by Penny Kline
*
The boy at the checkout had just been given a bag of loose change. ‘Came in here did he?’ he said, pouring coins into one of the compartments. ‘What d’you say he’s like?’
‘Fair hair, wearing a dark blue zip-up jacket over a blue sweatshirt and grey trousers. He’s six, nearly seven.’
‘On his own, you say?’ He turned to speak to a woman who was tearing up cardboard boxes and stacking them in a pile. ‘You seen a boy with a blue coat?’
‘Don’t you have an announcement system?’ said Janice. ‘What happens if a kid wanders off and loses its mother? This place is like an aircraft hangar. Just stuff for pets, is it? Crikey, they’re better off than most human beings.’
‘Wait there,’ I told her, starting up the centre aisle, past the sacks of dry pet food, furry beds, plastic bowls, collars and leads. Customers, studying the shelves as if they had all the time in the world, seemed to be standing in my way at every turn, blocking the view down the side aisles, deliberately refusing to get out of the way. A parrot in the distance was squawking something unintelligible but when I came closer I could hear it repeating two phrases over and over again. “Who are you? What d’you want?” “Who are you? What d’you want?” Three black and white rabbits lay stretched out asleep in the corner of their hutch, gerbils ran in and out of a brown plastic boot, and a mouse in the next cage raced round its wheel. There was no sign of Charlie.
I called his name but the parrot drowned my voice. What was it he had said he wanted, only Eric had refused to buy it for him? A reticulated python, or if that was too expensive, a cane toad or a longtailed skink. I circled the reptiles, peering under their enclosures in case Charlie was hiding or had fallen asleep, but with no real expectation of finding him, just a superstitious belief that if I searched every place I could think of everything would be all right, he would be alive and well.
‘Charlie? Charlie, it’s me, Anna, if you’re here please come out, no one’s going to be cross, it wasn’t your fault.’
Silence. Even the parrot had stopped squawking. Then I remembered the tanks of fish in an alcove on the right. Charlie knew about fish too: guppies and pineapple swords, tiger barbs and kissing gouramis. He had a book about them and a fish mobile that hung above his bed that he had made himself with silver paper and pieces of orange and white plastic cut from a yoghourt pot.
The lights were very bright, tiny fish moved through the bubbles in shoals, larger ones drifted aimlessly, and at the far end of the room, partially hidden behind a pillar, stood Charlie, staring up at something large and spotted with a huge mouth that seemed to be sucking the glass.
‘Charlie,’ I said softly, not wanting to frighten him, and he spun round, steadying himself against the pillar then stumbling towards me.
‘I was tired,’ he said, ‘I was only having a rest. She crashed the car. I think she’s dead.’
Chapter Eighteen
Through the workshop window we could see Charlie playing swing ball on the lawn. Every so often, when he missed the ball or smashed it too hard so it came back and hit him, he mouthed a four-letter word, then gritted his teeth and started again.
On my way to find Eric he had asked if Lianne’s head was better. ‘I shouldn’t have gone with her, should I, but she told me you’d asked her to collect me from school. Why did she?’
‘It wasn’t your fault, Charlie. She just likes children.’
‘Hasn’t she got any?’
‘No.’
He gave a sad little sigh. ‘I shouldn’t have gone to Pet Mart. I asked two girls where to catch a bus that went up the Wells Road but they told me to go home or my mother would be worried about me. After I’d looked at the python and the fish I was going to see if someone would lend me twenty p so I could phone Dad.’
‘It’s all right, Charlie, none of it was your fault. Everyone’s just glad you’re safe and well.’
Eric sat at a workbench jabbing a chisel into a piece of wood. ‘That Lianne was going to marry Cunliffe,’ he said, ‘at least that’s what she told the police.’
‘Yes, that’s what Janice said only I got the impression she thought it might have been a fantasy in Lianne’s head.’
‘Makes no difference.’ The euphoria of the previous evening, brought about by Charlie’s safe return, had evaporated. Lianne’s revelations had introduced a new set of problems. ‘After Cunliffe died she went through a notebook she’d taken from his flat, found the initials EN, together with various times, places and sums of money, and decided he must have been blackmailing me.’
‘Where is this notebook?’
‘She threw it away.’
‘Doesn’t make sense,’ I said. ‘If she thought you’d killed Cunliffe why didn’t she give it to the police?’
EN for Eric Newsom, or for Edward Newsom?
He shrugged. ‘Who knows? Admitting she made the anonymous calls to them has just made Maltby even more convinced I’m a double murderer. Cunliffe had told Lianne he and Nikki had been lovers.’
‘Was it true?’
‘Was what true?’ He slammed his fist on the workbench making the row of chisels jump so that two of them rolled to the floor. ‘Did I kill my wife? Did I kill Cunliffe? What is this, whose side are you on? Go on then, say what you really think.’
‘Where did you go that day I had to take Charlie to the college?’
‘What?’ He stared at me as if I had asked a totally irrelevant question. ‘Nowhere, I never go anywhere in particular. All the times I’ve asked you to stay with him, it’s because I hoped if I left the two of you together he might tell you what was making him feel so bad.’
‘Does your mother know what Lianne told the police?’
‘My mother? All she knows is you introduced one of your crazy students to Charlie and two days later she abducted him.’
‘You’ll have to tell her more than that. If you don’t, Maltby will.’ And when she knows the whole story she’ll tell the police about Ted or will she? Not if she thinks it would be likely to leave her son in an even more incriminating position.
‘I asked you about Charlie.’ Eric stood up and started pulling drawing pins out of the pin board on the wall. ‘He’s said something, hasn’t he, but you didn’t like to pass it on.’
I thought about Barry’s phone call. Supposing Nikki had let Eric think he was Charlie’s father then, six months ago, in the middle of a row, blurted out the truth. She could even have threatened to leave and take Charlie with her — to his real father?
‘A couple of times he’s asked me why no one told him,’ I said.
‘Told him what?’
‘He wouldn’t say. Anyway, I told you that before. When I pressed him he made up some story about his school uniform.’
‘How do you know he was making it up?’ His anger was rising again. ‘All right, what do you think he meant? Come on, you’re bound to have some theory.’
‘What happened between you and Barry?’
‘Nothing. He thinks I killed Nikki.’
‘Is that what he said?’
‘Not in so many words but that’s why he didn’t go to the funeral.’
‘He was ill.’ I had my hand on the door. ‘Look, I’ll talk to you later, I have to go and see Janice Kirk.’
‘When? Now? If the stupid woman had told you about Lianne Fraser none of this need have happened.’
I was tired, and sick of being shouted at. ‘She wasn’t to know Lianne was going to pick Charlie up from school. I doubt if it was something even Lianne herself had planned. She was hanging about, watching the children coming out and when no one turned up to collect him —’
‘Why? Why was she hanging about? I thought she’d gone home with a migraine.’
‘Yes, that’s what Janice said. Look, I don’t know, Eric. She’s rather a pathetic girl, I suppose she wanted to talk to Charlie, be with him, take him for a ride.’
‘You can say that again! In a stolen bloody car. She could have killed him!’
<
br /> *
Janice’s flat was on the ground floor but when I knocked I heard someone start running down the stairs and the door was opened by a man in dirty overalls, who looked as if he was in the middle of bleaching his hair.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I thought you was somebody else.’
‘I’ve come to see Janice.’
He looked blank, put his hand up to touch his hair, then thought better of it. ‘She one of the birds on the ground floor?’ He pointed to a door at the back of the house. ‘Could be in the garden, thought I saw someone getting their washing in. You haven’t seen a black bloke, have you, tall, skinny?’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘Oh, well.’ He disappeared up the stairs again and I heard a woman’s voice asking who it was, then a door slammed and a moment later loud music filled the whole house and a window frame started to vibrate.
Janice was coming through the garden door with a pile of clothes in her arms. She screwed up her face, trying to adjust from the bright light outside to the relative darkness of the passage. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, ‘how’d you get in?’
‘The man from upstairs.’
Pushing a door open with her elbow she waited for me to take hold of it before it swung shut. ‘In here.’ She dropped the washing in a corner. ‘Only one chair. I’ll sit on the bed. We could have sat in the kitchen but it’s a tip. Lianne used to do the washing up. I do enough at the restaurant.’
‘Yes, I’m sure.’ The walls were covered in posters, pictures of people kissing, pigs kissing, children in funny hats, topless men on motorbikes. On a shelf above the fireplace a row of books from the reading list had been propped up between a pink teddy bear and a radio. The table was covered with more books and what looked like the first page of an essay. Janice covered the essay with a pad of file paper, then flopped onto the bed and sat with her back against the wall and her legs stuck out in front of her.
‘Nice room,’ I said, carefully lowering myself onto the metal-framed chair with a canvas seat that was coming adrift at one corner. ‘How long have you lived here?’
‘You mean this place or Brislington? Five months here, before that I was in a basement but the damp made my chest bad. What’ll they do with Lianne, put her on probation, make her see a shrink?’
‘How is she? You’ve been to the hospital?’
She nodded. ‘Coming out at the weekend. Think the cops may drop the charges? Think there’s a chance? I mean, she never meant to harm him.’
‘Just abduct him, steal a car and run it into a hedge. They could both have been killed.’
Janice heaped up the pillows behind her back. ‘She wanted to take him to the seaside.’
‘And then what was she planning to do?’
‘Doubt if she’d thought that far ahead. Buy him a burger and fries, then drop him off back home?’
‘Because she thought Eric had killed Shaun Cunliffe. Anyway, I came here to see how you were, and to thank you.’
‘What for?’ She pulled the duvet over her feet. ‘For not telling you about Lianne and Shaun before?’
‘You weren’t to know she was going to do something like this. Did you ever meet him?’
‘Cunliffe?’ She shook her head. ‘By the time Lianne moved in here he’d ditched her, that’s why she needed a place. Mind you, I could tell what he was like, a wanker that makes promises without the slightest intention of keeping them. Poor kid, she believed what she wanted to believe, thought if he was screwing her that meant he must be in love with her. Oh, that reminds me.’ A big smile spread across her face. ‘Cunliffe told Lianne about this place he and Nikki used to go to. Some kind of club, lesbian sex shows, women touching each other up, only with men watching it, of course. Anyway, the reason I thought you’d like to know, that posh woman from the toyshop in Fish Street works there.’
‘Works there?’
‘Dresses up in silly costumes, prison warder or strict school mistress, you know the kind of crap, tells the girls how naughty they’ve been, gives their bums a smack.’
‘The woman from the toyshop? I think you must have got that wrong, Janice.’ She hauled herself off the bed. ‘Ah, but you’ll never know, will you, not unless somebody checks. If you’re interested I could give you the address. House called The Priory, I remember that much, but I’d have to look at the map to remember the name of the road. If they put Lianne inside I don’t know what I’m going to do for cash. I mean I can’t relet her room, not if she’s coming back.’
‘They won’t put her inside,’ I said. ‘Listen, you say Deborah Bryant works at this club, but how did you know I knew her?’
‘Who?’
‘The woman from the toyshop.’
‘Oh, her.’ She pulled open a drawer and took out an envelope. ‘Lianne said Shaun Cunliffe sent you a letter, just for a laugh it was, after he found you’d moved in next to Eric.’
‘Cunliffe did?’ Hallo! How do you like living next door to a killer? Charlie is my darling! Had he made the phone calls too?
It seemed very likely — until I remembered they had continued after he was killed.
‘Letter from Andrea,’ said Janice, holding up the envelope. ‘I invited her to stay but she hasn’t said anything about it.’
‘We’ll talk about it later.’
‘When?’
‘Soon, in a day or two. This club you mentioned, is it open every night?’
‘The Thursday Club, that’s what Lianne called it. Shaun was going to take her there, only he never did.’ She put the letter back in its envelope, then turned away, straightening the bed. ‘You asked how I knew you were a friend of the woman in the toyshop, only you know the answer already — you saw me.’
‘I saw you that time near the hospital.’
‘And in the supermarket. What about all the other times? I’d lose sight of you, then catch up again.’ She gave a huge yawn, covering her mouth with both hands. ‘Pathetic, eh? Couldn’t get you out of my mind, wanted to know where you went, if you had a boyfriend. No, don’t tell me, I’ve read the books. Transference, they call it, feelings from the past, when you were a kid, transferred into the present, only God knows what feelings they were and in any case they’ve gone now, ever since we were out looking for Charlie.’ She was watching me, daring me to put a foot wrong, say something she could interpret as patronising. ‘Before that, before Lianne took Charlie, I’d thought you were some kind of superwoman, cool, in control, then suddenly there you were rushing round like a headless chicken and it dawned on me — shame really — underneath you were just like the rest of us.’
*
I felt like a kerb crawler, driving slowly past gates and driveways, making use of the street lights to try and read the names of the houses although most of them had no plates that I could see. Eventually I gave up, parked my car in a side road and walked back the way I had come. Since talking to Janice I had realised how little I knew about Deborah — only what Isabel had told me, and a few scathing remarks from Eric. Neither Isabel nor Eric thought she and Nikki had liked each other very much, but Ronnie seemed to think Nikki had seen her as some kind of role model and if they had both attended the same health club they might have spent more time together than anyone realised. Could Deborah have known Cunliffe? Had Nikki introduced him to her? And how much did Ted Newsom know about it? Not much, I guessed. Deborah had fallen for him because he was a doctor, a father figure — and probably because he was married to someone else — but the reality of day-to-day living in a tiny flat that had been exclusively hers before he moved in, had soon taken the edge off the relationship. Had she talked to Cunliffe, told him how unhappy she was, then started a second ‘illicit’ affair?
Two men were coming out of a porch covered in Virginia creeper. One was carrying a torch, its beam of light jerking about as he helped the other into the back of a silver-grey Mercedes. Closing the car door with a discreet clunk he stood for a moment, staring all about him, then climbed into the driving seat, re
versed, almost hitting another car, then shot forward, pulling up a short distance from where I was standing, before turning into the road. The plate on the gate post, was only inches from my face: The Priory, black lettering on white with a black edging like an invitation to a funeral. As the car swept past I had caught a glimpse of the passenger’s mottled face and paunchy cheeks. He looked well-dressed, but very old, old enough to live in a private nursing home, although I doubted if The Priory was such a place.
It was close to midnight. Some of the club ‘members’ probably stayed till the early hours. Had Ted got used to Deborah returning in the middle of the night after ‘an evening out with her female friends’? I thought about the photograph of Cunliffe that Maltby had shown me. His face was the kind some women love — dark hair, a short, broad nose, sulky mouth — and I wondered why someone who appeared to be so pleased with himself would have bothered with a girl like Lianne. She was quite good-looking in a fragile, doll-like kind of way, but Cunliffe looked the type who would have hated someone clinging, dependent. Looked the type? I knew nothing about him, apart from the few hints Janice had dropped and she had never even met him. Perhaps it had amused him, for a time, to have a devoted slave hanging around. She helped to boost his ego until he could persuade Deborah to ditch her doctor and let him move in instead.
Keeping close to the rhododendrons I moved nearer to the house, hoping to find a place where I could watch the front door with very little risk of being seen. The sky was overcast and the only light came from narrow slits between the curtains. At first there were no sounds from the house, then my ears became accustomed to the noise of passing traffic and tuned in to faint music that could have been on the first floor, although all the windows I could see were dark, with their curtains drawn back. If Janice was right did the show take place on the ground floor or upstairs? Was it underway even now or did the departure of the old man with the mottled face mean it was over and it was only those clientele less in danger of succumbing to a heart attack who had climbed the stairs for part two of the entertainment. I could have asked Howard Fry what he knew about the house — the police were usually well-informed about most such places and chose to turn a blind eye — but that would have led to a string of questions and quite likely another visit from Detective Sergeant Maltby.