‘But we’ve got Derek now, and there are others – Zak, for example: he’d help us.’
‘Zak’s fine, but I’m not sure that in a crisis . . .’
Charlie thought it was time to interrupt. He knocked on the door and went in.
‘They’ve told us we can see Ben,’ Alan said excitedly, as if that was all that mattered.
‘So I hear. Maybe we’ll be able to talk to him too.’ He sat down with them on the bed. ‘Tell me, how long have you two been at the refuge now?’
They had to screw their minds back to answer the question.
‘Three, nearly four weeks,’ said Alan, after counting.
‘That’s about what I thought. I suppose for Ben it was pretty much a full-time job, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh yes. We’re still at the stage of setting it up and getting it known.’
‘So he was here twenty-four hours a day, mostly?’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Katy. ‘There were people to see, people who could help, or people who were making trouble: local councillors, that sort of thing. And of course he had to have a bit of time to himself.’
‘What sort of thing would he do with that time?’ Charlie asked.
‘Mostly he’d go to the pub,’ Alan said.
‘How often?’
‘Maybe two or three times a week.’
‘You didn’t go with him?’
‘Of course not. We’re under age. Anyway, there had to be someone here.’
‘Do you think he really went there?’
‘What do you mean?’ Alan said, indignantly, getting a little red. ‘You don’t think we tried to smell his breath, do you? That’s the sort of thing my mum would do if I’d been at a party – thought she could do it so’s I wouldn’t notice.’
‘What I’m wondering,’ said Charlie carefully, ‘is whether Ben might have had a girlfriend around here.’
That floored them for a bit. They looked at each other, then back at Charlie.
‘It had never occurred to us,’ admitted Katy. ‘What you’re meaning is that when he said he was going to the pub, he was really going to her, right?’
‘Makes sense, doesn’t it? Or maybe a bit of both. He seems to have . . . spent his life with ladies around him.’
‘You don’t have to pussyfoot around about it, you know,’ said Alan.
‘I suppose it does make sense,’ admitted Katy. ‘I don’t suppose he even liked my mother very much, but they . . .’
‘Did he ever say what pub he was going to?’
‘No,’ said Alan. ‘But he never took the car.’
‘What does that give us? The Portland Arms – that’s a pretty rough joint.’
‘That wouldn’t worry Ben,’ said Alan proudly. ‘He wouldn’t have set up this place if he was scared of rough types.’
‘True. But he may have found the Portland a bit too much of a home from home. Then there’s the Ale Machine and the Dodo. Those would be the only ones within easy walking distance of here, wouldn’t they?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Alan. ‘I’m not into pubs.’
It was said with a touch of the priggishness of the young – that same priggishness, maybe, that had made him and Katy such enthusiastic workers at the refuge. They obviously wanted to get back to what they were going to tell Ben when they visited him in hospital, so Charlie left them to it.
The nearest pub was the Portland Arms, and it showed every sign of being a rough pub: the stuffing was coming out of several of the seats, one window was boarded up, the music was too loud, and the landlord had tattooed arms and a fag hanging out of his mouth. When Charlie, fearing a succession of pub sessions, ordered a fruit juice, he was treated like something out of Star Trek. In this environment anything but a pint of bitter needed justifying, so Charlie flicked his ID at the barman.
‘Oh Gawd, what is it this time? Has Jimmy Bates been flogging things out the back yard? You lot know I can’t keep an eye on what goes on out there. You can see how short-staffed I am – ’
‘It’s the attempted murder,’ said Charlie succinctly. Even in the vicinity of the Portland Arms attempted murder was a rarity.
‘Oh aye, that. It’s got people talking, has that.’
‘Did he drink here?’
‘Who? Him that was knifed? Not that I remember myself, but people were saying last night that he come in here once or twice when he first bought the house. Mike, wasn’t it you as said he’d been in?’
Mike shambled over, a beer belly clutching a pint mug.
‘Who?’
‘Chap who’s been knifed.’
‘Who wants to know?’ Charlie flicked his ID again, knowing it would result in customer-resistance. ‘Sure, I never would have come over if I’d known. I don’t have nothin’ to do with the police if I can help it. Show them an Irish accent an’ they arrest it.’
‘I’m arresting nobody,’ said Charlie, peaceably. ‘All I want to know is where he drinks – if he did.’
‘He came in here once. Had a pint, sat watching, then went out an’ I never saw him again.’
‘Why did you notice him?’
Mike took a deep swig.
‘First of all because he stood out, an’ then because the rumour went around that he was opening a house for dossers. He stood out because he was middle class. He may have worked with roughs and dossers, but he wasn’t a rough himself. Try the Dodo – they’d be more his type there.’
He shambled away, and Charlie decided that, though the manner was unpolished, the advice was good.
The Dodo was a different place altogether. There was evidence of a brisk lunchtime trade, the music was quiet and middle-of-the-road, and several of the drinkers had collars and ties on. In some parts of Bramsey they stoned you if you were wearing a collar and tie. Charlie ventured on a half of keg bitter. When he presented his ID to the landlord the man’s eyes became veiled, and he just stood there, waiting.
‘It’s about the double knife attack in Portland Terrace.’
‘Oh aye.’
‘I believe Ben Marchant was a regular here.’
He chanced his arm because he believed that the man would deny it if he could. The gamble paid off.
‘Not to say regular. He’s been in now and again.’
‘How often? Once a week? Twice a week?’
‘Difficult to say. A month or two ago it was quite regular: maybe twice, even three times a week. That sort of tailed off. I don’t think we’d seen him in the last ten days.’
‘I see. Did he have any friends here? Drinking partners? Girlfriends?’
The landlord shifted uneasily.
‘Look, mate, we don’t like talking about our customers here. They’ve got a right to their privacy. It’s bad enough him getting knifed like that. I don’t want this pub to get a bad name like the Portland.’
‘Look,’ said Charlie reasonably, ‘I’m investigating an attempted murder. Finding who did it takes precedence over your good name, right? Do you want me to go round asking all your customers?’
‘No, no. Don’t do that.’
‘Then answer my question. The man’s at death’s door. He doesn’t have any secrets at the moment.’
The landlord shifted on his feet.
‘It wasn’t him I was worried about. She’s a regular, and a nice woman, and I don’t want to land her in it.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Bessie . . . Oh, what’s her surname? Godber, that’s it. Social worker. Black. Moved here about a year ago. Nice lady. Popular. Does a lot of good.’
‘And he and she met up here?’
‘Far as I know. I’m not the gossip columnist of the Bramsey Times. They began sitting together when they were here – laughing, chatting, going off together. No harm in that.’
‘Did I say there was?’
‘I’d’ve said it was a happy, harmless affair – not too serious. And Bessie most certainly isn’t a crazy knife-wielder.’
‘Would you know where Bessie lives?
’
‘Well, I didn’t, but they were all talking in here earlier on. It seems she lives on the Wellcome Estate – those big blocks down Mitching Lane. Don’t know which one.’
‘Did you say she was a social worker?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then she’s really living on the job, isn’t she?’
• • •
Oddie found the lottery company very hard work indeed. They went on about confidentiality, their clients’ trust, their responsibilities under the Act – almost as if they were a top Lincoln’s Inn law firm, or even a Swiss bank. The fact that it was the police asking made them marginally more respectful than if it was a tabloid reporter, but it didn’t make them more unbuttoned. Quite early on Oddie lost hope of getting the size of Ben Marchant’s win out of them, and he tried to pin them down instead on whether he had had a win at all.
‘If we told you he’d had a win,’ said the voice, obviously experienced in fending off the curious, ‘even if we didn’t tell you the sum, it would still be a breach of our undertaking to our client.’
‘Client’ affected Oddie very much as being called a ‘customer’ by British Rail did: they were small-time gamblers, for Christ’s sake. But he managed to keep his temper, and keep the sweet reasonableness in his voice.
‘The fact is’, he said, not entirely truthfully, ‘that we are pretty sure this man is not a client of yours at all. He seems to have used the lottery to explain a large sum of money which in fact he came by . . . let’s just say by illegal means. That would reflect badly on the lottery . . .’
It took another ten minutes, and a scarcely veiled threat to get his chief constable to approach the Home Secretary (a man pathetically anxious to get a reputation for being tough on crime – indeed for being tough on anything) about lottery confidentiality as a shield for the criminal, before they would consent to put Ben Marchant’s name through their computer. When they had done so they came back to him and, in the voice of an Irish bishop talking about his sex life to a Sunday newspaperman, said: ‘No win of any kind at all.’
• • •
When he got to the Wellcome Estate, Charlie decided that the best way to find out where in the tatty beehive Bessie Godber lived was to ask one of her likely charges. He picked on a skinny, harassed-looking young mother wheeling a pram with one hand and leading a toddler with the other. She seemed glad to talk to anyone adult, and pointed to one of the blocks.
‘She’s in Grimshaw, seventh floor. But I think she’s away. I was round there yesterday afternoon, and there was a note on the door.’
‘I’ll give it a go,’ said Charlie.
The lift smelt of urine, and Charlie decided to use the stairs. The stairs smelt of urine too. What impulse led people to micturate communally, he wondered? Or was it perhaps children locked out of their flats while their mothers were at work? He ran up, taking breaths sparingly.
On the seventh floor he looked around for a door with a note on. It was at the far end of the landing. The note, which the girl he’d talked to presumably couldn’t read, said: ‘Away at a conference. Back Thursday afternoon.’ It was then Thursday afternoon. The landing was bleak and bare, but the cold stone floor was clean. It was lit by windows at both ends. Charlie lingered, unwilling to waste a seven-floor run. From the window just by the flat he looked down on a meagre concrete play area, then on to scraps of green beyond, and beyond that on street upon street of red-brick terraced houses. From the other he looked down on the entrance to Grimshaw block, and here he struck lucky. A taxi was drawing up, and from it an ample black woman was emerging, paying the driver and collecting a suitcase from the boot. Charlie waited.
She didn’t see him when she emerged from the lift, but Charlie could see her. Vital, genial, tough was how he summed her up. She strode along to her door, tore the note off it, then inserted her key in the door.
‘Miss Godber?’ said Charlie, coming up behind her.
‘Mrs Godber, or Bessie,’ she said, turning round. ‘What can I do for you, young man?’
Charlie pulled out his ID, and she inspected it with an experienced eye.
‘Well, well. Where you from, young man?’
‘Brixton.’
‘Where you from before that?’
‘Brixton.’
She grinned, acknowledging his refusal to start off on a footing of any shared island background.
‘Have it your own way. I’m just not used to black coppers. Bet you get a lot of aggro.’
‘No more than you, I should think.’
She grinned agreement, and shrugged.
‘Water off a duck’s back.’
She led the way into a large, light, well-furnished flat. It was more than comfortable, it was smart.
‘My penthouse apartment,’ she said, with pride in her voice. She took from the hall table a notice that said PLEASE RESPECT MY PRIVACY OUTSIDE WORKING HOURS and stuck it on her front door. Inside the living room they both sat down and resumed the conversation where it had left off.
‘They accept me now. I was an oddity at first – Bramsey’s not a black area, as I’m sure you know. That was one reason why I wanted to take the job. I didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a “black problems” person.’
‘I know the feeling.’
‘Which of my charges is in trouble this time?’
‘None are, far as I know. None that I’m dealing with, anyway. This is to do with your private life.’
‘Don’t have no private life to speak of,’ she grinned. ‘First my daughter got married, then my son moved to Manchester. I love them and they love me, but our lives have separated now. That’s why I was happy to move here.’
‘Seems a bit like living on a powder keg to me.’
‘Mostly they respect my private life. If they don’t, I give them hell. West Indians are martyrs to bricks and mortar, boy.’
‘Eh?’
‘We say “I’m not paying rent to no council or landlord”. So we buy a house, and it has to be cheap, and that means it’s old and falling down, and when something needs doing, which it does all the time, we find someone who’ll fix it cheap, and then it needs fixing again six months later. When I got this job I said to the council: “I want a flat, and I want a big one, because it’ll be my office too.” So now the council fixes things that go wrong, if I come on real strong at them, which I do, and I make it nice here and spend all my spare money on myself. In my work time I’m caring and compassionate and help people with their problems. In my own time I’m a selfish woman who pampers herself and likes a bit of luxury.’ She pulled herself up and peered accusingly at Charlie. ‘What private life, young man?’
‘The private life you want your charges to respect, I suppose,’ he said cheekily. ‘Ben Marchant.’
‘Oh, that private life.’
She said it dismissively, as if it wasn’t important to her. She obviously had not heard the news, away at her conference.
‘Ben’s been attacked. He’s badly hurt, not out of danger yet.’
This time she did react, open-mouthed.
‘Oh God! Poor Ben! One of his dossers, was it?’
Charlie was interested that she and Lady Mallaby shared the same assumption.
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ he said. ‘Why do you think that?’
‘He’s got some pretty hopeless specimens there, I’d guess.’
‘Was it his setting up the refuge brought you together?’
She shook her head vigorously.
‘Not at all. I have practically nothing to do with the homeless.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. They’ve fallen through the net, and they accept the fact.’ She leaned forward, self-justifying. ‘Look, you in the police don’t go out looking for dead bodies on the off-chance, do you? You investigate when one’s brought to your notice. I don’t go out canvassing dossers and trying to help them. I wait for them to come to me. And mostly they don’t.’
‘So you’re not sympathetic?�
�
‘I’m very sympathetic. They’ve had the rawest of raw deals from life. And all they get from politicians is empty words at best, hostility at worst. Very soon they’re going to rediscover the Elizabethan idea of the “sturdy beggar”, and Conservative politicians are going to demand they be whipped.’
‘And Labour politicians are going to demand they be whipped even harder,’ said Charlie, who was nothing if not politically impartial. Bessie Godber threw back her head and laughed. Then she got back to justifying herself.
‘But my work takes up all my stock of sympathy and love and compassion. I know what Ben’s doing, but he doesn’t bring his stock of sympathy and compassion here. We never talk about it.’
‘What brought you together?’
‘Sex. A young man like you shouldn’t need to ask.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t be interested if I didn’t like the man. We met up at the Dodo and the spark lit between us, you know? Ben’s a charmer. He’s so used to it that he takes it for granted, but you take my word for it – he knows it.’
‘He’s had a long line of woman friends.’
‘I know. He talks about some of them.’
‘Did he talk about his lottery win too?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Did he tell you how much?’
‘No. Probably thought it would bring out the gold-digger in me!’
‘Did you believe him, about the lottery?’
She frowned.
‘Funnily enough, something inside me didn’t. I don’t know why. Plenty of people are having lottery wins, no reason why Ben shouldn’t. But it all seemed so convenient, everything came too pat. Winning a lottery so you could set up a home for the homeless, somehow it didn’t ring true. I think I could have believed it more easily if he’d splurged it on big cars and fast living.’
‘What other explanation is there?’
She shrugged.
‘Not my business. If I started investigating all the lies I’m told I’d never get a hand’s turn of real work done. Maybe he got it off that lady out at Otley. Ben could charm birds from trees.’
‘If it was given him as a philanthropic gesture, it’s difficult to see why it should be kept quiet.’
‘If it was that, maybe that’s what she wanted. You broadcast gestures like that and you get the whole world on your back. You must know that: send a small cheque to Save the Whale and you get Oxfam, Save the Children and the RSPB bombarding you with junk-mail appeals.’
No Place of Safety Page 16
