Ask for mercy, p.22
Ask for Mercy, page 22
‘New tenants? What happened to Craig and Bethan?’
‘After your performance last week,’ her mother said, ‘they split up and moved without warning. From the sound of the rows they were having down there, he must’ve confessed to something. She stormed out, never to be seen again. Then he had the nerve to act as though it was my fault,’ she added, with a trace of a wicked smile.
‘Blokes.’
‘What are they like? I tell you what, he won’t be getting his deposit back.’
They both laughed at her naughtiness. Ever since she was little, Mercy had known that the best way to get this woman to thaw out was to have a giggle with her.
‘What are you like?’ Mercy beamed up. Julie was only in her early fifties, still a beautiful woman and being in her presence always had a raw effect. Throughout her life, people were forever telling her she looked like her dad. But here was the parent she’d always longed to resemble. ‘Craig was half your age, mum,’ she said. ‘I’d be scandalised if I wasn’t impressed. What with Dad and his escapades and you carrying on with toy boys, it’s a wonder that I turned out so well adjusted.’
‘We weren’t always like that,’ Julie assured her as she rinsed conditioner out of her hair. ‘When your father and I started out we were the very model of the perfect couple. Like Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, people used to say. Well,’ she qualified, ‘Ray used to say it. Flattering himself.’
‘I’ve seen your wedding pictures,’ Mercy said as her mother detangled her hair. ‘There’s no denying, you were a gorgeous couple.’
‘That must explain why we produced such a gorgeous kid,’ Julie smiled, squeezing Mercy’s shoulder in an affectionate gesture. ‘Now let’s see if we can’t give you gorgeous hair to match.’
She moved her round to face the mirror.
‘Try not to give me a short back and sides this time,’ Mercy said. Her mother assured her that she’d be getting sexy, voluminous hair like all her other customers. Mercy closed her eyes, radiating in how glorious it was to have this woman, who’d been responsible for so many of her harsh boyish haircuts when young, finally deliver the feminine treatment she’d always wanted from her.
‘How’s Big Bill?’ Julie asked as she snipped. Reflected in the mirror, his Barbour jacket was hanging from a coat stand behind them. ‘Coping without Ray?’
‘He’s been very supportive,’ Mercy told her. ‘Teaching me the tricks of the trade.’
‘He always was a lovely bloke.’
‘Unlike Barb,’ Mercy agreed, ‘who’s been less welcoming, to put it mildly.’
‘The biggest mystery to come out of that place,’ scoffed Julie, ‘is how they’ve been putting up with her for so long.’
‘It isn’t for her winning personality. What do you make of Nina Markham?’
‘I only met her the once,’ Julie considered as wet triangles of hair fell onto the smock around Mercy. ‘She seemed moody. Mind you, we were at your dad’s funeral, so fair enough.’
‘Did Dad trust her?’
‘Trust her?’ Julie asked. Her scissors paused and their eyes locked in the mirror. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘Nothing,’ Mercy shrugged. ‘Just trying to get a sense of how he rated my new colleagues.’
The snipping resumed.
OK, Mercy thought, time to stop pussyfooting and go in for the kill.
‘Guess who I ran into yesterday,’ she said, in her sweetest manner. ‘Kittichai.’
‘Kitty who?’ Julie asked.
‘Kitty McColl,’ Mercy explained. ‘You remember her. Alan’s Thai wife.’
‘Blimey,’ Julie raised her eyebrows. ‘Are those two still together? I wouldn’t have put money on it.’
‘Yeah, she works at his shop now. Her English has improved and we had a long chat about the good old days. Nice girl.’
‘Imagine being married to Expanding Alan,’ Julie whistled. ‘She deserves a medal.’
‘Kitty remembers you fondly too,’ Mercy said. ‘She was telling me about that awful afternoon at the Spoils.’
‘What afternoon was that?’
‘The garden party when Sarah Neale killed herself,’ Mercy said, studying her mother’s reflection as she said it. ‘You can’t have forgotten.’
Julie winced. She looked at Mercy through the mirror.
‘I don’t know what she’s been saying,’ Julie told her, pointing with her scissors, ‘but she wasn’t even at that party. It was for Maggie Neale’s birthday and she’d hardly invite a copper’s wife, even if he’d retired. The only people invited were me, Mags, Jill, Moira and Barb.’
‘Kitty wasn’t a guest,’ Mercy replied. ‘She was there as a caterer. Perhaps you don’t remember because she was quietly pouring the drinks and is a person of colour.’
‘It was over a decade ago,’ Julie defended herself. ‘I can’t be expected to remember every little detail. It was very traumatic.’
‘I can imagine,’ Mercy sympathised, ‘a young woman throwing herself from a high balcony like that straight onto the ground in front of you all. And wearing your red dress! Must’ve been extremely distressing.’
‘It was like something from a horror film,’ Julie confirmed, while glancing over at the rest of the salon. The other stylists were busy chatting to their clients. ‘One of the worst things I’ve ever witnessed.’
‘You’ve never talked about it much.’
‘Can you blame me?’
‘I guess not,’ Mercy said and left a respectful pause before continuing. ‘Poor Sarah. Did she say anything before she jumped? Any last words?’
‘No. She just stepped up onto the ledge of the balcony and then plummeted.’
‘Could she have been pushed?’
‘Who by?’
‘That’s what I’m asking.’
‘There wasn’t anyone up there with her.’
‘You sure?’
‘Sarah wasn’t all there, mentally,’ Julie explained, her focus having already returned to Mercy’s hair. ‘She’d been a drug addict earlier in her life. Party girl gone wrong. And that stuff never really leaves the blood. Victor helped get her clean. Whatever else might be said of him, he did good there. She was a troubled soul and he’d sorted her out; got her into expensive rehab clinics, helped her kick all her filthy habits. But, as he spent more time abroad, nobody was around to protect her from toxic influences. Sad waste of a beautiful woman.’
‘Did she seem high,’ Mercy asked, ‘when she welcomed you into her home that day?’
‘If memory serves, someone else let us in. It was all immigrants working there around that time, none of them spoke much English, but they showed us out the back and kept our champagne glasses full. We didn’t see much of Sarah until she was on the balcony ready to jump. But yeah, the hospital said she had a wide variety of drugs coursing through her when she died. Which explains everything.’
‘Kitty says she was impressed with how well you handled things. She reckons you and Maggie really took charge.’
‘We had the presence of mind to call an ambulance, if that’s what she means.’
‘I’m not sure it is,’ Mercy said, nearing her point. ‘Sarah died on the way to the hospital, right? Did any of the guests travel with her?’
‘Only Moira Mance had the stomach for that. The rest of us stayed in the house until her death was confirmed. Maggie kept drinking her birthday champagne, which was a bit off, but nobody had the guts to say anything. Then, one by one, we all dispersed back to our own lives.’
‘Including the staff?’
‘I suppose.’
‘If you had to guess,’ Mercy asked, as her mother picked up a flat iron hair straightener, ‘how many weeks pregnant was she when she died?’
The straightener was marble-coloured, making it appear heavier than it probably was. Julie clutched it like she was considering giving Mercy a sharp clout.
‘Your little Thai friend told you that, did she?’ Julie asked, their eyes meeting again in the mirror.
‘Not just her,’ Mercy nodded, ‘Barbara was overheard talking about the baby bump too. And Bill admitted he was told the same thing – that Sarah took her own life and also that of her unborn child.’
There followed a weighty pause before Julie answered.
‘She’d have been in early in her second trimester, I’d say. I mean, she wasn’t showing on that day she visited our house to borrow my dress and that was only weeks earlier. None of the others knew about the pregnancy before the party either.’
‘But why didn’t you want anyone knowing about it?’ Mercy persisted. ‘Apparently once her body had been removed you and Maggie started bullying all the other women into not mentioning it.’
‘Kitty’s exaggerating,’ Julie said as she pulled the straightener down, twisting her daughter’s hair as she did so. ‘Do you think we could keep a baby secret from the paramedics? Do me a favour. Now keep your head still while I work on these waves.’
‘According to Kittichai,’ Mercy remained as still as she could, ‘it wasn’t the authorities you were trying to conceal the fact from; it was from your own husbands. She told me that you didn’t want any of the men to know about the belly.’
‘I think I preferred pretty Kitty,’ her mother said in a light voice, her attention still fixed upon Mercy’s hair, ‘when she couldn’t speak English.’
‘I’ve been racking my brains as to why you’d form a conspiracy of silence around that. Because Victor obviously would’ve been told that she’d lost a baby, so it wasn’t for his benefit.’ Julie kept on working the hair straightener. ‘However, if my Neale timeline is accurate, he would’ve been living in Antigua for most of the previous year while she’d remained in England. I suppose that makes her bump a bit controversial.’
‘If you’re going out tonight you’ll need your eyes done,’ Julie remarked. ‘Your lashes need work and the brows are a state.’
‘A smooth change of subject.’
‘What sort of mum would I be if I let you leave here without looking your optimum? I tell you what, once we’re done with your hair, why don’t I give you the full Julie treatment?’
‘I can’t afford the full Julie treatment,’ Mercy admitted. ‘To be honest, I can’t really afford this.’
‘You’re in Julie’s Hair & Beauty,’ her mother winked. ‘And I’m Julie. Don’t worry about the money.’
Despite the transparent attempt at distraction, Mercy was delighted. She’d come here hoping for as feminising a makeover as possible, so wasn’t going to refuse.
‘You’ll need to shut your eyes though,’ Julie added in a sweet tone, ‘and maybe your mouth as well. All I ask is for you to lie back and open your ears. I promise to tell you every bit of gossip I know about Sarah’s mystery bump – and gossip is all it is. When we’re finished – and you’re looking more like my daughter than ever – that will be that. Deal?’
‘Deal,’ said Mercy. Then she shut her eyes and allowed Julie to finish twisting her hair into subtle waves.
‘Sarah Fields-Fox was your classic double-barrelled, upper class It girl,’ her mother began once they’d moved to a discreet waxing room in the back of the salon. ‘Tatler famous. I’d seen her in magazines socialising with minor royals and the children of rock stars. The magazines had described her as an aristocratic wild child and that was before she’d started dating a gangster several classes below her.’
Mercy was leaning back on another chair, her eyes firmly closed as her mother softened her follicles with damp cotton wool. There was no radio playing in this private room, just her mother’s voice and a faint scent from the reed diffusers.
‘Basically, she was the sort of woman who people enjoy making up stories about,’ Julie continued, ‘regardless of whether there was substance to them. She and I got on well,’ she claimed with a hint of a boast, ‘we used to swap clothes because we had similar figures. To this day, I have this beautiful blue dress she wore to his fortieth birthday hanging in my closet. Obviously I haven’t worn it since but it feels wrong to give it away. Victor was besotted with her at that party. But, well, Vic was still Vic. He could be controlling.’
Mercy thought controlling was a bit of an understatement considering he’d paid M&T to run constant surveillance on her while out of the country.
‘The real problem though,’ Julie explained, ‘the bigger problem, was his brother Lawrence.’
Something got sucked out of the air as Julie uttered that name. Her eyes still closed, Mercy could sense her mother bracing herself, reluctant to cross this line in the narrative.
‘Lol was difficult. He had a bad reputation around women.’
Another pause.
‘So yeah, back in the day, that was a thing we talked about, we wives. Don’t get left alone with Lawrence Neale, we’d say. It didn’t matter that we were married to his mates, in fact that probably turned the dirty fucker on. He was always touching us up and there were stories of him... well, forcing himself on girls in his clubs. When we were all teenagers, Jill Lamoreaux’s sister Debbie claimed he pulled her into a gentlemen’s toilet and raped her. I’m sorry to say that nobody, including Jill, believed her at the time, which on hindsight is a bit shaming. Keep your face still, Mercy, or I’ll mess the shape up.
‘He cornered me once,’ Julie continued, ‘during a party at their house. Maggie was heavy with her Nick at the time and I was less obviously pregnant with you. We were having a nice barbecue and Lol was turning the meat while Ray, Victor, and the boys were all kicking a ball at the end of their garden. I asked Maggie which loo I could use and Lol answered for her.
‘“Use the upstairs bog, girl,” he called over. “The flush is fucked down here.”
‘So up I went, relishing the chance to explore their big house and found the lavatory. Afterwards, when I unlocked it, there he was, occupying the doorway like a leering gorilla, blocking my exit. My whole body went into high alert.
‘“Wiped your whiskers?” he grinned. His arm was placed on the door so I couldn’t shut it again. Outside I could hear your dad cheering because he’d just scored another goal. “He’s a lucky boy, your Raymond.”
‘I tried to push past but he wouldn’t let me. I told him to stop fucking about or I’d call his wife. He fucking laughed. Said, “Maggie hears what she wants to,” whatever that meant. I told him I was serious and almost managed to slip past, but he grabbed my hand to stop me leaving. Then he tried to force me into the bathroom. I was terrified. He was a massive bloke.’
Mercy had to open her eyes. Above her, Julie had gone pale. looked down at her daughter and gave her a thin smile.
‘Jesus, darling,’ she said, before reaching out with her fingers to motion her daughter’s eyelids shut again. ‘I haven’t thought about this in years. I went into full panic mode and was about to scream when I was rescued by Barbara of all people.’ Mercy raised her eyebrows. ‘She only had her job at the agency because she was tight with the Neale boys, so she was at the barbecue too. She must’ve noticed that Lol had crept off after me and had come to investigate.
‘“See to the sausages, Lol,” she said to him. “Before they burn.”
‘Lol released me, pushed past Barb and went back downstairs. He left me trembling. I reached out to thank Barbara but she just told me to dry my eyes and followed after Lol. Never mentioned it again.’
Mercy sat up on the bench and went to hold her mother. Julie responded, and they remained like that for a minute. The sick memory of Lol’s only son accosting her in the school changing room slithered through her again. Two generations of Tyler women attacked by the same rotten family.
‘That’s horrible, Mum,’ she whispered into her ear. ‘Did you ever tell Dad?’
‘Rottweiler Ray? With his explosive temper?’ Julie reached for a nearby box of tissues to dab her eyes. ‘No way. He would’ve done something about it and then where would we be? Lol was the most dangerous man in Britain. It would’ve been a death sentence for your dad. Lie down again so I can do the other brow. You’re asymmetrical.
‘I wasn’t the only one with such a story,’ she eventually continued. ‘Jill told me he grabbed her in a hotel lift once and ripped her blouse. She believed her sister a bit more after that.’
‘This is monstrous,’ Mercy cried from her prone position. ‘How was this not reported? He was a famous gangster. The police would’ve taken you seriously, the media even more so.’
‘I thought we agreed you’d keep your mouth shut and your ears open,’ Julie replied, plucking out a stubborn lash so hard that it stung. ‘We were all terrified of Lol but it was a different time. Also, there was a lot of money being funnelled to the agency from the Neale direction. Criminals can be very generous with their friends, partly because they can’t do much else with stolen loot. So yeah, blind eyes were turned. Lower your eyebrows, love; you’re making this difficult. Anyway, it came to a stop when his younger brother married Sarah. I didn’t realise at the time, but the pig turned his attention to her. Amazingly, they started an affair.’
‘A consensual affair?’ asked Mercy. ‘I don’t believe that for a minute.’
‘One night, Maggie received a midnight phone call from her brother-in-law who was still in Antigua. He was in tears. Imagine that, Victor Neale crying. He told her that she needed to keep a tighter rein on her husband. He’d intercepted a message written from Sarah to Lol, saying that she loved him.’
‘Mum, why didn’t you tell me this earlier? This totally fits in with my theory about—'
Julie placed a finger over her daughter’s lips.
‘Quiet darling, Mummy hasn’t finished. Shut your eyes. So, a short time later,’ she went on, ‘Lol was murdered in a car bomb. So that was the end of that.’
Mercy recalled that night in the Nepalese restaurant when her father had told them about the explosion. Poor Maggie, Julie had said about his wife. Poor Nick, about his son. Never poor Lol.
