Lula Does the Hula (17 page)

I did not correct the man. I needed his help and, besides, he was right on a few points there. ‘Tallulah,’ I said, stooping a little further to ease the ache. ‘Tallulah Bird.’

Helen’s mum bustled into the doorway. ‘Hello, Tatty! Helen’s still sleeping.’

‘She’s hurt herself,’ announced Arthur Cluny.

‘Well, let her in, dear! What are you doing keeping her out on the veranda! What’s wrong, Tatty?’ She shouldered her husband aside and grabbed my forearms. Just that little nudge had me falling to my knees with a ridiculous yelping scream.

‘My back!’ I managed.

‘Looks bad,’ observed Arthur without compassion. ‘No wonder you were beating the door down.’

‘Wasn’t me,’ I gasped. ‘Not the first time, anyway. You had a delivery.’

I gestured with a look to the side of the door and that’s
when I screamed for real and even Mrs Cluny’s muscly arms couldn’t keep me from dropping to my knees. Again.

On the Cluny’s front veranda was a body wrapped up in clear plastic. A puddle of dark liquid oozed from its folds and I could make out tufts of grey hair, an open eye staring up at me and a slightly parted mouth, the lips very blue. The worst was the hand that had fallen out from the plastic wrapping. It was old and clawed and it looked like it was beckoning to me.

It freaked me out.

Totally.

When I’d stopped screaming I realised dully that I could move again. That my body, while in pain, wasn’t in a total rictus any more. And that was lucky because the Clunys had forgotten all about me. They’d moved into overdrive and were calling to Helen, running for the telephone, phoning the police, phoning my parents.

‘
This
was the delivery?’ asked Arthur Cluny. ‘
This?
’

I nodded, still in shock.

‘Did you see who made the delivery?’

‘I – I –’ I stopped and took a breath. ‘I thought it was a courier,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t really see. The mist . . .’

Helen came running down the stairs in her pyjamas. ‘Tatty? What are you doing here? Mum? What’s going on?’

‘Someone dropped a body on the veranda,’ said her mum.

‘Oh,’ said Helen, yawning and rubbing her eyes.
‘Anyone want tea? Tatty, why are you here?’

‘She saw the guy who dropped the body,’ said Mr Cluny. ‘Police will want to talk to her.’

‘Oh,’ said Helen again. ‘Geez. Only with you around, T. Come get a hot drink.’ She shuffled away down the corridor in her slippers. I followed her cautiously, looking left to right as I went. The Cluny home did not look like I expected it to. It was totally normal.

Helen glanced back over her shoulder and gave me a look. ‘Stuff for doing the bodies is down in the basement and out back,’ she explained.

‘I wasn’t –’

‘Sure you weren’t, Tatty,’ said Helen, smiling wryly. ‘Sure you weren’t.’

‘Doesn’t it creep you out?’ I asked tentatively.

‘Just the fluids from the embalming,’ she said, putting the kettle on. ‘Not the stuff that goes
in
, you know, the stuff that comes
out
.’

‘Right,’ I whispered, but before I could slump into a chair and put ten sugars in my tea for the shock of everything I’d suffered so far, I heard my mum at the door. She was talking urgently to Mrs Cluny, but Mrs C was obviously calming her down, because by the time she got to the kitchen she was laughing at something Helen’s mum was saying.

‘Lu?’ said Mum. ‘
Whatever next?
Are you hurt?’

I stood up and she came over and held me gently.
‘Martha said something about your back?’

I nodded. ‘I was running this morning and I hurt it coming up this last hill. Just after the man dropped the . . . the –’

‘The body off,’ said Helen. ‘Hi, Dr Bird.’

‘Hello, Helen. Did my daughter wake you?’ Mum had a twinkle in her eye even though she still looked worried.

Helen grinned. ‘Tatty is totally weird,’ she said.

‘Ohh no!’ I replied. ‘No no no! Don’t pin this on me! I was just running by. Nothing to do with me. At All. Nothing To Do With Me At All!’

‘Uh-huh,’ said Helen.

I felt like I was going to burst into tears suddenly.

‘Let’s get you home,’ said Mum. ‘And I’ll call the surgery to see if Dr McCabe can take a look at your back –’

‘No!’ I said again, vehemently this time. I had seen the look on Helen’s face and I knew that if I stayed away from school today there’d be too much damage for even Alex to control. ‘I’m fine now!’ I said.

‘I don’t think –’ started Mum.

‘Let’s go!’ I said.

‘What about the police?’ asked Arthur Cluny, coming into the kitchen.

‘We’re only down the road,’ said Mum. ‘Can you point them in the right direction? I’d like to get Tallulah home now.’

‘No problem, Anne,’ said Mr Cluny. He opened the
front door and blinked in surprise. Parked outside was a police vehicle, lights flashing. And Sergeant Trenchard was standing on the veranda, her hands on her hips, staring down at the plastic-wrapped body while a man in a white coat stepped around it taking pictures.

‘Hi, Hilda,’ I said.

‘Hello, Tallulah,’ she replied, and smiled. ‘I see you found Parcel Brewster.’

‘What?’ My eyes slid to the body. ‘
That’s Parcel Brewster?
’ Sweat slicked out across my body.

Had he been
drowned
at Frey’s Dam?

Frik!

Who the hell had brought him here? Surely the old man and his partner would have made sure he stayed at the bottom of the dam?

‘Yes, there’s no doubt it’s Parcel Brewster,’ said Sergeant T, while Mum and the Clunys exclaimed in shock. ‘Matches a picture Esme Trooter brought in last week. And apparently the boys at the station had a call last night to say they needed to check for him up at the dam, but they thought the tipoff was a hoax. Laughed out loud, apparently.’ Sergeant T pursed her lips disapprovingly.

‘Oh,’ I said, my thoughts whirling and jumbling and settling on nothing helpful. ‘Did your policemen call you about it last night?’

‘Well . . .’ I could see Sergeant T was choosing her words
carefully. ‘No. The officers felt that the anonymous tip-off was not worth investigating.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘And now the body turns up here.’ My thoughts skittered to a few places, and I reined them back in pronto.
Don’t go there, Tallulah
.

Sergeant T ran a hand through her wild and curly redhead afro and looked over at the man in the white coat. He had stopped taking pictures now and was on his haunches, examining the body’s exposed hand. ‘Donald,’ she said, ‘can you hazard a guess as to when this man died?’

He glanced up at her sympathetically. ‘Nothing you could have done for Parcel Brewster, Hilda. Been dead thirty-six hours at least.’

Sergeant T nodded, and it was obvious that made her feel better. ‘Can you answer a few questions, Tatty?’ she asked.

‘Sure,’ I said, ‘but I’m not much help, I’m afraid.’ I explained to her exactly what I’d seen and heard that morning, feeling useless. Because what I really wanted to tell her was to do with last night’s visit to Frey’s Dam. Handcuffs on Sergeant T’s belt glinted in the early morning sunlight, and I swallowed. I couldn’t tell anyone I’d been up to Frey’s – not until we had evidence to prove there was no bird flu. Until it wasn’t a big deal that we’d been up there, treading through infected territory.

Sergeant Trenchard made notes on what I said, and asked me things I hadn’t really thought about, like the direction
the drop-off vehicle came from and went away to. I thought carefully about everything and gave her as much detail as I could. ‘Good work, Tallulah,’ she said.

But it didn’t feel like good work to me. Guilt at the things I hadn’t said twisted in my gut. My back began to throb.

I’d contemplated taking my little duckling to school, but Blue had blown my cover first thing in the morning by charging in unannounced as I was reading the side-effects of Nurofen, and how much a person could take in one go. (Not enough when experiencing this kind of agony.)

‘Blue! You should knock!’

‘Aunt Phoebe is knocking,’ she replied, racing over to see what I was doing.

‘Hi, Aunt Phoebe. How’re you?’ I asked, trying to hide the duckling on the kitchen counter.

‘Excellent condition, dear. I came to see how you are after all the drama this morning.’

Blue squealed loudly. ‘Aunt Phoebe! Lula has a pet chicken!’

‘It’s a duckling, Blue. And you’ll scare him if you shriek so loudly.’

‘He’s so likkle! Can we call him Big?’

‘Are you sure you should be looking after an orphan bird with avian flu on the loose?’ asked Aunt Phoebe, coming to my side to investigate.

‘Big is not a name, Blue,’ I replied. ‘Besides, he’s not.’ I
turned to Great-aunt Phoebe. ‘I couldn’t leave him to fend for himself!’

‘Where did you find him?’ Aunt Phoebe had lowered her stylish spectacles and was looking at me intently over the top. ‘Frey’s Dam, no doubt. Really, Lula. Really and truly, I don’t –’

‘Biggins, then,’ announced Blue. ‘Just like Boodle not a poodle, so Biggins not big. Okay, Lula? Okay? Please? Please, please, please!’

Biggins opened his bill and began bleating in unison with Blue.

‘Fine! Fine!’ I exclaimed, punctuating with the spoon I held for emphasis. Cold oats splatted on Blue’s forehead.

She promptly licked it. ‘Yuk,’ she decided.

‘Yegads. You’ve just given your sister bird flu!’ said Aunt Phoebe in a rare, rare panic. ‘Bird flu! For the Birds! It’s not even funny! Blue, open your mouth! Spit! Spit!’

‘Aunt Phoebe,’ I said wearily, spooning oats into Biggins as fast as they would go. ‘Humans don’t get bird flu. Besides, there
isn’t
any bird flu. It’s something else.’ I stopped abruptly.

Aunt Phoebe exhaled loudly. ‘Oh, God. What have you done. What do you know.’ She didn’t ask, she just
said
, like statements of insider knowledge: clearly I had been up to something terrible.

‘I’ll explain later,’ I said, hurriedly scooping up the last
of the oats. ‘I’ve got to get dressed now. Could you two take care of Biggins today while I’m at school?’

‘Please, sir,’ I begged. ‘My back is in agony.’

‘Rubbish!’ retorted VfrikkingD. ‘I don’t know what it is with you girls. Always trying to get out of exercise.’ He left our class at the changing-room door and marched up the corridor towards the hall. ‘Get dressed quickly, you lot. Volleyball today.’

‘What we want to know, Tatty,’ said Jessica, coming alongside me and throwing her arm round my shoulders, ‘is how you got the sore back. What kind of
energetic exercise
, huh?’

There was a lot of giggling.

Alex sighed melodramatically. ‘It’s always sex with you, Jess,’ she said. Jess winked back, taking this as a compliment. ‘But not so with Tatty,’ continued Alex. ‘She was running.’

‘Got to run to keep the chocolate gut under control,’ added Carrie, her eyebrows raised in disapproval at my cocoa addiction. She pushed open the changing-room door. ‘Where’s Helen?’

‘The police are interviewing her and her parents,’ I said quickly. ‘A body was dumped on their veranda.’

‘Well, it
is
a crematorium,’ said Tam, who I hadn’t had a chance to speak to before school. ‘That’s where bodies go.’

‘Yeah, well,’ I said, very casually, ‘I saw it, actually. On my run this morning. Big guy dropped it off.’

‘Lucky Helen missing PE,’ said Alex, changing the subject with masterful speed.

‘Come on, girls. Let’s get it over with,’ added Carrie, with a wink at me.

‘This is going to hurt,’ I grumbled.

‘I dislocated my finger the last time I played volleyball with you guys,’ huffed Alex. ‘And I’ve still got a fat knuckle.’

‘
Oh noooo
, not the
fat knuckle
,’ moaned Matilda McCabe. ‘No one’s going to hold your hand
ever
.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Alex, getting undressed. ‘No one’s going to hold your hand for sure, you big jock. Not with all those weeping blisters and callouses and cracked skin from rowing. Does your dad, like, get you special plasters and stuff?’

‘Nah,’ said Matilda, pulling on a terrible pair of shorts and lacing up her trainers. ‘He likes me being all strong and tough. Says all girls should row. Good for posture, good for physique.’

‘But not good for the lungs,’ said Tam. She stood up and smoothed down her PE kit. ‘You’d think it would be, but no. Not with those smelly boys.’ Even Matilda had to agree. ‘Let’s go kick some volleyball ass.’

So I got picked last, and my team wasn’t happy to have me
on their side. It was no secret I was the clumsiest person around, useless at ball sports and now to top it all off had a gammy back.

‘Pity it wasn’t from sex –’ started Jessica, smacking the ball to the other side of the net.

‘
Rampant
sex,’ added Matilda, bracing to volley back.

‘Because then the back pain would be worth it,’ finished Delilah Goldsmith, choosing
now
to speak. ‘Right, Jessica?’

‘You’re the only one who would know, Jess,’ I muttered. ‘Because the rest of us are pure and undefiled.’