No Place of Safety

by Robert Barnard

  ‘I’m guessing the problem was at home,’ he suggested quietly. The girl nodded.

  ‘It must have been. She didn’t talk about it – not talk. But you could tell by her reactions. If her mother was mentioned she went silent, or sometimes made an ugly face. She was sending signals, but she clammed up if you tried to get any details out of her. I tried to help, because I thought it was probably serious, but I never got through to her. There’s lots of us don’t get on that well with our parents, but this . . .’

  ‘This went deeper?’

  ‘I thought so. That was the impression I got.’

  Charlie nodded. He suspected that was the impression the neighbours had had too.

  ‘There was a man, wasn’t there, in the household until recently?’

  ‘Yes. Not her father.’

  ‘There couldn’t be any question of . . . of him and her, him and Katy? . . .’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so. I never got any hint. When he moved out Katy just said he “didn’t like the atmosphere – couldn’t take it any longer”.’

  ‘Well, that tells me something, at least. Did Katy see her natural father?’

  ‘If so, she kept very quiet about it. I never once heard her mention him.’

  ‘Long gone?’

  Sharon shrugged.

  ‘For all I know. There’s plenty of kids here from one-parent homes. Lots of them don’t know who their father is.’

  ‘You think Katy was one of them?’

  ‘That would be my guess. But we weren’t that close, you see. Not friends.’

  ‘And there was nobody here who was closer?’

  ‘No. I certainly never heard her mention Alan Coughlan, or any other boy as a boyfriend. There was . . . nobody.’

  ‘Bleak.’

  The girl considered Charlie’s word.

  ‘Yes. I think that’s what her life was. Bleak.’

  CHAPTER 2

  The Mother

  There was a light shining behind the lead-lighted windows of Katy Bourne’s box. It was a long way from Dingley Dell, but it suggested there was now human habitation. Charlie squared his shoulders for an unsatisfactory encounter and went up and rang the front door bell. Three descending notes and a recorded dog’s bark.

  Slow footsteps down the hall. The woman who opened the door had a narrow, straight mouth, deep lines of discontent along the forehead, and eyes that were cold and hard. Also tired. No doubt a day spent dispensing pensions, dole money, TV stamps and car licences would take their toll even on a tough lady well capable of taking care of herself.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mrs Bourne?’ The woman gave a tentative nod. ‘I’m DC Peace,’ said Charlie, showing her his ID card and making sure that she read it.

  ‘Oh.’

  This time Charlie got a message loud and clear: she was surprised to encounter a black policeman, and not pleased. Or was it that she was not pleased that the police were following up the case at all?

  ‘It’s about Katy, Mrs Bourne.’

  ‘Well, I could guess that. Do you want to come in?’

  ‘Please.’

  After a second’s pause she stood aside and led him into a hallway barely large enough for the two of them, then into a living room that was tiny by any standards, in which paths had been made between the furniture – hand-me-down stuff in a variety of different tastelessnesses. Charlie sat down on a meagrely stuffed chair with wooden arms, conscious of being the first black person to have penetrated this fastness (though he doubted whether visitors of any colour or creed had been frequent occurrences).

  ‘Right. Let’s get this over,’ was Mrs Bourne’s unpromising opener. Charlie took his cue from her and pulled out his notebook.

  ‘Certainly. When did you realize that your daughter had left home, Mrs Bourne?’

  ‘Saturday, when I got home from work. I do one Saturday in four, and that was it.’

  ‘You realized at once she’d gone?’

  ‘Well, no. Just that she wasn’t in the house. If she wasn’t at school, Katy was usually around the house. I thought she must have forgotten something in the shopping. I had my lunch, and then I began to unpack the shopping she’d left on the kitchen table. That’s when I realized.’

  ‘Oh. Why?’

  ‘She’d bought odd amounts. One pork chop. Half the milk we usually get. There was more change than there should be. That’s when I realized.’

  Charlie nodded.

  ‘I suppose you went up to her room?’

  ‘Yes . . . almost everything had gone.’

  ‘How could she have transported all that?’ asked Charlie, surprised.

  ‘She didn’t have that much. But I did think maybe someone had come and got her.’

  ‘That worried you?’

  ‘It surprised me. I couldn’t imagine who it might be.’

  Charlie had a sudden insight of these two women, living together in this tiny, unwelcoming box, having only each other and hating each other. Or perhaps – almost as bad – being totally indifferent to each other.

  ‘Did Katy have any contact with her father?’ he asked, out of the blue to surprise her. The woman laughed bitterly.

  ‘Don’t make me laugh! He took off before she’d even made an appearance.’

  ‘No attempt to make contact since?’

  ‘None. I’d have handed her over soon enough if he’d shown any interest.’

  ‘Did you resent getting pregnant?’

  There was a further tightening of the lips.

  ‘I wasn’t best pleased.’

  ‘Why did you go through with it?’

  Now they were really getting down to basics, to the bedrock of this woman’s hardness and bitterness. There was another laugh – short, shot through with grievance.

  ‘Because he was over the moon. Can you believe what men do to women? He was cock-a-hoop, insisted I had it, said it would be loved. And like a fool I believed him, wanted to hold on to him. So when I was eight months gone, what did he do? He upped and left me. Us, I should say.’

  ‘Leaving you to bring up a baby you had never wanted to have, on your own?’

  ‘That’s exactly the size of it. Oh, I had a bit of help from my mother in the early days. But she died of breast cancer five years ago.’

  ‘Did you always resent Katy?’

  She shrugged with impatience at the tone or the implications of the question and took out a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘That’s the language of books and magazines. I don’t need an agony aunt. We just didn’t pull together, her and I.’

  ‘Right from the beginning?’

  She took a deep draw on her cigarette.

  ‘I didn’t get a warm glow from holding her in my arms, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘And your feeling now?’

  She tipped her ash angrily into the ashtray and sat foursquare. A second or two went by before she replied.

  ‘I was in two minds whether to report her missing, if that answers your question.’

  ‘I think it does. Why did you?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘I’d like to know she’s all right.’

  ‘You’d rather know she’s all right and somewhere else than have her back?’

  ‘Frankly, yes.’

  ‘Thank you for being honest with me.’ She raised her eyebrows, impervious to or contemptuous of his praise. ‘The man who was living here until recently – ’ Charlie began.

  ‘Harry Tate? Mogadon Man personified. Yes – what about him? He moved out months ago.’

  ‘How did he get on with your daughter?’

  ‘All right.’

  The question seemed to astonish her – had obviously never occurred to her. It was as if the man had come to live with her without anybody noticing the fact that he was also coming to live with Katy.

  ‘You don’t think there was anything . . . going on between them?’

  The laugh this time was heartier.

  ‘There was nothing to speak of �
��going on” where Harry was concerned. He wasn’t much into that sort of thing. In fact he was the original dead loss.’

  That verdict seemed to beg a number of questions, including that of where Harry’s tastes lay, and that of whether this woman would have known – or cared – if anything had been going on. Charlie decided to stick with the subject.

  ‘How did you and he get together?’

  A wave of annoyance passed over her face. If she was going to be questioned about her own private life, it seemed to say, she regretted that she had ever gone to the police.

  ‘Is that relevant? . . . Oh hell, what’s the odds? We met at a pub quiz. When Katy was thirteen I decided she could look after herself and I could get out and about more. I found I was good at pub quizzes – won prizes, which came in useful. I always had a good memory. We teamed up, and when he suggested he move in with us, I thought his money would come in useful to pay the mortgage on this place.’

  ‘But it didn’t work out?’

  ‘The money was useful, but he was useless.’

  ‘Did you throw him out, or did he leave?’

  ‘Let’s just call it mutual consent. I found I could manage the mortgage, with difficulty, and he’d helped with the move, and I thought he’d served his turn. We didn’t need his pity.’

  Charlie pricked up his ears, and she noticed and immediately showed she regretted letting something out.

  ‘His pity?’

  She stubbed out her cigarette abruptly.

  ‘He was sorry for Katy. He said she was lonely and unloved. So what? I’m lonely and unloved, aren’t I? It was better we sort it out on our own.’

  ‘I suppose you could say in a way it has sorted itself, at least for the moment,’ said Charlie. She looked at him stonily. ‘You’ve said already you won’t mind being on your own, if that’s how things turn out.’

  ‘I won’t. At least it simplifies things. And I can suit myself, without any critical eyes on me.’

  Charlie left a moment’s pause.

  ‘This boy, Alan Coughlan – had you ever heard your daughter mention him?’

  ‘No, I hadn’t. Have you talked to his parents?’

  ‘To his father, yes.’

  ‘Well, if there was anything going on, they’d know. When he rang, his father said the boy always brought his girlfriends home. They knew nothing about Katy, so I should think there’s nothing in the idea.’

  ‘You apparently don’t think Katy would have told you.’

  ‘I’m damned sure she wouldn’t.’

  She seemed to take an obscure pride in that.

  ‘And if you had to hazard a guess as to whether she had a boyfriend at the moment –?’

  ‘If I had to hazard a guess on the probable course of Katy’s love life, I’d say she was unlikely to have a boyfriend till she was in her twenties – middle or late twenties at that – and that when it happened they’d both be pretty desperate, and the chances of him being Mr Right were practically nil. Mind you, the chances of finding Mr Right are practically nil anyway, so why should Katy have more luck than anybody else? Other people will just have more fun testing out possibilities, that’s all.’

  ‘You find life pretty unsatisfactory, don’t you?’

  ‘Totally. That’s why I’m better on my own.’

  Charlie thought that was probably a hint.

  ‘So, summing up, there’s no one you could imagine Katy having gone to – friend, relative or whatever?’

  ‘None. If I could think of anybody I’d have rung them up. I’m not totally uninterested. I’m just not particularly concerned. Don’t think I’m alone in that. A great many parents feel exactly the same.’

  ‘Oh, I know, I know. That’s why a lot of kids go missing, and that’s why a lot of them stay missing without anybody caring very much one way or the other.’ He paused, thinking. ‘But I must say this doesn’t feel very much like an adolescent just leaving home to live on the streets.’

  ‘I hope you’re right. Now, if you’ve finished, I’ve had a hard day and I’ve got a meal to cook – ’

  They stood up, both feeling slightly awkward.

  ‘Mrs Bourne – ’

  ‘Miss. I’ve never been married.’

  ‘ – if we find out where Katy is, what should we do? If she’s not in any danger, there’s little point in bringing her back here, particularly when the likelihood is she’s just going to take off again. On the other hand, she’s only fifteen.’

  ‘You’ve answered your own question. There’s no point in dragging her back if she’ll leave home again the minute I go to work. Fifteen is grown up these days anyway.’

  ‘Not in the eyes of the law it isn’t,’ said Charlie firmly. ‘And there’s the question of school.’

  ‘We can face up to that come the autumn,’ said her mother dismissively. ‘Anyway, the number of kids round here who spend their time skiving off school – when they’re not actually excluded – doesn’t suggest it will be a problem.’

  It was true enough. Even compared with his younger days school seemed to have become an option rather than a legal requirement. Yet it stuck in the throat that this woman gave the impression of having rehearsed in advance the arguments for not acting and not caring. Anything he said had to sound feeble.

  ‘We’ll keep in touch,’ he said at the door.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ she replied, shutting it.

  • • •

  As it turned out, Charlie had to ring Katy’s mother a couple of days later. He had had a visit at police headquarters from Arthur Coughlan, and when he had been summoned down to the outer office the man’s face showed something close to animation.

  ‘I wanted to tell you it’s all right – about Alan, I mean.’

  ‘Oh? He’s come home?’

  ‘Well, no . . . Not yet he hasn’t. But we’ve had a phone call from him, and he’s all right.’

  Charlie nodded, not too discouragingly.

  ‘That’s good news. He didn’t say where he was?’

  ‘No. But he was calling from a house, not a phone box. I could hear voices in the background, and a television or a radio on.’

  ‘You didn’t think of calling 1471 and getting the number he’d been ringing from?’

  The man looked blank.

  ‘I didn’t know you could do that.’

  ‘Never mind. Not a lot do. Did he say why he’d left home, or when he’d be back?’

  The man looked awkward.

  ‘Not really. But he said he would be back . . . And he said that Katy Bourne was there too.’

  That did surprise Charlie.

  ‘I see. Did you ask him whether he and she were . . . involved with each other?’

  ‘Sort of. Didn’t quite know how to put it, but he got my point eventually. He said no. Well, what he actually said was: “You just don’t understand, Dad. You never do.” You know how teenagers feel. They never think you’ve been a teenager yourself.’

  It was an understandable feeling, Charlie thought, as far as Arthur Coughlan was concerned.

  ‘But you definitely got the impression that, though they’re both at the same place, they’re not together in any other sense?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Odd.’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ said Coughlan, with a weak man’s obstinacy. ‘It’s cheered his mother up no end, I can tell you. He’s obviously all right, with a roof over his head.’

  Charlie had to bite back the retort that it was possible to be very far from all right, even with a roof over one’s head. This was hardly a police matter any more, so far as he could tell.

  ‘Well, it’s all encouraging,’ he said. ‘I’ll ring up Katy’s mother later.’

  ‘Oh, we’ve done that – did it straight away. To tell you the truth, she didn’t sound very interested.’

  She sounded even less interested when, for form’s sake, Charlie rang her that same evening.

  ‘Oh yes, that Coughlan man rang me up. It seems they’ve got a p
lace of some kind or other. Sounds like a satisfactory solution to me.’

  ‘Certainly I don’t think the police need to be involved any longer,’ said Charlie. His implication that a mother might want to be fell on predictably stony ground.

  ‘Oh no. Forget about the whole thing. Let them get on with it.’

  And that, for the time being, was what everyone did.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Centre

  ‘That lazy cow Bett Southcott won’t come and do the potatoes,’ said Katy Bourne, coming into the kitchen of 24 Portland Terrace. ‘Says she’s not feeling well. If I had my way she wouldn’t get any supper.’

  ‘That’s not Ben’s way,’ said Alan, reaching down into a low cupboard for a large saucepan.

  ‘Not Ben’s way at all,’ agreed Katy. ‘ “These are seriously disturbed youngsters.” Oh well, just so long as he sticks to his promise that if they don’t pull their weight over the long term they won’t be allowed back.’

  She pulled a bag of potatoes from the vegetable rack, and set to with a peeler. Alan watched her with affection. She was coming along, was Katy. Three weeks before, when they had both come to number twenty-four, she would hardly have ventured an opinion of her own – not an unfavourable view of one of the people at the Centre, and certainly not an implied criticism of Ben. And she wouldn’t have used the word ‘cow’ either. She was getting opinions, getting a character.

  Or rather the character that had always been there, submerged and suppressed, was beginning to emerge, to shake itself after slumber and walk tall. That was how Alan saw her, anyway. If challenged he would have had to admit that at school he had barely noticed her. Now, putting together the odd thing she had told him about her home life, so very different and so much sadder than his own, he saw that any life she had had must have taken place below a surface where practically nothing of any moment was discernible.

  ‘How many tonight?’ he asked conversationally. Katy was peeling the potatoes with the skill of a school dinner lady.

  ‘Eight,’ she said, not stopping. ‘Kelly Smith left today, and nobody’s come.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bank on that. Evening’s the time they come, and it was quite chilly out.’