The Indecent Death of a Madam

by Simon Parke

  Awe at the discovery; fear for who might be next.

  ‘Who the hell’s this?’

  yelled the young man beneath Katrina. It was his first time at Model Service and while hadn’t known what to expect, he certainly hadn’t expected this – a bloody monk in the doorway!

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Peter.

  Katrina, interrupted at work, turned her naked upper body round to the open door where he stood. She was wearing skin-tight leather boots and – apart from the cross round her neck – nothing else.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, with confused aggression.

  ‘I need to know where Cherise is,’ said Peter, trying to deal with Katrina rather than the scene before him. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, obviously, but it’s important.’

  Katrina covered herself with a towel, while staying astride the client.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, looking down at the IT man beneath her. (This was all he’d said about himself – that he worked in IT.) ‘He will go away.’ And then turning to Peter: ‘You go away!’ This wasn’t good for business.

  ‘Cherise?’ asked Peter stubbornly.

  ‘She’s downstairs.’

  ‘She’s not downstairs; and she’s not at home.’

  Katrina thought for a moment, caught between two worlds, two bodies.

  ‘Then she’s still at the asylum.’

  ‘The asylum? What’s she doing there?’

  ‘I can’t talk right now.’

  With her head, she indicated the IT man, who now lay still and silent, like a trapped bird. Could the abbot not see this was bad timing?

  ‘What’s she doing at the asylum?’ he asked.

  Katrina gave up. ‘Meeting a man.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I am not her keeper!’

  ‘Who’s the man?

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘But you do know.’ Her voice was troubled, angry. She clearly knew.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said to her client as she dismounted. And to Peter: ‘We talk outside.’

  Throwing a bathrobe over herself, she pushed the abbot through the doorway and out on to the landing.

  ‘Terence, all right?’ said Katrina.

  ‘Terence Blain? Cherise is with Terence Blain?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Why do you think so?’

  And so Katrina recounted her conversation with Cherise earlier that evening. She’d wanted to find out more, so she’d run the bath and asked the client to undress and settle in, while she returned downstairs.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ Cherise had said.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘He wants to meet outside the asylum, bless ’im.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Secret!’

  ‘Bybuckle Asylum – the one where Mrs Weller was killed?’

  ‘It’s all right, the police have all gone home!’

  ‘And that’s why I worry.’

  There was discomfort in Cherise’s voice, Katrina could hear it, despite the overlay of confidence.

  ‘Why go there, Cherise? Why go to the asylum?’

  ‘We’re not going inside or anythin’. He just wants to show me the gaff.’

  ‘And why would he want to do that? It is not like a tourist attraction or anything. It’s a ruin.’

  ‘Most tourist attractions are ruins, Kat, that’s the point, isn’t it?! Lighten up!’

  ‘I’m just asking: why?’

  ‘The place means a lot to ’im, all right? I don’t know why and I don’t much care! I don’t mind being paid for a walk down memory lane.’

  ‘It depends on the memories and whose they are. Not all memories are good.’

  There had been silence between them, Cherise feeling angry because it wasn’t like Katrina was her mother or anything. Not that she listened to her mother; they hadn’t spoken in years. And she wouldn’t be listening to Katrina either.

  ‘And then we’ll come back ’ere. That’s the plan, all right?’

  ‘You’re coming back here afterwards?’

  ‘That’s why I need the matron’s outfit!’

  Katrina paused now, standing on the landing in the bathrobe. The story was told.

  The abbot nodded. ‘And that’s the last time you saw her?’

  ‘Yes, it is. You happy now?’

  ‘Happier than Cherise, I suspect.’

  ‘He doesn’t like her anyway, I know that.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I just say it because it is true.’

  ‘You know the man? You know the man she’s meeting?’

  ‘You go now!’ She opened the door, revealing her client getting dressed. ‘I cannot believe you inconveniencing me – really! How did you even get in?’

  ‘Pervert!’ grunted the young man.

  Peter decided to leave. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt.’ He turned and started down the narrow stairs.

  ‘Is she all right?’ called out Katrina. But Peter was gone, moving fast.

  ‘Cherise is in trouble,’ he said on arriving in reception where Fran loitered. He’d let the abbot in.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘In the asylum, that’s where she is. Scenes I never thought I’d see.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, I’m talking to myself.’

  And he was talking to himself, because the danger was acute and he needed to focus, to calm the world around him, and calm the world within, to make good decisions . . . to think ‘360 degrees’, as a therapist once told him. Peter remembered him now. He’d spent six months in the monastery, burned out with the care of others and needing a break – a bit of desert respite, the healing of rock and sand.

  ‘We generally think about forty degrees, Peter,’ he’d once said over supper in the refectory. ‘We’re aware of about forty per cent of what is happening, within us, around us. Forty per cent, max . . . some a lot less. To think three-sixty degrees is pure mindfulness.’

  And that’s what Peter wished for now . . . 360 degrees.

  ‘You say she’s at the asylum?’ said Francisco.

  ‘What are you doing here, Fran?’ asked Peter, suddenly pausing. Why was he here?

  ‘Me? Well, Blessings has thrown me out, hasn’t she?’

  ‘The judge has thrown you out? What have you done?’

  ‘I haven’t done anything,’ he pleaded in his Welsh lilt. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘She wouldn’t throw you out for nothing.’

  There was a brutal fairness about Blessings; some sort of moral logic.

  ‘I’ve been thrown out for not being gay, I suppose. Usually the other way round in seaside towns, isn’t it?’

  Peter took this in. ‘Explain – quickly.’

  ‘I told her I was gay when she visited me in prison – and it wasn’t absolutely true.’

  ‘So she’s angry because you lied to her about being gay.’

  ‘It’s not a complete lie.’

  ‘Lies rarely are.’

  ‘But I’m with Cherise now.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I’m with her, all right? And that’s why she’s thrown me out. The judge doesn’t like what Cherise does, calls her slutty. And I don’t like what she does, mind. I don’t like it at all. It is slutty . . . right slutty, in my view. But that’s all going to change, I know it. She just needs to learn.’

  ‘So you’re trying to fix Cherise.’

  ‘I will fix her. It’s not right what she does.’ The abbot’s eyebrows rose. ‘Makes a fool of me.’

  ‘It’s her life.’

  ‘Not any more it isn’t. It’s our life now. She needs to learn that.’

  He’d met the man

  beneath the street light by the Bybuckle Asylum. James was making his way along the empty seafront towards the shelter of the beach huts when he saw the figure at the foot of the steps, looking around as if wondering what to do. With a shaved head and military bearing he assumed the man was
homeless; he’d hardly be the first old soldier out on the drift. Why else would he be standing here on a night like this, with a cold moon above? There was nothing here but the wind and the sea.

  ‘I’d warn you against that place,’ said James, eyeing the gloomy silhouette of the asylum.

  The man looked surprised to be spoken to. ‘Why would you do that?’ he asked, pulling his coat tighter around him.

  ‘If you’re thinking of kipping there, I mean.’

  ‘Kipping there?’

  ‘Do you know what it was – what it once was?’ said James, who could still feel the damp of the walls and didn’t mind a little company now.

  ‘I know enough,’ came the reply.

  ‘It was a nuthouse,’ said James.

  ‘Is that what they call it?’

  ‘It’s probably not what the mayor called it, or not in public at least!’

  ‘More of a crime scene,’ said the old soldier, looking up at the building. ‘From what I hear, it’s more of a crime scene.’

  ‘No, I mean before the murder.’ James had read all about the killing of the charity woman. The homeless do see newspapers; they just tend to be second-hand, extracted from bins or picked up at stations. ‘It was a mental asylum before that, the Bybuckle Asylum. And I reckon you can still hear the cries.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘The place spooked me, and damp as hell. I was in there a few weeks ago, but couldn’t stay.’

  James liked this man. He was drawn by his stillness.

  ‘As you say, you can still hear the cries,’ said the stranger. ‘They don’t give up, do they?’ He spoke quietly.

  ‘You heard them?’

  ‘But I don’t want to keep you.’

  ‘I don’t mind a chat. What’s life, if you can’t—’

  ‘No – I don’t want to keep you.’

  ‘No,’ said James, understanding. It was a dismissal. This was not a man who encouraged small talk, he could see that now. ‘I’ll be on my way.’

  ‘It’s good to get home . . . or so I’m told.’

  ‘Yes,’ said James. ‘Well, I’m aiming for the beach huts, a kinder holding than this place.’

  Had he really said that? There was something about the man, as if he too had spent his life walking into the wind; as if he too had missed kindness along the way. Yet here they both were, passing ships in the night, and a space between them that could never be crossed.

  ‘Good night to you,’ said the man.

  ‘And to you,’ said James. ‘I didn’t catch your name.’

  ‘I don’t think you need to.’

  ‘No, well, see you around, no doubt.’

  Terence smiled and James disappeared slowly down the road, in and out of the street light. He thought of looking round, looking back – he wanted to know what the man was doing by the asylum. Something had seemed strange. But he decided against it; it was best that he didn’t, that he simply kept on walking, looking ahead.

  And then he was thinking about the stove in the beach hut. He could make something hot. Soup – he had two sachets in his pocket, mushroom and minestrone. Though he’d prefer to be going home. He knew that now as he walked along the seafront. He wanted to go home. For years he’d known he couldn’t go home, that he’d only disappoint his wife and children again, and he couldn’t do that. But now he wanted to try . . . to try again. As the man said, it’s good to get home.

  He passed a girl walking the other way – well, a young woman, walking quickly and quite dressed up. He said, ‘Good evening,’ because he couldn’t ignore her, he had to say something, and she looked at him as though he was a perv.

  He wasn’t surprised; he knew how he appeared. The woman might have looked at a solicitor – his old self – but she wouldn’t look at a tramp, who must be rejected and determinedly not seen, as one too frightening to contemplate.

  James wanted to make for home; but instead, he kept walking towards the beach huts and the stove.

  Who knows what that bloke was up to at the asylum?

  ‘So why is she angry with you, Francisco?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I really don’t—’

  ‘Please don’t waste my time.’ It wasn’t a request from Tamsin. ‘She gave you a home. You must have done something to make her angry.’

  ‘Why have I been arrested?’ he asked calmly. He wouldn’t be kicked around any more. He had plans for this evening and this interview wasn’t part of them. ‘I don’t understand why I’m here.’

  ‘You haven’t been arrested, Francisco. You’ve been detained . . . for questioning.’

  ‘I’m not black, am I? I mean, if I was black I’d expect to be stopped and searched without cause.’

  ‘Don’t try and be clever.’

  ‘She organized this, didn’t she?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s the sort of thing she’d do to get her own back. Get her friends in the police to give me some grief. Bloody typical!’ Fran felt angry now.

  ‘We are not her friends.’

  ‘She barked and you jumped, eh?’ That irritated Tamsin because it was true.

  ‘No one’s jumping, Francisco.’

  ‘Then what are we doing here when I’ve done nothing wrong? Or is Welsh the new black in Stormhaven?’

  ‘These are just routine enquiries.’

  ‘Routine enquiries? She’s frightened of what I know and that’s a fact.’

  ‘What do you know?’ Tamsin was suddenly interested – but Fran laughed. He actually felt quite powerful. He wasn’t going to be pushed around by her. Nor by any woman . . . no more being pushed around by women.

  ‘She doesn’t like me being with Cherise, all right?’

  ‘And why doesn’t she like Cherise?’

  ‘She’s a prostitute. Well, a sex worker. She prefers to be called a sex worker. But that’s a prosy in my book, a slut. Blessings calls her a slut.’

  ‘So?’

  Fran paused. ‘And I told her I was gay.’

  ‘Told who you were gay?’

  ‘The judge.’

  ‘Really? That’s an odd thing to do.’

  ‘I’m not gay.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘It was when she visited me in prison. I played up to it a bit, you know, for the sympathy, I suppose.’

  ‘And then she discovers you, on video, visiting a brothel?’ Fran made a face. ‘It’s not playing out well, I can see that.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that anyway – between me and Cherise, I mean.’

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘I didn’t know Cherise’s job when we met. I was doing her garden. I’m “Gardener Man”.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

  ‘I only discovered later – you know, what she did.’ Should Tamsin mention the sticker yet? ‘Then I mentioned something, and she got really angry,’ he added.

  ‘Who, Cherise?’

  ‘No, Blessings.’

  Hold back on the sticker for a moment. ‘And what made Blessings angry?’ asked Tamsin.

  ‘Ask her about Rosemary and her father!’

  ‘Why would I do that, Fran?’

  Fran was beginning to twitch, his legs unable to keep still.

  ‘Pay her a visit and ask her about her father – ask about Rosemary and her father!’ Somehow he knew this was important, that it might get him out of here. ‘She just froze when Rosemary spoke of him . . . totally froze.’

  ‘What did Rosemary say?’

  ‘And I didn’t mean to blackmail her or anything – it just came out. About the pornography.’

  ‘What pornography?’

  ‘It just came out. I just wanted to stay, wanted a home – or to get my own back. I don’t know.’

  Tamsin raised her hand to quieten him. She wanted to mention the sticker, but she also wanted clarity; this was important, possibly urgent. She glanced down at her phone. A new text message had appeared, from Peter, or ABBOT as her phone put it:

  It’s about
the sexual shame. Bad tonight. Going there now. Ring.

  What was Peter talking about? He shouldn’t be let loose on texting. She’d finish with Francisco and then ring.

  ‘So what did you mention, Francisco, that made her so very angry?’

  ‘Like I said, I heard a conversation between her and Rosemary. It was after one of their meetings.’

  ‘What sort of conversation?’

  And so he told Tamsin what he’d heard. Rosemary talking about Blessings’ father with the pornography. And the heart attack . . . how he’d died in the toilet surrounded by dirty magazines.

  ‘Rosemary was trying to be kind, I think. She was quite forthright, that lady, and trying to be kind. But it didn’t sound kind to Blessings, that was very clear. She went quite ape when she’d left. And the milk turned after that.’

  ‘The milk turned?’

  ‘She didn’t have a kind word for Rosemary, ever. “I find it quite repulsive the way she chases after Terence,” I remember her saying. But then, of course, Terence fancied Rosemary; you could see that, even from the kitchen.’

  ‘You saw a lot from the kitchen.’

  ‘And Blessings fancied him as well, so that wasn’t going to work, was it?’

  Tamsin’s mind had just gone up a gear: a shameful end, an unlikely love triangle . . . and a sense of acceleration in the investigation. Things were becoming very clear.

  ‘I want you to go downstairs and make a statement, Francisco. And then you’re free to go. You’ve been very helpful.’ They could forget the sticker for now.

  ‘No apology, then?’

  Tamsin looked at him with disdain. ‘PC Wells will go with you.’

  And with the two of them gone, Tamsin glanced again at Peter’s message. ‘Ring’ he said, but she didn’t need to ring. Different paths through the wood, perhaps – but they’d come to the same clearing. The Welsh Wonder Francisco had made everything very clear and she needed to act, to make an arrest in Firle Road. She texted a reply:

  Understand. See you at the front door.

  This was going to feel very good indeed . . .

  He’d worn a hat and beard

  on arrival and departure at Model Service, aware of the corridor cameras. It had made Cherise laugh at the time.

  ‘It’s not so bad!’ she’d say. ‘It’s not like it’s illegal!’