Singing to the Dead

by Caro Ramsay

  He made his way back into the dark hall, away from the strobing lights at the front door and the cables that were snaking their way down the old stone steps. He went to the next door, a big solid wooden one, a door he had never been through before. The single brass knob turned easily in his grasp. There was music in this room, very faint, but it was there. He could see the green light of a CD player in the corner. This room was slightly warmer, as if life had been here recently. He felt for the light switch on the damp wall, but couldn’t find it. He put the tambourine under his arm and pulled out his torch.

  The narrow beam of light caught the yellow brightness of a brass bedstead, and he saw the outline of a body swathed in a white silk sheet. With a shaking hand he slowly moved the beam up and there she was, her beautiful face shrouded in a cloud of dark hair. Her right hand was held up to her face, her fingers curled upwards like a child’s.

  Mulholland didn’t move, he couldn’t. ‘Fran?’ he said softly. ‘Fran?’

  She didn’t respond. He reached out to touch her cheek, and her head inclined towards him. He stroked her face. She was cold. ‘Oh, Frances… Oh, Frances… Who did this to you?’

  It was then he realized he was listening to ‘Tambourine Girl’, to Rogan singing the final line – she says goodnight to you. He tensed, waiting for it… Goodnight… Then the disc clicked and the opening bars struck up again. She plays her tambourine…

  He heard a rattle, and something thumped at his feet. The tambourine had fallen to the floor. As he bent to pick it up, the beam of his torch floated upwards, revealing Rogan’s face in a black and white print that covered the entire wall. He reached for it, then somebody moved in behind him in the darkness, the torch was prised from his grip, and an arm crossed his body, slowly reversing him out of the room.

  Costello was talking to him, repeating over and over, ‘Come out now, Vik, come out. It’s no place for you.’ Vik didn’t move. Costello tightened her grip on the damp fabric of his sleeve. ‘Vik? Vik?’ Nothing. He was looking at the wall, his eyes wide open, murmuring something Costello couldn’t make out. Costello took hold of his chin and slowly turned his face towards hers. ‘Vik, we are leaving here, now.’

  She was guiding him out of the flat when Lewis passed them on the way back in, and the sombre strains of ‘Tambourine Girl’ grew and died as the door opened then closed.

  Say goodnight to the tambourine girl…

  ‘God, I hate that song,’ Costello said.

  O’Hare considered himself an expert on cyanide deaths now. ‘And in the interests of consistency,’ he said, ‘I’m going to be in on this at the start.’

  DCI Quinn asked, ‘Have you examined her body?’

  ‘As much as I can in this light,’ O’Hare said. ‘The Headeze tablets are here, the glass of water is there. The skin tone doesn’t appear as red as I’d expect, but the room is very cold and this light is terrible. You can smell the cyanide on her – on her face, her skin – can’t you?’

  Quinn nodded. ‘Yes, I can. It’s horrible. Did she take her own life?’

  ‘Strangely, I’d say it looks accidental. The fridge is stocked with food, and there are all those wrapped presents in the hall. And there’s enough prescription stuff in the bathroom to kill off any number of people; so if she wanted to do it, she could have done it any time and made sure she slipped away peacefully. With cyanide, there’s a lot of things you have to think about to make it as painless as possible. Why bother, when she could OD and just sleep away?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Anyway Vik Mulholland is in no fit state to tell us much just yet, but from what I understand Frances never read the papers, she didn’t listen to the news, she might not have heard the warnings. If I find any sign – any sign at all – that it was suicide, I’ll let you know. But my first instinct is that this was an accidental poisoning.’ O’Hare pulled the hair back from her face. ‘Poor girl. Poor, poor girl. She looks so young.’ He raised his head, suddenly, listening. ‘Do I hear a baby crying somewhere?’ he asked. ‘Don’t tell me there’s a baby in here as well.’

  ‘It’s that bloody cat. Sounds just like a kid,’ said Quinn.

  ‘What do you want done with it, ma’am? The cat?’ asked PC Irvine, as the cat wound its way round her ankles.

  ‘Get on to the Cats Protection League. It’s a pedigree; it’ll find a home.’

  PC Irvine picked the cat up and cuddled it to her face. Yoko contented herself with rubbing her chin against Irvine’s body armour. Irvine looked at the figure on the bed, a pale statue, slightly bronzed in the light, her body swathed in white silk, her pillow draped with dark hair. Irvine remembered seeing Frances briefly at the fair, when she had been laughing with Peter Anderson. The cat mewed in her ear, wanting to be fed. She began to cry.

  ‘Irvine, out!’ said Quinn not unkindly. ‘Go and cuddle the cat in my car. Take it back to Partickhill and lock it in my room. Find it a saucer of milk or something.’

  Irvine snuffled a reply, trying to hold on to a now-struggling Yoko. As a claw narrowly missed her face, Irvine jerked her head back and stumbled off-balance, letting go of the cat as she put a hand against the wall to steady herself.

  And disappeared. Her scream was loud enough to waken the whole of the West End as the cat bolted for the door, adding its own screech of indignation.

  Quinn and O’Hare exchanged glances. Quinn muttered, ‘Bloody Keystone Cops. Irvine, can you not look where you’re going?’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ Irvine sniffled, trying to disentangle herself from the dark-red curtain. ‘I got a fright. You’d better look at this.’

  ‘Can’t be worse than what we’ve already found,’ said O’Hare, putting his arm up to open the curtain further.

  They were assaulted by a stench of fungus and dampness and joss sticks as the light from Quinn’s torch picked up a few mouldy cushions lying on the floor. The torch beam arced around, ghosting shadows over the pictures and photographs that adorned the walls. A mosaic of Rogan O’Neill looked back at them, a hundred, a thousand times. He was on the wall, on the floor, on the ceiling.

  In the corner was a baby grand piano, with two sheets of handwritten music on the stand, complete with childish doodles and crossings out. Quinn walked over and peered at them. No one said anything for a couple of minutes. Finally Quinn straightened up. ‘That,’ she said, ‘is very interesting. It’s the music and lyrics for “Tambourine Girl”, dedicated to Rogan O’Neill. Dedicated to, you note. Not written by. And the words are slightly different. I play my tambourine…’ Quinn sang the line under her breath.

  On the dresser, the only other piece of furniture, was a selection of framed photographs, all of Rogan and Frances, taken in the eighties from the look of the clothes. Quinn picked one up and swore under her breath.

  ‘Jesus Christ. Look at that, Frances and Rogan – love’s young dream. Bloody nightmare, more like. Poor deluded girl.’ She sighed and replaced the photograph, and played the torch over the others. ‘How old does she look in these, Jack? Can’t be over twenty.’

  ‘Younger, I would say.’

  ‘Does this explain any of it?’

  Jack O’Hare was scanning the ceiling and walls with his own torch, taking in each image. ‘The display of pictures is unusual, obsessional, but this…’ he pointed to the old cigarette butts lined up in a row, each dated, and a location noted, ‘… is disturbing.’ A selection of men’s clothes, moth-eaten, was hanging from the picture rail. ‘And look at this…’ Behind the door was a collection of magazine cuttings, all half scorched. ‘Look, she’s burned out the girlfriend in every single one.’

  Irvine leaned forward to flick through them.

  ‘Don’t do that, Gail, that’s evidence. Use the end of a pen.’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am. I’m just a bit upset by all this.’

  ‘Yes, I know it’s hard, but destroying the evidence doesn’t make it any better.’

  ‘And I think that’s some evidence.’ O’Hare pointed. ‘Shine that torch over here, will you
, Rebecca?’ On the wall, framed in a baby’s shawl that hung between two hooks, was another collection of pictures. ‘Who’s that?’ asked O’Hare. ‘They’re old photographs, from the look of them.’

  ‘Rogan as a kid. He was a natural blond,’ Quinn said. ‘He and Elvis Presley were both light-haired, you know.’

  O’Hare stepped closer, taking a good look. ‘Well, you learn something new every day.’

  ‘Prof?’ Irvine called from the corner. Her voice was tremulous, her face eerily pale in the torchlight. ‘What’s this? Over here, in this glass thing?’ O’Hare shone his torch towards the glass case in the corner. ‘It looks like a roll of paper wrapped in a blanket,’ said Irvine, her voice shaking. ‘There’s something taped to the glass. Hang on, can you shine that torch here? It’s a poem. No, it’s the lyrics for that other song, “The Lost Boy”.’

  O’Hare looked over her shoulder. ‘It’s in the same writing as the other one, and dated…’ He peered more closely. ‘1985.’ Then his torch caught the contents of the glass case. ‘Come away from that, Irvine,’ he said, his voice gentle but insistent.

  ‘What is it?’ Irvine asked, her voice shaky.

  ‘That, I’m afraid, is – or was once – a baby.’

  Christmas Eve

  30

  ‘… every single bloody year since you were old enough to drink.’

  ‘About fourteen, in my case.’

  ‘You shouldn’t boast about it, but yes, since you were about fourteen we have always had to have an Eve Christmas; we’ve had to put up with you slobbing about all day under your duvet and lying on the settee drinking, and eating toasted cheese and crisps and chocolate for your Christmas dinner,’ Lynne shouted from the kitchen where she was digging around in the cutlery drawer. Eve had been messing things around. Again.

  ‘Oh, who gives a shit? Christmas is for watching TV. It was only you who wanted to have bloody turkey and all that bollocks. We used to spend the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year avoiding eating with each other and then, the one day when we’re supposed to be happy and full of joy, we would sit in absolute sin and misery, making small talk, when we could be ogling Steve McQueen’s arse on that motorbike.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘Going over the fence in The Great Escape. Every bloody Christmas, without fail…’

  ‘Eve, just come through into the kitchen and we will do it my way today. A nice Christmas lunch now, and tomorrow we will have your Christmas Day.’

  Eve wheeled into the kitchen and put her hands up. ‘Way-hay, hang on. You’re being nice to me; it’s not like you.’

  ‘It’s the season of goodwill and all that, and this might be our last Christmas together.’

  ‘Do you really think you’ll be living with Douglas next year? You arse!’

  Lynne ignored her. She had spent all morning in the kitchen, keeping out of Eve’s way. The rain outside pounded on the wintered detritus of her garden, and the light was already fading. She lit a few candles and placed them on the kitchen table, among the crackers, wine and party hats. Lynne had laundered and ironed the Irish linen tablecloth, embroidered at the corners with thistles and shamrock and holly and mistletoe. Their granny had made it one year during the school holidays, with Lynne sitting on her knee following every stitch.

  ‘I’ve made deep-fried garlic mushrooms, your favourite.’

  ‘Jesus, that’s nice of you. What are you after?’ Eve was thrilled, though. Her face lit up, and she immediately picked up a cracker and started pulling it apart.

  ‘It’s Christmas Eve and we are going to have a lovely meal…’

  Eve pulled the snapper strip from the cracker, and started to twist it in her fingers. ‘Why are you being so nice to me? It’s not like you!’

  ‘A new start for the new year. You see, I know that you know who Douglas is…’

  Eve rolled her eyes up. ‘Yes, he’s Douglas. Does he ever pretend he isn’t?’

  ‘You know exactly what I’m talking about. OK so he defended the guy who then crashed into you. But you cannot punish him for someone else’s bad driving and you cannot punish him for doing his job properly. And you are going to spoil the one good thing that came out of it all, the fact that I met Douglas. The only good thing to come of any of this was Douglas. I knew he was a nice man and…’

  ‘Oh, be quiet. You didn’t know he was a nice man, you knew he was loaded; you always get those two things mixed up.’

  ‘Look, I want you to try and forget all that, Eve, and leave Douglas and me alone. If we know, there’s no point in you thinking you know something we don’t. Just let’s all get on with our lives, make a new start.’ Lynne put a dish of deep-fried garlic mushrooms on the table, and set a ramekin of mayonnaise in front of her sister.

  Eve speared a mushroom on her fork, ‘I’m past caring about that. I lost interest when I found out he had more than me to be scared of,’ she said with her mouth full.

  But Lynne wasn’t listening, she stuck her fingers in her ears and started chanting tunelessly, La la la la… Eve raised her voice, almost shouting. ‘I’ve seen the valuation – Oh, my dear, look how much it’s worth; oh, let me buy it off you and release the capital for you. Even if you owned it, which you don’t, you’d walk away with twenty pee and he’d sell it for eighty grand more than he told you it was worth. Oh, he says, what a surprise, what a buoyant house market. He’s stupid, but you’re even more stupid. You think he wants you. He doesn’t – he wants the house. You’ve never dared tell him it doesn’t belong to you, have you? And if you think you can persuade me to let him buy it, you can think again. It’s my house, not yours. I might leave it to you in my will – if you’re lucky, that is.’

  ‘I don’t really want to hear it, Eve. It might be true. It might not be true. But the reason that Douglas and I are not together is because of his wife.’

  Eve thought for a minute before replying. ‘I’m not leaving you to the evil machinations of That Man. In property or in life. About men, Lynne, you don’t know your arse from your elbow. Munro Properties would have you out on the street already if it wasn’t for me.’

  ‘Once he’s divorced, we will live together. You’d better pull your chair in and have a nice lunch. Make the most of it.’

  ‘Oh, you silly cow,’ retorted Eve, watching Lynne arrange a few lettuce leaves and two twists of cucumber on a plate, more than a little disappointed that her sister hadn’t risen to the bait, robbing her of the humiliating revelation that Eleanor was Mrs Munro, Douglas’s mother, not Mrs Munro, Douglas’s wife. But she could keep that one to herself a little longer. ‘Only one steak?’ she asked, watching the piece of meat grilling slowly, the smell of charring flesh drifting throughout the flat.

  ‘I’m not eating too much. I have a bit of a headache. I’ll have some salad and mushrooms, though.’

  ‘Have one of my painkillers,’ said Eve, dipping into her mayonnaise and sucking it off her fingers, making a noise like a Clyde dredger. She glanced at the clock. ‘In fact, it’s time for me to take the next round of mine. Where are they?’

  ‘They’re on the worktop, where you left them, as usual.’

  ‘I’m going to have to tell the doctor I need them upped; I can’t live on those. I’ll need more painkilling cover once I start getting up and about. I am trying, you know.’

  ‘Very trying,’ Lynne muttered, dropping the capsules from her palm on to the tabletop in front of Eve.

  Their eyes locked for a moment. ‘Here, you have one of these.’ Eve tipped a capsule back on to Lynne’s still-open hand.

  Colin Anderson thought he was well prepared. He would stay calm, say what he was going to say. If Helena was innocent, she would understand why he asked. If not, he needed to know.

  So, how are things? he rehearsed to himself, walking down the corridor to the double doors of the ward. Do you know where Peter is? But how could he say that?

  How could he not?

  Costello might be
right about Helena; but he didn’t know what to think about anything any more.

  There were two beds to the left, two to the right. But he couldn’t see Helena. There was a fat woman to the right, an amorphous pink lump under a blue sheet, with numerous fat children crawling all over her. Beyond her was an older woman, with short spiky grey hair, who looked ill with the gauntness of cancer eating away at her; he looked away before she looked up. To the left a slim figure was lying screened from the corridor by a half-pulled curtain, arms at her side, stomach gently rising and falling, her face obscured by an oxygen mask. Even with the mask, he knew it wasn’t Helena. He turned automatically to the fourth and last bed, his smile and So, how are things? ready, but an old grey-haired woman, her husband’s hand grasping hers across the white sheet, was sitting up in bed laughing.

  She wasn’t here after all.

  Then he caught the eye of the woman with the short spiky hair, and she smiled at him. It was only then that he recognized her. He forced the look of horror from his face, hoping it did not show how much he wanted to cut and run.

  Helena held out her hand to him, and her beautiful elegant smile seemed toothy in a thinner face, her eyes darker, pain registering somewhere inside.