Come to Harm

thirty-four

“How far have you got?” said Mrs. Poole after long minutes of silence.

“As far as I can take it nearly,” said Malcolm. He kneaded one hand across his brow, snarling the hairs of his eyebrows out of line. He started to speak again, but the first words were sucked out of his mouth in a sob.

Keiko stretched towards him with her free hand, so the three of them were joined together.

“I was surprised when Murray took up with Natasha,” Mrs. Poole said, picking up the story. “He’d never had any time for girls before that, but all of a sudden there she was, round at the workshop every night in her leotard and every time the doorbell went, it was her looking for Murray. And then she stopped doing the workouts. She still came round to the house asking if Murray was in, but as often as not he would get us to say he wasn’t.

“I knew what was up, of course. She started walking different. She always wore a ponytail high up on one side of her head and it used to bob up and down like a pom-pom whenever she moved. She washed her hair every day like all you youngsters. Well, around about the time Murray seemed to go off her, that ponytail wasn’t bouncing any more. It was swaying from side to side instead. And I knew exactly what that meant-when you start rocking sideways as you walk and even your nose and fingers are looking bloated. She was pregnant, and it was Murray’s and he was having nothing to do with it. So I got his father to talk to him. Duncan went to him and told him that if it was too late to fix it, then Murray would have to face up to his responsibilities and make the best of things.”

“Fix it?” Malcolm echoed.

“I know,” said Mrs. Poole. “We’ve gone over and over it until we were ready to scream. Your father trying to remember exactly what he said and if it could have been taken the wrong way.”

“But that’s crazy. Dad couldn’t have blamed himself. It’s mad.”

Mrs. Poole choked him off. “Don’t you think I tried to tell him that? I know only a madman would think he was telling his son to do away with the girl. And your father’s answer to that was that he should have faced the fact that it was a madman he was talking to, and he should have had the sense to watch what he was saying.”

“But,” said Keiko, trying to bring them back to the story and lay out another fold of it for her, “why did Mrs. McMaster not do something? She must have known Tash was pregnant too.”

“Pet McMaster broke her heart when Fancy took off,” said Mrs. Poole. “And she blamed herself for being heavy-handed. She had tried to get Fancy to stay on at school, stay on with Pet even once her birthday was past. Then it was only months after Fancy left that Tash came. She was fifteen, and I think Pet would have walked on eggshells for the rest of her life to keep her. She would never have confronted her. She was waiting for Tash to turn to her. Didn’t think she could bear it if another one ran away. Well, she was right. She couldn’t. When Tash disappeared, I thought Pet was going to fall to pieces. She had tablets in the morning to wake her up and tablets at night to put her to sleep again. I don’t know what would have happened if Fancy hadn’t landed back here with her wee one, looking like a dog that was overdue for a kick. Of course, Fancy was that taken up with her own problems I don’t think she even noticed how things were with Pet. And anyway as soon as Pet had got the pair of them installed, she started to pick up again too. She eventually gave up the idea of looking for Tash and, my God it shames us all to say it, but I don’t think any one of us would have given the wee soul another thought.

“Except that I found her things, stuffed in a bag in the bottom of his cupboard.” Mrs. Poole pointed out of the kitchen door, towards Keiko’s bedroom.

“Here?” Keiko said. “Murray lived here?”

“Not for very long,” said Mrs. Poole. “Just for a while, not even a year. After he gave up in the shop, you know, when we were trying to… he lived in the flat and he had the bikes. Then I found everything. Bra and pants, wee twists of leather she used to wear on her wrists. That’s what made me sure it was Tash. I couldn’t understand why he had kept them, but we saw the same tonight. The clothes separate from the rest. I suppose it made some kind of sense to Murray.

“I was looking for stuff for a jumble sale; having a good clear-out just like you do when you really believe you’ve turned a corner.” Her voice was rising. “Tash was out of sight out of mind, and Murray was more like himself than he’d been for a long time. He had been doing a bit more for us in the shop, you know.” Mrs. Poole withdrew from Keiko and hugged her arms around her own chest and shoulders, clawing at herself. “He had offered to do the rendering, for once. It’s a horrible job, rendering bones. I thought it was a good sign. He made batches of sausages, which wasn’t like him. Queer-tasting things they were, too much spice, but we encouraged him. He made the gravy for a load of Malcolm’s pies and they-they-they-they went down very well.” She retched and pressed her hands against her mouth until it had passed.

“And then I found her things, and we agreed together, the pair of us, that we would keep the secret. Duncan spoke to Murray, warned him, put the fear of God into him from what I could make out: no more girlfriends and he was barred from the shop. One of us was to inspect his workshop every week. Ridiculous now, to think how we had it all planned out, but we really thought we could handle it. We really thought we were doing the right thing.”

She stopped and fought for a deep breath, gasping again and again until finally her chest filled and she sighed it out again.

“The first letter came about a month after we found out, about six months after Tash disappeared. Somebody knew.”

“The letter!” said Keiko. “I found it.”

“What?” said Mrs. Poole. “You can’t have. I burned it.”

“What letter?” said Malcolm. “Who from?”

“It wasn’t signed,” said his mother. “They just said they knew what had happened because they’d seen it and they threatened to tell everyone. And then there was another one and another, and the fourth one asked for money.”

“Ah, I see,” said Keiko. “There were a lot of them? Well, you missed one. I found it here. In the flat. I know what you did. I saw you. I will-” She bit off the words at the cry they had torn from Mrs. Poole. “Sorry!”

“A blackmail letter?” said Malcolm.

“They wanted five thousand pounds sent to a post office box number.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I know what you would have done,” his mother said. “Same as tonight. You would have said to call the police. Tell the world, let it all out.”

“But I would have told the police that you knew nothing,” said Malcolm. “I would have been more than willing to take my share of it.”

“But you were all we had left that wasn’t ruined, Malcolm. We wanted to keep you out of it, so that one thing in our lives would still be right.”

Malcolm stared at his mother, slowly beginning to nod.

“We were stripping ourselves bare,” said Mrs. Poole. “Every penny we had and more, and the letters kept coming. I knew it was somebody local-had to be. Someone who’d seen something the night Tash went. On and on, everything we had worked for all our married life, any hope we had of getting Murray into a clinic if he’d ever agree, all our hopes of setting you up in a place of your own far away from here. Oh, yes-that’s what we wanted. We wanted you at the other end of the country, independent, then we were going to put Murray into treatment. But the letters just kept on coming. I watched your father winding himself up like a spring, and I knew it couldn’t go on.”

Keiko looked from one to the other of their faces. Normally so unlike each other, but now with identical dark blooms under their eyes and identical deep lines etched from the sides of their noses to their grim mouths, they looked like mother and son at last.

“We had stopped paying your father’s life insurance,” she said, “and mine. The business was in debt, we were nearly a year behind with the mortgage on the house, the tax wasn’t paid-every blessed penny we had and more went to that post office box number. And everyone talks about weight and blood pressure and hypertension and genes, and on and on, but every time you press them-the doctors-if you press them, every leaflet you read, somewhere in the small print it’s there. ‘Stress is a factor.’ ‘Stress could be a factor.’

“And he died. I knew then we would go under, and I should have given up. But all of a sudden I wasn’t scared any more; I was angry. I wanted to keep going just long enough to find out who it was and face them with it, and then I would take whatever was coming.

“So Murray had to come back into the shop, because there was no money to pay anybody else. He would have had to give up the workshop too if Byers had pressed us, because there was no money for the rent. At any rate, there was no chance of buying it for him. Buying a property! I can’t even afford to do the Christmas cooking for the homeless. Keiko moving into this place was just about all that let me keep going this last few months. Your father had offered it for the student way back when it was just an idea, and I pretended to Jimmy that we had always meant the Traders to pay us rent.

“Meanwhile, I started marking the notes.”

Her voice grew hard as she described it to them: the hours spent every day after closing time, hunched over the desk in the back office, making marks on bundles of grubby fivers and tenners, then spreading out the day’s takings before her and looking for her old marks coming back. She put up with people’s kind and not so kind remarks about the length of time it took her to do her books, shrugged off all offers of help. She had a plan. She kept a mental note of who was in the shop every day, and when she found a marked note she was going to narrow it down, start taking the money out of the till after every customer. She would think of something to say to the boys, she would make up some story. But it never came to that, because not one of her notes ever came back. In six months of her poring over them every night, she found not a single one. She looked at them through a magnifier, wondering if perhaps whoever it was was cleaning them or painting them out, but there was nothing. Every day she thought, just one more day. If I can keep going just one more day.

“I’m sorry,” she said, turning to Keiko. “But when you arrived it seemed like the last straw. I thought God was laughing at me. I thought I was going mad. Because, it might sound daft, but it never occurred to me that you would be a girl. Even when we heard your name, we had no idea. I told myself you would be some wee bloke in specs coming to do an engineering degree, and when Jimmy told me it was a Miss Nishisato and showed me your picture and told us you were a psychology student, interested in food… Before I had time to call a halt to it, here you were. Beautiful wee thing, and as soon as Murray clapped eyes on you, I knew where it would go.” She smiled at Keiko, a calm, tired smile and then a small breath of laughter.

“I tried my best to keep you away from him, you can’t say I didn’t. I could hardly have been less welcoming, and I don’t blame you for taking against me. Which you did!” she insisted as Keiko began to protest. “Which you did. All the same, I was terrified. Every night you were in that place doing your exercises together, I was outside the back door listening to you. Every time Murray came round here, I was downstairs. I felt sure you must know there was someone watching you.

“Still, you must think I’m wicked. How could I stand by and let you get close to him? I’ll never forgive myself. But Tash was years ago and Murray was fine, seemed fine, ever since. And I knew, I thought-”

Tears were spilling from Malcolm’s eyes again, faster and faster, the dark spots where they fell on his chest joining up into splotches. Now he sobbed.

“Son?” said Mrs. Poole.

“What were you thinking?” he said. “I don’t mean about Keiko. I mean tonight.”

His mother only shook her head.

“What about tonight, Malcolm?” said Keiko.

“Don’t you see?” he said. “If someone knows-the blackmailer-then Jimmy and Fancy are down there for nothing.”

Keiko stared at him, feeling her blood drain away.

“It’s got to stop now,” he went on. “I’ll go and get them back before it’s too late and then we are going to call it a day. Maybe the police will keep things quiet as much they can. And maybe they’ll be able to find the blackmailer for you, eh?” He was almost crooning, like a parent trying to coax a sulking child into smiles.

Mrs. Poole did smile, and again there was that air of calm, almost serenity, that made Keiko briefly wonder if she really had lost her mind.

“I sent two hundred pounds off at the weekend,” she said. “And I put a note in saying that it was the last. There would be no more. Tonight when I looked in Byers’s wallet, there was a hundred and sixty left.”

They were silent then and so they all flinched at the sudden sound of the door. Fancy stood in the doorway, her hair plastered with sweat to the sides of her grey-white face. She raised one arm straight out from the shoulder holding a black plastic sack in her fist. She was trembling so much that it seemed she was shaking the bag in their faces like a cheerleader’s pom-pom. Both Keiko and Mrs. Poole rose to draw her towards them.

“I’m not coming any closer,” said Fancy. “I stink. I’m sorry but I was sick quite a lot and it’s on your stuff, Mrs. Poole.”

“I’m going to come home with you,” said Keiko, but Fancy shook her head.

“Can you keep Vi till tomorrow and I’ll come and get her?” she said.

“Well, at least I’ll walk home with you, sweetheart,” said Mrs. Poole, reaching out again.

Fancy retreated a step. “No, you’ve got to wait for Mr. McKendrick. He said I was to call him Uncle Jimmy and he’ll be here very soon to take you home.”

She walked backwards along the passageway to the front door, like a ceremonial page-boy, keeping eye contact with Keiko as she fumbled behind her for the handle and then stepped backwards onto the landing as the door closed on her.

“What’s she doing?” asked Malcolm. “Is she all right?”

Keiko nodded. “I think she’s trying to be.”