‘Okay, that would be good. Tim’s one of the better ones.’
‘Yeah, I agree. He would be perfect for this one too, he’s good with people like our Stan.’ Paul gestured at his vibrating phone. ‘Ah, that’ll be him.’
George opened the boot of the car, pulled out the black folder with his blank statement forms and walked back into the house. He stopped to wipe his feet on the mat — habit when entering someone else’s home. He could hear some soft music and the sound of movement. It was coming from the living room where he had left Stan. Silently he peered round the door. Stan was still in there. He was at the fireplace, gliding in a rough circle over his worn mark, his arms outstretched as though they were still wrapped around his wife of sixty-two years. His eyes were shut tightly, accentuating his wrinkles, as if he had aged a decade since George had left. But his lips were pursed tightly together in a kind of smile. It was growing, spreading over his face as the music quickened. His slippers scuffed against the floor as his strides got longer.
George slipped back into the hallway. He could see the big kitchen, through internal doors with glass inserts. He could see Ali in her full, white forensic suit. She was dusting surfaces, trying to piece together who had come here in the middle of the night for the sake of their savings and then gone, taking everything but fading memories.
George stepped back out onto the gravel. Paul was just coming in.
‘Is he not doing the statement?’
‘He will,’ George said. ‘Let’s just give him a minute.’
Chapter 7
Jenny stood at the window where she had been for most of the night. She had kept the light off in her hotel room and peeked around the thick curtain, or pulled it back and stood behind the net curtains when the night had been at its blackest and she had been at her most confident. Now, the sun was back up and she was hidden again, just one eye checking for movement on the street below. There was a lot more of it now, mostly cars queuing in two solid rows for the port of Dover that was just off to her left. There was some movement from people out on foot, but their heads were bent into the driving rain, their hoods pulled up and their chins dug into scarves or collars. No one seemed to be taking any notice of the hotel. Hotel didn’t really describe it. It was a drab B&B. The night before it had displayed No Vacancies in a stern black font in the window. But Jenny had run as far as she could away from the town. She was by the sea and more and more desperate. She didn’t know where else to go. Yesterday afternoon the weather had been better. A group of tanned foreign-looking people had been out on the forecourt when she’d approached, gathered around an old black car with the bonnet up. They’d all stopped to look at her as she walked to the door. More than once she nearly turned and ran away again. But it was practically the last building before the port. She was out of options.
An elderly woman eventually came out of the ground floor flat. She’d looked Jenny up and down and then said in the slowest English she could muster that they were full. Her body language relaxed a little when Jenny spoke back in English. She told her she was in trouble, that she just needed somewhere to stay. The old woman admitted that she did have a spare room, but said she wasn’t allowed to put guests in it anymore. It was a converted loft and new fire regs meant that it was no longer deemed safe enough. She could lose her licence. Jenny practically begged her. The woman folded, she said she could put her in there for cash, but if anyone asked, she was staying there as a non-paying guest. This had suited Jenny more than she would admit. The woman hadn’t even taken her name.
It was the very top floor. She could see that it had once been a fully functioning suite, but it smelled as if it had been closed up for a while. The woman had warned her that it was used for storage. There were stacks of old towels and linen, and piles of plates and cutlery. The stuff had been in the middle of the room when Jenny went in and she’d spent the first twenty minutes pushing it all over to the side. The bathroom was the worst for the closed-up smell; it didn’t have a window. The bath was covered in a layer of dust. The bath water popped and burped when she’d first turned it on, but eventually it did run and it got warm. She crushed up a bar of soap that had hardened edges but was good enough to produce a thin lather. A bath was the first thing she’d thought of once she’d felt safe enough. The room felt like a million miles from civilisation. Surely no one could find her here.
Her paranoia came back, though. It snuck in with the shadows that replaced the daylight. The other residents were noisy too, most of the time it sounded like they were angry, like they were shouting at one another. At one point she considered the fact that she might have to leave to get something to eat. The thought of going outside was terrifying, but her hunger pains were getting stronger. Among the piles of linen and cutlery, she found a wicker basket full of individually packed biscuits, the sort you would find resting against your coffee. She devoured eight or nine. She would offer payment for them when she saw the proprietor in the morning.
Much of her evening was spent cleaning and dressing her arm. She’d soaked it in the bath and picked out the tiny little bits of black metal that had penetrated the skin. It was slow going and painful. She’d had to keep stopping, she couldn’t see to work through her tears. When the pain got so bad, she would curse Joseph, a man she hadn’t known much more than eighteen months and who had always had an air of mystery about him. That was a big part of what she had found so damned irresistible. But she cursed him still, for whatever he had done to bring this on her and for staying in that car while she had run away with their daughter.
And what of Isobel? The room had an old portable-sized tube television with a stiff piece of wire looping from the top for an aerial. She had manipulated it to get BBC 1, the national news. The shooting in Dover was the headline piece. The report had confirmed two men dead but said they believed there to be more. They hadn’t named anyone yet. Jenny accepted that Joseph was one of them. She was surprisingly numb about that. There had been no mention of Isobel in the early reports. The ten o’clock headlines, however, were shown live and displayed a sombre row of police officers. The one in the middle introduced himself as a chief inspector. He was appealing for the mother of a young baby left at the scene to get in touch.
‘We want you to know that your baby is safe and well and being looked after by appropriately trained officers and staff. There is round-the-clock protection. I can’t imagine the stress you were under, the pressure, when you decided to leave your child in the care of our officers and to flee the scene, but we know you did that for your child. Now we want you to get in touch. Just to tell us that you are safe. And from there we can work with you to make sure you stay safe. Please, there is a number on your screen . . . Please, just give us a call or come into any police station and make yourself known. I will personally guarantee your safety. Just a phone call.’
It took Jenny a little while to recover from knowing that Isobel was safe. The relief ebbed out of her and with it all of her energy. She had fallen to her knees in front of the television and sobbed Isobel’s name. She managed to note down the number on a napkin taken from a pile. It was only three numbers in truth: 1-0-1. When she was calmer, she considered the inspector’s offer — just a phone call. That could wait for the morning. The last time she had thought the police were there to help her hadn’t worked out so well. And she was so exhausted. But she could not sleep a wink.
The morning light and the driving rain seemed to come together and she was awake to see them both. She had no idea how long she had stood at the window; she wasn’t wearing a watch, and though the time was shown on the rolling news channel it was too small to make out from where she stood. The television was on very low as she still didn’t want to draw any attention to her room. Then, suddenly there was a knock at the door. She froze and let the curtain fall back shut. She moved over to the television and flicked it off. The room was suddenly as dark as it had been. She moved to the door and stumbled on some boxes.
‘You in there, lo
ve?’
Muffled as it was through the door, Jenny still recognised the voice as belonging to the proprietor, the elderly lady who had given her the room. Jenny rested her right hand on the handle. ‘Yeah, I’m in here.’
‘I do breakfast, love. At least I used to. You can come down to my flat and have some if you want. There’s no one about.’
Jenny still held the door handle. Her hunger pains were far worse than last night and she couldn’t face another biscuit meal.
‘It’s included, see. You pay for the room, you get your breakfast. I was going to do some bacon for me anyway.’
Jenny pulled the door open, just enough to be able to see out. The woman’s features were softer than Jenny remembered. She smiled, her hair was long and dyed dark, the roots were grey. She had pulled it back into a tight bun. She wore a fleece top over leggings and rubber Croc shoes with socks. Jenny smiled back. ‘Sounds lovely, thank you.’
Jenny had to walk from top to bottom, past every door of every room to get to the woman’s flat and she heard nothing, not a peep.
‘Is everyone out?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, the place always empties early in the morning. It’s one of the best things about this business. They all get picked up early to go to work.’
‘They live here?’
‘Yeah, for now at least. Most of ‘em are asylum seekers, a mixed bag, all at different stages of trying to stay here. Some have already been rejected, some are going through appeals, some arrived on the back of a lorry last week.’
‘Some have been rejected? How come they’re still here?’
‘They won’t be for long. And I don’t mean they will be sent home. As it gets nearer to immigration turning up on the door to deport them, they will disappear. Most go to the big cities, easy to get lost up there.’
‘And they work all day?’
‘Not legally. You can’t work if you’re waiting for a decision on your asylum status. That’s why they stick them in places like this. They have to give them somewhere to live, but the system’s a bit of a joke. They all work cash in hand somewhere, the takeaways, carwashes, deliveries — anywhere that will take the risk on a bit of cheap labour. There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of that either. I think the authorities are well aware, but they don’t cause any problems and it helps keep the wheel spinning on the economy. I don’t ask any questions and I certainly don’t tell no tales. This setup works nicely for me too.’
Jenny followed her into her flat. It had a corridor that ran the length of its left side and a neat little living room was the first room off to the right. They passed beyond it and moved through to the kitchen at the back. Again it was tidy. The cooker and the fridge were oversized, almost industrial, but it was the only sign of it being the hub of a B&B.
‘So I suppose you don’t need to make them all breakfast in the mornings. How many evening meals do you have to do?’
‘Oh, I don’t cook for them, love. I mean I get paid to and it’s part of the contract but I don’t. I tried to at the start, but they want halal meat and they can’t eat for Ramadan or whatnot. I’m much more of a Sunday roast, and fish and chip suppers kinda girl. I tell them that and they soon find other arrangements. They eat a lot of takeaways, the ones who work in the chicken shops or the kebab houses. They tend to bring home enough for everyone. I still take the extra cash from the government for feeding them, why wouldn’t I? The way I look at it, I offered and they refused.’
‘Well, I won’t.’
‘You what, love?’
‘Refuse. I won’t refuse bacon. And don’t worry about it not being halal. I haven’t eaten for a couple of days.’
The woman chuckled. ‘Fine then. I’ve missed it if I’m honest. I used to like the banter, cooking for people in the morning, setting them up for their day.’
‘You’ll certainly be doing that.’
‘Well, then, now you know my secrets, I take government cash and spend it on my own bacon and exotic holidays rather than feeding my tenants, so now it’s your turn — your secrets.’ She was still smiling. She poured out two cups of strong-looking tea from a pot that had been hidden under a tea cosy.
‘My secrets?’
‘A girl turns up at a place like this with a bloody arm, begging for a place to stay and she hasn’t eaten for a couple of days. That sounds like a girl with secrets to me.’ She pushed one of the teas at Jenny. A bowl of sugar lumps followed. Jenny took the tea in both hands and slurped at it immediately.
‘I don’t even know your name,’ Jenny said, grinning nervously.
‘Anne,’ the woman said, ‘and I’ve seen something like your arm before. My husband got himself in an argument with a farmer. This fella had a shotgun for chasing away the vermin on his farm, only he’d sawed the end off so he wouldn’t miss. Close up it’ll rip you apart, but a bit further away and you get a nasty rash like on your arm.’
‘A shotgun, eh? Would you believe me if I said I didn’t know what it was.’
‘I would. Hurts like hell too, I would say.’
‘It’s better now. The bath helped.’
‘The girl on the news, the one they’re saying ran away from all the chaos down in the town. They reckon she was attacked by a man with a shotgun. A lot of people got a look at him. Not many got a look at the girl, though.’
Jenny sipped at her tea. She was looking away, knowing that if she made eye contact she would give herself away. ‘Really?’
‘That’s what they said. I guess when there’s a man running around with a gun, he gets all the attention. The only description of the girl is that she’s got dark hair, quite long, and she was wearing a white top and blue jeans. And she left her baby at the scene. They say she did that to keep the little dot safe. They don’t think that little girl is more than six months old.’
Jenny did now look Anne in the eye. Anne hadn’t made any start on breakfast yet. Jenny knew she was being studied for a reaction, but Anne’s expression was soft and sympathetic.
‘You learn a lot, running a place like this. Just that all the guests have their own back stories, their own reasons for hiding in the attic. All I’m saying is that if that girl came here, if she needed help, then she would get it without any questions asked.’
Jenny finished her tea. The second she put it back down on the side Anne filled it up again with a tip of the pot. Jenny added the milk. ‘I’m sure that would be appreciated. Sounds like she would have had a hell of a day.’
Anne’s face broke into a full smile. She lit up some pans and pulled the fridge open. Soon the air was filled with the delicious smell of sizzling bacon.
‘So your husband . . .’ Jenny said, ‘. . . you said he got shot at. I take it he got himself a rash and nothing more?’ She was peering around for signs of co-habitation.
Anne cracked some eggs. ‘A nasty one. All down his right side. I was picking shots out of him for a good couple of hours. Healed up fine though. And after that he never again picked on a man with a shotgun under his arm.’
‘Sounds sensible. Does he work here with you?’
Anne pursed her lips. ‘I’m afraid not. He was a good man, he was good to me his whole life and then he was good enough to die first! The insurance bought this place outright. I don’t know whether that makes me lucky or not.’
Jenny broke into a smile for the first time since the previous morning. She covered it over swiftly, realising that perhaps it wasn’t appropriate.
‘Don’t worry,’ Anne said. ‘It was a long time ago. I’ve had plenty of time to get used to it. He was good man. One thing we always had was the jokes. I know I can say things like that, I know he’ll be up there now laughing hard. Now, love, please find yourself a seat at the table, it won’t be long now.’
Anne turned back to her stove. Jenny moved a short distance to the table, the chair caught on the wooden floor and squeaked. Anne had turned the radio on; it must have been on the hour because the news headlines kicked in. The shooting dominated the report,
then they went live to a press conference. Jenny looked over to Anne, she was still facing away but she had half-turned back to Jenny, no doubt waiting to see if there was any reaction. Jenny didn’t give her any, she just swigged at her tea, but she was listening. It was the same voice as last time: the chief inspector, though she couldn’t remember his name. He said that they were still looking for the female who had fled the scene. He confirmed that at least two men had died as part of the incident, and then he made another appeal to the missing woman. Only this time it was different:
‘Jenny, we can’t imagine the stress you are under right now but I want you to know that you will be safe with us. Please make contact with us, even if you just let us know that you are safe. We want you to know that your daughter is safe, we want you to know that she slept well last night, despite all of the excitement. She’s been checked over by medical staff, Jenny. She’s perfectly fine. Call us, Jenny. You can call 101 or 999 — it doesn’t matter. We will come straight out to you. Thank you and I’m sorry but I can’t take any questions as this time.’
The reporter cut back in. He talked immediately about the fact that the female had now been named, or at least her first name revealed. He then appealed for witnesses and quoted a number to call. Jenny’s head had fallen forward into her hands. She snapped upright as a plate was placed in front of her.
‘I’ll drive you down there, Jenny,’ Anne said. ‘Whatever you’re running from, it doesn’t matter anymore. The police have your baby and she’s safe. Just go and see her. But we’ll eat our breakfast first, okay? I can’t be having a bad review on TripAdvisor now, can I?’
Jenny wiped at her face, she jerked a nod and took an intake of breath. She managed a smile too. She didn’t want to be running anymore. Whatever Joseph was into, it was nothing to do with her. They would see that. There was nothing for her to worry about.
Hungrily, she bit into her sandwich.
The George Elms Trilogy Box Set Page 28
