by Ann Granger
As I came to the end of my short act of memorial, it seemed to me I wasn’t alone after all. I looked up quickly, thinking someone might be watching me from the railings atop the steep bank, or had come along the towpath unheard, or was even in one of the quiet houseboats.
But there was no one. The canal itself was covered with a scum of debris, everything from waste paper to discarded condoms. Water slapped against the houseboats as they groaned and creaked. Yet I still felt that tingling between the shoulder blades that you get when someone is watching. I wondered for a moment whether it was Albie’s ghost. Except that Albie’s spirit would have been well disposed towards me and what I felt was alarm, some age-old instinct, as if an unfriendly presence had manifested itself and prowled about me.
The mood was broken as, with a whirr of wheels, a cyclist appeared at the far end of the towpath and pedalled determinedly towards me. He was all kitted out in a special helmet, goggles, thigh-hugging black cycling shorts and a tight jersey. I had to clamber up on the bank, almost trampling my flowers, to let him past. The ignorant oaf just cycled on without so much as a nod of thanks, not even slowing down. Yet I was pleased to see him because just then any sign of another human life was welcome.
I didn’t agree with Parry that there would have been absolutely no one around down here in the early hours of the morning. There’s a whole world out there that seeks the darkness and the lonely places. But if there’d been anyone and if they had seen anything, they would be keeping quiet. It was as Albie’d said. Those who move about the city streets by night see and hear a lot, but they say very little about any of it. It’s one of the laws of survival out there.
But Albie had seen something and, against all the rules, had told me. He’d put confidence in me because we both hankered after the theatre: he, because he’d lost the life, and I, because it shimmered before me like a mirage, vanishing whenever I tried to grab at it.
He’d trusted me and I wasn’t about to let him down.
Chapter Seven
It was after four when I left the canal and started to walk home. My mind was busy planning how to go about my enquiries. There were two lines of approach, as I saw it. One was Jonty, assuming I could find him again, and the other was the women’s refuge run by St Agatha’s.
The refuge had cropped up a couple of times and the more I thought about it, the more I felt it tied in somehow. In fact, St Agatha’s church seemed to feature large in all of this, one way and another. It would only be a slight detour to call in there on my way home. I turned my steps in that direction.
In daylight St Agatha’s mock-Gothic looked less like a backdrop for a Hammer House of Horror special. The gate in the fencing around the place was unlocked and pushed open wide. The porch was empty and clean and reeked of extra-strength commercial disinfectant. The church door also stood open and from within came the whine of a vacuum cleaner. I put my head through the gap.
I’d never been inside but I could have made an educated guess and been more or less right. It was a fairly typical late-Victorian church, with oak pews and pillars bearing wooden boards for hymn numbers, and brass memorials to local worthies. There were a lot of flowers around, either in free-standing arrangements or attached as posies to bits of the architecture or fittings. It suggested that recently the church had seen either a wedding or a funeral. A woman was standing on one of the pews, tin of metal polish in hand, rubbing energetically at one of the brass plaques with a rag. Further away, up in the chancel, another woman pushed an ancient upright Hoover back and forth. Both were intent on their tasks. I walked in, up to the brass polisher and cleared my throat loudly.
She turned and looked down at me from her vantage point on the pew. ‘Oh, hullo,’ she said. ‘Can I help?’
I apologized for disturbing her and indicated I just had a couple of questions, which wouldn’t take a moment.
She seemed glad of the chance to stop work and chat, and clambered down from her pew, puffing. She was a little on the heavy side to be climbing up and down furniture. Her companion in the chancel had switched off the machine and was struggling to extricate the full inner paper sack from the outer bag.
‘It’s our turn on the cleaning rota, Muriel’s and mine,’ my new friend explained. ‘I’m Valia Prescott. My husband is captain of the bell-ringers. If you want the vicar, I’m afraid it’s his afternoon off. There’s an emergency number on the notice board. If it’s a baptism or a wedding, that’s not emergency, I’m afraid, and you’ll have to get in touch with him tomorrow.’ She paused for breath.
It can’t be helped, but some given names don’t age with their owners. I suppose it will be odd being called Francesca when I’m eighty. Perhaps one ought to be able to change one’s name as one goes along, to suit one’s years – turn into a Maud, Doris, or a Muriel like the wielder of the vacuum cleaner. The name Valia, to me, suggested some sort of wood nymph cavorting about veiled in nothing but her long hair. But this Valia was sixty something, grey hair set rigidly in a tight perm, and she wore a hand-knitted tangerine-coloured pullover, which clashed nicely with her flushed rosy complexion. None of the information she’d so kindly reeled off for me was of any use. I nodded brightly to show I’d taken it all in and then explained my business.
‘My name’s Fran Varady. I’m trying to find an elderly homeless man who might have been sleeping in the porch out there last night. His name is Jonty.’
She first looked a little startled, this being an out-of-the-ordinary request, then her good-natured expression became grimmer. ‘Someone was there last night, all right! The smell out there was still dreadful when I got here with Muriel around two. It’s difficult to get cleaners for a place this size and paying someone’s out of the question, so the Mothers’ Union got up a rota. I don’t mind doing it – I quite like cleaning brass.’
She paused to glance up complacently at her work. The memorial was to a ‘physician in this parish’, paying tribute to his observance of his ‘duty as a Christian and as a man of healing’. His patients had lost his services in 1894. His testimonial gleamed like gold, testifying to Valia’s efforts. I complimented her and she beamed at me as brightly as the brass plaque.
‘I don’t mind doing anything, really, but anyone would draw the line at having to clean out the porch. Not that I had to clear away the worst of the mess. Ben, our caretaker, had done that this morning. But the smell was such that we just had to throw a bucket of Jeyes down there and brush it well out. It’s the vicar, you see.’
Fortunately I was able to decipher her meaning. ‘You mean the vicar lets the homeless sleep out there?’
‘Not exactly allows it, but doesn’t stop them. We used to have a wire mesh outer door but vandals broke it down. Then this vicar got the idea that we ought not to refuse shelter to a homeless person, even if it meant letting him sleep in our porch. Of course, one wants to be charitable . . .’ she drew a deep breath, her ample bosom filling like a pair of water wings, ‘but there are limits! As I say, the vicar doesn’t have to clear up after those people. Sometimes – well, I won’t tell you what kind of disgusting mess they make out there.’
‘This Ben, the caretaker,’ I asked. ‘Would he still be around the place?’
She looked vague. ‘He might,’ she said. ‘If so, he’d be seeing to the furnace. We’ve had a lot of problems with it. It’s very old. It’s in the basement, entry outside the church. If you go out of the door there where you came in, turn right and make your way along, you’ll see the door, down a couple of steps.’
I thanked her and went to find Ben the furnaceman. If he had been the one to clear up the porch first thing, it was just possible he’d seen or found something that might give a clue to what happened here last night.
I made my way along the outside wall of the church. The area between building and street was untidily planted with shrubs and might once have been a garden. Someone, perhaps Ben, had cut the grass, but otherwise the shrubs had been left to grow straggly and misshapen. As I appr
oached one clump, from behind it came a metallic clang and rather to my surprise, Muriel, the wizard with the vacuum, appeared. She was holding the crumpled emptied paper liner. St Agatha’s cleaning rota, economical souls, reused them. She started on seeing me and stopped, clasping the bag to her flat chest.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for the furnace room. Valia said it was along here.’
‘Oh,’ she looked relieved. ‘Yes, just behind there.’ She hurried past me, back to the safety of the church.
I saw now that the bushes served both to hide a row of refuse bins and the steps down to a low door in the side of the church. I wondered whether St Agatha’s had a proper crypt. Probably not, but possibly some cellars, one of which now housed the furnace.
I paused by the refuse bins and eyed them. If Ben, or anyone else, had found anything, it might have been tossed into one of these. Gingerly, I took off the nearest lid. A layer of grey dust, fluff and unidentifiable scraps covered the top. The contents of Muriel’s dust bag, no doubt. I peered at them.
‘What’re you looking for, then?’
The voice came from behind me, male, hoarse and suspicious. I jumped round.
He was elderly, red-faced beneath a greasy cap, and stout. He wore dark blue overalls and carried a folded tabloid newspaper.
‘Ben?’ I asked.
‘That’s me. Who’re you, then?’ He wheezed as he spoke and I saw the redness of his skin was accentuated by purple threads.
I explained who I was, what I wanted, and that Valia had directed me to him.
He snorted and went past me down the steps to unlock the door. He disappeared inside, but left it open, and I assumed I was meant to follow.
Once inside, I saw I was in Ben’s personal sanctum. Most of it was taken up with the furnace, an ancient and alarmingly rusty-looking monster. Just enough room was left for a small table, a wooden kitchen chair, a small paraffin heater and a billycan. Ben had placed his newspaper on the table and added to it a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches. He indicated I should take the chair.
‘You belong to one of them charities, then?’ he rasped.
‘No, it’s – it’s personal. Ben, do you ever see any of the men who sleep in the porch or have they always gone by the time you get here in the morning?’
He prised a cigarette from the packet and lit it. Shaking both the match to extinguish the flame, and his head at the same time, he said, ‘No – not hardly ever. They clear out before they see me because they know I’d help ’em on their way with me boot.’
So much for the vicar’s charity. It wasn’t shared by his staff.
‘So you wouldn’t know an old man, rather smelly, called Jonty? Or another, a bit cleaner, called Albie Smith? I think Albie slept here regularly.’
‘Journalist?’ Ben asked, ignoring my question.
‘No, not a journalist. I told you, it’s private.’
He looked disappointed. It occurred to me that journalists have been known to pay. But I didn’t have any money. All I could do was stand my ground and wait.
‘It smelled bloody awful this morning,’ Ben observed. He didn’t seem to hold it against me that I’d not offered any money. It’d been worth a try. ‘I wish I did know who done it because if I’d got hold of the bugger I’d have made him clean it up! Gawd knows what they were doing in there last night.’
God probably did know. I was trying to find out. ‘Was there anything left behind like clothing or blankets?’
‘Just a few rags. I slung ’em in the furnace there.’ He pointed. ‘Not that it’s lit. But if I find anything what burns, I sling it in the furnace. It’s all fuel.’
Hesitantly I asked, ‘Is it possible to get them out again?’
He looked at me in amazement. ‘Think I got nothing better to do than to spend my time raking rubbish out of the furnace just to amuse you, whoever you are?’
I glanced down at the table, the newspaper and the cigarettes. He scowled but took the point.
‘It’s my tea-break,’ he said sulkily.
‘What time do you go home, Ben? I mean, what time do you lock up?’
He pointed to the ceiling. ‘When them women finish their polishing. They generally goes off around five. I lock up at six and that’s it. Can’t leave the place open. Sometimes the vicar wants it of an evening and then he lets me know. He’s got his own keys, of course.’ He shuffled about and curiosity got the better of him. ‘These rags, what do you want ’em for?’
‘Just to see them, in case I recognise any of them.’
Ben expelled his breath in a hiss between his yellowish stubs of teeth. Then he picked up a long metal rod fashioned into a hook at one end. Alarmed, I wondered if he meant to drive me off, but he inserted the hook into the handle of the furnace door and tugged it. The round metal door swung open. Ben reached in with the useful hook and poked around, eventually emerging and turning toward me. A grimy and tattered piece of gabardine, once the skirts of a raincoat, hung from the rod.
‘This ’ere’s part of it. Make you happy?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘There was a bit of blanket as well. I can try and find it.’
It meant nothing to me. I shook my head. Ben pushed the rag back into the furnace. He swung the door shut and tapped the metal behemoth with the rod. It replied with a cavernous echoing groan. ‘Pipes is buggered,’ he said. ‘Whole lot wants replacing.’
‘And that’s it?’ I asked. ‘You found nothing else?’
‘Only what you’d expect,’ he said. ‘Whisky bottle. Live on alcohol, them old blokes. No matter how badly off they are, they always manage to get themselves a drink. A bottle and a fag packet. I put the packet in the furnace and the bottle in the dustbin, one of the bins outside there.’
Crossing my fingers, I asked, ‘Would it still be there? Could I look?’
‘Course it’s still there. Haven’t been emptied, have they? Take a look if you want. Leave it all tidy, that’s all I ask. Don’t go chucking stuff around.’
‘Which dustbin?’ I’d remembered there were three of them.
He frowned. ‘End one, as I recall. Where you was looking just now.’
I thanked him again and left him settling down to read his paper as I climbed up the short flight of steps to the outer air and the lines of refuse bins behind the bushes.
I took the lid off the bin in question and stared down at the grey mix of dirt. I didn’t fancy putting my hands in that. What I needed was something like Ben’s furnace hook. I retraced my steps. He was reading the football page and looked up crossly.
‘What d’you want now? No, you can’t borrow it. I needs it.’
‘You’re not using it now,’ I pointed out.
‘Ah, and if you go running off with it, I won’t never be using it again, will 1?’
I promised faithfully I wouldn’t leave the premises with the poker. He picked it up and gazed at it as if it were made of precious metal, before handing it over to me, laid ceremonially across his two hands, like a symbol of office. Perhaps, to him, it was.
I lugged it back up the steps and began to scrape little trial trenches in the dirt. At first I turned up only crumpled sweet wrappers and other assorted scrap paper. But eventually, after much diligent probing, the metal poker chinked against the glass and the round neck of a bottle appeared. I picked it out carefully – an empty Bell’s whisky half-bottle.
I replaced the lid of the bin and made my way down to the furnace room. Ben, who evidently read his newspaper from back to front, had progressed from the sports news to the indiscretions of a politician on page two. I propped the poker against the furnace and thanked him for the loan of it.
He glanced down at it sternly, checking it was undamaged. I held out the Bell’s bottle.
‘Is this the bottle you found?’
‘That’s it.’ He nodded and lost interest. He turned over the last sheet of newsprint so that now he’d reached the front page. It was nearly filled with a photograph of the erring politician arm in arm with
a leggy bimbo. Ben, sucking his teeth, studied the picture carefully and gave his verdict.
‘Oh well, good luck to ’im, anyway. I didn’t vote for ’im.’
‘You don’t mind,’ I asked, ‘if I take it away?’
‘What? That empty old bottle? Blimey, you got some funny ideas, ain’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said simply. ‘Have you got a bit of paper I can wrap the bottle in?’ I didn’t want to walk along the street holding an empty bottle. I had my standards.
Ben had decided I was a joke. He got up chuckling and began to rummage in a black plastic bin-liner in the corner. He emerged with a crumpled and grubby plastic carrier bag. ‘Here, take this. I find ’em floating around the place and I keep ’em because they come in handy.’
‘Thanks,’ I told him.
