The Big Chill

by Doug Johnstone

  ‘What?’

  ‘She took keys for a Warners place across the street, that’s where she was holed up waiting for her dad.’

  Sandra’s head went down, eyes to her glass, then she drank.

  ‘I don’t think that’s helping,’ Dorothy said, nodding at the Malbec.

  ‘Don’t tell me how to cope.’

  Dorothy sighed. ‘I saw someone else using the flat, got a trace on the owners, found out CTL were using it. Both guys used the same car, owned by CTL. I put pressure on Justin there, he gave Stephen up easy enough when I threatened him with the police.’

  ‘Too easy.’

  ‘How did you hope to keep this a secret?’ Dorothy said. ‘How did you think this would end?’

  Sandra drank again, half her wine gone already.

  ‘I didn’t think ahead. Obviously.’

  Sandra looked out of the window. There was a seafood market across the road, corner shop, barbers, couple of tasteful bistros. Just an ordinary neighbourhood going about its honest business.

  ‘I read about it in Japan,’ she said. ‘Apparently, they have businesses renting out relatives, boyfriends, even brides and grooms. Social pressure.’

  Dorothy stayed silent.

  ‘Abi started asking at nursery,’ Sandra said, another swig of wine. ‘All the other girls had daddies, where was hers? I thought it would go away but it intensified at school. Her behaviour was off, tantrums you wouldn’t believe, back to bedwetting, refusing to eat.’

  Dorothy pressed her lips together.

  ‘I know,’ Sandra said. ‘Don’t worry, I disgust myself. I heard there was a place in Edinburgh. A mate of a mate hired a boyfriend to get her mum off her back about being a lesbian. It was only meant to be short term.’

  Dorothy sipped her wine.

  ‘But Abi got more attached. I had to make up a job for Neil that meant he was away a lot. Stephen wasn’t comfortable but I was paying him, he sucked it up. And he became genuinely fond of Abi.’

  ‘You entrusted your girl to a total stranger.’

  ‘I was always there at the start,’ Sandra said. Her eyes were wet with tears. ‘Once I knew him a bit I let Abi see him alone.’

  ‘You trusted him?’

  ‘He’s a good man.’

  Dorothy half expected her to say he was a good dad.

  Sandra drank again, scratched at her cheek. ‘It got harder and harder, Neil had to be away longer. I kept thinking if he wasn’t around Abi would forget, realise he was fobbing her off, but she just invested more in the idea of him.’

  A couple of punters came in, two young men in tight trousers and skimpy beards, headed for the bar.

  ‘To the point where she ran away to find him,’ Dorothy said.

  ‘None of this was supposed to happen.’

  Dorothy ran her tongue around her mouth, felt the red wine scuzz there already. ‘I don’t understand, being a single parent is no big deal. Why lie?’

  Sandra looked away for a long time, a car flitted past the window.

  ‘Because no matter what I said she would still have a real dad, and I couldn’t tell her about him.’

  Dorothy looked around the pub. The barman was a big man with a tight belly, shaved head, navy tattoos on his forearms. She wondered if he was a good dad to a little girl somewhere.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said.

  Sandra looked at Dorothy and held her gaze. Something defiant in her face.

  ‘Abi’s dad is my dad too,’ she said eventually.

  She kept looking at Dorothy, eyes filled with tears, until Dorothy looked down at the table. Sandra picked up her glass and downed her wine, refilled it with the last of the bottle. Dorothy watched her chest rising and falling, thought about the heart beating inside her chest, pictured her on a slab in the embalming room, Archie treating her with dignity.

  ‘It’s as old as the fucking hills,’ Sandra said, disgust in her voice. ‘Daddy’s little secret. I’m sure you don’t need details.’

  Her breathing seemed too shallow, frantic.

  ‘I let it go on. I should’ve put a fucking knife in that cunt’s guts, but I didn’t.’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  Sandra laughed. ‘Fuck off with the therapy, you don’t know.’

  Dorothy touched the edge of the table, felt a sticky mark. ‘No, I don’t.’

  Her mind immediately went to Jim playing with Jenny when she was little, patting her knee or tickling her. Jenny used to come through on mornings when there wasn’t a funeral and get into bed with Dorothy and Jim. She was maybe ten at the time. Dorothy never imagined, it genuinely never crossed her mind. What if. She thought about it now and felt sick.

  ‘He’s still alive, as far as I know,’ Sandra said. ‘I ran away, cut off all contact. He doesn’t know about Abi, I couldn’t ever let him into her life. I panicked, made up a dad. Maybe I wanted it to be true, a nice guy who treated her well, bought her presents, took her for ice cream. Just a normal dad, not a fucking pervert.’

  Another slug of wine then Sandra pursed her lips.

  ‘Do you think it matters who our parents are?’ she said eventually. ‘I mean genetics, something in the blood?’

  Dorothy tried to think what Jenny had taken from her, from Jim. What Hannah took from her mum or dad.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I think if you raise your kids right, are honest with them, that’s all you can do.’

  Sandra laughed again, bitter and drunken. ‘I’ve fucked that up, haven’t I?’

  Dorothy wanted to reach over and take Sandra’s hand, which was twitching on the table, but she didn’t move.

  ‘What happened to you wasn’t your fault,’ she said. ‘But you can’t keep lying to Abi.’

  ‘I can’t tell her the truth either, not all of it.’

  Sandra held her arms out looking for an answer.

  Dorothy wished she had one.

  55

  HANNAH

  There were no beeping machines like you saw on television hospital dramas. He didn’t look injured just tired, no drip or bandages, just a young man in a hospital bed who she wanted to shake awake.

  She sat by him and went over the last two hours. He’d stood up from flying over the car roof then looked around with a glazed expression. The woman driving the Ka got out and was hyperventilating, leaning against her car bonnet. A passer-by called an ambulance as Hannah took the guy’s hand and led him to the pavement, where he eased himself onto a park bench like he was an old man. He closed his eyes, rubbed the back of his neck then passed out.

  The ambulance took him away but Hannah had to stick around with the car driver to give police statements. Why were you chasing him shoeless from the cemetery? Good question. After half an hour they let her go, promising to be in touch. She called Indy to check the funeral went OK then jumped in a taxi to the hospital and here she was. It was easy to find him still in A&E, he hadn’t been moved to a ward. She swept in, checked behind each curtain, told an orderly she was his sister. The doctor dealing with it didn’t question her, barely had time to speak before he was rushed to another patient, told her the man had two broken ribs and concussion, they were keeping him in as a precaution. A nurse wheeled him upstairs and Hannah went too, so easy to bluff your way in the chaos. So now she was sitting at his bedside waiting for him to wake up, feeling terrible for running after him.

  Darkness descended in her mind. People got hurt wherever she went. Hugh died, Indy got shut out, this guy was concussed and broken. She was the connection, the evil that spread across people’s lives, and Indy was better off without her. This guy in the hospital bed was better off without her. The world was a better place without her.

  She thought about their other cases. James Dundas, homeless and dead, his dad apparently unbothered. Abi’s fake, actor dad, a mother who lied her whole life. And the worst was Craig still out there in the city.

  The guy in the bed stirred and opened his eyes. Took a moment to focus then groaned when he clocked Hannah stil
l in her funeral clothes. He wasn’t much older than her. She was surprised at his eyes, beautiful blue-green, freckles on his nose, but the dark bags under his eyes made him seem sad, serious.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said, voice cracking.

  She handed him a glass of water from the bedside table. He tried to take it with a trembling hand but spilled it so she held it to his lips. Something intimate about seeing his Adam’s apple bob up and down.

  ‘I want to know who you are.’

  He swallowed then pushed the glass away. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  He coughed, winced and held his ribs. ‘Fuck, that hurts.’

  Hannah nodded at his chest. ‘You broke two ribs.’ She looked at a graze on his head, half hidden by his hairline. ‘And concussion.’

  ‘Shit.’

  Hannah had her hands in her lap. ‘I’m sorry.’

  The guy shook his head. ‘Why did you chase me?’

  ‘Why did you run?’

  He blinked heavily. ‘Because you chased me.’

  He was making a joke but nervousness in his eyes suggested there was more to it. Hannah looked around. He’d somehow snagged a single room rather than a ward, maybe just luck of the draw. She’d expected a room full of patients, a comedy guy with his body in plaster, leg raised, someone else with a head wrapped in bandages, but it was just the two of them.

  ‘How long was I out for?’ he said.

  Hannah looked at the clock on the wall. ‘Three hours. What do you remember?’

  ‘I got up,’ he said, closing his eyes. ‘I was fine.’

  Hannah shook her head. ‘You weren’t. I took you to a bench and you passed out.’

  He raised shaking fingers to his hairline. ‘My brain isn’t fucked, is it?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘Because that’s all I need, on top of everything else.’

  Hannah shifted in her seat, touched the edge of his bed, thought about the phrase ‘hospital corners’ that Gran used once. Not a thing people talked about anymore, something about bouncing a coin on the bed?

  The guy looked around the room as if expecting someone else.

  ‘Why are you here?’ he said.

  ‘I wanted to check you were OK.’

  ‘Apparently I have two broken ribs.’

  ‘I’m sorry I chased you.’

  ‘I’m sorry I ran in front of a car, so we’re both sorry.’

  Hannah looked at the door as if a doctor would walk in and stop this.

  ‘Please tell me who you are,’ she said.

  He pressed his lips together. ‘I’m Cameron. Cammy for short.’

  ‘Cammy who?’

  ‘Wilson.’

  She rolled it around, thought she would feel something, a spark in her synapses, an answer, but she didn’t know Cammy Wilson.

  Cammy rolled his neck, winced. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Hannah,’ she said. ‘Skelf.’

  ‘The funeral people.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He put out a hand and she shook it, both of them mocking the formality.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Hannah.’

  ‘Likewise, Cammy.’ Hannah put her hands back in her lap. ‘I’ve been trying to find you for a while.’

  ‘Really?’ Another cough, another shudder from the pain. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m a private investigator.’

  ‘I thought you did funerals.’

  ‘We do both.’

  ‘That’s odd.’

  Hannah shrugged. ‘It is what it is.’

  Cammy swallowed. ‘So why were you trying to find me?’

  ‘I’ve been looking into Hugh Fowler’s death.’

  Cammy reached for the water, lifted it to his mouth, took a drink. He was like a nervous deer in the woods. ‘He committed suicide, right?’

  ‘You visited his widow.’

  He nodded. ‘I didn’t know he was dead the first time I went there.’

  ‘But you went back a second time.’

  He closed his eyes, touched his forehead, rubbed his neck. ‘I read about it. I went to offer condolences.’

  ‘But you ran away.’

  ‘I got nervous, I guess.’ There was something off about his tone.

  ‘Nervous?’

  ‘I get like that around death. You understand.’

  ‘Not really, I’m in the funeral business.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘How did you know Hugh?’

  Something came over Cammy’s face. ‘I don’t know if I should say.’

  Hannah clenched her fists. ‘I just want to know the truth. Please.’

  Cammy sighed, shifted in bed, rubbed at his ribs. ‘We were buddies at the meetings.’

  ‘What meetings?’

  ‘The cancer support group. We were cancer buddies. They pair you up when you first arrive.’

  ‘Hugh had cancer?’

  ‘Didn’t his wife tell you?’

  Hannah thought over their conversations. ‘I don’t think she knows.’

  Cammy raised his eyebrows. ‘Well everyone deals with this shit differently, but I’m surprised he wouldn’t tell his wife he was dying.’

  Hannah tried to get her head straight. ‘Dying.’

  ‘Stage four rectal adenocarcinoma.’

  Hannah took a deep breath. ‘Rectal.’

  Cammy chewed the side of his lip. ‘Yeah, nasty. Not that any of it is pleasant. But arse cancer, the symptoms are horrible.’

  Hannah didn’t even know how to shape what she was thinking.

  Cammy went on. ‘He was diagnosed very late, the prognosis wasn’t exactly glowing. They offered him options, chemo and radiotherapy, even rectal surgery. But there were a lot of down sides and he was an old man. He decided to ride it out.’

  Something occurred to Hannah. ‘What about you? Are you…?’

  ‘Dying? No.’ He reached for the bedside table. ‘Touch wood.’

  He scratched at his chin and gave Hannah a look. ‘Testicular.’ He glanced at his crotch under the sheets. ‘Both are gone, shooting blanks and all that. But I’m lucky, they caught it quickly, I’m in remission.’

  Hannah couldn’t help following his gaze and staring at his groin. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m still here, right?’

  Hannah tried to focus. ‘When did you first meet Hugh?’

  Cammy thought it over. ‘He turned up about three months ago. All the old ladies loved him, he was a real sweetheart.’

  Three months wasn’t any time at all. And he’d planned Mel’s memorial in that time, giving someone he’d hardly known a send-off when he knew he was on his own way out.

  Cammy tried to get comfortable. ‘I presumed Wendy knew.’

  Hannah shook her head, pulled at her earlobe. ‘So he killed himself because he was dying anyway?’

  Cammy kept moving in bed, wouldn’t settle. He looked out of the window then around the room. His energy was all wrong.

  Hannah narrowed her eyes. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’

  Cammy shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Come on,’ Hannah said. ‘It’s eating you up. Tell me, you’ll feel better.’

  He was vulnerable, injured, concussed, she was manipulating him but she had to find out.

  He rubbed at his neck. ‘I didn’t know what he had planned. I mean the end is horrible, symptoms are so awful you can’t imagine. Suicide is a way to avoid all that mess, inflicting it on loved ones, but I never realised that’s what he was going to do with it.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  He came to a decision, held her gaze for a moment. ‘The acid. I heard about how he did it. I mean, how was I to know, who the fuck drinks acid?’

  ‘What?’

  Cammy touched his head again, fingers fluttering at his hairline. ‘The hydrocyanic acid, I got it for him.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I work at the organic chemistry lab at King’s Buildings. That’s why the suppo
rt group put me and Hugh together, because we were both at uni, had science backgrounds. I make up compounds and solutions for post-docs and post-grads when it’s needed. It’s shit pay but they’re nice people.’

  ‘And Hugh asked you for some hydrocyanic acid.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You didn’t ask why he wanted it?’

  Cammy shrugged. ‘Said he wanted to conduct an experiment. Honestly.’

  Hannah thought about Schrödinger’s experiment, the cat in the box, hydrocyanic acid. She looked around again, still waiting for a doctor to come and take charge, tell her she shouldn’t be here, give her a reason to get away.

  She realised something. ‘That’s why you ran earlier.’

  Cammy nodded. ‘I wanted to pay respects, of course. But I looked it up, helping someone with suicide can get you done for culpable homicide, that’s years in prison. When you started walking towards me with that look, I panicked.’

  ‘That’s why you ran from Wendy’s house too.’

  ‘I went to say sorry but when I was standing on the doorstep I bottled it. Saying sorry implicates me, I can’t be involved, I didn’t know what he had planned, you have to believe me.’

  He was almost in tears, hands shaking on his bedsheets.

  Hannah stared at him and felt her face grow warm. ‘I believe you.’

  Cammy’s breathing calmed down, he nodded to himself, tried to smile. ‘So are you still investigating?’

  Hannah pictured Hugh frothing at the mouth, the acid bottle in his hand. She thought about Schrödinger’s cat, alive and dead at the same time, a man with terminal cancer looking to die with dignity.

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ she said.

  56

  JENNY

  She sat at Skelf’s reception drumming her fingers on the desk. Hannah and Indy hadn’t returned from Hugh’s funeral and Dorothy was speaking to Abi’s mum, so Jenny was holding the fort. She’d hoped manning the phones would distract her but she was going crazy over Liam. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d called, always voicemail. She’d gone to his flat, no answer, asked the neighbours, no one had seen him. She even went back to his ex’s place, looked her in the eye when she said she didn’t know where that piece of shit was. Jenny believed her.