Lady Bag (24 page)

I thought the Master of Spiders had forgotten one tiny corner of his web where I could be cared for and at peace with Electra. I was wrong. He lured Pierre and Electra in and gave me moments of comfort with them only to rip them away. The Craftsman of Pain gave me the Poisoned Draught. It’s called Foul Hope and it kills slowly.

A couple of hours later, back in the interview room, DC Anderson said, ‘Tell me more about the little stone lion that you noticed was gone from outside 14 Harrison Mews.’

‘It was there, and then it was gone. What’s to tell?’ I was numb now, three-quarters dead. Everyone seemed to prefer me that way. DI Sprague was back again, squatting like a scorpion in the corner. WPC Linda brought ice cream and custard, and then went away. Kaylee sat beside me chewing on a hangnail. I couldn’t be bothered to ask for a chair for my foot. I knew it was throbbing but I couldn’t really feel it.

‘What made you notice it?’

‘I didn’t, Electra did. I told you, she thought it was bogus.’

‘But when you came out of hospital it was gone?’

I nearly corrected him—the fact is that when I came back from hospital I didn’t notice a thing. But I couldn’t tell that to Anderson and Sprague because, when I did finally check up on it, Smister was with me.

‘Where do you think it is now?’

‘How should I know?’ I didn’t want to say, ‘Under the Devil’s kitchen sink’. He’d ask how I knew and that too would mean talking about Smister.

‘But you suspect it might have been the weapon that killed Natalie?’

I shrugged.

‘Good question.’ Dl Sprague stood up and stretched his long arms over his head. ‘How would you know any of this unless you broke into 17 Milton Way, assaulted Chantelle Cain and found a bloodstained stone lion under the kitchen sink?’

I was horrified. I turned to Kaylee with what I hoped was an expression of stupefied ignorance on my face.

Kaylee looked horrified too. ‘Where is this accusation c-coming from, Detective Inspector?’

‘Information received from the Acton Police.’

‘W-why wasn’t I informed?’

‘Only just received. They were waiting for forensics.
For your information
, Ms Yost, Angela Mary Sutherland’s fingerprints were found in the premises.’

‘I-is this true?’

‘My mother, my brother and me—we lived there all our lives. Now I don’t live anywhere. The Devil lives there and I haven’t a pot to piss in or a window to jump out of.’

‘About “the Devil”,’ Anderson put in.

‘Gram lives there.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He’s in the fricking phonebook,’ I cried. ‘Just cos he’s the Prince of Pain doesn’t mean you can’t look him up.’ I was so grateful to Smister just then: remembering him with the phonebook was almost as good as having him beside me.

‘Stay c-calm. You were doing so well.’

‘But you haven’t lived there for what—four, five, years? Surely Mr Attwood’s redecorated, had building work done, since then?’

Oh the crafty bastard! He wanted me to tell him about Gram turning my brother’s room into a home gym. Then he’d know I was there.

I shook my head. ‘They took away my key. I can’t go in. There’s a force field protecting the house… ’

‘Y-you’re mumbling again,’ Kaylee said. ‘I can’t understand you.’

I pointed at Sprague. ‘He’s got Satan riding on his back, whispering in his ear. He knows I can’t go home but he taunts me. Make him stop.’ With that I folded my arms on the plastic-topped table, lay my head down and closed my eyes. Electra would be pleased, she’s always telling me to keep my head down and my mouth shut. There was a blessed silence for a few moments, and then I heard Sprague go back to his corner and sit.

Kaylee touched my shoulder and said, ‘Do you want anything?’

‘Sleep,’ I said, ‘ice cream, a comfier pillow, a bottle of red wine and Electra.’

‘Ice cream it is,’ DC Anderson said cheerfully.

He waited for it to come and allowed me four spoonfuls before saying, ‘You were keeping company with a young woman calling herself Josepha Munrow. It was about the time of the fire at that block of flats at South Side Docks. She appeared on TV with you and said she was your daughter. Who is she?’

I kept my hand steady on the spoon that was stirring the ice cream. I said, ‘What’s she done now?’

‘She’s not your daughter, is she?’

‘Of course not. She just wanted to get on telly. They wanted to interview Electra. She’s a heroine, you know.’

‘She isn’t even a young woman, is she?’

‘She’s a dog,’ I said, pretending to misunderstand. The fearful thing had happened—Jerry-cop had spread his evil in bits and bytes on the Corrupter’s Spider Web.

‘Josepha,’ Anderson said.

‘She’s a thief and a liar but she has a heart the size of a horse. Where is she? She walked off with my umbrella and didn’t come back.’

‘That’s not all he-she walked off with, was it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He was caught using Natalie Munrow’s stolen credit card.’

I said, ‘It wasn’t stolen. It was mine. I was Natalie. The police told me so.
They
gave me the card. I gave it to Josepha because she’s got small fingers. My fingers got swollen in the cold and then the Lord O’Disorder made machines too small for my hands and too big for my brains. My feet are too big too and I can’t buy shoes. Bad Brad tried to chop one in half, but it didn’t work.’

‘S-slow down, you’re r-rambling again.’

‘That’s the point,’ I wailed. ‘How can I ramble when I’ve only got half a foot? How can I ramble when I’m in here and you won’t let me out?’

Nobody could think of any reply to that so I finished my ice cream. Then I said, ‘She didn’t steal the card or the phone. I gave them to her but if you find my umbrella, I’d like that back, please.’

A loud sigh from the corner told me that Sprague was reaching his limit.

Anderson said quickly, ‘The original question was, who is the person calling him or herself Josepha Munrow?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said because it was the Devil’s own truth. ‘I heard her called Jo, Josey, Jody, Josephine and Josepha. There were four of us—her, Electra, Too-Tall Tina and me. They took TT away in an ambo after the fire. I think she died. Josepha and I split up soon after. That’s what happens when you’re homeless. The only one left is Electra and you’re keeping us apart, thank you so fucking much.’

Smister, poor little Smister, was out on public display. I’d tried so hard to keep her private. But the Commander of Catastrophe keeps his army of eight-legged probes to attack the last corners of private life. Those long, jointed palps reach in through your mouth to suck information out of you and stick it on their web of lies. It doesn’t matter if the information is wrong—like my name, or what Jerry-cop said about Smister—what matters is that it lives forever. It exists like supermarket plastic bags floating, indestructible, in the ocean.

It won’t matter how horribly Smister mutilates his body to be a girl, somewhere on the steel spider’s web lurks the information that he is a boy. Unless he’s very careful and restrains all his natural urges, that bit of byte will persist, waiting to bite him on the arse.

‘Take her away,’ Sprague shouted to WPC Linda. ‘She’s a raving lunatic. Take her away and section her. I can’t deal with it anymore.’

Chapter
41

Toxic Hope

T
hey charged me with Assaulting a Police Officer and sent me to HMP Holloway on remand.

That first night I dreamed that Electra and I were in a supermarket. We could take anything we wanted. I loaded goodies into my backpack but it weighed a ton and hard objects, like tins and boxes, dug into my back. I was exhausted, but Smister and Pierre were waiting for us in the car park. Smister opened the boot of a car so that I could put the backpack in. To my horror I found that the heavy, painful bag was empty. All our goods had fallen out. I had to retrace my steps alone until I found myself in a grubby white interview room in front of a supermarket manager, dressed like a cop, who was laughing his nasty head off. It was all a cruel joke. ‘That’s life,’ he said, just as I woke up.

At the medical screening I was diagnosed with alcoholism, depression, paranoia, three cracked ribs, two cracked metatarsals and a severe chest infection.

Well, no shit! Wouldn’t you be depressed, paranoid and in need of a drink if you’d been through what I’d been through?

There were warders and Prisoner Advice people but I didn’t want to talk to anyone. This was not my life so I didn’t want anyone advising me on how to live with it. Besides, I’d been there before. I knew how to remove myself from my own body.

On the fourth day Kaylee Yost came to see me. She said I could have visitors because I was only on remand. But no dogs. She said Pierre and Smister had sent a parcel of clean clothes which she’d left at reception.

I was torn. I wanted Smister to see the inside of a prison for his education; so that he’d take more care. But I didn’t want him to see me there. Plus it was too dangerous because the cops still wanted to talk to him.

All I needed from Kaylee was to know how long I’d have to wait. I hadn’t been to court yet because everyone thought I was unfit to plead. She said I’d been given twenty-one days to detox and then they’d review my case. She said Holloway ran a good detox unit and I should make the most of the opportunity.

I knew. But they’d turned me into an anti-depressant dependant last time. Well, not Holloway, but the prison system—I couldn’t remember where exactly cos they move you around. And they take heroin addicts and turn them into methadone addicts.

Kaylee said I was seeing the negative side and that I should be more aware of the best in people and circumstances. If I did that, she said, I’d feel all the benefits of a positive mental attitude.

‘Like hope?’ I asked.

‘That’s the s-spirit,’ she said.

She understands nothing. You’d think, being a junior in a law firm and being dumped with all the Legal Aid cases, that she’d have learned something about who benefits from the system and why. Then she’d understand how toxic hope is to the likes of me.

‘Would you like to meet with your AA sponsor?’ she asked.

I looked at her very carefully but she didn’t seem to be kidding.

‘I can arrange a visiting order for him,’ she went on.

‘Can you find out about Too-Tall Tina for me?’

‘What’s her real name?’ She clicked her biro in a competent legal way.

Smister would ask why I cared about TT when it was obvious she didn’t care for me. Of course he didn’t know I’d made a pact with the Devil—Tina’s life for Electra’s. Electra was alive so TT must be dead and I must be responsible for her death. So if I end up locked away for all time or sectioned to a secure wing at least I’ll know I deserve it. And that might be some comfort.

But I can’t forgive myself for being so naïve. There was a fire and Electra stopped breathing. I asked for her life. But I didn’t ask for her life
with me
, did I? So the Devil laughed and said, ‘Okay, wish granted.’

I was so grateful. I remember it clearly. He lulled me and duped me. Then he said, ‘Ha-ha, but I forgot to mention, Electra has to live with Smister and you have to live in the chokey. You’ll never see each other again. But don’t complain—I did what you asked.’ The Shah of Shattered Dreams is considered a wit in his circle of Hell.

My circle of hell was filled with young women; some of them still teenagers, barely out of school. Sheer incompetence had brought them to Holloway—theirs, their parents’, their teachers’, the care homes’. How does a girl become an addict with a personality disorder by the age of thirteen, and be unable to read and write unless many, many people older than her let her down? Its one thing for someone like me to find solace at the bottom of the heap—I came here almost by choice—but the bottom of the heap is where these kids started. No one gave
them
a choice.

For the first few days I could smell anger and distress the same way I could hear shouts and screams in the night. I’d lie on my bed and imagine Electra and me in the West End, sitting on the steps at Trafalgar Square watching people have fun in the fountains, shrieking their pleasure, and wonder if I’d ever hear screams like that again. I’d think, this is where I live now, in Satan’s palace of iron and ice, among his handmaidens. It’s my duty to watch him thrust the icicles of want and need under their fingernails and hear them scream for love and comfort.

I took my pills every day and waited for the misty grey gauze to settle in front of my eyes and cut me off from pleasure, pain and life. The pills don’t fill the hole in the middle of your chest. It’s still there, vaster than ever, but I don’t seem to care.

I was waiting for the time when the taste of good red wine left my mouth, when the feel of Electra’s soft ears left my fingertips, when the smell of Smister’s girly boy hair disappeared from my nose. Then, when I heard the screams in the night, I’d pull the blanket up to my ears and go back to sleep. I’d be cured of hope.

A week later Kaylee Yost came back. She said, ‘You’re looking b-better. You’re not l-limping so badly. How’re they treating you?’

‘How’s Electra?’ I asked because I wasn’t cured of hope yet.

‘Your friends are fine, and your dog’s b-being well looked after, but she’s missing you.’

‘You’ve seen her?’

‘Well, yes… ’

‘How’s her arthritis? Is her nose cool? And her ears? Are they remembering to put her coat on in the rain? She likes canned tuna but she mustn’t have it cos it runs straight through her.’

‘Er… she seemed p-perfectly healthy to me. I’ll remind Pierre about the coat and the tuna.’

I should’ve just thanked her because going to see Electra was more than most lawyers would do for a client like me.

Kaylee said, ‘I’ve brought good news.’

‘Good booze?’ I said, because my heart was still full of Electra.

‘N-no. Chantelle Cain has confessed to Natalie’s murder.’

‘
No
,’ I said, horrified.

‘Yes.’ Kaylee’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement.

‘You’re joking. That can’t be right.’

‘I-I thought you’d be relieved. If you had any lingering fears that the police might still try to i-implicate you.’

‘But she didn’t do it.’

‘W-what d’you mean?’

‘
He
did.’ How could she be so blind?

‘Graham Attwood? But why w-would Mr Attwood kill Natalie? He loved her. He was going to marry her. That’s why Chantelle killed her. It was a classic case of murderous jealousy.’

‘No, no,’ I shouted. ‘That’s what he would
make
her say. But it isn’t true.’

‘Well, that’s what the police believe. They say she’s pleading temporary insanity. Graham Attwood knew nothing about it whatsoever.’

‘How can they possibly believe that?’ I cried. ‘If she did it, it was his idea. He drove her to it. He benefited from it.’

‘But you were right about the murder weapon,’ Kaylee said, sounding discouraged. ‘It was the stone lion you noticed outside Natalie’s house. The police think Chantelle put it under Mr Attwood’s sink to implicate him.’

‘You’re wrong. It’s the other way round.
He
kept it there so that he’d always have something to blackmail
her
with.’

‘But what would be the p-point?’

‘Maybe he wanted to dump Chantelle but keep her car. Maybe she’s got a cute little riverside house and he’s tired of living in Acton. I don’t know. But the corporeal manifestation of the Devil has material ambitions. He’ll end up grabbing everything. You wait and see.’

Suddenly I couldn’t care less what everyone else thought or why. They were wrong. They were being controlled by forces they didn’t understand. Maybe one day someone would wake up to what advantage Gram took from Natalie’s death and Chantelle’s confession. But by the time that happened Chantelle would be old, and bitterness would have ripped at her hair and skin. Her fine tanned ankles would be puffy, veiny and white.

‘I think you’re quite wrong,’ Kaylee said. ‘But I didn’t mean to upset you. I wanted to cheer you up before telling you the bad news. Your friend, er, T-too-Tall Tina Smith… ’

‘I know,’ I said dully, ‘she’s dead.’

‘Not exactly. She was very, very sick in St George’s for a while, but she was beginning to recover, and then she set fire to her hospital bed. Now she’s pretty badly burned. Even if she get’s better she’ll end up in a secure hospital somewhere. Arson seems to be h-habitual.’

It
sounded
like a death to me. The Devil has many interesting interpretations of the word and they don’t all include a box and a hole in the ground.

‘When can I see a judge?’ I asked.

‘When your twenty-one days are up they’ll reassess your medical condition and then I’ll see what I c-can do. Do you want my advice?’

‘Not really. Also, I didn’t assault a police officer. I’m innocent.’

‘It’s n-not what you’ve done,’ she said. ‘It’s who you are. Weirdly, I quite admire your independence. You’ve wangled a lot of advantages from being someone no one wants. The police couldn’t get rid of you fast enough; the social services can’t handle you so they leave you alone. I think, in your own way, you’ve benefited from that. I don’t know how c-crazy you really are but prison is different. When a prison gets fed up with you they don’t let you go. They just move you to another prison—
ad infinitum
. In prison the system always wins. Always.’

Kaylee Yost was not a total div. She was shy but she wasn’t stupid. And nor am I—I knew she was right.

So here I am, in chokey, pretending to be sane in order to claim the privileges of the mad. I’m enduring imprisonment so that I can walk away free with Electra. I’m lonely so that I can protect my friends. I’m obedient so that I can indulge my habit of sticking two fingers up to authority. And I’m teetotal because there isn’t any booze.

Who knows what will happen next?

I no longer dream about Trafalgar Square; I dream about what I’ll say to Chantelle Cain when we meet. Because word on the wing says she’ll be remanded to Holloway, and if that happens maybe we’ll meet at Association. Will she ever smell of
Rive Gauche
and truffle oil again?

I play games with myself. In them Electra says, ‘You will have three and a half minutes with Chantelle—you can ask her only one question. What will it be?’ Electra looks dignified and fair, like a good judge.

What would I ask? Was it Chantelle or Natalie who I saw with Gram Satan Attwood that day, long ago, outside the National Portrait Gallery? Or, whose idea was it to kill Natalie? Or, was she the one who left the mews house the morning Natalie died, and if so, who picked her up in the sexy little red car?

‘No,’ Electra says, ‘that’s a bunch of questions. You aren’t Old Fanny—you can’t ask multiple questions and pretend it’s only one.’

‘Okay then,’ I say. ‘I’ll just ask her this—how did Gram persuade you to take the rap for him?’

Because I know he did. He did it to me.

I remember how his tears scorched my naked shoulder. I thought he was so young and that he should remain free. If he were to be locked up, I thought, he’d never have a chance to blossom and grow. He would be corrupted in prison I thought. And he promised to love me forever if I took all the blame. What a sick, sick joke. Listen to me laugh.

I don’t care what the cops or Kaylee think. Gram
is
the Devil, and who knows what game he has in mind next? He got away with murder this time and another poor woman is paying the price.