Evil Turn (Nathan Hawk Mystery) (8 page)

Over the next couple of days the nit combing ran its course and the ointment Laura had prescribed for the sores on Kinsella’s face and neck started to work. As she examined them just before supper one evening, Kinsella said, “Mr Hawk, that Lewis chess set in your living room, is it just for show? Are you a player?”

“I’m not.”

Laura glanced in my direction, then went back to the sores.

“I saw that, Doc. He does play, he’s just scared I’ll beat him.”

“Well, I’m not,” said Laura. “I used to captain my school team. I’ll have a game with you sometime.”

“This evening?”

“Very well.”

“Fantastic! I bet you’re good. Are you good?”

She smiled, went over to the sink and began washing her hands more thoroughly than most people ever contemplate, forbearing to lecture us on the subject even though it had become her latest hobby-horse. Kinsella followed her there for an answer.

“How good?”

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

Grogan ducked into the kitchen from the hall with a visible aura of panic clinging to him, the one reserved for lost dogs or misplaced children. His eyes came to rest on Kinsella, who’d been out of his sight for five minutes, and he relaxed. It was a game they’d started to play and in the scoring so far Kinsella was way ahead.

The conversation over supper was too girly for my liking, and I’m sure Bill Grogan felt the same, given that it centred on men’s fashions, childbirth and calorific values. Kinsella tried to hijack it. He’d been overweight as a kid until he’d started playing football. With practice twice a week and a match on the weekend he soon slimmed down. Laura praised his parents for getting him out in the fresh air instead of letting him solidify in front of a television. At that point Kinsella made a bid for our sympathy. Far from being model parents, his mother was completely under his father’s thumb, afraid to challenge him on any of his shortcomings, and she ended her life as a haggard, neurotic parody of the woman she might have been. The girls made a few sympathetic noises, then went back to their conversation, this time about skin-care products, Charles Dickens and breast cancer.

“On the subject of staying healthy,” said Fee in her patrol leader’s voice, “I think we should all go jogging, starting tomorrow morning.”

There was one hell of a silence. Only Kinsella thought it was a good idea. He’d done quite a bit of jogging in his time, a couple of half-marathons, though never in bare feet. He tried to whip up our enthusiasm and failed.

“Oh, come on!” said Fee, gesturing at what remained of supper. “We can’t just sit here, packing away more and more calories, never burning any off.”

“I agree,” said Fairchild, hands straying to her hips.

“Settled, then!” said Fee. “Seven thirty, tomorrow morning?”

Grogan wasn’t so much lost for words as disinclined to use any.

We cleared the table, a team effort, after which Kinsella asked Laura if she was still up for a game of chess. She said she was looking forward to it and suggested that he go and set up the board in the living room. Once he’d left the room Grogan muttered a two-word instruction to her.

“Thrash him.”

“Are the rest of you going to sit and watch while I do?” she asked. “Or have you other plans?”

“Fee and I’ll mosey up to
The Crown
, I reckon. Care to join us, Fairchild?”

She was about to say yes, but a slit-eyed look from Grogan changed her mind.

The Crown
was pretty busy for a weekday and, since Fee hadn’t been there since Christmas, she received quite a welcome, people asking how she was, how life in Japan was treating her but, more importantly, had it started raining outside yet? Fine, fine and not yet, she was able to tell them. Most people thought she looked radiant, of course, but one or two inquisitors wanted to know the real reason for her trip home. Was it just to check on the old man, make sure he was behaving himself? She’d made a pact with herself, she told them, to return at least twice a year, and if she hadn’t got the summer visit in sharpish it would soon be Christmas again. That gave everyone a chance to bemoan the passage of time.

We settled at the bar and when Fee asked Annie McKinnon how Roberta, her two-year-old daughter, was, I thought I sensed envy in her voice. Annie must have caught it too and, without ceremony, asked after Yukito almost as if she were inquiring about his sperm count. Just as bluntly Fee told her that she and Yukito were history and, to Annie’s delight, launched into a detailed account of the break-up. I was glad to see that an old friend, Jaikie’s Latin and Greek teacher, was in the snug and apparently on his own, finishing off a crossword someone else had started. I took a drink through to him.

John Demise rose to greet me and we broke into the usual square dance of embraces before settling down to chat about cabbages and kings. Over my shoulder he caught Fee’s eye, through in the main bar. He waved, she waved back and he seemed to drift off for a moment; he’d once told me how Fee reminded him of his late wife, Susie. When he returned, he said, “I didn’t know you had an extended family, Nathan.”

“I don’t. That’s Fee, my daughter.”

“Yes, I know that’s Fee,” he said, with a teacher’s irritability. “I’m talking about your cousin, Bill.”

He was referring to Grogan who, for cover purposes, was my mother’s nephew. The trouble with people like John Demise is that you tell them some trifling detail and they remember it forever.

“So he’ll be Auria’s son, will he?”

“Yes, yes,” I said, trusting that at some stage I’d tested the logic of that. “You met him?”

“No, not him, his wife, Petra. If I ever decide to get married again I’ll advertise for someone just like her. Poor Susie, eh?” he added. “The moment her back’s turned.”

I smiled. “Give it to me in Latin, may not sound so bad.”

He gazed into the middle distance for the translation. “
Quando tergum suum convertum, ceterae feminae converto
.”

“Sounds worse. Where did you meet her?”

“Durham University, 1965.”

“Not Susie, my cousin’s wife, Petra.”

“Oh, in the post office queue at Stone, couple of days ago.”

I hadn’t made it my business to check on every move Fairchild or Grogan had made since they’d been with me, but something about the words ‘post’ and ‘office’ retains the power to disconcert coppers of a certain generation. It has something to do with them being robbed every five minutes.

“What was she doing in Stone Post Office?” I asked.

“Posting something.” I acknowledged his gentle dig. “A parcel. Somebody’s birthday, given that the wrapping had ‘Happy Birthday’ written all over it.”

“Dead giveaway. No one in the family, so I guess it must be, well...”

Leave something like that dangling and, if the other party has the knowledge, they’ll usually share it. Besides, it’s in a teacher’s blood to pass on information.

“Someone in Grimsby,” he said. “I know you’re supposed to stand well back when those in front of you are at the counter, but there’s something about the name Grimsby that cuts right through the air.”

I’d suspected there might be something fishy about this case ever since the name Grimsby first came up, way back when Blackwell asked if he could billet Kinsella on me. So far there’d been nothing much to go on, apart from my natural feelings of mistrust, but this was promising. An SOU officer, charged with protecting the main prosecution witness, had sent a parcel to someone in the town where Aaron Flaxman murdered two trawlermen. Who and why? Who was it addressed to, why had she sent it? It smelled decidedly off.

Walking home from
The Crown
, arm in arm with Fee, I might have been any middle-aged man strolling late at night with his daughter, each of us happy to place our private worries on the back burner as we chatted. Had they been brought to the boil, Fee’s would’ve concerned a man called Yukito whom she’d spent two hours being disloyal about to Annie McKinnon, something she doubtless now regretted. Mine would’ve homed in on Grimsby and birthday presents being sent there. And, beyond that, why I’d let Tom Blackwell lumber me with his star witness. Hadn’t experience taught me that such unguarded generosity would land me in trouble?

Under the glare of a security light we’d triggered, Fee suddenly said, “Dad, what about the shoes?”

“You mean Kinsella?”

“I mean his feet. I bet it’s true, you know, it’s an abuse of human rights to deny a man footwear.”

“Nonsense! There are whole races of people who’ve never worn shoes in their lives.”

“Not in the North of England, or wherever he comes from.”

“North Wales.”

“That might be a special case, but I still want an answer.”

She’d always been a persistent girl, argumentative and fearless, all qualities I admire so long as they’re not directed at me. I’d also disregarded her Grand Plan to save the world one creature at a time, a mission she’d inherited from her mother.

“It’s out of my hands,” I said, as we turned into Morton Lane.

She stopped dead and the arm lock she had on me forced me to do the same.

“You know that’s rubbish, Dad. Bill Grogan would do anything you told him to. He’d whinge, he’d pull his face, but given enough time to sulk he’d fall into line.”

“And Fairchild?”

She took her time answering that. “I’ll let you know when I’ve sussed her out. Meantime, she’s so happy to have a job with the boys it’s embarrassing...”

I smiled at her. “Since when did you become such an expert judge of character?”

She let go of my arm and stood facing me, ready to do battle, just as ready to fall back in defence. “Since needs must.”

She meant when she’d stepped into Maggie’s shoes, nine years ago at the age of twenty-one, and started organising the lives of four other people: Con, Jaikie, Ellie and me, everything from laundry to the weekly shop via vetting her brothers’ and her sister’s friendships. She’d done it from choice, she once told me, not because I’d asked her to, and The Others had responded well enough. The only problem was she had yet to fully release her grip and, in an odd disfigurement of family power, all three of her siblings knew they would always answer to their big sister.