Beautiful Child (7 page)

‘I didn’t want you to send me away,’ he said.

‘But I’m expecting someone.’

‘Yes, I know,’ he said, ‘you’ve been a very naughty girl.’

Rita didn’t know what to say. She turned away from him but that was her big mistake. He grabbed her from behind. She tried to scream but his hand, covered in a black leather glove, was being held tightly over her mouth and she had no defence against his strength. Her body was consumed with absolute terror. Why the hell was he doing this? She’d never have thought him capable.

‘Just relax,’ he said in a slightly whispered voice that intensified her feeling of terror. ‘The situation will be all be over a lot quicker if you do.’

She tried to scream but it was no use. Then a cold, sharp blade of steel ripped through her throat and she began the short journey into death.

Matt liked his Fiat 500 car. No, he loved his Fiat 500 car. It was groovy and red and gorgeous and he loved driving around in it, so did Charlie’s boys, Freddy and Harry. He’d taught them Italian and whenever they were in the car together the three of them spoke it. Matt had learnt the language from his best friend Gabriella. She and Matt had grown up together and her parents were Italian. Ten years ago she married a big hunky Italian called Umberto and moved out to be with him in Rome. Matt flew over to see them once a year and Gabriella came back to Manchester for regular family visits too, although not as much since she’d had the children. He and Gabriella had been inseparable as teenagers which had led Matt’s mother Ann to believe for years that they would one day get together. But that wasn’t to be and Gabriella had known that long before Matt’s mother. 

‘It’s me!’ he called out when he let himself into his parents’ house. He could hear that the evening news was on the television and the current item was a piece from America about how difficult it was proving for the President to push through health care reform and Matt pricked up his ears. Some woman in a town hall meeting was opposed to the idea of universal coverage because she said it was a betrayal of freedom. So, thought Matt, the definition of freedom is being able to afford healthcare insurance when many of your fellow citizens can’t? But nothing must be done to help the poor who can’t afford healthcare because that would be a betrayal of freedom. Well Matt thanked God for the NHS. He’d hate to live in a country where the less well off have to rely on the benevolence of rich folks through their fundraising dinners and their charitable donations.

He walked into the lounge which ran the whole length of his parents’ detached house in the South Manchester suburb of Cheadle Hulme, just a few miles from his own place in Didsbury. His parents lifted themselves from watching Fiona Bruce and embraced him. They were looking well, a good ten years could be taken off their real ages. His mother had just turned seventy a couple of months ago and his father was a couple of years older. He was glad that his mother was giving up working at the presbytery. It was time for them to kick back and enjoy themselves. 

‘This is a nice surprise, love,’ said Ann. She’d long had to look up at her son but either he was getting taller or she was shrinking but the gap always seemed to be widening. ‘And to what do we owe this honour?’

‘Nothing really,’ said Matt, as he embraced first his Mum and then his Dad. They’d always been a physically affectionate family. Maybe that’s why he’d always found it easy to show affection to friends and loved ones. He’d been taught well enough. ‘Just felt like seeing you both.’

In truth Matt was feeling at a bit of a loss. Charlie’s bombshell about selling his half of the practice had really shaken him. Nothing was ever going to be the same again and he wanted to talk to his parents about it.  

‘And you might’ve known I was making your favourite for dinner,’ said Ann.

‘Slow-roasted lamb?’

‘It’s been in the oven since just before two,’ said Ann. ‘ and I’ve done roast potatoes cooked in goose fat too.’

‘Oh Mum, I knew there was something pulling me home tonight.’

‘Come on through to the kitchen and get a beer for yourself and your Dad.’

Matt followed his mother through to where the smell of the lamb filled his nostrils and made his mouth water. It took him way back to when he’d first started dreaming of what life was going to turn out like for him.  

‘I’m glad you came,’ said Ann who’d always felt especially close to Matthew, the protective older brother to Susie. When they were children he’d always been the one she could rely on to behave, the one who always helped her get the tea, the one who’d achieved the most academic success, gaining four A-levels and the highest marks of his year when he graduated from medical school in Birmingham. She was proud of him. But she still couldn’t help but have a dig despite Brendan’s recent words. ‘I saw Heather at the shops yesterday.’

Matt smiled and hoped she wasn’t about to start. Matt had been engaged to Heather before the truth of himself had led to him calling off the wedding a month before it had been due to take place.

‘That must’ve been nice,’ said Matt through clenched teeth as he took a couple of beers out of the fridge. ‘Is she well?’

‘Oh she’s very well,’ said Ann. ‘Her little girl is just gorgeous too. I’m glad she found someone who could make her happy.’

Oh dear, thought Matt. He really wasn’t in the mood for this. ‘And do you wish the same for me, Mum? Do you wish I could meet someone who could make me happy?’

‘Well it depends on what you want to call happy I suppose.’

Matt rolled his eyes. ‘Mum, if I’d have married Heather it would’ve made you happy and me miserable and sooner or later I’d have broken her heart. Now as my mother I thought you’d have been on my side.’

‘Oh I am on your side, Matthew,’ Ann insisted, ‘it’s just that you choose to live your life in a way that I’m not always comfortable with.’

‘I don’t choose to live it this way, Mum, I was born this way and I will die this way and that’s because your God has made me this way in His own image.’

‘I hate it when we argue’ said Ann.

‘Then just don’t keep having a go, Mum. Okay? You’re the world’s worst for pressing my buttons and then acting all innocent.’

‘Brendan gave me a right talking to about you.’

‘He did?’

‘He said I should just accept your sexuality and be done with it.’

‘I shall buy him a packet of fags next time I see him.’

Ann laughed. ‘You do that’ she said. ‘And I will try, son. Honest, I will. It’s just that when I saw Heather and how happy she was it made me think of you all alone every night. I want you to be happy, son. I don’t want you to be lonely.’

He kissed her. ‘Mum, if I end up being lonely it won’t be because I’m gay. It’ll be because I didn’t meet the right man for whatever reason and don’t tell me that it never works for men like me because I can give you the names of ten gay couples off the top of my head who’ve been together for years and intend to stay that way.’

‘But I want something to work for you, son.’

‘You and me both, Mum.’

‘Like I said, I just don’t want you to be lonely.’

‘But I’d feel even more lonely in a sham marriage to a woman like Heather, Mum. Don’t you see that? Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to her either.’

‘I suppose, love.’

‘Now do you want me to help you with dinner?’

‘No, you’re okay, love’ said Ann. ‘You know I like to do it all myself.’

‘Then I’ll take this beer out to Dad.’

Matt took a beer through to his Dad and clinked cans with him. ‘Cheers, Dad.’

‘Cheers, son.’

‘You’ve got a hard life, Dad,’ he said, ‘a roast dinner in the middle of the week?’

‘Oh I’m not complaining, son.’

‘I’m glad Mum is retiring at last though, Dad’ said Matt. ‘She’s spent her whole life running round after us lot and a load of priests. She needs a break.’

‘That’s true enough, son.’

‘You’ve got to start insisting she takes it easy sometimes, Dad,’ said Matt.

‘Am I getting a bollocking off my own son?’

Matt laughed. ‘ Not a bollocking, Dad. Just the planting of a concern in that head of yours, that’s all. I know you do your bit as much as Mum allows you to but perhaps you need to be more insistent, that’s all.’

Bill had been married to Ann for over forty years and in that time she’d never let him so much as breathe in the kitchen unless she wanted him to, same with the housework. Matt was right though. He had to start insisting that bit harder. 

‘So what’s new in your world, son?’ asked Bill.

Matt grimaced. ‘ Charlie wants to sell his half of the practice.’

‘What?’ his mother exclaimed as she came through and joined them.

‘You’re kidding us?’ said his father.

‘I wish I was,’ said Matt, ‘I really wish I was, Dad. But it seems the lady Natasha, who apparently must always be obeyed, wants him to move out to a practice in Cheshire where his patients will be more to her liking.’

‘I hope Charlie realises how much hard work she’s going to be,’ said Bill who didn’t like Natasha at all. Charlie had brought her round to the party when Susie got engaged to Angus and Bill hadn’t taken to her. He’d met many girls of her type in his time. She’d end up thinking herself as important just for being Charlie’s wife.   

‘All fur coat and no knickers that one,’ said Ann.

‘Yeah, well, she’s got her claws into Charlie alright,’ said Matt.

‘Will you be able to afford to buy him out, Matt?’ asked Ann.

‘I might need to borrow some, Dad.’

‘Well we’ll sort you out there, son,’ said Bill.

‘Of course we will’ said Ann. ‘ But I can’t believe that someone like Charlie would turn his back on you and the practice for the sake of that pretentious madam.’

‘Well I’ve tried talking to him but it doesn’t make any difference.’ 

‘Do you think you’ll find another doctor alright to replace Charlie?’ asked Bill.

‘Oh I don’t think that’ll be a problem, Dad’ said Matt. ‘A lot will jump at the chance of working in a busy inner city practice. Unless of course they’ve got an air stewardess girlfriend called Natasha who only works in first class and who looks down her nose at what she considers to be poor people.’

The telephone at the presbytery rang and when Ann Schofield answered it she was deeply shocked to be told that Rita Makin was dead.

‘Who was that?’ asked Brendan, who’d just come back from hearing confession in the church.

‘It was the police’ said Ann, tearfully.

‘Whatever is the matter, Ann?’ asked Brendan. ‘What’s happened?’

‘They’d been asked to contact us by Rita Makin’s family’ said Ann who could barely get her words out. ‘Brendan, Rita is dead.’

‘What?’ Brendan questioned in a state of complete disbelief. ‘But I only saw her last week. She didn’t look ill. In fact she looked the picture of health and happiness.’

‘She wasn’t ill, Brendan’ said Ann, gently. She could see that Brendan was clearly very distressed by the news. ‘Apparently, Brendan, Rita was murdered.’

‘ Murdered?’ Brendan gasped. He made the sign of the cross on himself. ‘Oh for the love of God, no! Not Rita? Who on God’s earth would want to murder her?’

‘They found the body just this afternoon’ said Ann. ‘ They said… they said that her throat had been cut.’

*

Rita Makin’s kitchen had never been anything other than ordinary. As DCI Sara Hoyland stood in the small room at the back of the terraced house she took in the pink wallpaper with vertical broad cream stripes, the fake wood faced units, the automatic washing machine, the gas cooker that didn’t seem to have a grill, the tall fridge freezer that had probably helped Rita Makin to budget her food bill. There was only just enough room for the table and four chairs in the corner.

‘That wallpaper would have to go if I lived here,’ said Sara when DI Tim Norris came into the room. The house, which had been cordoned off with uniformed police positioned both in front and behind the house, was full of forensics officers taking samples from anything that might be useful.

‘Yeah, I guess it isn’t really you,’ said Tim who was really doing his best to get on with Sara and put their past behind them. It wasn’t always easy but they were both trying.

‘How did someone manage to kill her in here? There’s hardly enough room to swing the proverbial.’

‘No wonder there was blood everywhere’ said Tim. ‘It couldn’t have been avoided.’

‘So what do we know about Rita Makin?’ asked Sara.

‘She was a widow’ Tim answered.

‘Children?’

‘One daughter.’

‘Did she raise the alarm?’

‘No’ said Tim. ‘Her daughter’s married and lives up at Radcliffe with her husband and three sons. It was her son-in-law who discovered the body’

‘Her son-in-law?’

‘He’d popped round on the off chance that she might be in but instead of tea and biscuits he found something else.’

Sara stood in the small kitchen looking out the window at the view of several allotments beyond the back yard. Inside this small insignificant little space in the world a woman who’d led a no doubt pleasing but unremarkable life had met with a rather brutal and unpleasant death.

‘Isn’t it a bit unusual?’ Sara posed before turning her eyes back to the room.

‘What?’ Tim questioned.

‘A man to call in on his mother-in-law on his own?’

‘I don’t think it’s that unusual outside the world of seventies comedians,’ said Tim, ‘I mean, I get on fine with my mother-in-law.’

‘But would you call in and see her if you were passing?’

‘Yes’ said Tim. ‘I mean, I haven’t but I would.’

‘And what does the son-in-law do for a living?’

‘He’s a butcher.’ said Tim. ‘Got his own shop in Newton Heath.’

‘So he’d be good with knives then?’

‘Sara, the man is in shock.’ said Tim. ‘Why are you going for his balls?’