Come to Harm (13 page)

“Have your what?” she snapped, brushing the shoulders of her coat as though he spread flour from his fingers like a human dredger.

“My loyalty, Henrietta,” he said. “More than you know.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Etta said. She had a high colour and always wore green basecoat, so she was safe from untoward flushing, but she could not help her eyes growing round. How could he know anything? What made him think for a moment there was anything
to
know?

“Don't look so worried,” he said, for he was fond of his wife, proud of her, and liked life easy. “Like I just told you, you can count on me.”

“My God,” said Craig quietly to Fancy. “It's supposed to be us young ones that fall out and have a go at each other in the pub. Look at Etta and Mr. Staypuff. If looks could kill!”

“Craig,” said Fancy, catching another glimpse of Mrs. Poole, who hadn't moved although the room was emptying from around her like water draining from a bathtub and leaving her stranded. “Do you ever think there must be more going on round here than what your uncle tells you? The
state
everyone's in.”

“Everyone who?” said Craig. “What do you mean?”

“Oh. Well, nobody,” said Fancy, turning away from Mrs. Poole again. “Yeah, you're right. Nothing.”

sixteen

The security light clicked
on most nights, flooding the back of the house and the patio with a white glare that banished sleep as instantly as snapped fingers. Roaming cats set it off, tree branches in high winds, even a hedgehog one time. They had learned to ignore it and so the delivery went unwitnessed. The letter didn't make itself known until the next morning. Then there it was, propped against the kitchen window, held in place with one of the large polished pebbles from the water feature, facing in, the front of it—
for you
—pressed against the glass, ink bleeding a little from the dew. And inside:
There's a name for people like you. There's a word for it. I will tell them all
.

As soon as the house was empty for the day, it was taken upstairs, up the Ramsey ladder, to the attic, into the eaves. It was filed between the pages of a weekly magazine, fifteen years old, one of hundreds, yellowing. It was put towards the back of the issue too, with the dress patterns and recipes, the black-and-white pages, where no one flipping through to see the articles and photographs would ever go looking.

Monday, 4 November

The first knock came half an hour early. Keiko was ready though, a pile of questionnaire papers and a mug of biros set out in the living room, the whole bottle of chemicals tipped down the kitchen sink and a vanilla candle lit, the door to her bedroom and bathroom safely closed.

She stepped back when she saw Malcolm Poole standing there but managed, moving sideways, to turn it into a gesture of welcome.

“I'm not coming in,” he said, his voice booming around the high empty landing.
The creep across the road
, Craig's cousin had called him. “I just wanted to warn you to close your back windows. Mum said your bathroom window was open.”

“Yes,” said Keiko. “I open it every day. I didn't realise. Please make my apologies to your mother.” Could a creep be female? She could ask Fancy.

“No,” said Malcolm. “Just this morning, I mean. I'm doing kidneys.”

“Oh yes?”

“Cleaning them. And they smell a bit.”

Keiko took a little sniff, feeling her lip curl and Malcolm, looking up briefly, noticed and smiled.

“I haven't started yet,” he said. “They're lovely, once you've soaked and blanched them. But they do smell at first, so I do a whole load of them together and freeze them down. I'll go up to McLuskie's after this and tell the girls to take their aprons in off the line.” He seemed to be waiting for a response, looking from side to side at the edges of the doormat.

“You're very thoughtful,” said Keiko. “So … you'll be busy in the little house in the yard this morning.”

He looked at her properly then, closely into her face for the first time, then shook his head, and made a massive movement of relaxation, leaning against the doorframe and throwing one leg in front of the other. He almost filled the doorway, an iceberg in his white overall and white boots, leaving just a sliver of space that she would have to jump through if she decided, for some reason, that she needed to get past him.

“No,” he said. “I do everything in the back of the shop. We don't really use the slaughterhouse anymore. Hey!” he said, suddenly loud, the sound echoing. Keiko could feel her heart banging. “Hey! I'll bet you've never had a steak and kidney pudding.”

“You're right,” said Keiko.

“I'm going to make you a steak and kidney pudding. I only make pies for the shop, of course. They keep better. A pudding has to be made and cooked in a oner, unless you're very careful, but there's nothing like it. I'll use ox kidneys. Beef suet. You know, suet is kidney fat. Makes sense, eh? All these old recipes.”

“You're very kind,” said Keiko again.

“You've no idea,” said Malcolm. “Wait until you taste it. I'll need to come up here to boil it, though. Easiest all round and let's face it, the smell of it cooking is half the pleasure. You name the day and I'll be here.”

Keiko's thoughts raced. Then she said, “Come and cook it for lunchtime while I'm running my dry run. And all the people will smell the lovely smell and come downstairs and buy a pudding to take home!”

“A pie,” said Malcolm, slowly. “Puddings don't keep to sell in the shop.” There was a pause. “So you're starting your work this morning?” he said. “I saw the sign downstairs.”

Keiko made a gesture of mock panic, but her eyes were dancing. “You could come in and be the first person,” she said. “Your mother seemed a little … but it's really nothing to be concerned over.”

“I'm already the first person,” said Malcolm, smiling down at his feet again. “Alien spaceships and killer tomatoes. Been there, seen it.”

Keiko laughed in surprise. “I forgot!” she said. “Yes, of course. But Fancy's taken away my aliens. She said they were too distracting. She's very firm.”

Malcolm uncrossed his legs and, bending one knee slightly, pushed himself up off the doorframe and stood straight. “Right. You go and push back the frontiers of knowledge, and I'll go and blanch my kidneys.” He turned and moved away.

_____

Mrs. Watson, it turned out, was the first person. She knocked on the door at quarter to ten, and then put her head round and called along the passageway.

“Shout at me, Keiko my darling, and tell me to get out and come back when you're ready, but you'll have to shout at me, for I'm that excited I can't wait.”

“Mrs. Watson,” said Keiko coming along to the door. “You're going to be so disappointed. It's so very dull.” Mrs. Watson's head disappeared and when Keiko opened the door, she was standing half-turned away on the mat. “But how can I shout at you, when I am so excited myself ?” She took Mrs. Watson's arm, walked her to the living room, and settled her down at the table.

“Now,” she said in a high voice. “Please read the instruction page and then ask me if anything is unclear.”

“Och, away,” said Mrs. Watson. “You tell me about it yourself. You'll know it all back to front.”

“No, I can't,” said Keiko in her normal voice. “Everyone has to have exactly the same introduction so that I don't give more information to some and not others by accident and confound my methodology.”

“‘Confound your methodology',” echoed Mrs. Watson. “Your mother must be so proud.” She nodded conspiratorially and turned her eyes to the page while Keiko sat in an armchair and pretended to read. When Mrs. Watson looked up, she leapt to her feet.

“Is everything is clear? Good. If everything's clear, please go on to the sample question. We can talk through this one.”

Mrs. Watson nodded with shrewdly narrowed eyes and read aloud: “
Mark the line to show how strongly you agree with the following statement: There's no smoke without fire
. You know what this is like? This is just like a séance. Make the mark wherever you feel drawn to make it. Let yourself be guided, empty your mind.”

“Well,” said Keiko, but bit her lip as Mrs. Watson marked the paper with a languid hand.

“What would you do if people started coming out with real messages,” she said. “Could you use that?”

“Do you believe in the spirit world, Mrs. Watson?” Keiko said, sidestepping Mrs. Watson's question. She hadn't put anything in the profiler about such paranormal things, since most British people were supposed to be so rational that they would scoff. And she didn't want to offend the others.

“I'd like to,” said Mrs. Watson. “I sometimes feel as though there's someone nearby. Don't you?”

“Not really,” said Keiko, although she shivered as she spoke. “But I've never lost anyone close to me.”

“And long may that last,” said Mrs. Watson. “I don't recommend it.”

Keiko hesitated. Was Mrs. Watson thinking of her niece Dina? If she was speaking Japanese she would have been able to tiptoe up to the questions, but in English the intrusion would be—

The doorbell rang.

“You run along,” said Mrs. Watson. “I know exactly what to do. You concentrate on the newcomers.”

It was Mr. McKendrick, dressed in a dark suit and black tie. He checked his step for a moment in the living room doorway when he saw Mrs. Watson bent over her paper, and looked rather ostentatiously at his watch.

Mrs. Watson raised her eyes without raising her chin, regarded him over the top of her spectacles. Then taking in his black tie she lifted her head. “Of course, it's Tam Cleland's funeral this morning,” she said. “I couldn't believe it when I heard he was gone.”

“Aye, he looked such a tough old goat,” said Mr. McKendrick.

“But Mrs. Mackie was saying there's nothing at the church.”

“No, it's the crematorium, just. And no do.”

“Crematorium!” said Mrs. Watson. “He'll be turning in his grave.” Then she put one hand over her mouth to smother the giggles.

Keiko got Mr. McKendrick settled and took him through the introduction, Mrs. Watson looking up at intervals and nodding. He viewed the mug of biros sternly and reached into his pocket for his fountain pen.

“
No smoke without fire
,” he said softly. “
No smoke without fire
. Would that be barbecue smoke? Because this was supposed to be about food, if you remember.”

“The food questions will come later,” Keiko said. “This is just smoke.”

“You're not allowed extra instructions, Jimmy,” said Mrs. Watson. “It wrecks the methodology.”

Mr. McKendrick turned slightly away from her and addressed Keiko. “It's true, you know. I was a volunteer fireman in my younger days. Even when there's only smoke there's either just been a fire or there's going to be a fire. Or if there isn't, it's because someone sees to it that there isn't. So would that be a yes or a no?”

“It's not a clear yes or a clear no,” said Keiko. “You need to mark the line to show what mixture of yes and no. More yes? More no? Can't say?”

“Just let your mind drift, Jimmy,” said Mrs. Watson, without looking up.

“And if you don't know, if you can't say, you leave it blank?” said Mr. McKendrick.

“No,” said Keiko. “If you can't say then it would be in the middle. Neither yes nor no. You see?”

Mr. McKendrick nodded, kindly. “Aye well, I suppose that's why you do a dry run, isn't it after all,” he said. “To iron out these wee hitches. You'll need to ditch this one before you get going for real, eh?”

Keiko smiled tightly. “Mr. McKendrick,” she said, “remember these answers are strictly anonymous. You should use one of my pens instead of yours, so that all the sheets are the same.”

Mr. McKendrick moved as though to put the lid back on his pen, then catching sight of Mrs. Watson staring at him, he set the nib down on the paper.

“I've nothing to hide,” he said, “and I trust you.”

seventeen

By evening, she had
twenty-five completed papers and was sitting at her desk rewriting the instructions—
Do not confer
during the experiment
and
Please do not discuss your answers with anyone
—when Murray arrived, dressed in running clothes.

“How did it go?”

“Tremendously well,” said Keiko, flopping back down onto the sofa. “But I'm exhausted. Twenty-five people and it might have been more, except there was a funeral.”

“Tam Cleland, yeah,” Murray said. “So now you know all there is to know about the people of Painchton?”

“More than I expected to,” said Keiko with a laugh. “I know that Tam Cleland's daughter-in-law is to blame for such a small funeral and she's ‘been through the house and stripped it bare.' Miss Morrison told me all about it.”

“Miss Morrison.” He nodded slowly. “Okay. You're fine with her.”

“What do you mean?”

“You wouldn't understand,” Murray said.

“Who am I
not
fine with?”

“Well, there's me,” he said, grabbing hold of her hand and pulling her to her feet. “I didn't tell you in case you tried to get out of it, but I reckoned tonight would be the perfect time to get started on you.” Keiko opened her eyes wide. “At the gym.” He looked appraisingly at her and she felt her neck lengthening, her chin lifting. “I know you never came round like I said, but have you got any workout clothes?”

_____

It was only a few yards round the corner to the workshop, but still Keiko let go a breath of relief when they arrived without being seen. She felt fluorescent in the unaccustomed pale clothes and her feet, darting in and out of view, drawing her eyes down towards the tennis shoes, were as white and bulky as puffballs. She had imagined the people in the flats above the shops leaving their armchairs and padding to their windows to see her, drawn from the television by something even brighter.

“New trainers, eh?” said Murray with a small smile as he stooped over the padlock at the workshop door. “What brought that on?”

“I'm going to be very fit and healthy despite the steak and kidney pudding and the apple pie and the cheese scones,” Keiko said, stepping neatly around the question.

“You don't have to, you know,” said Murray, clicking switches off and on until the right selection of spotlights left the motorbikes draped in darkness and picked out the exercise machines. “Just say you're not hungry.”

“But they're all so kind,” said Keiko. “Mr. McLuskie brought me a pie the size of a tyre when he came today.” Murray said nothing. “And a big bowl full of extra … whatever it was that was in the pie.”

What Mr. McLuskie had told her was in the pie was squashed flies.

“A fly pie, hen,” he'd said. “Also known as a flies' graveyard. Fine old traditional names are dying out. Like blood oranges. Ruby red oranges they call them now, and these would be Abernethy slices, I suppose, but the Japanese are not a squeamish people, I know, so fly pie it is. And I've put a wee bowl of extra filling in your fridge for you to make toasties. I know you've a toastie-maker in that kitchen of yours because I gave it myself.”

“Thank you,” said Keiko, meaning it to encompass everything.

“Och,” said Mr. McLuskie, flicking his hand that way that had seemed so rude to her at first, but which she was getting used to. “I promised Etta I'd do my bit, keeping you from fading away, wee thing that you are, so far from home and you must wonder what the he—eck you're doing here, eh?” He sat down heavily, one hand on each knee, dropping backwards into the seat with a sigh. As he did so a gust of warm sweetness rushed towards Keiko's nostrils and, as she bent over him to explain the questionnaire, was she only imagining that she could taste it, like a cloud of icing sugar hanging in the air around him?

“
No smoke without fire
,” he said, stifling a yawn.

“Would you like a cup of coffee, Mr. McLuskie?”

“Och no, I wouldn't want to put you to it,” he said. “But if the kettle's going on anyway, I'll keep you company. Tea, mind, not coffee. Nice change to be asked too. Etta's up to high doh this weather and I can raffle.”

“I'm sorry?” said Keiko.

“My wife is not herself these days,” said Mr. McLuskie. “Anybody's guess why not. So it'll be a wee treat to have somebody make me tea.”

“And a slice of pie?” said Keiko, holding it up to him as though she had made it and was tempting him.

“I shouldn't really,” he said. “I brought it for you.”

“But I like that,” said Keiko. “I mean, the way you appreciate your own … Mrs. Imperiolo took me out for fish and chips, and Malcolm is doing something with suet and kidney for me.”

“Fish, eh?” said Mr. McLuskie. “Well, at least she never had you at that so-called Indian or the so-called chink—uh, Chinese, I beg your pardon.”

“I don't understand you, Mr. McLuskie,” Keiko said. He had followed her through to the kitchen and was watching her setting out cups and plates, the questionnaire forgotten in the other room.

“See, me? I'm a traditionalist,” he said.

“I am very glad to hear it,” said Keiko. “You will be an important part of my study. I cannot tell you why, but I assure you.”

“I make plain and pan, morning rolls, bridge rolls, cottage, farls and batch. Mince pies, steak pies, sausage rolls, bridies. All with Malcolm's special mixture. Honest food from right here.”

“And you make the pastry to go around?” said Keiko.

“Aye, from the finest flour, butter, lard, and salt, with these two hands,” he said. “And then there's fruit scones, drop scones, tattie scones, soda scones; never mind the teacakes. And speaking of cakes! Vanilla slices, cream horns, French fancies, coconut rocks, your fly pie there, fruit slab, Chelsea buns, yum-yums … you name it. Of course I could fling together a hundred kinds of muffins, wee bits of dried blueberry and choc chips that might as well be rabbit pellets for all the taste of them. Of course I could be shovelling out croissants and cookies and rocky road—a child of five could. But I am a Scottish Master Baker, see? And there's nothing can go inside a panini that can't go in a good morning roll.”

Keiko formed her lips to attempt a reply but could not think of anything. Mr. McLuskie sailed on.

“But the thing is, Imperiolo's café and chippy and Indian and chink—Chinese—you'll forgive me, hen—have got folk from all over the country, down south,
France
even, raving on about how marvellous it is, all over that Internet, and then there's McLuskie's Bakery and … not a sausage! Nothing! My customers just aren't the type to …”

“To post online reviews,” said Keiko.

“Exactly! It doesn't mean I'm not as good a baker as Kenny is a whatever he calls himself these days. He hasn't shaken a basket of chips for twenty years. I'm still up at four every morning with my yeast. He just sits in his office at his computer.”

“He's probably writing reviews,” said Keiko. Mr. McLuskie crashed his cup down into its saucer. “I didn't mean that,” she blurted. “I was only joking.”

“Ho ho!” said Mr. McLuskie. “You've hit the nail on the head, hen.”

“I was joking.”

“Oh no, you've cracked it.”

“Please!”

“I am going to make you a cake,” said Mr. McLuskie, standing up. “Royal icing and sugar roses, because you are a wee sweetheart. You've made my day.” And he left, the questionnaire forgotten.

_____

“Keiko?” said Murray. “You're miles away.”

Keiko blinked and smiled at him. “Sorry,” she said. “I was thinking about Mr. McLuskie.”

“I bet nobody's gone off in a dwam about him for a while,” Murray said laughing.

“I told him something about someone and I shouldn't have.”

“Who?” said Murray, staring hard at her.

“Kenny Imperiolo.”

Murray considered this for a moment and then shook his head. “You're better off staying away from both of them,” he said. “Best thing.”

“I can never tell whether you're serious or joking,” said Keiko staring at him.

“I'm never joking,” Murray said. “Remember? I only laugh so I don't scream. Right then.” He walked towards the gym machines, but Keiko put out a hand to stop him.

“I'd like to learn another bike first, please,” she said.

“Gold Flash,” he said, once again doing the trick with the tarpaulin that made him look like a children's conjuror and made Keiko want to giggle. “BSA Golden Flash. 1950 to 1961. So called because of the colour. Although they did do them in black and chrome too—pretty rare. I've had a set of black front forks and mudguards for years, probably never get a hold of the rest.”

Keiko listened and nodded but could not see in this machine anything like the glamour of the Harley or the spidery elegance of the Vincent. This one seemed to be nothing but trouble. Murray told her about the innovative plunger suspension, which wore out too quickly, and the brakes not strong enough to allow a sidecar. She could feel a frown form on her brow, too tired to take a scholarly interest in such a catalogue of failures. She was glad when he stopped talking and threw the cover back over the bike again.

“Right. No more skiving,” he said. “What do you weigh?”

“Ah, fifty kilos,” said Keiko. “I don't know in stones.”

“That's okay. Metric's best,” Murray said. “Do you mind?” He walked towards her and put a hand around her upper arm, warm thin fingers reaching right around it. “Flex,” he said. Keiko tensed the muscle with all her strength, one foot lifting slightly off the floor in its weightless trainer.

“Go on, flex your bicep,” he said sternly.

“I am flex—” she started.

Murray smiled. He squatted down in front of her, cupped one hand around her right calf, lifted the leg from the floor and laid the other hand flat against the front of her thigh.

“Point your toe,” he said, curving his palm around her thigh as it stiffened. Keiko wobbled and put one hand on his shoulder to steady herself. She stared down at the top of his head, at the glint of his eyes through his lashes.

“Flex your foot up?” he asked quietly, and she did, feeling his hand squeezing the small ball of her calf. She relaxed and Murray set her foot gently back down. She took her hand away from his shoulder and crossed her arms as he stood upright and looked down at her.

“It's a miracle,” he said. “You have absolutely no muscles. How do you walk around?”

Keiko started laughing. “You're very rude to me,” she said. “Maybe I'll go home and eat my pie.”

“Multi-gym, leg press, incline bench, treadmill, cross-trainer,” said Murray—cursory, so different from his caressing descriptions of the motorcycles—then started to work at the fastenings on one of them. The contraption, which looked to Keiko like the mechanism of an elevator, had no obvious place in it for a human body to be added.

“Weight-lifting?” she asked. He smiled at her over his shoulder but said nothing, spun the loosened weights free, and stacked them in their place in the pile. Then he straightened and held up his hands to Keiko, showing her two absurdly tiny weights like doughnuts in his palms.

“No,” she shouted. “I am not as feeble as that.”

“Nothing feeble about it,” said Murray. “You have to start from where you are. This is where you are.”

He settled Keiko into the contours of the machine, nudging her feet into place and pushing her head gently back into the rest, then swung the bar over her, talking her through the exercise in minute detail. When she tried it, just as he said, shoulders down, stomach tight, her eyes opened wide with surprise at the resistance of the silly little weights. She felt the tendons on her neck and heard her ears crackle.

“Won't this make me look like those orange ladies?” she asked, releasing the hold. “They're very ugly.”

“How can you ask questions when you're breathing in?” said Murray watching her arms.

She stopped and replaced the weight. “But will it?”

“No,” said Murray. “They increase the weight. You're going to up the repetitions. You'll look more like me than them. As long as you do what you're told. Do you trust me?” She nodded. “Will you do what you're told?” She nodded again.

“And if I eat the pies? Will it cancel out?”

“You can't eat the pies,” said Murray. “You don't want to, do you?”

“Malcolm wants so much to show me the pudding.”

“You don't need to worry about Malcolm,” said Murray. “I'll tell him to leave you alone.”

Keiko lay down and moved the weights again. “Have you always done this?” she asked him. “Have you always been …” She couldn't think of a way to say it that wouldn't make his eyebrow lift that way it did. “Only Malcolm and your father are so different.”

“Dad?” He was surprised, she could tell, but not shocked, not horrified. Perhaps Malcolm was right and it wasn't Mr. Poole who had made Murray so sad after all.

“I saw his photograph,” Keiko reminded him. “And I just wondered if his health, you know, was what made you decide to be the way you are and why Malcolm didn't … join you.”

“His health?” said Murray.

“I assumed it was a heart attack,” Keiko said.

“I think most people did,” said Murray, nodding.

“But it wasn't?”

“Not so far as I know.”

She sat up and hooked her arms over the bar, slouching. “Is that the puzzle you talked about?” she asked him.

“Not exactly,” Murray said. She started to speak again, but he talked over her. “Like I said, you wouldn't understand. And even if you did, you wouldn't believe me. And even if you bel— Keiko, have you ever heard the expression ‘What you don't know can't hurt you'?”