‘That was good,’ he complimented her. ‘I enjoyed that.’
She felt an absurd amount of pleasure.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘How’s your mam?’
‘Why?’ he asked, immediately alert. ‘Did you think she looked poorly?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s just the kind of polite inquiry us middle-class academics make. Sometimes it’s meaningless. Sometimes it stems from a real interest.’
‘And what’s it stem from this time?’ he asked.
‘Real interest. I liked her. I hope she liked me. Did she?’
He smiled, no sheepish child’s grin this time, but sardonic and watchful.
‘You oughtn’t to ask questions unless you want to hear the truth,’ he said.
‘That’s the only reason I ever ask questions,’ she retorted with spirit.
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘Mam said you seemed quite a nice kind of woman.’
‘Oh.’ Ellie considered. ‘Is that good or bad?’
‘Well, she might’ve said you seemed quite a nice kind of lady,’ said Farr.
‘And would that have been better or worse?’
‘What do you think?’
He rose from his chair and strolled slowly towards her. She felt all her muscles tense. He halted only a foot away.
She said, controlling her voice with difficulty, ‘If you’re planning the mixture as before, Colin, I should point out that I’m wearing an extraordinarily sturdy pair of jeans today.’
To her surprise he flushed beautifully.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I wanted to say I was sorry about that. Sometimes I do things … I was upset, I don’t know why …’
‘Upset by me?’
‘I don’t know what!’ He spoke sharply. ‘Only sometimes when things get a bit mixed up in your mind, it seems to make sense to get ’em all straightened out, nice and simple, even if it means forcing one or two of them a bit. Don’t you ever feel that?’
‘You certainly acted as if you were about to force me. I was terrified.’
‘Were you?’ He sounded genuinely taken aback. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. Oh shit. It just seemed to make things simpler if I thought of you as a middle-class bird who fancied a bit of rough.’
‘Well, thank you, kind sir!’
‘No, I’m sorry, that’s not what I really think. I knew it wasn’t true, even when I tried it on. That’s why I did it like I did, I reckon, because I knew it was just a gesture. I’m really sorry, though. Do you believe me?’
‘You’d have got a real shock wouldn’t you if I’d flung myself on top of you and started tearing your clothes off!’ said Ellie pensively.
He began to smile, the true Colin Farr smile, slow, charming, incredibly attractive.
‘I’d have tried to act like a gentleman,’ he said.
He was still very close and Ellie suddenly felt a thrill of danger and knew this time it came from within as much as without. It was time not to be alone with this youth, but she wasn’t yet ready to part company with him altogether.
‘Have you time for a cup of tea or something in the refectory?’ she asked. ‘I’m parched after all that talking.’
‘What about your lassie?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you have to pick her up?’
Oh God, here we go again, she thought. Poor old Rosie!
‘She’s in the crèche,’ she said. ‘I’m late already, but they don’t usually mind. I’ll just ring up to make sure they can hang on to her another half-hour. You could do a bit of tidying up after your mates if you like.’
She gestured at the newspapers strewn around the tables. This feeble attempt to retreat to a teacher-pupil relationship did not go unremarked.
‘Yes, miss,’ he said.
She went out and along the corridor to Adam’s office. He wasn’t in, but he had given her a key so she could use the room to store any material she didn’t want to lug around with her. It took her a few minutes to get through to the crèche, conjuring up pictures of some dreadful crisis with Rosie, mutinous from neglect, at its centre. But no, all was well, a matter-of-fact voice assured her, and yes, another half-hour would make no difference.
But when she returned to the classroom she saw that a few minutes had made a very great difference.
Colin Farr was standing with one of the discarded newspapers in his hand. His face was pale and drawn and suddenly the resemblance to his mother was quite marked.
‘Colin, is something wrong?’ she asked.
‘Mebbe. I don’t know.’
He threw the paper on to the floor and made for the door. She followed him.
‘For heaven’s sake, what’s the matter?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘That cup of tea’ll have to wait.’
They reached the landing and without pause he stepped on to the paternoster. Unthinking, Ellie followed him, falling heavily against his taut young body as the moving platform dropped away. He put his arms around her to steady her, but he did not take them away. The descent seemed dream-like. Her eyes were closed and when he stepped out, almost carrying her with him, and she opened her eyes once more, she would hardly have been surprised to see the neon glow and whitewashed walls of pit bottom all around them.
He said, ‘I’ve got to get home. See you next week.’
Then he kissed her briefly and turned and loped away towards the car park.
She watched him go till rationality came seeping back.
What in the name of God am I doing? she asked herself, and glanced around, sure that an ambush of curious eyes must have gathered to view this silly old slag who was behaving so daftly.
There was no one to pay the slightest interest. Recalling she’d left her bag in the seminar room, she summoned a lift. The paternoster’s cramped cells seemed to be flying upwards at an impossibly dangerous speed. The lift was a long time coming and an even longer time ascending and by the time she reached the room, she was perfectly composed. She picked up her handbag, checked her face and hair in the pocket mirror and prepared to leave.
Her foot kicked the paper Colin Farr had dropped to the floor. She picked it up. It was the Challenger and it was open at the page containing Episode Two of Watmough’s alleged memoirs. Her eye caught the word Burrthorpe. Peter had been talking about this yesterday, she recalled. She had affected indifference. No, not affected. Yesterday she had been indifferent. But not now.
She read the piece swiftly, then more slowly re-read the final paragraph. She recalled her conversation with Mrs Farr. There seemed no doubt; the dead witness, the man about whom this terrible insinuation was being made, must be Colin’s father.
When she’d finished, she stared at the photograph of Neville Watmough which stared seriously back from alongside the headlines.
‘You bastard!’ she said. ‘You shitty bastard.’
Chapter 4
‘Mr Downey. Your sister said I’d find you here. Can I have a word?’
Arthur Downey was kneeling on a small mat, facing east, his face devout with concentration.
‘What? Oh, it’s you. Hang on.’
He rose slowly and shook off the soil from his hands.
‘Digging up some rhubarb roots for forcing,’ he explained. ‘You interested in gardening, Mr Boyle?’
Monty Boyle looked around the immaculately kept allotment and shook his head.
‘No time,’ he said. He manoeuvred himself till he was straight in front of the other and opened his jacket.
‘I’m surprised to see you here, Mr Boyle,’ said Downey. ‘After what was said in the Challenger yesterday.’
‘By Watmough, you mean? I can’t be held responsible for what an ex-policeman says.’
‘It’s you who’s been asking the questions round here. You should take note – there’s a lot who’d say anything for a free drink, and take it back for another.’
‘Is that so? Well, I promise you, I personally never write anything I can’t prove.’
It was true, but on
ly in the way that most of Boyle’s pieces were true; i.e. there was just enough truth there to support a whole precarious edifice of speculation. Next Sunday’s episode was all set up but he needed a new startling revelation for the week afterwards.
‘So you think you can prove I’m a liar? Round here, you can get yourself thumped for saying things like that!’
Downey’s long face creased beneath an ill-fitting expression of belligerence.
‘What makes you say that, Mr Downey?’ asked Boyle, all injured innocence.
‘That article yesterday, it seemed to say that yon fellow Pickford couldn’t have been round Burrthorpe that afternoon. And I’m the one who saw his car. And it said I were a good friend of Billy’s, implying I might have been covering up for him.’
‘Like I said, I don’t write the articles, so I don’t know what Mr Watmough’s getting at. But it’s a question worth asking, Mr Downey. Would you have lied for your friend?’
The agony this question caused was written so clear on Downey’s face that even a journalist’s heart could not be untouched.
‘Look, no one’s saying you’re a liar, Mr Downey. You didn’t say you saw Pickford’s car, you said you glimpsed a blue car parked off the road that runs along the bottom of the ridge, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘And it was quite close to the track down through the woods where the child’s bramble bucket was found.’
‘Yes.’
‘And this was the truth?’
A pause as if to check for traps.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘And I believe you. So, next question, Mr Downey. Is there anyone round here who drives, or used to drive, a blue car about the size of a Cortina?’
‘I can’t rightly say,’ said the deputy after another agony of concentration. ‘Probably plenty. But I can only think of one off-hand.’
‘Who’s that?’ asked Boyle.
‘You know him, I’ve seen you talking to him. Harold Satterthwaite.’
‘Oh yes. He’s been very helpful, Mr Satterthwaite.’
‘Has he? He’s all right, Harold, a bit rough but all right. Except for one thing. He never cared for Billy, and he likes young Colin even less.’
‘I gathered. What do you make of Colin Farr, Mr Downey?’
‘I don’t know. He’s not happy here, that’s a fact. Mebbe it’d be better if he took himself off again. Trouble seems to follow him. Like some people are always having bad luck. Have you noticed that? How bad luck seems to pick on the same folk all the time? But Colin’s Billy’s son and I’ll not hear a word against him.’
‘No?’ Boyle smiled. ‘Funny thing is, despite all his trouble, and with one or two notable exceptions, most people seem to be of your mind. The world seems to love Colin Farr. Even I find it hard to dislike the lad and all he’s done for me is throw me through a window!’
‘I’m finished here,’ said Downey. ‘You’re not going by the Club, are you?’
‘I can do. Will they be open?’
‘Soon enough. Hang on.’
He went into the small wooden shed and came out with a cauliflower and aerosol can. The cauliflower he handed to Boyle, saying, ‘Try that. Lovely flavour. You’ll be amazed,’ as he sprayed the aerosol round the edge of his vegetable patch.
‘Keep the animals off,’ he said. ‘There’s a wilderness out there but they still seem to prefer a bit of cultivation.’
Boyle looked around. ‘Wilderness’ was extreme, but certainly many of the neighbouring allotments were looking very neglected.
‘You should have seen it during the Strike,’ said Downey nostalgically. ‘Every inch packed with veg that year. We mounted pickets at night to make sure nothing went missing.’
‘I thought it was all brotherly love and community spirit during the Strike,’ said Boyle cynically.
‘Oh yes. We’re sent into this world to help each other, I sincerely believe that, Mr Boyle. But there’s always some who don’t want to be helped, and others who just want to help themselves. I’ll just lock up.’
Boyle went to his car and tossed the cauliflower on to the back seat. He also took the opportunity to run back and replace the full tape on his cassette recorder before Downey joined him. He switched if off temporarily. No point in recording the noise of his motor. In fact, probably little point in recording much more of Downey. But there might be others at the Club. Satterthwaite for instance, who owned a blue car and was always so keen to badmouth Billy Farr. It could be worth talking to Satterthwaite again. And Pedro Pedley, a very hard man to get anything quotable out of. How would he react to the idea floated in the Challenger that his daughter’s killer might still be on the loose? Unless, of course, it had been Billy Farr. But that would be a pity. A live killer was worth a much bigger spread than a dead one. That could be the way to prise open May and Colin Farr’s mouths. Hint at evidence emerging that … that what? The trouble was, no evidence was emerging, just rumour, innuendo, theory. None of which he objected to, but he had to have that pinch of truth which would act as leavening to all the rest.
‘Ready?’
Downey had come up quietly behind him.
‘Right. Hop in.’
As he started the engine, his car phone rang. It was a luxury Ogilby had conceded only after a string of vandalized public phones had delayed a terrific rape story which Boyle had stumbled upon a few months earlier.
It was the editor himself.
‘Monty, where are you?’
‘Burrthorpe.’
‘I thought so. Look, we’ve really stirred things up,’ said Ogilby gleefully. ‘Some victims’ rights lawyer threatening us with an injunction. A woman too, Pritchard, I think she was a big mouth during some of the Strike trials, so see if you can get a few quotes down there, the more sexist the better. I’m giving her a headline next Sunday, though I don’t expect it’ll be the one she wants. Also, the police are inquiring after you at ever decreasing intervals so we’ve certainly caught their interest too.’
‘Oh yes. Will you just keep telling them you can’t make contact at the moment?’
‘Naturally. Hot on a good dirty trail, are you?’
Boyle glanced at Downey who was busy trying to clean the earth from out of his fingernails.
‘Oh, yes, I shouldn’t be at all surprised,’ he said.
Chapter 5
It was five minutes to opening and Pedro Pedley was wrestling a beer keg into position in his cellar when he heard someone coming down the stone stair. The steps were light as a dancer’s, but naturally, not furtively.
‘Hello, Col,’ he said without looking up. ‘Got a thirst on, have you? I’ll be with you in a couple of minutes.’
Farr said, ‘You saw the Challenger yesterday?’
‘Aye,’ said Pedley. He finished coupling the pipe to the keg, then sat on it and looked up at Colin Farr, who had stopped half way down the stairs.
‘I were in here yesterday dinner-time. Why’d you not say anything? Why’d no one say anything?’
Pedley tugged at his moustache and said, ‘What did you want people to say, Col? For all anyone knew, you’d read it yourself and were ready to stuff the first bugger daft enough to mention it.’
‘That’s what they thought? But what about you, Pedro? You were entitled to mention it. In fact I reckon you were bound to mention it!’
‘Mebbe. But in me own time, not over the bar with all them dirty lugs flapping.’
‘Time’s now, Pedro. So what do you think? Do you reckon there’s even the millionth chance there’s any truth in what that lousy bastard’s implying?’
Pedley sighed and said, ‘What do I get if I say owt but no, Col? Will you try to bust my head open with one of them kegs?’
‘He were a good friend to you, Pedro,’ exclaimed Farr. ‘And he loved that lass of yours like she were his own.’
‘Did he? I always thought so. But he didn’t see her safe home that day, Col, like he’d always done before. He never explained that to me, not
proper. No, don’t interrupt. Hear me out. You’ve got to understand; what me and Maggie have been through changes your view of folk. It’s not so much you stop trusting ’em as you stop trusting your own judgement of ’em. I went to the inquest they held on that bastard Pickford. If he were the one as took our Tracey, I wanted to know all about him, I wanted a true picture so I could at least dream about tearing him apart! Know what I heard? I heard his wife tell what a lovely man he were, how he loved dogs and children, how he went on sponsored charity runs, how she’d never believe in a million years that he’d done what he said in his letter. His mother were the same only worse. It got me thinking, I tell you.’
‘What did it get you thinking, Pedro?’ asked Farr softly.
‘Only this,’ said the steward with equal softness. ‘If you want the ninety-nine per cent of me that says, there’s no more way good old Billy Farr could’ve harmed our Tracey than pigs can fly, you’ve got it. But if you want the other fraction, well now! That doesn’t trust my own judgement any more, that reckons that after Pickford there’s no bugger in the world who’s not capable of anything and everything! That’s it, Col. That’s what you asked for. So what’s it to be? The fist or the keg? Only be warned. I’ll not just sit here and take it.’
Colin Farr’s body, taut before, was now trembling like a cable under breaking strain.
He flung back his head and cried, ‘He were my dad!’
And Pedley slowly rose and whispered, ‘And she were my daughter.’
‘Will you come in for a drink?’ asked Arthur Downey through the window of the car which Boyle had brought to a halt just short of the Welfare.
The journalist hesitated. He wanted to see Pedley but not while he had customers to serve. Before he could make up his mind, the door of the Club burst open and Colin Farr came rushing down the steps. His motorbike was lying half on, half off the pavement as if he’d been in too much of a hurry to put it on its rest. He dragged it upright, mounted it in a fluid movement which even the turmoil evident in his face could not render less than graceful and sent it screaming round the side of the building into the potholed lane that ran up to the ridge.
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