Dead Man's Grip

This woman looked dangerously unpredictable and she had no idea how her husband was going to react. Glad now that Detective Investigator Lanigan was sitting outside the gates in his car, she surreptitiously glanced at her watch. Thirteen minutes left before her first text.
    She entered a grand hallway with a flagstone floor and a circular staircase, and followed the woman, who bumped against the wall several times, along a corridor furnished with antiques. Then they entered a palatial drawing room, with a minstrel’s gallery. It had oak beams and tapestries hanging from the walls, alongside fine-looking oil paintings. Almost all of the furniture was antique, except for one item.
    Seated, with his legs up in an incongruously modern leather recliner armchair, was a man in his fifties, with slicked-back grey
hair and dense black eyebrows, watching a ball game on television. He held a can of beer in one hand and a large cigar in the other.
    The woman walked towards him, picked up the TV remote from the antique wooden table beside him, peered at it for some moments as if she had never seen one of these before in her life, then muted the sound and dropped the remote back down with a clatter.
    ‘Hey, what the—’ the man protested.
    ‘We have a visitor, Lou.’ Fernanda pointed at Carly. ‘She’s come all the way from England. How nice is that?’ she said icily.
    Lou Revere gave Carly a weak smile and an abstracted wave of his hand. Then, keeping his eyes on the silent players on the screen, he turned to his wife and reached out for the remote.
    ‘This is kind of an important moment in the game.’
    ‘Yeah, right,’ Fernanda said. ‘Well, this is kind of an important moment, too.’ She reached down, picked up a pack of Marlboro Lights and shook out a cigarette. Then she gave Carly a crushing glare.
    Carly stood awkwardly, eyes darting between the two of them, thinking, trying desperately to remember her script.
    ‘Know who this bitch is?’ Fernanda said to her husband.
    Lou Revere grabbed the remote and unmuted the sound.
    ‘No. Listen, I need some quiet here.’ Then he added, ‘Get this lady a drink.’ He glanced disinterestedly at Carly. ‘You wanna drink?’
    Carly felt in desperate need of a drink. And the sweet rich smell of the smoke was tantalizing. She craved a cigarette.
    ‘I’ll die before I give this fucking bitch anything,’ Fernanda Revere said, staggering over to an antique drinks cabinet, the doors of which were already open, and clumsily refilling her glass from a silver cocktail shaker, slopping the contents over the side. Then she drank some, put the glass down, tottered back over to her husband, grabbed the remote and switched the television completely off.
    ‘Hey!’ he said.
    She dropped the remote on to the rug and stamped hard on it. There was the sound of splintering plastic.
    Carly’s fear deepened. This woman was crazy and totally unpredictable. She looked at the man again, then back at the woman,
before sneaking a glance at her watch. Three minutes had passed. What the hell was the woman going to do next? Somehow she had to bring her out of her anger.
    ‘Jesus Christ!’ Her husband put down his beer and ejected himself from his chair. Turning to his wife, he said, ‘Do you know how important this goddamn game is? Do you? Do you care?’
    He strode towards the door. Grabbing him by the arm and dropping her glass, which broke on the floor, Fernanda screamed at him, ‘Do you fucking know or care who this bitch is?’
    ‘Right now, I care about the New York Yankees winning this game. You know how bad it would be if they lost?’
    ‘And you fucking think they care that you’re watching? You want to just focus a second? This is the bitch who killed our son. You hear what I’m saying?’
    Carly watched him, her eyes swinging between them. She was trying to keep calm, but her nerves were in meltdown. The man stopped in his tracks and turned towards her. He glanced for a moment back at his wife and said, ‘What do you mean, hon?’ Then he turned back to Carly, his whole demeanour changing.
    ‘This is the bitch who was arrested at the scene for drunk driving. She killed our son, now she’s fucking standing here in front of us.’
    Fernanda Revere made her way over to the bar, taking measured steps across the floor as if it were an obstacle course. There was sudden menace in Lou Revere’s voice as he spoke now. Gone was the mildly angry guy of a few seconds