Altered Life

by Keith Dixon

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  BEFORE LEAVING CREWE I’d used a CD-based telephone directory to track down any existing Brian Evans in Narberth. I found half a dozen Brians or Bs and rang them all, but none of them admitted to being the son of Derek Evans. That either said something about him as a father, or that the Brian Evans that I wanted had an unlisted number and I’d have to try a more direct route. My usual trick was to ring the person’s doctor, pretend I’m the missing person, and tell the nurse who answers that I’m waiting for a hospital appointment and that I want to check they’ve got the right address and telephone number to send the appointment to. Always works. But this time I didn’t know Evans’ doctor and had no way of guessing without access to a Yellow Pages or the internet.

  It was almost four o’clock, so my hunting time was running out. I parked on the high street and put on a thick fleece, then started to get my bearings. It had grown dark quickly and I had a sense of the life of the town being sucked out of it as people arrived home from work and retreated behind their curtains. Kids on bicycles gathered on corners next to the mini-supermarkets and looked at me territorially as I went past.

  My first stop was the Post Office, but the lady in there either couldn’t or wouldn’t help me. If Evans wasn’t in the telephone book, the postal system was blind. ‘I’m sorry, love,’ she said. ‘We’re not supposed to go around giving out that kind of information, see.’

  So I hit the street again, working my way on foot around the main stores.

  I tried the ironmongers and the insurance company, but no one could help. They looked at me through narrow eyes and had we been in Texas I would have seen them reaching for the shotgun under the counter. But in the third shop I entered, a woman with wiry grey hair that sprouted in all directions, and teeth that looked as though they were wearing thin, drew a deep breath when I mentioned the name of Brian Evans.

  ‘Ooh yes, we know him,’ she said liltingly. ‘Nice young man but we don’t like his wife. She comes in to pay the newspapers and never a hello or how are you.’ Her eyes took on a shrewd look. ‘Why do you want him then?’

  ‘Some of his old college friends are throwing a surprise party.’

  ‘I see, it’s a secret.’

  ‘For a surprise,’ I said. I didn’t like lying to this woman, whose face was maternal and trusting while at the same time seeming to look straight through me.

  ‘We’ve never been to his house,’ I said. ‘I was roped in to find out where he lives. We’re going to wait in his garden and surprise him when he comes home from work.’

  She nodded slowly. ‘That’ll be cold, see, in this weather.’

  ‘We don’t mind.’

  ‘Known him a long time, have you?’ she asked, resting her elbows on the counter.

  This was getting too serious. ‘If you don’t know where he lives, I can ask someone else.’

  ‘Oh I know where he lives. And I’m wondering why you have to come in here and start telling me all these fibs so you can find out.’

  ‘I’ll go now.’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ she said suddenly, standing up straight, ‘because I don’t think you’re a bad man. I don’t think you mean him any harm. What is it, then? Does he owe money or something?’

  I looked at her. ‘You’re very bold. You don’t know who I am.’

  ‘Perhaps. But I used to be married to the Police Sergeant down here, over at the station, see. I met a few bad people in my time, and Arthur told me about plenty more. Before he died, God rest him. You’re not one of them, are you, but you’re not being straight with me.’

  I looked around her shop. It was a small newsagents and tobacconists that carried one wall of glossy magazines, a carousel of postcards and a glass cabinet of speciality cigarette lighters. I didn’t understand how anyone could look at these objects all day long and not go crazy. But maybe she had.

  ‘It’s his father,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to find Brian’s father. He’s gone missing up in Cheshire and this seemed a good place to start. Do you know him?’

  ‘Derek? Oh yes, I know Derek. What’s that thing about knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing? That’s Derek. Never liked him or his mother. Brian turned out all right, but Derek was always shifty.’

  ‘What else should I know?’ I asked.

  At this she shook her head slightly. ‘I’ve done my gossiping for the day,’ she said. ‘Very nice too, but it’s not Christian to go on about others, is it?’

  I stared at her. ‘So how do I get to Brian’s house?’

  ‘Come out here,’ she said, ‘and I’ll show you.’

  Her name was Ruth and she knew most of what had happened in Narberth for the last twenty years. And didn’t like it much. Too many immigrants from England; too little for the kids to do; too little work for their dads. She gave me this commentary as she pulled me down the street and at the second corner, pointed up a road that headed north and was bordered by large white-fronted houses that gave directly on to the pavement.

  ‘Up here two hundred yards, then take the first left,’ she said. ‘The road opens up and after a while you’ll see a row of three houses set back behind low brick walls. Brian’s is the middle one.’

  ‘You’ve given me a hard time,’ I said.

  ‘Are you laughing at me, young man?’

  ‘I guess I am. But you like it, don’t you?’

  She punched me lightly on the arm. ‘Just don’t tell him I told you.’

  ‘Sealed lips,’ I said.

  She turned and walked away, limping slightly on fat legs encased in thick stockings. Strange the people you meet in this job, I thought.

  I cut across the road, started my car, then drove back and followed her directions. I parked opposite the row of three houses she’d described. Lights were on in the downstairs rooms of all three, but the curtains were drawn only in the house belonging to Brian Evans. A dented Rover 420 was parked in its driveway—a car that I thought was unlikely to belong to a Financial Director at a swish management consultancy in Cheshire.

  I sat in my cold car and wondered whether I was on a fool’s errand. Derek Evans could be at the opposite end of the country, or in the Bahamas for all I knew. But there was something about his cowed bellicosity towards me that made me think that his ambition would be small and that if he were running away, he wouldn’t have the guts to run far—at least not to begin with. He may not even have told his wife yet, saving up that task for when she began to ask questions.

  And there was, of course, the question of why he’d run away in the first instance. If that was what he’d done. Maybe he’d turned up at Brands this afternoon. Maybe if I phoned Laura now she’d tell me that he’d arrived in the office at three o’clock wondering what all the fuss was about—wasn’t a man allowed to have a round of golf on his day off ... ?

  But somehow I didn’t think so. Things were too tense and at the same time too controlled at Brands for someone in Evans’ position to simply take a day off without letting anyone know what he was doing. There was something guilty and furtive in his actions.

  Any further thoughts I might have had about this were cut short when a long Audi 8 pulled up silently outside Brian Evans’ house. Derek Evans climbed out of the driver’s side and waited while a woman I took to be his wife, Emily, got out the other side. Satisfied she was out and her door was shut, he pressed his key and the doors of the car locked with a flashing of indicators. They had no bags and walked straight up to the front door. Evans looked around and then knocked quietly and after a moment the door pulled back and they slipped inside.

  I sat watching for ten minutes. What now?