Mystery Man 04 - The Prisoner of Brenda

by Bateman

  Sergei was inspired to pick up his violin again and he began to play his damned theme tune once more. And in all of the shouting and screaming and reading of rights and playing of music, nobody noticed that Sean hadn’t moved a muscle and it only became clear why when I saw that he was stone cold dead, with a hatpin through his eye and into his brain, and Nicola was standing there as triumphant as I had been, but in a hell of a lot more trouble.

  50

  It was definitely the most exciting funeral gathering anyone had been to in years.

  Depending on whom you spoke to it was, variously, a shambles, a triumph or a horror show. Everyone seemed to have an opinion on it with the notable exception of Sean O’Dromodery, who no longer had an opinion on anything. Because nobody had actually seen Nicola insert the hatpin in his eyeball, they had to leave Sean where he was while they calculated angles and positions and tried to second-guess the arguments that the experts called in by her defence team would make about opportunity, and her being left-handed when the pin could only have been stabbed into him with the right and other such proofy-type nonsense. They didn’t yet know that I had it all on a crisp digital recording, which I could later use to bargain my way out of any charges DI Robinson might choose to hang on me for busting Sergei out of Purdysburn.

  Nicola was as guilty as sin. She sat on a chair in the hallway, handcuffed to a WPC; her head was slumped down on her chest, and there was a dried-out riverbed of tears on her cheeks, which was replenished every few minutes by a little flash flood. I did not know how much she had wept over the death of her husband, but I suspected she had kept most of it bottled up while she was consumed by planning her revenge. Two of her accomplices were outside, in separate police cars. I was sure that they would tell all. Their arrest had seemed to break whatever spell Nicola had over them, and the words and the justifications and even the apologies came spilling out of them as they were led away. Soon enough their solicitors would order them to clam up, but for the moment the most obvious emotion coming from them was one of relief. My first impression from listening to them was that they were a bit stupid, and therefore easily swayed and manipulated by someone who was used to swaying and manipulating, like a schoolteacher. Sergei, meanwhile, was left sitting in the front room, playing his violin, while DI Robinson tried to puzzle out what to do with him. I suggested something to him, and he seemed to find it reasonable, so I said I would set it up and went outside to make the call.

  Alison found me there.

  She said, ‘It’s raining.’

  I said, ‘Is it raining? I hadn’t noticed.’

  She snorted and said, ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral.’

  I said, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  I put the phone away. She hooked her arm through mine.

  ‘You okay?’

  I said, ‘So-so.’

  ‘You don’t like to lose a client.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you think you could have saved him.’

  ‘Yes. I should have guessed about the pin, the way she was playing with the hat the whole time. She might as well have been twirling a gun around in her hand.’

  ‘There were police all around him, they should have protected him.’

  ‘Yes, and no. Part of me thinks she always intended to use those kids as a diversionary tactic. The other part thinks she just seized her opportunity. Either way, he was my client and I set this all up. If I hadn’t put on the show trial, he would still be alive.’

  ‘Perhaps. But if you hadn’t put on the show trial, they’d still be out there, plotting, and they’ve been tenacious and efficient up to now, so he was on borrowed time anyway.’

  I said, ‘I suppose. It’s just unsatisfactory.’

  ‘Because you weren’t carried shoulder-high from the court, with people cheering and yelling bravo? You wanted your Atticus Finch moment.’

  ‘Of course. But more than that. I . . . made a mistake. He should not be dead.’

  ‘Hey – you’re only human. Humans make mistakes.’

  ‘You mean you agree I made a mistake?’

  Her eyes narrowed.

  We began to walk around the outside of the house. The rain was not heavy, nor was it particularly cold. She said, ‘How did you know it was Nicola? And when?’

  ‘Uhm. I suspected, as soon as I knew she was putting on an act for her hospital visits. But I only knew for sure when the defixio turned up at my house.’

  ‘Our house,’ said Alison.

  ‘Legally . . .’ I began. She gave me the eye. ‘Okay. Our house. The inscription – the curse on the family of Anthony Boucher.’

  ‘Who’s he? I thought you were going to call him as a witness.’

  ‘If only, but he’s been dead for years. Anthony Boucher was a renowned American mystery writer, editor and critic. You’ve heard me talk about Bouchercon before? It’s where writers and devotees meet every year . . .’

  ‘Like Comic-Con.’

  ‘Yes, but interesting. Well, it’s named after him. The awards given out there are called the Anthony’s, after him.’

  ‘And the relevance to this is . . .?’

  ‘None, apart from the fact that when we left Nicola’s house, you remember I swapped one business card for another?’

  ‘I do. I remember thinking you were being a bit anal about it, but then that’s you. The old you, I might add.’

  I gave her a squeeze and told her that I’d printed the card out on the morning of my escape from Purdysburn, and substituted my real name for that of the late mystery writer. ‘It was just a shot in the dark. But I think our little visit spooked her enough to set the dogs on us. She couldn’t just scare us off, she had to create a defixio for us. It was all part of her justification for what she was doing. And being so focused on her master-plan, she hadn’t registered my name when you gave her my card the first time round. She found the second card, copied the name onto the defixio and that was enough to trap her: nobody else in the world knew about the card, so it had to be her.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Alison said, ‘I wonder what your brain would look like under a microscope.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I hope you never get the opportunity to find out.’

  It was a big house. Round the back, out of sight of the police and the few remaining mourners, Alison grabbed me and gave me a snog. I did not resist. A taxi was just pulling up when we arrived back in front. The rear door opened and Nurse Brenda climbed out. She was glowing. She came straight across and threw her arms around me and said, ‘Thank you, thank you. You did it, you did it.’

  Her bosoms were enormous. When she let me go I saw that Alison was grinning.

  ‘Sergei,’ Nurse Brenda said. ‘His name is Sergei!’

  I had updated her on the phone. I said, ‘He could still be charged with murder.’

  ‘I know that. I always knew that. But I also know he’s innocent. You can tell. Oh look – here he comes!’

  We turned. DI Robinson was just emerging with Sergei, who was still carrying his violin. He was not handcuffed, which pretty much summed up the inspector’s thoughts on how dangerous he was or how likely he was to make a run for it without me there to encourage him. I had told him about Patrick confessing to the murder of Francis Delaney and he’d said it would be difficult to prove that anyone was guilty of it, given that they were all a bunch of nuts.

  They came down the steps, and Nurse Brenda went forward and put her arms around Sergei and hugged him – and I could see over her shoulder his eyes widening and I could tell that he did not recognise or remember her at all.

  DI Robinson cleared his throat, and then once again, until Nurse Brenda released Sergei. He nodded at the taxi and said, ‘I’ll ride to Purdysburn with you, just to make sure you all arrive safe and sound, and then we’ll take a look at everything once all this calms down.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll be fine by ourselves,’ said Nurse Brenda.

  ‘I’ll ride with you to Purdysburn,’ DI Robin
son repeated.

  Nurse Brenda was too happy to put up an argument, or to use her eyes on him. It was a pity that I was no longer controlling the agenda, because I would like to have seen how she coped with my eyes now that I was free of my drugs; I reckoned I could have held my own. I would like to have told her that Sergei had a wife and family and that they would be coming to see him and perhaps claiming him back and taking him away, but I did not. Everyone should have a little happiness, no matter how fleeting, and I was looking forward to mine, one day.

  Nurse Brenda guided her charge towards the cab and he climbed in and sat back and then turned his stubbled, hollowed face towards me. I nodded at him and he nodded back and slowly, slowly he began to disappear as his breath misted up the window.

  Nurse Brenda squeezed in beside him from the other side. DI Robinson intended to move in after her, but hesitated when he saw how little room there now was; then he moved to the front passenger door and opened it, but before he climbed in he winked at Alison, which I didn’t like, and then jabbed a finger at me and said, ‘I’ll be seeing you,’ and I said, ‘Not if I see you first.’ He gave a shake of his head and got in and slammed the door.

  As the driver started the engine I took a last look at Sergei, but his face was almost entirely hidden by the misting up – except for where he was moving his finger across the glass and making shapes, and then I saw that they weren’t shapes, but numbers, and written in reverse so that they were easy for me to read.

  Alison, holding on to me, felt me tense, and said, ‘What is it?’

  I kept staring at the window, at the figures, until Sergei put his full palm against the glass and smoothed it across, removing them. The car began to pull away, and he did not look towards me then or back at me as they departed.

  I said, ‘One hundred and forty-eight point five.’

  And Alison said, ‘Wah?’

  And I said, ‘It’s the square root of twenty-two thousand and fifty-six.’

  And Alison said, ‘So what?’

  Epilogue

  I was back where I belonged, and yet I was no longer sure if I really did. I love No Alibis and I love my books, but I was unsettled. In the absence of anything resembling a customer, with Jeff off taking another exam, I had spent several hours on Mother’s Kindle, trying to distract myself, and much to my surprise I found that I did not hate the machine as much as I had imagined, and in fact it got me thinking about the possibilities, and wondering if there was a way to exploit them. I daydreamed about selling e-books through the store, or the website. Perhaps I could get neglected Irish crime classics digitised and act as their publisher, taking a cut and passing at least some of the profits on to the authors or their literary estates. And then I thought, why stick to Irish classics? There were thousands of pulp titles that had never been properly published or which had fallen out of print. Maybe I could get the rights to them and aim at the world market.

  Or perhaps – now that my head was clear and my body clean – I could do what I had always secretly thought of doing, but had never dared say out loud: I could write my own novel. What was to stop me? I had read every crime-fiction title worth reading and many others besides, I had the experience of tackling real crime and I had listened to enough of Brendan Coyle’s crappy creative writing classes to know I was at least on a par with his best students, and probably much, much better. I knew the template for writing crime fiction, and that the key was to write something new and original but to remember not to mess with that template too much. Give the public what it was used to, but with a twist. I could write an Irish crime classic. No – why limit myself? I would write a classic, for the whole world, and for all time, and make a mint in the process. I would transform myself from bookseller to a book seller.

  I put the Kindle down and sighed. I could not get Sergei and his square root out of my head. He might well just have dragged it up from his subconscious – or he had been perfectly aware that I was in that Purdysburn cell with him and that I had tossed the number out to him as a challenge which had seemed not to register. Was his muteness an act all along, and if so, what did that say about him, and his contribution to the murder of Fat Sam Mahood? What frustrated me was that I might never know. I like things to be in black and white, but like Sergei’s only suit, they were increasingly grey.

  Alison phoned to see if I was coming home for lunch and when I said no she said good, because there was nothing in and she was about to go to Tescos and I said, ‘I’d like to go to Tescos.’

  She snorted. She said, ‘You never go to Tescos.’

  ‘Nevertheless.’

  ‘But you never go shopping with me!’

  ‘That’s true. And I don’t want to now. I want to go shopping for you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not fair that it’s all left up to you. I’m sure you have a million and one other things you have to be doing.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Completely.’

  ‘This is brilliant! I love the new you! When you get home I’m going to ride your brains out!’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  She did have other things to do. She had to take Page to try out a nursery, and Mother had a doctor’s appointment. So she gave me a list of groceries we needed but said that they weren’t prescriptive.

  ‘Feel free to improvise,’ she said.

  I drove to Tesco. I chose the one off the Newtownards Road. From the car park, I had a view of the All Star Health Club. I knew there were hoods in there, working out and popping steroids. I would never know what Fat Sam’s connection to them really was, or how much involved the manager was, or if he had thrown me out to protect himself or because I was very, very nosy. Sergei had been caught on security camera inside. He had been the only one not wearing a mask. He told DI Robinson that when he fully realised the consequence of what was about to happen, he tore off his mask and tried to warn Fat Sam, but was beaten to it by his accomplices, whose faces he had never seen. DI Robinson said he was guilty by association and intent, but was unsure if he could get a conviction. Something was worked out with the Russian Embassy and he was released into their custody until he could be picked up by his family and escorted home.

  When I called the hospital and asked to speak to Nurse Brenda, they told me she was on sick leave. Perhaps she had her heart broken. Perhaps she found that once Sergei opened his mouth and mind, she didn’t like him quite as much.

  I pushed a trolley around the shopping centre. I had only completed one aisle and it was almost full. I realised that taking one of everything wasn’t the way to do it. I would have to pick and choose. There was a whole new world out there, and I was determined to sample all of it. But I needed to take my time, otherwise I would never make it out of the fruit department.

  After ninety minutes I joined a queue at one of the checkouts, more or less satisfied with my selection, which evenly covered all of the major food groups.

  When my turn came and the groceries passed along the conveyor belt, the woman behind the cash register said, ‘Would you like some help in bagging your items?’ and I said no, and I began to bag them myself. I found it quite therapeutic. I organised the fruit, and meat and the vegetables into separate bags. When the woman had totted up the final amount she said, ‘We have a special offer on today – if you spend another 14p you get £5 off your next shop.’

  I said, ‘What do you have for 14p?’

  She said, ‘Well, probably not very much, but that’s the minimum amount you have to spend to qualify for the offer.’ She called out to a supervisor who was beside the next till, delivering more plastic bags. ‘May – could you get this gentleman something for 14p plus to make it up to the money-off offer?’

  May said, ‘No problem. Anything in particular you would like, sir?’

  ‘No,’ I said, because for the moment I had purchased everything I really wanted.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we have a number of special offers just over here.’ She indicated a disp
lay at the foot of the nearest aisle. ‘I can give you a Twix, or a packet of Starburst, or a crème egg or there’s a small box of Tesco paracetamol.’

  ‘Give me the paracetamol,’ I said.

  When I got out to the car park, I put the groceries in the back of the Mystery Machine, with the exception of a can of warm Pepsi Max and the paracetamol. I sat behind the wheel, opened the drink, and swallowed all twelve of the pills. It seemed like the right thing to do.

  I drove home. Alison was not back yet.

  I brought the groceries in and divided them into their respective cupboards, drawers, the fridge and the freezer. Then I began to retrieve the pills and potions that I had hidden in strategic places. Alison thought she had discovered all of my stashes, but in fact she had only found those which I had intended her to find. I am not an idiot. I know how to hide things. I swallowed and I mixed and I imbibed. It had been a long time, too long, and it was good.

  Half an hour passed pleasantly. When they had still not returned I wandered upstairs. I found myself in Alison’s makeshift study. I looked at her paintings and sketches of Page as an alien or demonic baby, and found that I liked them even less than before. So I took them down, and gathered them up, and took them into Mother’s room, which smelled of sherry and cigarettes. Mother liked a coal fire in her room and it rarely ever went completely out. I tore up Alison’s work and fed it into the embers of the fire, and it soon revived. It took a while to get through them, but I did not mind. I had all the time in the world.

  When it was done, and with nothing better to do, I looked through Mother’s cupboards, and at the dresses she had worn in my younger years. I took one of them out, a yellow number with little flowers on it. I remembered her wearing it to collect me from school, before she went bad. I tried it on. It fit quite well. I admired it in the mirror.