A Fall from Grace

by Robert Barnard

  “Good, because I haven’t. I can’t even guess how they met.”

  “Do you remember you came home during the evening one day, while you were busy with that copper’s shooting? You went straight to bed, but you told me the next day that as you were coming in from the car you thought you heard the singing of the children’s gang, and that it came roughly from the direction of Dad’s bungalow?”

  “That’s right. Or rather the direction of Forsythia Avenue. Could have been anyone up there. Even Ben Costello lives somewhere near your dad, and they might have fingered him for an Italian immigrant.”

  “I doubt it. People don’t think about unusual names in Britain unless they’re really unpronounceable, and Abbott and Costello have made it seem perfectly usual instead of Italian or Irish, or whatever it is. If he was fingered it was as a newcomer to the village. But say it was my dad, and they were up there singing their song, ‘’Ban, ’ban, Ca-Caliban,’ and maybe others too. What might my dad have thought?”

  “That he was being serenaded as one of the country’s foremost writers?”

  “That they were carol singers.”

  “ ‘’Ban, ’ban Ca-Caliban’ doesn’t sound much like a carol, especially the way they sing it.”

  “My dad was tone deaf. I’ve often told you. He could barely distinguish the National Anthem from ‘Happy Birthday to You.’ ”

  Charlie pondered.

  “So he goes to the door, the smaller children scatter, Anne stays there—pert little piece as she is—and she goes along with the carol singers idea, says the younger ones have gone home to bed, maybe gets invited in . . .”

  “Yeah, well, the detail isn’t important. But I do think that, or something very like it, could have been how it all started.”

  And the more Charlie considered it, the more he liked it. And the more he thought, the more he saw how Anne Michaels could have acted up to the role that Rupert Coggenhoe would have cast her in: that of the acolyte, the admirer, the breathless fan. Maybe at first she genuinely thought Rupert was a well-known writer who could be useful to her when she became a real actress. But perhaps always in the back of her mind there was the possibility of making real mischief for him, or using the threat of it as blackmail.

  * * *

  The next morning, Tuesday, Charlie was not on duty till eleven. Over coffee and toast he took up the Bradford telephone directory and looked up Vickery. There was only one in the Halifax area, and it was, he felt pretty sure, in the Slepton Edge district—a street five minutes from the center. As Felicity was setting off for nursery school he got in the car, drove through the village, then left the car at the nearest wide road. He idled away a few minutes in a newsagent-cum-anything-with-a-better-profit-margin on the corner of Mitching Lane, where he felt sure the Vickerys would live. He was rewarded first by seeing Dwayne barge out of the front door and go off joyfully to school; then, a few minutes later, by seeing a substantial black lady who reminded him of photographs of his mother when younger, leading a small girl. He paid for his Times, then drove his car to the nursery school, passing Felicity on her way home with a gaggle of young and youngish mothers.

  He stopped his car when he saw Mrs. Vickery on the way back from dropping off her daughter. Charlie got out and strolled up to her with a casual air.

  “Do you think I could have a word with you?”

  She looked at him, definitely flirtatious.

  “If you care to walk with me to the bus stop round the corner, I’m on duty in half an hour.” She was a deep contralto, and spoke with a precise, almost prissy accent.

  “On duty?”

  “At Halifax General Hospital.”

  “Ah. This isn’t professional. It was more in your capacity as a mother I wanted to talk.”

  “Well, I have that capacity as well as that of senior nurse.” Suddenly the accent changed, though not the element of flirtation. “If yo’ ain’t embarrassed to go talkin’ to a black person who’s gone up in de world, then I ain’t de same. Even if yo’ is a p’liceman.”

  “Policeman and senior nurse,” said Charlie, smiling broadly back. “Pretty similar jobs.”

  “We in the nursing profession have to be much more tough.” The accent had become prissy again. “Now, I don’t know your name, but you sat in on the drama classes a while back, and gave them a talking-to afterward. And you spoke to my boy Dwayne yesterday.”

  “Right. And you kept him off school yesterday because you realized that questions might be asked about a death that resembled the one in Unman, Whatsit and Whosit.”

  “I did.” She sighed. “Oh, I knew I couldn’t keep him home for long. For a start he’d sneak out, and I’ve a reputation for firmness to keep up. I just wanted to spare him getting involved in all the gossip and rumor that will be going round. He was one of the main boys in the play.”

  “And do you think there’s a connection?”

  “Yo’ is de copper, boy. But it’s a hell of a coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “You’re assuming it was murder, aren’t you?”

  This caused her to think long and hard.

  “Well, yes, I am. If it wasn’t a murder, or not a premeditated one, it doesn’t seem so much of a coincidence.”

  “Are you a bit suspicious of the drama stream for your boy? You wouldn’t be the only one if you were.”

  They came up to the bus stop and again she considered long before replying.

  “I wasn’t suspicious. Dwayne seemed so happy . . . so bright. And he didn’t fall behind in the other subjects either—got better at them, in fact. But I heard from some of the other mothers that kids from the other streams were jealous, that there was a lot of bad blood, a feeling that the drama stream was getting way above themselves. I didn’t want that for Dwayne. And then there was this nasty little gang. They could have picked on me next, and wouldn’t I have given them hell, and Dwayne too.”

  “I think they’d have thought twice before they picked on you,” said Charlie.

  “Maybe. But children aren’t as wise and cautious as adults. And then came this death. Maybe I’m being silly, but it made me think. And I’m not daft enough to think that all the children in the stream are going to end up with a career onstage or on telly, or directing or designing or whatever. Most of them will end up loading shelves in Marks & Spencer’s, just like the other kids. It doesn’t do to burn your bridges with most of the other pupils in the school.”

  Charlie nodded. She was a feet-on-the-ground lady.

  “This little gang—it’s been active round our way.”

  “Have they? Didn’t pick on you, then, with your Brixton accent? You’d give them a hefty wallop if they did, I bet you.”

  “Policemen are the last people who can go around giving kids a hefty wallop. Now, the gang is led by Anne Michaels, I know.”

  “Oh, there’s no doubt about that. Stuck-up little miss. And dangerous, I’d guess.”

  “You’re not far out there. I’ll maybe talk to her later. I’d like to talk to one of the younger children first. Know any of them?”

  “One or two. I guess they’ll be frightened of talking. Not of you so much as of her. She’ll have put the fear of God into them, if I know her.”

  “Who would you recommend I talk to?”

  She ran through the children in her head.

  “I’ve seen them hanging around together, so I know most of them by sight. One I do know better than that is Carmel Postgate. She’s about eleven or twelve and was in hospital for a couple of weeks with pneumonia earlier this year. The pneumonia didn’t stop her chattering away nineteen to the dozen every minute the day held.” She looked at Charlie. “That could be useful, I guess. Right. This is my bus.”

  “One more thing,” said Charlie quickly. “Could you forget we’ve had this conversation? Pretend it’s never happened?”

  “Sure. It’ll be a secret between you and me and the twenty or thirty people who’ve passed us in the street.”

  And she waved c
heerily as she got on the bus.

  Charlie walked thoughtfully back to the car. Of course he had been careless. But where could he have gone to talk to Mrs. Vickery in secret? He didn’t particularly care if Costello found out he’d been talking to possible witnesses eventually. He could cope with that, if the information he had gathered proved relevant. He had no particular sympathy with policemen who cared about their patch and their promotion over the calls of the case and securing a just result. But he didn’t want it to come out now, with all the possible repercussions, including disciplinary ones. He was going to have to be more discreet.

  He drove carefully through Westowram, where parents and toddlers were still making their way to school, then out toward the M62 to Leeds and work. But he was not two minutes from the center when he thought he saw Chris Carlson. This wouldn’t have been surprising if Chris were making his way to somewhere local to paint. But today he was going nowhere. He was removing rubbish from an old corner shop that looked as if it had been closed for decades and was well on the path to dereliction. As he slowed and watched, Chris and a teenage boy brought out ancient tills, bits of a counter, even groceries presumably spectacularly past their sell-by date. He was rather ashamed as he watched Chris, in his shirtsleeves on a coldish winter morning, because his mind was estimating whether he was physically capable of tipping Rupert Coggenhoe over the quarry edge. There was no question about it: he was six foot, lean, very lithe. There would be no contest if he was faced with a seventy-year-old man, gone to seed, with a stoop and a prominent tummy.

  Charlie got out of his car and went over.

  “Setting up shop?” he asked pleasantly.

  “Charlie!” said Chris, stopping work and mopping his brow. “Wasn’t expecting you. Not exactly shop, more like office. It was a shop once, but it’s been closed for years. I’ve rented it for a couple of months, with an option. It’s going to be my campaign headquarters. Alison wasn’t keen on that being at home—not with her being about to produce the long-awaited offspring in four months’ time.”

  “I can understand that. So you’ve decided?”

  “Yes, I have. I felt as if it decided itself, was inevitable, after my having got so close last time. I felt as if I’d be breaking faith with all those who’d supported me then. And the truth is, I enjoyed the campaigning that time, and I’m looking forward to it now. It’s something worth doing.”

  “I think I’d keep quiet about it for a bit,” said Charlie.

  “Keep quiet? How can you keep an election campaign quiet?”

  “I mean for a week or two. He’s only been dead three or four days. People might see it as you jumping rather overenthusiastically into dead men’s shoes.”

  Chris looked gobsmacked for a moment.

  “Good Lord, I hadn’t thought of that. Tasteless, you feel?”

  “A bit. And pushy.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be that. It wouldn’t do me any good at all . . . Peter!” He called in the direction of the boy, who was struggling with a long plank of wood. “I think you’d better do the removal work. I’ll stay inside and give the place a lick of paint.”

  “It’ll cost you,” said Peter stoutly. “If I’m going to do all that lifting work I’ll need an increase of wages.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Chris reluctantly. “I promised you eight pounds for the morning. We’ll say ten.”

  “Twelve.”

  “Why you—Oh, all right. It’s daylight robbery, though. I’m only giving it you because you’ve got me over a barrel.”

  Chris made himself less public by slipping inside. Charlie and Peter followed him, and watched as he took up a paint pot and brush.

  “Know a girl named Carmel Postgate?” Charlie asked Chris. “Quite young—eleven, twelve maybe.”

  “I don’t,” said Chris, stirring the paint. “Children don’t come to me with their worries.”

  “Maybe they should.”

  “I know her,” said Peter, glad of any excuse to put off heavy work. “Chatters like a parrot—you can’t shut her up.”

  “I heard that. She goes to Westowram High, I suppose. First or second year.”

  “That’s right. Drama stream. They make you sick, that lot. Go on as if they’re God’s gift to the nation. She’s one of Anne Michaels’s little followers. What a crew! You watch she doesn’t take you on next. Incomers is what they go for, and it’s often as not color they’re really talking about.”

  “Know where Carmel Postgate lives?”

  “Up Brigg Street. It’ll be about number eighteen or twenty. Father works in the council offices.”

  “Right. Thank you very much. I’d like you to keep quiet about this. I don’t want it to get around for a bit.”

  “It’ll cost you.”

  Charlie sighed, pulled out his wallet and handed over a fiver.

  * * *

  It was some way into the afternoon, when he was deep in the paperwork connected to the shooting of the police sergeant and the charge against his assailant, that Charlie got an idea. Politicians were then, as always, proclaiming how they would reduce paperwork for the police while they were at the same time bringing in new regulations that would increase it further. The only thing that Charlie would say in favor of the mountain of forms he was compelled to produce was that most of them could be filled in with only half a mind.

  When the idea occurred to him he grabbed the phone.

  “Felicity? I want you to do something.”

  “Something to do with Dad’s death?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “Tone of voice. You wouldn’t use that tone or those words if you just wanted me to go down to the supermarket for a bottle of whiskey. Anyway, you always get that tone when you’re on a murder case.”

  “Don’t use that word. Nobody’s sure, not even me.”

  “But the others think the balance of probability is to natural causes, and you think the balance is toward unnatural causes.”

  “Maybe. Shut up. I’m supposed to be working. There’s a girl called Carmel Postgate, lives up Brigg Street, maybe number eighteen or twenty. They’ll probably be in the directory.”

  “You say ‘girl.’ I presume you mean one of the younger children in Anne Michaels’s gang?”

  “Yes. Very bubbly and talkative.”

  “Sounds useful.”

  “But don’t bank on it. A lot of talk about the murder has probably gone around the school, so she might be a bit reserved. There’s the parents too. Many of them must have seen Unman, Whosit and Whatsit, and if connections are being made at school they very likely will be made at home too. So Carmel’s parents may be protective too.”

  “All right, all right. You don’t have to mollycoddle me. I take it you want me to go round and talk to her and find out if the gang ever targeted my dad, and if so what happened when they went up to sing songs at him.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Just anything your novelist’s antennae can pick up about the dynamics of the gang, or about its leader.”

  “It shall be done. I’ll enjoy doing it.”

  Gaining admittance to the Postgate home was easier than Felicity expected. Even before her father’s death their arrival in the village had been generally noticed—Charlie’s color, the fact that he was an inspector, Felicity’s own ambitions to be a novelist “like her father” (the phrase, commonly used, would have driven Felicity wild if she had heard it) meant that they were a marked family. She was therefore invited in; Carola was sent to play in a back room with Carmel’s preschool-age brother so they could settle down in the sitting room.

  “It’s my father,” said Felicity. “I’m still trying to come to terms with his death, you see.”

  “It must be awful when it’s so sudden.”

  “It is. Much more difficult to make sense of. You must be wondering what it has to do with you.”

  “Well . . . not altogether. But go on.”

  “It’s r
eally your daughter Carmel I wanted to talk to.”

  An expression of aggravation crossed Carmel’s mother’s face.

  “I thought as much! She’ll be home any time now.” She leaned forward confidingly. “She’s clammed up every time your dad’s death has been mentioned, and Jim and I have been convinced there’s been something up—something connected with that Anne Michaels, we feel sure. She’s such a bossy little madam, and we’re sure she’s been leading the younger ones astray. What’s a girl of her age doing, spending so much time with kids three or four years younger than herself?”

  There was a sound of a key in the front door, and someone entering. There had for some time been a degree of noise and childish laughter from the back room, suggesting that Carola and the young Postgate were getting on fine. Soon there came a child’s voice raised: “Mummy, who’s this black kid Dicky’s playing with?”

  A face peered round the door, and its jaw dropped.

  “Don’t be so rude, Carmel,” said Mrs. Postgate, red with embarrassment. “This is Mrs. Peace, whose father died—you know, Mr. Coggenhoe. She’d like to have a talk with you.”

  The supposedly talkative girl clammed up at once, an obstinate expression settling on her face. “I don’t want to talk to her.”

  “Oh yes, you will, my girl,” said her mother, no mean exponent of the obstinate expression herself. “You’ll tell her exactly what she wants to know.”

  The girl came in, dragging her feet, and went to sit on the sofa under the window, as far as possible from Felicity.

  “I don’t know anything,” she muttered.

  “You don’t know anything about what?” Felicity asked sweetly.

  “Nothing.”

  It looked like being a long haul unless Felicity came straight to the point, so that’s what she did.

  “I suppose you mean you don’t know anything about this little . . . group that Anne Michaels has got together from children in the drama stream, don’t you?”