“I don’t actually think Kyra ever had anything to do with drugs, Mim,” said Connie.
“No, her old man wouldn’t let her do anything like that,” Wally agreed. “Was very angry when she had her ears and nose pierced. He always had standards, Joe.”
Mim looked a little miffed, as though allowing her husband space to inject three sentences into the conversation was somehow a failing on her part, and quickly resumed her monologue. “Yes, more parents should have standards, and they don’t. What are kids brought up on these days? Fast food, discotheques and video games…that’s what they’re brought up on, aren’t they, Wally?”
Her husband, still basking in the glow of his recent conversational triumph, didn’t feel the need to respond.
“I think bringing back National Service would do them all a lot of good. Your time in the Army didn’t do you any harm, did it, Wally? Then these kids wouldn’t go round smoking stuff and sticking needles in themselves and stuffing substances up their noses. Me and Wally worked in the music industry, where there was supposed to be lots of drugs going round, and we never saw any of them, did we, Wally? No…whereas these days the kids can buy drugs as easy as ice lollies – and they don’t think no more of taking them than they would of eating an ice lolly. No wonder it all ends up with violence and murder.”
“But as I said,” Connie repeated patiently, “Kyra didn’t have anything to do with drugs.”
“I’m not saying she did. But the boy…the boy must’ve done. People don’t go round strangling people for no reason. The boy must’ve been on drugs.”
“We have no means of knowing that,” said Connie, trying to bring a little rationality into the conversation. “And nor, indeed, do we know that Kyra’s boyfriend is the guilty party.”
But Mim’s prejudices weren’t so easily shifted. “Oh, come on, if he didn’t do it, why’s he disappeared? If he’s innocent, if he’s got an alibi, why doesn’t he come forward and tell the police about it? No, I’m sure he was on drugs.”
“Now let’s blow it into shape, shall we?” said Theo, and started fluttering around Mim with the hairdryer.
“On drugs,” said Wally, taking advantage of the diversion to continue dramatically, “or in the grip of a passion that he could not control.”
Mim once again seemed to regret the lapse that had allowed her husband to get a word in. “Don’t talk, Wally. You always move your head when you talk, and that makes it very difficult for Connie to cut your hair. Doesn’t it, Connie? You come out of here with a cut on your ear, Wally, and it’ll be your fault, not Connie’s. Won’t it, Connie? Incidentally, Connie, did you know the boy…you know, this Nathan, the one who killed the girl?”
Jude, who’d been taking in everything, listened with even greater attention.
“Yes, I had met him,” the hairdresser replied, “and you really must stop saying that he killed her.”
“That’s what everyone else in Fethering is saying.”
“I know, Mim, but in this country everyone is innocent until they’re proven guilty.”
“That’s nonsense. Was Hitler innocent? He never went to trial, he was never proved guilty, but are you telling me he wasn’t?”
“No, I’m not. But that wasn’t in this country and – ”
“I think it’s rubbish, that business about people being innocent until proven guilty. There’s some people who should be locked away from birth. Paedophiles, and some of those illegal immigrants.”
Realizing that she wasn’t participating in the most rational of arguments, Connie contented herself with saying, “Well, as I told you, I did meet Nathan a few times. He’d sometimes pick Kyra up after work, and to me he seemed a very nice boy. Shy, not very sure of himself – only sixteen, I think – but I wouldn’t have said he had a violent bone in his body.”
“It’s the quiet ones you have to watch.” Mim pronounced the words as if they were an incontrovertible truth that clinched her argument.
“There,” said Theo, showing off his handiwork to his client in the mirror. “That’s how we like it, isn’t it?”
She responded admiringly. “Back to my natural look, yes.”
“Just a little whoosh of spray to fix it, and we can unleash you onto the streets of Fethering to break all the men’s hearts, eh?”
“Yes.” Mim preened in the mirror. “I could do with a few compliments. Never get any compliments from you, do I, Wally?”
“There – you’re done too.” Connie stood back from her client, the coordinated timing of the haircuts having worked to perfection. “Look all right, does it?”
The question had, inevitably, been put to Mim rather than Wally. She looked appraisingly at her husband’s hair. “Little more off the back. Don’t want it trailing over his collar like some errand boy.”
While Theo made a big production of the final primping of his client, Connie duly did as she was told to hers. The couple were pampered into their coats. They paid their money, with Mim duly tipping both stylists. (Jude wondered whether Wally was allowed to carry any money of his own.) Then Connie crossed to the appointments book. “Usual five weeks, shall we say? The Tuesday again. Same time?”
“Oh yes.”
“So that’ll be nine-thirty for you, and the ten forty-five slot for the gentleman.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’ll come at the same time, and you’ll sit and wait, won’t you, Wally?”
Once again long experience told her husband that no response was required.
¦
“Grenston’s their surname,” said Connie. “Wally and Mim Grenston. He was quite a successful musician – had his own band and did a lot of arranging, I believe. And she was a singer – also a very good career, but she gave it up when they got married…as women often did in those days.”
“But she said they didn’t have children.”
“Maybe she didn’t need them, the way she treats Wally. They’re absolutely devoted to each other, you know.”
“I could see that,” said Jude thoughtfully. “And Wally implied that he knew Kyra’s father…”
? Death under the Dryer ?
Five
Like Carole, Jude had the privilege of having her hair washed by the salon’s owner. “I must get another junior soon,” Connie had said, “but it seems, I don’t know…so recent after what happened to Kyra.”
“Yes. Will it be hard to find someone?”
“God, no. Hundreds of girls still want to be hairdressers…in spite of the rotten pay. I get a dozen letters a week from kids asking to be a junior here, some with a bit of training, some not even left school yet. But the problem is getting the right one, one who’s going to take the job seriously and actually be of some use to me.”
“Was Kyra one of those?”
“I think she could have become quite good. I mean, she was only seventeen. Like most girls of her age, she was easily distracted, mind often away somewhere else, not concentrating on the job in hand. But she was interested in the hairdressing business, and she definitely wanted to make something of herself. Get a bit of independence…her home life wasn’t that easy.”
“As Wally implied.”
“Yes. Her father’s very old. Kyra was the product of his second marriage, but then her mother died a few years back. If she didn’t get something of her own going, Kyra could see the prospect of being stuck here in Fethering as a carer for her old dad.”
“He must have taken it hard…you know, what happened to her.”
“I assume so. I don’t know. Although he lives only in the next street to me, I’ve never actually spoken to him. I don’t think he goes out much.”
Jude’s hair was now towel-dry. Connie appraised it in the mirror. “You’re lucky, you know, not to need colouring…”
“At my age.”
