She looked at Einstein’s remains and felt her tongue start to sweat, tried to quell the rising sickness. She’d seen bodies in all states, decapitated, hit by a high-speed train, churned up in an industrial blender. Two years ago she lay with her dead husband upstairs for hours before she alerted anyone else. She looked at Einstein’s dismembered and partially eaten body, a dog who came into her life in the back of a crashed stolen car. A dog who gave his life to save hers.
Einstein lay on a tray in the embalming room. Archie was out picking up a body so she had the place to herself. The light was low and she felt the chill from the air con against her neck. Her bandaged arm throbbed with pain. The dog’s head and legs were intact, but in between was a bloody mess of fur, bone and sinew, his ribcage smashed by the cat’s jaws, flesh and guts gnawed out. His spine was intact, linking the head to the rear legs and tail, the tail that thumped on the floor every time Dorothy came through the door. He’d bonded with Dorothy quickly after the disaster of his last owner. And she needed him, still grieving for Jim, she soaked up the unconditional love. She reached out and ran a finger down his back, tickled behind his ear, then touched the scar tissue at the eye socket where he’d been injured long ago. She made herself look at the mess of his body, ragged skin and fur hanging over a rib. She imagined that broken ribcage rising and falling, pictured Einstein panting in the sun after a walk, or shivering in the draughty air con, or trotting back to her in the park with a foot in his mouth.
Anxiety swam up her body and she tried to swallow it down. Decades of meditation didn’t help. Her tears fell on Einstein’s nose and she leaned down and kissed him there. She could smell him, his usual dog smell mixed with rotting flesh and the metal tang of blood.
She left and walked quickly through the house, past Indy at reception, up two flights of stairs to the studio, strode to the drum kit, her ribs aching as she moved, the scratches on her neck throbbing too, her arm burning away, reminding her what Einstein had done, what the jaguar did. She put headphones on and picked up her drumsticks. The sunburst Gretsch kit gleamed in the light beaming through the window and Dorothy looked out, the tops of trees and tenement flats, Edinburgh Castle built into the rock, Salisbury Crags jutting above the city like a ski ramp, the Meadows sprawling between, masses of parkland and trees and bushes and big gardens for the cat to be hiding in. She wondered if Whiskers would remain free forever, make her way to the Pentlands, or north into the Highlands where there was more space to roam.
She picked an early Neil Young playlist and began to drum along. She needed something simple but with soul, something to lose herself in. But her arm screamed in pain, the ache of her ribs pulsing in time with the beat and her movement. ‘Heart of Gold’ was simple 4/4, but needed close control on the snare, Young’s voice struggling as he said he was getting old, Holy Christ she could relate to that, her body felt like it would never heal again. And maybe it wouldn’t, when you got to her age every little thing left a mark, her life was a collection of physical and mental scars, wounds that she carried, and all the mindfulness in the world couldn’t combat that.
‘Harvest Moon’ needed brushes but she didn’t have any handy, just leaned in and rolled the sticks lightly on the snare, an old shuffle beat. She loved the Laurel Canyon stuff, had a place in her heart that was always California. There was something beautiful about the hippy ethic, although the truth about peace and love was just the same old misogyny, guys fucking around with impunity, women paying the price. Her left arm raged but she thought she was holding it together until the 3/4 sway of ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’. She moved to the ride cymbal, then the harmonies kicked in on the chorus and she felt them overwhelm her, tears running down her face, ugly sobs in her throat, but she didn’t stop, kept the beat, the only thing that mattered, tears on the snare drum darkening the skin, then that chorus again, goddamn, it was the weakness in his voice that made it, singing about his world falling apart.
She looked up and realised Indy was at the studio door. She pressed pause and took the headphones off.
‘Someone wants to speak to you,’ Indy said.
Dorothy wiped at her eyes and cheeks. ‘Who?’
‘She says she’s Mrs Winters,’ Indy said, eyebrows raised.
Dorothy fanned at her face outside the arranging room, tried to get the blood from her cheeks. She opened the door and saw Edith Winters sitting on a large leather sofa. This was a room to impress customers, oak fittings, egg-and-dart cornicing, ornate fireplace, large lily bouquet on the coffee table. It smelled of a respectable, long-running family business.
The word that sprang to Dorothy’s mind about Edith was self-contained. She was small, hands in her lap, cardigan and slacks, comfy shoes. She seemed to be trying not to take up too much space in the world, and Dorothy wondered about that. She was late fifties or early sixties, but something about her demeanour, her set hair and closed face, made her seem older. Dorothy tried to imagine her behind a drum kit but couldn’t.
‘Mrs Winters.’
Edith stood and held out a hand, solid handshake.
Dorothy sat. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
Edith was stony-faced. Dorothy thought of her own tears minutes ago. Everyone is different.
Edith nodded out of the window at the garden. ‘Is that where he did it?’
It took Dorothy a moment to understand. ‘Yes.’
‘We are good Christian folk.’ Edith gripped her hands tight in her lap. ‘I don’t believe it.’
Dorothy frowned. ‘What exactly did the police tell you?’
She’d passed Edith’s details to Thomas so an officer would get in touch.
Edith stuck her chin out. ‘That he hung himself from a tree.’ She pointed out of the window. ‘That tree?’
Jesus, why hadn’t Dorothy used a room on the other side of the house? ‘Yes.’
‘Did you see it?’
‘I came home later, my daughter had cut him down by then.’
‘So you don’t know it was suicide.’
Dorothy narrowed her eyes. ‘The police think it’s fairly clear.’
Edith shook her head. ‘My Derek wouldn’t do that.’
Dorothy bit her tongue. The man abused his daughter for years, he didn’t hold the moral high ground. She didn’t know how much Edith knew and didn’t want to bludgeon her with any details.
‘We never know what others are going through,’ Dorothy said.
Edith’s neck muscles tightened. ‘He wasn’t going through anything.’ Her words dripped with anger. ‘We were happily married for thirty-five years.’
Oh boy. Dorothy didn’t know how to address that level of denial. Maybe Edith just didn’t know, maybe she was clueless. Can a mother really live in the same house with her husband and daughter for years and not know?
‘What else did the police say?’
‘They said you want to do the funeral, which seems a bit rich, him dying in your garden.’
‘I had nothing to do with it, Abi said she wanted the Skelfs to handle the ceremony.’
Edith rubbed her hands together and stared at Dorothy like she’d lost her mind. ‘Who the hell is Abi?’
Dorothy looked at her for a long time, trying to work out something from the way her face was set, the way her body moved. She didn’t know and now Dorothy would have to tell her.
‘Abi is your granddaughter,’ Dorothy said. ‘Why do you think Derek was here?’
Edith looked confused. ‘I don’t have a granddaughter.’