All Bones and Lies (26 page)

‘Mel, really. I was right. This is
important
.'

Now she was spinning like a top.

‘Mel, stop that! Please! This
matters.
It's a letter to Tamina Poppy—'

‘Who can't even read!'

‘That's not the point. These people want to give her something.'

Now she was spinning the other way. ‘She could do
with a new roof over her head. We both could. That's what you ought to be thinking about, Colin. Not—'

In his excitement, he had interrupted her. ‘. . .
in the absence of any indication of the invalidity of . . . and pending further and thorough investigation
. . .'

She was back on her body bends, resting each leg in turn on his car wing and stretching along it. ‘It doesn't
sound
as if they want to give Tam anything. I'd say the bits you're reading out sound rather nasty.'

What were those raw red patches? Hastily, he looked away.

‘That doesn't mean a thing. Frampton Commercial send round a circular that manages to make their annual fire extinguisher inspections sound like a favour. The fact remains' – he worked his way down through the dense unpleasantness of formal language – ‘I'm almost sure these people want to give Tam money.'

‘Oh, yes? How much?'

His eyes fell on the sum. ‘My Christ! I don't believe it!'

Mel froze in the middle of a back bend.

‘It's all In Trust,' he told her hastily. ‘Until Tam's twenty-one.'

Mel snorted. ‘Twenty-one!' Clearly the notion that this small creature in the car seat still cheerfully gabbling away to a tiny plastic girl in a glass ball might ever reach school age, let alone adulthood, was, to her, almost entirely unimaginable, and made the whole boiling seem even more fanciful. ‘And what does “In Trust” mean?'

‘That you can't spend it. Only the bits you'd need to send her to a good school and buy her uniform and—'

Losing interest at once, she went back to her stretching.
‘I don't believe it anyway. It's all some stupid mistake. We don't know anybody who has any money – certainly not enough to hire some posh lot like this to dish it out. And if it really was us they meant, they'd be writing to me, wouldn't they? Not to Miss T. P. Gould who's only
three
.'

He wasn't listening for, in his mystification, he'd flicked over the page yet again to notice, this time, clipped to the back, a flimsy half sheet of handwriting beached in a sea of darkly speckled paper. It spoke of copies of copies, and was presumably part of a letter, trimmed to excise bits deemed irrelevant to Miss T. P. There were only a couple of paragraphs, and even these were written in a hand so crabbed and shaky they were hard to decipher. But some parts were clear:

‘. . . time of great grief and sorrow . . . learn who your true friends are . . . the only two people in the world to bother to sign my dear late husband's Book of Condolence . . . this thoughtful tribute to my beloved George Henry . . . moved to the quick . . . revoke all previous codicils . . . this little bequest . . .'

Little?

He wasn't going to tell her now. They hadn't time – not till he'd visited Mother. Still, he couldn't help but mutter over the sharp little intakes of breath born of her stretchings. ‘Not
that
bloody little!'

She wasn't listening. ‘So who is this old bag who was so fond of her dear hubby?'

He flipped back to read Taw, Grant & Sorlence's letter reference aloud. ‘
Estate of the late Florence May Besterton
.'

Clearly her lack of curiosity about the money stemmed not from indifference but from disbelief. ‘See? A mistake. I don't know anyone called Florence Whatsit.'

‘Get in the car,' he ordered. ‘I'll take you round to my place. You can stay there at least till I find out where they've rehoused you.'

She bent, just like a lily, one last time. And, as the breeze lifted the blouse from the back of her neck, he saw the bright raw graze. ‘Mel! Have you been back on the trapeze?'

‘Just making sure I could still—'

Wincing, he broke in on all her chatter about pikes, and back balances, and something distressingly referred to as ‘skinning the cat'. ‘Mel! For one thing it's
dangerous
. Especially if you're out of practice. And for another, you're a
mother
now. With serious responsibilities. You simply can't—'

‘Oh, do shut up, Col.'

At least his fussing had driven her into the car. He turned to strap in Tam. Before they'd reached Mount Oval, Mel had abandoned her sulk and was rattling on cheerfully about the train ride and the look on Alexi's face when he slid down the rope at the end of his practice set, practically into her arms. She was still telling him all about the welcome in the caravans, and the parties that followed, when Tam started squawking about sweeties ‘for Lavender!'.

‘Oh, God!'

Unbuckling her safety belt, Mel turned and draped the top half of her body over the back of her seat to reach for the lemon drops Colin's speedy skirting of Mount Oval had sent skidding out of the child's reach.

‘There! Happy?'

She twisted back and buckled up again, still filling him
in on things about which he hoped he'd never have to hear again:
corde lisse
, and roll-ups, and something she kept vertiginously referring to as the one-toe cross-over hang. But not before he'd spotted the angry red rope burn right across the very top of her leg. And the look of pure triumph that had utterly transformed her.

Absorbed as he was in the sight of the flames roaring upwards, he still noticed the police undercover agent taking his photo.

‘Problem?' he asked her, proffering his card.

The woman looked shifty. ‘It's just that you seem to have been to an awful lot of fires this morning.'

‘Statutory duty,' lied Colin. ‘Toxins pouring forth, and such. I'm afraid my department had been getting rather slack over the past few months and years. But a new government directive came round recently, so we've been trying to pull our socks up.'

God! Was this him? From barely articulate, he'd turned into as glib a liar as a poorly paid salesman on a used car lot forecourt.

‘Still, three in one morning . . .' She shook her head and said, a trifle sarcastically, ‘You'll be quite the world's expert now. Any idea how this one got started?'

‘None at all, I'm afraid.'

‘Know anyone who lives here?'

‘Me.'

‘Really?'

Embarrassed, she slid off. He watched a shower of sparks fly from his bathroom window. What could that be? His aftershave exploding? He was losing the whole
lot. Anything he cared about? Not really, no. Guiltily his thoughts crept upwards, like the flames, to Mrs Singer's cosy flat above. She had been dazed and weeping as she'd been helped past. But, on the other hand, for some years now that very pleasant daughter-in-law of hers had been saying she'd be far better off in some form of sheltered accommodation. So maybe, even for Mrs Singer, this fire was a blessing in disguise. After all—

No! he recanted, remembering Val pointing out how very easily people managed to assure themselves that whatever suits them will suit the elderly. Like ghouls, she'd said, itching to nail down the coffin lids on the still undead. ‘This car of yours is really just cluttering up the garage now, isn't it, Grandpa? Would you like me to—?' ‘Bit hard to garden all this lot now you're on your own, isn't it, Doris? Would it help to sell me and Linda just enough of a strip at the back to build a—?' ‘Mum, don't you ever worry about burglars spotting these valuable old pieces through the window? Would you feel a bit safer if—?'

The police nark was back at his elbow now. ‘Have a quick word?'

He turned to see if Mel or Tam were getting restless. But Tam was still dead to the world in her comfy new car seat, and Mel was back to doing her ballerinery bits and bobs with her hand on his car wing.

Still. Three fires in one day. The sooner he was away from here, the better.

‘I really should be getting along. My mother's coming out of hospital today, and—'

She brushed off her fleeting pretence of taking an interest. ‘Young Jamie over there was just saying you'd
been having a few run-ins recently with some fellow called Hacksaw.'

‘Haksar,' corrected Colin. He gazed, entranced, as, in a spilling, shimmering haze of colours, the inner floors fell. ‘No. I'm quite certain that's all settled now.'

And bloody well ought to be. Haksar had done a good job. Everything he owned was gone. His sterile flat. His squeaky-clean appliances. The pictures he had never even glanced at. Odd bits of pottery abandoned by Helen. One or two personal documents a man of the desk like himself could get replaced in no time. And, most miraculous of all, the ghastly family sideboard his mother had decided she couldn't stand but wouldn't sell. ‘I can't bear looking at it.
You
take it, Colin.'

All gone. All burned to ashes, unsought, undeserved. The last dregs of his boring life.

And, in his hands, the generous wherewithal to start another.

Nodding apologies, Colin turned back to his car, carrying only the envelope that the courier, bewitched by the sight that presented itself as he turned the last corner, had finally thought to tug from his saddle-pack, and, after a bit of discussion with the other onlookers, most of whom were neighbours, put in the hands of Colin Aloysius Riley, Esq.

Tracked down at last.

The minute he'd tipped the still-sleeping Tam out of his arms onto the sofa, his sister signalled him to follow her into the kitchen.

‘For God's sake, Col! I'm having someone round. Is
there absolutely nowhere else you could think of leaving them?'

‘Like where, for instance?'

‘Well, your place, for starters.'

‘I only just finished telling you. It's burned down.'

‘I thought you said that was
her
place.'

‘Yes, it was. First hers, then mine.'

‘This is
insane.
Why can't you drop her off at some hotel? Or Holly House?'

‘Oh, yes? Fetch Mother out of hospital to meet a stranger and a bouncy child?' He gave a shudder.

‘Well, it's no more convenient for me.'

Edging past him, his sister made one small concession to hospitality by peering back through the doorway to check Mel wasn't listening. He saw her eyes widen. ‘What on earth is she doing?'

He didn't even bother to look. ‘Practising.'

‘Practising what?'

‘Her high-trapeze stuff.'

‘Really?' Clearly, the romance of the circus had never seeped through to his sister's soul. ‘Well, she can't stay here. I don't think Tara would get on with her at all.'

‘What sort of person can't get on for one evening with a mother and child who've just been made homeless?'

‘Someone like Tara. She's one of the top-flight solicitors from our insurance arm.'

‘From Tor Grand?' His sister's stunningly selfish lack of interest in the fires made him bite back. ‘Then I doubt that she'll come. She'll be far too busy sorting out this Chatterton Court mess.'

Though she was almost through the door, she stopped. ‘Which Chatterton Court mess?'

‘You know. The Special Promotion. A month's free contents insurance.'

‘No, no. Perdita has already been carpeted for that.' His sister snorted. ‘As if it wasn't absolutely typical of her arrogance, to walk into a new department in the morning and take it upon herself to turn a simple intra-office design and marketing exercise into a full-bodied outside mailing without even checking with anyone above her.'

He stared. ‘You mean they weren't even supposed to be posted.'

‘God, no! And Tara heard Marjorie saying that if there should actually be a fire—'

‘Which there has been.'

‘A fire?'

‘I
told
you. I
kept
telling you.'

‘I thought you told me that was
your
place.'

Would they go round in circles all afternoon? ‘And so it was. Hers first' – best leave out Mother's for the moment, so as not to confuse things – ‘and mine straight after.'

‘Chatterton Court. Gone up in flames?' He'd never seen a person's mood change quite so fast. You'd think he'd waved a wand to turn her from ratty to radiant. ‘The whole lot? Are you serious? You never told me.'

He felt like Clarrie. ‘I like that! I've been telling you for the past
ten minutes
.'

His sister was ecstatic. ‘Well, isn't that bloody Perdita in the soup?' He hadn't seen her so enchanted since the first time her trick of stringing dental floss between
the magnolia and the laurel fetched him off his bike into the lupins.

A moment's thought and her smile became even more radiant. ‘And this is going to cause a heap of shit to fall on Marjorie as well! In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if—'

Snatching the tray from him, she rushed from the kitchen to fall on Mel just like a proper hostess. ‘Is tea all right? I'd be delighted to fix you a drink, if that's what you need more after all your horrors. Though we will be drinking later, when my guest comes. I hope you don't mind. You're
terribly
welcome.'

Her eye fell on Mel's grubby and travelworn clothing.

‘Though perhaps you'd be happier tucked away with the telly. You think about it. But, right now, you must tell me exactly when you last had a bite to eat. There's supper coming. But right now I could offer soup. Or a sandwich. And, while I'm getting it, you must come through with me into the kitchen to tell me all about this dreadful,
dreadful
fire . . .'

She was still chuntering merrily when he left.