A Year Less a Day (15 page)

“We know all about that ... But what about the drugs?”

“They're for my husband's cancer.”

“Not that kind of drug, Ruth. We're not stupid. We know what's happening. We've even got you on surveil-lance videos, buying on the street.”

A brick might have hit harder, although the hurt wouldn't have been so deep, and she slumps in tears as her worst fears come true.

“Don't get upset, don't cry, don't argue,” she had told herself on the occasions when Jordan had been unable to get out of bed, and she had buddied-up to a bunch of denim-clad sub-humans outside the youth club and walked back to the café with dirt on her hands.

“From the amount found in your apartment, you'll certainly be charged with possession—possibly trafficking,” continues Wilson.

“But it was Jordan's medicinal marijuana,” she tries lamely.

“And that's why you bought it from a pusher on Queen Street?”

The pain in her fingers and face can't compete with the pain within as she fights with images of her broken mother and recalls all the promises she made to herself that she would never, ever, end up on the same road.

“What's happening to the café?” she asks eventually, when she sees no other path.

The spark of life that Ruth and her husband had kindled has gone, and the café is now as cold and clinical as a mortuary. Sheets of white paper plaster the windows, shielding the forensic team from the lenses of press photographers. And the tropical aromas from Ethiopia, Columbia, and Costa Rica are lost in a welter of dust motes as floorboards and ceilings are pried and probed. Halogen spotlights turn December's gloom into glacial brilliance, but the light is as frosty as the winter's sun on the distant Rockies.

The gaggle of reporters who'd hung around outside the café the first day have already moved on; so have most of the rubber-neckers and displaced customers. Donut Delight is bursting with the overflow, and the crossword gang is crammed into a tight spot. There is only one topic of conversation.

“Sends a shiver up your spine doesn't it?” says Darcey, without looking up at the others. Matt and Maureen nod while trying to concentrate on 10-down.
“A cheap place to stay in Ireland.”

“You don't think she did it, do you?” asks Matt, but nobody answers as Trina pushes through the crowd and plops, “INNOCENT,” in the spot before anyone can stop her.

“Of course she didn't do it,” says Trina, jamming herself between the other two women, with her eyes on 31-across.

“Have you been to see her?” asks Matt.

“I'm on my way now. I took her some really nice clothes yesterday to cheer her up.”

“How is she?”

“She seemed happy when I told her that I'd find Jordan.”

Darcey and Maureen look up and say, “How?” in unison, but Trina clams up. She has a plan, but she does-n't want anyone poking holes in it—and she knows there are holes.

“Oh, look. There's Cindy over there,” she says, loping off.

Cindy looks out of place as she sits on her own in Donut Delight, with her resume in her purse and her eye on the front door of the Corner Coffee Shoppe at the other end of the street.

The crime-scene tape has been reinforced by a second strand since Trina's incursion, and the uniformed policeman now has a critical glance at every visitor's badge—even those with whom he had breakfasted an hour earlier at the briefing.

“The scrout's got quite a violent streak,” Sergeant Brougham had told the small group as they had sat around the café waiting for a plumber to begin dismantling the sewer system. “I wouldn't be surprised to find something gruesome in the drains.”

“Do you still want us to do the floorboards, Sarge?” asked one of the men.

“Yeah, Pete; as soon as the truck arrives and we get the carpets out of the way.”

The rolled carpets, enveloped in plastic sheeting, are being carried out and piled into a large blue van as Trina slides into the seat opposite Cindy, asking, “What's happening at Ruth's place?”

“They're taking the crappy carpets now. There won't be much left soon.”

“What else have they taken?”

“They've got a dumpster around the back. Jordan's crappy mother is there telling them what's his and
what's hers and what to chuck out.”

“Oh, no,” sighs Trina and takes off at a run.

“What's going on at the coffee shop, Cindy?” asks a voice from above, and Cindy snaps back her head.

“Raven!” exclaims Cindy. “Where have you been? I didn't think you were ever coming back.”

Raven's face falls. “Neither did I.” Then she laughs, “You were right, Cindy. All men are crappy. But what's going on? They wouldn't let me in.”

Cindy drops her tone. “It's like the kitchen-sink version of psycho. I heard it all—the yelling and shouting.” She stops and looks around before dragging Raven down into a conspiracy. “I told the police I was too busy to look, but to tell the truth, I didn't wanna get involved. I know what men can be like when you get between them and their crappy wives. Been there, done that.”

“Jordan killed her?” Raven asks incredulously.

“Other way around. She killed him.”

Raven's face screws-up in confusion. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. She's in jail. It's in all the papers.”

“I don't believe it,” says Raven firmly, but Cindy checks around again then whispers in her ear. “I'm not supposed to know this, but I've got a friend who says Ruth's pretending to be insane.”

“No ... That's not ...” starts Raven, but Cindy is still whispering. “She even attacked a doctor and the guards. I heard they put her in a straitjacket. I knew something was up when she went overboard with all that crappy rabbit food.”

“I have to contact Serethusa,” says Raven, as she slides out of her seat; then she pauses. “Where's all my furniture and stuff?”

“I should have thought you could afford new,” says Cindy, but stops as Raven gives her a confused look. Then she queries, “You did win the lottery, didn't you?”
Raven's chaise-lounge is in the dumpster with many of Ruth's clothes and a load of rotting food from the closed café, together with a furious Trina Button.

“You can't throw this away,” Trina is yelling to Jordan's mother as she wades through the garbage, pulling out Ruth's possessions.

“Leave it alone you stupid woman,” Gwenda Jackson shouts as she tries to grab the stomping woman. But Trina is too fast for her and has her hands full by the time Sergeant Brougham appears.

“Not you again ... Get out of there.”

“She's throwing all Ruth's stuff away,” bleats Trina.

“Well, she won't need it where she's going,” shoots back the older woman. “And I'm damned if I'm having it in my place after what's she's done.”

“She hasn't done anything ...” screams Trina, but gives up when she feels wetness on her foot and realizes she is standing in something messy.

“Come on. Leave that stuff and get out,” orders Brougham, and Trina relinquishes everything apart from Ruth's roll of posters, her bead bag, and what feels like a pound of squashed tomatoes on one foot.

“Put those back,” says Jordan's mother, tussling with Trina over Ruth's posters, but Brougham steps in.

“She might as well take them. They're allowed posters in jail these days.” Then he turns to Trina sternly. “Now stay out of there and leave it alone or I'll arrest you again.”

“I'm telling Ruth what you're doing,” Trina spits at Gwenda Jackson as she squelches away, trailing pureed tomato.

But telling Ruth is not as easy as Trina had hoped. A bureaucratic roadblock awaits her at the police station. “You're only allowed one visit, and you saw her yesterday,”
Noreen tells Trina, anxious to keep Ruth's injuries from public scrutiny, then spends twenty minutes trying to come up with the relevant regulation.

“I'm not leaving 'til I see it in black and white,” says Trina crossing her arms, and she laughs when Noreen threatens to arrest her for trespassing.

“Go on then,” says Trina, holding out her hands with her wrists together. “Then I'll get to see Ruth.”

“This isn't a joke,” says Noreen sternly. “Your friend is in very serious trouble.”

“So will you be if you're lying to me,” shoots back Trina. “Now where does it say that I can't visit my friend again?”

Ten minutes later, with Ruth tidied up a bit and her hair brushed, Trina walks into the interview room bubbling with excitement, laughing, “I nearly got arrested ...” then she stops in horror. “What happened to your face? And look at your fingers. What happened to your nails?”

Noreen and Annie stand, arms folded, and stare at the ceiling as Trina carries on. “And what about your clothes? They were nearly new. And where's your glasses?”

“I fell over,” sobs Ruth, and she carries on crying as Trina gives the guards a dirty look and tries to cheer her up with a cuddle. “Never mind. I'll bring you some more clothes. You'll just have to be careful, that's all. You'll soon be out of here.”

“How?” whimpers Ruth.

“I've started a campaign to get you released,” says Trina with new-found bounce.

“Tell me it doesn't involve dynamite, Trina.”

“No. It's a publicity campaign. I put it on the Internet last night. You've already got supporters in Moscow, Senegal, Sydney, and a couple of places I can't pronounce.
I've even got half a dozen American lawyers offering to take your case to the UN Human Rights commission.”

Ruth painfully raises her eyebrows. “How much will that cost, Trina?”

“Oh ... I hadn't thought of that. I thought they were just being helpful.”

“Lawyers?” queries Ruth.

“OK. But the
Sun
is going to do an interview with me this afternoon. Don't worry. Jordan will turn up and tell them it's all been a mistake, then you'll be out.”

The thought of getting out overwhelms Ruth, but then every thought overwhelms her, and the tears flow again.

“Your mother-in-law is tidying the place up for you, and she gave me some of your things to take care of,” says Trina, landing another punch, then she finds herself crying alongside her friend. “Cheer up, Ruth,” she implores through the tears. “Mike says that his friend in England is going to find your father for you.”

Trina, as always, has erred on the side of optimism and, in truth, David Bliss has virtually given up any hope of tracing the man on the sketchy information supplied by Mike Phillips. However, in a last ditch effort, he has decided to visit Liverpool and is nearing the Beatles' Merseyside home with Daphne Lovelace as navigator. It's early evening in England and the wintry drizzle contrasts sharply with the bright morning sun that still shines in Canada. Vancouver, nestling under the Coastal Range, is still cool and crisp in the mountain air, but Inspector Wilson is rapidly warming up as Trina Button tears into him.

“She's been beaten up,” Trina yells into Wilson's face, once Ruth has been led back to her cell.

“She fell ...”

“Don't fucking lie to me. I'm a nurse. I can see when someone's been smacked around.”

“She attacked the doctor,” Wilson protests.

“No more beatings,” orders Trina. “You keep your hands off her. She's getting a lawyer right now.”

“She hasn't got any money. She'll have to apply to a judge for legal aid.”

“I said, ‘she's getting a lawyer,'” snaps Trina as she storms out.

Liverpool's cramped back streets of terraced houses are gleaming under a fresh glaze of sleet as David Bliss gingerly navigates in search of a hotel. The Beatles are pumping out “Day Tripper” on the car's CD player—“It'll put us in the right mood,” Daphne had insisted—while Bliss's injured leg is throbbing in time.

“I'll have to stop soon,” says Bliss, as he furiously kneads his thigh.

“I'm sure it was around here somewhere,” says Daphne, peering determinedly through the gloom to spot the Norbury, a hotel she has eulogized as a gem among gems for the past two hundred miles. “I distinctly remember it; they did a wonderful lobster bisque.”

“But that was ten years ago,” moans Bliss testily as the pain from his leg shoots up his spine.

“More like twenty,” replies Daphne, and Bliss hits the brakes.

“This will have to do,” he says as he slides into the driveway of The Royal Hotel ten seconds later. “My leg is killing me. I can't drive another inch.”

“Are you sure you can drive all right with that leg?” Daphne had asked as he'd rented the car in Westchester that morning and, although he'd been emphatic, he had
been forced to halt every fifteen or twenty minutes to shake out the cramps. “You should let me drive,” she had offered several times, but he had convinced himself that the pain was therapeutic and soldiered on.

“Maybe you can drive back,” he'd told her eventually, with little intent.

Inspector Wilson is still in his office, smarting over Trina's attack, and is praying for something concrete to bolster his case. The possibility that Ruth could be telling the truth doesn't cross his mind, but the possibility that Trina Button might come back with some high-priced reinforcements does.
We just need a break,
he is thinking, when a phone call sends him flying back to the Corner Coffee Shoppe.

“You might want to take a look at this,” enthuses Sergeant Brougham as he meets Wilson at the café's front door and guides him across a floor of splintered boards.

“I need some good news. I've just had that Button woman ripping into me.”

“I'm gonna screw her if she doesn't back off,” agrees Brougham, then points to an area where a force cameraman is rigging a spotlight.

“It's under the floorboards just there,” says Brougham, “You can see it quite clearly.”