Bustamonte says she’s gone away.”
Mrs. Dunwiddy swayed gently from side to side in the bed, as if she were rocking herself to sleep. She said, “I not going to be here for much longer. I stop eating solid food after you leave the last time. I done. Only water. Some women say they love your father, but I know him long long before them. Back when I had my looks, he would take me dancing. He come pick me up and whirl me around. He was an old man even then, but he always make a girl feel special. You don’t feel—” She stopped, took another sip of water. Her hands were shaking. Fat Charlie took the empty glass from her. “Hunnert and four,” she said. “And never in my bed in the daytime except for confinements. And now I finish.”
“I’m sure you’ll reach a hundred and five,” said Fat Charlie, uneasily.
“Don’t you say that!” she said. She looked alarmed. “
“I’m not like my dad,” said Fat Charlie. “I’m not magic. Spider got all that side of the family, remember?”
She did not appear to be listening. She said, “When we would go dancing, way before the Second World War, your daddy would talk to the bandleader, and plenty times they call him up to sing with them. All the people laugh and cheer. Is so he make things happen. Singing.”
“Where is Mrs. Higgler?”
“Gone home.”
“Her house is empty. Her car isn’t there.”
“
“Er—you mean she’s dead?”
The old woman on the white sheets wheezed and gasped for breath. She seemed unable to speak any longer. She motioned to him.
Fat Charlie said, “Shall I get help?”
She nodded, and continued to gasp and choke and wheeze as he went out to find Mrs. Bustamonte. She was sitting in the kitchen, watching
Mrs. Bustamonte went out. She came back holding the empty water jug. “What do you say to set her off like that?”
“Was she having an attack or something?”
Mrs. Bustamonte gave him a look. “No, Charles. She was laughing at you. She say you make her feel good.”
“Oh. She said Mrs. Higgler had gone home. I asked if she meant she was dead.”
Mrs. Bustamonte smiled then. “Saint Andrews,” she said. “Callyanne’s gone to Saint Andrews.” She refilled the jug in the sink.
Fat Charlie said, “When all this started I thought that it was me against Spider, and you four were on my side. And now Spider’s been taken, and it’s me against the four of you.”
She turned off the water and gazed at him sullenly.
“I don’t believe anyone anymore,” said Fat Charlie. “Mrs. Dunwiddy’s probably faking being ill. Probably as soon as I leave here she’ll be out of bed and doing the charleston around her bedroom.”
“She not eating. She say it makes her feel bad inside. Won’t take a thing to fill her belly. Just water.”
“Where in Saint Andrews is she?” asked Fat Charlie.
“Just go,” said Mrs. Bustamonte. “Your family, you done enough harm here.”
Fat Charlie looked as if he was about to say something, and then he didn’t, and he left without another word.
Mrs. Bustamonte took the jug of water in to Mrs. Dunwiddy, who lay quiet in the bed.
“Nancy’s son hates us,” said Mrs. Bustamonte. “What you tell him anyhow?”
Mrs. Dunwiddy said nothing. Mrs. Bustamonte listened, and when she was sure that the older woman was still breathing, she took off Mrs. Dunwiddy’s thick spectacles and put them down by the bed, then pulled up the sheet to cover Mrs. Dunwiddy’s shoulders.
After that, she simply waited for the end.
Fat Charlie drove off, not entirely certain where he was going. He had crossed the Atlantic for the third time in two weeks, and the money that Spider had given him was almost tapped out. He was alone in the car, and being alone, he hummed.
He passed a clutch of Jamaican restaurants when he noticed a sign in a storefront window:
“We at A-One travel are here to serve all your travel needs,” said the travel agent, in the hushed and apologetic tone of voice doctors normally reserve for telling people that the limb in question is going to have to come off.
“Er. Yeah. Thanks. Er. What’s the cheapest way to get out to Saint Andrews?”
“Will you be going on vacation?”
“Not really. I just want to go out for a day. Maybe two days.”
“Leaving when?”
“This afternoon.”
“You are, I take it, joshing with me.”
“Not at all.”
A computer screen was gazed at, lugubriously. A keyboard was tapped. “It doesn’t look like there’s anything out there for less than twelve hundred dollars.”
“Oh.” Fat Charlie slumped.
More keyboard clicking. The man sniffed. “That can’t be right.” Then he said, “Hold on.” A phone call. “Is this rate still valid?” He jotted down some figures on a scratch pad. He looked up at Fat Charlie. “If you could go out for a week and stay at the Dolphin Hotel, I could get you a week’s vacation for five hundred dollars, with your meals at the hotel thrown in. The flight will only cost you airport tax.”
Fat Charlie blinked. “Is there a catch?”
“It’s an island tourism promotion. Something to do with the music festival. I didn’t think it was still going on. But then, you know what they say. You get what you pay for. And if you want to eat anywhere else it will cost you.”
Fat Charlie gave the man five crumpled hundred-dollar bills.
Daisy was starting to feel like the kind of cop you only ever see in movies: tough, hard-bitten, and perfectly ready to buck the system; the kind of cop who wants to know whether or not you feel lucky or if you’re interested in making his day, and particularly the kind of cop who says “I’m getting too old for this shit.” She was twenty-six years old, and she wanted to tell people she was too old for this shit. She was quite aware of how ridiculous this was, thank you very much.
At this moment, she was standing in Detective Superintendent Camberwell’s office and saying, “Yes, sir. Saint Andrews.”
“Went there on my holidays some years back, with the former Mrs. Camberwell. Very pleasant place. Rum cake.”
“That sounds like the place, sir. The closed-circuit footage from Gatwick is definitely him. Traveling under the name of Bronstein. Roger Bronstein flies to Miami, changes planes, and takes a connection to Saint Andrews.”
“You’re sure it’s him?”
“Sure.”
“Well,” said Camberwell. “That buggers us good and proper, doesn’t it? No extradition treaty.”
“There must be
“Mm. We can freeze his remaining accounts and grab his assets, and we will, and that’ll be as much use to us as a water-soluble umbrella, because he’ll have lots of cash sitting in places we can’t find it or touch it.”
Daisy said, “But that’s
