Sugarcoated Page 2

  So the nosey parkers clucking outside Dad’s window belonged to a parallel world. That was why the leaking of proper violence into it was as alien and exciting as a spaceship outside Somerfield.

  ‘Ooooh, police are in there now? See. Did Mr Quinn’s big lassie call the cops?’

  ‘Wonder if she put that fella in the recovery position?’

  ‘He was choking on his tongue, face was turning blue –’

  ‘If she did she’s sharper than she looks, eh?’

  Inside Dad’s shop there was a bit more decorum. That’s why I could hear everything being said outside. None of it correct, by the way.

  Not, I’d already decided, that I planned to put anyone straight on The Facts. I might be the big daft lassie that Mr Double-Vision Dobson with chronic diabetes was still pointing and shaking his head at, but I’m not completely stupid.

  Come on? After witnessing how heavy-eyed Black Glove and his sidekick warned people off, do you think I’d volunteer to create their photofits on some police computer? I wanted to hang on to my smile, at least till the price of laser whitening dropped.

  So. Er. No. Safer to do a three wise monkeys while I faced the official version of the questions being posed outside:

  ‘Did you report this? Are you a witness?’

  That was Dad. First person to question me. This was after he barged through the crowd of patients clutching his arm for information.

  ‘Oh Mr Quinn. We’re that worried you were …’

  He ignored the blue and white police tape across his doorway, giving its authority the respect due a cobweb when he tore it down.

  ‘Behave yourself, sonny. My daughter’s in there,’ I heard him interrupt the squat cop manning Quinn’s entrance like it was a goal mouth.

  ‘Sir, you’re trespassing –’ the cop warned.

  ‘On my own property, Rambo? Aye right!’ Dad snorted. ‘Where are you, Cloddy?’

  He found me in the back kitchen. Came straight to me. His hand cupped my cheek, eyes probing mine like when he tested them. Looking for problems: What have you seen?

  Before I could tell Dad anything – or nothing – two uniformed cops banged in with their own questions. One doing the talking. Other licking his biro.

  ‘So was it you who called this in, er … Claudia?’

  ‘And did you leave the shop to check that the man was alive?’

  ‘Did you, Cloddy?’ This was Dad again. Round here? You nuts? his tone implied.

  Finally, I was grilled by detectives. Pair of them showed up. Grey suits. Stale, instant-coffee breath. Bellies. Bad skin. Both of them had the same flat seen-it, done-it, bought-the-T-shirt voices.

  ‘So. You saw what happened? Requested the emergency services?’ the first detective tried to put words into my mouth. DCI Stark, his badge read.

  ‘No. Didn’t need to,’ I replied. ‘Ambulance came right away.’

  ‘You didn’t summon assistance?’

  This second detective’s badge was smaller: DI Hatch. Starsky and Hutch, I thought as soon as I read those names. Surely a joke? I’d to choke back the giggles while I was busy telling them, ‘No. I said already. Called no one. Didn’t need to.’

  ‘Were you the first to attend the victim?’

  ‘No. Ambulance came right away. No point in me interfering.’

  ‘So what did you see exactly – ?’

  ‘– Just describe any small detail of the attack.’

  The detectives’ questions overlapped. Just like they do on telly interrogations when they’re tightening the screws on a suspect or a stroppy witness. So just like an uncooperative character on one of my cop shows, I shrugged all the time they were talking.

  ‘Just give us anything you witnessed –’

  ‘– description of the attackers. Weapon –’

  ‘– anything you heard –’

  ‘– that could identify –’

  ‘Nothing.’ I cut in as soon as I could. ‘Window was belted. I hid behind the desk. Heard shouting. Didn’t look –’ I was shaking my head.

  ‘Yes, but tell –’

  ‘– us anything you –’

  ‘– saw or –’

  ‘– heard. Anything at –’

  ‘– all, Claudia –’

  It didn’t matter how often I told Starsky and Hutch: ‘I saw nothing. Heard nothing,’ they repeated the same questions. Even when I grew upset.

  Turned dizzy. Had to lean over the sink in the shop kitchen.

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Hear?’

  ‘Must have witnessed something.’

  The detectives kept quizzing me, even while I was dry heaving, a policewoman taller than myself and called Marjory holding back my hair and pressing wet paper towels to my forehead. Dad’s arm was round my waist, too. When I threatened to barf for real they both interrupted the detectives:

  ‘Right. That’s enough with my daughter for now.’

  ‘Boss, she’s had a helluva fright. Could we lay off.’

  Marjory’s voice was deeper than Dad’s, and I was impressed with her effect on her DCI. When she thrust out her chest – not in a sexy way, in case you’re wondering – both DI and DCI pocketed their notebooks.

  Turned out this was nothing to do with her though.

  ‘Sorry, Marge. Would you listen to us? Getting all carried away like we’re the real –’

  ‘Starsky and Hutch, boss. But you’re not. And we’re in Glasgow, not California –’

  When Marjory interrupted her superiors I’d to jackknife over the sink. Run the tap and splash my face to camouflage a guffaw I couldn’t silence. Her deadpan putdown exposed what could only be Stark and Hatch’s hilarious fantasy: These old guys secretly see themselves running about in a Ford Torino, solving crimes. How sad is that … I snorted under the running water till Starsky-Stark tapped my hip with his mobile.

  ‘We’re about through here for now. Just asking you as much as we can to –’

  ‘– save us all a return visit. You’ve been a help, Claudia.’

  When I turned, Hutch-Hatch was yawning and stretching.

  ‘Ay, ay, ay. Long shift. We’ll be off. Wagons roll, lads! Head for the hills.’ Hutch-Hatch swept his arm towards the dozen or so uniformed cops who must have multiplied inside Dad’s shop while I was hanging over the sink. When I saw how much they were enjoying themselves while on duty, I couldn’t help thinking that maybe a job with the police would be the ideal ticket for a girl like me who didn’t like to gee herself, wasn’t too flush in the brain-cell department, and enjoyed a bit of a laugh. The uniforms were certainly having that, modelling Dad’s Extraordinarily Cheap’n’Nasty range of two-tone tinted bingo glasses, wearing them squinty or upside down, and jostling for shots at a mirror. Three or four laughing policemen – hotties all, or maybe it was just the uniforms blinding me to their individual shortcomings – were literally reduced to tears of mirth.

  Note to self, I mentally jotted. Pop into Careers ASAP for info on minimum entry requirements to Strathclyde Plodsworth.

  ‘Nice big place, this, Mr Q, isn’t it? Good range of stock, haven’t you? Been here long? Mind if I look round?’

  So the DCI wasn’t leaving yet after all. While I was still congratulating myself on coming up with a career pathway that might just make it easier for my dad to accept his only daughter was never going to produce enough grey matter to keep the name of Quinn Family Eyecare alive, I heard Starsky-Stark – still asking questions.

  ‘Coming up thirty years.’

  Dad sounded distracted answering the detective. He kept checking over his shoulder like he didn’t want to leave me alone in the back-shop with Marjory. I didn’t want him to leave me either. Her kindness was scaring me. When I followed him through the shop my legs were blancmange.

  Cellulite inside as well as outside.

  ‘Everyone done here now? Can I get on with running my business?’ Dad opened his shop door and windmilled his arm in a gesture that said ‘Leave’ to the cops
inside. But all that happened was the chatter from the gathered gore-seekers outside billowed into the shop too.

  Only DI Hutch-Hatch took the hint.

  ‘Right. Show’s over folks. Howz about you vamoose? Less any of you feel like giving statements. Down the station.’ I noticed how he barely raised his voice and the crowd zimmered and hobbled and limped away. There was authority!

  Meanwhile, inside the shop, the DCI was still putting questions to Dad. ‘Thirty years you’re here? Would you credit it?’ He seemed in no hurry to leave.

  ‘Must be needing new gregs, don’t you think? D’you know this is the first time I’ve noticed an optician’s here? Boom. Boom. Eh? Eh?’

  He illustrated his own joke-cum-question, lurching and groping round in a circle. Like Dad had never heard that one before.

  ‘And you just recently promoted for your astonishing powers of observation, sir?’

  This was Marjory, deadpan, passing me to join her colleagues. She left my shoulder stinging from her farewell slap.

  ‘Funny thing is, it’s not like I’m never down this patch, you know? Mainly after hours, mind you. Got a business card, Mr Quinn?’ DCI Starsky-Stark was quizzing Dad, handing his own card over. ‘My next day off I’ll come in with the wife, will I? After all she’ll be the one looking at me in my specs, eh?’

  The detective’s wink, as he joined his partner in the doorway, was for my benefit.

  Then, like a freeze-frame at the end of a scene in some cheesy cop show, Starsky-Stark and Hutch-Hatch turned to have the last word.

  ‘Mind you,’ the DCI told his partner, ‘we’ll be back sooner if the joker who’s dirtied Mr Quinn’s window croaks it, won’t we now –’

  ‘Roger that. We’ll have one less bad guy to chase,’ the DI replied in his flat, on-duty voice again, ‘but another bloody mess to mop up.’

  The detectives were outside Dad’s shop. Both lighting fags from the same match. Mooching to their car with hunched shoulders.

  ‘Drug turf war, this carry-on. Organised crime. Nasty people,’ Marjory shrugged. ‘Though we’ll probably only bother you folks again if carnations and teddy bears start piling up out here. Happens soon as someone dies these days. Should’ve been a florist, me, in a city like this,’ she said, downturning her mouth at the slick of congealing blood she nearly stepped in with her big plod-cop shoes.

  4

  sweet-talking guy

  ‘Less than an hour I leave you and it’s Gangsta’s Paradise in Greenwood. Just as well your mum’s Down Under.’

  My dad was sighing at his window. You could hardly see out it. Patches of the glass were rose tinted, where the dried bloodstains were thin. Others were daubed with rusty brown slicks, thick enough to cut the light coming through. As if the shop wasn’t dim enough, every inch of the window was aluminium-powder dusted for fingerprints. No wonder there hadn’t been a customer through the door since the attack. I mean, for an OAP with angina, stepping over the chalked outline of a whacked man to get your eyes tested was kinda offputting.

  ‘And they tell me they’re sending more forensics before I can clean up and get back to normal.’

  Dad stopped kneading his love handles and glowering at the police photographer to sort all the scattered frames the cops had played with. A no-brain-strain-job like that was normally my responsibility but since Starsky and Hutch had left with Marjory, I wasn’t worth a button. Once I’d phoned to confuse all Dad’s afternoon appointments by telling them, ‘Hello. I’m calling from Quinn’s the optician’s. We’re not here today,’ I was done in. Just sat behind reception, staring through the stained glass window, my hand going automatically from my mouth to the box of Brazil nuts some satisfied patient had left Mum about two years ago. I wired in till both trays were empty. What a porker! I don’t even like Brazil nuts. Even fresh ones. Does anyone? They stink your breath. I was humming too. Songs from The Lion King. Through my nose. I like humming. Always calms me down. Don’t understand why it winds other people up so much. I mean, humming absently through your nose is hardly as heinous as the way people absently pick theirs. Then eat their excavations.

  Anyway, apart from the highest bits of Circle of Life, I wasn’t humming that out of tune. Well, I didn’t think so.

  Still, it wound Dad up something else.

  ‘Cloddy, for the love of God,’ he interrupted just as I was drawing a deep breath to do justice to the chorus of Can You Feel the Love Tonight? ‘Take your wages out the till. I’ll see you back home. It’s been a rough enough day without your mouth music. Sounds like you’re gargling with acid.’

  I could have taken the hump with Dad, but hey: Out early from work and paid too! Hakuna Metata, I hummed. Into myself this time. Didn’t want old Pops changing his mind. Not before I hopped the chalked ghost of the man whose misfortune had improved my Saturday no end.

  Wonder if he’s dead, concern suddenly hit me. Flickered. Momentarily. Infinitesimally. Till I recalled what Marjory had said about the hammer victim: Big-time crack dealer. Scum.

  I shivered then, like something nasty I couldn’t see had brushed up against me.

  Brrr. Definitely time for some choccy therapy, I decided.

  But be good. Only a Mars Bar and a celeb mag. Not piles of chocolate I cautioned myself.

  At the newsagent’s counter I’d a Mars Bar and a Snickers in one hand, and was swithering over Maltesers or Minstrels or both, and I’d have bought them all if an arm hadn’t reached across me.

  ‘Some days you gotta have a sugar fix, yeah?’ this voice – male – whispered to me. A soft, tan sleeve just and no more brushed against the front of my jacket. I caught a waft of suede mixed with fabulous aftershave. It was a heady combination.

  Brrr.

  For the second time in five minutes I shivered. Deliciously. Had to lunge for the sweet counter to stay upright. As I moved forward, my outstretched hand accidentally shunted the fingers on the end of the soft suede sleeve. This was just as they were closing on the packet of Minstrels I fancied.

  Was I mortified! Two blast furnaces fired up in my cheeks like they always do when I’m embarrassed, their instant heat throbbing my face scarlet. And this was before the person attached to the fingers and the soft suede sleeve held the Minstrels out to me.

  ‘Sorry. Last packet. You’re before me. These your favourites too? Hey, we could share?’

  I was surprised the skin wasn’t melting off this sweet-talking guy’s face. Because now I was radiating enough thermal energy to liquidise every bar of chocolate on the counter. And sweet-talking guy was so close. Close enough for me to notice he was about two inches taller than I am, which made him six feet plus, and that his pale grey eyes were flecked with streaks of blue, and his lashes were black and longer and thicker than mine, and his cheekbones were high, and his skin was clear and slightly tanned, and his smile was so broad, and his teeth so straight and white and perfect that I wished I’d checked the overlaps and crannies in my own for Brazil nut debris. Oh, and popped a stick of super-mint chuggy before I left Dad’s shop.

  Because this guy …

  This guy pushing back his dense, goldy-fair hair while he grinned at me was so cute …

  Honestly. Why are you grinning at me, exactly? Talking about sharing Minstrels, I was thinking while he chuckled, ‘I try not to bite through the hard shell, but it’s too tempting.’

  And I was trying to place the ever-so-faint accent that made him pronounce his t’s and roll his r’s in a way that looped frizzles up and down the back of my neck, and made me want to beg him to keep on talking to me even though a voice in my head was niggling: This is bonkers, Clod. Handsome dudes never sidle up beside big ginga gals out of the blue and confess, ‘I can’t resist the chocolate in the middle of a Minstrel.’

  Come on sweet-talking guy. Look at me properly. Then rewind. Do us both a favour. Especially me. Make the world go back to normal. Coz this ain’t right.

  That’s what the Get-a-grip, Clod! voice of reason inside my brain kept i
nsisting. Even when this utter hottie cupped his hand round my elbow and steered me out of the queue we were holding up to continue our conversation. Even when he introduced himself.

  ‘I’m Stefan.’

  That was when we shook hands. And he took my right paw in both of his. Clasped it tight even though it was clammy with sweat and a bit sticky from the chocolate Brazils. But he didn’t let go. Squeezed.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Claudia,’ I told him. ‘But I’m called Clod. Y’know, Clod by name, Clod by na-’

  ‘Claudia. Like Schiffer. Supermodel,’ Stefan interrupted me by leaning forward and kissing the salty base of my palm.

  (Note to self: Finally. 17¾ years old. First kiss. And about time too.) His lips barely made contact with my skin, but Stefan had damaged me for life. My poor heart felt like it wanted to gallop free of my ribcage. I couldn’t regulate my breathing. My kneecaps were visibly vibrating through my trousers and all the blood in my upper body seemed to be relocating to my groin. That’s why I didn’t hear a word that I nodded and smiled at in the – well, it could have been twenty seconds or twenty years Stefan chatted to me following his killer kiss before I was aware of hearing normally. In fact I didn’t even think I was hearing normally yet. This

  donk, donk, donk

  bass-line seemed to be throbbing in the space between us

  donk donk donk

  Thinking that my body was undergoing some kind of cardiac trauma due to the shock of being kissed by a male who wasn’t a blood relative, I shook my head to make the throb go away. But it only happened again. Louder: