Aunty Jan was happy to do that, because it was a touching story that she loved to tell. The poor boy had had a very difficult time of it after his parents were killed in the accident, she explained when they were settled in the kitchen. It was divine intervention really that had brought the two of them together after so many years. She had been checking out the sunbeds and spa pools and saunas at the fitness salon at Silvermeadow one day when she had stopped to admire the photographs of the waxed body builders hanging in their golden frames (‘Well, Kathy darling, there’s no harm in looking, is there?’), and one in particular had caught her eye. It had reminded her so much of her sister’s brother-in-law Donald, on whom she’d had a terrible crush twenty years ago, before he and his wife were killed in the accident. So like him, in fact, that she began to think of their little orphan kid Eddie, whom she hadn’t heard of for years. And then she’d looked at the signature scrawled across the bottom of the photo and when she managed to decipher the name her heart had gone all of a flutter, for there he was, Eddie Testor, in the glorious flesh.
‘It’s not that I fancied him, Kathy darling,’ she said. ‘Not really, cos that would be like incest almost, and anyway I’ve got a boyfriend, who’ll be here any minute actually, to take me to our dancing class, Latin American. But I had to speak to him, and tell him that we were long-lost relatives, and that if he ever needed an aunty I was here. He didn’t really take up my offer until last Sunday night, when he showed up in such a state, poor kid.’
‘Did he say what had happened? The black eye, the cut lip?’
‘Some thugs beat him up, didn’t they? He looks a great hunk of muscle, but he’s like his dad, a real softie inside.’
‘How did he get here?’
‘Taxi dropped him off.’
‘And he brought a bag with his things?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘So he’d been to his home, then?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘After he’d been beaten up, he went home.’
‘Oh yes, I suppose he did. He was done in when he arrived here. Completely exhausted. He’s hardly stirred from his bed since he got here. He’s really not been well.’
Lowry joined them in the living room. He was carrying a number of clear plastic bags containing packets and bottles, which he laid on the coffee table.
‘What are these, Mrs Goldfinch? Do you know?’
‘From Eddie’s room?’ she said vaguely. ‘They’ll be his pills. For his body building, you know. He has to take a lot of pills.’
‘Where does he get them from?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t know that. From his doctor, I suppose, or his friends at the gym.’
‘Do you take pills, Jan?’ Kathy said.
‘Me? Only what the doctor gives me. I’m depressed, see, since Alfred passed away. That’s my late husband. But I don’t believe in letting it show. You have a duty to add a little sunshine to the world, I always say, no matter if it’s raining in your heart.’
Kathy thought that probably explained Aunty Jan’s remarkable unconcern at being the subject of a police raid.
‘That’s your pills in the bathroom cabinet is it?’ Lowry said.
‘Yes, they’re mine… Oh!’ She looked at him in alarm. ‘You haven’t touched them, have you?’
Lowry shrugged ambiguously.
‘Oh no! You can’t take them away!’ Panicking, she looked to Kathy for support. ‘You mustn’t do that!’
‘It’s all right, Jan, I’m sure that won’t be necessary.’ She looked at Lowry, who seemed at first reluctant to cooperate, but then he reached into one of the plastic bags and took out a packet which he handed to Kathy. She made a note of the name and the chemist’s label before she returned them to Jan, who looked relieved.
Just then the front door bell sounded and Jan jumped to her feet. ‘Oh, that’ll be him now, my boyfriend. We’re late. You don’t mind me dashing off, do you? It’s the rumba you see, my favourite. I love the hip movements, don’t you? Although my boyfriend has a bit of trouble with them, since his operation.’
Kathy and Leon Desai stood at the window, watching Brock and Lowry working on Eddie. Kathy was very conscious of Leon’s body at her side and its stillness, observing the exchanges in the other room with hardly a blink of his dark eyes. Despite Lowry’s lip service to interviewing rules, Kathy was in no doubt that his manner was intimidatory, and was intended to be so. He sat hunched forward across the table as if short of hearing, baring his teeth in what he might claim to be a smile. His crouching posture contrasted with Eddie’s, sitting stiffly upright, head back on his thick neck, and Kathy wondered if Lowry might be physically envious of the other man, even while he seemed, with every gesture and word, to despise him utterly. Brock was sitting back, saying nothing, doing something with a pencil on a notepad as if the proceedings held no interest.
‘You’re a very, very stupid fellow, Eddie,’ Lowry was saying. ‘You could kill yourself taking stuff like that. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Sergeant,’ the duty solicitor interrupted. ‘Excuse me, but are you intending to lay charges in connection with the alleged possession of performance-enhancing drugs? Because if not, I don’t see-’
‘Do you mind!’ Lowry screamed at her, furious. The violence in his voice and in his cold stare set the solicitor abruptly back. There was silence for a moment as Lowry seemed to struggle with his temper, before continuing in a more reasonable tone to Eddie. ‘You do know that, don’t you? Those are animal drugs, Eddie. What they give to horses.’ He shook his head in amazement.
‘Are they?’ Kathy asked Leon. ‘Did you get a look at them?’
He nodded. ‘Yes. Stenbolol, the anabolic steroid, is a veterinary product, usually used for geldings in training. It’s popular among body builders because it’s available in tablet and paste form, rather than by injection like most animal anabolic steroids. Eddie could have got them from anywhere-they’re common enough. He also had human testosterone tablets, and a cocktail of tranquillisers, too.’
‘What sort of doses have you been taking, Eddie?’ Lowry pressed him.
The solicitor frowned and sat forward to whisper in Eddie’s ear.
‘I’m asking, Eddie,’ Lowry said in a menacing tone aimed at the lawyer, ‘because I understand that taking heavy doses of this stuff can make you very tense and angry, is that right? Do you find that? Does it put you on a short fuse? Does it make you really mad when people muck you about? Does it make you want to sort them out with those great big bulging muscles of yours?
‘And maybe your clever solicitor can understand now the relevance of my question to you, Eddie. Because if you’d been taking them before you got talking to Kerri, and if she mucked you about and wouldn’t give you what you wanted, and if the steroids made you very, very angry with her, well, that might be something we should bear in mind, isn’t it? You might not have been in full control of your faculties, see? You know all about that, don’t you, Eddie, because you’ve used that excuse before. But the problem is, if you don’t tell us about that now, if you keep silent, the court won’t want to know about it if you try to bring it up later, when we’ve brought you to trial. Ask your brief, Eddie-go on, ask her. True or false, it’ll be too late then.’
Lowry thumped the table with the flat of his hand and got to his feet and paced away as if he couldn’t stand to look at Testor any more. Eddie stared after him, then turned slowly and looked at his solicitor.
Desai shook his head. ‘I don’t think Gavin’s making any impression at all,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t think Testor has a clue what he’s talking about.’
The solicitor was frowning. She leant forward across the table to say something to Brock, who stooped to hear her point. While the two of them were taken up in this, Lowry, stretching his frame, sauntered round the table and suddenly ducked his head against Eddie Testor’s ear, muttering something which the microphones didn’t pick up. The body builder flinched abruptly, his eyes widened, and he shrank away from Lowry as if from a freezing draught. Lowry straightened, smiling grimly to himself, and strolled away.