Towers of Silence

by Cath Staincliffe

  Did she believe this crap?

  “I don’t sleep. Friday night ...” she began.

  I interrupted her.

  “Which pub?”

  “The Cat and Ferret, Jersey Street.”

  “I’ll try and catch him.”

  “He’ll be there all afternoon.”

  I escaped without even trying to correct the misunderstanding.

  The Cat and Ferret was warm and smoky and busy. Huge plastic cartoon cut-outs of Santa and Rudolf, sleighs and bells had been taped to the walls, garish against the flock wallpaper. Dingy streamers were strung about. Brewery posters advertised Christmas Fayre and family fun. I was marked as a stranger as soon as I walked in. Conversations were suspended as people waited to see why I was here. I scanned the room. Horace Johnstone sat with a group of men. He was the only black person. I was the only woman.

  The resemblance to his son Roland was striking. I braced myself and crossed to the table. They were playing cards. One of the men shuffling the set.

  “Mr Johnstone?”

  He turned, peered at me. His grey hair was wiry, just covering the top of his ears. “Yes?”

  I moved closer, lowered my voice. “I need to talk to you.”

  He frowned. “Who are you?”

  “Sal Kilkenny. I’m working for your daughter Constance.” His eyes widened in surprise. “Roland told me where to come.”

  A burst of laughter came from the bar where more men were watching a television suspended up in one corner.

  “If we could talk in private?”

  He looked at me cautiously, nodded once and picked up his glass. He swallowed it down, his Adam’s apple rippling as he did. He pulled the coat from the back of his chair. “Deal me out, Dave.”

  The men were clearly tight with curiosity but Horace didn’t furnish any explanation and they were unsure of me enough to forego any banter. I was an official, they knew that much: the social, the council, the filth. Someone to be given a wide berth.

  Horace Johnstone pulled on an olive green, flat cap and buttoned his coat. He took his time. I sensed the ferocious concentration of the habitual drunk in the slow way he moved.

  We walked in awkward silence, into the wind, and back to the maisonettes. There was no sign of his downstairs neighbour.

  The dog barked loudly as Mr Johnstone unlocked the door.

  “Don’t mind him,” he said. “He’s in the kitchen.” He stooped to pick the folded paper from the floor.

  “I left a note,” I said, “before I came to the pub.”

  The door led into a narrow hallway. Mr Johnstone hung up his coat and took me through the door ahead into a small, rectangular, low-ceilinged room. No one had cleared up for a long time. The navy carpet was covered with dog hairs, bits of lint, crumbs. Yellowing newspapers were piled up on the sideboard and the room smelt stale, like the morning after a party, old beer and cigarettes and the meaty scent of dog. There was no sign of Yuletide, not even a card.

  Mr Johnstone gestured for me to sit in one of the shabby armchairs and he sat in the other.

  “I’m a private detective. My name is Sal Kilkenny. Constance hired me because she was unhappy about the inquest into her mother’s death. She wanted to know more about the day itself, where Miriam had been, who she’d seen; that sort of thing.”

  He regarded me suspiciously. “And Roland?”

  “He told me that he’d found you, that he’d been seeing you in secret. He said you’d arranged to meet at Heald Place. He hoped you and Miriam would let bygones be bygones.”

  He gave a sigh, he sounded exasperated.

  “One moment.” He went out and returned with two cans of cheap lager. He popped one and drank from it.

  “I’m the first person Roland’s told. He’s convinced that seeing you drove Miriam into a panic. He blames himself for what happened.”

  He frowned, took another swig. “That don’t make no sense,” he said.

  “I know but he does.”

  “No,” he held the can out towards me to emphasise his point, “I don’t mean that. It makes no sense,” he said carefully, “because Miriam never saw me. She wasn’t home when I called at the house.” He nodded solemnly and took a drink.

  “What did you do?”

  “I thought maybe Roland had cold feet. I waited a little bit and I asked at the shop. They told me about this centre she goes to. I wondered if she’d be there or if Roland had gone there maybe, to give her some warning about me. I thought he said twelve fifteen then I got to thinking if I had it mixed up and then ...” He shrugged. His speech was slurred. “I went to the centre and she gone.” He shifted and pulled a tin of tobacco from his pocket and some Rizla papers. He began to roll a cigarette with slow, practised movements.

  “Miriam had left. I missed her.” He struck a match and lit his roll-up. He took a drag and blew smoke into the air, drank some more.

  “What would you have done if she’d been there?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know. Was all Roland’s plan and he was nowhere in sight.”

  “Have you seen him since then?”

  “I rang him and he said to keep in touch.”

  Really? Roland’s version was that he had hung up the phone, refused to talk to his father. Why this little lie? Was it all lies?

  “You never went to the funeral?”

  “I wasn’t welcome. Miriam and me we parted with very, very bad feelings. She turned them all against me. She never let me see my son.”

  “Did you try?”

  “She wouldn’t let me, no way,” he said evasively.

  “She became ill just after you walked out,” I said. “It must have been difficult for them.”

  “She had a weakness,” he said. “Some people, that’s the way they are.”

  “Were you surprised when she killed herself?”

  “No, ” he took a long drag. “It’s like a bomb waiting to go off, you know? Sooner or later ...” He made a gesture with his hands tracing the shape of an explosion.

  He was the only person I’d talked to who had known Miriam and hadn’t expressed surprise or disbelief at her suicide. He hadn’t seen his wife for fourteen years - maybe that had something to do with it. Perhaps emphasising her mental vulnerability and the inevitability of her fate was a means of absolving himself of any responsibility for the way her life had gone. If Miriam was weak and destined for suicide his walking out would be neither here nor there. Was that it?

  “You had no contact over the years?”

  “No.”

  “Did you contribute financially?”

  “No,” he said defensively. “I can’t do that. I never had lots of money and why should I pay? I never see my own children. I don’t have food cooked or my washing done or nothing”.

  But we were wandering, now.

  “After you’d called at the centre, what did you do?”

  “I thought about trying the house again. Maybe she walked a different way. But I decide to give her a bit of time. I went for a little drink.”

  “Where.”

  “The Albert.”

  I knew it. I nodded.

  “I stayed there awhile and I thought, you know, maybe Roland he set me up. Some sort of silly matchmaking and that’s why he wasn’t there. Though he must realise that it’s going to be a big, big shock for her if I turn up out of the blue and no Roland to have his say.”

  “He was delayed,” I said. “He got stopped leaving school.”

  He peered at me, trying to take in this new scenario. “Delayed?”

  “Yes.”

  The ash fell from his cigarette onto his trousers, he rubbed it in. Had a drink.

  “He’s a fine boy,” he said. “He came to find me. His sisters, they never bothered. Father,” he pointed to himself, “and son,” He pointed away. He had a last suck on the roll up and dropped it in the beer can. There was a tiny hiss.

  “Then I was thinking, in the Albert, I was thinking if Roland had come back and his mother
they were maybe waiting for me. I got some Dutch courage and I went back to the house,”

  I imagined him a little worse for wear, walking along to Heald Place.

  “What time was this?”

  “They were still serving.”

  Before three-thirty then.

  He stifled a belch. Popped his second can. “But Miriam had her own business to attend to,” he said sarcastically.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was busy, going out with her fancy man.”

  I stared at him.

  “You saw her?”

  He nodded. Belched. “Both of them. Come out of the house and get in the car.” Nicholas Bell? Albert Fanu? “Bloody cowboy.”

  For a moment I thought he was referring to the style of the vehicle or the attitude of the man driving. Cowboy builders, cowboy mechanics. A con man, a wide boy, flash and trashy. But it was simpler than that.

  “Like Wild Bill Hickock. Big mess of a beard and them cowboy boots.” He made a sucking noise with his teeth.

  Eddie Cliff.

  My stomach lurched and my scalp prickled with unease.

  Eddie Cliff.

  What the hell was he doing there?

  Chapter Thirty Six

  “I was gobsmacked,” I told Diane. “He’d already claimed that Roland wanted to keep in touch which I knew was a lie and then he sprang this. But I couldn’t see that he’d be making it up. As far as I know he’d never clapped eyes on Eddie before.”

  “Bit weird.” She agreed. “What’s this Eddie like?”

  “All right. Well, I thought he was. Good with people, passionate about his work. Helpful.”

  “So, ask him about it.”

  “Oh, I intend to. As soon as possible. It’s a bit awkward though because it means he wasn’t being straight with me. And I can’t see why. Of course the other side of all this is Roland, who thought his father turning up on the doorstep had led to his mother cracking up and that wasn’t it at all. He must have been to hell and back, poor kid. Now I can tell him how wrong he was, once I’ve talked to Eddie Cliff and got things a bit clearer.”

  “Another?” Diane held up her beer glass.

  “Please - and crisps.”

  While she was at the bar I worried some more about Horace Johnstone’s version of events. There was a possibility that he was writing himself out of the picture because he felt guilty, though I’d not seen much sign of that. Maybe he had met Miriam and she’d freaked out. He’d panicked and left her. Later he hears she is dead. But the description of Eddie Cliff was too close to be coincidental. He must have seen him. Could he have seen him at the centre and then invented the bit about the car. Possibly, but why? To point me in a different direction? That only made sense if Horace Johnstone had done something he wanted to keep hidden. The more I chewed it over the more muddled I became. I thought about the timing - it wasn’t exact but presumably it was after Roland had gone off to wait in the park at two-ish and before Martina got in around four o’ clock.

  Diane returned with our drinks and two packets of cheese and onion crisps. I took a swig of beer, opened my crisps and ate a handful.

  “What about the other lad, the one that was running off?”

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” I said. I trailed him twice. He spent one day mooching around the Arndale and the next on an odyssey to York.”

  “York?”

  “York. Stood outside a house, watched the occupants, went home in tears.”

  “Aw!”

  “And I’ve no idea what’s going on there. I thought perhaps a girlfriend, unrequited love. But there was no girl the right age. I even asked his mother if he was adopted, thought he might be tracing his roots. She thought I was bonkers.”

  “Is he stalking them?”

  “I thought about that but it’s the first time he’s been up there so that doesn’t fit. He even stopped to ask me directions.” I pulled a face.

  “What did you do?” Diane exclaimed.

  “Bluffed my way through it. Seemed to work. All I can do now is find out who lives in the house, hope it means something to his mother.” I took a drink. “Mmm.” The beer was just cool, tasted full and bitter and had a creamy head that meant you had to lick your lips after each drink. Perfect. “So, tell me about Iceland.”

  “Thunderbirds are GO. All on schedule. Bit of a panic when the airline couldn’t find a note of my booking.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “They’d just lost me somewhere.”

  “Over the North Sea.”

  “Saves on the catering. It’s sorted now.”

  “You go Friday?”

  “Yes. Thermals are packed and Christmas cards posted.”

  “Mine aren’t.”

  “So how’s Christmas shaping up in the Kilkenny/Costello household?”

  “Nana Tello is on the brink of accepting Ray’s offer. She’ll spend all day needling Laura if recent form is anything to go by.”

  “How does Laura cope?”

  I grinned. “She smiles sweetly and replies politely. She’s got far more control than I ever had. You can see it drives Nana Tello mad; she wants a scrap.”

  “Why’s she like that?”

  “Jealousy? I don’t know. Yours truly can do no wrong these days.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Flavour of the month. I think I preferred being the devil within.”

  “Does Ray say anything?”

  “Oh, yeah. He blows up after so much and then she goes all quiet and cold or tearful. But I think I’ll stick my oar in if she starts this time. It’s horrible for the kids let alone Laura. Goodwill to all men.”

  “You’re really looking forward to it then.”

  I gave sickly smile. “I’d rather come with you.”

  “The course is fun. Oh, and they’ve got a television crew coming over from Germany, arts documentary, so that’s another spin-off.

  “Brilliant. And after Iceland?”

  “The world,” she said in a phoney American accent. “Warrington actually,” she went into broad Mancunian. “Children’s library.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “I like libraries.”

  “It was the children’s bit.”

  “Nah. Won’t have to do much with them, a design workshop. Well-behaved group of schoolchildren, teacher present.”

  I smiled.

  “And New Year, of course.” We’d both been invited to the party at our old friends’. “Are you going to Harry and Bev’s?”

  “You bet. Means I can bring Maddie; babysitters are pretty scarce at New Year. Are you?”

  She screwed up her nose. “You know I hate New Year. I might just rent a video and curl up with some smoked salmon and single malt.”

  “Chris and Jo will be there. Be a chance to catch up with people.”

  “You bringing Stuart?”

  I grimaced. “Don’t know. Probably not. We haven’t talked about it really. He might be doing something with his family. And if not that would mean me explaining who he was to Maddie.”

  “Still a secret?”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly. And I didn’t like it, I realised. One of the things I was becoming more uncomfortable with was the secrecy we’d imposed upon ourselves. It had seemed sensible at the time, for the sake of the children, to give us chance to work out whether we were suited before involving anyone else, but I wasn’t so sure any more.

  It’s the secrecy I can’t stand, Susan Reeve had said, the lies and the secrecy.

  From a completely different perspective I agreed.

  I tried phoning Stuart at his place when I got in. A woman answered the phone.

  “Is Stuart there?”

  “Who is this?”

  I was thinking the same thing.

  “Sal Kilkenny, I’m a friend.”

  She put the phone down.

  I felt like I’d been slapped.

  How dare she? Who was she? Some other new conquest that Stuart had forgott
en to mention? My cheeks burned with outrage and I found myself talking aloud, spluttering with indignation. It really wasn’t worth it. Crikey, seeing someone after years in single-parent purdah was tough enough without rude behaviour from anonymous third parties to contend with.

  I got ready for bed and lay there rehearsing my speech to Stuart, adapting it to suit his reactions. But whichever version I chose; penitent Stuart, blasé Stuart, misunderstood Stuart, bastard Stuart, I always ended up reaching the same final line.

  Goodbye.

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  I felt sullen the next morning. Too little sleep and too much unresolved ill temper. I still felt resentful of Stuart though I realised I was being unfair in leaping to conclusions and passing judgements before I had the facts. I packed my swimming things. If I could fit a few lengths in it would help with the slow burn in my stomach.

  Ray was walking the children to school so I took half-an-hour to warm-up and practise some holds and jumps from self-defence. I went through my kicks; forward, side, back and stamp. Concentrated on getting the force and weight into my leg, nowhere else. Forward, back, side, stamp. I imagined jaws, knees, balls. Then I moved onto a pull and roll technique that always made me feel good when I practised it at the class with Brian. The idea was to wrong-foot an attacker by moving with them rather than against. Brian would lunge at me and I’d grab his arms and roll back and down pulling him over as I went. Once he’d landed behind me I would recover forward and run. It wasn’t the same without a partner but I could still rehearse the roll. I had a troublesome shoulder and it was important to fall without incapacitating myself.

  “You won’t get a chance to warm-up,” Ursula had always told us, “maintaining general levels of fitness is important, keeping supple too. That’s the groundwork for all the rest. You need to minimise the risk of pulling a muscle or spraining something in a tricky situation.”