Towers of Silence (10 page)

I got a resoundingly warm welcome from the members of the Craft Club and a cup of tea and a biscuit too. There were eight people there and Eddie told me when I arrived that seven of them had been coming some time and knew Miriam Johnstone. He introduced everybody.

I recognised the two women who had been helping to decorate the hall. Tracey, the slim, dark haired woman and Sandy, the overweight teenager, who barely spoke. Then there were two women wearing the same purple sweatshirts and shared similar husky smoker’s voices, though one, Carla, had a Manchester accent and the other, Dolly, had a thick Glaswegian brogue.

A young black woman with lurid green-framed spectacles was introduced as Pauline. She said little but scowled a lot. Joe, shaky, shy and stammering and thin as a whippet, looked to be in his fifties and beside him sat Charlie, a heavy-set man with brown teeth and badly cut hair.

Then there was Jane. Jane talked all the time, oblivious as to whether anyone was listening or whether anyone else was trying to speak. She had bubbly blonde hair and a heart-shaped face with small features and virulent eczema. Periodically Carla leaned across the table and told her to shut up. It worked for a few seconds then she’d start again. No one else bothered and I soon adapted to two streams of conversation.

“Jane,” Eddie said, “Sal’s come here today to ask us all about Miriam.”

“Oh,” Jane said flatly and shut up.

“Yes,” I said, “you remember back in October, the last session Miriam came to?”

“We were starting the batik,” Eddie said.

“Burnt my fingers,” said Jane. “It’s very hot, the wax gets very hot. That’s so it melts but you’ve got to be very careful. It’s got to be hot, smoking hot and then when ...”

I realised I’d have to talk across her. I raised my voice a little and addressed the others.

“I want to find out which way Miriam went after the session. Did anyone go out with her?”

A chorus of no and shaking heads.

“She cleared up,” Jane said.

“That’s right,” said Eddie.

“I should’ve cleared up but I burnt my fingers. I was going to do it. Me and Melody.”

I recalled the pretty young woman I’d met at the sewing circle, the one who trembled like a leaf. She didn’t come anymore, preferred sewing.

“We were on the rota. I had to put some cream on. Thought I’d have to go to Casualty.”

“It was a small burn,” Eddie smiled.

“Hurt a lot, hurt more than you think. If you’d ...”

“Shut up,” said Carla.

“So Miriam was one of the last to leave?” I checked.

“Melody was crying,” said Jane.

“She wasn’t,” Carla said scornfully.

“She was, in the toilets,” said Jane.

“Melody was upset,” Eddie intervened, “I think there’d been a bit of a row at home.”

“No one told me,” Carla said defensively.

“What are we doing today?” Charlie asked.

“The presents,” said Eddie. A ripple of excitement ran round the group. His eyes twinkled. “But we’ll finish talking to Sal first. She wants to know if anyone saw Miriam after the session.” He glanced at me to see if that was right.

I nodded. “Yes, that afternoon, or perhaps on her way home?”

“I go in the minibus,” Jane began. “So I couldn’t see her. She never gets the minibus. She walks doesn’t she. Me and Pauline we go back to the centre. Everyone else ...”

“We made a lovely wreath for her,” said Dolly.

Jane fell quiet. There was a pause. Sandy began to rock in her chair ever so slightly.

“No one saw her?” Eddie tried again.

Shaking heads.

“Did she talk to anyone about her plans that afternoon?”

More shakes.

“I burnt my finger. It’s that hot,” said Jane.

“Thank you,” I said and made to leave.

I could feel the relief and people shuffled in their seats.

Eddie took me through to the foyer. “It makes some of them anxious,” he said. “Suicide. A couple of them will have already attempted it.”

I must have looked shocked.

He shrugged. “Comes with the territory. Not with Jane and Pauline, they have learning difficulties. But those with a history of mental health problems, depression, well ...”

“So not everybody’s been ill?”

“No. We’re open access. Anyone’s welcome, literally. We do get referrals, other professionals ring up and ask if their clients can come and give it a go but I wanted it to be about breaking down the labels and the barriers not reinforcing them. You don’t have to be mad to come here,” he grinned. “Take Charlie. He’s lonely. His wife died last year, world fell apart. All he’s looking for is some friendship, some focus. And that’s what we offer.”

“Not therapy?”

He laughed. “Only with a small ‘t’. I’m not qualified to do that sort of thing. I wouldn’t want to. I’m much more interested in making things, using arts and crafts as a way of people building up their self-esteem.”

“They’ve made some great stuff.” I gestured to the huge banner on the wall.

“Oh, yeah. Miriam did a lot of that, the figures.”

I waited a moment. “When she was clearing up with you, she didn’t say what her plans were.”

“Nope. I didn’t see her go either, or I could tell you which way she went. I assumed she was going home, she usually did. I was pretty occupied, we’d a visit from the Central Grants people, they were due at half twelve so Sharon and I were busy getting everything ready for that.”

“Did anyone call here asking for Miriam? A black man, middle-aged maybe older, with grey hair?”

“No.” He looked curious.

“No one ever met her after the sessions?”

“Not as far as I know. You think there might have been someone?”

“I’m not sure.” And the information I was gathering was confidential for Connie’s family only.

“I’m sorry it’s been a wasted journey,” he said as we reached the outside door.

“Not at all. Nothing’s ever wasted; even if it just confirms what I’ve heard, it’s still progress. All part of the job.”

I had followed in the footsteps of the police; talking to Miriam’s family, her neighbours and to Eddie Cliff. I’d found that the police had not been particularly thorough in their actions immediately after Miriam’s death - at a time when it was deemed suspicious and before it became obvious it was suicide.

I had visited the scene of her death and talked to her friends from church. I’d discovered that she’d had a mystery caller but had no way of knowing whether that contributed to her decision to take her own life. I’d a funny feeling about Roland but nowhere to go with it. Any progress I was making to fill in Miriam’s missing hours was painfully slow. But investigations are like that - you can’t hurry things along. There were still several names on my list of contacts, people I would speak to before giving up. But I was aware I might have nothing to tell Connie at the end of the day. Just a big
don’t know
.

One of the things I love about my work is the freedom it gives me to manage my own time. No clocking on, no set hours, no annual leave allocation. That flexibility meant I could go along to the school show at two o’clock that afternoon without having to fill in any forms or ask anyone’s permission.

Maddie was a Kiwi fruit and Tom was a cactus. From this you can probably deduce that this was not your traditional Christmas nativity play. No. This was winter celebrations round the world; an opportunity for each class to be a different country and enact the rituals (very broadly interpreted) for winter feasts and pageants.

Maddie had been practising her song all week but as I craned my neck I could see her face was set in a mask of abject terror. Last year she had burst into tears and had to be led from the hall. Tom, in contrast, waved a spiky paw at me, beaming all over his face. I looked round but couldn’t see Ray yet.

A quick check of the programme told me that Maddie’s class would be second. It couldn’t be soon enough for me. I tried to ignore the seething tension in my stomach and smile at her encouragingly. She refused to catch my eye.

The Swedish lot, done up as candles with flame hats, kicked off with a story about the feast of Santa Lucia. I couldn’t see Maddie for the duration and hoped she was still
compos mentis
. Riotous applause from the packed hall greeted the end of scene one. A baby began to wail. Those parents with video cameras vied for a good position.

I remembered to breathe as the classes changed places. The Maori chant began. Maddie stood between her friends Kim and Ayesha, her lips barely moved. A group of children with feathered hats began to dance. Jacob, another of Maddie’s friends, was among them. His hat slid down over his eyes causing helpless hilarity among the audience and some of the performers. He soldiered on. Every time he pulled it up he had to let go to perform the handclaps and at that point it slid inexorably down again. There was an extra burst of applause for the laugh factor. New Zealand was over. I felt my shoulders settle back. I could relax. Maddie shot me a shy smile. I grinned back and gave her the thumbs up sign.

The other high point of the show was a number of cactus jokes from Tom’s lot followed by an off key but extremely enthusiastic rendering of ‘La Cucharacha’ and a sort of Mexican clog dance. They had obviously been well drilled in the steps but it only needed one boy out of step to create perfect slapstick. The woman beside me laughed so hard she cried. And I bet all the people shooting videos were thinking of the cheque from
You’ve Been Framed
.

Ray had watched the show from the back as he’d cut it close time wise. The four of us walked back together; a most unusual occurrence which made the children even more giddy. I told Ray about the loose board near the roof.

“I’ll ask Barry to take a look,” he said. “He wouldn’t do it himself but one of the lads might. I’m seeing him next week about some work in the New Year, says he’s drowning in conversions and one of his joiners has left. Don’t know if I can fit it in. If I don’t get these orders done.”

“Will it cost much to fix?”

“Nah. Good man could do it with a ladder. Cost of the timber if the wood needs replacing, labour. Barry’ll give us a fair price.”

I looked at Tom running ahead. He was a lovely child. My dealings with him seemed more straightforward than those with Maddie. I didn’t know whether that was because I wasn’t his mother or because he was a boy or because of his personality. He was so good natured. Would he stay that way? Would adolescence turn him into a sulky young man or a truculent one?

“What were you like as a teenager?” I asked Ray.

“Gorgeous.”

“Sod off.” Ray is incorrigibly vain. “Seriously.”

He shrugged. “Dunno.”

“Well, did you cause your mother grief or not?”

“Not much. I went through a druggy patch,” he looked ahead, made sure the children couldn’t hear. “Magic mushrooms, grass, cough medicine.”

“Cough medicine - yeuch.”

“It was. And booze of course. The trick was to get in and say goodnight in the gap between getting hammered and either being sick or passing out.”

“Were you happy?”

He tutted.

“Depressed?”

He shrugged again. His shrugs can be quite eloquent, especially when read with his facial expression. This was a stop-talking-about-it-I-don’t-like-it sort of a shrug.

“Confused?”

“Probably. Why?”

“Oh, something I’m working on. I can remember feeling desolate as a teenager, and misunderstood. Craving everything but it was all just out of reach. I wanted to be somewhere else, doing something else. And wanting to escape. Awful time. The world was a mess, people were cruel or stupid, life wasn’t fair. Grinding dissatisfaction. But I don’t know what boys think about.”

“Sex,” he said.

I looked at him.

“Yeah, there was that.”

“And fitting in ... having mates, spots. But mainly sex.”

I raised my eyebrows.

I thought of Adam Reeve, sitting on the bench. No mates, plenty of spots. Was he brooding about sex? I wasn’t convinced.

Hattie Baker had known Miriam for years.

“We met back in 1987,” she said. “In hospital.”

“You worked at Saint Mary’s too?”

“No, no. We were patients. Mental patients.” She said it gently as if she was taking the sting out of it for me, followed it with a small smile.

She was a tiny, birdlike woman, with an enormous beaky nose, warm brown eyes and a scrawny frame. She wore lurid orange lipstick which more or less matched her tousled dyed hair. I guessed that she was in her sixties.

We were in Hattie’s lounge, a real fire blazed in the hearth and I suspected that the central heating was on too, as the room was incredibly hot. The decor and furniture was a complete mismatch of styles; a traditional richly patterned carpet, Turkish style, the main colour was burgundy, a black leather three piece suite, an Indian rosewood coffee table, ornately carved, an incongruous computer station in one corner and garish geometric wallpaper in brown, orange and beige. Thankfully most of the latter was covered with a plethora of prints and paintings, mainly landscapes and street scenes.

There was the tang of satsumas in the air, a bowlful sat beside Hattie and the peel from several lay on the occasional table.

“Miriam wasn’t there long. She responded well to the shock treatments. But she’d come back and visit me, you see. And when they finally let me come home, she’d come here. Funny, really. Most of the people you meet in hospital ... well, it’s not a happy time, you don’t want reminding. You never see them again. We just clicked. I do miss her.” She gave a sigh, turned the ring on her finger. “Oh, I do miss her. I could rely on Miriam. She always came, without fail. Didn’t mind that it was always here.”

I must have looked puzzled because she leant towards me to explain. “I don’t go out. Agoraphobic. So she always came to me. And the fun we’d have,” she smiled. “I manage. But there are times, like the funeral,” she winced, “if only I could have been there. I sent a letter of course. Times like that, it makes me think what a stupid, scared, silly woman I am. But I can’t ...” She stopped talking.