Fruitful Bodies Read online

  “ONE THING THE BRITS DO BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE IS THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE NOVEL.… RUTH RENDELL AND MINETTE WALTERS ARE TWO EXAMPLES OF THE BEST PRACTITIONERS OF THIS ART. YOU CAN ADD MORAG JOSS TO THIS LIST.”—DEADLY PLEASURES

  Praise for Morag Joss’s

  Spellbinding Mysteries

  FRUITFUL BODIES

  “The most persuasive chronicler of the city perhaps best known to some as Jane Austen’s stamping ground.” —London Times

  “Joss has a remarkable talent—reminiscent of early P. D. James—and a gift for creating wonderful characters and relationships.” —Yorkshire Post

  “Morag Joss writes with razor-sharp, wry observation.” —Bath Chronicle

  FUNERAL MUSIC

  “An exquisite crime novel.… If rich, gorgeous Sara sometimes seems too perfect to be true, the book’s supporting cast is nicely fleshed out with human idiosyncrasies and tangled cross-purposes. Even better are Joss’s lyrical evocations of Bath, which becomes the book’s most compelling character.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “Funeral Music earns the favorable Ruth Rendell/P. D. James comparisons Joss has received.… Not many mysteries about professional musicians show how their combination of detail and passion make them ideal detectives, but Joss knows just which strings to pull.” —Chicago Tribune

  “A very dark and disturbing mystery.… Joss has created an excellent ensemble of characters.… Funeral Music’s well-plotted story compares to those by Patricia Cornwell, James Patterson and Phillip Margolin.… Each turn of the page skillfully peels away another layer.” —Fresh Fiction

  “It is always a pleasure to welcome a new and exciting talent to British crime writing, and Morag Joss’s distinguished debut demonstrates an interesting setting, characters, both sympathetic and villainous, who are drawn with wit and perception, good writing and a plot which combines tension with credibility.” —P. D. James

  “As well plotted as Ruth Rendell and with all the psychological complexity you find in the great P. D. James, Funeral Music is an exceptionally accomplished first novel. Beautifully written, it manages to be witty and touching at the same time.… Music lovers will admire Morag Joss’s expertise and anybody who loves Bath itself has to buy this novel for the setting alone.” —Bel Mooney, Bath Chronicle

  “Both literate and sardonic, filled with persuasive characters.” —Sunday London Times

  “The skilful plotting, strong sense of place and colourful but credible characters would alone mark this book out. What makes it not only convincing crime writing but also a fine novel is its lively sense of social comedy and sharp wit.” —Good Book Guide

  “Well written and well plotted, with a good Bath back-ground.” —Evening Standard

  “A promising first novel. The author writes well and has a keen sense of place. Her evocation of Bath is very convincing.”—John Boyles, Tangled Web

  FEARFUL SYMMETRY

  “Fearful Symmetry makes the elegant city of Bath a venue for fear and suspicion. A mesmerising psychological thriller.” —London Times

  “The characters are presented in sharp detail, while their various relationships offer a complex set of variations on the theme of love, all adding a rich substrata to the skilful unravelling of the intricate plot in this accomplished and satisfying novel.” —Good Book Guide

  “Fearful Symmetry is in the finest tradition of British whodunits—constructed with page-turning skill, witty and touching in equal measure, and displaying the crucial awareness that corruption looks innocent and lives next door.” —Bel Mooney

  “A welcome addition to the crime writing genre, there are enough twists and turns to keep you guessing through-out.” —U Magazine

  “Larger-than-life characters inhabit this absorbing mystery.… The plot twists and turns to an unforeseen conclusion.” —Family Circle

  HALF BROKEN THINGS

  Winner of the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger Award

  “Sad, funny, original and wise.” —Literary Review

  “A work of fiction that sets its author on the path to greatness.” —London Times

  “It is a fantastic moral exercise as well as a gripping novel.” —Scotland on Sunday

  “This is a top-notch example of British psychological thriller writing.” —Manchester Evening News

  Also by Morag Joss

  FUNERAL MUSIC

  FEARFUL SYMMETRY

  And coming soon in

  hardcover from Delacorte:

  HALF BROKEN THINGS

  FRUITFUL BODIES

  Hodder and Stoughton UK edition published 2001

  Dell mass market / August 2005

  Published by Bantam Dell

  A division of Random House, Inc. New York,

  New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2001 by Morag Joss Cover photos by Hidenori Kataoka/Photonica &

  The Hulton Archive/Getty Images

  Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-440-33553-5

  www.bantamdell.com

  v3.1

  FOR

  FIONA, GAVIN AND NEIL

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  A List of Music Played in this Novel

  Map

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part 2

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Part 3

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  About the Author

  Preview of Half Broken Things

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Lots of people helped. John and Yvonne Cullum very kindly allowed me to turn their beautiful house into a clinic for the purposes of this story. Hamish Denny hunted out huge amounts of arcane information crucial to the plot, despite being busy either sculpting or operating on animals. Fiona Scott-Lockyer found time to show me round the Royal Albert Hall when she had the builders in. The Soil Association was very helpful, as was Howard Morrish of Dove Farm Foods.

  The late and much missed Alex Kelly was the source of the (true) story on which Chapter 10 is b
ased. Iain Burn-side helped with the Rachmaninov as well as with James, and his emails also meant that most days I began work laughing. I must thank also Olive and Bob Heffill, for sharing their knowledge of Japan and the Japanese, and Keith Shearn, former Superintendent of Bath Police, who with his wife Lyn now runs an excellent B&B on which the one in this book is not modelled.

  I am immensely grateful as ever for the support, advice and patience of Judith Murray at Greene & Heaton and Kate Lyall Grant at Hodder. And Tim and Hannah were, it should go without saying, their saintly, selfless and long-suffering selves throughout the year of writing, for which I do, truly, thank them most of all.

  A LIST OF MUSIC PLAYED IN THIS NOVEL

  Brahms Variations on a Theme by J Haydn—The St Anthony Variations

  Dvořák Cello Concerto in B minor Op. 104

  Rachmaninov Preludes Op. 23: No. 4 in D

  J S Bach Adagio from the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C, BWV 564

  J S Bach Suites for Violoncello: No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007

  Beethoven Seven Variations in E flat major on Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte

  Twelve Variations in F on Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte

  Saint-Saëns From Carnival of the animals: The Swan

  Fauré Elégie in C minor Op. 24

  PART 1

  CHAPTER 1

  SOMETHING WRONG WITH the lipstick. Joyce’s fingers, which were feeling twice their normal size, swivelled the base again and the thumb of puce lard twirled down out of sight and then welled back up out of the tube at her. She stared as it shimmered and wavered, eluding focus. Sniffing, as if this could somehow improve her eyesight, she gave it a push with one finger and inspected the smudge on her fingernail. That looked solid enough, so maybe it was only her lips that were wobbling. She wiped the finger down the front of her jacket and with another sniff looked firmly into the mirror that was held by a piece of wire to the handle of the cupboard above the Baby Belling. She sucked in a deep breath and tried to maintain a steady pout. But her reflection was telling her that the problem was not just getting her lips to hold still long enough to put the stuff on, it was the question of finding them first. They were developing a tendency to slip into her mouth and stay there, stuck to her dry teeth.

  They had never been that great anyway. The gene pool of Monifieth in 1927 had not been overstocked with luscious Aphrodite mouths in the first place, and seventy-odd years of Scottish consonants, east winds and chewing politely had not fleshed Joyce’s out any. Across the crumpled page of her face her lips looked like two horizontal curly brackets of the sort that Joyce as a little girl had practised whole jottersful of at Monifieth Elementary School, along with sevens with wavy tops and treble clefs. Joyce allowed herself a moment’s recollection of the perfection of her treble clefs with an involuntary satisfied purse of her lips, before giving herself a shake. It was another tendency she recognised; if she grew for a moment inattentive, her mind would pull her back to a past so distant that even Joyce herself viewed it with scepticism. For how could they have been real, those treble clefs? She must concentrate on the here and now. She leaned in towards the mirror again, took another deep breath and stretched out her lips to receive a straighter gash of Bengal Blush.

  Worse. Her mouth now looked like a newly stitched scar and time was getting on. She would have to allow extra for the underground walk, changing from the Northern to the Piccadilly Line at King’s Cross, especially in her best kitten-heeled shoes which had been a good fit for the first eleven years but now slowed her down because she tended to walk out of the backs of them. That was the trouble with having Scottish feet, which were longer and narrower than Englishwomen’s, she had read somewhere. It sounded finer somehow, longer, narrower feet; yet another little superiority in which one could have taken a pride if more people had known about it, although it did make for a wee problem going any distance in the kitten-heeled shoes.

  She considered wiping all the lipstick off but Bengal Blush was the finishing touch, being the exact shade of her suit, the Pringle two-piece that she’d had for, well, did it matter how long, it was a classic. A classic re-interpreted for the modern woman, she remembered being told when she bought it in Jenners on Princes Street in Edinburgh, where it was called not a suit but a costume. Ladies’ Costumes, Second Floor. And the jaunty little poodle brooch for the lapel, she’d bought that in Hosiery & Accessories on the way out, unable to resist the picture she made of a professional woman with the style and means to travel from Glasgow to Edinburgh to buy her clothes, no Sauchiehall Street for her. And from Jenners! New stockings too, six pairs on a whim although by this time she was mainly showing off to the salesgirl and the girl had known it, the tone of her ‘certainly madams’ carrying by then the merest acidity, the wee baggage. But she was getting off the point again. Concentrate on the here and now.

  Joyce began to busy herself around the bedsit, collecting purse and keys and, from a suitcase under the bed, her good handbag and chiffon scarf. Only when she had gathered everything up in her arms did a sound from behind the one armchair, followed by the rattle of Pretzel’s claws on the linoleum under the sink, remind her that she had not left him any food and he had trodden in his water bowl again.

  ‘Och, Pretzel, was that Mummy going away and not leaving you your tea?’ she said.

  She dumped her amassed accessories on the floor, mainly into the pool of spilled water, and opened a new tin of dog food while Pretzel’s rattling on the floor grew animated and the entire brown tube of dachshund torso wriggled in anticipation. The warm, already half-eaten smell that arose from the tin reminded Joyce’s innards that she was in need of sustenance too. As she stooped to put down Pretzel’s tea on the floor under the sink, where the smells of drain and warm dog were waiting to mingle with the scent of braised horse and gelatine from the bowl, her stomach, signalling its emptiness, pushed out a little shudder which puffed up through her guts and out of her mouth in a quiet, inflammable belch of vodka vapour. Sour saliva flooded the inside of her cheeks. Her throat puckered and she swallowed a mouthful of neat bile. No, not food. Something else. But there was only the remaining vodka in the bottle in her bag and she was supposed to be keeping that for when she felt the need, or for later on (whichever came sooner, if there was a difference) but what the hell, what was wrong with now? Here and now. She didn’t need to get there till the second half, anyway.

  Some time later she closed the door and concentrated hard on the here and now of getting the key, which seemed to be trembling, into the keyhole, which wouldn’t keep still. From inside the room she could make out the burble of the television which she had switched on so that Pretzel would be less lonely, and thought she could hear Carol Smillie. Pretzel liked Carol Smillie. Joyce sighed with satisfaction as the key finally turned, and set off carefully down the stairs, her good handbag over her arm. Her slept-on, unbrushed hair, her bare, varicosed legs and the rickety Bengal Blush, all things which she had consigned to the there and then, concerned her not at all.

  CHAPTER 2

  SARA WAS FEELING sick in the usual way, that was to say, not quite unpleasantly so, and it was such a familiar feeling that it would have unsettled her to be without it. She had done her warm-up, showered, changed into the dark brown silk dress and fixed her face and hair, also in the usual way, which meant about an hour before she really had to. So she had walked about the dressing room, switched the radio on, cracked her knuckles, practised deep breathing, switched the radio off, made some faces in the mirror and asked herself why she did this for a living.

  Outside, she could hear the hum of people who had leaked out of the Prommers Bar and were lining the stuffy corridor around her dressing room door. They would be leaning on the walls fanning themselves with programmes, knocking back warm drinks and waiting for the second half, in complete if not comfortable relaxation. She would give anything, anything to be one of them, to be in a summer top and sandals at a conc
ert, sipping heartburn-inducing house wine in the interval, the biggest challenge of the evening being the momentous decision on the way home between Chinese or Indian.

  Feeling sorry for herself, she clipped on her diamanté earrings, the only jewellery she would wear with this slinky, chocolate satin dress, and turned her head to watch them catch the light of the dozen or so bulbs round the dressing room mirror. The earrings were too large for real life, and too showy even for some musicians she could think of, the professional mice who would consider the playing of the Dvořák Cello Concerto at the Proms as a grave undertaking whose solemnity was not to be compromised by any flippancy in what they might call ‘the earring department’. Sara smiled to herself in the mirror. All the more reason to wear them, then. She liked the frivolous note they struck, and the question they raised—brassy or classy?—which led to the next question—who cares?—as long as the Prommers enjoyed the bit of sparkle. What they made of her playing was up to them, once she had given them her best. The one-minute bell sounded and the hum in the corridor began to subside.

  Now her shoes were on and she had, out of a mixture of superstition and supreme practicality, worked out the exact spot (a little above her knee) on the front of the dress where she needed to pick up the fold in her right hand and raise it before she took the first steps out on to the stage, if she were to avoid standing on her hem, ripping the dress, falling on hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of Peresson cello and impaling herself on her bow. The audience would love that.

  The sick feeling was still there. She swigged some water from the glass on the dressing table, made her way over to the green velvet sofa and perching on the arm (she did not want to walk on stage with even one satin crease across her stomach), she rang Andrew on her mobile.