Sugarcoated Read online

  ‘To us,’ Stefan raised his glass. ‘Cheers! Saluti! Mazel Tof!’ he grinned, necking his champagne in a oner. Not knowing any better, Coke being the only fizzy drink I normally swig with my din-dins, I did the same. Course it went straight to my head.

  ‘Zat one of your customs? Sloshing back the bev?’

  Before I’d even put down my empty glass I was giggling, trying not to snot champagne bubbles.

  ‘Customs?’ Stefan was frowning. Refilling my glass. Guiding it to my lips.

  ‘Y’know: Mazel Tof! Down the hatch! One of your foreign customs,’ I sloshed another toast at Stefan, ‘Coz you’re not from … y’know? Here.’ When I waved my drink in the air, I managed to sluice wine all down my hand and over the sleeve of Mum’s Ralph Lauren dress. ‘You’re Norwegian or Dutch or Swedey or …?’

  ‘My passport says British Citizen, clumsy Claudia.’ Stefan interrupted my list of fantasy Nordic types – before I could suggest ‘Finnish’ or ‘Icelandic’ or ‘Viking’ – by taking my wet hand in his and kissing it. That was enough to make me forget what I was asking him about. But when he started to lick drips of champagne from the inside of my wrist …

  8

  dishing the family dirt

  Well, frankly, a move like that on a girl who’s never been licked by a stray dog with halitosis let alone a buff sweetie like Stefan was enough to scramble my head completely.

  What did I care who this guy was.

  We were here.

  This date was probably all going to turn out to be a horrible mistake on his part. Or else I was having one of my occasional magic dreams that make up for the Crapness Of Being Clod. Whatever. All that mattered was I really liked Stefan and he seemed – even temporarily – into me. Enough, at least, to stroke my hair with his thumbnail then run it from my neck to my collarbone. Zigzag it down to where I hadn’t buttoned Mum’s dress …

  Phew! Just as well the food arrived.

  Funny, that’s what Stefan said, adding, ‘Phew. You’re something else, Claudia. And I want to find out all about you tonight.’

  Then the tuxedoed sphere put down our starters.

  ‘Thank you, Radec,’ Stefan told him.

  I couldn’t recall having seen a menu at this point, let alone ordering any chow from – Radox? Radish? Radec? What kind of name was that anyway?

  But maybe I had ordered without realising. Things were moving so quickly here. Too quickly. I wanted Stefan to dish me some facts about himself, but somehow the evening passed with me doing all the blethering. Not deliberately though: I’m anything but a gasbag. Ask any teacher who’s put up with my surly silences over the years. A cocktail of nerves and alcohol must have loosened my tongue. Combined with the fact that Stefan played the perfect gentleman.

  ‘No, no, no,’ he kept insisting whenever I asked him stuff like, ‘So where d’you live? Who’s in your family?’

  ‘Ladies first, Claudia,’ he’d chuckle. ‘Go on.’

  With prompting like that, not to mention Stefan feeding me bites of rare steak from his plate and spooning ice cream into my cakehole, it was understandable I ended up spilling most of the Quinn family beans in the course of three courses. Stefan learned not only that my big-shot big brother businessman Neil in Melbourne had a low sperm count, but that his wife Margaret-Mary had a hairy face (yes, Bless Me Father, I did reveal my pet name for her), and my dad had been recently diagnosed with high blood pressure and thought Coldplay were class. By the time our dessert plates had been cleared away and I was slurping either my fourth or fifth glass of champers, Stefan was up to date on my garbageness at school and Mum’s decision to stay Down Under for at least a week after Neil’s baby came.

  ‘Sh’ might not be home f’r’ages yet,’ I told Stefan through truffles so rich and buttery that even an expert like myself wouldn’t hazard a guess at their fat content.

  ‘Dad’s still here coz Mum thinks I can’t be trusted to shut the fridge, let alone a front door. “You know I love you to bits but you’re hardly the brightest light on the Christmas tree, Cloddy – ”’

  ‘Oh, that’s unfair,’ Stefan put his finger to my lips before I could go on running myself down in Mum’s disappointed voice. ‘You’re left in charge of a business on your own. You handle money. Need to be smart for that. You deal with customers. Complaints –’

  ‘Yeah, but one of the other receptionists is usually there. I just sit about. Answer the phone. File. Dad’s short-staffed just now. Normally I only cover lunchtime alone. Quietest time. Safe enough –’

  ‘Hey not today. Bloody hell, Claudia.’ Stefan, face very close to mine, shook his head like he wanted to disperse something unpleasant inside it. ‘I know you haven’t talked about … y’know … earlier …?’ Stefan’s hand covered my own, ‘but, I’ve been going over and over it. You must have been terrified. Maybe you want to tell me more? I’m a great listener –’

  The lull in our chat was the first of our date, Stefan holding open a space for me to relive something – well, to tell the truth, something I’d pushed to the back of my mind for the last few hours.

  What’s to talk about? I was thinking, I’m far more interested in the way your hair falls over your eyes when you look down, Stefan. Let’s talk about that. And maybe about me running my fingers through it while you snog me dizzy …

  In the silence between us, Stefan let go my hand. Opened his wallet, sifting though a healthy selection of plastic friends. Holy Moley, the guy had accounts with every bank in the UK! When he slid out one of those special Red AMEX cards Saint Bono invented for Minted People, I couldn’t stop myself blurting, ‘Y’a millionaire or something?’

  ‘Just like good causes,’ Stefan’s shrug was bashful enough to stop me coming right out and asking him exactly what he did to be flush enough for a Red AMEX. Any AMEX. A guy his age – whatever that was.

  D’you rob banks or old ladies? Deal crack? I might have said.

  But Radec was by my side like he could smell a tip.

  ‘All yours, my friend,’ Stefan slipped the card into Radec’s breast pocket. When he patted it with the flat of his hand the gesture was a dismissal as well as payment. His eyes, never leaving mine, were serious. Made him seem older all of a sudden.

  ‘Claudia,’ he whispered although we were quite alone, ‘I’ve got to ask: You know when that man was hammered, d’you really not see the pair who did it? Their faces? Because you know the cops, and the SOCOs – y’know the Scene Of Crime Officers? – they were making a fingertip search. Dusting for prints. That’s major forensics. They must want those guys badly. So if you got an ID on them –’

  ‘But I didn’t.’ My interruption sounded like panic. Change the subject, I was thinking. This conversation was giving me indigestion.

  ‘How come you’re up on all the jargon: SOCOs, fingertip searches? You a gangster or something?’ I chuckled into my champagne, peeking at Stefan over the top of my glass.

  ‘Just big into violent crime,’ he answered, waiting till my own eyes widened before chuckling, ‘fiction, I mean. Lee Child. Ian Rankin. Michael Collins. Hey. Got you going there, Claudia. How could a babyface like me be a bad guy?’

  Stefan’s arm went round my shoulders and he pulled me close against his T-shirt, holding me to the muscles in his chest. Nothing baby-faced about them! Since this was the first time I’d been hugged by any male other than Dad or my uncle Mike or in dreams, I’d happily have stayed in that position until undertakers prised my bones free. But my bliss was fleeting. Stefan noogied my head like I was his kid brother. Released me, then returned to the one topic of conversation I’d rather end.

  ‘Seriously,’ he said seriously, ‘what’ll you tell the cops if they come back to question you – ?’

  ‘But the cops won’t,’ I shrugged. ‘Less the guy dies. Jeez. That’d be a murder I’d s-’ I’d my hand over my mouth. With the way my head was spinning I wasn’t sure if I was clamping it shut to stop what I was about to admit to Stefan, or a shock reflex at the realisat
ion that I’d actually witnessed a man thumped to death. Or maybe I just didn’t want Stefan to hear me burp.

  ‘Babes,’ Stefan took my hand. ‘If that guy dies you’ll be grilled bigtime. And the papers might get your name. Your picture. Would you tell the cops more? Can you? Because people don’t always realise how much they’ve seen. New detail might come in flashback. Subconscious mind and all that. Incredible stuff goes on in there.’

  Stefan tapped the middle of my forehead as he tipped the dregs of the second bottle of champagne into my empty glass. My just-about-conscious mind was trying to unscramble the thought:

  You clever I bet psychology are student Aha!

  and turn it into a sequence of words, but everything in my head had slurred and anyway, Stefan’s phone –

  ‘Donked,’ I was going to say.

  But he must have changed the ringtone or something. This time it played the whistley assassin tune from Kill Bill.

  And actually the phone he pulled out wasn’t the stainless steel one he’d used earlier. At least I didn’t think it was. Half-cut in a dim booth I could barely focus on anything when Stefan pecked me on the top of the head. ‘Sorry, babes. Gotta take this. Little bit of business. I’ll slip upstairs for a better signal. Don’t go away.’

  As if, I thought, realising I could do with nipping to the loo. Stumbling about a candlelit room was easier said than done with a bottle and a half of champagne sloshing inside me. After lurching through a voile curtain which concealed an old man snogging the face off some woman half his age – Excuse me! – Radec gestured me unsmilingly to the door I wanted. ‘Lookayu, Claudia Quinn,’ I slumped on the toilet seat and scolded the flushed, twin girls with plunging blotchy necklines I could see in the mirror. ‘Cupletely pissed. Yak yak yak, ya big bore.’

  When I flung my arms towards the twin me’s in disgust I must have lost my balance. Hit the floor. Couldn’t seem to lift myself off it. I was safer staying put anyway. Bones felt like they’d turned to concrete. Couldn’t move them. And the world was twirling faster and faster …

  The next thing I remembered was a sensation of being hoisted upright by several arms. None of them gentle. Nor were any of the male voices who sniggered comments in a language I’d never heard before. And neighed to each other. And definitely not gentle was the hand that thwacked my backside as I was slung over someone’s shoulder. Slowly and haltingly shifted up a flight of stairs.

  The vehicle I was poured into at the top can’t have been a regular taxi. It was too sleek and well-upholstered, and anyway Glasgow taxis refuse paralytic fares in case they puke. They don’t blast out foreign speed-folk violin music to their passengers either, which the driver sings along to at the top of his voice. So who knows what brought me home.

  Or who.

  My eyes wouldn’t open, you see. Lids were paralysed. Lead dead-weights, same as my lips and my tongue and my voice.

  So all I know is that my companion on the ride home was some bloke whose shouted conversation with the driver wasn’t in English or school French.

  Whoever he was, he somehow knew my address, even though I’m sure it was about the only personal detail I hadn’t given Stefan.

  And he went through my jeans for my keys.

  And he must have been stealthy as a cat-burglar. Not to mention chivalry itself.

  Because when I woke with the hangover from Hell’s Hell – (Note to self: Nothing glam about Champagne – it’s poison). I was in my bed and under the covers. Shoes off, but fully dressed. My hands were crossed, Sleeping Beauty-style, over my chest, and the rose Stefan had given me was clasped in them. On my bedside table someone had left me a mug of water, two paracetamol and a strategically placed basin.

  All this had happened without my dad hearing a sound.

  9

  to hell and beyond

  I knew Dad must have been oblivious to his only daughter being carried home bladdered and put to bed by at least one strange man, because there was a note outside my bedroom door. I slipped on it when I finally groped from my room thinking a shower might drown the evil invisible goblin drumming my temples with a pickaxe. It didn’t. And I won’t go into details about how sick I was. Suffice to say my three-course meal tasted better on the way down than it did on the way up.

  Too hungover to even dry myself, I crawled back into bed with Dad’s note. Had to crawl back out again to find sunglasses. The white paper left my eyes feeling like they were being skewered by red-hot knitting needles.

  Morning my precious Clod,

  Dad had written.

  6 a.m. on my day off.

  Your snoring woke me, sweetness. Thank you.

  And I thought your

  humming was bad!!!

  I’m away fishing for some peace and quiet.

  Perthshire. Meeting your

  Uncle Mike half way.

  See you tonight.

  Pa.

  PS – Had a Senior Moment and mislaid my

  VISA card. Sure it was in my wallet. Any

  chance you’ll have a snuffle around?

  ‘Later,’ I groaned, curling into a ball of misery. My intention was to die, and I probably did for a few hours or weeks or years – who knows – until a bell started ringing and ringing and ringing in my head: dingdongdongdongdingdong.

  The sound was far away at first, so I ignored it, but it didn’t quit: instead it became louder, taking the throb in my temples to new realms of pain: dingdingdingdongdingdong.

  Then it grew even more annoying. It was being accompanied by non-stop banging.

  ‘I will never drink champagne again in my life,’ were the first words I croaked when I realised I was not actually in a queue outside the Pearly Gates. No, I was in Hell where someone had already tortured me by superglueing my tongue to my bottom teeth, Artexing the roof of my mouth and sandpapering my throat.

  It was dark in Hell, too, and I was beginning to hear voices in my head on top of infernal ringing and banging.

  ‘Hello, Claudia Quinn. Anyone home?’ the voices – male and female, one as deep as the other – were calling.

  I whimpered and rolled over. Ouch! Something sharp pierced my bare bahooky. That shot me out of bed. I’d been sobered up by the thorns on Stefan’s red rose.

  So I wasn’t in Hell after all. And actually, once I was on my feet, the evil invisible goblin seemed to have tired of pounding my head quite so hard. Even better, the horrible ringing had stopped, although the banging continued. And the voices were still shouting.

  ‘Hey? Anyone home? Police here.’

  ‘No sign of life, sir, we’ll try later.’ I recognised Marjory’s voice. Then everything grew quiet.

  ‘P’lice?’

  Up in my room I froze in front of my mirror, a naked lifesize statue: Hungover Lassie with Glass of Water. 21st Century. Alabaster. Artist unknown.

  There were heavy footsteps crunching a retreat down our long gravel path. The click and squeak of our annoying gate at the far end. A car started before three doors slammed and wheels pulled away on wet tarmac. Now there was silence.

  Except for my whisper in the dark.

  ‘The hammer guy. He’s dead.’

  I was covered in goosepimples, my heart racing.

  ‘What happens now?’ I gulped just as I Am the Walrus rattled tinnily from the chair on which the jacket I’d worn last night had been draped.

  10

  better safe than sorry

  ‘Smart place, babes. A bit lonely, though.’

  Less than five minutes after phoning to give me a five-minute warning – ‘I need to see you, Claudia’ – and in way less than I needed to spruce up, Stefan stood in the centre of our living room.

  He’s back to see me. This is unbelievable.

  It wasn’t a cruel mirage either. Even after I pinched myself, Stefan was still there. The pointy cowboy boots he was wearing sank into the fancy rug Mum didn’t allow footwear on, leaving their outline on the pile. The Man in Black he was today – Hello, I’m Johnny Cas
h – his full-length, rain-spotted leather coat scenting the room deliciously when it swung behind the rest of him to examine Mum’s display-cabinet crammed with antique perfume bottles, then the horrible cow-specked Highland landscapes Dad reckoned would fund his retirement.

  ‘Hope Mr and Mrs Claudia are well insured. There’s fair brass ‘ere, lass.’ Stefan didn’t quite pull off the Ee-By-Gum accent he was attempting. It jarred with his own. Never mind. I forgave him because when he flung himself down on our sofa he grabbed the belt of my dressing gown. Pulled me next to him.

  ‘Show me again,’ he said. His hand went from my knee to the business card I’d scooped from the front door when I opened it to let Stefan in.

  Starsky-Stark’s name and mobile number were on one side. The back read:

  Ms Quinn,

  Called 4.30pm.

  Will try again after 7.30pm unless you

  arrange alternative time.

  Need to talk to you.

  ‘Think that means this is a mudder enquiry?’ I said ‘mudder enquiry’ like they always do on Taggart while Stefan read the card.

  ‘I better phone. See what the cops want –’ I went on. But Stefan interrupted.

  ‘You mean phone now? When I’m here to see you? Take you out for tea? Don’t think so –’ Stefan was grinning at me when he plucked the DCI’s calling card from my hand. He held it at arm’s length by the tiniest corner like it was something contaminated. When he dropped it to the carpet his smile dropped too. He shook his head slowly. Scowled.

  ‘Never tell cops anything, babes,’ Stefan said in a low voice. ‘They’re bad news, every last one of them. Bad guys with badges my father calls them –’

  Stefan had hunched forward on the sofa. While he spoke he ground the DCI’s card under the sole of his pointy boot. Because his hair had flopped all thick and blondly over his face it felt like he’d curtained himself away from me.

  Must have some private grief with the cops, I decided, also trying to figure if Stefan’s hair was naturally streaked with so many shades of blonde, or subtly highlighted.