by Jess Kidd
I can’t bear it. “Who will help him pack? He’ll need someone there to support him during the move, to reassure him.”
“We have people.”
“But what about the house, all his things?”
“That is his son’s concern now.” Biba turns to her computer screen, pushing back her bountiful hair and sighing.
“Has anyone told Cathal any of this?”
Biba glances at me. “Dr. Flood thought it would be preferable not to worry his father about the move.”
“So you’re not even going to tell him? Warn him?”
I can see it all: Cathal, a noble, aged zebra, with a long frightened face and white mane, bolting through the house with a pack of orderlies running after him—jackals all. The old man will be brought down, netted, and tranquilized. They’ll drag him out by his heels with his tongue lolling and crate him. He doesn’t stand a chance.
“You’re scared of him.” I smile with bitter triumph. “And so you should be; he may be decrepit but he broke Sam Hebden. I hope he leads you a merry dance.”
Biba sneers. “Mr. Flood did not break Sam Hebden. Sam dealt with the situation admirably and as a consequence was moved to a senior Geriatric Conflict Resolution position in Hull.”
“Good for him.” Then I say it before I can stop myself: “When did Sam go?”
“A day or so after the assault.”
I freeze. “Are you saying he’s been there all this time, in Hull?”
Biba looks at me oddly. “Yes.”
“And you’re sure of that?”
Biba takes up her torpedo. “Well, that’s where he’s supposed to be. But that’s his own agency’s concern, isn’t it?”
As I watch Biba massacre the last of her sandwich, a terrible creeping feeling comes over me. “You’ve met him; what does Sam look like?”
Biba looks frustrated. “Average.”
My heart turns over. “Tall? Blond?”
She narrows her eyes. “Average.” She picks up her receiver. Her voice is cold. “We’re done here, Maud. Remember to bring the key back. Call us in a week; if the complaint is dropped by then we’ll see if we can place you with another client.”
For a moment I watch her type numbers into the phone. She waits a second before treating the receiver to her ribald laugh.
GABRIEL IS barreling down the garden path as if his arse is on fire. When I step out from behind the buddleia he nearly dies.
“Maud.”
“You sneaky, underhanded fuck.”
He looks at me in astonishment. “There’s no need—”
“There’s every need. Besides setting me up you promised that old man in there that if he complied you’d leave him be. What harm is he doing?”
Gabriel clutches his manbag to his chest as if it would shield him from my biblical disgust. “He’s done his harm and he’s moving on now; he’ll live out his remaining time peaceably.”
I think of Biba with her syringe and shudder.
“And you’ve told him this? That you’ve shafted him? That’s why you came here today?”
He purses his sweaty mouth.
“Of course you haven’t. You really are a repellent bastard.”
Gabriel’s eyes dart towards the gate; I’m blocking the path. My trainers planted, my center of gravity low. He’s trying to figure out how to get round me.
I take a step forwards, keeping my chin high. “What was it that the old man had on you, Gabriel? Come on, you can tell me. Whatever it was that has prevented you pulling the house down around him and turfing him out on his ear.”
A sly look steals across his face. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
A thought dawns on me. “You’ve got it, haven’t you? Whatever it is you wanted from that house. Whatever it was he was holding over you.”
“You’re talking drivel.”
“It’s probably there in your handbag.”
His knuckles whiten on leather. I wonder if I should mug him and how I would set about doing that.
“You’ve been suspended, Maud. You shouldn’t even be here. I’ll call the agency. The police.”
“Go on, then.”
“I suggest you leave this property right now.”
“This isn’t your property; Cathal is here yet.”
He sneers, a little nervously. “Cathal, is it? It sounds as if you have designs on the old man.”
“God, you’re an awful arsehole.”
His face seems to implode. His mouth splutters and his jowls begin to shake. “I don’t have to take this,” he whines. “Get off this property.”
I square my good strong jaw. “Or what?”
He fumbles in his manbag and brings out his phone and holds it up in front of me as if it’s a talisman. “I’m calling the police.”
In the work of a moment I have it snatched from his hand and hurled over the toolshed.
“You mad bitch.” His voice is high, hysterical. He almost jumps in his loafers. If he wasn’t scared of me I am sure he’d slap me.
Instead, he grips hold of his manbag and rushes past, leaping over an abandoned mattress, making a dash for the gate. I have to hand it to him, he moves nimbly for his size.
I narrow my eyes. “I’m going to find out exactly what’s been going on here. Then I’ll be the one going to the police.”
Gabriel laughs at me from a position of safety behind the closed gate. “To say what? That you’re a mad bitch who makes up crime stories?”
I stare at him. “You’ve been spying on me. You shut me in the icehouse. You sent thugs to threaten my friend.”
Gabriel stabs at his temple with his finger. “You’re fucking mental.”
“I’m going to get to the bottom of what happened to Mary and Maggie. I’m not going to stop.”
His face reddens. “You’ve been warned to steer clear—”
“I’m not surprised your sister tried to drown you. I’ll be tracking down Marguerite to find out what she has to say.”
The color drains out of Gabriel’s face. It turns from pink to white, as if a tourniquet has stopped his blood. Even in my distracted state I find this remarkable.
“Marguerite cannot be contacted,” he says. “She went away.”
“I’ll find her and bring her back. With any luck she’ll want another pop at you.”
“This is not a family to mess with,” says Gabriel with a look of wholesale horror on his face.
“Or else? You’ll send round more criminals? We’re not scared.”
Gabriel narrows his eyes. “You really don’t want to escalate this; you won’t know what hit you.”
“Neither will you, you bollix.” I bend down and pick up a brick with which to knock Gabriel’s head off. By the time I straighten up to take aim he’s gone.
* * *
CATHAL SITS silently at the kitchen table. It’s not a position of defeat, not quite. It’s one of introverted thought: eyes lowered, breathing quiet.
I expected roaring, shouting.
I reach forwards and take his hand. He glances up at me, his eyes watery under still-dark brows. He covers my hand with his big paw.
“What will you do?” I ask.
He smiles. “I’ll have a birthday to remember; you’ll still come?”
I nod. “I will of course.”
“Then God blast the rest of them to hell.”
“What about all this? Your house, your things.”
He laughs. “Jesus, don’t be so mournful, I haven’t left yet.” He squeezes my hand.
He looks tired, fantastically frail, his eyes puzzled, blinking, startled. He gets up from the table and walks across the kitchen with an uncertain tread, as if he’s testing to see if the ground is still real.
I should tell him about Mary and Maggie and Marguerite. Tell him what I know and what I don’t know, before he is kidnapped into geriatric care and permanent sedation. But when I look at him, I can’t. Not right now, when the man has just found out he’s losing his h
ome from under him.
At the door he looks up at me. “You never lost your temper, Drennan, and wasn’t that a good thing for the both of us.”
He pats the door frame and wanders off down the hall.
CHAPTER 33
Jimmy O’Donnell looked out through his thick girl’s eyelashes at me. This usually made me laugh, only not today. It didn’t make him laugh either. I believe his heart wasn’t in it.
We sat in Granny’s kitchen looking out at the weather collecting all around the bungalow. The sky was petrol-dark, banked with great sulking rain clouds. But then there was a sudden rift, and the sun, heavy with the molten gold of a summer evening, came lancing through it.
The sun shone on the clothes that dripped limp on the washing line (wetter now than when they were put out to dry) and the empty birdfeeder on the patio. It spilled through the kitchen window and alighted on the table, on the sticky oilcloth, the sauce bottles with claggy tops, the trails of crumbs left by other, earlier, meals. It lit Jimmy O’Donnell brightly and almost entirely (with the exception of his right hand and the parts of him under the table). So that, in a way, you could imagine that illuminating Jimmy O’Donnell was the sole purpose of this last ray of evening sun. He was burnished to the sheen of a saint: his eyes shining in his heart-shaped face, his hair lustrous bronze in the radiant dying last-ditch light.
Jimmy had a cast-iron alibi: he was at his uncle’s house in Ballyshannon plumbing in a bath. Even with the speeds Jimmy drove he couldn’t have been back at Pearl Strand in time for Deirdre to go missing. Wasn’t that the case?
He told me this with his hand shaking, as his cigarette traveled from the table to his mouth and then back again. And then flick, flick, flick, worrying the end of that cigarette with his thumbnail, ash in the sugar bowl, ash everywhere.
Jimmy looked at me and I looked back at him.
Behind him his shadow changed shape on the kitchen wall, malformed and five times the size of him. Jimmy with brooding shoulders and hooked claws for hands. I watched his shadow creep and slouch, grow and retract, with every movement he made. It was easier than looking at his face. For in that resplendent light Jimmy didn’t seem himself. He seemed tired and scared.
He’d had threats, people spitting at him on the street.
When the guards gave him the all clear he’d leave town, no messing, no forwarding address, just like Deirdre had.
Only, unlike Deirdre, Jimmy had no one to hand him an envelope full of cash.
Jimmy grimaced. He ran his fingers through his hair. “You know why she had to go, don’t you?”
I nodded.
He looked relieved. He screwed his cigarette out in the ashtray. “And you haven’t heard from her yet?”
“No.”
“She’s taking her bloody time,” he said, his eyes on the drive.
It was a big risk, him being here. Mammy and Granny would be back soon. They were down in the town putting posters up. Jimmy had waited at the end of the lane for them to leave.
I no longer loved him but I promised him anyway, as I had promised Deirdre.
“We never saw Jimmy O’Donnell on the beach,” I repeated to him. “There was only ever us.”
He squeezed my arm as he got up from the table. “Good girl yourself.”
CHAPTER 34
Renata doesn’t flinch. She listens carefully, without interrupting. She smiles grimly at the part where I pick up a brick and looks thoughtful when I relay Biba’s description of Sam Hebden.
St. Dymphna listens too, leaning forwards in the easy chair, her legs crossed under her and her veil slipping down. She smiles too, more than Renata and sometimes at the wrong moments.
When I’ve finished talking Renata gets up and rambles out of the living room, returning with her pipe. She puts the stem of the pipe in her mouth and sits back down.
“Just pretend,” she mumbles.
St. Dymphna throws Renata an evil look, then turns to squint at the television, chewing the end of her plait. The sound is turned down on Inspector Morse. I wonder if normal life will ever resume.
“Have faith,” says Renata, in a doubtful voice. “This is a case where nothing is as it seems. We are walking on shifting sand. But really it is perfectly simple if we remain focused.”
“Well and good,” I say. “But there’s another pressing problem.”
“Which is?” Renata strikes an invisible match and sets an imaginary flame to nonexistent tobacco.
“If I didn’t sleep with Sam Hebden, then who in the world have I slept with?”
St. Dymphna smirks in my direction.
Renata mimes a succession of deft puffs on her pipe. “Biba’s description was not so clear.”
“That Sam is average as well as in two different places simultaneously?”
Renata shrugs. “Biba only knows where he should be, not where he is.”
“Maybe,” I say doubtfully. “But would you consider Sam to be average?”
Renata smiles. “Darling, is he a slice of chocolate fudge cake? No? Then to Biba he is average.”
Renata is a picture of effortless elegance today in her knotted headscarf and kimono with her kohled dark eyes, the effect skewed a little by the pipe clamped in her teeth and her air of dogged determination. “All is not lost, Maud.”
“Isn’t it?” I ask. “The case is in tatters. How are we going to solve it when I’m not even allowed near the house?”
“We talk to Doreen Gouge. We tell her about your incontrovertible communication from the afterlife.” She nods at Mary Flood’s notebook, open on the coffee table.
“Who the hell is Doreen Gouge?”
Renata fishes down the side of her armchair and hands me a slim book.
I glance at her. “Where did you get this?”
Renata smiles slyly. “I sent Lillian to the spiritualist church.”
I inspect the cover. The book is titled The Reluctant Clairvoyant: A Spiritual Awakening. There is a photograph of a fluffed blonde in a peach sweater. She has a lipsticked grin and an expression of committed insanity in her wide blue eyes.
“Lillian must have given you hell for this.”
Renata adjusts her headscarf. “At least she didn’t read chapter four.”
I immediately turn to chapter four.
Many psychics first meet their spirit guides in dreams. They will fly through the air or swim through water to be with you, metaphorically of course! The real substance they move through is celestial space and time.
I think about my nightmares, remembering Mary Flood in her nightie, and I wonder . . .
Your spirit guide is your dedicated escort through the realm of the afterlife. They are uniquely bound to you. You do not choose your guide; your guide chooses you. My spirit guide, Johnny Big Tree, is an Apache warrior who died fighting the Spanish in the 1850s. Johnny first came to me in a dream wearing no more than a pair of moccasins and a crow feather in his hair. He fixed me with his enigmatical dark eyes and held out his hand. With Johnny I always feel safe, he leads me with his silent step and his head held high through the ranks of the departed. They dare not touch us as we pass through the desolate murk of the otherworld. Bringing messages from the dead to the living.
I cast Renata a caustic look. “And you’ve read this shite?”
She nods. “I found it very informative. It explains why I feel Bernie’s constant presence.”
I try not to glance at the urn on the coffee table. Renata and Bernie have become inseparable since the visit from Gabriel’s henchmen. She even pours him a glass of krupnik from time to time.
I read on.
In most cases your spirit guide will be of the opposite sex. They will be well-matched to their psychic in terms of physical attractiveness and interests. For example, Johnny and I have a mutual love of good conversation, food cooked outdoors, and ecstatic dancing. My good friend and fellow medium, Stacey Barrett-Mold, has published widely on the subject of the psychic–spirit guide relationship. Stacey has a prof
ound love of numbers and order. Her spirit guide, Mr. Sidney Curd, an accountant who was stabbed to death with a letter opener in 1954 by a bankrupt client, shares these interests. Mr. Curd doesn’t have a bow and arrow like Johnny; he rather deflects unwanted attention from unsavory spirits by opening his briefcase and rustling spectral tax returns.
I shake my head in despair.
“Before you judge,” says Renata with offended dignity and a voice of deep-napped velvet, “you should read the testimonials.”
“Doreen is one in a million—her ears are open to the faintest voice of the dead. No one understood my late aunt for the last five years of her life due to chronic laryngitis but Doreen gave her a voice again!”
MRS. V. B. PRITCHARD
“Doreen, what can I say? You reunited me with my beloved husband. We are closer than ever now, I am reassured to know that he watches over me—and the prize-winning marrows I grow in his memory.”
MRS. S. BOLICK
“Doreen is the real thing: a fully fledged Ghost Whisperer.”
SAM STROUD, AUTHOR OF THEY COME IN DROVES: A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO MASS HISTORICAL HAUNTINGS
* * *
“HAS IT really come to this?” I close the book and put it down on the table.
“I think it has,” says Renata. “Give it a try. What have we got to lose?”
I look over at St. Dymphna, who rolls her eyes, then turns back to the television. I stay as silent as the afterlife.
CHAPTER 35
Sam Hebden is standing on Renata’s doorstep. He is wearing espadrilles. Jesus Christ looks approving; Johnny Cash sneers. Renata and I stand at the door with our arms crossed.
Sam nods at us with a rueful air. “Renata. Maud.”
Renata nods back, her black brigand’s eyes giving nothing away.
Undaunted, Sam smiles. “I’m sorry for not calling.”