A Small Hill to Die On: A Penny Brannigan Mystery (3 page)

She picked up the tattered
Racing Post
Derek had left on the table and stuffed it into an overflowing rubbish bin under the sink. As she straightened up, a shuffling sound in the hall announced the arrival of her daughter, who was wearing pajama bottoms with a pattern of cupcakes, an old bubble-gum-pink T-shirt with
ROCK CHICK
spelled out in glittery silver letters, and oversize black-and-white slippers in the shape of panda bears.

“I don’t feel so good, Mum,” Ashlee Tran said as she lowered herself into the chair Derek had just vacated. She gave a big sniff and supported her head in her hands, her dark hair falling like a silky curtain over chubby fingers.

“What’s the matter with you, love?” her mother asked.

“I can’t stand the smell of that cigarette smoke. And those fag ends make me feel like I’m going to throw up.” She pushed the saucer of cigarette butts away from her.

“Well, get some breakfast down you and you’ll feel better. Fancy some eggs and bacon?”

Ashlee turned a pasty, sallow face to her, opened her mouth, and jabbed her index finger in front of it. Mai got the gagging gesture.

“I’ll take that as a no. Maybe just some cereal, then,” said Mai. “Something light to settle your stomach.” She reached into the cupboard, pulled out a cereal box, and placed it on the counter. As she turned to walk to the fridge, she looked thoughtfully at her daughter. She opened the fridge door and took out a carton of milk and gave it a little shake. “There should be enough there,” she said, setting it on the table. As she reached back for the cereal box, her daughter sprang up and raced from the room. A few minutes later Mai heard the sound of a toilet flushing. A rising feeling of dread clawed at her stomach as she lowered herself into a chair and stared at the cereal box.

With everything else that was going on, the last thing she needed was a pregnant nineteen-year-old daughter. “Please don’t let her be in the club,” she muttered under her breath. A moment later she reassured herself. Ashlee couldn’t be. She doesn’t have a boyfriend. Mai looked at her daughter, now standing in the door frame. She did seem to have gained a little weight, though. But maybe that was just the result of a little comfort eating after all the upheaval of moving to the new place. Finding a bit of solace in the bottom of a crisp bag. It was hard to tell. Unlike her mother, who was extremely slim, Ashlee had a roll of fat around her abdomen, so a baby bump might be difficult to detect. Mai frowned. No, if anything like that was going on, Ashlee would have told her weeks ago, as soon as she suspected. They were so close. Her daughter would never keep something like that from her.

“Ashlee, you’d tell me if anything was the matter, wouldn’t you? If there was something going on with you that I should know about?”

“Of course I would, Mum. Nothing’s the matter. Everything’s fine.”

The girl sat down. Mai winced as her chair scraped the kitchen floor.

“I’m not hungry. I’ll just sit here for a few minutes and then get something in town later, maybe.”

Four

As the bus pulled up at the Watling Street stop in the town centre, Mai’s seventeen-year-old son, Tyler Tran, pushed his way past a young woman struggling to get off with a folded-up pram in one hand and a toddler in the other. Once on the pavement he seemed unsure which way to go, so he stood where he’d landed, trying to get his bearings, forcing passengers anxious to board the bus to go around him. An elderly man wearing a frayed plaid flat cap seemed about to say something to him, or perhaps make a general comment on the lack of manners in today’s youth, but his wife’s restraining hand on his arm, accompanied by a look every husband understands, combined with something in Tyler’s scowl and general air of aggression, made him think better of it and he climbed on the bus without saying anything.

Tyler watched the bus disappear over the town’s famous three-arched bridge on its way to the neighbouring town across the river. As his breath curled into the crisp air, he peered into a shop window, taking in a halfhearted display of dusty plastic fruit, biscuit tins, and jars of jam stacked to form a triangle. At the base someone had placed a few evergreen boughs, now dry and turning brown, and sprinkled them with fake snow. The window was edged with twisted red and green streamers that had begun to fade under a wintry sun. The display, which would have had little appeal for Christmas shoppers a month earlier, now begged to be dismantled. Jamming his hands into the pockets of his anorak as he turned away, Tyler slouched off down the street in the same direction the bus had gone, not sure what he was looking for but confident he’d know it when he found it.

The younger child of Mai Grimstead and her first husband, a Vietnamese immigrant who had been chosen for her by her family, Tyler couldn’t believe what he was hearing when his mother had told him the family was moving to North Wales, a place he’d barely heard of. “You’re kidding me” had been his first reaction. His second had been, “Well, you can stuff that. I’m not going and you can all just bloody well piss off.” But his uncle Tu’, head of the family in a traditional, supreme-authority sort of way, could be very persuasive, and despite himself, Tyler had made the move. Now that the relocation was complete, he refused to go to school and spent his days holed up in his room playing endless, aimless video games and the bloodier the better. He missed his old life, despised his stepfather, and ached to return to Birmingham. He was old enough to leave home. He didn’t need anyone’s permission. A friend had told him he could sleep on his sofa until he got himself sorted.

As he reached the bridge, the sound of rapid footsteps behind him made him turn around. To his amazement, coming toward him was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Her dark hair was piled on top of her head, and as she passed him, she gave him a brief smile as she moved slightly to the right while at the same time he took a step back to let her pass. She strode on for a few more metres, checking her mobile as she went, and then opened a small black wrought-iron gate. After closing the gate behind her and quietly slipping the latch into place, she walked up the little path that led to a large grey stone building crouched on the bank of the River Conwy. She pushed the door open and went inside.

THE LLANELEN SPA
read the sign on the building.

Well, this was more like it. Now he had a purpose in life. He had to find out who she was. Maybe her mum worked there. Or maybe she was going to the Spa to do whatever ladies do in places like that, but he didn’t think so. She didn’t look old enough. She looked young, about his age. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a wad of scrunched-up banknotes. He bit the inside of his cheek as he straightened out a five-pound note and shoved the rest back in his pocket. A few minutes later he lifted the latch on the little wrought-iron gate and, heart pounding, made his way down the path to the front door of the Spa.

Five

“May I help you?”

The receptionist smiled at the teenage boy with the dark hair and distinctive Asian eyes.

“Hiya. I was just outside and a girl walked past me and I think she dropped this,” Tyler said, holding up the five-pound note. “She’s young and has black hair, like, and I’m pretty sure she came in here.”

The receptionist stood up.

“Oh, that must have been Eirlys, our manicurist. Just wait here and I’ll ring her.”

“Ta very much.”

A few minutes later Eirlys, wearing a puzzled expression, walked down the hall toward him. “Hello? You wanted to see me?”

“Oh, hi,” said Tyler. “We almost bumped into each other on the street back there, and after you’d gone, I noticed this on the pavement, so I thought maybe you’d dropped it, and when I saw you come in here, I thought I’d just…”

“Well, that’s very nice of you, I’m sure,” said Eirlys, “but I didn’t drop it. It’s not mine.”

“Oh.”

Tyler, who hadn’t thought this far into his scenario, was at a loss for words and remained silent while his brain raced to try to think of something to say.

“Anyway, since it doesn’t belong to me”—Eirlys shrugged—“I guess it’s yours to keep.” In the awkward silence, she turned away from him and peered down the hall. “Well, thanks for coming in. I’d better get back to work now.”

“I’m Tyler,” he blurted out. Rhian, who couldn’t help hearing the exchange taking place in front of her, suppressed a smile.

“Right, well, bye then, Tyler,” said Eirlys.

“Bye,” said Tyler. “See you around.”

As the door closed behind him, he let out a frustrated sigh and then hit his head with his fist.

Eirlys exchanged a quick look with Rhian. “What?” Rhian shook her head, and Eirlys returned to the manicure room.

“What was all that about?” asked Penny, who was stacking the towels Eirlys had just folded on a shelf.

“I’ve got no idea. Just some lad who found a five-pound note on the pavement, thought I’d dropped it, and wanted to return it to me. I don’t know what he was on about.” She shrugged and then brightened.

“Penny,” she said, “I was online last night and I saw this new kind of manicure and pedicure that uses real snakeskin so the customer gets a nail that has a perfect snake pattern on it. It comes in a kit. Do you think we could order in one or two of them?”

Seeing Penny’s look of astonished dismay, Eirlys laughed.

“Oh, no, nothing like that. It’s just skin the snake has shed naturally, see. It’s not like the snake was killed for it or anything like that.”

“Oh, that’s all right, then,” said Penny. “And tell me, who would be wanting such a manicure? And more important, be willing to pay for it.”

“Well, young people, of course, and maybe trendy older ones. Not really old, like Mrs. Lloyd, of course, but you know, sort of old. Up to thirty, maybe.”

Penny laughed. “Well, I guess to someone who’s what, seventeen are you, thirty must seem kind of old, but believe me, it won’t when you get there.”

“Anyway,” said Eirlys, “you were really good about getting in the bright colours of nail polish teenagers like, so I just thought you’d be well up for giving this a try. I’ll show you the advertisement so you can place our order. You have to cut the snakeskin to fit the client’s nail bed and then you apply it with a special gel. I know we’ll be able to sell them. And they’re expensive, too. I think the manicure is about seventy-five pounds.”

“All right, you show me and we’ll order a couple of the kits.”

Six

The middle-aged man scanning a computer screen looked up as the bell jangled to announce the arrival of a punter.

“Morning, Derek.”

Derek mumbled something as he entered the betting shop.

“Put the cigarette out, Derek, please. You know you’re not allowed to smoke in here anymore.” Derek flicked a half-smoked cigarette out the door and pulled it shut behind him. He longed for the good old days when the air in any bookmaker’s in Britain would have been chokingly thick with the blue fug of heavy smoke.

He paused to scan the lists of horses running that day at racecourses throughout the country. Three other men, and one lone woman, sat at tables impassively watching a horse race on a wall-mounted flat-screen television. No one took any notice of the newcomer.

Using the little pen provided, Derek filled out a betting slip and handed it to the man behind the counter. He glanced at it, then entered a few numbers into his computer.

“Five hundred pounds on Brummie Boy to win in the two thirty at Doncaster?”

Derek nodded and handed him a wodge of grubby banknotes. The bookie’s lips curled up slightly in distaste.

“Why can’t you use a credit card like everybody else, Derek?” he grumbled. “I hate having to handle all this cash and then count it up at the end of the day.”

“Are you saying real money’s not good enough for you?”

“No, I’m saying no one uses cash anymore.”

He counted the money into a drawer, tapped a few computer keys, and then handed Derek a slip of paper.

“Here you go, mate. Good luck.”

Derek pocketed the receipt, scratched his chin, and sat down at one of the tables to watch the races. The bookie’s eyes followed him and then returned to the computer screen as a younger man emerged from the back room holding out a cup of tea.

“Him again, is it, Glyn? Getting to be one of your regulars, isn’t he?”

Glyn nodded and then gestured to where Derek was sitting. “Five hundred pounds he wagered today,” he said in a low voice.

He pointed at the computer screen. “To win.” He looked at his companion. “I hope his horse breaks its bloody leg.”

“Why, what’s that horse ever done to you?”

“It’s not the horse.” Glyn scowled. “It’s what his wife’s doing. She’s only the one starting up the new tanning service right here in town.”

“Oh, so this is about your missus, then, is it?”

“Too right it is. She’s got a thing about tanning and with that new shop she’ll be in there every other day, wasting her time and our money. And with the two kids and the mortgage, we can’t afford it. It’s all I can do to keep this place going.”

“Well, if your wife likes tanning so much,” said the assistant, “maybe she should ask Derek’s wife for a job. She’ll probably be hiring and your wife has experience, so to speak. And maybe your missus could squeeze in a few minutes here and there on the tanning bed when no one’s looking. Just to make sure the equipment’s in good working order, like.” He gestured at the cup he had set down on the counter. “Now drink your tea before it gets cold.”

Glyn gave him a calculating look as he reached for the cup. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. You might be on to something there. She was a receptionist at the hotel when we got married. I’ll have a word with Derek. Cheers, mate.” Feeling much better, he took a cheerful slurp of tea.

Derek continued to stare at the screen. His race wouldn’t start for a while yet, but he had nothing to do and this was as good a place as any to do it.

Seven

The little turquoise bus wound its way out of Llanelen. Images of trees and sky flashed by, reflected in the mud-spattered windows, but Tyler Tran was too wrapped up in his thoughts to take any notice of the scenery.