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  Killing Mum

  by Allan Guthrie

  This book is available in print from Five Leaves Publications

  Copyright 2009, 2010 Allan Guthrie

  http://www.allanguthrie.co.uk

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the author.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover photograph by Shahram Sharif

  Cover design by JT Lindroos

  ONE

  The padded envelope contained a note and a bundle of cash. The note read:

  Charlie —

  Advance for Valerie Anderson. You know her address.

  Second half of payment on completion of job.

  It wasn't signed.

  Carlos Morales counted the cash. He counted it again. Ten thousand pounds. He stuffed the money back in the envelope and placed it on the counter.

  He was alone in the tanning studio today, which was just as well. He snaked out from behind the counter, grabbed the nearest rack and pulled it over. It crashed to the floor, crushing tubs of tanning lotion and beauty products that burst and spewed and leaked all over the previously squeaky clean floor.

  "Mierda," he said, out of habit.

  He stepped over the debris, walked to the door, locked it, switched the sign to 'closed'.

  He slid his mobile out of his pocket and called home.

  Maggie answered. "What's wrong?" she said.

  "Just wanted to see how you were."

  "At ten past nine? What's wrong, Charlie?"

  There it was, the name on the note. He couldn't bring himself to think it might be her. There had to be some other explanation. Other people called him Charlie. Well, one other person.

  He breathed in. Hadn't had a cigarette in ten months, but when he dreamed, he always had one in his hand. He wished he was dreaming right now. "How's my little girl?"

  "She's fine, misses her daddy."

  "Tell her to hang on. I'm closing up. I'll be there in twenty minutes."

  ***

  Carlos climbed in his car, got the engine purring, thumbed through his CDs and couldn't find anything he wanted to listen to.

  He sat there, the envelope on the passenger seat for company.

  He looked away, out the window. People walking past looked blurred, as if he'd been crying. He rubbed his eyes. They were dry.

  To his left, a grassy patch with a handful of trees. He focused on a squirrel, watched it sprint across ten feet of open ground and up the trunk of a tree. It stopped a few feet up, clung there, turned its head and stared at him.

  Valerie Anderson, he heard it say. Nothing but a lonely old woman who's a little too fond of the bottle.

  Carlos thought hard as he stared back at the squirrel. Someone knew his business. That was bad enough. But someone knew his private life, too, and that made Carlos extremely uncomfortable.

  ***

  When he pulled up in his driveway, Maggie was at the door, waiting for him, Sofia in her arms.

  He turned off the engine, pinched the envelope between thumb and fingers, climbed out of the car.

  Maggie sauntered over to him, her flip-flops clacking against the soles of her feet, kissed his cheek. "What's so bad you had to come home?" she said, quietly, her eyes too bright and more purple than blue.

  He leaned in, saw that Sofia was asleep. He ran his thumb lightly over her scalp, stroked the fair downy hair she'd inherited from her mother. "In the garden," he said, leading the way round the side of the house, towards the back.

  "Grass needs cut," Maggie said.

  "So cut it," he said.

  "I'm just saying," she said.

  "Well, don't."

  "What the fuck's wrong?"

  "Don't swear at me."

  "Jesus, Charlie." Her chin dimpled.

  He sat down on the bench at the back of the house. "Go put this in the safe." He held out the money. The finances and the paperwork and all that, Maggie's job. He struggled with numbers. No, that wasn't true. He could do it all right, he just chose not to. It bored him, whereas Maggie seemed to get something out of it.

  "What is it?" she said.

  "Deposit."

  "Nice," she said. "You better take Sofia, then."

  Once Maggie'd gone, he turned Sofia to face the garden. Little stretches and a pop of her lips and her lips widened and she smiled and then it was gone. She was still asleep. "Shame your daddy's not much of a gardener," he whispered to her. "Mummy neither." Not many little girls in Edinburgh had their own garden.

  Pity you rarely got the weather to take advantage of it. Usually raining or windy or both. Today was dry and the wind hadn't come out to play yet.

  One day, when she was older, they'd appreciate it together.

  For now he'd sit here with her and she could sleep and he could enjoy his garden. He'd worked hard enough for it.

  He closed his eyes after a bit, but the inside of his head was too busy. His eyes sprang open again.

  "It's okay," he said when Maggie returned.

  "What is?"

  "The grass.Doesn't need cut. Not yet."

  "Charlie," she said.

  He said nothing.

  "Carlos, look at me," she said.

  He looked at her. He liked looking at her. She was pretty, didn't need make up. She was half his age, twice as smart. She'd gained a little weight having Sofia and it suited her. She was sexy even with baby sick on her sleeve.

  She said, "Are you going to tell me what's going on?"

  He took a breath through his nose, smelled her perfume, something delicate, rising above Sofia's sweet milky smell.

  "Mum spoken to you recently?" he asked.

  "Only once since I told her to sober up. She phoned. Wanted to know if you'd fix her tap."

  He smiled. "That again. No mention of Sofia?"

  "Yeah." Maggie glanced at her feet. "Said she was sorry."

  "I don't doubt it."

  "Neither do I. You don't think I'm wrong, do you?" Her tongue flicked out, licked her lips. "Is that what this is about?"

  "How can you think that?" He shook his head.

  "So why all the interest in your mother?"

  "You won't believe this," he said. He didn't believe it himself. He took hold of Maggie's hand. "Someone wants her dead."

  ***

  His mother answered the door, eyes red-rimmed like she hadn't been sleeping. She looked like she'd just thrown her clothes on. Her cardigan was buttoned up all wrong.

  "Madre," he said. It annoyed her when he spoke Spanish.

  She didn't let on, asked, "What are you doing here?"

  "You still got that leaky tap?"

  "The one in the bathroom?"

  He shrugged.

  "Well, yes," she said.

  "Then I'll try to fix it."

  "It's not the washer."

  "Did I say it was?"

  She shrugged.

  He said, "I'll take a look anyway."

  "Oh," she said. She straightened up, maybe realising he hadn't come here to chastise. "This is an unexpected surprise. What's brought it on?"

  He looked away. "You phoned."

  "That never worked before."

  "Well, you've been going on about it long enough."

  She peered at him down her long nose, kinked in the middle where she'd broken it on a skiing holiday, along with her leg.

  "You want the tap fixed?" he said. "Or should I go?"

  She folded her thin arms, nibbled her pale lower lip. "You're not working today?"

  "It's slow," he said. "Left Dan to take care of things."

  "Maggie sai
d he was on holiday."

  Maggie hadn't mentioned that. "You spoke about Dan?"

  "I asked how things were going at the salon."

  "Well, Dan's back, as of this morning."

  "Must have been a short trip."

  "Yeah," he said. "Couple of nights. All he could afford on the salary I pay him."

  She nodded, unfolded herself, tucked her lip away. "Come on in."

  ***

  The sitting room was a shrine to seventies bad taste. Bucket seats, white leather couch, brown and orange shag carpet and stripy psychedelic wallpaper. Reminders of her prime, no doubt.

  She said, "You want coffee before you start?"

  "Si," he said. Before he started what? The décor was fucking with his head, making him dizzy. Oh, yeah, fixing a leaking tap. Which he had no intention of doing. He wouldn't know where to begin.

  He moved a magazine off the settee. It squeaked when he flopped down into it. Placed the magazine on top of the glass coffee table, next to the old-fashioned dial-operated red telephone, one of those models that once upon a time everybody used to have.

  "You don't have any tools," she said.

  "Thought I could use George's."

  "I imagined you'd bring your own."

  "I don't have any. I'm not a plumber."

  "Right."

  "You still have them?"

  "You have to ask?" She disappeared into the kitchen. She shouted, "How's Maggie?"

  "Good," he said.

  "What? Speak up."

  "Good," he said, louder.

  "And Sofia?"

  "Good."

  "How's Sofia?"

  "Great," he said, louder.

  "You know, I'm so sorry, but I'm just grateful she landed on the cushion. No harm done. And whatever Maggie thinks, the drink has nothing to do with it, it's just me, you know me, clumsy..."

  She babbled on. She'd never liked Maggie. The fact that Maggie was twenty years younger than Carlos had a lot to do with it. And Maggie had never warmed to her as a result. After what had happened with Sofia, the temperature of their relationship had grown decidedly cool. He tuned his mother out. Picked up the magazine, flicked through it. Gardening magazine. His mother didn't have a garden. Well, she shared a garden with the other members of the tenement, but there was a lawn, and that was all. No reason that she should have a gardening magazine. Maybe she was thinking of coming round to his, giving it a make-over.

  She could leave his fucking garden alone. God, she knew how to make him angry.

  When she returned with coffee — milk jug and sugar bowl on a tray, despite the fact that neither of them took sugar, and a selection of biscuits which he knew neither of them would touch — he asked her about the magazine. "You renting an allotment or something?"

  "Not mine," she said, her cheeks turning pink.

  "Whose, then?" he said.

  She pressed the plunger on the cafetiere. Her hand was shaking. "Just a friend."

  Just a friend. She'd had a few of those since George died. "A good friend?" he asked.

  "Well," she said. She poured a cup of coffee for him, half a cup for herself. "Well, yes, I'd have said so at one point. But now I'd have to say no."

  "Sorry to hear that," Carlos said. "You want to talk about it?"

  "I doubt any good would come of that." She reached behind her, pulled a bottle of vodka from the side of the settee. "Don't say a word." She unscrewed the top. "This is my house. My vodka. I can do as I wish."

  He said nothing, picked up his cup, drank his coffee. She made good coffee. Hadn't always been that way. When he was a kid her coffee tasted like crap. He remembered his dad drinking cortados. Coffee the way it should be drunk. But back then Carlos's palate was too immature to appreciate it. And by the time he was old enough to do so, Pablo Morales had disappeared from their lives.

  "So," she said, pouring a generous amount of vodka into her cup. "Work's slow?" She screwed the top back on the bottle.

  "Yeah," he said, but he could have said anything. She'd already decided what she was going to say next.

  She took a sip of her drink, blinked slowly. "Plumbing," she said. "It's never too late."

  "Cago en tu leche."

  She frowned, pouted her lips. "Something about milk?"

  Something about shitting in it, but he wasn't about to tell her that. "I'm very fucking sorry I never became a plumber, Mama."

  That's right. Now she'd snapped to attention. He'd never match up to the late George Anderson, his mother's second husband, plumber fucking extraordinaire. Carlos changed the subject. Last thing he needed right now was more anger he didn't have an outlet for.

  Things were about to get complicated.

  "Mum," he said. "This may seem like a strange question, but you haven't annoyed anybody recently, have you?"

  She grinned, lips quivering, exposing dull yellow teeth. "Me? Always annoying people."

  "But annoyed somebody very badly."

  "I usually annoy people very well. Ask Maggie."

  "You know what I mean."

  "What a strange question." Her eyes shone, twin beams of pencil torches. He watched her eyelids come down, the left slightly quicker than the right. Then they rose again. "I really have no idea what you mean."

  The tanning salon was a front. Carlos had bought it many years ago from Florida Al, a fat Geordie who liked to wear Hawaiian shirts. Carlos wasn't sure why the fat lad wasn't called Hawaiian Al, but nicknames don't always make sense. Al had been using the salon as a base for a gun-running operation. All Carlos did, he just took his concept up a league. Gave it the balls that fat verga never had.

  Carlos didn't kill people. He made the arrangements for someone else to do the killing. He was a broker, a go-between, an intermediary, an agent. At various times, he'd called himself by all these names.

  But he wasn't a killer.

  Plenty of people knew how to contact him directly. Receiving the package hadn't been that much of a surprise. The fact that someone knew that Valerie Anderson was Carlos Morales's mother worried him. He was careful to hide that, never spoke to anyone about his private life. But what was deeply troubling was the fact that the letter had arrived addressed to Charlie. There were only two people who called him Charlie: Maggie, and his mother.

  He'd discussed the situation with Maggie and they'd agreed he had no choice. He had to ask his mum straight out. "Mama," he said. "Why would someone want you dead?"

  She shuffled in her seat. "Why what?"

  "You heard me."

  She picked up her cup, took a large sip. "What nonsense is this? It's not funny."

  "I'm perfectly serious."

  "Why would you think someone wants me dead?" she said.

  He couldn't answer that. Not now.

  ***

  When he got home, Maggie was alone in the sitting room watching TV. Carlos noticed she'd been biting her fingernails.

  "How did it go?" she said.

  "Where's Sofia?"

  "Sleeping. How did it go?" she repeated.

  He told her what had happened.

  Maggie shook her head. "You have to tell her."

  "Tell her what?"

  "The truth.About you. About the business."

  "I can't do that." His mother had no idea what he really did for a living and Carlos wanted to keep it that way.

  "Then what? This is eating you up, Charlie."

  Was it? He hadn't noticed. She was probably right. He was trying not to notice, but he did want to find out who'd paid for the contract. It wasn't just curiosity either. His mother could be a pain in the arse, sure, but he couldn't believe someone would hate her enough to want her dead. And at a very decent price, too.

  "What are you going to do?" Maggie asked.

  "I'm going to look in on Sofia," he said, watching Maggie tighten her lips, shake her head fast, like she was trying to dislodge water from her ears. A familiar gesture that had become more exaggerated since Sofia was born.

  "And then what?" Maggie
said.

  "One step at a time, mi esposa impaciente.Patience, love."

  ***

  Back at his mother's a few days later, sitting on the settee with another cup of coffee. She sat forward in one of the bucket seats to refill her glass from the bottle of vodka on the coffee table.

  "I've been worried," she said. "You got me flustered, all your talk of people wanting me dead. I haven't slept."

  "I'm sorry," he said. She looked tired. But then she'd looked tired for years.

  "Thanks. But that hardly helps."

  "I know." He shifted in his seat, leaned closer. "I need to tell you something."

  She glanced away. Took a sip. "Why do I feel like I don't want to hear this?"

  He could leave now. He could walk away. Everything could stay as it had always been.

  Instead, he told her everything. It was the only way he could be sure.

  She listened in silence.

  When he'd finished, she said, "I don't believe a word of it."

  He nodded. "I don't blame you."

  "You've been doing this for years?"

  "Long time, si."

  "How could I not have known?"

  "I'm careful."

  "But still. You'd think a mother would know that her son was a ... a monster." Her face was even paler than usual, her lips like hungry worms. "I should call the police."

  "I can understand how you feel," he said. "But there would be no point. I'd just deny it. You'd sound like a crazy old drunk."

  "You think that's what I am?" She placed her glass on the table, carefully. It made only the tiniest sound. "What about you? What happened to your sanity? What happened to your conscience, for God's sake?"

  "Please, Mum. I can do without the moralising. I don't mention your drinking, do I?"

  Her eyes widened. "You just did. Anyway, there's a bit of a bloody difference between ... killing people and enjoying a drink."

  "Maybe," he said. "Although I don't think Maggie sees it that way."

  She wiped a drip off her glass with her forefinger. "She knew what you did when she married you?" She licked her finger, wiped it against her thumb.