“It’s more interesting.”
He was embarrassed directly he’d said it. It seemed too personal. He guessed that Vicky was embarrassed too, from the speed with which she followed this remark by saying, “Anyhow, what are we going to do?”
Stephen said slowly, “I think we’ve got to go to the police.”
“But you said all along. . . .”
“I know. And I still don’t think they’re going to take any notice.”
“Then why. . .?”
“Because it’s the only thing we can do. We haven’t a thing to go on, so we can’t go looking all over the country by ourselves. And I don’t want to go back to the parents.”
“If only we’d seen where they were.”
“I didn’t see anything except those two who were talking.”
“I didn’t either. . . . Wait a minute!”
“What?”
“I did. I did see something. Only I can’t remember what.”
“That’s not much help, then.”
“Wait a tick, I almost got it then.”
Stephen waited.
“It was behind his head. On the wall.”
She shut her eyes.
“A picture. It’s a place. Only I don’t know it. It’s coloured. There’s a sort of mountain. It’s got a flat sort of top, with fire coming out of it.”
“A volcano,” Stephen said.
“That’s right. And it’s night. There’s some country round the bottom, only I can’t see that properly. The frame’s black and gold.”
She opened her eyes.
“That’s all.”
“Fantastic. How did you manage to remember that, when you said you couldn’t?”
“It was like remembering a dream. You know. You say to yourself you’ve forgotten it completely, and then something reminds you, and you know you’ve sort of got a clue, and then suddenly you get it. Little bits at first and then the whole thing. You sort of see it and know that’s it.”
“I know.”
“It’s a bit like what we get. You know. The flashes. D’you think they could be like that? Only working backwards?”
“Sorry, I don’t get it.”
“Well. You know how you remember things. They sort of come into your mind when you’re not expecting anything?”
“Mm.”
“Why shouldn’t it work the other way round? Sometimes. So you remember things that are going to happen, instead of what did?”
There was a silence.
“You think it’s all stupid,” Vicky said, disappointed.
“No I don’t. I think it’s brilliant.”
“Do you really?”
“Because we don’t really know about time. I mean, my father says we just think of it moving one way. You know. Forwards. But it could just as well go both ways. Backwards sometimes. It’s something to do with causality.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t understand it really. Something like, if you do something today, something different happens tomorrow, because of what you did. So if you don’t believe in time moving the way we think it does, you don’t really know whether there was a cause or not.”
Vicky thought about this. “If time didn’t work like we think, it wouldn’t matter whether we went to the police or not. I mean, nothing we did would matter. Would it?”
She surprised Stephen again by her quickness. “I suppose not.” “Do you think that might be how we see things?”
“Could be. Gosh, I wish it was. If it was really just that, I wouldn’t feel so——”
“So what?”
“So peculiar.”
“You’re not the only one,” Vicky said.
They looked at each other.
Stephen said, “That picture of the volcano.”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t help much.”
“At any rate it’s something we could tell the police.”
“We have got to tell them?” Vicky asked.
“We’ve got to, Vicky. Even if it isn’t any good. We’d feel awful if we didn’t. I would, anyway.”
“You said they wouldn’t believe us.”
“They won’t.”
“And you said we hadn’t got anything. . . what was it?”
“Positive.”
“Positive, then. To tell them.”
“I’ve thought of one thing. They’ve probably got heaps of pictures of people who’ve been had up for something or other. If we could see them we might recognize one of those two.”
“I wish I could remember what it is that’s funny about his hair,” Vicky said.
“It’ll suddenly hit you when you see his photograph. You’ll say, ‘That’s him, with the rabbit’s ears sticking up through his hair.’”
“You’re crazy!” Vicky said, laughing.
“Come on. For one thing, Chris is never going to let up till we’ve done it.”
Nineteen
“We won’t say anything about flashes. We just say we’ve seen a couple with a baby,” Stephen said, meeting Vicky that same afternoon by pre-arrangement.
“How would we have known it was that baby? There’s heaps of men and girls with babies.”
“Didn’t you hear the news this morning? They’re asking anyone who’s noticed anyone behaving peculiarly with a baby to tell them.”
“What’ll we have for this peculiar behaviour?” Vicky asked.
“Suppose we said we’d been there when that girl took the baby?”
“Wouldn’t they want to know why we didn’t say so before? It’s three days.”
“It’s going to be very complicated,” Stephen said gloomily.
“We could tell them what we heard. About not hurting it. That’s peculiar enough.”
“That’s right! We could.”
“But it wouldn’t have to be in that room, because we don’t know where it is.”
“It could have been in a café like the one you and Chris go to.”
“Sitting at the next table and quarrelling.”
“Only we’d have to make up which café it was.”
“What about a park? We could make it Kensington Gardens the day it happened.”
“But they wouldn’t. Would they? Just go and sit on a park bench just near where they’d taken the baby from?”
“I know! A bus. Or a train. We could’ve been sitting in the seat in front of them. . . .”
“And heard them quarrelling and not thought much about it till now. . . .”
“Till we heard the appeal on the radio this morning.”
“We’ll have to make up our minds where the bus was going. We’ve got to have it all worked out. Or the train.”
“Train,” Vicky said.
“Why?”
“Because if it was a bus and we say which one, they could get hold of the conductor, and he could say there wasn’t a baby on it then. But no one could say there wasn’t a baby on a tube train.”
“That’s brilliant,” Stephen said.
“Let’s say the Victoria Line. That goes a long way, it could be anywhere.”
“No, you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“The way the carriages are built. You can’t sit in front of anyone.”
“Which line, then?”
“I think the Northern. It’s longer than the Victoria. Anyway it isn’t much of a clue, because they might not have been going to a station on that line. Like us. We changed on to the Piccadilly at Leicester Square. They could’ve changed too.”
It took time. As Stephen said, it was complicated working out a story that held together, that couldn’t be faulted. But when it was ready it sounded a good deal more credible than the account of the flashes.
“How are we going to explain that we aren’t absolutely sure of what they look like?” Stephen said finally.
“If they were sitting behind us, we’d only have sort of looked at them when we got out. You don’t notice much, looking quick, like that,” Vicky said.
&
nbsp; They’d rung 999—“I’ve always wanted to,” Vicky said, and Stephen said, “Go on, then. Have fun!”—they were put through to something called Information and asked questions which seemed to them to have very little to do with what they had to say. Their names, their addresses, the names of their parents. Their ages, their schools. “What about the maiden name of my grandmother?” Stephen said impatiently to the sound over the instrument of the scratching ballpoint taking down all particulars. “Pardon?” said the voice the other end, and Stephen said, “Sorry. Nothing. Sorry.”
“Would you be able to go to the Kensington station?” the voice asked.
“Which station? High Street or. . .”
“The police station. Earl’s Court Road. Thirty-one bus goes right past it. The Detective Chief Superintendent in charge of the case is working there. He might want to put a few questions to you.”
“You mean go there now?” Stephen asked.
“Where are you speaking from?”
“Hampstead Heath. Well, Southend Green actually. . . .”
“Should take you about forty minutes. No, Sunday, a bit more. I’ll ring Kensington and say you’ll be over, shall I?”
“I suppose so,” Stephen said, but the line was already dead.
In the Kensington police station they found a young, dark-haired sergeant at the counter expecting them. He asked the same questions and wrote down the answers, but very quickly, searching them with bright dark eyes, smiling occasionally at Vicky. From him they were passed on to a higher-up officer in a room with several desks, walls covered with maps and charts. “It’s like Z Cars!” Vicky whispered as they went in, and Stephen whispered back, “Of course. They do their homework.” Here they sat silent while a big burly man with knobbly knuckles and curly brown hair, so exuberant and wiry it seemed trying to become airborne, read through the notes brought up by the dark-haired sergeant from the front counter. Behind them a woman police officer sat at one of the desks, relaxed but alert. Here, at last, they told their story, almost without interruption; the burly detective sergeant asked the fewest possible questions, never interrupted, listened intently. Stephen, who did most of the talking, felt that beneath the wiry hair, there was a critical mind, weighing up every statement, watching for inaccuracies and uncertainties. It was nerve-racking, as bad as an examination. Stephen could tell from the way she fidgeted that Vicky was nervous, though she was all right when she was actually answering a question. She answered straight and short, no hesitation. He was proud of her. After what seemed a long time, wiry-hair looked across at the woman officer and said, “Chief Superintendent Price’ll want to hear this,” and she nodded back, “Yes.” So on to another room and another listener. This time he was in plain clothes, a tall lean man with greying hair and a lined face stamped with fatigue. More questions. Innumerable, endless questions about every detail of that train journey, every event that had led up to that key line, “You said you wouldn’t hurt her!” Just as well they’d agreed on their story, Stephen thought, and just as well too they hadn’t come with the unbelievable truth. At least now they were being taken seriously. But it was exhausting, keeping a watch on everything you said, trying to make sure you didn’t contradict yourself. After more than half an hour of it, Stephen’s brain felt woolly, he found he was taking longer over each answer, his thinking was confused. Price must have noticed. He stopped suddenly, in the middle of a sentence and asked one of the waiting sergeants to bring tea. It was hot and strong and sweet and did Stephen a lot of good. While he was drinking it, Price asked, “You’d recognize those two again, would you?”
“I’m not sure. We really only just glanced at them,” Stephen said.
“Would you?” Price asked Vicky.
“I might.”
“I’d like to take you along to the Yard and show you some pictures we keep there. It needn’t take long.”
“Right away?” Stephen asked, dismayed. He’d thought their ordeal must be nearly at an end.
“Yes. Is anyone going to worry if you don’t get home for another hour or so? You could ring up if you like.”
They were driven very fast through the empty Sunday streets to St. James’s Park, signed in at the entrance of New Scotland Yard’s imposing block, taken by Price to see the officer in charge of the “pictures”. “Witness albums. That’s what we call them. Rogues’ Gallery’s what you probably know them as,” the competent, small, carroty-haired officer said, and then started asking his own questions. He wanted detailed descriptions of the man and the girl with the baby. Age? Colour of eyes, hair, complexion; height. Stephen looked quickly at Vicky, hoping she’d remember they were supposed only to have seen the pair sitting down. Fat, thin, medium? Heavily or slightly built? Shape of eyebrows, nose, mouth? Outline of face? It was like feeding information into a computer, you could almost see the cogs turning and the counters falling under the carroty hair. And the result was amazing. The photographs Stephen and Vicky were shown were all of faces not unlike those two they’d seen. Muddling, to have to look at so many so much the same, and yet there were very few over which they hesitated. One or two Stephen looked at twice, girls with enormous dark rings round their eyes, Cupid’s Bow mouths and long hair that was so curly it was almost frizzy, but not quite. There were plenty of them, but none of them dead right. He was examining one to try to define what it was that made her different from the girl he’d seen, when Vicky exclaimed, and the sergeant and Stephen moved over to her and looked at the picture she was pointing to.
“Is that him?” Stephen asked.
“I think so. It’s like what I remember.”
“You’re right he has got funny hair.”
The face that looked up at them was narrow and bony. The eyes were a little too close together, the nose was small and pointed above a tight, spiteful mouth. The hair, which was sparse, grew in tufts, as thin as a newborn baby’s in some places on the scalp, thicker in others. It looked, Stephen thought, moth-eaten and rather nasty.
“That’s the one you fancy?” the sergeant said. He looked up the name and read it out. “James Henry Purfitt. Armed robbery with violence, threatening behaviour. Had an address in Walthamstow five years ago. Did a stretch of three years. Nothing definite since. Suspected of being in with a lot of boys who ran a protection racket, but it wasn’t proved against him.”
“Does it sound as if it could have been him?” Vicky asked.
“Can’t tell. You’d have to talk to one of the officers who knows him. Doesn’t look very pleasant to me, but you never know. You’d swear to the identification, would you, Miss?”
“I think it’s him. Only I didn’t look at him for long.”
“Supposed identification, we’ll call it. Well, thank you, Miss. We’ll keep in touch. If there’s anything new comes up, we’ll let you know. If there should be a question of another identification, we can find you at this address, can we?”
They left the Yard convinced that they’d only been half believed and that they wouldn’t hear any more. It all seemed very flat and unsatisfactory. But at least Chris could no longer reproach them. Vicky told her as they went to bed, after an evening made uncomfortable by the necessity of inventing yet another story to explain how she’d come to be out most of the day without warning and without Chris. Mrs. Stanford was on edge, unusual in that comfortable woman, and Mr. Stanford was sharp. He told Vicky off for coming in late, which was fair enough. She took that in good part, but floundered when he wanted to know whom she’d been with. She told him, Stephen, and that they’d been for a walk round Parliament Square and hadn’t noticed the time. She said she was sorry, but it didn’t help. Mr. Stanford wanted to know why she couldn’t go around with a boy of her own sort, like Chris did. Chris began to defend Stephen and there was the makings of a row. Mrs. Stanford stopped it by saying she had a headache and was going to bed and that the girls had better go up too. They left Mr. Stanford sitting gloomily in front of the television. Vicky couldn’t remember a more thundery evening.
Chris’s reaction to the great news was disappointing too. She was pleased, but not as much pleased as Vicky had expected. She said, “Good. That’s marvellous,” but stopped there, not asking the questions Vicky wanted to answer, and without any of the warm sympathy and bounce that she generally showed. Vicky was forced to tell the whole story straight off without the interruption of eager questions. Like this it seemed short and bald and very inconclusive.
“Aren’t you pleased we went like you said?” she asked at the end.
“‘Course I am. You had to, didn’t you?”
“Stephen said we had to.”
Silence.
“Chris?”
“What?”
“You angry we didn’t ask you to come too? Stephen thought if there was the three of us again, like when we went to that house, they wouldn’t listen.”
“No. I don’t mind.”
“But you’re glad we went?”
“Told you I was.”
They were in bed by this time. Chris lay with her back to Vicky. She picked up a book and made as if she were going to read.
“Chris. What’s the matter?”
“Why should anything be the matter?”
“You sound different, that’s why. Are you cross with me?”
“No, I’m not.”
“I would have told you before we went, only there wasn’t a chance. Dad was there all the time, and you know how he is about Stephen.”
“It doesn’t matter. I guessed anyway.”
“What did you do while we were there?”
“I went out.”
“With Paul?”
No answer.
“With Paul, Chrissie?”
Chris said, “Turn off the light, Vicky, will you? I think I’ve caught Mum’s head.” Vicky turned off the light, but she couldn’t go to sleep at once. And she listened in the darkness to Chris’s long deep breaths and couldn’t make up her mind whether they were muffled sobs. Once she said, “Chris?” but there was no answer. She lay awake for what seemed like hours.
Twenty
Mrs. Plum sometimes treated herself to a glass of port or half a pint of Guinness in the pub on the corner at the end of the day. She had cronies there with whom she gossiped about the weather and the local characters. Other middle-aged friends of hers exchanged their views on the Government and the shocking prices of everything in the shops and about their grown-up children and their precious grandchildren, and they swopped memories, often well-edited so that they became more impressive and more glamorous, or more terrible than the real facts would have been. Most of them were only semi-retired, like Mrs. Plum; they let lodgings, they had part-time jobs in the shops, one was a lollipop man and several were traffic wardens. They talked a great deal and they didn’t listen very carefully to what the others had to say, but there was a general feeling of amiability and good will which prevented them from interrupting each other’s stories too often or engrossing the general attention for too long. And by and large they absorbed, without listening, the trend of the information, so that everyone was always up to date with the condition of each other’s ailments and children’s marital status and number of offspring. Since most of Mrs. Plum’s tenants were single ladies and gentlemen who went out to work all day, these meetings provided her with the company she loved. During the long day with no one to speak to, she looked forward to the evenings when she could find relief in the spate of words which had to be dammed up so many long working hours.
The Chinese Egg Page 13
