park in front of someone else’s nasty little matchbox house on the nasty little matchbox street with its nasty little matchbox people? Bland three-up two-downs with built-in garages that no one ever parked their car in, because they were too small. Putting fake stonework around the windows and edges, didn’t make it any less like an undiscovered circle of Dante’s Inferno. Where dreams went to be punished.
She huddled under the porch, pulled out her keys, and unlocked her front door.
Stepped inside.
The sound of a kids’ TV show jangled out of the open living room door, cheerful idiots singing a stupid song:
‘Now Doris had a friend called Morris, he was a tyrannosaurus,
He had teeny tiny arms and couldn’t brush his teeth,’
A new coat had joined the fleeces and waterproofs behind the front door: pale pink, checked, feminine and fitted. Not hers. The material was soft between her fingers, and it smelled of … sandalwood and roses?
‘His breath was vile, he had no style, his cavities: an awful trial,
So Doris asked a stegosaurus how they could fix his smile,’
Lorna looked around the open living room door.
A toddler was imprisoned in front of the TV in a collapsible travel-playpen thing. Jiggling and gurgling in time with the song, beaming up at a bunch of really crap puppets, and a pair of morons dressed in overalls.
‘And he said,
We haven’t invented soap, so that’s why we’re all smelly,
There’s no toothpaste, it’s a disgrace, that’s why we can’t eat jelly,’
Lorna eased the door closed and limped down the short hall to the kitchen – small, cluttered, but no one there. Maybe…
A creak came from somewhere overhead.
She stood at the bottom of the stairs. Listening.
The only noise was the muffled song in the living room.
She climbed up to the landing.
Stopped with one hand on the bannister as all the air hissed out of her lungs. Staring.
Brian’s bedroom door was ajar.
Oh God…
A mousey blonde lay spreadeagled on the double bed, naked, one arm thrown over her eyes, nipples brown and swollen like Ferrero Rocher. Biting her bottom lip and moaning, because Brian – Brian who was supposed to be in meetings all day – was on his knees at the foot of the bed, going down on her. Chubby little Brian, with his hairy arse and bald bit at the back of his head. And this … woman had her hand hooked behind his ear. Guiding him as she squirmed and moaned.
Lorna turned and walked downstairs. Across the hall and through the door to the tiny garage that they’d lined with cheap metal modular shelving units, because neither of their cars would fit in here. Packing the place with all the things that wouldn’t fit in the kitchen or any of the other rooms. Bleach, scouring pads, boxes of lightbulbs and oatmeal and dishwasher tablets. The food processor and the bread machine they never used, the skis for the skiing holidays they never went on, old sporting equipment from her university days – back when she used to have dreams! Before she buried them away, out here in suburbia, with the domestic detritus of a marriage that had died years ago, leaving nothing but this rotting corpse behind.
She hauled a hockey stick from the rack of sports kit. Old and dusty and solid. Perfect.
Lorna marched to the garage door and twisted the mechanism, pulling the whole thing up-and-over. The springs and hinges squealed – probably the first time it’d been opened since they moved in. She kept going, down the driveway and across the road to her manky little Fiat. No midlife-crisis sports car for her. No baby for her. No promotion for her.
Nothing – but – crap.
She yanked open the back door and hurled the hockey stick into the footwell.
Stood there, staring at it.
Then Danners leans in close, her breath warm on Lorna’s skin. ‘Take a telling, you two-faced bitch. Next time we won’t be so polite.’
Not any more.
Lorna grabbed the hockey stick again, turned, and stomped back across the road to the brand-new Mini Cooper, with its shiny red body and its jaunty white roof. She swung the stick like a sledgehammer, right into the windscreen, sending cracks spidering out from the centre as the impact juddered up her arm and the car alarm screeched. Hazard lights flashing as she battered the hockey stick into the glass again. One more go and the whole windscreen sagged inwards.
Good enough.
Lorna went back to her Fiat, tossed the stick inside. Slammed the door. Got in the front and drove off.
Grinding her teeth, gums aching, the taste of blood in her mouth, hands tight on the steering wheel.
‘Take a telling, you two-faced bitch. Next time we won’t be so polite.’
Yes, well: two could play at that game.
‘Ready or not, here I come!’
Superintendent Doig placed a bag of currants on his desk and followed it up with one of candied peel. Then one of dates. Making sure they stood in a straight line, as if they were on parade. ‘Now, you see, Logan, the trick is to get your fruit in to soak early.’ A tall man with a big forehead surrounded by closely cropped hair. The wee bald patch at the crown glowing with fine little hairs, deep creases around his eyes as he smiled and added a packet of suet to his fruity soldiers. Doig frowned at a bit of fluff on his black police T-shirt. ‘Tsk…’ He picked it off and dropped it into the bin – a rectangular one, presumably because it was easier to align with the desk.
Everything in its proper place: the photo of a British Blue cat on his desk, precisely lined up with keyboard, pen holder, monitor, and notepad; the framed commendation from the Chief Constable exactly equidistant between the filing cabinets and the whiteboard; the perfect crease in his trousers, the perfect shine on his superintendent’s pips, the perfect mirror gloss of his boots.
His smile faltered when he looked at Logan slumped there in one of the visitors’ chairs. ‘Is something wrong?’
Logan rubbed his face with both hands. ‘Urgh…’
‘A Christmas cake can be a tricky thing, Logan. It’s important to follow proper procedure.’
‘One: it’s October. Two: I’m not “Urgh”ing about your cake, I like cake, I’m “Urgh”ing about Detective Sergeant Lorna Sodding Chalmers.’
‘Ah, I see. Well … I’m
