AM02 - The End of the Wasp Season (25 page)

Kay sat at the table next to Frankie, waiting. She looked around the cold room, cold in its colors and the furnishings. The architecture of this whole building seemed designed to communicate hostility, from the buttresses on the street to the cell-like plainness of the office they had to wait in.

Frankie sat hunched over, his back so bent it looked unnaturally round. She traced the curve of his spine, as if she was checking he was all there still, from the nape of his neck down to the little bumps of fat on his hips. It was the pizzas. He was eating three pizza dinners a week at the moment, enjoying having money and working, feeling what it would be like to be a man and make his own way. He was a good boy. She rubbed his back, correcting his posture under cover of an affectionate gesture. He shook her off and looked up at the camera in the corner of the room.

“No.” She pointed. “The light’s not on yet, darlin’. Camera’s not on.”

Sure her hand was gone, he slouched further over the table, his hands out.

“Let’s get this over and done with,” she said, half believing it herself, “and then we can go home and get on with our lives.”

He gave her a look then, searched her face to see if she believed it and saw that she didn’t. She shrugged, exasperated.

“It was your idea to come in here,” he said.

Kay held her hands up. “I just thought, you know, we can sit at home with our fist in our mouths and get yanked in at ten o’clock or we could come in at a reasonable hour and get it over and done with.”

But it wasn’t that. She was here with her boys, brushed and washed, with the papers they had prepared and the statements she had gathered to prove to someone that they were good-living people. She was smart enough to know who she was trying to prove it to.

“I’m going to miss my work.”

“I know, pal.” She loved him for that. “I know. It’s just one night.”

They heard a noise behind them in the corridor and turned to see the man, Bannerman, with Alex Morrow tripping after him, her eyes down, a wee bundle of papers in front of her. Kay stood up to meet them and prodded Frankie to make him get up too. Alex looked small and round today, standing behind her tall slim boss, and Kay wondered if he knew she’d driven them home in her own car. Probably not.

He sat down and then Alex Morrow sat down and neither of them made eye contact with her or Frankie, or said hello or thanks for coming or anything. They busied themselves with cassette tapes. A woman came in and checked the camera and gave them the OK and left without meeting Kay’s eye.

They were ignorant people. That’s the only way she could account for their lack of warmth or social decorum. Margery Thalaine, Molly Campbell, Alex Morrow and this tube sitting at the table here. Ignorant.

The man introduced himself again, Bannerman, as if they’d have forgotten. He said it was an informal interview and thanks for coming in but he didn’t look grateful and it didn’t feel informal. Frankie’s face was blotchy pink and he was scratching the back of his hand. He looked guilty.

She poked him at the waist, making him bend towards her, and gestured to him to sit up. He flashed her an angry look and she was pleased, it was better.

“First of all,” said Bannerman, as if it was nothing at all, “what shoe size are you?”

Frankie looked at Kay. “Seven,” she told him.

He relayed it to them: “I’m a seven.”

Bannerman wrote it down. He wanted another rehash of the night Sarah Erroll died, where Frankie had been, how long everything had taken. Frankie handed over the brand-new red folder Kay had given him.

“What’s this?” asked Alex.

“Um,” Frankie looked at her again, she wished he’d just say. “It’s, um, stuff my mum made me get…”

Frankie had been to Pizza Magic in the afternoon for a photocopy of their delivery receipts for that night. Fat Tam had given him a written statement, more of a note really, saying Frankie’d been with him all night and he hadn’t been out of the car for longer than ten minutes. It was written on the back of a pizza order form, on cheap paper that was supposed to fold around a carbon slip, and didn’t look very official. But Tam signed it with a big flourish, as if that made it a more compelling piece of evidence. He also said, and underlined it, that Frankie’s brother had never been in the car with them and they hadn’t seen him all night.

Bannerman looked at Tam’s statement, his lip curling up at the side. He unfolded it and finished reading. His eyebrows shot up at the end as he looked at Fat Tam’s big signature.

“This,” he held it up, “is actually worse than useless. You can’t go around getting people to write statements for you.”

Frankie touched the folder defensively. “How not?”

“Because it could be construed as coaching a witness.”

“What am I meant to do then?”

“Just let us do our jobs.” He gave a bitter little smile, first to Frankie, then to Kay.

“The polis at our bit are bent,” Frankie told Alex, annoyed now, sounding like himself.

Alex craned forward, encouraging him, glancing to the left, up to where the camera was filming, telling him to go on.

“When there’s a break-in at the flats they send one officer up to take a statement and look at the doors and that, and we found out that it meant they weren’t even processing the complaint ’cause it was making their numbers look bad.”

Bannerman did not want to hear it, his eyes were open wide. “How is this relevant—”

“So you’ll excuse me,” interrupted Frankie, fifteen and a gentleman already, “if I seem a bit wary of you ‘just doing your jobs,’ it’s  ’cause my experience with the polis has been mostly bad.”

Alex sat back. “Is there any record of that, Frankie?”

The way she said it made Kay feel that she had looked into it and knew there was. She felt a shock of sudden gratitude towards her.

“There is a record of that, yes, the local police station—”

Bannerman leaned in between them. “This isn’t what we’re here to talk about.”

Frankie got stuck and looked at Kay. He’d trusted her about the folder and it hadn’t panned out. She didn’t know what to do now.

Bannerman started again: “Are you and your brother close?” It sounded like a threat, the way he said it.

Frankie looked nervous again. “Aye.”

“Would you say you’re very close?”

It sounded sinister and he hesitated. “I would, aye.”

“You hang about together? Do stuff together?”

“We share a bedroom. We’ve no option.”

“You’re of a similar mind?”

Frankie shrugged his shoulders up and looked confused. “Suppose.”

Bannerman nodded and wrote something down. Alex licked her lips.

“You wear the same sorts of clothes?”

Frankie looked at him. He looked at Alex and then at his mum and the nervousness left him suddenly. He laughed, boyish, merry.

Bannerman wasn’t joining in. “What’s funny about that?”

“What, you mean the shoes you took off us, the trainers?”

“Yes, you had the same trainers—d’you dress alike?”

Frankie laughed again. “I’m fifteen,” he said and looked at Kay, deferring. She was smiling too now, not because it was funny but just because she was so relieved to see him smile.

“Mr. Bannerman,” she said, “I’m their mum. I buy their clothes.”

He seemed embarrassed. “Where did you purchase those particular trainers?”

“I got four pair at Costco, one pair for each of them.”

He scribbled it down. Kay said, “They’re actually pretty chuffed you took them because they all hate those trainers.”

“Mum, they look medical,” Frankie told her.

“They’re well made,” Kay told him, “and they’re waterproof.”

“Teenagers don’t care about
waterproof,
Mum. They’re diddy shoes.”

“Well, fine.” They were smiling at each other and Kay saw Alex was smiling along with them. “Diddys don’t get wet feet.”

“You’ve no style, Mum. That’s why I got the job, to buy us some decent gear.”

They grinned at each other. He didn’t spend the money on clothes at all. He blew it every week on taking his brothers or his sister out, or buying knock-off movies, but it was a relief to talk to each other.

Bannerman took charge, asking details again, very annoyed, but the spell was broken. Frankie was back with her and confident again, himself again.

No, he’d never been in a gang. His attendance at school was flawless. He’d cooperate in any way he could. He was happy for them to come to the house if they needed to, they could look through his things if they wanted to, speak to anyone about him.

Alex asked him if he’d ever been to Perth, which Kay thought odd. Bannerman did too, apparently, because he listened to her asking questions about it and was interested in Frankie’s answers. Frankie had never been to Perth. He did not attend a church, though he had been to a disco at the local Orange Lodge two years ago but that was only because his friend had tickets and did that count as attending a church? Alex said it didn’t. Frankie got embarrassed and said he wouldn’t go now, he thought that was wrong. He actually supported Celtic now, they could ask anyone.

Kay interrupted, “Are you allowed to ask about religion?”

“Yeah,” Alex said, kindly. “You’re thinking of job interviews: they’re not allowed to ask you about religion.”

Bannerman asked if Frankie had ever been to Glenarvon? Just once, he said. When was that? Well, it was half term and Mrs. Erroll had died and he was off school anyway. He went to the funeral and they left from the house because there was room in the car. She didn’t have a lot of family and his mum was so upset that he wanted to go with her.

Bannerman acted as if this was hugely significant. “Where did you go in the house?”

Frankie didn’t remember. They’d been in the front room mostly—

“Did you go upstairs?”

He nodded.

“What?” said Kay. “When did you go upstairs?”

“I went to the loo.”

“How?”

“I couldn’t find the other one.”

Bannerman asked him personal questions: how did he do the toilet, did he sit or stand? Frankie got embarrassed because his mum was there but answered anyway: he stood. Was the seat down when he went in? He couldn’t remember. Did he usually lift the seat when he did a wee? He supposed he did. Kay saw his right hand push out under the table as he thought about it.

They stopped abruptly and took Frankie out, and Joe came in and sat down next to her.

He was feeling insecure, she could tell, because he was doing a charm offensive. He shook hands with both Alex and Bannerman and asked how they were this evening? Alex smiled and said she was fine and how was he? Joe misunderstood the pleasantry and said he was a bit nervous and felt a bit tired after last night. He’d had to come home early from school and he was a bit dizzy.

They walked him through the same questions as Frankie: Joe knew his own shoe size, a size nine. He’d spent the night with his pals and he had a blue folder full of coached witness statements that might go against him if the case came to trial. Bannerman told him he’d done the wrong thing too.

“We were trying to save you time,” explained Kay, hoping she sounded reasonable.

Bannerman was frosty about it, slapped the folder shut and pushed it back across the table to Joe. “Don’t do it again.”

He’d never been in a gang, his mum would have killed him.

Morrow asked, “Have you ever been to Perth?”

He was definite. “Yes.”

Kay looked at him. “When?”

“Couple of months ago,” he told her. “An away game for the sevens.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“Yes, you do. You made me sandwiches. Remember we had a fight about the fare because I didn’t book it in advance and there wasn’t room on the bus?”

“No.”

“I had to pay the full train fare because I didn’t book it in advance and you said I should have known that I wouldn’t get a place on the bus—”

“That was Carlisle.”

“Oh. Was it?”

“Yeah, that was Carlisle.”

“Have you been to Perth?”

He looked to Kay for the answer. She shook her head.

“No,” he said, “I’ve not been there.”

“Know anybody there?”

“No.”

He’d never been involved in religion of any kind, although he supported the Gers and once fancied a girl who was Catholic, did that count? No, Alex said it didn’t. Joe said that was good because he never even spoke to her and it would be a shame to get done for murder for fancying someone he’d only seen in the street. He laughed, expecting them to join in, and looked sad and frightened when they didn’t.

Kay sat and listened, touching his arm when he looked vulnerable or worried. Her anger began to recede. She realized slowly that Margery would have turned on her whether or not Alex went to see her; that Margery was a snob and a funny old bird. She’d probably have sacked her soon anyway. She couldn’t afford a cleaner anymore, certainly not five days a week.

She saw Alex touch her stomach sometimes, saw her sitting over on one buttock and smile to herself when the babies shifted; Kay’s eyes slid across the table top to her tummy. She couldn’t find it in her to hate her anymore. And Joe was right: last night, dropping them home, had been decent of her.

By the time the interviews were over and they were being shown out of the station and having the bus stop pointed out to them up the street, Kay had decided to go and see Danny the next day and tell him just to forget it.

They were planning the funeral. Moira and Ella lay on the bed with a throw over their legs, in bed together, but not in bed. Moira with a pen and a notepad balanced on her knees, Ella cross-legged, a giant packet of marshmallows standing upright in the bowl of her thighs. They’d found a dry-store cupboard, big as a walk-in wardrobe, full of food that the family had never even seen and the staff must have been keeping for themselves: cheap biscuit assortments and marshmallows and boxes of Wotsits.

Thomas didn’t want to sit on the bed with them, even though there was room, it felt wrong, so he wandered around the periphery of his parents’ bedroom, an unfamiliar room, glimpsed through the open door but never explored in childhood. He had never been told not to come in here, and couldn’t have said why he hadn’t. Even now he felt a frisson of fear that Lars would walk in, open his eyes wide wide wide and roar a reproach.

The big yellow poplar-burr sleigh-bed sat in the middle of the room, the massive window looming behind it like a bedstead.

Moira had decided to bury Lars in Sevenoaks. It felt a little spiteful to Thomas. He said that maybe Lars would prefer to be buried in town, since they would be moving when they sold up and he loved the city, but Moira was insistent. She said that since he loved this place so much, it was fitting, but she had a smile behind her eyes when she said it. She was trapping Lars in the place where he had trapped her.

Ella ate marshmallows slowly, getting eight bites out of each, as Thomas wandered slowly around the room, touching things that had belonged to Lars, wondering if he had exactly the same things in his other house. He looked up at Moira in the bed. She was happy, lying there with Ella, jotting notes about the funeral and who should come and what should happen. He felt bad for her, knowing that Theresa would call soon. Moira might already know but she didn’t like facing things. She might start taking antidepressants again and they’d lose her again.

“Anyone from school you’d like to invite to Daddy’s funeral, Tom?”

Thomas shook his head.

“Not Squeak?”

“No.” He touched a hairbrush. “’S too far.”

“Hmm.” Another day she might have sent the Piper for Squeak, just so he could be there for Thomas, but this was a different time. They couldn’t afford things like that anymore.

“His daddy might send a plane for him?”

“No, I’d rather not.”

“How about Donny? Did you invite him?”

“Donny?” He looked at her as if she was mental.

Moira pursed her lips at him. “Donny, stepdad has cancer, you spent this morning with him…”

Thomas blushed, felt horrible and sick, but Moira thought she’d tripped him up and smiled, nodding at him as if to say she knew.

“You could invite her, if you like, your girlfriend.”

He tutted at her and looked away, embarrassed because Theresa couldn’t be his girlfriend. It was creepy to think about it and yet he had. On the train home he’d thought about little else. He didn’t think about actually touching her. He thought instead warm soupy thoughts, her thick hair, the way she rolled her shoulders when she walked, eating breakfast in the stupid pancake place after a night together. He went to the toilet on the train and had a quick tug, thinking about something else entirely, a film he’d seen, so that he could go back and sit and daydream in safety about her.

“Don’t you want to invite her?”

“No.”

Moira watched him, became serious. “You weren’t meeting Nanny Mary, were you?”

“Fuck off!” he spat, angry that she knew about that and had mentioned it.

“Because that woman sold those pictures of your father to the paper.”

“I’m not meeting Nanny Mary, for Christ’s sake—”

“She’s a snake.”

“Fucking hell, shut up about that.”

Moira read his face and saw he meant it. She turned back to her pad.

Exhausted by not being the center of attention for a minute and a half, Ella curled up on the giant pillows. “OK, what songs?”

“
Which
songs,” corrected Moira.

“No,” Ella kicked her little heels on the bed, “I think you can say ‘what songs.’ ”

Now she was being cute, talking kind of babyish. Thomas was staying away from her. She was laying it on so thick he’d found himself on the verge of punching her. Her moods swung around all the time—she laughed during pauses, and she asked stupid questions: will it rain tomorrow, what is that color called.

He thought of Phils and his sister, Bethany. They’d be cool about this. He imagined himself as sulky Phils, skateboarding Phils, growing-up-in-Chelsea Phils. Thomas tried to imagine an equivalent person in his class at school but there weren’t any because Phils went to day school and they were always different. And if Ella was Bethany she’d be cool too. She’d be honest with Thomas-Phils. She’d say she was sad that their dad was dead, as well as glad. Bethany probably trusted Theresa, she wouldn’t lay it on with a trowel or copy characters in the movies to know how to behave. Bethany would know already.

“‘Star of the Sea’?”

“No,” said Ella, “something…” she couldn’t think of the word but pushed her hands in the air as if she was throwing confetti, “UP!”

“Rousing,” said Moira.

“Yes, something rousing. Rousing, rousing.”

“‘Jerusalem’?”

“Is that a hymn?”

Moira wasn’t sure. “He liked it though.”

Ella nodded.
“Rousing.”

“OK.” Moira wrote it down. “And afterwards. Should we have a funeral supper?”

“Is that what people do?”

Thomas didn’t know about this bit, he’d never been to a funeral, so he was actually listening.

“Well, we can get some caterers. But would anyone come? It’s a diplomatic uncertainty. Daddy was in trouble and no one’s scared of him anymore…”

Far away, down the stairs, the phone rang softly. Thomas was quick to the door. “I’ll get it.”

“No.” Moira leaned over to the bedside table and lifted a receiver.

“Hello?” She listened, looking pleased at first and then puzzled. Thomas’s heart tightened into a fist. He glanced at the bedside clock. It was only six thirty, he’d left Theresa at one. It was only five hours since they’d parted, five and a half hours, and he’d thought of little else. Maybe she had too. Maybe she thought about him the same way and it was meant and they could overcome the obstacles that lay between them, the way she and Lars had overcome his other family.

Moira looked at Thomas with cold clear eyes. “Just a moment.” She smiled and held the phone out to him. “For you.”

He took the receiver from her hand and retreated to the other side of the room before he lifted it to his ear.

A wheezy breath hit the receiver. A man’s breath, not Theresa.

“Thomas. Is that you?” The voice was slow and tired, a broken man’s voice. Lars, his voice changed from the hanging, calling from the morgue. “Is that you?”

Thomas walked out onto the landing, shutting the bedroom door carefully behind him. “Who is this?”

“Thomas, this is Father Sholtham.”

Thomas caught his breath. The name came from a million years ago. Father Sholtham was the school’s priest. There were rumors that he’d been a drunk, that he’d been in the navy before entering the priesthood, been a boxer, killed a man. He had charisma and didn’t give a flying fuck about Doyle or any of them: Thomas had once seen him, on stage during a parents’ assembly, reach into his trouser pocket and blatantly scratch his balls.

“Father?”

“Thomas, are you there?”

“Um, yeah, Father, I am.” He was flattered that Father Sholtham should phone him. There was a pause on the other end but Thomas didn’t want him to go. “Did you—how did you get my number, Father?”

“Mr. Doyle…”

“Oh, I see.”

“Thomas… I don’t know how it is…” The sentence tailed off to deep breathing. He sniffed then and it sounded wet, as if Father Sholtham was crying, as if he was in trouble.

Thomas didn’t want to speak to him here, on the stairs in the hall, he wanted to concentrate and speak to him without watching the bedroom door. “Father, will you stay on the line and wait for a moment?”

“I will.”

Thomas held the phone and ran down the stairs. He knew that voices carried up the hall: he’d heard Lars and Moira say terrible things to each other in the living room. So he hurried into the kitchen, taking the steps down to the freezer room, leaving the light off and sitting in the dark on the bottom step.

“Father?”

Father Sholtham was crying now, spluttering like a child. “Tom, Tommy? Can you talk to me?”

“Father, why are you crying?”

“Oh, God!”

Thomas held the phone away from his ear and realized abruptly what it was: the priest was pissed. It was pathetic, disappointing.

“Thomas,” whispered Father Sholtham, “I
know
what you did.”

Thomas froze at that. “Sorry, Father, what are you talking about?”

“To her, the woman,” he broke off to sob, “God in heaven.”

“Father, where are you?”

He was angry about that. “Nowhere! Don’t even think…I don’t want you thinking…”

He really was very drunk. He’d be easy to confuse.

“You’re a bit drunk, Father, aren’t you?”

“I am, yeah.” Big sniff. “I am.”

“Father, you shouldn’t be talking about it, should you?”

“Thomas, there are sins…”

“You could be excommunicated for talking about this, if you heard it under certain circumstances…”

“I am already lost, Thomas. I’d rather be lost than let you—”

“OK. Look. I think, drunk or sober, you need some help. I think you need to seek some spiritual advice about this, Father, and you need it soon.”

The priest caught his breath. “Right, you’re right.”

“No harm’s been done so far, Father, I’m going to forget this conversation—”

“No harm?”
He could barely speak.
“No harm’s been done?”

“I mean about this.” Thomas was very firm. “About
this,
the matter of you saying this. You need to see someone and soon.”

“I was going to, I was waiting—”

“Until you’d stopped drinking? Well, maybe you won’t stop until you do.”

Thomas was curled over his knees, pressing them tight into his chest, squeezing the breath from himself, his eyes shut tight.

“Thomas?”

“Hmm.”

“I’m afraid for you.”

“Hmm.”

“I’m worried you won’t make a confession.”

It was laughable. “How likely am I to do it now, do you think?”

Father Sholtham had nothing to say about that.

“Father?”

“Yes?”

“When did you hear?”

“Why?”

“I need to know.” He didn’t seem moved by that, he snorted, so Thomas added, “I’ll confess, if you tell me.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Because Thomas, it’s not enough to confess, you have to be truly penitent—”

“Father, how could I not be?”

They were whispering now, as if through a confessional screen, as if a chapel full of nosy fuckers were four foot away.

“I can’t take a confession over the phone, Thomas.”

“I know, I’ll go down here, I’ll find someone here. When did you hear about this, can you tell me that?”

Sholtham considered his position for a drunken moment, which was longer than a normal moment. “Lunchtime. Choir meeting.”

“That’s a Tuesday, isn’t it?”

“Twelve, yeah, why?”

“Were you drinking then?”

“God forgive me, yes. Will you confess, Thomas?”

“I’ll go to confession if you do.”

The old man cried at that. He cried for a long time, half reciting stock phrases dredged out from a priest’s trousseau, bless you, God have mercy.

Thomas talked him down, made him promise to confess and swore he would too.

After he hung up he didn’t move. He stayed doubled over in the freezer room, looking at the concrete floor, stunned motionless.

By the time they met on the pebble beach Squeak’d already told Sholtham. He found Sholtham drunk and confessed to him and he’d told him that Thomas killed her. Squeak had always been planning his escape.

Thomas didn’t want to get caught now, not now that Theresa was going to phone. What would she think if she knew that about him? She’d be afraid of him. She’d think he was a monster and he’d never ever be able to explain what happened in that hall. Not even to her.

Anyone would do that to you if they got you down, but Squeak more than most.