It was late morning before Charlie could get away from routine paperwork at police HQ. When he got to Bramsey he left the police car around the corner, well away from 24 Portland Terrace. He didn’t want to frighten the people in the refuge, or give the neighbours who were agitated the wrong idea. He was very conscious of the fact that a few years ago he might have been taken for one of the homeless refuge-seekers, whereas now he looked almost frighteningly respectable. It occurred to him that his very smartness might reduce his usefulness as a black police detective. He took off his jacket, loosened his tie and lingered on the corner, looking down Portland Terrace.
The street seemed mostly to have been built around the turn of the century: tall, narrow houses, with the attics converted into third-storey bedrooms. Mostly they were terraced, and a lane at the back gave access to a yard and kitchen door. Here and there, in gaps, later, smaller houses had been inserted, their walls abutting their neighbours’, looking like children holding the hands of grown-ups on either side. Most of the houses looked solid but neglected – stalwart presences gone to seed with age. It was not unlike Alan’s home street.
As he watched, two young people rounded the far corner from him, carrying bulging supermarket bags in both their hands. He lingered, noticing the house numbers nearest to him, and doing a quick calculation in his head. As they came nearer he thought he recognized Alan Coughlan from the last year’s photograph he had been given by the boy’s father. The pair, talking animatedly, turned into number twenty-four. They didn’t look like any homeless adolescents he had ever seen. It looked as if they were doing good rather than taking refuge. He lingered, to give them time to disburden themselves of their loads. Then he walked down the Terrace and rang the doorbell.
‘Alan Coughlan?’ he said to the boy in the short-sleeved shirt and baggy trousers who opened the door with an expression that was almost welcoming. ‘I’m DC Peace.’
The boy took some time to register the abbreviation, then his expression lost its welcome. He barely looked at the ID put in front of his eyes, and stood four-square in the doorway as if to repel the invader.
‘Yes?’
‘Can I come in and talk to you?’
‘Why?’
Charlie had to tell himself he had been twice as bolshie as this at his age, especially with policemen.
‘Because you’re sixteen years old and missing from home,’ he said reasonably, ‘and Katy Bourne is fifteen years old and missing from home. All right?’
The boy hesitated, then reluctantly stood aside. Charlie walked down the long, high hallway, noting the new paint and the attempt at cheerfulness in the colours. A side door led into a large sitting room, which in its turn opened directly into a kitchen. In there Katy Bourne was stuffing food from the supermarket into over-full cupboards, items now and then falling out on to the table tops and cooker.
‘There’s no beds tonight, Alan – ’ she began, and then turned around. ‘Oh.’
Clearly his relaxation of his smartness had not turned Charlie into a likely dosser.
‘Katy Bourne?’ he asked. She nodded slowly. ‘Do you think you could come through into this room, and we can all have a talk? I’m DC Peace, by the way.’
‘DC?’
‘Detective Constable. I’m a policeman.’
She came through, but dragging her feet. The set of her shoulders reminded him of her mother: she was going to be awkward.
‘There is nothing illegal going on here, you know – no drugs or anything, no prostitution. This isn’t that kind of place. It’s a sort of hostel – a refuge.’
‘It’s you I’m here about, not the refuge. Now, can we all sit down?’
He set an example by sinking into an armchair. They slowly sat down on the sofa, close but not intimately close. He looked them over as he took out his notebook. Alan Coughlan was nice-looking without being in any way handsome or distinguished – Charlie had known boys of his age look distinguished, against all the odds. A lock of hair fell over his right eye, and his face was lean, with sharp eyes twinkling from under fair eyelashes. It was the eyes that gave Charlie the idea that he was going to grow up an interesting man – not an insurance tout or a bank manager anyway (Charlie had had a bad experience recently with the manager of a bank which claimed to fall over backwards in its eagerness to hand out loans).
Katy was of course more unformed, further back on the road to womanhood. Her clothes seemed to have been bought with little idea about colour or fit – just something to drape over herself. Charlie wondered whether this was her doing or her mother’s. But in her case, too, the face was alive, with bright eyes and mobile mouth, and this was not something he had expected from her friend’s or her mother’s account of her. He could only assume that it was since she had left home that she had come alive. Certainly her whole stance on the sofa suggested an attitude that was positive and even, if necessary, aggressive.
‘Now – ’ began Charlie.
‘I don’t see why you’re here,’ said Katy, who clearly believed in the pre-emptive strike. ‘We’ve rung our parents; they know we’re all right.’
‘They know you say you’re all right,’ corrected Charlie. ‘On the other hand, you were careful not to tell them where you were or what you are doing.’
‘I suppose mine used the call return facility, did they?’ asked Alan. ‘I must say I would never have thought they’d heard of it.’
Charlie refrained from mentioning that he’d had to tell them about it.
‘Naturally they’re concerned about you,’ he began. Katy Bourne shook her head vigorously.
‘You’re just saying that,’ she protested. ‘It’s just words. My mother isn’t concerned in the least.’
‘Of course she is.’
‘She isn’t finding life alone as pleasant as she had hoped, and she isn’t liking having to do the things I used to do, but that’s all. She isn’t concerned about me at all. The person she’s concerned about is herself.’
Charlie thought he’d better try a new tack.
‘How did you come to leave home?’ he asked.
‘We heard about this place, and we thought we could do useful work here,’ said Alan, ‘at least over the summer, and maybe for longer.’
‘You’d had a row at home, hadn’t you?’ Charlie probed. ‘What was it about?’
‘Oh – the usual things,’ Alan said, with studied vagueness and shrugging his shoulders. ‘Being out late, playing loud music, that kind of thing.’
It was the first time during the interview he had lied. It was done with a sort of schoolboy aplomb, but was none the more convincing for that.
‘So you’d both heard of this place . . . Who from?’
‘Oh, several people. There’s a number of people of my age at school who’ve left home for a bit.’
The vagueness clearly masked another lie.
‘And you, Katy?’
‘Oh . . . the same.’
Charlie shifted in his chair. Was it worth trying to batter down this particular wall?
‘What attracted you to homeless young people as the sort of area you wanted to work in?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ said Katy, with renewed fierceness. ‘These are people of our own age, sometimes younger. They’ve got no homes, often no family that wants to have anything to do with them. They can’t get benefits, they can’t get a job. So, they’ve just fallen through the system. They beg, they do drugs, they fall into prostitution. Of course we’re concerned. They could be me.’
That speech, at least, had the ring of truth. Charlie turned to Alan.
‘But it couldn’t be you, could it, Alan?’
‘Of course it could.’
‘You’ve got parents who are concerned about you, a good, stable home, you are doing well at school.’
Alan seemed on the edge of saying something revealing, but then he changed his mind.
‘Being homeless can happen to anyone,’ he said. It was true enough for Charlie to change his tack.
‘OK, tell me about this hostel.’
‘I knew you were wanting to get dirt on the Centre,’ said Katy.
‘Only because you two are here,’ said Charlie equably. ‘Who comes here, who runs it?’
‘The young homeless on the streets in Leeds come here,’ said Alan. ‘They can stay a fortnight, then they have to leave for a bit. We don’t take anyone who’s into drugs, since that’s a special problem we can’t deal with because you need special skills. Anyone who’s going to be disruptive for the rest isn’t allowed back in. Otherwise, we take everyone we can, and there are practically no rules.’
It occurred to Charlie that there were points in this account where it would have been natural to use the name of the man running the refuge, but Alan had avoided it.
‘Who started it, who runs it?’ Charlie asked. Alan paused, and pursed his lips, but concluded it would be foolishly suspicious to keep the name back.
‘Ben. Ben Marchant. He started it and runs it.’
‘How long’s it been going?’
‘Three months or so.’
‘And what does he run it on?’
‘They don’t pay,’ said Katy quickly. She’d been told that would make a difference legally, Charlie felt sure. ‘They live here free and get a meal a day.’
‘So what does Ben do for money?’
‘He got a lottery win,’ said Alan. ‘Not millions and millions, but a nice sum. He bought the two houses with it, did them up, then started up the Centre.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he wanted to help, put something back. He’s a good bloke. He wants to do good.’
‘Can I talk to him?’
‘No, he’s out. But I’m sure he’d talk to you if he were here. We’ve got nothing to hide.’
‘I didn’t say you had . . . Will you go back home when the school holidays end?’
They both looked down.
‘I may,’ said Alan. ‘I want to keep on with school.’
Katy looked up, an obstinate expression on her face.
‘I don’t want to go back, ever,’ she said.
‘You’re too young to have left home, you know,’ Charlie said gently.
Katy’s chin went up.
‘I’m not. There’s younger than me here.’
‘I don’t doubt it. We do have experience in the police, you know, of the people who are on the streets. That doesn’t alter the fact that you’re both too young. The danger is, you’ll get into a downward spiral – you’ll have seen that here. Will you go back and see your parents? It would help. Help us to turn a blind eye to the situation, for the moment.’
That was a new thought. Some of the hostility went out of the set of their shoulders. After a moment they both nodded.
‘Well,’ said Charlie, getting up. ‘I’m not sure there’s much else I can do at the moment. There doesn’t seem to be anything to be gained by hauling you both back to your parents, only to have you take off again. But’ – he turned to Alan – ‘you are the older, and I hold you responsible for Katy’s welfare. If there is anything going on here that makes you uneasy, you get in touch with me – right?’
This time there was no hesitation in the boy’s nodded response. When they said goodbye they were both almost friendly.
As he walked back to the car Charlie mulled over his impressions of Alan Coughlan. From the little he had learnt from his father he had got the picture of a normal boyhood in the nineties: fairly good at schoolwork, fashionable interests of the young, worry about future employment prospects – generally happy, or at least contented, and socially concerned.
And then, suddenly, something different. There was something more about the Alan Coughlan he had just seen. There was a stretching out towards maturity – and he had the feeling that it was due to something that had happened. It embraced in embryo all the aspects that maturity does embrace – considered responses, acceptance of responsibility, and ability to rise above his own egotistical concerns. If only the boy had not held back at that moment when he seemed to be about to say something revelatory. Or perhaps, knowing young people, what he had been about to say might have seemed revelatory to the boy himself, but would have seemed utterly trivial or beside the point to an outsider. Still, Charlie itched to know what had made the boy take that giant leap towards adulthood.
He got into his car and directed it towards the Coughlan family home.
He was pleased when the door was opened by Alan’s mother. It was his first sight of her. She was fair, plump, mid-forties or later – a comfortable, undemanding mother, and obviously a loving one, though perhaps not a strong one in a crisis. She presented a pleasant contrast and comparison to Katy’s self-absorbed parent.
‘Oh – you must be Mr Peace. Come in. Have you got any news?’
Charlie went through to the living room – tidier now, indeed well scrubbed and polished. Knowing her son was all right had clearly brought out Mrs Coughlan’s house-proud instincts.
‘Yes, I have,’ he said, sitting down. ‘I’ve just come from talking to him and Katy Bourne. I don’t think they’re together – I mean not romantically involved in any way. They’re working – and working very hard, I would guess – at a sort of hostel or refuge for homeless young people in Bramsey.’
Her face fell a little.
‘Oh dear. I don’t like the sound of that. I couldn’t bear it if Alan got into drugs and that. There’s someone at the bank that happened to, and she felt she just lost her daughter – she said it was like another person being in the same body.’
Charlie held up his hand.
‘Don’t jump the gun, Mrs Coughlan! We did investigate the place a while ago and there was no evidence of drugs. As far as we could see – and as far as I could judge today – the place provides a bit of stability for young people who’ve dropped out. I would think that Alan is doing a very useful job there.’
‘Yes, but – ’
‘He’s so young. I know. But some time before very long you were going to lose him, he was going to fly the nest.’
‘But sixteen!’
‘I know. Children grow up younger than in your day, Mrs Coughlan. They have to. They’re getting adult messages thrown at them all the time from school, from the media – even from the pop songs. What do you think made him leave home?’
‘Well, we had this row . . . about tidying his room.’
Charlie had to stop himself raising his eyebrows.
‘And yet he seems to have been a happy, normal boy before.’
‘Oh, he was.’ She seized on his words as if they were a self-justification. ‘Always happy, always helpful. Alan was never a rebel. And Arthur has always been good to him. We tried to be sensible – made his girlfriends welcome, let him go on holidays with a friend, did everything we could for him money-wise, though that hasn’t been easy these last few years, what with Arthur on the dole, and only the odd bit of extra money coming in. He’s down the Railway at the moment, helping. They’re doing a wedding.’
Something in her words struck Charlie, and as she chattered on he tried to work out what it was. He interrupted her.
‘Mrs Coughlan, is your husband Alan’s natural father?’
It had been the words ‘Arthur has always been good to him’. As if he had somehow taken Alan on. Mrs Coughlan looked down into her lap.
‘No, he isn’t. I married him when Alan was one.’
‘And did Alan find out about this? Was that what the row was really about?’
It was a moment before she replied.
‘Yes. Yes, it was.’
‘Would you tell me the name of Alan’s real father?’
She looked up, visibly distressed.
‘Oh, surely we don’t have to rake all that up again, do we? I know I’m old-fashioned, and it’s a bit ridiculous in the circumstances, but I don’t like talking about it – it embarrasses me, and – ’
‘Was his name Ben Marchant?’
There was silence, and then she no
dded.
‘Yes. Ben was Alan’s father. I haven’t seen him for years.’
And Charlie was willing to bet that Ben was also the man who Mrs Bourne hadn’t seen since shortly before the birth of Katy.
CHAPTER 5
Outside Interest
Mrs Alicia Ingram was quiet during dinner. She had cooked for her husband the sort of varied and delicate meal she cooked when she had little dinner parties for people who mattered, or might matter, though perhaps with less care and attention, for Alicia Ingram was someone with a strict sense of priorities. But she had eaten it with an absorbed air, staring at the cloth, her fine red hair flowing down her shoulders in more abandon than usual, her ample (but not too) bosom held back from the strawberry granita, her little red mouth pursed.
Her husband knew exactly what she was going to say, and eventually she said it.
‘I’m going to go for the candidacy, Randolph.’
His mouth did not show the tiny smile of self-congratulation that he was feeling.
‘Are you, Alicia?’ he said, feigning mild surprise. ‘I’d have thought you’d be wiser to wait for Dickie Mavors to announce his intention of retiring?’
‘Oh – ’ she brushed this aside with a reddened spoon. ‘He should have gone years ago. The Bramsey ward needs someone with twenty times his energy.’
‘Well, it’s your business not mine,’ said Randolph, who was not even a member of the party, ‘but I’d have thought you’d best go carefully. There’s plenty around who would like to take Dickie Mavors’s place on Leeds City Council.’
He had done his duty – warned his wife. She was, he knew, not wonderfully well-liked in Bramsey Conservative circles. Her manner was a bit domineering, and though it was a gross exaggeration to say, as some did, that she oozed condescension as Liz Taylor oozed diamonds, still the tone of voice in which she spoke to people, the way she looked at them, grated on many. The trouble was, she had a need not only to feel superior to people, but to show them just how superior she felt. And it was not merely social: she made it clear that she knew she had a better mind than anyone around.
No Place of Safety Page 4
