Mr. Flood's Last Resort(37)
How?
“Can I help you, Mr. Flood?” I sound abnormally bright.
He must have seen me jump. I quickly wash the knife, dry it, and put it in the drawer, in case he’s tempted to start right away with the murdering.
“I’ll paint you, Drennan.”
My heart is in my mouth. “I don’t know—”
“Wear your hair up,” he says. “We’ll start tomorrow.”
*
I’M HALFWAY down the garden path with a bin bag in each hand when I see Gabriel Flood up ahead. He’s in jeans with a white shirt tucked in over the bulge of his stomach. He is still wearing loafers.
“Let me take that for you.” He smiles and holds out his hand. “How’s the old bugger today?”
“He’s grand. I’ll leave you to go in and see him now.”
Gabriel walks ahead, gallant with the rubbish. “Actually, it’s you I came to see, Maud. I wondered if we could have a word.”
“I need to be somewhere.”
He puts the rubbish into one of the wheelie bins and follows me out of the gate. “I could give you a lift.”
“No, thanks,” I say.
“My car’s just there.”
Renata’s voice in my ear cautions me against accepting a lift from a man in loafers. “The bus is fine.”
“But a lift would make a nice change? We could go for a quick coffee on the way.” He motions at a brand-new black BMW across the road.
I’m surprised. I had my money on something more prudent for a lecturer. A ?koda, perhaps, with tweed upholstery, hot-wired to Radio Four.
“I’m sorry, Gabriel, but—”
“Please, Maud.” He fixes me with a desperate, harassed kind of look. “I need to talk to you about something. Something that concerns Dad.”
I assess the likelihood of Gabriel Flood driving me to the yard of a disused warehouse, bargaining for illicit sex, and then beating me to death with a car jack.
Then I narrow my eyes and speak like a woman armed with a dangerously sharp crossword pencil, a swift right knee, and a Wing Chun taster session.
“All right.”
*
AT THE coffee shop Gabriel takes a seat in a corner away from the window and waves the waiter over. He orders coffee and an all-day breakfast sandwich without looking at the menu. He’s making an effort to seem calm and controlled, but the red face on him and the wet top lip betray the real state of affairs.
He scans the room surreptitiously, then leans towards me. “I need a favor, Maud. It’s a bit sensitive.”
I watch his fat fingers as he plays with the top of the ketchup bottle.
The waiter brings the coffee over. Gabriel looks pained by the interruption. He runs a hand over his thinning hair, as if checking it’s still there, a quick frisk. Then he fiddles with the sugar bowl until the waiter walks away again.
He lowers his voice. “I need to find something, in the house.”
“Oh yes?” I sound disinterested.
His top lip is becoming wetter; he dabs at it with a paper napkin. “Nothing of any material worth, only sentimental value.”
“Can you not just ask your father for it?”
He frowns. “You saw what the old man was like with me the other day. He hardly lets me step foot in the door.”
He looks crestfallen for a moment, then he licks the back of the spoon with his fleshy tongue.
“I’m not quite sure how I can help, Gabriel.”
Gabriel takes a sip of his coffee and pretends he’s just had a thought. “Is it too devious to ask if you would take Dad out of the house for the day? Then I could swing by and search for it myself?”
I smile at Gabriel, wondering if he realizes that I have the advanced bullshit warning system which comes from working with the mad, bad, and cantankerous day in, day out. This is how I can tell that someone is lying about eating the last custard cream, willfully shitting their knickers, or hiding my handbag.
“I wasn’t aware that your father ever went out.”
“You could convince him, surely; you are so good with him.”
He laughs; the small points of his teeth remind me of some kind of sinister fish. He has a pale clamminess to him, as if he’s spent his life skulking around in the bottom of a tank avoiding daylight.
“What about a day trip?” he ventures. “To the coast perhaps?”
I appear to consider it. “It would do him the power of good. You’d want me to take him?”
Gabriel grins. “Of course, all expenses paid.”
“Wonderful! Mr. Flood will be so excited. I’m sure he’ll be grateful to you for wanting to treat him.”
Gabriel’s grin falters. “Let’s not tell him it was my idea. You know, he might think there’s something cloak-and-dagger going on. Which there’s not, of course.”
I smile benignly. “Of course not, but there will be procedures. I’ll have to write a risk assessment and run it past the agency for permission.” Just to see him hop, I add, “It should only take a couple of weeks to set up.”
And hop he does. “Would you really need to go to all that trouble, Maud?” he asks, the pitch of his voice rising with a pleasing note of hysteria.
The waiter arrives with his all-day breakfast sandwich.