Tarnished (45 page)

Peg went to her and held her close, the last parts of her world collapsing about her, like great Stonehenge-sized rocks crashing to the ground.

‘What you going to do now?’ Parker whispered.

Peg looked up at him with empty eyes. ‘I’m going to call the police.’

‘Good call.’ Parker nodded. ‘I’ll go and keep lookout till they come, then. Then I’d better clear off. Take care, little Loz. Mind them ribs of yours. Take it easy.’

Log nodded and tried to smile, her eyes closed against her tears.

Peg showed him to the back door.

‘Thanks for everything Parker. What are you going to do now?’

‘Don’t worry about me, girl. Something’ll come up. Can’t see it’ll be any good back at the garages now. Not for a good while, anyhow.’

‘I’ll call you once we’ve got everything sorted,’ Peg said. ‘If there’s anything we can do to help . . .’

‘Thanks.’

‘See you, then.’ As he went to shake her hand, she gave him an enormous hug. ‘Thank God for the good people,’ she said.

Blushing bright red beneath his oil-smudged skin, Parker mumbled his farewell.

‘What number do I call?’ Peg said, heading back towards the lounge and getting her phone out. ‘Nine-nine-nine? It’s not an emergency any more, is it?’

‘You don’t call no number.’

Peg froze with shock in the lounge doorway.

In a scene she never could have imagined, Jean was standing in Doll’s lounge, leaning against the partition wall. With one massive hand, she had Loz clamped to her, pinioned to her chest. The other held a carving knife at her throat.

Behind her, the one-way door stood wide open in a wall that was bulging under her weight. Barely conscious, Loz whimpered, the pressure on her sore body almost too much to bear.

‘Put that phone down now, Meggy,’ Jean rasped. ‘I’m not letting you do this.’

Stunned, Peg stood her ground.

‘Put it down!’ Jean said. She drew the knife a fraction of a millimetre across Loz’s throat. Just enough to draw a tiny bead of blood.

‘Please . . .’ Loz gasped, her eyes wide with terror.

‘Shut it,’ Jean rasped in Loz’s ear. ‘Put that phone down now, Meggy.’

She redoubled her grip on Loz, squeezing her sore ribs tightly, making her yelp in agony.

As if it were a gun, Peg put the phone down on Doll’s chair and stepped backwards, hands up in the air.

For a moment, no one moved or said a word. The only sound was Jean’s menacing wheeze and a small, frightened noise, something like a strangled hum, coming from the back of Loz’s throat.

‘So what are you going to do, Jean?’ Peg said. ‘Are you going to kill Loz? And then what? Are you going to finish me off too?’

‘You silly little girls.’ Jean was panting heavily under the strain of carrying her massive bulk. ‘Along with that stupid brother of mine, you’ve gone and spoiled it all.’

‘You knew what Nan was up to, didn’t you?’ Peg said. ‘You even helped her, didn’t you? I remember now, I saw you with her, doing that.’ She gestured at the singed Commonplace Book, which she had left open at the diagram of Anna Thurlow.

‘You shouldn’t remember, Meggy. You shouldn’t remember ANYTHING.’

‘And what about Raymond? Did he have anything to do with any of this?’

‘Your father?’ Jean spat. Actually spat on the carpet in Doll’s lounge. ‘What a waste of space. What a useless wimp. A lily-liver. He was no use to us at all. He never helped out, you know? Not with the cleaning up. Not even with the driving.’

‘Driving?’

‘We’d come out here with it and throw it all off the edge. Good currents here. It’s how we found this place. Thought it’d be a nice spot for us to end up. Why we moved. Oh, Mummy . . .’

A wave of grief momentarily engulfed Jean. For a moment it looked like she was going to melt into the wall, possibly release her grip on Loz. But then she gritted her teeth and wrenched Loz’s arm further up her back.

Loz screamed.

‘Stop your racket, you stupid little bitch,’ Jean hissed. ‘And that milksop brother of mine cried when we helped your poor sick mummy out.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She couldn’t go on being sick like that. It was breaking his heart. But when Mummy helped him out, he cried like a baby.’

‘Nan killed Mum, too?’

Jean chose not to hear Peg. ‘And then when they found out it wasn’t natural causes and I said he had to own up to it to save Mummy, that he had to say he done it for a mercy killing and there was no way out of it for him because it was two against one and who’d believe him anyway against the voices of an old lady and her handicapped daughter, he almost jumped at it. Like he was trying to get away from us. Like being in prison was better than being in the family. He’d always been an ungrateful little shit.

‘And all Mummy wanted.’ Jean’s voice was quivering on the edge of hysteria, her breath coming in short, rasping gasps. ‘Was to look after us. Is that so much to ask? After he pushed Keithy off that dock . . .’

‘He pushed him?’

‘I TOLD YOU HE PUSHED HIM,’ Jean roared, ‘WHY DON’T YOU EVER BELIEVE ME?’

‘It’s OK, Aunty Jean . . . Calm down, please,’ Peg said, holding her hands out.

‘All Mummy was doing was looking after us.’ Her voice was coming in gulps now – the effort both of standing and of restraining Loz was putting her body under unaccustomed stress, and, to make matters worse, the partition behind her looked as if it might any minute give way under her weight.

‘She looked after me with Tony. She looked after Raymond with that little floozy and your mother, and she looked after you with that nasty piece of work bully-girl. Don’t you see? Don’t you see, Meggy? SHE DID IT FOR US. And now I’m going to do the best thing for all of us and see to this girl the way that weak squit of a brother of mine should’ve done WHEN I TOLD HIM TO. I’ve called him and told him now. I’ve told him there’s nothing doing any more. It’s all off between me and him.

‘If you want a job doing properly, you’ve got to do it yourself. It’s always the men let it down, isn’t it, eh, Meggy? Believe me, you’re better off without.

‘If it hadn’t been for Daddy hiding the key to Heyworth and burning Mummy’s books then we wouldn’t have to face any of this. We could’ve finished with that bullying little nasty piece of work and everything would’ve been tidied away nice and proper.

‘So now it’s just up to me, isn’t it? I’m the last one with any sense left around here. Leave it to poor old Jeanie.’

With her eyes reddening at the rims and sweat pouring from her brow, she tightened her grip on Loz, wrenching her and making her squirm in agony. ‘Yeah, poor old Jeanie. She’ll have to deal with
this
first. Then she’ll shop that brother of hers. Who’ll believe his word over hers? He’s a convicted murderer and she’s just an invalid lady in a bed. She’s just Mummy’s handicapped daughter.’

Alarmed, Peg saw that Jean was shaking all over – even her knife hand, whose knuckles were white with the strain of gripping, juddered against Loz’s frail white neck.

Peg had no idea what her next step should be.

If she did nothing, Jean could strike at any moment and carry out her threat. But jumping her would be worse: Peg would never reach her in time to stop her drawing the knife across Loz’s throat.

She could see it now: quick, brutal, deep.

The only chance she had was to reason with her. She tried to muster her own quaking voice that had somehow stuck in her throat like a stone. Nothing came out but a dead little squeak.

She felt, as always, helpless.

Then suddenly, something inside her gave way.

‘PARKER!’ she yelled, the word jerking out from somewhere under her ribs.

‘What?’ Jean said, wheeling round towards Peg.

The lounge door flew open and Parker stormed in.

Taking advantage of Jean’s stumbling shock at his sudden presence, he launched himself at her and wrested the knife from her hand.

‘Oh!’ Jean yelled, her body shuddering as Parker pushed her away from Loz. ‘Oh!’

Somehow, perhaps because he had underestimated her weight, he lost his balance and ended up pulling her down towards him. Coughing with the shock, Jean toppled forwards, landing on top of him and bringing the TV and bookshelf, which she had grabbed hold of in an attempt to steady herself, shattering down on top of her.

Loz only just managed to escape being at the very bottom of the pile by rolling away and curling up to shield her head from the falling bodies. As she did so, she screamed at the agony of her cracked ribs as they ground against one another.

‘Parker,’ Peg cried. Pulling the bookshelf away, she launched herself onto her aunt, trying to pull her off him.

‘I’m OK, Peg,’ Parker said, his voice muffled underneath Jean’s immobile bulk. ‘Just pull her up as much as you can.’

Peg hauled with all her might, cantilevering herself against the weight of her aunt, but she was barely able to raise her, because she was as still and as heavy as a quarter-ton sack of potatoes. She carried on trying. Unable to seize a whole limb, she could only grab handfuls of fat, which she worried would rip off under the pressure.

At one point Jean’s head flopped backwards and Peg saw that her eyes were open in her bloated, purple face. But even with all the pulling and tugging, she didn’t make a sound.

Finally she managed to get a purchase and lifted her enough so that, with some pushing and squirming against the floor, Parker managed to wriggle his way free of his fleshly prison.

‘Fuck,’ he said, wincing and hugging his torso. ‘I think I’ve joined the cracked rib club, Loz love.’

Unable to hold her up any longer, Peg let Jean’s body flop down face first on to the ground.

‘What’s happened to her?’ Peg said, watching her stillness.

Carefully, nursing his sore chest, Parker knelt at Jean’s side and worked his hand underneath her to extract her arm. He pinched her pulse point on her wrist, then shook his head.

‘No dice, I’m afraid, girly. Her heart must’ve given out. Hardly surprising. Jesus.’

A sudden commotion in the hallway made him jump to his feet. Before he, Peg or Loz knew what was happening, two bald fat men – one black, one white – were standing in the doorway, looking at them. The white one had a gun, and it was pointed at Loz, who was curled up on the floor, barely conscious.

‘Stand back or I’ll shoot,’ he yelled. He was wired up – his face was red and his nostrils flared. He clearly meant what he was saying.

‘Wayne!’ Peg said.

The black man looked at her and nodded. ‘Do as he says, Margaret,’ he said.

Parker and Peg put their hands up.

‘Sit,’ the white guy barked, and they both sat on the settee.

Wayne stepped gingerly towards Jean and took her wrist where Parker had let it go.

‘She’s gone,’ Parker said. ‘Heart.’

Wayne nodded and let go of her arm. He stood, got his phone out and punched a number into the beeping keypad.

‘It’s done,’ he said into the receiver, his eyes on Peg and Parker. ‘The witch is dead.’

Everyone waited for a moment as he listened to the person on the other end, nodding at what was being said.

‘Yeah. She’s just fallen,’ he said, walking round Jean’s carcass. ‘Looks like natural causes.’

The white guy adjusted his grip on his gun. It was still trained on Loz, who was whimpering softly, her eyes closed. Still on the phone, Wayne moved towards Peg.

‘Please,’ Peg whimpered. ‘Please, Wayne.’ She too closed her eyes, certain that something bad was about to happen.

‘Yep. Yep,’ Wayne was saying.

Presumably he was talking to Raymond. She thought perhaps that might possibly be a good thing, but she had no idea. Never a great believer in certainty, after the day’s events she had completely abandoned any hope of second-guessing what anyone around her was thinking or doing. She hoped she had plumbed the depths of depravity of which her family was capable, but she wasn’t sure. What else was going to turn up?

She was weary beyond belief, wrung out.

For a passing second she thought perhaps being killed might come as some sort of relief.

Then she felt a nudge. She opened her eyes, expecting to see the gun levelled at her. Instead, Wayne was holding out the phone.

‘He wants to talk to you,’ he said.

Carefully, Peg held the phone to her ear.

‘Margaret?’ Behind the newly familiar voice on the other end, a boy band sang a chart hit from a couple of years back.

‘What going on, Raymond?’ she said. ‘Who are these men, and why are they following us?’

‘OK, love. Just calm down. These are my boys and they’re here to help. They’re on your side.’

‘Doesn’t look like it. They tried to kill Loz, you know.’

‘Nah, love. They were just going to pick her up and get her out of the way, keep her quiet for a bit. Look. What happened was—’

‘I know. She didn’t believe you.’

‘Didn’t believe me? I’d say she tried to beat the living daylights out of me. I needed to keep her quiet until I could have a word with you, tell you what—’

‘I know the truth, Raymond. I know.’

‘You know?

‘Loz found Nan’s book.’

‘She did?’

‘She believes you now. I do too.’

She heard him sigh heavily on the other end, as the carefree whooping of Paulie and his friends at the end of the song filled the background.

‘I didn’t mean to hurt her,’ he said, his voice cracking with relief. ‘I panicked. Jean knew you had the second key to Heyworth – she always had the first. She wanted me to burn the place. Then after the fight I had with your mate, I knocked her out with some of Mummy’s old chloroform, then I called Archer and he told me to take your friend over to Heyworth and he’d deal with it, get this bird from Flamingos, Carleen – I think you know her – to look after her, keep her out of the way—’

‘Carleen?’

‘Carleen. See, she’s another one keeps an eye on things for me on the UK side. Keeps in touch. You know.’

Peg blinked. ‘Were you expecting me when I got to Spain?’

Raymond sighed.

‘Jesus.’ Peg breathed in and out. ‘You were, weren’t you? So how long were you going to “look after” Loz for, then?’

‘Till I could get back after the party and tell you the truth—’