by M B Vincent
Jess joined Mary at the table. It was scrubbed. Bare. Moose lay under it, legs paddling in sleep. There was an end of day feel to the room, and Jess felt herself relax. Just a little. ‘Just sit, Bogna. I’ll make some hot chocolate in a minute.’
‘Ah, hot chocolate, cosy time!’ Bogna approved. She sat.
They talked. Not of murder. Not of death. Of Bogna’s new jumper and whether they could ever bear to sleep with Prince Charles and the relative merits of thongs versus big huge pants. Normal girl stuff.
The day receded. David’s death receded. Norris’s spectre receded. Until there were just the three of them and their chit chat.
Bogna picked up her handbag and rummaged in it for a tissue. ‘Anybody want a mint?’ She held out a small, olde worlde printed tin.
‘Me,’ said Jess, who never passed up a foodstuff, no matter how small. ‘That’s a cute tin.’
‘Funny, I don’t remember buying it,’ said Bogna, loosening the lid.
Jess just had time so shriek ‘Don’t!’ before Bogna opened the tin.
CHAPTER 16
CROSS MY PALM WITH SILVER
Tuesday 10 November
Eden had been incredulous. ‘A swarm of blowflies?’
‘They flew out of the tin like a fog.’ The memory made Jess pull her shoulders up to her ears. ‘And the smell, Jesus.’
The women had fled, screaming, batting away the foul, miniscule insects. Then they’d crept back and inspected the tin. Inside it was a strip of rotten meat that made them gag.
‘So,’ explained Jess, as she and Eden walked along Fore Street, ‘Norris must have planned this for a while. He put the meat in the tin, let it rot, waited for flies to lay their eggs, waited for the eggs to turn into maggots, and then closed the lid and slipped the whole thing into Bogna’s bag.’
‘Where had she been?’
‘The butcher’s. The charity shop. Lynne’s Mini-Mart.’
Their mutual awe went unspoken. Norris had passed unseen through a town on high alert and had the nerve to slip a grenade into Bogna’s handbag. The man passed through the blue line of police protection as if it wasn’t there.
‘What’s on the agenda today?’ asked Jess. She had only one glove; a terrible oversight. She felt lopsided.
‘Which agenda?’ Eden frowned. ‘Jess, I can’t involve you every day.’
‘No, I know, but . . .’ Jess couldn’t share her desperate need to be needed. Feeling left out comes easily to a younger sister who watched Stephen and Rupert go off on adventures without her. And now Rupert’s going for good. ‘But you’ll call me if there’s anything to report?’ She saw Eden blink. ‘Not report, I mean. I don’t mean you’d report to me. Oh look, I don’t know what I mean,’ she admitted.
‘Looks like somebody’s waiting for you.’ Eden tilted his head at Abonda, who was staring out from a window table in the Spinning Jenny. ‘See if she has anything useful for us.’
‘I’m a crappy spy,’ grumbled Jess. She put a hand on Eden’s arm as he turned away.
She saw how he jumped. He was a man who was seldom touched.
Jess had a lot to say, about how he wasn’t responsible for everybody, about how he was a good man in an age when they were thin on the ground, about how he was in obvious need of a square meal. But all she said was, ‘Take care.’
***
Abonda wiped mayo from the palm Jess offered her.
‘Hang on.’ Jess snatched back her paw. ‘This won’t get weird, will it, like the other day?’ She had always thought of palm readings – if she thought of them at all – as end-of-the-pier fun. She was wary after her hypnotised walk in the woods.
The blank look Abonda gave her was the one she wore when she needed a topic to disappear. Just as Norris’s rape conviction could never be spoken of, so was the trance verboten.
Jess persisted. ‘You were as freaked out as I was. You didn’t expect me to go so thoroughly under.’ David was with Jess always, now. He loomed over the Spinning Jenny tablecloth. ‘That doesn’t normally happen, does it?’
‘D’you want Abonda to read your palm or not?’ Abonda had lined her eyes with kohl. It was smudged and looked like dirt. It couldn’t hide the brown craters beneath her eyes. They spoke of listless nights. And pain.
‘I do.’ Jess was meek.
‘Reading palms,’ said Abonda, ‘isn’t just making predictions.’ Her grasp was firm. Her skin was cool. ‘Your hand tells me everything about you.’
‘No tall dark stranger shit, agreed?’
‘Your tall dark man ain’t no stranger.’ Abonda looked hard at the network of lines on Jess’s palm. ‘You don’t drink, I see. But you eat all the wrong food and you spend too much time sitting on your little gorger behind.’
So far so guessable.
Abonda traced a path across Jess’s skin. Her nail left a warm wake. ‘This here’s your lifeline. That one’s your head. Your heart line tells Abonda about the health of your heart and your soul.’
For the first time Jess wondered if the Judge’s condition was hereditary. She pictured her heart with a bandage around it.
The antiquated bell above the door pinged.
‘What are you scrounging this time, Eddie?’ asked Meera fondly before he had time to open his mouth.
‘A baking tray,’ said Eddie. ‘Just ‘till I have time to pop to Richleigh for one. We’re having a run on tarts.’
‘As the actress etcetera etcetera,’ said Meera, bending to find a tray beneath the counter.
Hand still in Abonda’s grasp, Jess leaned back and said, ‘Eddie? Do you have a lady staying at the hotel? A lady with kids. Twins, maybe.’
He knew what she was asking. He didn’t answer immediately. After thanking Meera, or trying to, as she waved him away, he said, ‘Yes, Jess, we do. But she’s not here for long.’
He left.
Abonda straightened Jess’s fingers, one by one. ‘The length of your fingers . . . that relates to your talents.’ She examined them. ‘Yours are stubby.’
Charming.
‘Oh, but look,’ said Abonda. ‘A nice long thumb. You’ll do all right, Jess Castle. You’re inventive. You’re flexible. You’re smart.’ Abonda frowned. ‘Oh no!’
‘What? What is it?’ Jess frowned too. Then hated herself for her susceptibility to such theatrics.
‘Your money line. Best not talk about that one.’
Around them, the café hummed. Sausages were fried. Toast was buttered. Jess watched Abonda, bent over her hand with the same concentration Jess had brought to The Edda in recent days. She couldn’t think of a way to weave in a subtle question about Norris. So she went in feet first. Her usual route.
‘Abonda, why not tell the police where Stevie is? You know they’ll catch up with him eventually.’
‘Abonda can’t tell what she don’t know.’
‘But Abonda knows everything about her Stevie.’
‘I know he’s being framed.’ Abonda pressed a little too hard on Jess’s palm. ‘That there’s your mound of Mars.’
‘Ow!’
‘See how it pops up when I press it?’
‘Again, ow.’ Are all Abonda’s readings this painful?
‘Nice and healthy. You have a strong sixth sense, Jess.’
‘Hardly. I’m an academic.’
‘What we look like and what we are is two different things.’ Abonda dipped her chins and locked Jess into a tractor-beam look. ‘You listen to that inner voice, ducky, you hear me? Some people got no intuition.’ Abonda’s face was so close to Jess’s hand she might be about to kiss it. ‘Like that funny little policewoman who popped in to see me. Plain, she was. Saw everything in black and white.’
That had to be Karen Knott.
‘Abonda give her a quick reading while the love potion was cooking up. Fennel. Basil. Vervain. A lamb’s little heart. She fancies some fella she works with.’
And that had to be Eden.
‘Her fingers were even stubbier than yours.’
A huge metal teapot, dented in the line of duty, nosed between them. ‘Top-up?’ asked Meera. ‘Ooh, are you palm reading?’
At a far table, Lynne – she of the Mini-Mart – raised her head. ‘Do me next! I love all that creepy stuff!’
Abonda didn’t respond, but Jess noticed the slight flutter of her eyelids. Abonda gets no respect.
‘This line’s short, gorger girlie. You don’t travel much, that’s for sure.’
‘True enough.’ Jess carved a rut from Harebell House to stone circle to university and back to Harebell House. With a brief stop-off at the police station on Margaret Thatcher Way. If I was Roma, my last journey would be a tour of cafés and burial grounds. Something struck her. ‘Who’ll take you on your last journey, Abonda?’ The woman was alienated from her tribe.
‘My boy. Who else?’
That’s one reason she wants to keep Norris out of jail.
Jess had read up on the facts of Roma life; she knew that Abonda’s situation was shameful. To be alone was a disgrace. Marime. There would be nobody else stepping up to guide her through her special places.
‘See these tiny notches on the side of your hand? Them’s accidents.’ Abonda counted. ‘Eight of ‘em. Something happened when you were eight.’
‘Nope.’ Jess was almost sorry to contradict her.
‘You sure?’
‘I’d remember.’
‘Maybe. See how this line forks? You’ve had sadness in your life, Jess.’
Who hasn’t? ‘Everybody gets depressed.’
‘Abonda don’t.’
Out on Fore Street, a procession of tiny people caught Jess’s eye. A platoon of seven-year-olds from St Luke’s stopped at the crossing. Maureen Davis was there to guide them across. As each child passed, she handed them a lollipop. It had become a ritual.
The bright cherry-red glowed malignantly.
‘You listenin’?’ Abonda rapped the table. ‘These creases here . . . I see you walking. A long way.’
‘Doesn’t sound like me.’
‘A trip. A jaunt with a companion, seeing places you’ve never been.’
‘Sorry, nope. I don’t do holidays.’ Jess had tried. She’d gone to a hotel. Lain by its pool. Eaten the local squid. Never, ever again. She was trying to live a small life. A quiet one. ‘Even if I win the lottery, I’m not going anywhere.’
Taking this knockback with her customary sang froid, Abonda stabbed at the base of Jess’s thumb.
‘That hurt!’
‘That’s your mound of Venus. You can guess which bit that relates to.’
Jess could.
‘Should be nice and bouncy, but look at it.’ Abonda jabbed it again. ‘Flat as a pancake. You should have more sex.’
There were nuns who pitied Jess’s love life.
‘Abonda’s tired.’ She dropped Jess’s hand. ‘We’re done.’
‘Have you read your son’s palm recently?’
Abonda looked at the table. Then lifted her black-rimmed eyes to give Jess a look of contempt.
She knows. Jess went cold. She knows Eden asked me to sound her out.
Abonda turned her head slowly, like a statue coming to life, to listen to Moyra, who was standing in the centre of the café, holding the latest copy of the Kidbury Echo at arm’s length.
‘“I’ve tried,”’ read Moyra haltingly, ‘“to reach out to him but he never responds.”’
Meera heckled her partner. ‘Wish you’d give in and get your eyes tested, pet.’
Jess was intrigued. ‘What’s that you’re reading, Moyra?’ She kept an eye on Abonda who had flicked her OFF switch and was ignoring Jess.
I’m crap at undercover work.
Moyra flashed the front page at her. ‘Paul Chappell’s done an interview with Nic Lasco’s dad. Fred Lasco.’
‘How? Via a medium?’ said Jess. ‘Nic said his dad was dead.’
Going from table to table, refreshing salt shakers, Meera said, ‘Turns out that was a fib. His dad deserted the family and Nic’s never forgiven him.’
Enjoying the spotlight, Moyra put her all into reading Lasco Senior’s words. ‘Speaking to me in his well-appointed sitting room, Fred Lasco, 68, said, “I wasn’t a deadbeat dad. I did my best. I admit my marriage failed because I began an affair with my current wife, but you can’t help who you fall in love with, can you?”’ Moyra lowered the paper to say, ‘You could try, you randy old goat.’
‘Don’t, love, he sounds sweet,’ said Meera. To the café at large, she said, ‘He says he used to spell Nic with a k.’
‘Told you!’ Jess was delighted with her minor victory.
‘Fred Lasco pauses to dry his eyes. “It breaks my heart when Nic tells folk I’m dead. Doesn’t he know I tried to keep in touch?” Fred is recovering from a major operation, and frequently stops to rest during our talk. He shows me a picture of a freckly, smiling lad. ‘That’s my son from my second marriage. Apple of my eye. He’ll tell you I’m a good father.”’
Meera spilled the salt. ‘What? I thought the picture was going to be of Nic.’ She threw a speck of salt over her left shoulder with her right hand.
Jess shared her surprise. ‘Not very diplomatic, getting the child who replaced Nic to give their dad a good review.’
Moyra read on. ‘Clearly emotional, Fred has one last message for his famous son. “Nic, I don’t want to die before meeting your little boy. Don’t believe all the lies your mum poisoned you with. Remember, little Nicky, Daddy’s here if you want to get in touch.”’ She folded the paper and dropped it in the bin. ‘Ironic, isn’t it? Children losing their fathers thanks to the Kidbury Kannibal, and that Nic Lasco has one he doesn’t want.’
Jess turned to Abonda but the seat was empty.
For a woman of bulk, Abonda could move swiftly when she had to. Jess saw her through the thicket of plastic flowers in the window-box.
Abonda waited at the crossing. A poignant, monumental figure in her old coat and dejected shoes.
From the left came a truck. Mitch’s arm was casually leant on the open window.
From the right came Rupert, on foot, coat flapping. His phone to his ear, he was in a hurry, thinking serious law thoughts. Or maybe Edinburgh thoughts.
The Range Rover slowed. Abonda lumbered over the crossing.
Rupert hurried past her and was gone.
Mitch put his foot down and was gone.
Abonda stopped outside The Buttonhole. A soggy drift of floral tributes lay against the boarded door.
With visible effort Abonda bent down, took a bouquet, stashed it inside her coat, and plodded on.
***
Tucked into a corner, trying to look blasé, Jess drank in Eden’s briefing.
Ginger Hair was asking, ‘Are we still committed to this One More Murder theory, sir?’
Eden swallowed before listening. As if this theory had been questioned once too many times for his liking. ‘Yes. The remaining Jolly Cook at Molton Abbot gives us our southern compass point and is the focus of our surveillance.’
Jess feared the dingy diner was so tightly watched it might encourage the murderer to change his pattern. It was circled in scarlet on the old poster she’d given Eden.
‘And we still think,’ said Ginger Hair, ‘that the next victim is the biggie, Judge Castle?’
The officer next to Jess winced.
Jess felt a puddle of nausea collect in the pit of her stomach. Her father was the biggie. She stuck up her hand. ‘Are you willing to even consider that Norris might be targeting fathers and not just people who did him wrong?’
Before he could answer, Knott was beside Eden, holding out a cup of something hot. ‘Fathers in danger, eh?’ she said, in that jocular way that let everybody know a flat-footed joke was coming. ‘Good thing you and the ex-Mrs Eden couldn’t have kids!’
Genuine pain floated on the sweaty, takeaway-scented air for a second or two. Eden took the cup and sipped before saying blandly, ‘We’re not ruling anything out at this stage.’ His
hair had grown a millimetre over his collar, a warning sign that everybody in the room took as seriously as the siren at a nuclear plant. ‘Moretti, where are you up to with Gillian Cope?’
‘Everybody’s favourite mad feminist bitch,’ said Sleeves-Rolled-Up. He let out an aggrieved ‘What? What’d I say?’ when the female constable behind him jabbed him in the shoulder with her pen.
‘Can’t rule her out, sir,’ said Moretti. ‘She’s hiding something. Something big. I’ve got video of the awards ceremony she claimed to be attending at Halloween, so if I can’t see her on it, I’ll call her in again.’
The meeting wound up. Jess tailed Moretti.
‘What’s that?’ She pointed to the mug in his hand. ‘Did Knott give you that?’
‘What, give me some of her special concoction? Nah. That’s strictly for Eden.’ Moretti held the door to a small, dark office, little more than a cupboard. ‘I assume you’re here to nose into the awards footage?’
‘You assume correctly.’
This time Moretti supplied the goodies. Bite-size Bounty wrappers soon littered the desk around the computer screen. They fast-forwarded, rewound, examined every middle-aged woman as the audience on the screen filed in and found their seats at small round tables before a stage.
Some of the guests had dressed up for Halloween: cats’ ears here, a witch’s hat there.
‘I recognise him.’ Jess tapped the screen. Nic Lasco was holding court in a ruffled shirt and a bow tie and vampire teeth. His girlfriend, Kirsty McVeigh, in the statutory plunging neckline, stood alongside, smiling and radiating boredom.
‘He’s punching above his weight with that McVeigh.’ Moretti was appreciative, and lingered a while before Jess took over the controls. She paused at various likely candidates but couldn’t find Gillian.
‘The lights have gone down. The warm-up act’s first. Bill someone. Bill Gladstone. Let’s find the interval.’
‘Hang on. Stop.’ Jess stared at the screen until Moretti said, ‘What? Jess, what?’
She didn’t answer him. She simply walked out.
***
The police vehicle outside Harebell House sat discreetly behind a hedge.