Die of Shame (17 page)

There weren’t any photographs, not that Tanner could see anyway. She felt relieved at not having to go through the usual routine, though the guilt at feeling that way was marginally worse. It was clear that Malcolm Finlay had seen her looking: the space where photos of his daughter should have been.

‘I can’t bear to have them out,’ he said. ‘Pictures of Heather.’

Tanner said, ‘I understand,’ though she didn’t, of course.

‘Not for now, anyway.’

‘Right.’

‘It’s hard to be surrounded by pictures of how she was, you know? When all I can think about is how she ended up.’

Tanner leaned forward to lay her glass down on the table. Finlay had offered her tea and Tanner had asked for water. He’d said, ‘Tap OK?’ and Tanner had assured him that it was, while she’d struggled to remember the last time she’d drunk tap water.

Her mother’s voice.
No uphill
…

The house was at the end of a terrace, ten minutes’ taxi ride from the station, and as Malcolm Finlay had led her inside Tanner had been immediately impressed by how neat and tidy everything was. Perhaps the man had always lived that way, Tanner thought, or perhaps he had been forced to do so after his wife had died. He might well have been a complete slob when his wife had been around to clear up after him. It was amazing how men who liked to appear domestically helpless could fend for themselves perfectly well when they had no other choice.

There was a sofa and an armchair and the thick lines around them showed that the dark red carpet had been recently vacuumed. A small flat-screen television stood on a cupboard in one corner and a modern pine bookcase in the other was well stocked with paperbacks. Choosing her moment, Tanner craned her neck to look at the names: Wilbur Smith, Ken Follett, Robert Ludlum.

‘We weren’t very close for a lot of years,’ Finlay said. ‘When it was bad. She didn’t make much effort to keep in touch back then, and when she did it was always awful. I wasn’t very sympathetic, you know?’

‘Must have been hard,’ Tanner said.

‘Oh, yeah.’ Finlay nodded. He was tall and well built; powerful. He still had a thick head of hair, though most of it was grey, as was the hair that sprouted at the vee of his open-necked shirt. ‘It was horrible.’ For a big man his voice was oddly light, thickened only by the hint of a rasp and the heavy Sheffield accent. Like someone Tanner had heard on the radio once, talking about gardens. ‘She just cut herself off from everyone for a while. The family, all her old friends. I remember some poor girl she was at school with ringing me, all upset. Asking me where she was, what had happened.’

‘What did you say to her?’

‘I just said Heather was having a few problems, something vague like that. Said she was down in London, you know? I was too embarrassed to tell the girl she probably knew as much as I did.’

‘It sounds like things got better though,’ Tanner said.

‘Oh yeah, once Heather had sorted herself out.’ Finlay sat back in the armchair. ‘Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t overnight, nothing like that. She was a bit all over the place to begin with, and it took me a while to stop thinking she’d go back on it.’

‘Understandable.’

‘Most of them do, don’t they?’

‘Some do.’

‘I couldn’t let myself believe I was getting the old Heather back. I was trying not to get too excited about it, in case it was only going to last a week, or a month or whatever. Scared of getting my hopes up.’

‘She didn’t, though,’ Tanner said.

‘What?’

‘She didn’t go back. She stuck at it.’

‘Oh, yeah.’ He smiled, for the first time since Tanner had arrived. ‘She did amazing.’

‘Did she start taking drugs at college?’ Tanner asked. ‘When she moved to London.’

Finlay shook his head. ‘Don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I mean, she caned it a bit. They all do, don’t they?’ He looked at her. ‘You got kids?’

‘No.’

He nodded, said, ‘Right. Well, it was just the usual stuff, I think: drinking cheap beer in the student union. Maybe a bit of weed. But no, I don’t reckon that was when she started on the nasty stuff.’

‘When did that change, then?’

He thought for a few seconds. ‘It was about ten years ago. There was a problem with some bloke she was seeing. It all got a bit heavy.’

Tanner’s notebook was on her lap. ‘What was his name?’

Finlay didn’t hear the question or ignored it. ‘There was a young bloke she used to knock about with before all this at college and he was really nice. Spoke to him a few times on the phone. You know, when I rang and he was round at Heather’s. I don’t know how serious that was, but it all went out the window when this new bloke came on the scene. That’s when everything went downhill, definitely.’

‘Do you remember his name?’

‘Never knew it,’ Tanner said. ‘Heather only mentioned him once, was a bit secretive about it. For some reason I think he was a bit older than she was. Maybe she said something, made me think that. I can’t bloody remember.’

‘No worries,’ Tanner said.

‘I do know that I wasn’t happy about it. I mean, whatever went on it was making her miserable.’

‘He ended it, did he? This older man?’

‘No idea what happened, but next thing I know she’s not returning phone calls, she only gets in touch to scrounge money and the first time she came home afterwards…’ He shook his head, blinked slowly. ‘I hardly recognised her.’

Tanner said nothing.

‘She’d always looked like her mum, Heather had, but now… THEN, I mean… she looked like her mum had done when she was ill. Just before she died. It was a shock, I can tell you that much. What she’d done to herself.’

Tanner watched Malcolm Finlay slowly raise his mug of tea, then pause and stare at it, as though he had momentarily forgotten what it was, what it was doing there. His mouth opened and closed, and then he drank.

‘Is there someone else Heather might have talked to about this man she was seeing?’

‘Maybe. A friend at college or something.’

‘What about family?’

Finlay looked at her.

‘Her sister, maybe?’ Tanner knew there was a sister who lived in Scotland. A secretary at an engineering firm.

Finlay shook his head and leaned forward to put the mug down. ‘They weren’t close,’ he said. ‘Even before Heather went off the rails. Her sister’s always been the sensible one. Always had a job and a family, even though, to be honest, it was Heather who was the bright one. I think she was a bit jealous because Heather was always the one who wanted attention, you know?’

‘She’s younger than Heather?’

Finlay nodded. ‘You know what she said when I told her about Heather? What had happened?’

Tanner waited.

‘She said, “Typical”.’ Finlay grunted. ‘It was just, what do you call it, a gut reaction. I know she was upset, because I could hear it in her voice, but that was the first thing out of her mouth. Typical…’ He found a thin smile from somewhere and leaned forward to brush at something on his trouser leg. He said, ‘Is any of this helping? Is it of any use to you?’

‘Everything’s useful,’ Tanner said. ‘It’s about building up a picture.’

‘That stuff about the bloke Heather was seeing. You think it might have anything to do with what happened to her?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘It was a long time ago.’

‘Ten years, you said.’

‘There or thereabouts.’

‘People can harbour grudges for a lot longer than that,’ Tanner said.

Finlay sat back again, nodding as though he could see the sense in what Tanner was telling him. He suddenly looked like someone who was harbouring a grudge or two of his own. He said, ‘They reckon that with these things, with murder and what have you, most of them are solved quickly.’

‘Who reckons?’

‘The first twenty-four hours or something.’ He glanced towards the bookshelf. ‘I must have read it somewhere.’

‘It’s not true,’ Tanner said. ‘I mean, sometimes, yes.’

‘It gets harder though, presumably. The longer it drags on.’

‘It takes as long as it takes.’ Tanner swallowed and found herself studying the marks on the carpet near Finlay’s feet. She wondered if perhaps she had sounded a little offhand. Flippant, even. ‘It will get solved though,’ she said. ‘We will catch whoever was responsible for your daughter’s death.’ She slid her notebook into her handbag. ‘Then maybe you can get those photos out again.’

Within five minutes of the train pulling away from Sheffield station, Tanner had visited the buffet car and was back at her table with a gin and tonic. Opposite her, a man in a smart suit worked furiously at a tablet. Swiping, tapping. It might have been spreadsheets or Twitter or Temple Run, there was no way to tell. Tanner decided that she would sneak a look when she visited the toilet.

It made her angry with herself, how badly she needed to know.

Malcolm Finlay had been right to question her about how helpful his information could possibly be. Was it really likely that something which had happened to Heather all that time ago was somehow connected to her murder a decade later? Could whatever – or
who
ever – made her turn to drugs for escape or comfort in the first place, have been responsible for her death?

It was possible, of course. Anything was possible.

She looked across at Tablet Man. He glanced up, then went back to his screen.

Tanner decided that she would try to talk to some of the people Heather had known ten years before. It would not be easy, as she had clearly lost touch with them, but Tanner would try to find someone who might put a name to the older man Heather’s father believed she had been seeing.

She took out her notebook, intending to jot down a few ideas, but it lay unopened and the gin got drunk, and Tanner quickly found herself struggling to stay awake, staring out at the Yorkshire countryside and thinking about family.

Listening to Malcolm Finlay talk about the relationship between Heather and her younger sister, Tanner’s face had betrayed nothing, but stories like that were something she always found hard to comprehend. Tanner had two elder brothers and they had always been thick as thieves. They talked on the phone every week. They spent Christmases together. She had been to dinner with one of her brothers only a week before and the other one and his wife had come away on holiday with her and Susan the previous year.

Stories like the one Finlay had told were sadly all too familiar though. Blood might be thicker than water, but so was bile. She knew very well that most people did not live like the Waltons, and her job brought her into contact with more dysfunctional families than she might otherwise encounter. All the same, Tanner couldn’t help feeling that she and her brothers were the strange ones. The freaks, the oddballs…

She was thinking about calling Susan again, steeling herself for it, when her phone rang.

‘I talked to some of the staff in that pub,’ Chall said. ‘They all knew exactly who I was talking about and one of them said he remembers that night really well. Said there was usually a lot of laughing or whatever, but not that particular Monday.’

‘An argument?’ Diana Knight had said something to that effect.

‘Several,’ Chall said. ‘This bloke in the pub told me he’d had to go across and ask them to keep the noise down. Chucked one of them out.’

‘Chris?’

‘Fits the description.’

‘Good stuff,’ Tanner said. ‘Well done.’

‘Oh, and I’ve managed to track down the final member of the group, too.’

‘Right, we’ll have a crack at her tomorrow.’ Tanner felt the tiredness start to lift a little. The man from Heather Finlay’s past was definitely worth checking out, but she still felt that Tony De Silva’s recovery group was the most promising area of inquiry. She stole another glance at her fellow passenger, tried and failed to read his expression. ‘Different approach this time,’ she said.

It gets harder though, presumably. The longer it drags on.
 

‘No more buggering about.’

Caroline is as good as her word and arrives more than an hour before anyone else is due, beaming and laden down with plastic supermarket bags. She hugs Heather warmly and gives her a card.

‘It’s only a silly one,’ she says. ‘You’ve got to have a laugh, haven’t you?’

Heather opens the envelope in the kitchen: a cartoon kangaroo in a party hat saying ‘Hoppy Birthday, mate!’ Heather says, ‘Thanks,’ and lays the card on the worktop. Caroline immediately picks it up and walks across to place it next to the only other card she can see, which is sitting on top of a bookcase. She points at the home-made
Happy Birthday
banner hung across the window and says, ‘That’s great,’ then she walks back and begins taking food from the bags.

‘Probably brought way too much.’ She produces large packs of sausage rolls, quiches and pork pies. There is an assortment of dips and crackers, spring rolls, mini pizzas and a big box of chocolate biscuits. ‘You can always freeze some of it, eat it whenever you fancy.’

‘I suppose.’

‘Probably last you the rest of the week.’

‘You could always take some home.’

Caroline laughs. ‘Last thing I need is all that stuff looking up at me every time I open the fridge,’ she says.

‘Oh, yeah. Sorry.’

Heather fetches plates from the cupboard and watches Caroline set out a selection of the food; arranging the sausage rolls, carefully laying out the crackers in circles, taking the lids off the dips. She hands Heather the items that need heating up. ‘We can put these on when people get here,’ she says. ‘They can help themselves.’

‘I might take them round on plates,’ Heather says.

‘Good idea,’ Caroline says. ‘Like a proper posh do.’

Heather puts what is not yet needed into the fridge and, when Caroline comments on the quantity of drinks in there, asks her if she wants something. Caroline asks for a Diet Coke, and once the drinks are poured into paper cups, the two of them lean back against the worktops and look at one another.

‘So, get anything nice?’ Caroline asks.

‘Sorry?’

‘Presents.’

‘There’s nothing I want,’ Heather says. ‘My dad sent some money.’

‘Nice.’ Caroline glances towards the card sitting next to her own on the bookshelf. She has already seen what is written inside.

Love Dad
.

Heather’s father is clearly a man of few words.

Not even a kiss…

‘So, you excited then?’

‘If anyone comes.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ Caroline says. ‘Everyone’s well up for it.’ She looks around. It’s not a big flat, just a kitchen and a small living room divided by a row of cupboards, one bedroom and one bathroom off the hall. ‘So, who else is coming then?’

‘It’s just us,’ Heather says. ‘The group.’

Caroline smiles, to show she’s fine with that. ‘I was hoping there might be some fit blokes.’

‘Robin?’

Caroline grins. ‘I was only messing about.’ She wanders across to the door. ‘Chris is good-looking, but I think I’d need to get him
really
drunk and there’s not much chance of that.’

‘Stranger things have happened,’ Heather says.

Caroline throws her a look, expressionless, then turns away and points up at the frames hanging near the kitchen door. The slogans, drawn and decorated. ‘Do these help, then? Just looking at them, I mean.’

Heather glances at her watch. ‘There’s another one I’m going to do.
A journey not a destination
.’

Caroline stares at her.

‘Recovery.’

‘Oh, right.’ Caroline cocks her head and claps her hands together. She nods at the frames. ‘Anyway, we can forget about all this for one night, can’t we? We are having a
party
…’

Heather watches as Caroline drops her empty paper cup into the kitchen bin. She walks across to straighten one of the frames, moves it just a fraction and says, ‘It’s times like this I really need to remember it.’

They all arrive within fifteen minutes of each other, though predictably, Chris is the last one to turn up. There are more cards to put on the bookcase and Robin and Diana have brought presents, each one beautifully wrapped. Heather opens them while they watch: an expensive set of soaps and bathroom smellies from Diana; a red leather iPhone case from Robin.

‘They’re gorgeous,’ Heather says, quietly, looking away as she tears up.

Robin smiles and lays a hand on her arm. Diana smiles too, but it seems like an effort, a bad mood hanging over her like a small, black cloud.

‘Blimey, that’s quite a spread.’ Robin nods towards the plates of food on the worktop. ‘Must have taken you ages.’

Heather looks quickly to Caroline, but the younger woman says nothing. Just winks.

‘Thank God,’ Chris says. ‘I’m bloody starving.’

‘Dig in,’ Caroline says.

As Chris starts loading up his plate, and Robin and Diana move to sit down, Heather gathers up her presents together with all the shiny wrapping paper and walks quickly away into the bathroom, so they won’t see her crying.

‘She’s having a baby,’ Diana says. ‘Can you believe it? That woman is having my ex-husband’s baby.’ She and Robin are sitting close together on the sofa, paper plates of food on their laps. Heather and Chris are talking in the kitchen, while Caroline is smoking in the far corner of the living room, blowing her smoke out of the open window. ‘Phoebe called me, absolutely furious.’

‘Understandable,’ Robin says.

‘Not with her,’ Diana says. ‘Not with the woman he left me for. With
me
. Yet again, this is somehow all my fault, because I wasn’t a good enough wife to hold on to him.’

‘You shouldn’t let it upset you,’ Robin says.

‘Really?’ She turns to look at him, horrified. ‘That’s all you’ve got to say? That’s being supportive, is it?’

‘You’re being rather unfair.’

‘Am I?’

‘We’re not actually in a session, Diana.’ He gestures towards the
Happy Birthday
banner. He holds up his untouched plate of food to illustrate his point, but Diana is determined to make one of her own.

‘We’re supposed to be a group though, aren’t we? A family. This is my “here and now”, OK, and some support would be very much appreciated. This bloody nightmare is my “here and now”.’ She glances up and can see that Heather and Chris are looking at her. ‘I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do.’

‘As long as you know what not to do,’ Robin says.

‘I really don’t need a lecture.’

‘Times like these are the most dangerous.’

Diana barks a short, bitter laugh and shakes her head. ‘You don’t have to worry. If I’m reaching for a bottle, it’s only so I can go round there and smash that bitch over the head with it.’

She looks up to see Caroline walking across, sighs and sits back. As well as a voluminous polka-dot dress, the newest member of the group is now wearing a pointed party hat and, ominously, two more are dangling from her fingers by thin elastic. She grins at Robin and waves one of the hats, but the look on his face tells Caroline all she needs to know, so she turns and walks away towards the kitchen.

Heather has made a playlist and now her phone is docked with a pair of portable speakers set up on the kitchen worktop. She has put together a collection of music from the year she was born – Depeche Mode, The Police, Billy Joel – as well as all her favourite songs from her time at school and college.

In the middle of the living room, Chris is dancing to ‘Tubthumping’ by Chumbawamba. He is acting out the lyrics as he throws himself around, arms flailing, taking a whisky drink, a vodka drink, a lager drink, a cider drink, and pretending to get increasingly pissed as he does so.

Heather is watching from the kitchen and laughing hard, loving it. She shouts at him over the music. ‘That’s hardly very appropriate, is it?’ He gives her the finger and that makes her laugh even more. She calls him a wanker and, without looking at her, he grins and spins away and ‘drinks’ another drink.

He is reeling about the room by the time the song fades out, pulling faces at Robin who is sitting alone in the corner. The track is replaced by ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ by The Verve and instantly Chris changes tack. He begins to sway and writhe, throwing elegantly dramatic shapes as though completely transported by the music. His movements become steadily more ornate and manic, but as the song reaches a climax, he throws a sly glance towards the kitchen and looks fiercely disappointed to see that Heather is no longer watching.

Instead, she is walking across to join Caroline and Diana, who are talking by the bookcase. They both tell her what a great party it is and the three of them stand and laugh at Chris for a minute or two.

‘You’ve got a lot of books,’ Caroline says.

‘Yeah, I love reading.’ Heather reaches out and touches one of the cracked spines. ‘Get that from my dad.’

‘That’s nice.’ Diana picks out a book and studies the back cover. ‘I was actually in a book club for a while, but it was just a bunch of women in full make-up who talked about whatever novel it was for two minutes, then sat round drinking wine and yakking about house prices. Don’t get me wrong, I was one of them, but I do like to curl up with a good book. Plenty of time to do it now, as well.’

‘I haven’t read a book since school,’ Caroline says.

‘Really?’

‘I like magazines and stuff, but books seem like such hard work.’

Heather shakes her head. ‘Not if you find the right book. You can really get lost in it, you know? Best entertainment there is, if you ask me, and it’s free. Well, good as. Most of this lot were thirty pence each from the charity shop.’

‘Oh.’ Diana looks at her. ‘I work part time in a charity shop and we have a huge books section. If you tell me the sort of thing you like, I can keep an eye out.’

‘Yeah, cheers,’ Heather says.

‘It’s really not a problem.’

Chris moves across to join them, then stands there, hands on hips, nodding his head in time to Ace of Base, until they are all looking at him. He says, ‘Talking about me?’

‘Talking about books,’ Heather says.

‘Bloody hell,’ Chris says. ‘Party’s not got that bad, has it?’

Heather leans towards Caroline. ‘He’s not a big reader. Not unless you count cereal packets.’

‘I prefer films,’ Chris says. ‘It’s a more kinetic medium.’

‘A more what?’ Caroline says.

‘Yes, I like films too.’ Diana is actually tapping her feet to the music now and seems finally to be enjoying herself. She replaces the book she has been looking at. ‘What’s your favourite?’

Chris thinks about it. ‘Well, there’s one called
The Sperminator
I’m rather fond of. Oh, and
Raiders of the Lost Arse
is an absolute masterpiece.’

Diana says, ‘You’re disgusting,’ and looks as though she means it, but Caroline and Heather are already giggling and, after a few seconds, Caroline has to spit some of her drink back into her cup.

Nobody is quite sure how long the doorbell has been ringing. When Heather finally hears it, she immediately panics and rushes to turn the music down. She stands frozen in the kitchen and tells everyone to be quiet. Convinced that someone has come to complain about the noise, she sends Robin to the door, deciding that if she is in trouble, he is the person best equipped to get her out of it.

‘I can’t lose this flat,’ she says. Diana puts an arm around her. Heather is actually trembling.

‘It’s probably just a Jehovah’s Witness,’ Chris says.

‘Seriously, I just can’t.’

‘If he’s fit, can we invite him in?’ Caroline asks.

They wait in silence for a few seconds, until Robin reappears. He has an odd look on his face, a half smile. He says, ‘Guess who’ and a cheer goes up from the others when Tony emerges from behind him.

‘Brilliant,’ Heather says.

They all move towards him and Diana says, ‘I thought you couldn’t come.’

Tony holds up a box. ‘I just dropped in to deliver a cake.’

Heather rushes forward to take it from him then turns back to kiss him on the cheek. ‘So glad you came,’ she says.

He has reddened. ‘I can’t stop.’

‘You’ve got to have some cake at least, seeing as you brought it.’

Heather lifts the cake from the box. It certainly doesn’t look as though it has come from a chain bakery. She shakes her head in disbelief and opens a drawer to get a knife.

‘I bought some candles too.’ Tony takes a paper bag from his coat pocket and hands it across. ‘They didn’t have enough for the number of years.’

‘It’s not that many,’ Heather says, laughing. ‘Cheeky sod.’

‘Just put one in the middle,’ Caroline says. ‘One candle for one family.’

Robin nods his approval. Tony says, ‘Very nice idea.’

Once the candle is lit, Caroline launches into a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ and the others join in. Diana’s voice, a high trill, rises above everyone else’s and Chris tries and fails to sing a harmony line at the end. Everyone claps and after Heather has blown out the candle and wiped her eyes, she steps forward to cut the cake.

‘Looks amazing,’ she says. She glances at Caroline, takes care to only cut five slices.

Chris turns the music back on, and Heather quickly nudges the volume down a little. Robin and Diana carry their cake into the living room and sit down.

Tony looks around, at the balloons pinned up in the corners of the room and on the door, the banner that has started to sag a little. ‘Looks like you’re all having a great time.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Chris says. ‘The joint is jumping.’

Heather is still grinning. ‘We had dancing.’ She moves closer to Tony and hands him the plate with the biggest piece of cake. ‘I bet you’re a good dancer. Being musical and everything.’

‘You should have brought your guitar,’ Caroline says.

Chris rolls his eyes and heads towards the bathroom.

Tony has just taken a bite. He shakes his head, grunts and swallows. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Maybe one Monday night. You could give us a private concert.’

‘It’s not really why we’re there,’ Heather says.

‘Afterwards, obviously.’