Dead Eyed by Matt Brolly Page A

terrible news and had come to pay his condolences. The rotund woman looked him up and down for an uncomfortable amount of time before inviting him in.
    Lambert surveyed the living room whilst Sandra Vernon made tea in the kitchen. The room was sparsely decorated with white walls and a couple of mass market reproduction paintings in cheap frames on the wall. A small flat screen television sat beneath one of the rectangular PVC windows. A simple wooden crucifix hung above the fireplace. Beneath it, taking pride of place on the mantelpiece, was a picture of Sandra Vernon and her son on his graduation day.
    ‘He was a good boy,’ said Sandra Vernon, returning with a tray.
    Lambert couldn’t detect any emotion in the woman, her face blank. ‘He was, here let me take that for you.’ Lambert took the tray from the woman’s unsteady hands.
    ‘What did you say your name was again?’ she said, the lilt of her accent deeper now.
    ‘Michael Lambert. I lived on the floor below Terrence in his final year at University. We were not the best of friends but I knew him.’
    Sandra Vernon poured him a cup of tea.
    ‘How are you coping, Mrs Vernon?’ asked Lambert, sipping the weak tea.
    ‘Day by day, Mr Lambert, but it is Miss Vernon. The church is a great help to me as you can imagine.’
    ‘Of course. Terrence was always very religious at University,’ said Lambert, unsure if he was saying the right thing.
    ‘He had a strong relationship with God. For that he will be rewarded.’
    ‘I didn’t realise his home was in Bristol whilst he was at University. My parents lived in London. To be fair, I couldn’t wait to get away from them,’ said Lambert. He ignored the comment about God. Tension was always high when religion was involved. Experience told him it was best to steer clear unless the conversation was necessary. Like Klatzky, he was a lapsed Catholic. Apart from the odd occasion, wedding, baptism, or funeral, he hadn’t attended church since he was a teenager.
    Vernon drank her tea, studying him, her eyes lifeless behind the covering of her spectacles. ‘I always was close to Terrence. I decided to stay near to him when he moved to University. We lived in Wales before then.’
    Lambert had never heard of a parent moving with their child to University. Though not inconceivable, it suggested an over-familiar relationship between parent and child. ‘It’s been a while since I’ve seen Terrence. Did he ever marry?’
    Vernon laughed. ‘No, no.’
    ‘Was he seeing anyone?’
    ‘As I said, Mr Lambert, he had a strong relationship with God. He had no time for such nonsense. God was all he needed.’ Sandra Vernon looked away as she said the last words, as if threatened by Lambert’s suggestion.
    ‘What was that church he was with? It was one of those really evangelical ones wasn’t it?’
    ‘It’s called Gracelife. It is a proper church, with true believers and proper morals. It’s one of the reasons I moved here in the first place.’
    ‘Of course, sorry I don’t know much about these things.’ With the conversation failing, Lambert knew he had a decision to make. Either leave things as they were, or push the woman further. She had recently suffered a great loss, and for that he was sympathetic, but he wasn’t blind to the tone she was using. She had taken a clear disliking to him, speaking down to him as if he was a child.
    ‘One thing that did confuse me, Miss Vernon. I see that Terrence had changed his name to Vernon. We’d known him as Terrence Haydon at University.’
    ‘That was his father’s name.’ Sandra Vernon sat on the edge of her seat. Her face had reddened and she glared at Lambert, her small eyes magnified by her oversized spectacles.
    Lambert didn’t mind the woman’s discomfort. He pushed further. ‘Ah yes, I remember Terrence mentioning him. Is his father not around any more?’
    The woman’s eyes narrowed. ‘He was no father,’ she said, lowering her voice.
    ‘Did Terrence ever