Mud Pie

by Emma Lee Bole

When I was ten, I adopted Mr Turner as my family. Mr Turner taught year 6. He was round, bearded and bespectacled, jolly and firm in equal measure. I played him up and tried to win his heart. Luckily he was a sensible man, with three children of his own.

  I had realised by then that my family wasn’t normal; not through lack of a father, for that was common enough, but because other people’s mothers, though they might shout and slap, did not lie all night at the bottom of the stairs or try to walk through mirrors or cut the legs off their children’s too-small pyjamas with a pair of garden shears, to turn them into shorts.

  There was no Mr Turner for me at High School. Gradually, however, the whole school became my surrogate family – a big, noisy, ever-moving crowd in which I could hide and be normal. I went early and stayed late, doing basketball, gym, book club, art club, choir, jazz dance, any excuse. I won community merits like Tesco points.

  It was a run of the mill school, with a few good teachers, many adequate ones, and modest targets. The head of year gave us weekly pep talks on the importance of eating breakfast and tucking shirts in. I delighted in these mundane scoldings, as comforting as an auntie’s hug.

  For much of High School, I had Dave as a surrogate father, which helped too. He seemed to take it for granted that I would work for my exams, and think about careers, so I did. The day I sat my last GCSE, I went to the park with my mates and some lager. They were celebrating. I was lost. Now I had nowhere to go.

  But arriving at college to do my NVQs, I found it served much the same function, if more impersonally. So did my first job in a big hotel kitchen. Work gave me a home. I was able to pull further and further away from my blighted childhood, and at last – to my huge relief – to pull out altogether and into my tiny flat with Charlotte. I’d made it. I was safe.

  And now I wasn’t.

  “I don’t know what they’ve got on him,” I told Charlotte. I was using her, once again, as my place of refuge. It was the day after the sobering end of the Family Fun, and I was kneading sweet dough in the back of her shop. “If he was guilty, I would have spotted something. Jesus, I lived in the man’s house for weeks, after all!”

  “But he lives somewhere else,” pointed out Charlotte.

  “Well, I’ve been to Sue’s flat too, and believe me, she would have turned Frank in at the first sign of anything incriminating.” I recalled the powder in Becki’s purse. I hadn’t done anything about it. I hadn’t turned KK in. I hadn’t even told him about my finding of the drugs, though I’d left an addled message on his answerphone, distraught at Frank’s arrest. The police hadn’t searched KK’s flat at all. But they must have searched Frank’s house. By last night he had not been released.

  “I didn’t know Frank well. He wasn’t easy to get to know, was he?” said Charlotte. She sounded dismissive, but I was too wound up to pay much attention.

  “He’s just himself. He’s Frank.” I knew Grimshaw had got it wrong. I just didn’t know how he could have made such a mistake.

  Charlotte shrugged. “They must have had a good reason to arrest him, though, mustn’t they? And Frank seemed – hidden. He kept a lot back.”

  I wished she wouldn’t talk about him in the past tense. “Surely you don’t think he did it, Charlotte?”

  She rested her hands on the floured table. “To be honest, Lannie, I’d be relieved if he did.”

  “What?”

  “So would Hugh. You can see it’s like a black cloud lifting for him, this arrest. I mean he’s horribly shocked and saddened, but at least it’s the end of all the worry. Not knowing what happened. You don’t know what it’s been like for him. It should be a load off your mind, too, just to know who it was.”

  “But,” I said, helpless.

  “But nothing. Leave it to the police, Lannie. Let them sort it out. They know what they’re doing. It’s out of our hands.” Charlotte slapped her dough around, and then began to stretch and loop it expertly.

  Out of our hands. For a while I watched her deftly plaiting strips of dough. Her hands were strong and assured. Bread was all that mattered.

  “You’re getting good at that,” I said unhappily.

  “Yeah, quite a production line these days.”

  “Business is good, then? You seem happier.”

  “It’s not bad. It’s improving.” She pushed the plait aside and started another. “Lannie. I’ve got a proposal to make. Do you fancy coming to work with me? Bridget’s lovely, but all she can do is shove things in and out of ovens. I really need someone else who knows the technical side. I’ve been making hot cross buns 24-7 for the last fortnight.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll have to think.” At once my thoughts hurtled back into their hamster wheel of torment. It wasn’t Frank. It couldn’t be. Why would Frank kill Becki? Frank was safe. That was why I’d gone to his flat after being chased over Brocklow – because I knew he was safe. For a start, he wasn’t tall enough to be the man who’d chased me.

  I stared at the ovens. Bloody hell. What did that mean? Did that mean that subconsciously I felt it was someone from the club who’d been chasing after me? Not a Salford gangster after all?

  “I can’t make you a partner,” continued Charlotte, “because Daddy wants me to keep sole ownership, and I can’t pay you a great deal. But I can equal what you’re getting at the moment.”

  “Uh-huh.” Hellfire. The club was full of big, fit, agile men. KK. Niall. The Killicks. Stevo. I had KK’s drugs in my holdall. What about those? Were they what Niall had sent me to find?

  “You can make a new start,” said Charlotte. “I know someone who’s got a room in a house in Chorlton. That’s not too far. And it’d be better than sleeping on a bench in the pub, wouldn’t it?”

  “Anything’s better than that.” I was getting terribly confused. The person who chased me over the moors must be the same person who killed Becki. Mustn’t it? Therefore could not be Frank. Why would anyone from the club want to chase me? Had I been getting too close to somebody? Had I asked too many questions? Michelle flickered into my mind, curling her hair around her finger.

  “And now they’ve caught him – I mean Frank – you might not want to stay there. It’ll all be a bit awful, Lannie. You’ll want to get away.”

  “Will I?” What had Grimshaw got on Frank? Had Sue said something to him? Jesus, that woman.

  “Lannie! You can come home now,” Charlotte urged. “Becki’s death was nothing to do with you. Nobody’s chasing you any more. I know it’s not the answer you expected, but you can stop worrying.”

  “I don’t know what the hell’s going on,” I said. I don’t think Charlotte heard me.

  “We could go out and see old friends. Hugh would like it too. I think it would do him good, Lannie. He was asking after you. He said he missed you.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yes, he’s been trying to phone you but he said he can never get through.”

  “No signal.”

  “And when he came round to see you, you’d gone out for a walk.” Her tone was faintly accusing.

  “Sorry.” Frank wasn’t a killer. He wasn’t angry enough. Except about Dean: he kept so much closeted away, all the ancient grief... Christ, that handkerchief!

  Grimshaw had taken some stuff from Frank’s house. I remembered Ed’s plastic bags. What if they’d found the handkerchief? What if they thought the blood was Becki’s? My hands clenched on the dough.

  “Then it was too busy at the fun day for him to talk to you, and then Frank got arrested and everyone went home and you’d gone too before he realised.”

  “Yes.” They would have tested the handkerchief. The DNA wouldn’t fit. But they must have had a good reason to arrest Frank. And Frank must have a reason for the reason.

  “Lannie? I wish you’d ring Hugh.”

  “Hugh?” Saying his name, I saw Frank’s face, his intense, absent-minded gaze. The way he had gazed at Becki’s father at the funeral, fascinated... “Hugh’s got Tamara,” I said automatica
lly.

  “Yes, but. You know, I’m not sure about Tamara. I don’t think she’s good for him. I think she’s been winding him up.”

  “Winding him up how?” Fifteen years ago, what had Becki’s dad been doing? Driving his car over the Cat and Fiddle Pass...? My thoughts began to snake and twist like the road, heading off towards unlikely destinations. Impossible dead ends.

  “I don’t know. Hugh wanted to talk to you about something Tamara said. What do you think she could be saying? He wouldn’t tell me.”

  “God knows,” I said. Tamara didn’t matter. Hugh hardly mattered. I didn’t know what was happening to me.

  My hands had stopped moving and were clutching the pastry as if it was a soggy handkerchief. It was an effort to release it. My fingers were as cold and numb as stones.

  “Oh, Lannie.” Charlotte wiped her own hands on her apron and gave me a floury hug. I succumbed, sniffing, rubbed my face and blew my nose.

  “Are you keen on Frank?” she said, looking at me intently.

  “Of course not. He’s got a girlfriend. That Sue, you know.”

  “I never spoke to her. What’s she like?”

  “Sue? Very down to earth. Upright. Practical. Gets things done.”

  “Very like you, then,” Charlotte said.

  “Damn. No wonder I can’t stand her.”

  Charlotte gave me a little shake. “Lannie! Leave Frank to the police. It’s over. You don’t need to stay there any more. Leave all that hassle. Leave the pie and chips and come back home.”

  “Maybe.” I blew my nose again, shook my head and got a grip. I went to wash my hands before returning to the dough. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “I am right.”

  On autopilot, I cut and sugared buns, laid them out, and then started a new batch. “What’s the house in Chorlton like?” Not that I wanted to know; but I had to say something.

  “It’s okay. The room’s not huge, but the house has central heating and a nice kitchen.”

  “Who’s the owner?”

  “He’s called Duncan,” said Charlotte. “He’s a web designer, but he’s quite normal. Actually, he’s really nice.” Her voice was smiling.

  “Charlotte? Are you sure it isn’t you who should be moving in with him?”

  “Oh, no,” said Charlotte seriously. “Far too early days. Daddy wouldn’t like it. They haven’t even met each other yet. You’d like him, though. You’d like it there. You’d like working here with me.” Dear Charlotte, so trusting, so optimistic. She believed in fairy-tale endings. She gave me hope.

  Charlotte drove me to Stockport station and waited on the platform with me, with the wind slapping and tweaking our clothes like a hyperactive little brother who didn’t know when to stop. Eventually a train arrived to take me to Macc, a slow bus trundled me up into the chilly hills and my reluctant feet carried me along the narrowing lanes back to the Woolpack.

  I had thought the country tediously safe. Now it had turned into the heart of darkness. Trudging through Brocklow, I averted my eyes from Nan’s house and gazed up the hill. Had I really walked up there with a killer all those weeks ago? But the killer had chased me over there last week: and that hadn’t been Frank, but a taller man. There couldn’t be two killers around. Could there?

  Back at the empty Woolpack, Brendan was glum and bewildered.

  “Not Frank.” He repeated it under his breath. “Not Frank.” The two little girls scooted around, giggly and over-excited, playing dodge under the tables until Rhoda bundled them upstairs. The arrest would be something to boast about in the playground. My daddy knows a murderer.

  “The thing is,” said Brendan mournfully, “We thought it must be your Manchester drugs gang. Well, everybody did. That’s what Niall was saying, and for once I thought he was talking sense. It made everyone a lot happier, so to speak.”

  “They all knew about that?” I was a bit staggered, and then touched by their discretion. Nobody had said a thing to me. Not a word of accusation. Until now; when Frank’s arrest, thanks to my big mouth, came with all the shock of a trusty gas stove blowing up in their faces. Not Frank...

  I stayed in the back making huge batches of pastry for the freezer, to keep myself occupied. Charlotte was right: I needed to find another place to live. Anywhere away from here. I couldn’t stand still. I couldn’t sit. When Rhoda asked me to pop over to Arthur’s for some eggs, I jumped at the chance to get out.

  I trudged through the twilit mud to the accompaniment of wailing dogs. In the dark, the wind felt as savage as a hungry wolf come rampaging off the moors.

  “By heck,” said Arthur as he opened the door, “It’s wild out. We’ll be losing a few chimney pots in this.”

  “Not ours, though,” said his wife Doreen complacently. She sat bolt upright in her chair by the fire, knitting something salmon-pink. Their kitchen was huge, low-ceilinged, dark and weather-tight as a ship’s hold. The fire, more generous than the Woolpack’s, filled the room with a smoky warmth that I wanted to grab and pull round me like a blanket.

  “How’s Rhoda?” asked Doreen.

  “She’s fine. She says can we buy a dozen eggs please, if you’ve got them.”

  Doreen laid down her knitting on the long dark table and disappeared out the back.

  “Bad news about Frank,” Arthur said with satisfaction.

  “Yes.” I looked around, wondering how to phrase the question in my mind. The ceiling had vast oak beams with a drying-horse dangling from them. There was a heavy black dresser straight out of the Antiques Roadshow, probably seventeenth century oak or something, rag rugs on the flagstones, socks drying on the rail along the front of the stove, and a tiny, snowing TV sitting on a peeling melamine cupboard. Arthur settled himself into an old green easy chair which would have met with Nan’s approval.

  “Rhoda’s on the mend, then?”

  “I think so. Um.” I hesitated, and then came out with it. I wanted things clear, even if it couldn’t help Frank. “That bother you talked about,” I said, “the other week when you knocked on my door. Was that Rhoda’s illness you meant?”

  “What else would it be?” said Arthur tartly.

  “It might be the bother when Becki came round to the Woolpack and had words with Rhoda, back in November.”

  “Oh, aye? Who told you about that?”

  “The girls. Katy hasn’t forgiven you for calling her a mucky pup.”

  “Oh aye. She is, an’ all.” He was silent for a moment, rubbing the arm of his chair absently as if it were his dog’s head. “Bad business,” he said.

  “Sounds like your dog broke it up.”

  “Aye, well, I gave him the order. He were a bit surprised, like, seeing as they weren’t sheep, but he did the job well enough. Madam screamed like a stuck pig, and left in a huff and a puff, any road.”

  “Becki?”

  “Aye. Don’t know what these young lasses are coming to.”

  “Mm. Becki was a bit...” I left it open-ended.

  Arthur answered with a huff and a puff of his own. “And the language!”

  “She swore at you?”

  “Like a trooper, though it were nowt to do wi’ me. I only called round to borrow some gaffer tape, like, so it were a bit of a shock to see them having a go at each other hammer and tongs in the kitchen. Just as well I had Laddie by me or Madam might have ended up wi’ a knife in her throat right there and then and not three months later.”

  “You’re kidding! That bad?”

  Arthur gave a snort.

  “What was it all about?”

  He gave me a sidelong look. “You don’t know? If you don’t know, I’m saying nowt.”

  “I do know,” I said. “Becki and Brendan.”

  “Aye, well.” He shifted in his chair, restless as one of his dogs. “God knows what Madam thought she were doing there, stirring it up again. Getting Rhoda all het up. Shaking with anger she were.”

  “Did she attack Becki?”

  “Rhoda? Don’t be so bloo
dy silly.”

  “What, then Brendan attacked Becki?”

  Arthur sat straighter in his chair and stared at me accusingly. “I thought you said them lasses had told you all about it?”

  “They’ve got Frank for the murder now,” I said. “Do you think they’ve got the wrong man?”

  He shook his head as if the suggestion was a fly. “I’m saying nowt for you to carry off to the police. It’s all nonsense.”

  Doreen came back in with a carton. “Ten’s all I could find,” she said cheerfully. “Will that do?”

  “I’m sure it will. Thanks, Doreen.” As I headed for the door, Arthur got briskly out of his chair and took his ragged overcoat off its peg.

  “I’ll just check them bullocks in the barn,” he told Doreen. “They’ll be panicking a bit, this weather.” He followed me out into the yard. He had to raise his voice into the wind.

  “You leave it be. Madam were looking for trouble. I don’t say she deserved to be murdered, but I can’t say I were surprised. The way she carried on. All sorts, according to Rhoda. Now she’s dead, you leave it be.”

  “I’m only trying–”

  “You leave it be,” he repeated angrily. “Rhoda’s had enough.” He turned on his heel and walked off into the gale. I had learned nothing, and solved nothing. All I had gained was a vague, unlikely thought that maybe Frank was covering up for someone else. I didn’t even know whether it was something to hope or fear. So instead I grabbed on to the more acceptable hope that the police would have to release Frank soon, when their thirty-six hours were up.

  They didn’t. That meant it was serious enough to get a magistrate’s consent: I knew that much from all the times Karl had got himself arrested. He’d never got convicted, though, until I took a hand in it. I felt dreadful.

  Overnight, the wind grew stronger, howling like a werewolf. By morning it was a bullying monster that blustered at the windows and barged at the doors. Brendan went out shopping with his face wrapped in a scarf. I turned the ovens on full blast and began to bang around in the kitchen.

  “What’s that you’re making?” asked Rhoda.

  “Yorkshire pudding. The walkers will want a good stodgy meal. We can fill the Yorkshires with the cold beef.” The truth was I wanted the ovens burning like furnaces. I wanted the heat to purify me.

  Rhoda looked doubtful. “If we get any walkers today. Who’d go out in this?” Then she sighed. “Well, it’s up to you. You’re the chef.”

  That was a first. Rhoda was almost tiptoeing around me as I clattered bowls and broke Doreen’s eggs in spectacular, careless, one-handed fashion, tossing the shells right across the room into the sink.

  “You feeling all right, Lannie?”

  “Time of the month.” As good a reason as any.

  “Shall I get you some painkillers?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. What I really wanted was a large brandy, but that never solved anything. So I whisked and battered myself into a frenzy, ready for the customers who didn’t come.

  “Nobody’s out walking this weather,” said Rhoda at last. “Come and sit in the lounge, Lannie. Have a drink.”

  I had a grapefruit juice. Rhoda poured herself a quarter-pint of beer and joined me by the fire, where a solitary log was burning feebly.

  “No point building it up until someone comes in,” said Rhoda. We listened to the wind whining peevishly at the windows. The curtains flared. “Well, maybe I will,” said Rhoda. She put on another log, which sat there blackly, and topped up her glass. “I shouldn’t be drinking, but what the hell.”

  “With the drug regime?”

  “They say I can drink in moderation. Now and again.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “It’s going all right,” said Rhoda, “they think. As far as they can tell. Everything’s provisional with them. There’s nothing definite until you die. Then you’re definitely dead.”

  “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

  “Thank you. You’ve helped.” She didn’t say I had helped a great deal. But then I probably hadn’t.

  “I’ve enjoyed working here.” It was true, apart from the chips, the cheesecake, and the Becki business. Rhoda looked wary.

  “But are you definitely thinking of leaving?” I couldn’t tell if she wanted me to or not.

  “Yes. Scotland.”

  “Have you got a job to go to? We could probably find you one through the brewery,” said Rhoda, “if you’re happy working in a pub.”

  “I don’t mind where I work.”

  “But you don’t want to stay on here?”

  “It was only ever temporary.”

  “Until I got better, was that it?” She sat forward and said briskly, “You’re very welcome to stay, Lannie. You’ve been useful. I know I was a bit sharp with you when you arrived, but I wasn’t feeling too good.”

  “I understand that.”

  “It’s been a help for me to have the free time. I have to admit the new menu’s gone down well, and your puddings are very popular.” She coughed. “We could even give you a raise. Not a huge one, mind.”

  “It’s not the money.” It’s the murder, I wanted to say, it’s Frank, it’s this feeling that I’ve been turned upside down.

  “We’ll miss you,” she said, as the door crashed open and Brendan launched through it with armfuls of shopping bags. The wind rampaged gleefully around the bar, tossing beermats into the air.

  “Shut that door, Brendan!” ordered Rhoda. “What took you so long?”

  “Had to stop in Fylington,” announced Brendan. His face was glowing pink with excitement. “Going straight back there. Emergency. The bloody roof’s blown off the club!”