Nutshell (12 page)

In the early afternoon the phone rings and the future introduces herself. Chief Inspector Clare Allison, now attached to the case. The voice sounds friendly, no hint of accusation. That may be a bad sign.

We're in the kitchen again, Claude has the phone. His first coffee of the day is in his other hand. Trudy stands close and we hear both sides.
Case
? The word packs a threat.
Chief
inspector? Also unhelpful.

I gauge my uncle's anxiety by his zeal to accommodate. “Oh yes. Yes! Of course. Please do.”

Chief Inspector Allison intends to visit us. Normal practice would be for both to come to the station for a chat. Or to make statements, if appropriate. However, due to Trudy's advanced condition, the family's grief, the chief inspector and a sergeant will come by within the hour. She'd like to take a look at the site of the deceased's last contacts.

This last, innocent and reasonable to my ears, puts Claude into a frenzy of welcome. “Please come. Marvellous. Do. Take us as you find us. Can't wait. You'll—”

She hangs up. He turns towards us, probably ashen, and says in a tone of disappointment, “Ah.”

Trudy can't resist mimicry. “
All
…
fine
, is it?”

“What's this
case
? It's not a criminal matter.” He appeals to an imaginary audience, a council of elders. A jury.

“I hate it,” my mother murmurs, more to herself. Or to me, I'd like to believe. “I hate it, I
hate
it.”

“This is supposed to be for the coroner.” Claude walks away from us, aggrieved, takes a turn around the kitchen and comes back to us, outraged. Now his complaint is to Trudy. “This is
not
a police matter.”

“Oh really?” she says. “Better phone the inspector and put her straight.”

“That poet woman. I knew we couldn't trust her.”

We understand that somehow Elodie is my mother's charge, that this is an accusation.

“You fancied her.”

“You said she'd be useful.”

“You fancied her.”

But the deadpan reiteration doesn't needle him.

“Who wouldn't? Who cares?”

“I do.”

I ask myself once more what I gain by their falling out. It could bring them down. Then I'll keep Trudy. I've heard her say that in prison nursing mothers have a better life. But I'll lose my birthright, the dream of all humanity, my freedom. Whereas together, as a team, they might scrape through. Then give me away. No mother, but I'll be free. So which? I've been round this before, always returning to the same hallowed place, the only principled decision. I'll risk material comfort and take my chances in the wider world. I've been confined too long. My vote's for liberty. The murderers must escape. This is a good moment then, before the Elodie argument goes too far, for me to give my mother another kick, distract her from squabbling with the interesting fact of my existence. Not once, not twice, but the magic number of all the best old stories. Three times, like Peter's denial of Jesus.

“Oh, oh, oh!” She almost sings it. Claude pulls out a chair for her and brings a glass of water.

“You're sweating.”

“Well, I'm hot.”

He tries the windows. They haven't budged in years. He looks in the fridge for ice. The trays are empty in the recent cause of three rounds of gin and tonics. So he sits across from her and extends his cooling sympathies.

“It'll be all right.”

“No, it won't.”

His silence agrees. I was considering a fourth strike, but Trudy's mood is dangerous. She might go on the attack and invite a dangerous response.

After a pause, in mollifying mode, he says, “We should run through it one last time.”

“What about a lawyer?”

“Bit late now.”

“Tell them we won't talk without one.”

“Won't look good when they're only coming round for a chat.”

“I
hate
this.”

“We should run through it one last time.”

But they don't. Stupefied, they contemplate Chief Inspector Allison's approach. By now, within the hour could mean within the minute. Knowing everything, almost everything, I'm party to the crime, safe, obviously, from questioning, but fearful. And curious, impatient to witness the inspector's skills. An open mind could peel these two apart in minutes. Trudy betrayed by nerves, Claude by stupidity.

I'm trying to place them, the morning coffee cups from my father's visit. Transferred, I now think, to wait unwashed by the kitchen sink. DNA on one cup will prove my mother and uncle to be telling the truth. The Danish debris must be close by.

“Quickly,” says Claude at last. “Let's do this. Where did the row start?”

“In the kitchen.”

“No. On the doorstep. What was it about?”

“Money.”

“No. Throwing you out. How long was he depressed?”

“Years.”

“Months. How much did I lend him?”

“A thousand.”

“Five. Christ. Trudy.”

“I'm pregnant. It makes you dim.”

“You said it yourself yesterday. Everything as it was, plus the depression, minus the smoothies, plus the row.”

“Plus the gloves. Minus he was moving back in.”

“God yes. Again. What was he depressed about?”

“Us. Debts. Work. Baby.”

“Good.”

They go round a second time. By the third, it sounds better. What sickening complicity that I should wish them success.

“So say it then.”

“As it happened. Minus the smoothies, plus the row and gloves, minus the depression, plus he was moving back in.”

“No. Fuck! Trudy. As was.
Plus
the depression, minus the smoothies, plus the row, plus the gloves, minus he was moving back in.”

The doorbell rings and they freeze.

“Tell them we're not ready.”

This is my mother's idea of a joke. Or evidence of her terror.

Muttering probable obscenities, Claude goes towards the videophone, changes his mind and makes for the stairs and the front door.

Trudy and I take a nervous shuffle around the kitchen. She too is muttering as she works on her story. Usefully, each successive effort of memory removes her further from the actual events. She's memorising her memories. The transcription errors will be in her favour. They'll be a helpful cushion at first, on their way to becoming the truth. She could also tell herself—
she
didn't buy the glycol, go to Judd Street, mix the drinks, plant stuff in the car, dump the blender. She cleaned up the kitchen—not against the law. Convinced, she'll be liberated from conscious guile and may stand a chance. The effective lie, like the masterly golf swing, is free of self-awareness. I've listened to the sports commentaries.

I attend to and sift the descending footsteps. Chief Inspector Allison is light-boned, even bird-like, for all her seniority. There are handshakes. From the sergeant's wooden “how d'you do” I recognise the older man from yesterday's visit. What's blocked his promotion? Class, education, IQ, scandal—the last, I hope, for which he might take the blame and doesn't need my pity.

The agile chief inspector sits at the kitchen table and invites us all to do the same, as if the house were hers. I think I imagine my mother thinking that she might more easily mislead a man. Allison spreads a folder, and clicks repeatedly the spring-loaded button of her pen as she speaks. She tells us that the first thing to say—then pauses with great intensity of effect to look, I'm certain, deeply into Trudy and Claude's eyes—is how deeply sorry she is at this loss of a dear husband, dear brother, dear friend. No dear father. I'm fighting a familiar, rising chill of exclusion. But the voice is warm, larger than her frame, relaxed in the burden of office. Her mild cockney is the very register of urban poise and won't be easily challenged. Not by my mother's expensively constrained vowels. No pulling that old trick. History has moved on. One day most British statesmen will speak like the chief inspector. I wonder if she has a gun. Too grand. Like the queen not carrying money. Shooting people is for sergeants and below.

Allison explains that this is an informal conversation to help her form a fuller understanding of the tragic events. Trudy and Claude are under no obligation to answer questions. But she's wrong. They feel they are. To refuse will appear suspicious. But if the chief inspector is one move ahead, she may think that compliance is even more suspect. Those with nothing to hide would insist on a lawyer as a precaution against police error or unlawful intrusion.

As we settle round the table I note and resent the absence of polite queries about me. When's it due? Boy or girl?

Instead, the chief inspector wastes no time. “You might show me around when we're done talking.”

More statement than request. Claude is eager, too eager, to comply. “Oh yes. Yes!”

A search warrant would be the alternative. But there's nothing upstairs of interest to the police beyond the squalor.

The chief inspector says to Trudy, “Your husband came here yesterday about ten a.m.?”

“That's right.” Her tone is impassive, an example to Claude.

“And there was tension.”

“Of course.”

“Why of course?”

“I've been living with his brother in what John thought was his house.”

“Whose house is it?”

“It's the marital home.”

“The marriage was over?”

“Yes.”

“Mind if I ask? Did he think it was over?”

Trudy hesitates. There may be a right and wrong answer.

“He wanted me back but he wanted his women friends.”

“Know any names?”

“No.”

“But he told you about them.”

“No.”

“But you knew somehow.”

“Of course I
knew
.”

Trudy allows herself a little contempt. As if to say, I'm the real woman here. But she's ignored Claude's coaching. She was to speak the truth, adding and subtracting only what was agreed. I hear my uncle stir in his chair.

Without pause, Allison changes the subject. “You had a coffee.”

“Yes.

“All three. Round this table?”

“All three.” This is Claude, worried perhaps that his silence is giving a poor impression.

“Anything else?”

“What?”

“With the coffee. Did you offer him anything else?”

“No.” My mother sounds cautious.

“And what was in the coffee?”

“Excuse me?”

“Milk? Sugar?”

“He always had it black.” Her pulse rate has risen.

But Clare Allison's manner is impenetrably neutral. She turns to Claude. “So you lent him money.”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Five thousand.” Claude and Trudy answer in ragged chorus.

“A cheque?”

“Cash, actually. It's how he wanted it.”

“Have you been to this juice bar on Judd Street?”

Claude's answer is as quick as the question. “Once or twice. It was John who told us about it.”

“You weren't there yesterday, I suppose.”

“No.”

“You never borrowed his black hat with the wide brim?”

“Never. Not my sort of thing.”

This may be the wrong answer, but there's not time to work it out. The questions have acquired new weight. Trudy's heart is beating faster. I wouldn't trust her to speak. But she does, in a constricted voice.

“Birthday present from me. He loved that hat.”

The chief inspector is already moving on to something different, but she turns back. “It's all we can see of him on the CCTV. Sent it off for a DNA match.”

“We haven't offered you any tea or coffee,” Trudy says in her altered voice.

The chief inspector must have refused both for herself and the still-silent sergeant with a shake of the head. “That's most of it these days,” she says in a tone of nostalgia. “Science and computer screens. Now, where was—ah yes. There was tension. But I see in the notes there was a row.”

Claude will be making the same racing calculations as me. His own hair will be found in the hat. The correct answer was yes, he borrowed it a while ago.

“Yes,” Trudy says. “One of many.”

“Would you mind telling me the—”

“He wanted me to move out. I said I'd go in my own time.”

“When he drove off what was his state of mind?”

“Not good. He was a mess. Confused. He didn't really want me to go. He wanted me back. Tried to make me jealous, pretending that Elodie was his lover. She put us right. There was no affair.”

Too much detail. She's trying to regain control. But talking too fast. She needs to take a breath.

Clare Allison is silent while we wait to know the next direction she'll take. But she stays with this and puts the matter as delicately as she can. “That's not my information.”

A moment of numbness, as if sound itself has been murdered. The space around me shrinks as Trudy seems to deflate. Her spine slumps like an old woman's. I'm just a little proud of myself. I always had my suspicions. How eagerly they believed Elodie. Now they know: nurse's flowers will certainly not last. But I should be cautious too. The chief inspector might have her own reason to lie. She's clicking her ballpoint pen, ready to move on.

My mother says in a small voice, “Well, I suppose I was the more deceived.”

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Cairncross. But my sources are good. Let's just say that this is a complicated young woman.”

I could explore the theory that it's no bad thing for Trudy to be the injured party, to have corroboration for the story of her faithless husband. But I'm stunned; we're both stunned. My father, that uncertain principle, spins yet further away from me just as the chief inspector comes at my mother with another question. She answers in the same small voice, with the added tremor of a punished little girl.