Ramsay 04 - Killjoy (6 page)

‘Yeah!’ John said. ‘I usually do, but not tonight …’ He played his trump card. ‘Too much homework.’

He saw his father relax, proud that his son made time for homework, glad that he wasn’t one of the young tearaways who stole cars for kicks.

‘There’s just been a phone call for you,’ John said, pressing home his advantage, hoping to avoid further questions. ‘It was work. They want you to phone in as soon as you can.’

‘Right … Well … OK. I’ll not keep you from your homework.’

His father used the telephone in the sitting room so John, eating lasagne and reading the evening paper in the kitchen, did not overhear the conversation. But his father, shocked by the coincidence that a body had been found at the Grace Darling Centre, returned immediately to tell him the news. He was surprised by the boy’s reaction to Gabriella’s death. John said nothing. He disappeared to his room and Evan did not see him again all evening.

The police offered Gus Lynch a lift home—of course they would need to keep his Volvo, they said, for forensic tests. He declined the offer and took a bus, going the long way avoiding the Starling Farm estate. It was a precaution he had taken since the disturbances began. He was terrified of physical violence and had nightmares about it. He lived by the Tyne in a building that had once been a chandler’s shop. The fog lingered over the river softening the outlines of the ice factory and the new fish market. Gus was pleased with his flat on the quay. He had been lucky to get it. With the decline of the fishing fleet, the chandlery business, which sold everything from creosote to jerseys, had gone bankrupt and an enterprising architect had bought the building and converted it to flats. The area was not as fashionable as the Newcastle quayside where warehouses had been transformed into luxury apartments and wine bars had appeared on every street corner. It still smelled of fish. All the same Gus thought the flat was an investment and it would not be long before other developers discovered the fish quay too.

As he drew closer he looked up and saw that there was a light in his flat.

Shit, he thought. He should never have given her those keys. He had presumed that when he was late she would go away. His flat was on the first floor, up wooden steps from the outside of the building. Jackie must have been looking out for him, or she heard his feet on the steps, because she had the door open before he reached it.

‘Well?’ she demanded. She was blonde, very thin, attractive in a feverish neurotic way. ‘ Well, where have you been? Where’s your car? I was looking out for it.’

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a hell of a day. Aren’t you going to let me in first?’

She stood aside and let him in to the kitchen. His breakfast plates were still in the sink and he thought wryly that she was slipping. She must be anxious not to have washed them up for him.

‘I need a drink,’ he said. ‘A bloody big drink.’

He walked through to his living room and stood by the uncurtained window and looked out at the boat moored against the quay. When he was young he had haunted the quay on Saturdays, picking up casual work gutting fish. In the boats’ romantic names he had imagined adventure. Now he was back here, only a couple of miles from the house where he’d been brought up. It didn’t feel much like success.

Jackie had been watching the television and Lynch heard an announcer on the late local news talk about a ram-raid attack on the Metro Centre in Gateshead. He stopped to switch off the television and the silence was broken immediately by the foghorn at the end of the pier.

‘You’re so late,’ she said, following him into the room with a drink. She stood close beside him. ‘I was worried. You hear such dreadful things. All this violence …’

‘Oh,’ he said automatically. ‘You listen too much to your old man.’ Then he realized what he had said and how close he had been to violence and he started to laugh.

‘It’s not fair,’ she said. ‘You know how hard it is to get away. I need to talk to you …’

He looked down into the street and watched two drunks stagger from the pub two hundred yards away as they made their way along the quay, stumbling on the cobbles.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Jackie cried. ‘ Did you speak to Mrs Wood? What did she say?’

‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t listen.’

‘What are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It hardly seems to matter now.’

‘Of course it matters!’ She was beside herself with frustration. ‘We’re talking about your future. Our future.’

He turned back to her, suddenly sad and calm, he saw with detachment that she was a nuisance, that he could never be happy with her.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I can’t talk about it now. Gabriella Paston’s dead.’

Amelia Wood’s husband was an architect. When she had married him as a young woman this had seemed a promising career, glamorous even. She had imagined him as an artist, creating brilliant designs in glass and steel. She had been working as a secretary in a solicitor’s office and saw marriage as a romantic escape. The reality had been rather different. The loft conversions and garage extensions which comprised her husband’s bread and butter work did little to inspire her and she soon decided that if she wanted glamour and excitement she would have to provide them herself. She had few qualifications—the small private girls’ school she had attended prided itself on its caring atmosphere rather than its academic achievement—and she knew she would never have the persistence to take a lowly position in a company and work her way up.

Her background made her turn naturally to voluntary work, community service. Confidence and an ability to get things done were all that seemed needed in that sector and she had those qualities in abundance. As her three children grew up she became steadily more influential. She chose high-profile projects with a satisfying element of social contact. In the organization of luncheons and celebrity appearances she became indispensable. The Grace Darling Project became her favourite charity. It brought her into contact with artists, musicians. She loved the bustle of the place, the strains of music, the younger people in leotards and tights gathering for the dance classes, the press attention. It made her feel important.

When the local councillor resigned she allowed herself, with some modesty, to be persuaded to stand as Conservative candidate for Martin’s Dene, one of the few safe wards in Hallowgate. She impressed the voters with her style, flair, and commitment, and won with a much increased majority. It seemed that all her energy was devoted to public life.

Dennis, her husband, was content to allow his wife to take centre stage. He was busy making money. He supported her, of course, it did no harm for someone in his business to have connections on the council. As the recession developed in the south, the north-east became suddenly a more fashionable place to live. He bought up an old chandler’s on the Hallowgate Fish Quay for next to nothing, converted it into flats which he sold at a profit. He saw the venture as a prototype, the first of many. But he was a grey, silent man, and he preferred to remain anonymous.

When Amelia left the Grace Darling Centre she was pleased with herself. Lynch was no fool. He had the sense to realize that his future lay, indefinitely, with the project. They would find it impossible to find another actor, with as high a profile, to be director. She drove down Anchor Street and along the edge of the Starling Farm council estate. A row of shops was boarded up and covered with graffiti and she felt a stab of personal annoyance that such vandalism could not be prevented. On a patch of wasteland a group of children were setting fire to the rubbish that had been dumped there. Their silhouettes against the flames had a demonic quality and she wondered automatically what their parents were thinking of to allow them out so late. Her children had been submissive, apathetic, and she had never had any difficulty in controlling them.

She drove past the concrete square of the sixth-form college towards the coast and the streets began to change. There were more trees and the gardens were bigger. She passed a tennis court and a church, a row of small shops, selling expensive dresses and French cheese. Martin’s Dene had once been a village and still considered itself separate from the urban sprawl of Hallowgate which had grown up to the west of it. There was a prized open space—a hill where children flew kites on Sunday mornings and a scrubby valley beloved by dog walkers and the riders of mountain bikes.

The Woods’ house was large, solid, rather unexciting. Dennis had bought it as an investment soon after they had married. He had recognized Martin’s Dene as a place where property would keep its value. Amelia found it rather dull. When she invited the arty friends met through the Grace Darling to parties there, she felt she had to apologize for it. She found Dennis rather dull too.

He was sitting in front of the television with a cup and saucer on his knee. He had removed his jacket so that it would not crease. She knew that he would already have eaten. He was quite used by now to providing his own meals. The plates would be stacked in the dishwasher. All trace of mess would be cleared away. She knew his routine exactly. He would watch the evening news, make a general comment on the weather forecast, then retire to his office for an hour to catch up on paperwork.

‘Had an exciting day?’ she asked, sarcastically, hoping to provoke a fight, knowing there would be no response.

‘So, so,’ he said, not noticing the irony. He was grey haired, bespectacled. She wanted to scream.

She took off her coat and hung it up, then returned to him.

‘What are you watching?’ she asked, just to disturb him, because she knew perfectly well already.

‘Only the local news.’

‘Anything interesting?’ she persisted.

‘Yes,’ he said. He turned his attention from the screen and looked at her directly. ‘There’s been a murder. In that Arts Centre where you’re trustee. A young girl has been stabbed. They found her body in the boot of Lynch’s car.’

When Prue Bennett returned to the house in Otterbridge where she had lived as a child she opened a bottle of wine. She and Anna sat at the kitchen table and drank it, quickly.

‘I nearly brought out three glasses,’ Anna said. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the fact that she’s not around.’

Everywhere in the kitchen there were reminders of Gabby’s presence—her underwear strewn to dry on the radiator under the window, a jersey thrown over the back of a chair, a self-portrait stuck on the fridge, which had been a present to Prue on her last birthday. It occurred to Prue that Gabby must have made an impact wherever she went. Anna had lived in the house for most of her life yet there was little indication of her existence.

‘Isn’t it strange,’ Prue said suddenly, ‘that you were such good friends. You were really terribly different.’

‘You mean that she was amusing, friendly, and attractive, and I’m dull,’ Anna said sharply.

‘No, of course not.’ Prue was shocked by the bitterness.

‘I’m sorry,’ Anna said. ‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that. But sometimes it was hard not to be jealous. Not of the life she’d had. It must have been dreadful to lose her parents like that. But because she was always so popular.’

‘Did she have a boyfriend, at the moment?’ Prue asked. ‘I suppose the police will want to know.’

‘Oh,’ Anna said. ‘Gabby always had a boyfriend.’ She paused. ‘ I don’t know how serious it was,’ she went on, ‘but I thought she was rather keen on John.’ She kept her voice even. ‘I don’t know if anything came of it. And she’d always had a crush on Gus, of course. If he hadn’t been old enough to be her father she might have had a go at him.’

‘She liked John Powell?’ Prue’s voice was tactfully calm. ‘I didn’t realize.’

‘She never talked about it,’ Anna said. ‘She never talked about anything that was really important to her, if you think about it. She made everything out to be a great joke.’

‘Didn’t she even talk to you?’ Prue said. ‘I thought you two were so close. I could understand her not confiding in me…I thought perhaps I intimidated her…’

‘Oh, Mum,’ Anna said. ‘Don’t be so silly. She liked you. She really liked you.’

‘Did she?’ Prue looked up from her glass. ‘As you say, with Gabby it was impossible to tell.’

When the bottle was empty Anna went to bed. She had to step over the slippers shaped like seal pups which Gabby had left at the bottom of the stairs and in the bathroom she stood for a moment, quite transfixed. The smell of Gabby’s perfume still lingered there, so Anna felt that if she called out Gabby would answer her.

Prue stayed in the kitchen until past midnight. She opened another bottle of wine, which she began to drink more slowly. The cat jumped on to her lap and she stroked it absentmindedly, shivering slightly. She realized that the heating had gone off an hour ago, that she was very cold and a little drunk.

Joe Fenwick left the Grace Darling Centre at 11.30. The relief security man had been there for an hour but he had hung on, afraid of missing something, brewing tea for Ramsay and his men in the cupboard where he kept his things. There were no lights on in Hallowgate Square. Even the curious neighbours, who had heard of the murder on the telly and watched out for the police cars, had gone to bed. Usually, when he left work, Joe liked a quick drink in the Ship in Anchor Street. He liked the warmth, the conversation, even the piped Christmas music. He was well known in there. But tonight the doors were shut and the windows were dark. He walked on down the hill towards the river.

Joe Fenwick had lived in a basement flat at the bottom of Anchor Street for more than twenty years. During that time he had shared it on and off with Sal Grainger, the barmaid in the Anchor. She had been a big, impulsive woman who disappeared occasionally with other lovers, but they had got on well when she was there. They had shared a lot of laughs. Her death after a sudden illness had shaken him more than anyone realized. It had left him lost and lonely.

He was thinking of Sal when he was fiddling with the keys to his flat. He missed the anticipation of seeing her, sharing the news of the day, sitting in the stuffy little room in front of the gas fire, drinking tea or whisky. He was so lost in thought that the screeching brakes of the car turning from the square into Anchor Street shocked him. The car hurtled down the road, swerving from one side of the street to the other.