Crusher (4 page)

One or both of us were saved by the door opening, and Amobi standing there looking tense. “Sir,” he said. Prendergast ignored him, glowering at me. “DI Prendergast, sir,” said Amobi. “I need to speak to you a moment?”

Prendergast snorted, pushed back his chair and stood up. The uniformed PC returned—no sign of any coffee—and sat back in his corner seat, not meeting my eye. There was an urgent, hushed conversation on the other side of the door. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I got the gist: Amobi, the uptight, fastidious junior detective, was trying to stay deferential while he laid into a senior officer for ignoring every rule of procedure and possibly jeopardizing a murder enquiry, and Prendergast’s voice was coming back, loud, brusque, short on words and very much to the point.

Amobi didn’t come back in straightaway. I sat there while the clock ticked, thinking about my dad, wondering why he’d been killed, wondering if I’d ever know. Something told me this wouldn’t be a police priority. Yeah, they didn’t like unsolved murders, but unless there was a PR angle, or the victim was a child or a pretty girl, they’d leave the file open until it was buried deeply enough under other cases to be officially written off. Maybe I was the prime suspect, but the evidence was pretty thin, and now Prendergast had managed to screw up the case before the investigation proper had even started. The cops upstairs in the neat uniforms with the gold braid would be desperate to kick this into the long grass.

Amobi entered again, doing a very good impression of casual and relaxed, as if he hadn’t just witnessed his boss having a dump in the swimming pool.

“Finn, we have no more questions for now. Is there anyone you can stay with tonight—a relative, a family friend?”

I shook my head. “No, there isn’t. Can’t I go home?”

“It’s still a crime scene,” said Amobi. “But I can ask. Wait here, please.”

He left again. I suddenly realized my head was swimming. I was tired, really tired. I was sweating and chilled in this stupid paper suit, and I felt hungry and
sick at the same time. I didn’t know whether it was day or night outside. I just wanted to go home and go to bed.

Amobi returned. “If you really want to go home, that won’t be a problem,” he said. “The Scene of Crime people are all done, and the clean-up crew. Two of our uniformed officers will give you a lift.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Amobi stroked his nose between two fingers, contemplating how he was going to say what he was dying to say. “Finn, DI Prendergast said you made certain statements when you were alone with him? Regarding the incident?”

“I didn’t murder my dad,” I said. “It was a wind-up.”

“OK,” said Amobi. “But bear in mind, DI Prendergast doesn’t have a great sense of humour. You need to be—”

“Can I go home now, please?”

It was still night, as it turned out. The small hours of the morning. It had been raining, and the yellow of the street lights gleamed and bounced and glared from tarmac and sleeping cars and shuttered shop fronts. I sat in the back of a patrol car, pushing down the associations that brought up, trying not to look at the close-cropped necks of the uniformed officers in front. They sat silent, not bothering with small talk. Were they tired as well, I wondered? Were they being considerate to the child
of a murder victim? Or did they just not want to have a late-night casual chat with a punk who had brained his dad and walked out of the nick a few hours afterwards? I was curious, but too shattered to care.

They watched me walk to the door and open it with the key that had been retrieved from my jeans, which were still with forensics. When I shut the door behind me and stood in the darkened hall I heard the engine rev and speed away, tyres hissing on the tarmac and shashing through distant puddles. Silence. I reached out and flicked on the light like I had a few hours earlier. No body at the table this time. There was a faint smell of disinfectant, but otherwise the only sign that strangers had been in here were the ruts in the dust where stuff had been shifted as the room was searched. And when I looked closely, the furniture was at odd angles, as if someone was trying to recreate the way it had looked a long time ago, in the days before my dad had been killed. But I was too tired to look. Leaving the light on I stomped wearily up the stairs, my stupid paper suit rustling. My bedroom had been searched, I could tell—it was way too tidy. I shuffled out of the tired grey trainers the cops had lent me, pulled the paper suit off and left it crumpled on the floor, collapsed onto my bed and shut my eyes.

*  *  *

If I had any dreams, I didn’t remember them when I woke mid-morning, the pale cool sun shining on my face. My first thought was that I was late for work—really late for work—and that my alarm clock must not have gone off. Then I remembered it had, and I had switched it off and gone back to sleep without ever waking up. Then I remembered everything else. I lay there staring at the grey cracked ceiling, trying to feel something. Did the part of me that should feel the right sort of sorrow, did that part of me not believe he was dead? The rest of me believed it. So many thoughts were crowding into my mind I couldn’t begin to put them in any order.

Should I go to work? The police still had the clothes I’d been wearing yesterday, and the uniforms I had brought home to wash. Andy kept spares in the office, but gave them out grudgingly and docked your pay so that effectively you bought them—he’d never let you wash and return them …

To hell with it, I wasn’t going in to work. Someone murdered my dad yesterday, in this house. At the same time a tiny voice in my head said, “So what? You’re not dead.” I let it talk. Maybe it had something useful to say. “You’re lying in bed, you feel fine, you’re calm, you’re not in shock. You’re actually a bit hungry, you should fix yourself some breakfast. What’s the big deal about weeping and wailing? It doesn’t get you anywhere. It’s
just feeling sorry for yourself, and you don’t do that.” Yeah, that’s right, I remembered. I don’t do self-pity; I’d never feel anything else if I did.

“Should I call work?” I asked the voice.

“Sod that. What are you going to tell that twat Andy—
Someone murdered my dad so I’m taking the day off?
Call him later, maybe. Right now there’s other stuff to think about.”

It was true: as I lay there the thoughts and worries in my head were still jostling and milling about aimlessly, like tube passengers on a station platform when all the trains have been cancelled. Where’s my dad’s body? When do I get it back? Who sorts out the funeral? Who do I tell?

Who the fuck killed him, and why? It must have had something to do with that script, or whoever did it wouldn’t have taken the laptop. What the hell had my dad found out? Who had he talked to? He’d come in a bit pissed on Sunday night, and happy, the way he was when he’d had a chance to talk about himself and how he nearly had a career—he used to flaunt his failure like a badge of integrity, or make a comedy routine out of it, and often enough it got him a few free pints. But where had he been drinking? There were a dozen pubs within fifteen minutes’ walk of our house, and he didn’t mind catching a bus if he’d worn out his welcome locally.

Maybe it wasn’t that complicated after all. Maybe it really was just some smackhead who’d heard that I used to deal, and thought he’d chance his arm and see what he could find. Maybe I hadn’t closed the door properly when I left that morning, and he’d sneaked in.

Wait, no. I swung my legs out of bed and sat there on the edge of the mattress, frowning, trying to focus. Dad had lost his keys, and the next morning he was killed, by someone who’d come into the house while he was working. Did he really lose those keys, or were they lifted from his pocket?

What was in that script of his? I needed to read it, the latest draft anyway. The cops hadn’t been interested in that angle. If they’d asked, I would have told them that Dad used to back everything up, religiously. He’d written half a novel once, years ago, and lost all of it when the hard disk crashed. Since then he used an external drive, and then memory sticks, when they got cheap enough. The memory stick had gone, yeah, but he backed up his stuff into AnyDocs as well, the free email and web space provider. I knew his username; but I’d never asked him his password. I’d never needed it, never even been curious.

Shit. I knew it wouldn’t be anything stupid like “password” or “1234.” Dad was too paranoid about other writers stealing his ideas. He never wrote his
password down, either—he said the only asset he had left from his acting days was a good memory. I’d never guess it, not in a million years.

I knelt on the floor and peered under the bed.

My laptop was gone too. Mains unit and all. Of course—the cops said they’d found it. They must have taken it away to check the hard drive for evidence. Prendergast was probably going through it now, looking for my VAT receipts for coke and skunk, or maybe my blog entry on how to kill your dad and get away with it.

The doorbell rang. Or rather it buzzed. It was so old and clapped-out it mostly functioned by rattling against the wall. I dug out another pair of jeans and stepped into them, grabbed a relatively clean T-shirt and stumped down the stairs to answer the door. I guessed it was either Prendergast, or a neighbour, or the postman with something to be signed for.

But I was wrong. It was a redhead, in her late thirties, I would guess. Pretty enough, with fine even teeth, but with a slightly tense expression, as if she expected trouble. Her clothes were more smart than pretty—a sensible if shapeless raincoat, green jumper, grey slacks, minimal jewellery, and rather than a handbag a briefcase on a shoulder strap. As she turned to me I saw her don a practised smile. She held up an ID card with a prominent heading: “Social Services.” Her mugshot
made her look scared of the camera, but in the flesh she seemed cool and competent.

“Mr. Maguire, I’m Elsa Kendrick, Social Services? We’ve been told about what happened yesterday, and wanted to make sure you were all right. Is this a good time for us to talk?”

I shrugged and stepped back, opening the door for her. “Sure. Come in.”

She stepped inside, glancing around the ground floor with a professional eye. She tinged her smile with a hint of sadness and sympathy. She was good at her job—it was pretty convincing.

“Can I just say how very sorry I am? It’s such a terrible thing to happen. How are you feeling?”

“OK, I suppose. Sorry, can I get you anything?”

“Not unless you’re getting something for yourself.”

“I was just going to make some coffee …” I supposed it was a formula she had to follow, consoling a grieving relative; let them be busy if they want to, let them lose themselves in distracting daily routines. I put the kettle on, got out two mugs. Everything was clean; Dad had liked a tidy kitchen, even if his desk was a disaster area.

“You seem to be coping well, anyway,” she observed. I looked at her, wondering if she was making conversation or a professional judgement. She seemed to guess
what I was thinking. “You’re seventeen, am I right? And I understand your father had no regular work?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, no. He was an actor.” As if that said it all. But she seemed to accept it as an answer, and nodded, her eyes cast down.

“How will you manage? Living alone, I mean?”

“I don’t know. I’ll manage, I suppose.”

“Do
you
have a job?”

“I work at Max Snax, on Ealing Road.”

“Management, or behind the counter?”

I laughed. “Yeah, right, management. I work behind the counter. I should be there now.” I poured the hot water onto the coffee granules, stirred the drinks noisily.

“I’m sure they’ll understand. What with you losing your father.”

“I haven’t told them yet.”

She nodded again. Somehow I expected her to offer to call them, but she didn’t. I felt vaguely irritated; was she actually going to do anything useful, or was she just here to look sad and make noises and drink my coffee? She wasn’t even writing any of this down.

“What about your dad’s family? Have you told them?”

“He didn’t have much of a family. A brother out in China or Thailand, I think. His parents died in a car crash seven years ago.” I held the mug of coffee out to her.

“Thanks. What about your mother? His ex-wife, I mean?”

“What about her?”

“Have you told her? Has she … have you been in touch? You have contact details for her, don’t you?”

“No, actually, I don’t.”

“I see.” She frowned as she sipped at the coffee, though it was still way too hot to drink. We moved back into the living room.

“My mother left years ago. We haven’t heard from her since. She didn’t care then and she’s not going to care now. Dad and I always looked after each other and we managed fine.” This wasn’t quite true: the last few years, I’d mostly looked after him.

“Right, I see.” She slipped abruptly from caring-sympathetic mode to brisk and business-like, plonking the mug of coffee down on a work surface and turning to the briefcase she had left on one of the armchairs by the TV.

“I have some information and leaflets you might find useful. Trauma counsellors, victim support. Also we have a special unit for carers. Not that you’re caring for anyone, I mean”—she stumbled over that, and blushed, but blundered on—“but it has details of benefits you can claim, and contact numbers for Social Security.”

The pamphlets she offered me seemed second-hand and a little dog-eared. It was a big briefcase to be lugging
around, considering how little she had in it. I glanced through them, and the letters of the words danced that tired old tango. I’d decipher them later.

“What about if I need to get in touch with you? Are you my caseworker now, I mean?”

“Oh no, I’m only here to make an informal assessment—to see if further intervention was necessary. And you seem to be coping fine, just like you said. Thanks for the coffee.” She grabbed her coat and bag, as if eager to get away. “I have other clients to visit. Any questions or anything you need, just call Social Services.”

“And ask for you? Elsa Kendrick?”

“I’m usually out and about, but you can leave a message.” I followed her to the front door. She fumbled with the latch, and flashed me a bright, tight smile as she finally managed to open the door.