The End of the Wasp Season by Denise Mina

Author:Denise Mina [MINA, DENISE]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780316125703
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2011-10-04T23:20:57+00:00

TWENTY-FIVE

Kay was plating up mince and potatoes when the buzzer rang and made her flinch. John was expecting his pal Robbie to come up. Robbie had the guilty look of a wee boy who wanked all the time, possibly not at normal things. John had told her three times this evening that Robbie was coming up to do homework, so she knew they weren’t planning on doing that. Still, as long as they were hanging about the house she could keep opening the bedroom door and walking in without warning. Robbie’s brother was on tags for fighting as well. Nasty family.

The buzzer rang again and she shouted, “John!”

He came out of his room, looking paranoid, and saw her holding the big pot of mince over the plates. She worried suddenly that he might be smoking a lot of hash and made a mental note to smell for it.

“Buzzer. Might be Robbie.”

John picked up the receiver and turned away from her. “Aye?”

The person on the other end spoke too long for it to be monosyllabic Robbie. He was making his excuses, maybe. John pressed the button for the lobby doors and hung up.

“Is he not coming up?”

“Eh?”

“Is Robbie coming up?” she said slowly, and nodded at the mince pot. “Does he want some tea?”

John looked vague. “No, it’s the polis.”

“The polis? Again?”

“To talk to you.” He tucked his T-shirt into his jeans at the back, as if he had a gun, and walked away.

Moving quickly, Kay slapped a ladle of mince on all five plates and dished up the boiled potatoes and beans. She was squeezing tomato ketchup onto four of the plates when a knock rattled the glass pane on the front door.

Stepping out into the hall, she banged quickly on Marie’s door and opened it to an indignant “Hey!”

There were two warped faces behind the mottled glass on the door, and neither one looked like Alex. One was shorter than the other, neat hair, looking down the corridor, the other staring straight at the glass as if they could see through it.

“Tea’s out,” called Kay, watching the front door while moving around the hall. “No ketchup.”

“I don’t want any—”

“Don’t give us any shit, Marie.”

She didn’t have time to knock before she opened Joe and Frankie’s door. “Tea’s up.” She heard them stir, grunting as they got off their beds. She opened John’s door and shouted, “Mince!” over the noise of his stereo.

The police could see her moving around. The smaller one lifted a hand to knock again but Kay opened it before they made contact.

“Yes?” she said.

A man and a woman. The man had a tiny wee mouth too small for his face, and wiry dark hair. She knew the woman from Mrs. Thalaine’s the day before, small, dark, big hooked nose, but she looked different at Kay’s front door, familiar, like a woman she might be friends with.

They introduced themselves—the man, Harris, for the first time, and Leonard smiling, holding her neat little hand out—and asked if they could come in and talk to her for a moment about Sarah Erroll.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.