by Issy Brooke
“Oh my goodness,” Penny said, and stopped.
Destiny was dragging her feet behind, but she came up to Penny’s side, and laughed. “It’s great, isn’t it?”
“It’s … probably a massive health and safety hazard. How is it even allowed?” Penny gazed at the pile of wood and planks and rubbish that rose at least fifteen feet high. “When they set fire to that, it will burn for days.”
“Probably. It’s for kids, though, isn’t it? I bet Wolf can’t wait.” Destiny was trying very hard to sound bored by the whole affair.
The fifth of November was two weeks away, at the end of the half-term holiday. Drew and Ariadne looked back to see why Penny had stopped, and she started walking towards them again, quickly catching up.
Wolf had Kali, with the long lead attached at both ends - one to her collar at her neck, and the other end to a head-collar which gave a little more control. She was behaving well, as she had seen the treats that Wolf had hidden in his pocket. If he heard Destiny’s snide comment, he made no mention of it.
Penny pulled her camera free from her bag. She was hoping to catch some warm and cosy shots of them all, with the mist lingering in the background.
She was also hoping to catch Drew alone at some point, just to talk to, but it was looking unlikely. She reminded herself that the whole point of this morning’s expedition was to let Drew talk to Ariadne and possibly Destiny.
He’d been very reassuring on the phone the previous evening. Now he walked ahead with Ariadne, and was describing some of the success stories he’d seen at the Referral Unit for excluded pupils.
But they were almost all boys, Penny thought. What about naughty girls?
Then Drew beckoned Destiny forward. Penny lingered back, and began to take photos of Wolf and Kali as they frolicked.
She was just squatting down behind a tree to try and frame the shot with some twigs and branches, when Ariadne’s hand on her shoulder made her jump.
“They’re having fun, aren’t they?” Ariadne said. “Wolf has been coming up to the dogs’ home to help out, too.”
“That’s good.” Penny stood up and turned her camera off. “He’s a credit to you. You should be proud. Look, about Destiny…”
“I know. She’ll find her own way. But I could strangle her, I really could. Kids.” There was a hint of laughter in her voice now. Ariadne was looking better than she had done, with bright spots of red in her cheeks from the cold air. “Anyway, thank you for getting Drew to talk to us. He’s a good man.”
They both looked across the grass to where the tall man was waving his hands about and explaining something to the teenage girl. She was round-shouldered and affecting an unconcerned slouch but they could see that she was listening hard, even if she was pretending to be staring off into the distance.
“What are the photos for?” Ariadne asked. “Are you doing more arty prints?”
“I’m just practising doing photos with people in them. I’m going to see if I can take some good ones at bonfire night, maybe, and upload them to the community website. That’s what I’ve told people I’m going to do.”
“Sounds good.”
“Yeah. Look, um, I was just kinda curious,” Penny said. “When you started your dog-walking business, didn’t you set up with that other woman at first?”
“Julie Rose? Yeah, we tried…”
Yes, the dead woman, Penny though. “What happened?”
Ariadne shook her head. “I think I am a drama magnet. She was already doing it, the dog-walking, but she needed a business partner with a level head. She looked all organised on the outside, but no. It turned out that she was so chaotic, that no amount of level-headedness from me was going to help. I dunno … maybe it was my fault. Everything else is.”
“Oh, stop that.”
Ariadne pushed her hands deep into her pockets and kicked at the ground. Fifty feet away, her daughter was pulling almost exactly the same pose. Penny resisted whipping out her camera to capture the moment. “Ariadne, seriously. I know I ought to say supportive things and everything, but stop sinking into self-pity, all right?”
“I know.” She looked up. “But it’s hard. I am responsible for my daughter … and I don’t want her to go and mess up her entire life. I would do anything to keep her safe.”
* * * *
“Yes, purple,” Penny said decisively. “I have not changed my mind. Not all over, but some subtle streaks.”
“As you wish.” Agatha set about mixing up the colour to streak Penny’s hair with. It was Saturday afternoon and she was sitting in the salon, in the chair closest to the large windows so she could see people come and go.
All the gossip was, of course, about Julie Rose’s mysterious death.
“I heard that she was the carer for her uncle,” Penny said. “I hope all the right social services have kicked in.”
Agatha laughed. She was going for a gold-and-leopard skin look that day, and positively glittered with glamour as she mashed the foul-smelling dye around the bowl. “William? You know, he zipped past my shop earlier on his mobility scooter. Zipped back ten minutes later with a bag of fish and chips on his lap. Extra salt and vinegar, by the smell of it.”
“Really? He’s fairly independent, then?”
“Well, it was nice to see him out and about, to be honest. He has kept himself to himself since his stroke.”
“How long ago was that?” Penny asked.
“A few years, now. Julie was an angel. That’s more than can be said about that daughter of his. She was away, when it happened, carrying on somewhere in Nottingham or Northampton or Norwich or somewhere equally ludicrous.”
“And she didn’t come back?” Penny said.
“Not till about a month ago, I think. Poor William. Mind you, as I say, he’s perked up now, with his fish and chips and sword.”
Penny couldn’t help but jerk her head. “His what?”
“Yeah. He was carrying a sword too. Maybe he’d heard that the chippy could get a bit rowdy on a Saturday lunchtime.”
Penny shook her head but Agatha tutted and held her still as she began to paint the dye onto her hair. No one carried swords around. It would have been a roll of parcel paper or something.
Was it even legal to carry a sword? She would ask Cath later.
“Still, he’s going to need help at home, isn’t he?” Penny said.
“That Julie was a saint for taking him on,” Agatha said. “A saint. She never had any family of her own. Not husband or kids, I mean. Yes, I am sure they will arrange something.”
“Don’t you think his daughter will help him, now she’s back?”
“His daughter,” Agatha said, and stabbed the brush rather viciously into Penny’s scalp. “That Charlotte. No, I can’t say as I favour her.”
“Why not?”
“Well, if she didn’t come back when he first needed her, why would she lift a finger for him now? She doesn’t say much. I never know what she’s thinking.”
“Did she move back to Glenfield itself?”
“Yes, I heard she was in a bedsit here now, and doing odd jobs for people. They reckoned she trained as a locksmith, goodness knows why. She doesn’t do that anymore, as far as I know. She’ll clean your house or do your shopping, that sort of thing.”
“That’s something.”
Agatha sniffed. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else to handle my veggies.”
* * * *
Penny stepped out into the cool evening air and checked her phone. How quickly the constant checking had become an accepted habit, she thought as she flipped the mitten-flaps of her gloves from her fingers so she could stab at the screen and turn the sound back on.
She had some missed calls.
A lot of missed calls.
And they were all from Ariadne.
She tried calling her back, but there was no answer. She began walking swiftly through town, a terrible foreboding rising in her.
When she reached River Street, she could see a sm
all figure sitting on her front doorstep, and now Penny was half-running. As she neared her house, the figure lifted her head; it was Ariadne, with streaks of mascara down her face.
What has Destiny done, Penny thought in blind panic, still clutching her phone, assuming the worst.
But Ariadne rose to her feet and flung herself at Penny, grabbing her for support.
“The death was suspicious!” she wailed. “Julie was killed! Murdered! Penny, you’ve got to help me.”
“Why? What?”
“The police came and questioned me! I’m a suspect!”
Chapter Five
Sunday was cold. It felt like January, not October. Penny wrapped up in layers of fleece clothing and even opted to wear a pair of thick, woolly tights underneath her technical walking trousers. She admired her new purple-streaked hair in the mirror, and then felt sad that she had to hide it under a hat.
She’d asked Ariadne to join her with the ramblers but her sister had refused. She had cried for an hour when Penny had let her into her house, but they hadn’t managed to make much sense of anything.
She wasn’t really a suspect, Penny thought in exasperation. The police had gone to her house to ask Ariadne some questions about her relationship with Julie Rose, that was all. It was routine. Ariadne was over-reacting – as usual.
She loved her sister but her extremes of emotion were rather taxing.
Penny left Kali at home. Wolf would be round later, with his key, to take her for a walk. She had encouraged him to bring Destiny too, and hoped that he would persuade her to get outside, and give their mother some space.
It was nice to be with the rambling group once more. She greeted the familiar faces; there was Sheila and her husband, there was Edwin Montgomery, and Kevin and his dog Growler, and all the others. Someone had bought a brand new, super-dooper flask and was showing everyone how high tech it was, and that led everyone else to pull their Thermos flasks out of their backpacks and indulge in a little light one-upmanship.
“Well, mine stays warm for eight hours! If I don’t open it, of course. I can have a lovely cup of tea when I get home.”
“Yes but … you can, anyway.”
“That’s not the point. Eight hours, I tell you!”
Eventually they set off. Edwin was leading the walk and he strode on ahead. Penny pottered along, chatting to various people.
She fell in with a woman called Miranda, and Kevin. She didn’t know Miranda very well. She was a new young teacher at the primary school. Miranda didn’t know many people, or their histories, and it reminded Penny of how she was, when she had first moved to the town.
Miranda said to Kevin, “Someone said that you knew the dead woman, Julie! You must feel awful.”
“Well, I, er, didn’t know her well,” he said gruffly.
Miranda seemed oblivious to his discomfort. “But someone said the police came to talk to you, so you knew her well enough. I am so sorry. Please accept my condolences.”
“Uh, er, no, well, thanks and everything. Yeah, the police are talking to everyone, I’m sure.”
Sheila dropped back, her gossip-radar pinging overtime. “They haven’t talked to me. They say it was a suspicious death! In a bathroom! How horrible!”
“It’s pretty horrible wherever it takes place,” Penny said. She slid a sideways glance at Kevin. He was thrashing at the undergrowth to one side with his walking pole. Quite unnecessarily, she thought. “Was she one of your window-cleaning customers?” she asked.
He poked at a straggly, dying nettle patch. “I clean a lot of windows in that area,” he said. “The police wanted to … yes, they wanted to know if I had seen anyone acting suspiciously that day. But I don’t clean her windows. So I couldn’t help.”
“Oh, so you were in the area that day!” Miranda said, wide-eyed. “How thrilling!”
“Lots of people were there,” Kevin snapped. He sounded quite cross. “And I’m not the only person to have ever argued with her, either. As I am sure Penny can tell you.”
“Did you argue with her?” Miranda asked.
“Sorry, no, I never even met her,” Penny said.
“Yeah,” Kevin said. “But your sister had a big falling out, didn’t she, eh?”
It was too much, and it was too raw. “You can leave my sister out of it,” Penny said, her voice rising. “She has enough on her plate right now.”
“I’m just saying,” Kevin said. “If people want to go pointing fingers at who might have done it, that’s all. What about her uncle, eh? He barely leaves the house. Where was he? Never mind asking someone like me, who happened to be passing. What about him? Just because I fell out with her … why would I kill her? Your sister didn’t just fall out with her. Their business didn’t work out together. And who ended up doing better?”
“What do you mean?” Penny said.
“Julie’s business was failing. Your sister’s business seems to be doing very nicely.”
“How dare you! Are you suggesting–?”
“I’m suggesting nothing,” Kevin said, starting to wave his walking pole around. “Just that if people want to go suspecting other people, your sister needs to be on that list, all right?”
“I’m going to wrap that pole around your neck!” Penny shouted and lunged towards him, grabbing the walking pole. He pulled back but she held on tightly.
Now she had hold of it, she wasn’t entirely sure what she was going to do with it.
They glared at each other for a long moment.
Sheila stepped in between them and snatched the pole out of both their hands.
“Stop it, the pair of you,” she ordered.
Kevin’s nostrils flared. Penny narrowed her eyes. If he said one more thing about Ariadne, she would push him into the nettles.
No. She had to step back. What would she advise Destiny to do in this situation?
Penny threw her head back and said, “That’s it. I’m going home.”
She whirled around and stamped back along the footpath, retracing her steps to the car park, and ignoring all the cries and entreaties that faded in the distance behind her.
* * * *
Penny spent the afternoon curled up on the sofa, watching a corny old film and trying not to sulk. Later that evening, she made a quick phone call and then went out to the mini-market for some shopping. Instead of going home, she went to her sister’s house, and stood on the step, ringing the bell continually.
“What time is it?” Penny said, as soon as Ariadne opened her front door.
“Um – what?” Ariadne blinked and then glanced at her watch. “It’s just past seven o’clock.”
“Nope.” Penny revealed the bottle of cheap white wine she had been hiding behind her back. “It’s wine o’clock! Come on, let me in. It’s freezing out here tonight.”
Ariadne nearly smiled. “I can’t get drunk.”
“Yes you can,” Penny said, pushing her way into the warm living room. “I am your older sister. I insist.”
Still protesting, Ariadne went to fetch some wine glasses. Wolf looked up, said, “Nice hair,” then gathered up his laptop, his tablet, his phone and his ebook reader, and wandered upstairs to his bedroom. Destiny was in the kitchen, intent on tapping out messages on her phone.
“Bring three glasses,” Penny called.
“She is not drinking,” Ariadne said, appearing at the door and nodding back towards her daughter.
“No, for Francine. I called her earlier and told her to come here if she wanted wine.”
“Oh.”
And Francine turned up a few minutes later, carrying a large shopping bag of assorted snacks.
“I feel steamrollered,” Ariadne grumbled as they settled onto the sofa and armchair in the small front room.
“Yup,” Penny agreed. She opened up a bag of crisps. “And I’m not sorry.”
Ariadne actually smiled.
They chatted about nothing much for a short while, but Francine had not forgotten their earlier conversation
after the dinner party at Inspector Travis’s house.
“Hey, Penny, so how is it going with Drew?”
“All right.”
“Have you seen him lately?”
“Uh, yesterday.”
Ariadne pointed a finger, somewhat unsteadily. She rarely drank alcohol, so now that she was nearly at the bottom of her first glass she was getting tipsy. “Yesterday hardly counts,” she said. “We were all there together at the slipe, and he was talking to me and Destiny, mostly.”
“That won’t do,” Francine said. “You need to move on with things. Have you told Ariadne about the plan?”
“I don’t have a plan,” Penny said, feeling suddenly scrutinised.
“Yes, you do,” Francine insisted. “We agreed! By bonfire night – so you’ve got two weeks – by bonfire night, you need to have got him to admit to being your boyfriend, or you need to have given up on him and moved on.”
“I’m too old to have a ‘boyfriend’,” Penny protested. “I don’t like the word.”
“Whatever. You know what I mean. Look, you have been chasing him for too long. Have you even actually kissed?”
“Sort of,” Penny muttered, reddening. “It is none of your business. Okay, okay. I’ll make an effort.”
There was a general round of topping-up the glasses, more snacks, a little bit of ribaldry and ribbing, and then talk turned, almost inevitably, to the murder. Ariadne’s laughter died.
“What’s the news from your fella, Francine? What does Inspector Travis think?” Penny said.
Francine shook her head, making her bobbed hair swing like a black curtain. “Bill is such a stuck-in-the-mud sometimes,” she said. “He won’t tell me anything interesting. He does tell me about laws I didn’t even know I could break. He’s so married to the job, honestly…”
Penny grinned. “You remember at the dinner part, you hid his mobile phone, didn’t you?”
“It gets lost so easily,” Francine muttered.
“Liar. And come on, how exactly does someone’s pager accidentally fall into a pan of soup?”