‘Are you all right, Mr Sixsmith?’ said Mrs C. anxiously. ‘Shall I call a nurse?’
‘No, I’m fine,’ he said, closing his eyes. ‘Just a bit tired.’
‘Then I’ll leave you. Take care.’
He was a better actor than he thought. When he opened his eyes again to check that she’d gone, he saw from the clock on the ward wall that nearly two hours had passed.
It came to him that he felt much better and that all that was wanted to complete his recovery was a good night’s sleep in his own bed followed by the full English.
He swung his legs out of bed and put his feet on the floor. For a second everything swam round, then as quickly settled back into place. He tried a couple of experimental steps.
‘Mr Sixsmith, what on earth are you doing?’
It was Sister, looking very stern.
‘Going home,’ he said. ‘Can I have my clothes, please?’
‘Don’t be silly. We’re keeping you in overnight.’
‘Look,’ said Joe reasonably. ‘I haven’t broken anything, right? And Town have a home match tonight. So come closing time, win or lose, Casualty will be crowded and they’ll be ringing up here, begging for beds. Here’s mine. You don’t even have to pay me for it.’
‘But you can’t just go. How will you get home? There’s no ambulance available …’
Over her shoulder Joe saw Merv Golightly come into the ward.
‘It’s OK, Sister,’ he said. ‘I got a taxi waiting.’
21
Despite its proximity, Joe tried to avoid London. Even a small fish could swim around Luton and never be far from other small fish he recognized, but stepping off the train at St Pancras was like falling off an ocean liner.
His flat, which someone (Beryl? Mirabelle?) had thoroughly cleaned, had performed the anticipated therapy. Whitey had acted a bit pissed off, though it was clear he’d been very well fed. And his own bed had wrapped itself around him like a mother’s embrace.
Not that he’d been permitted to sleep without hearing Merv’s news.
‘Joe, you were spot on. Guy fitting that description to a “t” got a first-floor flat on the front. Calls himself Alan Douglas, claims he’s a writer who needs somewhere he can come and work away from the kids from time to time. Turns up two, three times a week maybe. Sometimes spends the night, but not often. Oh, and here’s a nice bit, janitor reckons he got a good deal on the rent ’cos he did the deal through the boss’s sister!’
‘That’s great, Merv,’ said Joe. ‘You remember you were saying how much you admire Long Liz? How’d you like to spend some time in her flat?’
That had all been arranged satisfactorily. And by ten o’clock Joe was submerged in a sleep deep and dark as a barrel of Guinness from which he didn’t surface till eight the following morning.
The full English completed the cure and by nine Joe was driving to the station.
He’d winced when he saw the Morris. Merv had had the broken window replaced but the damaged bodywork was going to need major surgery.
He’d left a thoroughly disgruntled Whitey on guard in the flat and a note on the door saying he was fine and had gone out on business. It would not keep the female flak from flying but at least it might stop them from calling out the police search squads.
Not that a police search squad wouldn’t have been useful in London. Even with his old A to Z he managed to get lost twice before he finally found Earls Court Terrace.
The D.U. Club’s portals looked sinister enough to be the entrance to the UK centre of the White Slave trade, which ought to have been reassuring but wasn’t. D.U., as he’d guessed, stood for Down Under, though a team of graffiti artists had other ideas, the least offensive of which was Diggers’ Urinal.
He pushed open the flaking door and found himself in a dim vestibule smelling of joss sticks. A young man was sitting behind a reception desk.
‘Help you, mate?’ he said.
‘It’s about some mail,’ said Joe.
‘Name?’
‘Vicary. Robert Vicary.’
The young man turned to a bank of pigeon holes behind him and after sorting through a bunch of envelopes extracted one fairly large one.
‘Not resident, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Got ID?’
‘Sort of,’ said Joe, producing the passport.
The man looked at the picture and said mildly, ‘Been lying in the sun, have you?’
‘It’s not me,’ said Joe.
‘You’re shitting me,’ said the man in mock amazement.
‘I’m a private investigator,’ said Joe.
‘Don’t entitle you to someone else’s mail,’ said the man.
‘Robert Vicary’s dead,’ said Joe. ‘There was a letter from his mother in his things, addressed c/o here. I’ve just been hired to tidy things up around him and I thought I’d better check if there was anything else. No need for me to take it though. I’ll notify the police and they’ll make it official.’
It was, like most of his lies, as near the truth as he could keep without actually telling it.
As he’d hoped, mention of the police did the trick. Young folk today regarded the cops like old folk regarded doctors. Once you started messing with those jokers, they hated to let you go without sticking something on you.
‘You might as well take it, but you’ll have to sign.’
He produced a dog-eared ledger in which he wrote the date and one letter addressed Rob Vicary, received by …
He looked at Joe queryingly.
‘Sixsmith. Joe Sixsmith.’
J. Sixsmith, he wrote. ‘Sign here.’
Joe turned the ledger round. The page was crowded with dates and signatures.
‘You get a lot of mail,’ he said.
‘Yeah. Folk come from Oz not knowing where they’ll be staying, they say, write care of the D.U. Got to be so many, we had to have a system to stop people just walking in and helping themselves.’
‘So what exactly is this place?’
‘Started as a water hole in the basement, then sort of expanded upwards to take in a few rooms to let.’
‘So people live here permanently?’
‘You gotta be joking,’ laughed the man. ‘It’s a stop over till you find somewhere better which, to tell the truth, isn’t all that difficult. Why? You’re not looking for somewhere for the night?’
‘No thanks,’ said Joe. What he was doing was passing the time while he ran his eye back over the name column. There it was, Rob Vicary again, presumably the letter from his mother … except the date …
‘That’ll be one pound,’ said the man.
‘Eh?’
‘We have to make a charge,’ said the young man defensively. ‘Cover our overheads. You OK?’
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ said Joe, still staring fixedly at the ledger. He handed over the money and took the envelope.
‘Hey, this is sealed up with Sellotape,’ he said suspiciously.
‘Some folk believe in belt and braces,’ said the man. ‘Or maybe Customs had a little poke around to check no one back home was sending a few grams of happy dust. It happens. Are you sure you’re OK?’
‘No,’ said Joe returning his attention to the ledger. ‘I think I’m having delusions. There’s another letter for Robert Vicary recorded as being collected back here.’
He pointed.
‘Yeah. So what? You said you got on to us ’cos his mother wrote him here. That must have been her letter.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Joe. ‘Or at least I hope not. You see, this one was collected four days after the poor sod died.’
A little later he sat in a pub and sought clarification in a pint of stout. It wasn’t Guinness but another brew which the barman assured him was very popular, presumably with people who liked their stout to taste like Guinness diluted with ten per cent ditchwater. It certainly muddied his mind considerably.
The receptionist at the D.U. had been unable to help him muc
h. If someone came in with some form of ID which stood a cursory examination, chances were they’d get the mail. He’d checked back till he found Vicary’s signature acknowledging receipt of presumably his mother’s letter. The forged scrawl wasn’t a million miles away.
So what did it all mean? Joe shrugged. No use drowning in what you couldn’t fathom. Time for that thing Rev. Pot had gone on about. Negative capability. Perhaps the envelope would contain a clue. He took his penknife out and carefully sliced through the Sellotape.
What it contained was a letter with a fancy heading declaring it was from the Melbourne law firm of Greenhill, Travers & Pearce. It was dated three weeks after the letter from the boy’s mother.
Dear Mr Vicary,
I hope that before you get this, you may have tried to contact home and so received the tragic news I have to impart in a less impersonal manner. In a letter, there is no kinder way than the most direct. I regret to tell you that your mother has died in hospital during the course of major surgery for cancer. It is not clear to me how much she had confided to you about her condition, but I gather from her physicians that the critical point was accelerated by the emotional distress she suffered as a result of yet another piece of tragic news. Your stepfather was involved in a car accident on his way to San Francisco airport and died a week later of his injuries. Your mother insisted on travelling to be by his bedside and she returned from the trip in such a weakened condition that her doctors advised that immediate surgery was necessary.
I deeply regret having been the bearer of such unhappy news. I am sending copies of this letter to all points at which there is a chance you may pick it up. On receipt please either contact me at the above number or take this letter along to your nearest Australian Embassy where I will make arrangements for money to be made available to fly you home. This is not the place to go into business details, but you should be aware that on your stepfather’s death, the great proportion of his considerable estate passed to your mother and thence to you, so there is no reason to let any financial consideration delay your return by even an hour.
With deepest regrets.
Yours sincerely,
Jeremy Greenhill.
When he’d finished reading, Joe sat for a long while just staring into his glass. Sometimes the world seemed such a randomly shitty place, you didn’t know why you bothered. Where was the point in getting your mind all snarled up over one lost life, when with a weary indifference God could kick any number of others into touch on a mere whim?
Maybe the way to look at it, God’s the enemy and I’m a member of the Resistance, thought Joe.
Keep on fighting. Good old Winnie’s across the Channel and he’ll never give in!
Two Australians were talking at the next table. Joe leaned over and said, ‘What’s the time in Melbourne?’
They exchanged glances then one said, ‘You taking the piss, mate?’
‘No. Just drinking it.’
‘In that case, it’s about ten or eleven at night.’
There was a Greenhill faraway who might be able to throw some final light on this thing, but not till he got to his office.
‘Thanks,’ said Joe, rising.
There were other things he might as well do while he was here. He got a tube to Tottenham Court Road and went into a big bookshop he remembered. It was as easy to get lost inside as out. He looked for an assistant to ask directions. Assistants were easy to recognize. They were the ones wandering around like displaced persons, speaking to each other in broken English. He found himself by accident in the Travel section and he checked out hotels in Vinnitsa and Kiev. Mrs Vansovich and her friends had been right. No Hotel Pripyat in Vinnitsa but there was one in Kiev and had been since the early years of the century. The confirmation was no pleasure.
Next he drifted with no conscious effort into History of War. What he wanted was something on the concentration camps. He knew about them, of course. He’d passed through the English school system and World War Two had figured large on the History curriculum. But like most human minds, his was only capable of keeping on the front burner the knowledge immediately necessary to his work, his well-being and his survival. The rest, like, for instance, algebra, or David Copperfield, or concentration camps, it consigned to the storage cellar in no particular order of importance.
His mind knew what it was about, he decided five minutes later as he leafed through a dozen pages of pictures at the centre of a scholarly tome. After a while he had to sit down. When he felt able to get up again, he took the book to one of the displaced persons and persuaded her to take his money. Then he continued up Tottenham Court Road and along Euston Road till the sanctuary of St Pancras came into view.
Half an hour later he was breathing the clean invigorating air of Luton.
He drove straight round to Bullpat Square. Butcher was just ushering a client out of her office.
‘Sixsmith,’ she said. ‘I heard you were in Intensive Care.’
‘More like intensive farming in there,’ he said. ‘Butcher, I need help from your computer.’
She said, ‘I know you’re a marvel with a lathe or a motor engine, but I’m not letting you get those oily fingers on my nice shiny computer.’
‘You’ll have to do it anyway,’ he said. ‘I don’t know the University entry codes.’
She dragged him into her office and shut the door.
‘What the hell are you doing, Sixsmith?’ she hissed. ‘Trying to get me jailed?’
‘Then I’m right?’ he said. ‘I just asked myself, who do I know who’ll be able to hack into every file in town?’
‘Sixsmith, be careful,’ she warned. ‘OK, I may occasionally need to dip into the odd set of records when Social Security, say, or the credit agencies are playing silly buggers with one of my clients, but that doesn’t mean I’m in the private data selling business. I leave that to the seedy end of your profession where I’m disappointed to find you.’
‘That’s where I may end up if you don’t help,’ he said. ‘Listen, all I want is to access their old records twenty years back. Nothing current, nothing personal. I just want to check whether there was an Australian student name of Vicary there at the time.’
‘That all?’ she said.
‘Brownie’s honour,’ he said.
She turned to her computer. A minute or so later she said, ‘There were two Vicarys, a married couple, Pamela and Malcolm. There for a year.’
‘Great. And was …?’
‘Hang about, Sixsmith,’ she cried. ‘You said you had just the one query.’
‘Of the computer,’ he said. ‘You can probably answer this one yourself. Was this the same year Willie Woodbine was doing his police civic course at the Uni?’
She thought and said, ‘Yes, it would be. Sixsmith, what the hell …?’
But Joe was on his way out.
His mind was getting weighed down with knowledge. Time to share the load. He got in his battered car and headed for Hoot Hall.
22
His first impression of Hoot Hall as run down and depressing was confirmed, but Dora Calverley did her best to compensate by welcoming him warmly and sitting him down with an excellent cup of tea. This, plus her air of calm authority, reassured Joe he’d come to the right place to shift at least one of his troubles.
She examined the passport and the letters carefully.
‘So he never got this from the lawyers?’ she said. ‘Poor boy. Though it does mean he was spared this terrible news. Is that a compensation, do you think, Mr Sixsmith?’
‘Wondered that myself,’ said Joe.
‘Yes. I suspect you are a great deal more sensitive than is usual in a man of your profession,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t mean that as a criticism. On the contrary. And you have done marvellously well here. When you pass all this on to the police I hope they are suitably abashed.’
‘That’s what you want I should do?’ he asked.
‘The whole purpose of the exercise was to try to put
a name to this poor child. Now I think the official process needs to take over. In fact, I suspect that to withhold this information might in itself be a breach of the law. But I’ll bow to your expert knowledge there.’
Joe made a mental note to apprise Butcher he was being deferred to as a legal expert, then scratched it, envisaging her scornful laughter.
‘Is there a problem?’ asked Mrs Calverley shrewdly when he didn’t reply straightaway.
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I think there could be a connection between this boy, Robbie Vicary, and the Woodbines.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
He explained. It didn’t sound much as he set it out step by small step, but she listened with so little sign of scepticism that he felt able to take her to the mistiest limits of his speculation.
‘Then there’s the verger,’ he said. ‘He’s firm there wasn’t any box lying around the churchyard at five-thirty when he arrived. When we found him at half-nine he was cold and pretty stiff. I’m no expert, but I’d guess he’d been dead several hours.’
‘So he died at six-thirty,’ she said reasonably.
‘Which means that during the hour from half-five to half-six, while it was still dusk, he turned up at St Monkey’s with a huge cardboard box, climbed into it and died.’
‘If he came in from the back way, there wouldn’t be much chance of being spotted,’ said the woman. ‘As for the box, doesn’t the lane behind St Monica’s run into the service road up to the Buymore Supermarket?’
She’d been using her head too. Joe liked that.
‘True,’ he said. ‘But they don’t sell, and they don’t use, Alfredo Freezers. Georgina Woodbine’s got one, though.’
Now for the first time Mrs Calverley’s tone of voice shifted towards incredulity.
‘You’re not suggesting that Georgie Woodbine dumped the box and the boy at the church?’
‘She drives a Volvo Estate which could manage both quite easily. And it was parked round the back in the Cloisters that night.’
‘While she was in the church, singing.’
‘She’d have needed an accomplice to get the box and the boy out and lug them round the other side. A strong man could do it.’
Born Guilty Page 16
