The Midnight Choir by Gene Kerrigan

Author:Gene Kerrigan [Kerrigan, Gene]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9781409015802
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2006-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

25

Friday will tell the tale.

The bitch has dropped the blazing smile she usually uses, like she wants Dixie to understand this is serious. The bitch should be fat and warty, an old hag with a voice like emphysema, but she’s about the same age as Dixie and her face has a glow and her teeth are perfect as though someone designed them. Her sweet voice can do the tone that shows how caring she is and when she says that Dixie can’t have Christopher back she does so with tenderness.

Five months since that day at the Prunty. Five months without Christopher.

Monday, when Dixie went to the meeting with her, the bitch walked her to the edge of the cliff.

‘Friday will tell the tale,’ she says.

Friday. Today.

Over.

Too late now.

The Prunty Shopping Centre is fifteen minutes’ walk away, but it takes longer when Christopher is in a mood. Dixie promises him a lolly.

She’s thinking things through. Health-and-fitness clubs – everywhere you look, people running and stretching and hoisting weights, trying to shed the fat so that they’ll look good when they got to the pubs and restaurants. She’s made a list. She’ll start with the clubs nearest where she lives, work her way out until she finds one that has a few hours’ work to offer.

She buys Christopher the lolly in the Sweet Factory, and he runs ahead to Marie’s Big Little Toy Shop, off to the left of the supermarket, where he’ll browse until Dixie’s finished shopping. He’s good with toys, no whining, no demands – he knows money doesn’t grow on trees, but he likes to take the toys down from the shelves and examine them at length, his serious little face appraising them like the expert he is.

The supermarket has changed the aisles around again. Just when you’re used to the layout they change it. They try to stop customers getting used to where everything is, so that you have to check out every aisle and end up buying stuff you don’t need. Dixie has no problem ignoring the temptations. She knows how much she’s going to spend. She finds the tinned tomatoes, the tuna, the sliced pan, the porridge.

At the checkout there’s a kid in the togs of the local GAA team helping to pack bags. Dixie throws a few pence in his bucket. Her head is singing. Half an hour before she decided to go shopping Dixie was slicing a line of coke, bent over her bedside locker, a small, solitary celebration of the possibilities she’s decided to chase.

Get work – stay clean.

She feels an enthusiasm that she hasn’t felt about anything for a long time. She’s wondering if she should swallow her pride, go see Obi-Wan Kenobi, see if he’s changed his mind about helping her get work in the fitness business. It’s been two years since the trouble – if she’s respectful, contrite – it’s not like she wants a full-time job, just a couple of hours here and there – mornings, when Christopher’s at

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