Killing Mum_Kindle (2 page)

"Must have been a short trip."

"Yeah," he said.
"Couple of nights.
All he could afford on the salary I pay him."

She nodded, unfolded herself,
tucked
her lip away. "Come on in."

***

The sitting room was a shrine to seventies bad taste.
Bucket seats, white leather couch, brown and orange shag carpet and stripy psychedelic wallpaper.
Reminders of her prime, no doubt.

She said, "You want coffee before you start?"

"
Si,"
he said. Before he started what? The décor was fucking with his head, making him dizzy. Oh, yeah, fixing a leaking tap. Which he had no intention of
doing.
He wouldn't know where to begin.

He moved a magazine off the settee. It squeaked when he flopped down into it.
Placed the magazine on top of the glass coffee table, next to the old-fashioned dial-operated red telephone, one of those models that once upon a time everybody used to have.

"You don't have any tools," she said.

"Thought I could use George's."

"I imagined you'd bring your own."

"I don't have any. I'm not a plumber."

"Right."

"You still have them?"

"You have to ask?" She disappeared into the kitchen. She shouted, "How's Maggie?"

"Good," he said.

"What? Speak up."

"Good," he said, louder.

"And Sofia?"

"Good."

"How's Sofia?"

"Great," he said, louder.

"You know, I'm so sorry, but I'm just grateful she landed on the cushion. No harm done. And whatever Maggie thinks, the drink has nothing to do with it, it's just me, you know me, clumsy..."

She babbled on. She'd never liked Maggie. The fact that Maggie was twenty years younger than Carlos had a lot to do with it. And Maggie had never warmed to her as a result. After what had happened with Sofia, the temperature of their relationship had grown decidedly cool. He tuned his mother out.
Picked up the magazine, flicked through it.
Gardening magazine.
His mother didn't have a garden. Well, she shared a garden with the other members of the tenement, but there was a lawn, and that was all. No reason that she should have a gardening magazine. Maybe she was thinking of coming round to his, giving it a make-over.

She could leave his fucking garden alone. God, she knew how to make him angry.

When she returned with coffee — milk jug and sugar bowl on a tray, despite the fact that neither of them took
sugar,
and a selection of biscuits which he knew neither of them would touch — he asked her about the magazine. "
You renting
an allotment or something?"

"Not mine," she said, her cheeks turning pink.

"Whose, then?" he said.

She pressed the plunger on the
cafetiere
. Her hand was shaking.
"Just a friend."

Just a friend.
She'd had a few of those since George died. "A good friend?" he asked.

"Well," she said. She poured a cup of coffee for him, half a cup for herself. "Well, yes, I'd have said so at one point. But now I'd have to say no."

"Sorry to hear that," Carlos said. "You want to talk about it?"

"I doubt any good would come of that." She reached behind her, pulled a bottle of vodka from the side of the settee. "Don't say a word." She unscrewed the top. "This is my house.
My vodka.
I can do as I wish."

He said nothing, picked up his cup, drank his coffee. She made good coffee. Hadn't always been that way. When he was a kid her coffee tasted like crap. He remembered his dad drinking
cortados
.
Coffee the way it should be drunk. But back then Carlos's palate was too immature to appreciate it. And by the time he was old enough to do so, Pablo Morales had disappeared from their lives.

"So," she said, pouring a generous amount of vodka into her cup. "Work's slow?" She screwed the top back on the bottle.

"Yeah," he said, but he could have said anything. She'd already decided what she was going to say next.

She took a sip of her drink, blinked slowly. "Plumbing," she said. "It's never too late."

"
Cago
en
tu
leche
."

She frowned, pouted her lips.
"Something about milk?"

Something about shitting in it, but he wasn't about to tell her that. "I'm very fucking sorry I never became a plumber, Mama."

That's right. Now she'd snapped to attention. He'd never match up to the late George Anderson, his mother's second husband, plumber fucking extraordinaire. Carlos changed the subject. Last thing he needed right now was more anger he didn't have an outlet for.

Things were about to get complicated.

"Mum," he said. "This may seem like a strange question, but you haven't annoyed anybody recently, have you?"

She grinned, lips quivering, exposing dull yellow teeth. "Me?
Always annoying people."

"But annoyed somebody very badly."

"I usually annoy people very well. Ask Maggie."

"You know what I mean."

"What a strange question."
Her eyes shone, twin beams of pencil torches.
He watched her eyelids come down, the left slightly quicker than the right. Then they rose again. "I really have no idea what you mean."

The tanning salon was a front. Carlos had bought it many years ago from Florida Al, a fat Geordie who liked to wear Hawaiian shirts. Carlos wasn't sure why the fat lad wasn't called Hawaiian Al, but nicknames don't always make sense. Al had been using the salon as a base for a gun-running operation. All Carlos did, he just took his concept up a league. Gave it the balls that fat
verga
never had.

Carlos didn't kill people. He made the arrangements for someone else to do the killing. He was a broker, a go-between, an intermediary, an agent. At various times, he'd called himself by all these names.

But he wasn't a killer.

Plenty of people knew how to contact him directly. Receiving the package hadn't been that much of a surprise. The fact that someone knew that Valerie Anderson was Carlos Morales's mother worried him. He was careful to hide that, never spoke to anyone about his private life. But what was deeply troubling was the fact that the letter had arrived addressed to Charlie. There were only two people who called him Charlie: Maggie, and his mother.

He'd discussed the situation with Maggie and they'd agreed he had no choice. He had to ask his mum straight out. "
M
ama
," he said. "Why would someone want you dead?"

She shuffled in her seat.
"Why what?"

"You heard me."

She picked up her cup, took a large sip. "What nonsense is this? It's not funny."

"I'm perfectly serious."

"Why would you think someone wants me dead?" she said.

He couldn't answer that. Not now.

***

When he got home, Maggie was alone in the sitting room watching TV. Carlos noticed she'd been biting her fingernails.

"How did it go?" she said.

"Where's Sofia?"

"Sleeping.
How did it go?" she repeated.

He told her what had happened.

Maggie shook her head. "You have to tell her."

"Tell her what?"

"The truth.
About you.
About the business."

"I can't do that." His mother had no idea what he really did for a living and Carlos wanted to keep it that way.

"Then what?
This is eating you up, Charlie."

Was it? He hadn't noticed. She was probably right. He was trying not to notice, but he did want to find out who'd paid for the contract. It wasn't just curiosity either. His mother could be a pain in the arse, sure, but he couldn't believe someone would hate her enough to want her dead.
And at a very decent price, too.

"What are you going to do?" Maggie asked.

"I'm going to look in on Sofia," he said, watching Maggie tighten her lips, shake her head fast, like she was trying to dislodge water from her ears. A familiar gesture that had become more exaggerated since Sofia was born.

"And then what?" Maggie said.

"One step at a time,
mi
esposa
impaciente
.
Patience, love."

***

Back at his mother's a few days later, sitting on the settee with another cup of coffee.
She sat forward in one of the bucket seats to refill her glass from the bottle of vodka on the coffee table.

"I've been worried," she said. "You got me flustered, all your talk of people wanting me dead. I haven't slept."

"I'm sorry," he said. She looked tired. But then she'd looked tired for years.

"Thanks. But that hardly helps."

"I know." He shifted in his seat, leaned closer. "I need to tell you something."

She glanced away.
Took a sip.
"Why do I feel like I don't want to hear this?"

He could leave now. He could walk away. Everything could stay as it had always been.

Instead, he told her everything. It was the only way he could be sure.

She listened in silence.

When he'd finished, she said, "I don't believe a word of it."

He nodded. "I don't blame you."

"You've been doing this for years?"

"Long time,
si
."

"How could I not have known?"

"I'm careful."

"But still. You'd think a mother would know that her son was a ... a monster." Her face was even paler than usual, her lips like hungry worms. "I should call the police."

"I can understand how you feel," he said. "But there would be no point. I'd just deny it. You'd sound like a crazy old drunk."

"You think that's what I am?" She placed her glass on the table, carefully. It made only the tiniest sound. "What about you? What happened to your sanity? What happened to your conscience, for God's sake?"