Wouldn’t let him sneak a few vials of Botox from the salonfor her either. But why should a woman her age look thirty years older than she really was?
Mum handed him the mug, then beamed out at the garden. ‘Ooh, it’slovely, Andy.’
‘It’s a start, anyway.’
‘Don’t be much longer, though. Can’t have you catching your death out here.’
On a night as hot and clammy as a tramp’s armpit?
‘It’s OK. Got the fire to keep me toasty, the smoke to keep the midges away, and you to keep me topped up with tea.’ He took a sip. ‘Mmmm, delicious. Lovely, thanks.’
‘Oh, really...’ Mum frowned at him, brushing a couple of leaves off his Mr McPork T-shirt. ‘What are you wearing that scruffy old thing for?’
He looked down at the pig mascot, with its butcher’s cleaver and ‘I’VEGOTSOMEMEATFORYOU, BABY’ – the print all cracked and faded. ‘I’m only gardening.’
‘It’s full of holes.’ She gazed up into his eyes, like he was the most precious thing in the whole stinking world. ‘Maybe I should get you a sweater?’
Christno.
‘Won’t be long, Mum. Promise. Just want to get this all tidied away, and maybe we can have breakfast on the patio tomorrow? I can make pancakes, if you like. Pretend we’re on holiday?’
She stood on her tippytoes and kissed him on the cheek. ‘You’re a good boy, looking after your old mum.’
Yeah, he was.
And that’s when the KL919 decided to spoil the mood – lighting up the sky as it came in to land at Aberdeen Airport. Its flight path didn’t take it right over the house, but the big Embraer ERJ-190 twin-jet roared over the field on the otherside of the garden wall. Getting lower and lower, wheels down, ready to land. A huge blue-and-white carrion crow.
Mum’s face darkened, shooting her fist into the air with the first two fingers extended. Bellowing it out against the engines’ whine: ‘FUCK OFF BACK TO AMSTERDAM, YOU HERRING-MUNCHING DUTCHBASTARDS!’
But the pilot didn’t – they never did – he just carried on with his final descent, over the airport fence, and onto the runway.
As soon as the plane was gone, the thunder faded from Mum’s eyes. She reached up and patted Andrew’s cheek. ‘Don’t be too late.’ Then off she shuffled. A fifty-year-old woman in an eighty-year-old’s body.
How was that fair?
He waited till she was safely inside, with the door shut, before grabbing the old metal pole and ramming it into the fire. Yanking it round and round, stirring the burning sticks, sending a swarm of sparks leaping into the tacky air. Going round and round. Whipping it up. Heat building and building. Till the whole world blazed around him...
Then he fetched the bin-bag from under the patio table.
Opened it and pulled out a copy of that morning’sPress and Journal,Aberdeen Examiner, and the latestEvening Expressas well. All three papers rumpled and creased where he’d been through them twice – reading and rereading every article, just to be sure.
Not one of them evenmentionedNatasha Agapova.
Andrew tossed them into the incinerator, feeding the flames.
Then dipped back into the bin-bag for the two pairs of fancy panties and the lacy bra. They went into the fire, then the dirty stocking.
Quick look left and right to make sure no one was watching,and the pants from Natasha’s washing basket got one last sniff for luck before the blaze took them.
What a waste.
Next to burn was every single thing he’d been wearing last night – from the black cargo pants and hoodie, right down to his socks and pants. Fizzling and smoking, thenwhoomp, they finally caught – polyester turning the smoke oily black.
Then the wee rucksack.
Only two more things in the bag.
The Knife wouldn’t burn, but a thorough spraying with bleach and it would get chucked in the river tomorrow.
