‘I’d ask you in, but I’ve just done the floors,’ the woman said, staring at the Inspector’s feet, which weren’t clean.
‘That’s fine, Mrs –’
The woman hesitated then said, thinly, ‘Harris.’
‘Mrs Harris.’ Laviolette smiled. ‘Mr Deane’s son, Bryan, sometimes visits him Saturdays. I was wondering whether you happened to notice whether Bryan Deane visited Mr Deane yesterday?’
‘What’s all this about?’
‘Just follow up to something – a family matter.’
‘A family matter involving the police?’ She waited, but the Inspector had nothing more to add to this, he just stood there smiling at her.
‘Did you see Bryan Deane here yesterday, Mrs Harris?’
‘He was here.’
‘What time?’
‘Around eleven.’ She sighed. ‘I noticed because it was the first time in ages I’d seen his car parked outside – and he was parked in my husband’s spot. My husband’s registered disabled – that’s why we’ve got the bay outside. I was about to go out there and ask him to move – when he drove off.’
‘So he didn’t go into the house?’
She shook her head. ‘He was parked there for, I don’t know – ten minutes or something – then he just drove off, like I said.’
‘He didn’t get out of the car at all?’
She shook her head again. ‘No. And like I said, it’s the first time he’s been round here in months – maybe even longer. Not like the other one.’
‘The other one?’ Laviolette said sharply.
‘There’s another one – tattoos – he’s been round a lot the past six months, and when he’s round, the shouting that goes on . . . it comes through the walls. I mean, we have the television up loud anyway because of Derek’s hearing aid, but when that lad’s round we can hear everything, and the language . . . in our own home. We’ve been on and on to the council, but they’re not doing anything about it.’ She paused, waiting for an echo of sympathy from the Inspector, but it never came.
The Inspector wasn’t following this. He was thinking hard about Jamie Deane. Mrs Harris had to be talking about Jamie Deane, who’d been in prison for twenty years – and who was released six months ago. The Methadrone production line in Bobby Deane’s kitchen had Jamie Deane all over it.
‘. . . and nobody deserves neighbours like that,’ Mrs Harris concluded.
Laviolette stared at her for a moment, his mind still elsewhere. ‘When you hear shouting through the wall – coming from next door – does it never occur to either you or your husband to knock and see if Mr Deane’s okay?’
Mrs Harris looked bewildered.
‘That would certainly be the neighbourly thing to do, don’t you think? It might save on your phone bill as well – to the council.’
‘Are you saying . . .’ she began.
But Laviolette cut her off. ‘What I’m saying, Mrs Harris, is this – has it ever occurred to you while you’ve been on the phone to the council to drop in the fact that you’ve got an elderly man living alone next door to you – with Alzheimer’s?’
Mrs Harris was too shocked by the Inspector’s anger to respond. All she could do was lay her hand against her collarbone and throat and watch him retreat across the immaculate garden, her eyes wide.
‘I’m a good Christian,’ she shouted hoarsely after him, afraid, when he stopped at the gate and turned.
‘Does Mr Deane get any other visitors?’
‘There’s a woman up on Parkview who brings in shopping for him – Mary Faust – but that’s only once a week,’ she said quickly, her eyes wet. ‘I’m a good Christian,’ she repeated, not wanting the Inspector to walk away with the wrong opinion of her, before shutting her yellow door on the world.
Mo’s daughter, Leanne, could have told the Inspector exactly when Jamie Deane visited his father in the bungalow on Armstrong Crescent because Jamie Deane’s irregular appearances in the store over the past six months were the only thing that made life inside the glass security booth worth living for her. She knew everything there was to know about him – even things he didn’t know about himself, like the way his eyes creased at the corner and got brighter when he laughed. Leanne knew everything.
Today though, Jamie caught her off guard.
She was busy reading a filthy text a friend had just sent her about Daniel Craig while talking to her daughter, Kayleigh, who was in the booth with her because it was Sunday, and who wanted to know what a zombie was – when she looked up and saw Jamie standing smiling through the security glass at her. The locket she’d been sucking on dropped out her mouth and fell wetly against her skin. That’s exactly who Jamie Deane reminded her of, she thought – Daniel Craig.
‘Haven’t seen you in a while,’ Leanne said, pulling her tracksuit top down nervously over her waist, breathing in and sliding off the chair.
‘Missed me?’
She pulled her hair back over her shoulders and laughed.
‘Put a pack of Bensons on the tab for me, will you.’
‘Your tab’s getting long.’
‘I’ll make it up to you.’
She was shaking as she got the cigarettes off the shelf and slid them through to his side, and thought she might cry when he stroked the back of her hand – briefly – with his forefinger.
Close to clinically obese, there was so much going on between chin and counter that all Jamie could do was stare vaguely but appreciatively at Leanne’s midway bulk – em blazoned with the word SWALLOWS spelt out in sequins (a gift from the friend who sent the Daniel Craig text) – before heading out of the shop and back into his van.
Two minutes later, he was back.
‘You can’t of smoked the whole pack.’
Jamie, distracted, said, ‘There’s a car parked outside dad’s – know anything about it?’
‘What car?’
Abandoning Kayleigh and leaving the booth door propped open with a fire extinguisher, Leanne followed Jamie out of the shop, but didn’t recognise the car parked outside Bobby Deane’s bungalow.
‘It might not be for your dad,’ she said at last, pleased with herself for thinking this.
Jamie grunted in concession to this theory as her eyes slid over the chain caught in the crease at the back of his neck and she breathed in the smell of him – take away food, dog, dope, anger, and a sweetness that vanished as soon as she tried to define it, and that wasn’t aftershave or the backlash of the dope.
‘Any strangers been in the shop this morning?’
‘No. Wait –’
‘Who?’ he demanded, irritable. ‘A woman who knew mum.’
‘Police,’ he hissed, turning round suddenly and nearly knocking her backwards she’d crept so close.
She lifted her eyes with difficulty from his neck and watched Inspector Laviolette leave Bobby Deane’s bungalow then ring on Mrs Harris’s door.
‘What the fuck’s he doing now?’ Jamie mumbled running, crouching into his van, which