It was flat roofed, constructed at the same time as the housing estate but not originally for residential purposes, I guessed. Three floors, and a yard behind with one-storey buildings which looked as if they were used for storage or garages.
‘It was light industrial but it was reclassified three years ago,’ he said. ‘It’s flats now.’ There were two cars in the back yard. One was an old Volvo, an estate car which had been loaded and unloaded many times, dented and worn. The other was a hatchback, black and neat and shiny, a little Peugeot. Arthur walked beside me, surprisingly managing to be casual. He wasn’t bad at it. I wondered why he’d stayed a PC so long. To retire as a beat copper – after forty years in – that was something. Although maybe it was more peculiar that he’d survived in the force at all.
‘We’re OK,’ I said. ‘Look.’ In the small patch of lawn which fringed the building was a FOR SALE board. I walked up to the front door: three bells, presumably one for each floor Three names: Jacobs, Hobbs, Fairfax. No first names. Arthur was looking at it reminiscently, with a touch of horror. ‘He was a very ordinary, respectable man,’ he said, ‘the kind of man you believed. I thought we had Timothy Evans bang to rights. Then it all went pear-shaped on us.’
I was only half-listening, because I was so pleased. This investigation was going to be easier than I’d thought. Magic. All the chance in the world to see round the flat that was for sale and to enquire about the other tenants.
Tomorrow, I’d send a buyer in. Nick, if I could find her.
I wrote down the estate agent’s name and number, and followed Arthur, who’d moved away. ‘Thank you very much,’ I said.
‘I’ll walk you home,’ he said. ‘Young girl like you. I don’t like to think of you unescorted.’
We were out of the estate now and back onto Lancaster Road. All round us were people, some of them unescorted young girls, walking purposefully and apparently safely through the fog. He was a nutter, I thought, but an Eddy-recommended and therefore harmless nutter, and I submitted to his protection and his criminal information for the ten-minute walk back to my flat.
Chapter Seven
I was back at the flat by seven thirty. I closed the front door behind me, flattened myself against the wall so I couldn’t be seen from the road and looked out through the small hall window. I watched Arthur pacing up and down protectively for a few minutes then, when he headed away up the Grove, I nipped out to the local shop for basic groceries – milk, bread, butter, water and coffee.
I made myself salami sandwiches and a cup of coffee and pondered the Nick problem, because there was still no message from her
By now anxiety was pricking me as I ate. I tried her mobile phone again. It was still unavailable. I also rang the office – no luck – and left a get-in-touch message on the answering machine.
Then I remembered Alan Protheroe.
He’d wanted me to see him, that evening. If I saw him it would be quicker than talking on the phone, because I could bully him to the point more effectively, and get a grip on what he wanted me to do. Plus there had been something genuinely urgent about his tone of voice.
I didn’t feel tired. What I really wanted to do was put off Alan, put Nick on the back burner until tomorrow, and get stuck into the DESTROY UNOPENED envelope. If I read every word of the letters surely I’d get a handle on the woman, and if I did that we’d have her son bang to rights. I didn’t believe he’d be the killer, but if there was even an outside chance that he was, a girl might die while I faffed around with a fussy, cover-my-back producer.
I took Polly’s car and went over to Alan’s. Such a long-standing relationship must go for something.
Alan lives in a mews house in one of the criss-cross little streets running off Kensington Church Street, super-expensive and super-cramped. He bought it after his divorce. He’s nearly sixty now and he should have given up chasing girls, but after his divorce he went for the seriously young and the seriously pretty. He got his fingers badly burnt, and lately his loneliness has been worrying me. I’d found him a joke for years but the joke was wearing thin, either because I’d mellowed or because he was getting sadder. Hard to know which.
I got there at eight, and rang the bell.
No answer.
Odd. He’d said he’d be in all evening; he hadn’t rung with a change of plan. He always rings with a change of plan, even if it makes not the slightest difference to the person he’s ringing. Pernickety, that’s Alan, not to say obsessive.
I rang again, and knocked, then looked up. The bedroom windows were open and a light was on. He must be in, then. ‘Alan – hey, Alan –’
I could see through the downstairs window that the living room and kitchen were empty and dimly lit. He might, just conceivably, be upstairs with a girl, if one of his lunches (he believed in lunches) had finally worked.
‘Alan!’ I called again cautiously. ‘This is Alex. I’m going away now.’
His head popped out, above me. ‘I’m coming,’ he said thickly. ‘Don’t go away.’
When he let me in I could see how ill he looked. Or, if not ill, sad, I realized as he led me through to the kitchen/dining room. ‘Have a beer,’ he said, more decisively than I’d ever heard him say anything. He brushed his wispy hair down with the flat of his hand. ‘I’m having a beer and I want you to have one too.’
The house was airless and baking hot. He opened the french windows to his tiny garden and let in some fog, cold air and traffic noise.
‘Shall I turn down the thermostat?’ I asked.
‘What?’
‘On the heating.’
‘Oh – yes, I suppose.’
I did, then joined him at the small round breakfast table. It was usually bare, but now it was littered: opened post, three photograph albums, two dirty glasses. I moved the glasses to the sink and stacked the post on top of the albums.
He didn’t notice. ‘I’m worried about my doco,’ he said.
‘What are you worried about?’
‘I’m afraid it’s just a bit – dull.’
I was silenced. As a surprise announcement, it was as if Marlon Brando had announced that he had a weight problem. All Alan’s documentaries were dull. That was their trademark.
Saying that wouldn’t have cheered him up, however. ‘Nonsense,’ I said as robustly as I could manage. I sounded like a firm but kind primary teacher many people sounded like that when they talked to Alan.
It was hard to make a more pertinent comment because I’d had nothing to do with his latest enterprise, which had been dragging on since January. It was a documentary about men, particularly young men, and their unfortunate position vis-à-vis women. Part of the point of the doco was that the whole crew should be male, including the researchers, and that was fine by me. I’d had enough work on not to want this.
‘I don’t want it to be dull because it’s an important issue. Do you know how many young men commit suicide, Alex? Do you know how many more young men are unemployed than young women? Do you know how much better girls do than boys in the current school examinations, and do you know that’s a combination of female teacher prejudice and incompetence, and the redesigning of the exams to favour girls? Do you realize how a simple misunderstanding by a silly girl can escalate to a criminal charge for rape? Do you know how biased the divorce courts are against men, and how little contact divorced fathers are given with their children, who they’re paying for? Do you know how many older men are made redundant, and do you know their chance of reemployment?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘I don’t care, anyhow,’ he said angrily, his shoulders sagging. ‘I’ve come to the end of the road, Alex.’
It was only then that I spotted he was drunk. It was partly the smell of brandy that wafted from him whenever he moved. That and the slurring of his words. Alex Tanner, ace detective. I’d been thrown off the scent because Alan was usually too cautious to drink.
‘Which road have you come to the end of?’
�
��Every kind of road. Have you heard Janey’s going to remarry?’ He put his hands on the table and looked at them. They were trembling and grubby.
Janey’s his ex-wife. Their relationship was evidently still alive for Alan. He looked as if what he needed was a hug, but I was reluctant to give him one in case he misinterpreted my motives. Like a duck, he imprinted on any youngish female who showed him the least attention.
Then he started to moan and rub his hands through his hair. He didn’t have so much hair that he could afford to do that, so I caught his hands and held them.
‘Come on, Alan, it isn’t so bad,’ I said.
‘We had so much in common,’ he said. ‘I always thought we’d get back together, at the end.’
‘At whose end?’
‘When I’d – sown my wild oats. And when Janey realized how much I meant to her.’
Now we were well out in the madlands. My impression had been that Janey was mighty relieved to be rid of him and Alan, to my knowledge, hadn’t managed to sow even the most domestic of oats.
Also, I had work to do, and this was boiling up into an all-nighter.
For a moment I seriously considered taking him to bed. That would be quickest in the short term. He had tried me a long time ago, when I was eighteen and he was forty-something, but that was while he was still married. I’d looked at him with such surprise and contempt that even he had noticed it, plus he hadn’t been seriously keen in the first place.
Now I’d gone up in his rating system because of Barty. Barty was a catch, and I’d caught him. Alan liked what he knew other men liked. I don’t think his prick had a personal response. So bed with me would have cheered him up, then I could have exclaimed over how wonderful he was and claimed that I needed to get away to recover from the emotional maelstrom his lovemaking had induced, and he would have gone to sleep and I’d have been out of there in under an hour, and back to work.
That was the practical solution.
But Barty wouldn’t like it, and since he was so far away and my current partner –
‘Tell you what, Alan,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t be alone. Come home with me, I’ll make us supper and we can talk.’
I settled him on the sofa, put cushions behind his head, made him an omelette, toast and butter, and a mug of cocoa.
This nursery treatment comforted him. I reckoned he’d fall asleep, so I said, ‘Give me an hour to look at these letters, OK? After that we’ll talk.’
Then I curled up in the chair opposite him so I could smile reassuringly when he looked up, opened Hilary Lucas’s envelope, and emptied the contents neatly on the carpet.
Should I bother about fingerprints? If it turned out to be serious, I’d better cover my back, though paper doesn’t print well. To salve my conscience I picked up the top two, protecting them with a tissue, and wiggled them into see-through plastic folders. Then I added the most recent letter, the one I’d read, and flicked through the remainder.
They were mostly folded: when I straightened them out, the earlier ones were typewritten on quarto paper, the later word-processed on A4. The quality of the printing improved over the years roughly in line with the advance of technology. They were in chronological order, the most recent on top, and all dated, the earliest 1.9.70. As Hilary had said, there was no handwriting.
I numbered them lightly in pencil. One hundred and fifty-three. A lot of letters. A long time. I paper-clipped them together in years. Roughly five a year. Four so far this year. Peculiar, not a scrap of handwriting anywhere. A writer? A typist? Someone who was extremely familiar with keyboards, and someone accurate. No spelling or punctuation mistakes that I could see, running over them, and a high level of vocabulary. Plus the recurrent dates, always in the same format.
A careful-minded, educated woman. Not an obvious candidate for an unplanned illegitimate child. Maybe she’d had it on purpose.
Alex?’ said Alan drowsily, waking up and looking like a fluffy owl with his face puffy from sleep and his thinning hair poking up in little wisps and erratic tufts. ‘Alex, what are you doing? Could I have a drink of water?’
I fetched him the water, and explained what I was doing. No names: the general principles.
‘Is it urgent?’
‘Could be, very.’
‘Then I’ll help you,’ he said, trying to regain some of the absolute control without which his anxiety levels rose to excruciating heights. ‘Excuse me a minute.’
He went upstairs to the bathroom, then reappeared looking combed and washed. ‘Got any aspirins?’
‘Kitchen. Usual cupboard.’
Back with more water and the aspirins, he sat himself at the desk. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Get started on these.’
‘What am I looking for?’
‘Any clue to her identity. Names, places, idiosyncracies.’
‘Right.’ He started to read, pencil in hand, squared up to the desk and the task. I looked at him with what I was disconcerted to recognize as the beginnings of protective affection. I didn’t expect productive work from him, but at least he was trying. We’d talk about his life later.
Chapter Eight
We worked in silence, and in my case increasing bewilderment, for nearly an hour, until I got cramp. ‘Want some coffee? I’m making,’ I said, getting up and stretching. Then I tried shaking my cramping leg like Arthur Fishburn, but it didn’t help. It must have been a guy thing.
‘Posture,’ said Alan. ‘You shouldn’t sit hunched over like that for long periods of time. No wonder your back is painful.’
‘It isn’t my back. It’s my leg,’ I said.
‘Referred pain,’ said Alan. ‘I’d like some tea, if you have it. Then we’ll confer, shall we?’
Confer. He’d be calling a steering meeting next. He was evidently feeling better, or pretending to.
I made the tea and coffee and settled back into my chair again, under his disapproving frown, not pointing out that I was sitting in the chair to work because he’d pinched my desk. ‘OK. I’ll tell you what I’ve got –’
‘Are you leading the discussion?’ he interrupted querulously.
‘Yes,’ I said, nearly losing patience, ‘I’m the chairperson, Alan, which is what’s done for my leg, according to you.’
‘Very well.’
‘I’ve got nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing concrete. Not a name or a place in any of them. Plenty about her feelings, her memories of their time together, particularly in bed, and some nicknames. I’m fairly sure “Man” is her husband. Her lover’s certainly “One” and she’s “Two”. Their shared child is “Boy.” Who d’you reckon “Girl” and “Four” are?’
‘Ah,’ said Alan. ‘May I address the Chair?’ He signalled this as a joke by rocking backwards and forwards and making a cawing noise like a minor character from Dickens.
‘Get on with it.’
‘Four is his wife. I can give you chapter and verse if you like—’
‘No, that’s fine—’
‘And Girl must be the woman’s legitimate daughter – older than Boy, because the letters refer to Girl’s jealousy and how she overcomes it.’
‘Do you have an age for Girl?’
‘She sounds about two when Boy is born. Tantrums, etc. So, two years at least older than Boy, who was born twenty-four years ago. Between January and May. In the January letter she’s pregnant, and in the next letter, in May, she’s talking about the beauty of the child.’
‘That’s something.’ I made a note. ‘Anything else?’
‘As you know, I’ve reached 1983. It’s a passionate relationship, obviously.’
‘On her side, at least.’
‘They’re still making love, in 1983.’
‘They’re still making love in 1997,’ I said.‘It needn’t be passionate on his side, though. They only meet about five times a year. And I think there’s something wrong in the last few years, as well. I can’t put my finger on it, but her letters seem to lose confidence, as if he might be going off her. Apart
from the very last letter, which gets the confident tone back.’
‘Let’s leave that for a moment. Other than that, the bulk of my letters, like yours, are simply expressions of her feeling, her memories of their times together and her hopes for the future.’ Alan cleared his throat. ‘I also know where they first acknowledged their love.’ Pause. ‘In Rome. Which explains the nicknames.’
Significant pause.
‘Get a move on, Alan,’ I said, trying to sound jocular.
‘Do you know the Browning poem, “Two in the Campagna”?’
‘No. Explain.’
‘It’s a love poem from a man’s point of view, about a man and a woman in the plain outside Rome called the Campagna. Our woman quotes from it. And that’s why she calls her lover One and herself Two. That gives us something, surely.’
‘You’re positive they were actually in Rome at the time?’
He passed the letter to me and I checked it through. It was clear enough. So if the worst came to the worst I could work on that, though a holiday in 1970 wouldn’t be exactly easy to drop casually into conversation.
‘This poem – how well known is it?’ I said, hoping we could narrow the field to poetry buffs or English teachers. I wouldn’t know, my education was mostly crap and though I read a lot, there are still huge gaps.
‘Very, I would have thought,’ said Alan. ‘I knew it.’
‘You went to Cambridge.’
‘I read history.’
‘OK, but still you must have learnt plenty of this stuff on the way up to Cambridge.’
‘I think most reasonably well-educated people of my age or up to fifteen years younger would be familiar with it,’ he said.
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