The Day She Died (20 page)

“Just take a break,” I told him. “Of course you don't feel like working just now. You've not even had the funeral.”

“But I'll go mad if I sit and do nothing.”

“Okay, well how about this?” I said. “That woman copper didn't agree, but I think you need to track down Ros. You need to ask her if she knows why Becky did what she did. If she wasn't pregnant, why did she tell you she was? And here's another thing—maybe Ros would want to come to her funeral.”

He didn't speak.

“I'm pretty sure the cops aren't going to lift a finger even though I've given them her name twice now. But maybe there's something here in the house—something with some information about her. She was Becky's best friend.” And then I had a brainwave. “Or maybe she left something behind in her digs. I'll ask Gizzy.”

“You gave the cops her full name?” said Gus.

“Not that they were bothered.”

“How did you know her full name?”

I must have looked like a goldfish, mouth opening and shutting, nothing coming out. “I don't know,” I said, slowly. “How did I find out her second name? You know how that can happen? You know something but you can't remember how you learned it?”

He stood up suddenly, came over, and put his arms around me. “It's doesn't matter,” he said. “You're right. I need to forget work for a while, and maybe finding Ros would be a good idea. She's bound to know something.”

“Ruby told me,” I said, too late to be any good. “She knows her name. She knows quite a lot of Polish, as it happens.”

Gus swung me back and forward, still smiling down at me. “God, you've really fallen for Ruby's routine? What makes you think it's Polish she's talking and not just mince?”

I knew it was really Polish, I thought, because Kazek understood it, but I didn't tell that to Gus. I just repeated my story about running into town and went on my way.

How the hell was I going to tell Kazek the news about the Bible guy? The drowned guy, I would have to remember to stop calling him, now I knew. I still hadn't come up with an opener by the time I got to Foxleap, but I knocked anyway. Kazek opened the door a crack.

“Jaroslawa?” he said.

“I'm bloody sick of being a stand-in for Becky with Gus and a stand-in for Ros with you,” I said.

“Jessie-Pleasie,” he answered, opening wide enough to let me in.

“Okay, Kazek?” I said, taking his hands in mine. He sobered
and his eyes were alive with worry. “Your friend.” I pointed to the Bible that was lying on the coffee table.

“Wojtek?”

“He's dead.”

He shut his eyes and let his breath go very slowly, then he shook his head once and opened his eyes again to look at me. There were tears there, but he wasn't reeling. He could take more.

“Murdered,” I said. I drew a finger across my neck and made the sound. “And then,” I had to let go of his hands completely to mime heaving a body into a water—“
Splash
!”—and I showed him the paper I had brought with me. The picture of the frogmen hunting in the river said it all.

He nodded. The tears didn't fall, no more following to push them down his cheeks. He wiped them away.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

“Now,” I said. “The police?”

“No!” Even with the windows shut, it was too loud a sound to come from an empty caravan. We both winced.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “But I need to get you out of here. Pack up your stuff and come with me.” I mimed walking away, both of us, with my fingers.

“Police?” he said, hanging back.

“No. I promise.” For the second time that day, I did something I never thought I'd do again after I left my mother's house. This time, it was a Bible. I put my hand flat on the cover. “No police,” I told him. So he hopped up on the kitchen worktop, got his packet of money down from its hidey-place, and we went on our way.

In the car I explained it, even though I knew he wouldn't understand.

“Gus needs to understand why Becky died,” I said. He nodded. He knew two of those names, and he knew what
died
was. “I think Ros knows something. It's too much of a coincidence that Ros left and then days later Becky was dead. Right?” Another nod, but I knew I'd lost him. “You can help us find people who know Ros. Ros was taking care of you, and I don't think she'd have left you high and dry. You are in big trouble.”

“In Little China,” Kazek said again.

“You didn't kill your friend, though,” I said, “because if you've killed someone you don't worry about them, and you were really worried about Wojtek. The money looks bad, but on the other hand, if you've stolen money, you spend it. So whatever trouble you're in, it's not because you're a thief, right? Even though you really really really don't want to go to the police.”

“No, no police,” said Kazek. “Bible, Jessie-Pleasie.”

“Yes, I know,” I put my hand on his and squeezed it. “For a wee while anyway.” He caught my tone and relaxed again. “But still you've got to ask yourself this question, Kazek,” I said. “Why do I trust you? Why am I taking you where I'm taking you? It doesn't make any sense to me. You've done nothing that isn't dodgy since the first minute I clapped eyes on you and yet I'm acting as if you're my long-lost brother.”

Which didn't mean much. Gus had a long-lost brother and I doubt if he'd do for him what I'd done for Kazek since I'd met him.

Gus.

Gus had been kind, more understanding than anyone I'd ever met, great to his kids, give you a lump in your throat to see them together, said he'd fallen in love with me, acted it too, wanted me, seemed to need me, made me laugh. But was it really true that I wanted to find out what had happened with Becky and Ros just to put his mind at rest, or was there a question I needed answered just for me? Did I trust that sweet, good, kind, sad man as much as I trusted this filthy, half-crazy scrap of trouble sitting beside me?

“You know my problem, Kazek?” I said. “I can't handle good things happening. Gus looks to good to be true, so obviously I'm going to find something to worry about. That's just me.” And I ignored the voice inside me—Dot's voice, as it goes—saying,
Too good to be true, eh? And why would that be?

We were turning off the bypass now, heading towards town and it seemed to me that the closer we got, the less easy Kazek grew. He was sitting forward, staring out of the windscreen. Maybe Dot was right and there really was something rotten in this place now.

Dumfries is a dead town at night, even without a murder in the news. A couple of clubs, a handful of pubs, no restaurants to speak of really, so once the evening classes chuck out, the suburbs are dead. I wound my way in on empty streets, houses with their curtains drawn, parked cars lining each side of the roads like barricades. I'd never tried to park outside my flat before. It hadn't occurred to me how there was never a space. And the barrier at the library car park was down, which wasn't very neighbourly when it was closed for the night anyway. But maybe, I told myself, as we walked back from where we'd had to leave the car, that was a good thing. The road was quiet and the stairway to my flat was quieter still; maybe better that we were quiet too.

Kazek hesitated at the door, peering into the dark mouth of the passageway.

“It's okay,” I said. I held out my hand. “Follow me.”

Upstairs I opened my door and shoved him in ahead of me. I don't go in for plants, so it didn't matter that it was six days since I'd been here. No harm done beyond a scummy tea cup in the sink and a load of wet washing growing black mould in the basket where I'd left it.

Kazek walked around. The living room cum kitchen was on one side, the bedroom and the bathroom on the other. All tidy enough. Poor-looking though. None of the curtains were the right size for the windows or the right colour for the carpets. And none of the carpets were any colour I'd have chosen. And throws. Throws look great until you sit on them, then they're just blankets hiding your manky chairs. And you can't put throws over everything—tables and chests of drawers and that—so they just have to sit there looking like what they are. I looked at the place with visitors' eyes and with the eyes of someone who'd been in Dave's House of Vintage Charm for a week, looking out at the sea, looking down at the perfect faces of little children. There was nothing here that looked even half as good as Ruby's face, not even when it was covered in brown sauce and tripping her. Then, following him round, I looked at it with Kazek's eyes instead. And all I saw was the double bed and the proper-sized shower. The radiators and the big fridge. The washing machine and the telly.

“Loads of channels,” I said, showing him the remote. “And you can eat anything you can find. Thank God for super-dooper pasteurised, eh? Milk keeps for months now.” I went back to the bedroom and started putting clothes in a bag. At last! If I never wore this pair of jeans again, it would be soon enough.

“Your home?” said Kazek from the doorway.

I nodded. “And here's the best bit,” I said. I held the phone out to him. “Call Poland. Call anyone. Get it sorted out. Call Ros's sister, what was her name?”

He took the phone out of my hand and for a moment I thought he might kiss it or kiss me.

“And I'll see you tomorrow,” I said. I tapped my watch. “Five o'clock,” I told him. “Got it? Five.”

Gus hadn't asked me why I needed to go back to town. Maybe he thought I meant Gatehouse, didn't think of Dumfries. He'd know now, from the time and the petrol. But I had my bag of clothes as a cover story. There it was again. I couldn't tell him about Kazek, and I couldn't tell myself why that might be.

He didn't ask me where I'd been anyway. What he did say drove my troubled thoughts far away.

“You're right!” He had opened the door when he heard me. He took the bag out of my hand and put it inside the bedroom doorway then drew me into the living room, to the fireside. “You're dead right about Ros,” he said. “I called the cops and they're not interested. But we need to find her.”

“How can they say they're not interested?”

“She took her stuff,” said Gus. “Some of it anyway.”

“How do they know that? They checked with Gizzy?”

He shrugged. “Must have. So as far as they're concerned, she's an adult doing what she wants and there's no problem.” I wasn't really listening, couldn't get past the news that the cops had been onto Gizzy so quickly. That they might so easily have decided to check around, and if they'd found me skulking about the caravan site—if it had been Sergeant McDowall anyway—I'd have been done for.

“So we need to wait for her sister to phone again,” Gus said, “and then put our heads together.”

“Agreed,” I said. “And don't tell her the news from Dumfries.”

He frowned.

“You didn't watch the local news today?”

He shook his head.

“That drowned guy didn't drown—his throat was cut. And he was Polish too.”

“How'd they know that?” said Gus. He seemed to have paled. Why would that be? Well, he'd stood there and watched the frogmen that day. Or maybe he was squeamish about blood and guts and things.

“It must have been pretty obvious. From the body.”

“I mean, how'd they know he was Polish? Is he like something to do with Ros or something? Some connection?” He really was a white as a sheet.

“Charity bangles with Polish writing,” I told him. “The cops came to work with the guy's clothes to see if maybe we'd provided them. ‘Looked like one of yours,' the sergeant said. He seemed okay when he was here, eh? But he was dead sour today.”

“The same cop?” said Gus.

“Small town.”

“The same cop that came here brought that drowned guy's stuff to show you, and you told him Ros was missing?” He seemed really struck by it, like I'd been. Only I knew about Kazek being a link between them. Gus didn't, so what was his problem?

“Are you okay?” I said.

“There's a lot of Polish folk about,” he said. “There's no reason at all the cops would connect them.”

“Why would that matter?” I asked him. “Why would you care if they did or not?”

He watched me for a long time before he answered. And, when he spoke, it was slow and soft, as if he was trying to hypnotise me.

“Like you said. So's they don't worry Ros's sister. So they don't tell her about him and make her scared for Ros. Just like you said to me.”

That made perfect sense and I smiled at him.

“I need to ask you something.” His voice was back to normal. “I need you to tell me something.”

“Okay,” I said. He slid out of his chair and came shuffling over on his knees to just in front of me. He reached out and put the flats of his first two fingers on my cheek, right on top of the old dot where the puncture mark used to be.

“I saw it when you were sleeping,” he said. “And I want you to tell me what really happened when you pulled the feathers out of your granny's quilt. Tell me the truth, eh?”

Inside

She was filthy now. She could smell herself with every breath, even over the stench from the dry toilet. She had tied a biscuit wrapper up into a jagged little ball of knots and spiky edges and she chewed it, like those dry toothbrushes you get in machines at motorway services. It kind of worked. But she stank. God, she stank. So she wasted some water and the sleeve of her t-shirt. Bit a hole in the seam at the shoulder and unpicked the stitching. Ripped the sleeve into two. One she kept, carefully folded inside her cardboard pillow. The other she wet with a glug of precious water, pouring it like anointing oils in some holy temple. She kneaded the cotton until the water was all the way through it, damp and cool, and then she washed herself, her face and ears. Her neck, under her arms, scrubbing hard, the stubble giving her some friction. She took off her jeans and pants and wept at the smell of herself. She turned the cloth and washed gently, lovingly, like a nurse would cool a patient after a fever. She turned the cloth and wiped her feet. It was nearly dry now. More water? A little. And her feet tingled as she scrubbed them.