Relief Valve: The Plumber's Mate, Book 2 (2 page)

“No. That’s the thing. She always seemed way younger than my mum. She had all this curly blonde hair—still rocking the eighties perm, I guess—and she used to take me down the park and play football with me and stuff. Mum never liked going down the park with me. Can’t blame her, really.”

“Too full of yobs from the council estate?”

I really wasn’t feeling up to reliving the memory of my first dead body right now. “Something like that.”

Phil sort of
hmphed
. “Yeah, I remember your mum. Council estate yobs really weren’t her thing, were they? I suppose they still aren’t.”

I pulled away and stared at him for a moment. “Are you calling my mum stuck up?”

“I’m saying she’s got class, you wanker. God, you’re touchy sometimes. Come here.” He pulled me back against his side, his hand drifting down as if by accident to rest on my arse.

“Yeah, well. Runs in the family, doesn’t it?” I said with a cheeky grin.

Phil rolled his eyes. “You, classy? Don’t push it. So you’re seeing your sister tomorrow? She’s the barrister, right?”

“Yeah. Carluccio’s.” Was he angling for an invite? I thought I’d better come up with a way of distracting him just in case, so I swung my leg over Phil’s recently vacated lap and started proving I could be a lot more fun than Arthur.

Classy? No. Creative? Yes.

Chapter Two

Carluccio’s, in St Christopher Place, was modern, bright, and ear-splittingly noisy. It was market day in St Albans, so the place was stuffed to bursting with yummy mummies showing off the latest toddler-and-buggy combos and picking at green salads and glasses of fizzy water. The place smelled more of rice cakes than of garlic.

I was on time—I swear I was—but my sister was already there, sitting at a table near the back with her phone out, checking her emails so as not to waste a second of her very valuable time. All right, for all I could tell she might have been playing Angry Birds, but I know what my money was on. Cherry hadn’t changed much. Still the same mousy-brown hair, wrenched back in an uncompromising ponytail. She didn’t wear makeup, never had, and dressed a bit frumpy, in a middle-aged, middle-class, Church of England sort of way. She looked up and frowned when she saw me. “
There
you are.” I swear her accent had got posher.

Or maybe I’d just got more common.

I squeezed past a couple of off-road baby buggies, picking up a light dusting of Hertfordshire mud in the process, and sat down opposite her. “All right, Sis?”

“You’d better choose quickly,” she said by way of fond sisterly greeting, thrusting a menu at me. “I’ve got a meeting at two thirty.”

I gave it a glance and shrugged. “I’ll just have a spaghetti carbonara.” I twisted round in my seat and managed to catch the waitress’s eye.

Cherry went for the chicken salad with prunes. I asked for a diet Coke, and she ordered a glass of fizzy water.

“So, how’ve you been, then?” I asked to be polite as we waited for our food.

Cherry ate
polite
for breakfast. “We didn’t see you at Mum and Dad’s for Christmas. Again.” It sounded like her court voice.
And I put it to you, m’lud, that the defendant wilfully and culpably spurned his mother’s roast turkey and all the trimmings (cries of horror from the gallery).

I looked down briefly to check I wasn’t actually sitting in the dock in handcuffs. “Yeah, well… I had stuff on, that’s all.” Stuff like avoiding soggy veg and stodgy conversation. And hoping a certain private investigator would turn up for a cosy Christmas dinner but not actually asking him until it was way too late for anyone to change their plans.

“Stuff? What stuff? You’re single and childless—how much
stuff
could there be?”
It seems clear to me, m’lud, and I’m sure the jury will agree, that the defendant’s alibi is flimsy at best.

“I’ve got cats, all right? I can’t just abandon them. Pets are for Christmas too, not just for life. And, well… I’m with someone now.” Not that Phil had actually shown his face round mine until Boxing Day.

“A man?”

“Er, yeah? Since when has it ever not been a man?”

“Oh, I don’t know. People change, you know.” At least she wasn’t sounding like she was wearing a horsehair wig anymore. “So who’s this one, then? Not that awful one with the dog?”

I sighed.
One time
I’d taken Gary round to Mum and Dad’s for Christmas, a few years ago when he’d been suffering from a particularly traumatic recent breakup. Not that they aren’t all traumatic for Gary, poor sod. Since then, the whole bloody family seems to have it fixed in their heads that me and him are an item. “Told you, Gary’s just a mate. And what’s wrong with him, anyway?”

“What’s right with him? Honestly, when he told that story about King’s Cross Station toilets, poor Mum didn’t know where to look!”

Okay, maybe she had a point there. Cherry, mind, had known where to look. It was at Gary. With daggers. “The bloke I’m with is called Phil,” I told her, secure in the knowledge that, unlike Gary, it wouldn’t ring any bells. Catch my sister taking an interest in my life. “Phil Morrison. He’s a private investig—”

“Phil Morrison?” She cut me off sharply. “Not the Phil Morrison who pushed you under a car when you were seventeen?”

“What? No! He didn’t push me. I ran. By accident. And how the bloody hell do you remember him after all this time? You don’t even remember my birthday!”

“I remember your birthday. We just don’t exchange cards. Anyway, there were some interesting legal ramifications, that’s all. I was very into tort at the time.”

Anyone else, I’d have said something like, “Taut abs?” But I wasn’t sure I was feeling up to one of Cherry’s patented withering looks.

Not that she let me get a word in edgewise, anyway. “What on earth are you doing with him? I thought you hated each other.
You
certainly ought to hate him. We could have sued, you know, but Dad thought they weren’t worth it, living on the council estate.”

I bristled on Phil’s behalf. “Yeah, well—it’s like you said. People change. He’s a decent bloke now.”

Her eyes narrowed. I could practically hear a little voice in her head going,
Hearsay! The jury will disregard that last statement.
“So how long’s this been going on?”

“Couple of months,” I said, as casually as I could. “We met—met again, I mean—back in November, over the murder in Brock’s Hollow.”

“Oh my God. I knew I’d seen his name somewhere recently. It was in the papers. He was the one who got shot, wasn’t he?”

Um. Maybe there were one or two things I’d forgotten to mention in my not-quite-weekly-all-right-more-like-monthly phone calls to Mum. I rubbed my arm. “Can’t believe everything you read in the papers, you know.”

Especially seeing as Phil and I might just have made a concerted effort to keep my name out of all the stories about the murder. Whoever said “all publicity is good publicity” clearly didn’t work in the kind of business where women on their own, the elderly and the infirm had to invite him and his big bag of tools into their homes on a daily basis.

She ignored my unsubtle hint for sympathy. “You were involved in that as well? Why?”

“Phil was asked to investigate by Melanie Porter’s family. You know, the girl who died. She was engaged to someone we were both at school with—Graham Carter. Remember him?”

“Don’t be daft, of course I don’t. Although I recognise the name from the papers. But how did you get involved?”

I looked over at the window currently being smeared with orange goo by a solemn-faced toddler in a high chair while Mum nattered gaily to her chums. “The police. They asked me to help find her.” The police, now, they’ve always been great about keeping my name out of the news. Probably so no-one knows just how bloody desperate they were, calling in a so-called psychic.

“Oh. You’re still doing that, then.” It was said flatly. Like, say, the sort of voice you’d use to say,
No, m’lud, the defendant has NOT ceased his hobby of torturing and dismembering little fluffy kittens
.

“Yeah, well, not everyone changes. Take it you’re still single, then?” I couldn’t imagine Cherry with a bloke. She had
spinster of this parish
stamped right through her like a stick of Brighton rock.

And now she was blushing. “Not exactly, no.”

“Bloody hell, have you got a boyfriend?” I was tempted to check out the window just to make sure there weren’t any airborne porkers flitting past. “Good thing you didn’t take me up on the park suggestion. You could knock me over with a feather—all those Canada geese would have bloody flattened me.”

“God, you sound about twelve. Yes, actually, I have met someone.” Her chin rose, defiant. “
He
went to Christmas dinner at Mum and Dad’s. Thank you.” She turned briefly to the waitress, who was just putting our plates down in front of us.

“Cheers, love,” I added with a smile. The waitress dimpled and swept away with a swish of curvy hips. “So go on, tell us all about him. Found yourself a bit of rough, have you? Tell you what, I’d have come to Christmas dinner just to see that, if I’d known.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s a canon of the Church of England.” I wasn’t too sure what sort of place a canon occupied in the church hierarchy, but the way she said it, you’d have thought this bloke had Jesus himself looking nervously over his shoulder.

“Is he a loose cannon?”

“Very funny. His name’s Gregory. Gregory Titmus.”

“Rings a faint bell…” Unlike my mate Gary, who’s always been loud and proud about both his camp and his campanology. “You sure he’s not gay?”

She tutted. “Not you as well. Honestly, just because someone’s reached their forties without getting married… People will keep jumping to conclusions.”

Uh-oh. I remembered Cherry was due to hit the big four-oh in a few months. “Nah, that’s not it. Honest. Actually, I dunno where I got the idea from.”

“Well, Gregory’s always been open about his support for gay clergy,” she said dubiously, cutting up a piece of chicken into its component molecules.

I nodded encouragingly. “Yeah, that’ll be it. I’ve probably seen his name in
Pink News
or something. Being supportive.”

She gave me a hard look.

“What? No, seriously, that’s probably it. What, were you worried I might have met him at a gay club or something? Now who’s jumping to conclusions? Anyway, I don’t even go to any gay clubs.”

“I wasn’t jumping to conclusions! Stop putting words into my mouth.” She frowned at a prune as she prodded it with her fork. “Maybe if you
did
go to gay clubs, you’d meet someone a bit better than Phil Morrison.”

“Let it go, Sis, let it go.” I forked up some spaghetti and gave it a twirl. “Anyway, I thought we were here to talk about Auntie Lol.”

Cherry sighed. “Don’t you think it’s time you started calling her by her proper name? I assume you can pronounce
Laura
these days?”

“Bit late now, innit?” I took a swig of Coke, silently toasting Auntie Lol.

“I’d have thought you of all people would have some respect for the dead.”

I jabbed at a rogue piece of bacon. “What’s so bloody respectful about changing someone’s name after they’re gone? And anyway, what do you mean, me
of all people
?”

“You’ve spent enough time with them. The dead, that is.” I swear I could see the prunes on her plate shrivelling up further under the force of Cherry’s glare.

“Oh, for—you make it sound like every time I step out the door, I’m knee-deep in corpses! Anyway, you’re a fine one to talk, Miss Spends-Her-Days-with-Criminals.”

“I don’t
associate
with them. I just defend them.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t exactly go down the pub with the dead either.” I paused. “I mean, I would, but they’re shit at buying their round. And they’re always losing fingers and stuff, and it puts you right off your peanuts, finding bits—”

“
Anyway
,” Cherry interrupted me. “The bequest is a bit, well, strange.”

“Strange? What sort of strange?” God, she hadn’t left me a collection of dodgy sex toys, had she? Yeah, I knew Auntie Lol had a girlfriend, but I was quite happy staying in the delusion that the closest they ever got was a cup of tea and a cuddle. It was like thinking of your parents having sex. Worse. Your
grandparents
having sex.

“Well, you know what she was like. She never could see the harm in encouraging you.”

“Encouraging me to do what?”

There was a slice of lemon in Cherry’s glass of fizzy water. It was currently curling up and cringing at the sourness of her expression. “You know. Your
thing
.”

Oh. That. I carefully kept my face blank. “Sorry, don’t follow.”

“Yes, you do. Your
finding-things
thing.” She pronounced every syllable with the sort of distaste you’d expect if she’d just discovered a cockroach performing unspeakable acts with a maggot in her salad. Then she sighed. “I always thought you’d grow out of that.”

“Well, I’m only twenty-nine. There’s still hope. So are you going to tell me about this bequest, or what?”

She huffed. “It’s so silly. You have to go to her old house in Mill Hill and look for it.”

“Hang on, Mill Hill?” That was north London. “Auntie Lol lived in Scotland. Near Edinburgh. And before that, St Albans.”