“I’ve only thought about it since Rani brought the matter up,” she admitted. “I suppose cultivating good relations with the press while keeping one’s distance—if that is possible.”
“Oh, it is possible,” said Collins. “The press understand the limits and constraints, though they’re continually pushing against them. Anything else?”
“I suppose supplying them with the maximum possible information on a case without hobbling an ongoing investigation or—most important, I’d guess—prejudicing a future trial.”
“Good. If you can get it, why can’t—well, never mind. What about the PR person’s relations with the police?”
“Well, I suppose that could be just as tricky. As I understand it the PR people are with the police—with them, for them, but not of them. I suppose he or she would have to start with the presumption that in a matter of controversy, the police have a case for what they do, that they must follow police regulations and so on. But the PR person would have to emphasize that since whatever-it-is has become a matter of public concern it is being fully investigated and the conclusions of the team going into the matter will be made public.”
“Not bad. Why did you go straight to a possible cockup?”
Eve thought for a moment. Why had she?
“I think people rely on the police, profess admiration for them, but underneath they rather resent them. Something similar could be said about the public view of clergymen.”
“The assumption that they are holier than the rest of the population is resented?”
“Something like that. And I suppose policemen are like clergymen—a very mixed bunch, and after all just fallible human beings.”
“You can say that again. So running a PR department in this setup is not like administering the staff of a bank, or a set of teachers in a school. They have to be near immaculate, but no one these days lives in awe, or fear, of them. We in the police have every gradation, from people who see themselves as God’s administering angels to those who joined it to have an excuse for a good scrap.”
“Difficult,” said Eve. “But not impossible.”
“Your mother was head of Blackfield Road, wasn’t she? Crossley?”
“That’s right. Did Rani tell you? A long, long headship. Did you ever come into contact with her?”
“Not in my job. I think there may have been some contact when I was there.”
“You were a pupil?”
“It’s not such a coincidence as you might think. After my father died my mother had to take jobs as housekeeper in families that could also house us children. The jobs never lasted long, so for a year I was shuttled from school to school. I’m afraid I hardly remember your mother, though I remember hearing she was a wonderful teacher.”
“Yes. Like most wonderful teachers she was shunted up to a headship where she hardly ever taught. But I must admit she loved all the administration as well—let’s face it, she loved the power.”
“I think perhaps she taught my class once or twice when one of the regulars was sick. But the funny thing is, the person I remember from that school is the headmistress. And I don’t suppose I ever was taught by her.”
“So you were there then. When my mother was deputy to—I don’t remember her name.”
“Mrs. Southwell. Although I was never taught by her she ran the daily assembly, and I expect that was what lodged in my mind. Looking back I see her as an actress manqué. She marched down the center aisle in the school hall as if she were Marlene Dietrich—all eyes were on her, and somehow she always managed to wear something different or to look different—hair, makeup, whatever. And she conducted the assembly as if we, the children, were extras in a crowd scene.”
“I had heard she could be difficult,” said Eve. “Actually she sounds fearsome.”
“To us children she was. Looking back—I keep saying that, but it’s difficult when you’re trying to see a child’s memories not to use an adult’s eye—it’s possible she was slightly ridiculous. And I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have had your mother’s skill in administration. In my experience people with giant egos never do.”
“I suppose to you children she must have seemed like a fairy-tale character.”
“I suppose she did. Something out of ‘Hansel and Gretel,’ perhaps. Probably today she’s an aged crone luring children into her lair with sweets.”
“Oh, she must be long dead.”
He shook his head vigorously.
“Not at all. She was certainly alive—when was it?—some months ago. There was a piece in one of the local papers about her eightieth or eighty-fifth birthday. I don’t remember the details. The face rang a vague bell, but as soon as I read it, and the name, it all came back to me—my months at Blackfield Road, forty or so years ago. She went on from there to a primary in the Bradford area.”
“Shifted sideways, I suppose.”
“Or even upward. It was a much bigger school. ‘Generations of beginners will remember’—‘her strong personality and her ability to make subjects live’—all the local newspaper clichés were there.”
“Where was she living?”
“It was near Keighley. It sounded like a nursing home, or one of those places where there is a warden and help whenever necessary, but otherwise most of the residents can still do necessary chores and light cleaning and generally look after themselves. What was the name? It didn’t have ‘twilight’ or ‘sunset’ in it, but it sounded like a last stop before the trumpets sound on the other side.”
“Well, I expect I can find out.”
“It shouldn’t be difficult . . . Rani tells me you’re looking into something in connection with your mother.”
“That’s right.”
“Not anything criminal, he says.”
“I don’t think so. Maybe something underhand, something dubiously honest, or even some kind of trick. I’ve certainly not come upon anything that could suggest a crime.”
“Good. Long-ago crimes get a very low priority here, I’m afraid.”
“Even if the criminal is still alive?”
“That’s basically irrelevant. It’s the extreme difficulty of finding proof that is the deciding factor.” He shifted in his chair, having delivered his little warning. “Well, I’ve enjoyed this talk. Can I get in touch with you at any time?”
“Anytime before Monday. After that you would have to leave a message on my answer machine. I’m flying to Australia to try to get a lead on my father. I’ll be away about a week.”
“Your father? Of course we always knew your mother as Mrs. McNabb, but I don’t remember anything about her husband.”
“You wouldn’t, at school. But she was actually married when you knew her, I should think. After the early or mid-seventies she was either a widow, as she claimed; a wife in name only; or separated or divorced. I would like to know for certain.”
“Well, I wish you luck. Though remember, certainty is always next to impossible, and sometimes undesirable. Your kind of quest is becoming quite common these days. They don’t always end happily, you know. We had a case of someone who spent years tracing his mother, and when he succeeded he tried to kill her on their second meeting.”
“Thanks for telling me, but I’m not one of nature’s optimists anyway. I don’t see everything sunny-side up—downside up, more like.”
They said their good-byes, and she was escorted out by the schoolboy policeman. He had nice manners, Eve thought, but it seemed likely to be years before experiences like the ones the chief super had just mentioned wiped the expression of ineradicable naiveté off his face. When she got out into the street, she stood for a moment blinking in the sunlight.
“Eve!”
Rani was coming from the car park a few yards away. Eve wondered whether he had just arrived back at base, or if he had been waiting for her.
“Rani,” she said, trying to erase any tinge of inappropriate warmth from her voice in the vicinity of so many policemen.
“How did it
go?”
“It went perfectly well, I think. We ‘got on’ brilliantly, but I’m not sure how relevant that will be. All he knows about my PR skills is what I’ve told him myself. And that wasn’t any more than a rank beginner could have learned in a couple of days in the office here. If he cares to follow up on my career, he should get a pretty good reference from my present place of work, but it probably won’t give him much more idea either of me or my talents. Damn! I must phone someone back in Wolverhampton and tell them I’m considering a change of job and a relocation, as the Americans say.”
“Is that definite?”
“It’s definite that I’m considering it. Not definite that I’m going to do it.”
“Well, that’s a start.”
There was something in Rani’s tone that suggested he was pleased. Eve felt a leap of the heart, but knew she must go carefully.
“Rani, I’m going to have a meal out tonight. I don’t know if you’re on duty or if you would like to have dinner with me, but could you and would you?”
There was not the minutest pause for thought.
“I should be honored. And very happy.”
Eve looked at him.
“Has something happened?” she asked.
“Yes . . . No . . . I don’t know. We will talk. It’s not much, but—”
“Shall we say Browns Restaurant, in the Radisson Hotel? It’s a pretty conventional menu—English and proud of it, or so it seemed when I looked on the way here. I feel like that, though there’s no reason why you should.”
“I am getting used to ordinary English food. But for me it is still out of the ordinary.”
“What time do you finish work?”
“At seven thirty.”
“I’ll see you in Browns at seven forty-five.”
“Yes. Our first . . . date. Is it a date?”
“Oh, definitely.”
“Then, Eve—would you call me Omkar?”
“Of course I will. Is that your—”
“First name, yes. Rani is my family name. It’s easy and sounds nice, and everyone at the station just stuck with it. And Omkar sounds a little bit odd.”
Eve had noticed the Radisson Hotel when she had been wandering around the city killing time before her appointment at police headquarters. Somehow the closeness to the town hall, one of her favorite pieces of Victorian overkill, gave her confidence in it. On an impulse she now went in and booked into a room for the night. She was probably making a big mistake, but if the worst came to the worst she could at least have a few extra drinks with her meal. It was nearly five, but on another impulse—she was going to have to watch out for impulses—she went and bought a new frock in the Victoria Quarter. Smart rather than gay, and needing another sort of handbag, but she hoped Rani was not the sort to notice.
He came into the restaurant from the street, dressed in the smart suit he’d worn that afternoon, but with a new and almost flashy tie. She raised her hand to him, and he came over looking appreciatively at her new dress.
“Impulse buying, Omkar,” she said. “I’m just facing up to the fact that I am now the owner of a large house that will do terribly well in the next property boom. I am a woman of substance. I’ve booked in here for the night as well.” She was so unprepared for the look of alarm that greeted her that she immediately denied all adulterous intention. “Not for us. I just didn’t fancy a late-night train home.”
“I could have driven you,” said Rani, relaxing and sitting down.
“No. I’m keeping you from your family for long enough.”
“Well, as far as that goes . . . But that can keep.”
“What will you drink? Beer, fruit juice, wine?”
“I think I can still drive after a glass of wine.”
They ordered their meals, a half bottle of red, and then settled down to talk.
“Glasgow first,” said Eve. “I talked to two friends of my father. Lots of detail about his work, his circle, a bit about his marriage. As I told you I got a general feeling of something being covered up—particularly by one of the friends, a retired art teacher called Jamie Jewell.”
“Any hint as to what was being concealed, or why?”
“No, not really. Perhaps the truth about his marriage. A slight feeling that it could have been rocky, before he took off for Australia, and something happened that was the last straw.”
“Wouldn’t you expect, if his marriage was solid, that he’d have chosen to go somewhere closer than Australia?”
“Yes. On thinking it over, I would. And I could see all sorts of reasons why the marriage could have been shaky.”
“Yes. Surely it makes sense, if your mother was having any sort of lesbian affair, that your father could have wanted to get as far away from her and the partner as possible.”
“Yes.” Eve pondered this for a few moments. “By the way, I have found no evidence of his death, beyond the fact that people began spreading rumors around that he was dead.”
“The rumors could easily have been true. He had chest problems.”
“We’re not living in the nineteenth century—coughing up blood, and Keats’s ‘that blood is my death warrant.’ My mother died too young, but that’s no reason to think my father did too, and really young. In a healthy country like Australia.”
“Except the talk. And he didn’t have the healthy childhood in the open that most Australians have. Don’t get your hopes too high, that’s all I’m saying. Any idea which part of Australia he went to?”
“No, I wasn’t vouchsafed details. This Jamie character said he’d forgotten, but he’s not the world’s most accomplished liar, particularly after a pint or two. I didn’t believe him. I must admit I didn’t take to him. There was something a bit snakelike about him. I got the idea of some sort of trick, something that could have been a joke or a hoax, but in fact was deadly serious.”
Rani thought hard.
“Does that thought come from these friends you’ve talked to, or from the letter? That sentence about ‘the business with John.’”
“I think it comes from both, Omkar.”
“Do you mean that something that might have appeared to be a hoax to the outside world was in fact deadly serious and had the desired effect of getting your father out of your mother’s life for good?”
“Yes . . . I suppose if I had put my thoughts into proper order that is roughly what I think could have happened.”
“And Jamie Jewell is still not willing to talk about it thirty-odd years after it happened?”
“If he was sworn to secrecy at the time—”
“It would be an oath that surely would have worn thin by the separation of the two people most closely concerned. You think, don’t you, that there may have been later connections between your father and Jamie Jewell, and he’s not letting on about them.”
“Yes. That’s a possibility, isn’t it?”
“Yes. But I’m not sure these two possibilities gel—the possibility of an apparent hoax, and the continued silence of Jewell due to an ancient promise.”
“I think we’re just going to have to keep various balls in the air, conflicting possibilities, until we have more information.”
“Fair enough.”
“By the way, I looked at his cartoons. Not wildly amusing or even appealing at this distance of time. But he was getting much sharper as a political cartoonist rather than the ‘aren’t people funny’ sort of domestic one.”
“Will that be what you look for when you go to Australia?”
“Oh—you’ve been talking to Collins. I’ll look for both kinds, Omkar. I imagine the Australian political scene was so different from the English one that it would take a fair time to adapt that side of his talent. A whole new cast of characters to get accustomed to, a new political situation, with the states and then the federal government. I’d better get a good history of Australia when I get out there to get wise to all the major figures and controversies.”
The waitress came to take t
heir plates away, and Eve thought for a few moments about her strategy. Then she said: “Well?”
Rani stiffened in his chair, ordering his thoughts.
“Things seem to be changing. Not for the better in our marriage, but in Sanjula’s attitude to it. She is spending more time away from home. If I say I’m working late—something all policemen have to do quite a lot of the time—Sanjula takes the baby and goes to stay with one of her relatives, or even with my parents. She has a brother, happily married in Bradford; several cousins, mostly in Keighley; and she gets on well with all of them, including my parents.”
“And I suppose that makes you wonder still more why the two of you can’t make a go of your marriage.”
“Not really—not now. I’d realized long ago that we have natures that simply don’t mesh. Oil and water.”
“Does she say anything about her visits?”
“Only that she likes the company. Generally she just stays overnight.”
“What’s your spin on this?”
“That she’s talking to both families about our marriage.”
“But that doesn’t worry you? It pleases you?”
“Oh yes. Of course she’s not going to win some of them around. My parents, for example. Sanjula knows that. But she’s getting people used to the idea that things aren’t going right in the marriage.”
Eve’s face twisted.
“Don’t you think they know that already?”
“I imagine so. Of course I’ve talked to my parents. But I think Sanjula has taken it a step further. I think she may be preparing the ground for the idea of divorce.”
Eve’s face showed her bemusement.
“But you seemed so sure she wouldn’t want that, Omkar.”
“I think I was wrong. I’ve always thought of her as the naive little country girl from backwoods India. Do everything your parents tell you to do. But I should have realized people can’t come to live in another country with another way of life without being affected by it. Little by little it seeps into you, particularly if you are a young person, and subtly it changes your way of thinking.”
“And you think Sanjula is beginning to see there is no future in a marriage like yours?”
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