted painfully. I wished I hadn’t shoved that bloody sandwich down so fast.
Dave shook his head wisely. “Shouldn’t make assumptions. Some of these so-called God-fearing Christians have pretty dark pasts.”
“Yeah, yeah. Been there, bought the T-shirt.” I stood up. “Right. Why don’t you get one of your lot to show me to where I get to write this bloody essay for you? What I did on my night out.”
“Long as it’s only stuff that’s pertinent to the enquiry. I don’t want to hear about the rest of your Friday night.”
“Oi, there wasn’t any of that, not after my sister nearly died.”
“Yeah, bit of a passion-killer, I expect. So he was with you all evening, was he? Morrison, I mean. Looked after you all right?”
“I’m not a kid. I’ve been looking after myself for quite a few years now.” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.
Dave showed no such restraint. “Says the bloke who managed to get himself shot in bloody Hertfordshire not so long ago.”
I’m not sure if Phil was at the station the same time I was or not. If he was, Dave didn’t let on. Sneaky sod. Anyway, when I got out, there was a message on my mobile from Phil saying they’d put him through the wringer too, and we ought to compare notes.
I hoped Dave’s boys weren’t monitoring our phone calls. Something like that probably sounded as guilty as hell.
We met up in the foyer of the Merchant Café in St Albans. It’s a big place, as they go in St Albans, but cosy,
with lots of little round tables and dark wood everywhere. In the summer, they have ceiling fans going, or you can sit outside in the Market Square on the rare occasions the sun actually shines.
This time of year, with everyone bundled up in thick coats, there was hardly room to move inside, but it was worth it for the smell of the place—rich, dark coffee with just a hint of chocolate. I almost didn’t bother getting a drink—I could have got my caffeine fix just by breathing in deep.
Then again, I’d have had nothing to dunk my biscotti in. I got a cappuccino and a smile from the blonde barista as she gave me extra chocolate sprinkles.
Phil got an Americano. And no smile. Then again, he was looking a bit grim. We sat down at a table in the middle of a row. Even though we were banging elbows with the neighbours, the din of chatter in the place gave us all the privacy we needed to talk. We could probably have discussed our sex life at full volume and no one would have batted an eyelid.
Then again, after what Phil had told me about his dogging case, I was beginning to think me and him weren’t trying all that hard with our sex life.
“Did you tell the police about Greg hiring you?” I asked. “I mean, I didn’t. Wasn’t sure it was relevant or whether it was one of these professional confidentiality things, so I thought I’d leave it to you.”
Phil sipped his coffee, then put down his mug. “I told them. You don’t know what’s going to be relevant in a case like this.” Voice of experience, here. Phil was a copper himself, once upon a time.
“Yeah, but it’d be stretching it a bit, wouldn’t it? I mean, someone doesn’t like Greg, so he—or she—poisons my sister? Why not cut out the middle man? Or woman, rather.”
“You don’t know what’s going on in these people’s heads. Maybe they thought if his fiancée died, Greg would turn away from his evil ways and repent? You think they were just out to hurt him, but these religious nutters usually aren’t that straightforward. They reckon they’re doing the right thing. Saving his soul. Maybe they think if someone has to die, that’s worth it.”
“What, so Greg’s soul is worth more than my sister’s life?”