But by Degrees

by Kit Eyre

  ‘A deal? What kind of deal?’

  ‘Half the people in there can go.’

  ‘You’ll let some people out?’ I questioned. As Jude shuddered against me, I added, ‘Why?’

  He let out a growl. ‘You’re not deaf, you’re not stupid.’

  ‘It just seems . . . I don’t know. It’s risky, isn’t it? If people leave they might tell someone what’s going on.’

  ‘Your job to stop it.’

  ‘Mine?’ I twisted into Jude’s body. ‘You mean you want me to go?’

  ‘No chance,’ he said with a snort. ‘You stay. That’s not up for debate. Something else – you choose who goes. You understand? No group debate, no picking names out of a hat.’

  I couldn’t follow him. I groped for Jude’s collar and rested my forehead against her chin. She gently tilted my head back to search my eyes and the lines on her brow deepened. Right now, I wanted to kiss her, but the headset was in the way.

  ‘Danni?’ Conrad pressed. ‘Do you want this deal or not?’

  ‘Y-yes. Of course. Why me though?’

  He snickered before he replied, ‘Everyone likes someone to blame.’

  Chapter 19

  July 2011

  Gemma chose to bunk down with Harriet. I didn’t much mind.

  She was discreet about it, not moving her bag until Jude’s door was shut for the night and none of the other guests were around. On my own, I put the television on mute and watched a repeat of Midsomer Murders in silence then left the screen flickering while I slipped inside the stiff sheets. Every time I turned over, they crinkled against my throat till I kicked them away and curled up in the middle of the bed. I got maybe a few hours of sleep shivering like that then I realised I needed the loo.

  The room was full of loose floorboards squeaking at the mildest pressure, and the door sounded like an elephant whining. I eased it shut behind me then turned towards the bathroom and –

  ‘God, you scared the shit out of me!’

  Jude was slumped against the burgundy wall in lime green pyjamas, knees drawn up to her chin. Her eyes fluttered upwards before she clambered to her feet using the speckled wall as a crutch.

  ‘I went to the loo a while back,’ she said.

  I crunched my fingers around my stick. ‘Forget the way back to your room, did you?’

  ‘Course not.’

  ‘What are you doing then?’

  ‘Waiting for you. I would’ve knocked, but it’s six o’clock and Gemma hates my guts as it is.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I don’t really fancy talking right now so if you don’t mind . . .’

  As I made to pass, she sidestepped into my path and stretched her arms across the landing. A familiar odour of sweat tickled my nostrils, catching in my throat before I could stop it. I swallowed it down and glared at her.

  ‘Stop acting like a five-year-old.’

  ‘I think we should go back to Lenora’s,’ she said.

  ‘That’s the plan.’

  ‘No, I mean just us.’

  Sweat slithered between my palm and my stick. ‘And why would that work?’

  ‘Harriet charging in there won’t,’ Jude argued, crossing her arms. ‘You saw her yesterday. She’s never had what you’d call tact.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘It’s exactly the point. We might not have another crack at Lenora once Harriet’s finished with her. But if we go –’

  ‘What? Come on, Jude,’ I demanded when she bit down on her lip. ‘You’ve got all the answers, haven’t you?’

  She reached up to tuck her hair behind her right ear. It was one of her old habits, but maybe it was calculated right now. Coiled around her eyebrow was a thin scar that jolted me back eighteen months, dragging me through an avalanche of emotions. Somehow, I mastered them and drew myself up.

  ‘I’m not ditching Harriet to suit you.’

  ‘It’s the only way we’ve got,’ she insisted.

  I sniggered. ‘First off, there’s no ‘we’ in any of this. Second, I don’t trust you as far as I could chuck you so why the hell should I care what you think?’

  ‘Listen to me – listen.’ She planted her hands on either wall, completely blocking my route to the bathroom. That show of control was quickly contradicted by the way she scuffed her heels together. ‘Danni, please, I’m here, aren’t I? I don’t have to be.’

  ‘No, you could’ve given us the address and left us to it. If what you really cared about was getting to the truth, that would’ve been enough. Wouldn’t have mattered whether you were here or not.’

  Her heels clipped again. ‘Okay, it wasn’t the only reason I came. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know. Come with me, come on. We’ll get a taxi, leave those two sleeping. If you level with her, let her see –’

  ‘Let you see,’ I interrupted.

  ‘It’s not about that. You know I’m right, Danni,’ she pressed, a smile tugging at her lips. ‘I can see it in your eyes. Let’s get dressed and go. Come on.’

  I hesitated then nudged her out of the way with my stick. ‘We don’t need a taxi. I’ve got Harriet’s spare key.’

  Jude’s chuckle shivered through me. ‘She’ll love that, won’t she?’

  The sun was rising beyond the rows of dusky houses by the time we left the B&B.

  Jude took her time adjusting the seat and tweaking the mirrors until she finally set off and steered us onto a dual carriageway. Wispy fog streaked between us and the legions of trucks and tankers trying to get through before the morning rush. I counted seven distinct patches then we swerved off into a service station.

  ‘We don’t need petrol,’ I pointed out.

  She pulled up alongside the forecourt. ‘We can’t turn up before eight and we could both do with breakfast. Looks like they do butties, do you want one?’

  ‘I’ll pay you back,’ I muttered.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  As she slipped through the automatic doors, my eyes strayed towards her. I’d been used to precision in the past, confident steps that took her where she needed to be, whether it was into Harriet’s office for a meeting or into my kitchen to push my fingers into her underwear. Now, though, she held herself back, shuffling across to the counter and keeping her chin low while she talked to the cashier. Maybe she dipped her head to hide her scar or maybe it was all an act for my benefit. With Jude, anything was possible.

  When she got back, she pushed a paper bag into my hands. ‘They were out of tomatoes so I got you sachets of sauce.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I paused. ‘Are we eating here?’

  ‘Woman said there’s a layby about a mile further along. Prettier than the back end of a petrol pump was how she put it.’

  A snort bubbled in my throat. ‘Fair enough.’

  The sandwich moistened my palms during the short journey. Jude parked up, unbuckled her seatbelt and settled back to enjoy her breakfast without a glance in my direction. I extracted my bap delicately, concentrating on not dumping it in my lap by mistake, and began eating.

  ‘How have you been?’ Jude questioned abruptly.

  A lump of bacon snagged in my throat and I forced it down, keeping my eyes fixed on the hedge outside. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘One of us had to start.’

  ‘No, we didn’t. There’s nothing to say.’

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ she murmured.

  I crumpled my sandwich back into the bag, twisting until the paper teemed with grease. ‘I’m not after a debate.’

  ‘Well, at least tell me what you were doing with that girl yesterday.’

  ‘Drinking – what did it look like?’

  Jude shifted in her seat. ‘She was pretty.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I agreed, finally turning my eyes onto her pallid cheeks, ‘and normal and chatty and smiley. You know, it was great. That’s what I should be doing right now, not limping around like Frankenstein’s monster.’

  ‘You’re not –’ she began but I cut her off.

  �
��I’m not looking for your opinion.’

  ‘Gemma was upset,’ she said after a moment.

  I crushed my knuckles into the paper bag. ‘You leave her out of this. You’ve got no right to talk about her so leave it alone.’

  Whether it was my tone or something else, she shrank back into her seat. The atmosphere crackled till she tucked the remnants of her sausage bap into her bag and tossed it onto the dashboard before glancing to me.

  ‘Are you ready to go?’

  On Lenora’s street, most of the houses were waking up.

  Kids were being bundled into cars and an old man criss-crossed the pavement with a plastic bag in one hand and a paper in the other. A Jack Russell trotted beside him without a lead, stopping by Lenora’s gate for a good sniff. The blinds on her windows were still down and a sparrow preened itself in the water drizzling from the fountain.

  I hesitated on the path again, but Jude was having none of it. She strode past me and rapped on the door continuously until Lenora yanked it open, primed to yell at us. Then her eyes latched on to me and she leaned heavily against the door jamb.

  ‘You’re her, aren’t you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘You best come in,’ she said.

  After exchanging a look with Jude, I stepped over the threshold and she followed. Lenora led us into an airy kitchen, sunlight filtering through Venetian blinds and trickling over the oak worktops while a radio hummed in the corner. I cared less about the house and more about her. Living here in luxury, you’d reckon she’d take care of herself a little better. But she looked twenty years older than she must’ve been, wrinkles colliding with each other and eyes hunkered down in reddish hollows. Her grey hair hung from her scalp in a haphazard plait that clumped against her left shoulder as she walked.

  ‘Do you want a cuppa?’ she questioned. ‘Was making one myself anyhow.’

  ‘Sure,’ I replied.

  She wafted us into chairs at the majestic table. It must’ve seated ten, but Jude’s knee still juddered against mine underneath, so I inclined my body away, jarring the muscles in my bad leg. I bit back a growl, though Jude must’ve felt it brewing. This time, her hand brushed my arm, ring finger meandering up to my elbow. I let it linger until I came to my senses and scraped my chair a few inches to the left.

  Once Lenora had poured three cups of PG Tips, she stared into her mug. ‘I know who you are.’

  ‘So do most people,’ I said, Eve’s face flitting through my mind. ‘I was plastered all over the papers, wasn’t I? You’ve got a history with Gerbera, you were hardly going to ignore what happened.’

  ‘Well, maybe I didn’t mean that.’ She fiddled with her plait until the hair frayed under her fingers. ‘You’re after the same thing he was.’

  A shudder ran through me. Jude’s hand tucked under the table again, pressing briefly against my thigh. I edged away after a few seconds, feeling the heat from her fingertips settle into my skin. My stomach, already twisted, wound itself a little tighter.

  Lenora was peering at us over the rim of her mug, waiting for a reaction. I tilted my head towards Jude and she straightened up in her chair, drawing her hands together on the table top. Meetings flashed through my head, her squaring up to Caroline across the desk while the rest of us leaned out of the line of fire. This time, I mirrored her pose.

  ‘If you knew him, why didn’t you come forward?’ Jude asked.

  ‘I couldn’t. It’s not as easy as you might think.’

  Jude snorted. ‘Who said it’s easy?’

  ‘You’re very high and mighty considering,’ said Lenora with a nod in my direction.

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ Jude answered.

  ‘No?’ She scraped pitted fingernails around her mug while squinting at us. ‘By my reckoning, it is. All that fuss about no love being lost between the pair of you and then you turn up on my doorstep. Not fitting with the story, is it? Maybe you deserved what you got.’

  Jude bristled but slumped back into the cushioned chair. It wasn’t something she’d ever had to deal with, homophobia for the sake of it. You didn’t get the repercussions if you married well and screwed a colleague in secret.

  I sat forward and caught Lenora’s eye. ‘Oh, I get it. That’s how you’ve justified it to yourself. I’m a dyke so I had it coming. Never mind that I wasn’t the only one who got hurt. You’re hiding from it. You wouldn’t have come forward whatever, would you? There’s something you want to keep to yourself, something you’ve done. Maybe you started all this –’

  ‘Did I hell,’ she interjected.

  ‘You did, didn’t you?’ I persisted, watching her forehead pucker. ‘Were you in on it with him? Do you know him?’

  Her chair shrieked as she thrust it back and began prowling the kitchen. Every step caused her plait to smack against her shoulder till it disintegrated and splattered grey hair all across her dressing gown.

  She twisted to face us. ‘I want you gone. Go on, get out.’

  ‘We found you. All we have to do is give your name to the police. Yeah, they might not investigate it, but they might. It’s a big deal, what happened to us. I had a talk with Vincent Knight last month. He said they’re still taking it seriously.’

  Lenora’s snarl froze then faded. I risked a glance at Jude and, this time, when her hand settled on my knee, I let it stay.

  ‘We’ll keep your name out of it,’ I went on after a few seconds. ‘All I’m looking for is the truth. You can either tell it to us or the police. Up to you. Who is he? What do you know about him?’

  Her eyes twitched before she groped back to the table and sat down again. ‘His name’s Sam Radison.’

  ‘Sam Radison,’ I repeated, feeling the name on my lips. ‘Go on. How did you know him?’

  ‘I didn’t, not like you mean. He came up here three years ago, something like that. I’ve lost track. It was a while after I’d moved up here, I know that. I’d convinced myself nothing was coming of it. I reckoned everyone would look after their own interests, that’s what they do.

  ‘I worked at the Scarborough site, you see. Oak House, it was called. It’s closed now, they shut it not long after I left. They put in an interim manager then called it unprofitable. What they meant was, they didn’t want it coming back to haunt them.’

  When she trailed off, I asked, ‘What coming back?’

  ‘You have to understand, I started off as a nurse. It was what I’d trained for and I was good at it. My choice to work with the elderly. I wasn’t one of them that fell into it. But once I got promoted . . . Well, I wasn’t cut out for it. Budgets, meals and all that. Not to mention being the boss of folk you’ve mucked around with for years. My old mates fell out with me and the new lot did what I told them to do.’

  ‘Which was?’ Jude queried. Only someone who knew her, who’d heard her quivering murmurs at her most vulnerable, would hear the lilt in her voice. ‘Were you cutting corners?’

  Lenora puffed out her breath. ‘Course I was. We were on the radar for all sorts, incidents and whatnot. Old building like that, there were plenty of repairs they didn’t need on the balance sheets, but they were holding steady on it. Way I was told, expansion doesn’t happen if you can’t take care of what you’ve got. So I took care of it.’

  ‘How?’ I questioned.

  ‘No more bad publicity, that’s what they said they wanted. Mr Knight came over and talked me through it.’

  I flinched and Jude’s fingers tightened on my leg. ‘Vincent Knight knew?’

  ‘Why do you think Radison went after him?’ Lenora retorted.

  ‘Okay, all right . . . So what happened? Was it his mum or his dad? Something happened, didn’t it?’

  Lenora took a gulp of tea, sucking at the rim of her mug. ‘His mum, it was. Constance Radison. A handrail gave way and she went through a staircase. She wasn’t found for a few hours, died of pneumonia and some infection in hospital.’

  My gaze slipped across to Jude’s. Her hand stiffened on my thig
h as her eyes met mine. I’d expected the glimmer of relief; I was feeling it too. After all this time, breaking through and getting answers struck us in the same way – why wouldn’t it? What I wasn’t expecting, though, was the ache that started in my chest and rippled down my body. I scraped my chair back, limping without my stick to the counter and keeping my attention on Lenora’s sallow face.

  ‘So what did her son think of it?’ I asked.

  ‘That was it. At first, he didn’t know any different than what we’d told him. They paid me off, I left. What happened afterwards, I’m not clear on, but they shut the place and I thought that was that. He never even turned up at the funeral, wasn’t a visitor or anything.’

  I stared at her nails crumbling the waves out of her hair. ‘And that makes it all right?’

  ‘It’d happened by then. What good would raking it up do?’

  ‘No good for you, that’s for sure. How did he find out then?’

  ‘He must’ve gone through his mum’s address book when he got back from Iraq, spoken to her friends or something. When he turned up here, he knew something, but he wanted it confirming. I told him – with a knife in my face – I told him all about Mr Knight and how he’d benefitted more than me in the long run with where he was in Gerbera and everything.’

  ‘You saved your own skin,’ I muttered.

  ‘What would you have done?’ she retorted.

  ‘She did the opposite,’ Jude said quietly.

  My eyes were drawn back to her, the same way Lenora’s were. Sat with her elbows planted on the table, she looked almost impenetrable, even if her foot was tapping silently on the floor out of Lenora’s sight. She looked between the two of us then settled on Lenora.

  ‘You wouldn’t have visited the accounting centre, would you?’ she questioned.

  Lenora shook her head.

  ‘No, not many people did. If there were any meetings to be had, they dragged everyone over the Pennines, didn’t they? We were in this run-down converted house at the back of an estate. Everyone else had moved out, by the end of it there was only us and a few residents left. We were already due to move.’