Paternoster (8 page)

The men got out of the car and dragged him from the back, hustling him into a house and slamming the door. It was gloomy inside: all the windows were either boarded over or masked by curtains. They shoved him through the front room and into the back. A kitchen led off it – orange chipboard units with the doors hanging off. A tap at a drunken angle hanging from the wall. No sink.

There was a wooden chair in the back room. One of those with a shelf for prayer books. They pressed him into it and bound his hands behind him with plastic cable ties.

‘Delivery!’ The man from the passenger seat shouted, and the two men left the house. A few seconds later he heard a car start up and drive away.

Footsteps on wooden boards. Someone came down the staircase in the corner of the room. It was a boxed-in staircase and Jimmy couldn’t see who it was until he was at the bottom. A lean, hungry-looking man, his neck, head and face garlanded with tattoos. As he clumped on to the last step, he grinned at Jimmy. His teeth had all been removed and replaced with steel fangs.

‘Hello, Jimmy,’ he said. ‘I hear you’ve been a naughty boy.’

‘No, no I haven’t,’ Jimmy said, struggling against the ties. It only ratcheted them tighter.

‘I heard you grassed someone up. Blabbed to the filth and got in the way of a very important operation.’ Fang Face licked his lips. He had a stud in his tongue. ‘You’ve made some very important men very angry indeed.’

The knife was in his mouth before he knew it. The cold steel sharp against his lips. Fang Face pressed hard, and the corners of Jimmy’s mouth stretched and split, until his mouth spread the width of his face. Jimmy tried to spit out blood. It dribbled down his chin and dropped on to his shirt.

‘Blabbermouth,’ Fang Face said, and set about some DIY facial reconstruction.

The copper was a rookie and hadn’t seen this kind of thing before. All he knew was Mrs Unpronounceable Name at number twenty-two was jabbering on about an empty house in her street. Her English was shit, and her ten-year-old son was translating for her. In the end, he gave up and promised to check it out. Probably squatters. Not his business but anything to stop her mithering.

Number twenty was a sorry piece. Windows boarded up, hideous curtains mouldering upstairs. Could be a crack den. Maybe that’s what she heard. He tried the door. Stuck. Damp probably. Didn’t seem to be locked. Better check it out. He thumped his shoulder against it and the door opened.

Kids gathered on the pavement. This was a new diversion. He fixed them with his sternest look and ordered them to go home. They ignored him.

He stepped into the house. Flowery wallpaper that was a crime on its own. He felt a crunch beneath his boots. A syringe? No, a blue inhaler. The plastic case all smashed up.

And there was a smell. What was it? Sweet and unpleasant, it caught at the back of his throat. Pressing the back of his hand to his nose, he inched further into the house.

The back room held just a wooden chair, the sort you find in church halls. It was tipped over on its side, a brown stain underneath it. Beyond was a scabby kitchen. Empty.

A boxed-in staircase in the corner of the back room. The copper called upstairs, the hairs on his neck prickling. Something wasn’t right here. Step by step he went up the stairs, his sturdy police boots rapping.

‘Hello?’ he called, his voice high and nervous. Pull yourself together, he scolded himself. You’re supposed to be a police officer, for God’s sake. Maybe he should radio for back-up? And say what? He’d got a nasty feeling on this one? They’d never let him live it down when it was only a sodden tramp or a feral cat.

Top of the stairs. Two doors leading off. The smell was worse here. He tried to breathe through his mouth. Front room more hideous wallpaper. Back room bare floors, bare walls, and the festering remains of Jimmy Little.

Eden yanked up the heating in her car. The pale spring sunshine promised much and delivered little. Deceived, she’d dressed in a floaty long-sleeved top and ditched her thick sweater. Her leather jacket was built for style rather than warmth and she tugged the sleeves over her wrists, rattling her coloured bean bracelet.

She yawned. After yesterday’s excitement of the skeletons in the trench, today was a slow day. A spouse she’d followed from his home to work and home again over several days, deducing nothing more alarming than a predilection for yellow socks. The wife was convinced he was trysting with some tart.

Yellow socks left his office just before two, and she tailed him across town to a smart Regency building, waiting in her car while he went inside. Once she was sure the coast was clear, she went up to the building and read the discreet brass nameplate. Smothering a laugh, she returned to her car and drove back to what she grandly referred to as her office: one room in a former mews behind the High Street. The council had paid for the conversion and rented the units to new businesses to encourage enterprise in the town. Eden’s neighbours were a TV repair shop, a nail bar and a sandwich shop that delivered. Her unit was on the first floor, up a set of metal stairs and along a walkway.

A brass plate on her door read ‘Eden Grey: Private Investigator’. She purred with pride each time she saw it. The door had swollen with damp and it took a kick to get it open. She was greeted by the smell of sausages cooking at the sandwich bar. Dumping her bag on her desk, she went to the kitchen unit at the back of the office, filled the kettle and plugged it in. Taking a cafetière from the cupboard, she spooned in coffee grounds, relishing their earthy aroma.

‘I’m absolutely sure,’ she repeated, a few minutes later, as the indignant wife squawked down the phone. ‘A hair transplant clinic. No evidence of an affair at all.’

She sneaked a sip of the coffee while Mrs Townsend repeated at volume that he
must
be a cheating lowlife sleeze: she’d seen his diary, she’d smelled aftershave on her husband, he’d bought her flowers, for God’s sake. What more proof did she need?

When she was able to get a word in edgeways, Eden said, ‘I’m sorry you feel that way, Mrs Townsend. I’m a very experienced investigator and I don’t think it would be worth any more surveillance on your husband.’ She took a breath, and as gently as she could, said, ‘You do know that you don’t need proof in order to get a divorce, don’t you? You can divorce him simply because the marriage has broken down.’

Mrs Townsend ranted a little more. She had a voice like a dentist’s drill and Eden felt a pang of sympathy for Mr Townsend. It couldn’t be easy living with that voice day in, day out.

A bleep on the line provided a welcome excuse to end the tirade. ‘Sorry to interrupt, I have another call coming in. I’ll put my invoice in the post today.’ Eden replaced the receiver and leaned back in her chair with a groan. The woman was impossible. Poor Mr Townsend. She suspected the sudden concern about his appearance was an attempt to keep his wife’s interest, perk up a stale marriage, even at the cost of having someone drilling into his scalp.

The new call wasn’t a number she recognised. She pressed connect, praying it was a new client. Now she’d got rid of Mrs Townsend, there was no more work on her books.

‘Is that Eden Grey?’ a woman’s voice asked.

‘Yes. Who’s speaking?’

‘This is Staff Nurse Watson. I’m calling from Cheltenham General Hospital. Paul Nelson was admitted earlier today.’

‘Paul? What’s wrong with him?’

‘We’re not sure, we’re still running tests, but he’s asked to see you.’

‘Me?’

‘You’re down as his next of kin,’ the voice said. While Eden was still digesting this news, the woman added, ‘Come as soon as you can. Mr Nelson’s condition is serious.’

She was directed to the intensive care unit where Nurse Gail Watson buzzed her in and ordered her to sanitise her hands with gel.

‘What happened to him?’ Eden asked, as she was led down a corridor.

‘We’re still trying to find out. It looks like an extreme attack of gastritis.’

‘Vomiting and diarrhoea?’

‘Yes, but his heart is racing and he’s had convulsions.’

‘Poor Paul,’ Eden said.

‘Are you his partner?’ Gail Watson gave her a look of sympathy and briefly touched her arm. Eden went cold.

‘Has anyone called his ex-wife, or his daughters?’ she asked.

Gail shook her head. ‘He asked for you. Said he didn’t want his daughters to see him like this.’

The nurse showed her into a small room at the side of the ward. Paul lay with tubes attached to his arms and a heart monitor threading an irregular green line.

‘He’s been slipping in and out of consciousness,’ she whispered. ‘But sit and talk to him. It might help.’

She left, soles squeaking, and Eden dragged an orange plastic chair over to the bed. Paul looked like hell. His skin was slack and white, and the bruises beneath his eyes bled into his cheeks.

‘Paul?’ she whispered. ‘Paul, it’s Eden Grey. They said you asked for me.’

She squeezed his hand as it lay on the sheet, and his eyelids flickered. His hand was dry, the fingertips icy. She chafed them, trying to rub warmth into him.

‘Paul, can you hear me?’

The monitor traced another line. Another blip. The readings changed; changed again.

‘Do you need anything?’

No response. She patted his hand. ‘I’m here, Paul. I’ll just wait here until you wake up.’

The hospital was stiflingly hot. She stood and slipped off her leather jacket, hanging it over the back of the chair. Paul’s hospital notes were in a clipboard at the end of the bed. She flicked through them, reading his symptoms and the tests the doctors were running, the medication he’d been given. Observations every fifteen minutes: blood pressure, temperature, pulse rate all over the place.

The chair squealed as she sat down and Paul’s eyes flickered open.

‘Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you,’ she whispered, shocked at how he looked now he was awake.

‘Eden,’ he croaked. His fingers trembled on the sheet. She grasped his hand and squeezed it.

‘I’m here. You asked for me. Do you want me to tell your wife what’s happened?’

‘No, not yet.’ He struggled to sit, failed, and flopped back down again. ‘Need you to find something out.’

‘All of that can wait until you’re better.’

‘No.’ His face contorted as a spasm ripped through his body. ‘This. Deliberate.’

The world rocked and stilled. ‘What?’

‘Tried to kill me.’

Cold washed over her. ‘Who? Who, Paul?’

Paul gargled and his body jerked. Eden hurtled to the door and shouted, ‘Somebody help!’

She stood back helplessly as nurses charged into the room, holding Paul down as they injected him with something to stop the seizure. His feet drummed on the mattress and his spine bowed as the convulsions racked him. A terrible strangling noise gurgled in his throat. At last the fit passed, and he slumped against the bed.

‘He should sleep now,’ the nurse said.

Eden kept vigil by the bedside, fiddling with the beans on her bracelet. She’d bought it from a New Age market stall years ago. Her first music festival; mud, pot and beer. She’d gone wandering round the stalls, the tarot readings and henna hand painting, and stopped to watch a long-bearded man playing the didgeridoo. Next to him was a stall selling bead necklaces and bracelets, dream catchers and incense sticks. She’d bought this bracelet and a matching necklace, which had snapped its string and scattered the beans in the mud only the second time she wore it. Idly she wondered if strange bean trees sprouted now in the field where her tent had stood.

The hours ticked by as she watched Paul’s chest rise and fall. The windows darkened and in the panes she saw an echo of herself, a small figure huddled by the bedside of a man she barely knew.

Around eleven o’clock, Paul’s eyes opened and fixed on her hands. A shadow passed across his face. ‘Paternoster,’ he breathed, then closed his eyes again.

He didn’t open his eyes. The nurse who came to take his obs warned that he’d gone into a coma and told Eden to prepare herself.

A few hours later, Paul Nelson died.

‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’ The nurse handed her a plastic bag. Paul’s clothes, shoes, wallet, keys. ‘These are his things.’

‘I’m not sure I’m the right person …’

‘He named you as next of kin.’

‘But …’ Eden bit her lip.
This. Deliberate. Tried to kill me
. ‘Where do I collect the death certificate?’

The nurse squirmed. ‘It won’t be available for some time, I’m afraid. There’ll have to be a post-mortem.’

Eden’s gaze held hers, her mind whirring. Of course there’d be a post-mortem.

‘It’s usual when we’re not sure of the cause of death,’ the nurse added, quickly. She squeezed Eden’s arm. ‘Take care.’

As she squeaked off down the corridor, Eden stared at the plastic bag in her hands.
This. Deliberate
. A plan formed in her mind. She’d have to tell Paul’s ex-wife, but right now it was three in the morning and there was no point waking the woman up and getting Paul’s daughters upset. Besides, what did Paul mean? What was he trying to tell her in those final moments? Maybe a few hours’ headstart was a blessing.

She went home. Normally her heart lifted at the sight of its clean lines and geometric windows, but today, in the dark hours, it seemed impersonal and grim. Her apartment was cold. The central heating had gone off hours before, and when she switched on the living-room light, the room looked abandoned and unfamiliar, like a stage set. Eden put a match to the gas fire and sat cross-legged in front of it, her palm wrapped around a cup of tea, and upended the plastic bag over the rug.

She went through the clothes first, quickly stuffing Paul’s socks and underpants back in the bag. Thank goodness he was a fastidious man. His shirt was plain white, expensive, tailored, fastened with cufflinks. The cufflinks were still in the sleeves: plain heavy gold studs. A pair of grey wool suit trousers, expensive, well-tailored. The pockets held only a folded white handkerchief that smelled of cologne.