by Penny Kline
She sniffed, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. ‘That the best you can manage? Not prepared to admit you keep picking on me.’
Steve reacted impatiently. ‘All right, Janice, I think that’s enough. Anna’s prepared to go halfway, more than halfway, but you still seem intent on …’
She stood up, hitching her baggy trousers, then resting her hand on the door handle, hesitating, wondering what to say next.
‘Look, you’re upset,’ said Steve. ‘Is there something else, not just Anna’s seminars, something you haven’t told us about? Maybe something going on at home?’
He was wasting his breath, it was going to be a repeat of her dramatic exit from the seminar. Without another word she wrenched open the door, then let it bang shut behind her. We heard her footsteps disappearing down the corridor, then a noise, like a pile of books being dropped on the floor, and students, laughing.
‘Sorry about that.’ Steve stood up and stretched. ‘Didn’t realise what you were up against. The trouble with these mature students is they bring all their personal problems with them — divorces, redundancies, housing difficulties … How much d’you know about her? Lives on her own, does she?’
‘I’m not here as a counsellor, Steve.’
‘Didn’t say you were.’ We stared at each for a moment. ‘She’s not stupid though, is she? She was right about needing to pull in as many students as possible. Has she made any more remarks about where you’re living?’
I shook my head. ‘Hasn’t had the opportunity.’
‘Perhaps you should have a talk with her, on your own, find out if there’s some particular reason she’s got it in for you.’ He noticed my expression and sighed. ‘All right, up to you, I just thought it might prevent more trouble. Perhaps it would be better if she changed to another seminar. Bob Milton’s running a parallel course that —’
‘No, don’t do that. You’re right, I need to find out more about her.’
I need to discover how much she knows about the Newsoms, if she’s bluffing, using it as a way of gaining attention for herself, or if she has information that could throw light on Nikki Newsom’s murder.
My last client of the day was a new one, a bachelor in his early forties who had lived with his mother until she had died very suddenly less than three months ago. It was a tough one. When his doctor referred him she had described him as severely depressed, but said nothing about the bereavement. He was so devastated by the loss that I could feel my own eyelids grow hot and heavy as he struggled to describe his mother’s last few days in hospital. Looking up at me for the first time — until then he had kept his eyes fixed on the floor — he picked up how I was feeling and stopped talking.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘my mother died a few years ago. Sometimes the feelings come back.’
‘So it’s normal.’ He seemed tremendously relieved. ‘I thought by now, after all these weeks …’
‘Tell me about her,’ I said. ‘Tell me what she was like before she became ill.’
After he left I met Martin on the stairs.
‘God, what’s happened to you?’ He put the palm of his hand on my forehead. ‘Temperature’s all right, but you look a wreck. Nothing to do with Eric Newsom, I hope. It was a mistake telling you about the annexe but I thought it would just be somewhere to stay. I never expected you to have much to do with him.’
‘I don’t.’ I started telling him about Janice Kirk, but if I had expected sympathy I was wasting my time.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, the whole point of you doing the seminars was to give you a break from seeing so many clients. Now this Steve bloke expects you to sort out all the screwed-up students.’
‘Only one.’
‘Yes, well if you want my advice I’d say the best thing is to do the seminars, then come straight back here.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Yes, it is, Anna.’ He was rubbing his chin, trying to remember something. ‘Oh, I know, I meant to tell you earlier but I was tied up on the phone for hours. I met this bloke who knew Nikki Newsom. Graeme Davis, he’s called. Works in the Path. Lab. Apparently he went to school with her. They were in the same year.’
‘Does he know Eric?’
‘Don’t think so. Anyway, the thing he remembers best, she had a mother who used to turn up at prize days, dressed to kill, looking like she was on her way to a garden party at Buckingham Palace.’
‘What about the father?’
‘Father? Oh, according to Graeme, her mother had remarried, then the second marriage failed and she walked out, leaving Nikki with the stepfather.’
‘This Graeme Davis,’ I said, ‘how come he knows so much about her? Fancied her, did he? How old would she have been at the time?’
‘When? Oh you mean when her mother walked out. About fourteen, I think, although according to Graeme it was like mother, like daughter — the way she got herself up she could have passed for nineteen or twenty.’
*
Eric was only going out for an hour or so. He would be back by nine-thirty at the latest.
‘Sure you don’t mind?’ He was peering through the window, watching for someone coming down the road? ‘Charlie’s in bed, reading; he’ll turn his light off himself.’
‘No problem, I’ve some essays to mark. Stay out as long as you like.’ I was curious to know where he was going, not that it was any of my business.
He started to leave, then came back. ‘If Charlie says anything about Dad and Deborah … I doubt if he’ll come down only recently he’s had a couple of bad dreams. The night before last he was making kind of wailing noises and I found him sitting up in bed like he’d seen a ghost.’
‘He knows you’re going out?’
‘Yes, of course. Anyway, I won’t be long.’
After Eric left I listened at the bottom of the stairs, wondering if I should go up and make sure Charlie was all right. My offer to babysit had been taken up sooner than expected, and seemed to come as quite a relief. Had Tanya Thurston fulfilled the same function? Since Charlie had never mentioned her, and Eric had told me he never really got to know her, it seemed unlikely. Resisting the urge to have a look round the ground floor, I returned to my pile of marking, but before I was halfway through the first essay I heard Charlie at the bottom of the stairs, muttering something about how he only wanted a drink of water and could get it himself. The clattering about in the kitchen seemed to last quite a time but I decided to leave him to it, then it occurred to me that his real intention might have been to make sure there was someone in the house.
A moment later he appeared, empty-handed. ‘I spilt some water,’ he said, ‘and I can’t find a cloth, except one with spaghetti on it.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll wipe it up.’
‘I’m just going to find a book.’ He crouched by the bookcase, pulling at his red Paddington Bear pyjamas when a gap appeared between the top half and the trousers. ‘It’s not for now. It’s in case I wake up early and there’s nothing to do.’
When I returned from the kitchen he had disappeared.
‘You all right Charlie?’ I called up the stairs, hearing his bedroom door click shut then open again.
‘Yes, thank you. I’m not going to read any more, I’m going to sleep.’
‘Want me to come up?’
‘No, it’s all right.’
I returned to my marking but I found it impossible to concentrate. It was the first time I had been in Eric’s living room and I wondered if the bright yellow paint and the curtains, with their design of blue and yellow butterflies, had been chosen by him or Nikki. Most of the furniture was cheap, the kind that can be picked up in junk shops, although the heavy antique bookcase looked valuable and had probably belonged to Eric’s parents. There was no evidence of his carpentry skills, no fitted shelves or cupboards like the ones I had seen in the workshop. The television and video recorder were housed in a cheap chipboard cabinet whose veneer had started to peel off and someone, probably Charl
ie, had been sitting on a bean bag much too close to the screen.
At nine-forty — Eric was still not back — I crept upstairs to make sure Charlie was asleep. His light was still on and the door was open just wide enough to see through the crack by the hinges. He was sitting on his pillow, wearing his dressing gown and slippers, and taking slow, deep breaths which he seemed to be counting on his fingers. He showed no sign of having heard me. After a moment or two he stood up, slowly, stiffly, and removed one slipper, then the other, placing them half under the bed, straightening them, then standing back to check and moving one a fraction to the left. Next he took off his dressing gown and placed it on a chair. One end of the belt hung slightly below the other. He pulled at it gently, carefully, until the two ends matched exactly, then walked back towards the bed, crouching down to touch the corner of the rug. Next he stood up very straight and touched the shade on his bedside lamp with one extended finger. He was frowning, unsure perhaps if he had carried out the ritual strictly to the book. Return to the slippers, lay them straight.
Dressing gown on chair, check the belt, walk to the bed, touch the rug, stand up straight, touch the lamp, sit on bed, turn out light.
Back downstairs the room felt cold. I picked up my jacket and my purse fell out of a pocket, scattering coins on the carpet. The notes were still there, two tens, and a five, but all the change was coppers and I was sure there had been a couple of pounds and some silver. I must have spent it without noticing. At lunchtime when I called in at the shop round the corner from the office? It was an easy enough thing to do. After a brief search under the furniture for coins I gave up and started running my eyes along the bookshelves, taking in the mixture that appeared to reflect Eric and Nikki’s differing tastes, of fat family sagas and sets of secondhand volumes with titles like British Birds, and The Flora and Fauna of the Mendips, together with some fairly recent popular science books. Pulling one out at random, I heard a sound and spun round, almost guiltily to find Charlie standing in the doorway, smiling nervously as he fiddled with the neck of his pyjamas.
‘The cupboard in my bedroom won’t stay shut,’ he said, clearing his throat to get rid of the croak. ‘It keeps coming open again.’
‘I thought you were asleep,’ I lied, accompanying him up the stairs. ‘Did something wake you?’
‘I was reading. Dad said I could.’
‘Yes, of course. Good book, is it?’
‘It’s about bats.’
I nodded. ‘How’s school?’
‘All right. I’m writing a story about an eagle that’s escaped from the zoo.’
‘Sounds good.’ I hoped the record of animals crushed on the road had been abandoned now the school term was well under way. ‘You must let me read it when it’s finished.’
‘It has to find food for itself.’
‘The eagle does?’
He stifled a giggle. ‘Guinea pigs, hamsters, a kitten sitting on the lawn in somebody’s garden.’
I tried the catch on the cupboard door and discovered why he had found it so difficult to close. ‘What about mice and rats? Eagles don’t usually live in the zoo — they have to hunt for their food in fields and woods.’
‘Eagles don’t go in woods,’ he said scornfully.
‘No, well, I’m sure you know more about it than I do.’ I pointed at the cupboard door. ‘Should be all right now, but I should ask your Dad to fix it properly in the morning.’
He sat on the bed, straightening his duvet. ‘We do more sums this term.’
‘You like sums?’
‘They’re all right. James can’t do them so I have to help him. Mrs Chambers doesn’t mind.’
‘James is your friend?’
He thought about this. ‘He’s the boy who sits next to me.’
‘Yes, I see.’ There was something in his voice that made me think he wanted to talk. ‘Charlie,’ I said cautiously, ‘you know the day I took you to school?’
‘What?’
‘It’s all right.’ I tried to sound as reassuring as possible. ‘Only just before your teacher came out into the playground you asked why somebody hadn’t told you.’
He swallowed but said nothing.
‘Was something worrying you, something you didn’t understand?’
His face was scarlet but he made a desperate attempt to look unconcerned. ‘Oh that. It was about having to wear such horrible trousers. Granny bought them for me in a shop in Broadmead but the ones in Asda are better.’
We both knew he was lying. ‘Oh, is that all,’ I said, and he flashed me a brief smile of relief and climbed under the duvet.
‘There’s a boy in my class called Lewis.’ His head was turned towards the pillow and his voice was muffled.
‘That’s his first name?’
‘Lewis Parrish. He didn’t like me before but now I’m in his team, only I have to go in goal, but soon he’s going to let me be a striker.’
‘That’s good,’ I said, wondering whether to kiss him goodnight, then deciding against it. ‘Goodnight then, Charlie, sleep well.’
‘I might have another bad dream.’
‘Try to think of something nice, something you really enjoy.’
A faraway look came into his eyes. ‘Football,’ he said, ‘that’s what I really like. Lewis can kick to kill.’
*
Eric came back at twenty past ten. He looked edgy and gave no reason for returning so much later, just muttered something about being held up. Then he asked if Charlie had been down.
‘He couldn’t get his cupboard door to stay shut.’
‘Oh that.’ He dropped into a chair. ‘Needs a new catch. What did he say?’
‘Nothing much.’ I wanted to tell him about the rituals; he had a right to know — although it was possible he knew about them already — but I hated the idea of Charlie finding out, not only that I had spied on him, but then told tales behind his back.
Eric stood up again and started walking round the room, yawning. ‘Did he mention his mother? You said he ought to talk about her, not that they ever spent that much time together but kids tends to idealise the absent parent, isn’t that right?’
‘She was here in the evenings, wasn’t she, at the weekends?’
‘I meant the parent who goes out to work. She used to do flexi-hours, and quite a bit of overtime. I was never sure when she’d be back.’
‘That must have been difficult.’ I picked up my folder of essays, ready to leave, but he hardly seemed to notice.
‘I didn’t love her,’ he said. ‘Oh, I suppose I did at first. Love, lust, what’s the difference? “Infatuation” was how my father described it. “You’re -infatuated, dear boy, but in a year or two you’ll wonder what it was all about.” He wanted Nikki to have an abortion.’
‘I don’t believe he calls you “dear boy”.’
Eric allowed himself a brief smile. ‘She wanted to get married.’
‘And you?’
‘How d’you mean? Oh, I wasn’t that bothered, as long as she kept the baby.’ He looked away, fiddling with a coffee mug on the mantelpiece. ‘My father’s a bastard, a cold, hypocritical bastard. All that sanctimonious, moralising crap and now he’s fucking Deborah.’
When I said nothing he reacted angrily. ‘Look, don’t you ever come off duty, talk like a normal human being, say what you really think? Charlie’s miserable and I’m making a total balls-up of trying to help him.’
‘That’s not what I think.’
‘No? Well, what do you think? I suppose you see me as the classic inadequate single parent. Get them sent to you, all the time, do you? Then what happens? Report them to Social Services, have their kids taken into care? What have you got me down as? Some kind of nutcase, screwed up weirdo, wife-killer?’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Nothing silly about it.’ He took off his glasses and held them up to the light, before scratching at a mark on the lens with his nail. ‘I’m the obvious suspect, the person most likely to have done
it. You don’t need a Ph.D in criminology to tell you that.’
When I opened the door of the annexe the phone started ringing, as if whoever it was had seen me leaving Eric’s house, then run to the call box at the end of the road.
‘You’re back then,’ said the voice. ‘I’d better come round.’
‘No! Look, I don’t know who you are but if Mrs Thurston was helping you, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid she’s moved away.’
There was a short pause then the voice became softer, almost wheedling. ‘It’s not fair, you know it’s not fair, remember when Nikki died?’
Never get into an argument, never show any emotion — the standard advice for recipients of unpleasant calls — but my frustration got the better of me. ‘All right, I’ve had enough. If you don’t stop phoning I shall have to —’
The line had gone dead. I dialled one-four-seven-one and established the call had been made in Bristol but was not from the box down the road, where I had checked the number the previous day. I could ask Eric to have the number changed, but was it worth it when I was only going to be in the annexe a few more weeks? Ever since Gayle Hedley had told me about the people Tanya Thurston befriended I had been trying to find out about agencies that arranged such ‘friendships’. Neither Martin nor Nick could help. Heather had made a few inquiries and discovered a couple of voluntary societies that fixed up support for ex-psychiatric patients, but if I got in touch with them they would hide behind rules of confidentiality.
When the phone rang again I snatched it up, intending to leave it off the hook. It was no good, I had to know.
‘Hello?’
‘Is that Jean?’
‘No, it’s not.’ The voice sounded different but … then I remembered. ‘Oh, Jean, yes, I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.’
‘Walter McGhee. Malcolm Knight gave me your number, said you were a friend of poor old Nikki. Hope you hadn’t gone to bed. I tried earlier but —’
‘No, it’s all right.’
‘Good. So am I right in thinking you’re as unimpressed as I am that five months have passed and her killer’s still on the loose. Apparently the police think she answered the door to a psychopath. I must say I find this hard to swallow. Nikki knew how to look after herself, she wasn’t some kind of helpless little housewife.’