“They’re putting Mum into the ambulance,” announced Cilla, returning with her sister. “She looks terrible.”
Selena and the neighbor looked down at the girl’s face, half illuminated and half darkened by the unnatural light of the flames. It showed neither pity nor fear—only an avid interest, and a sort of pleasure at being in the center of a sensation. The two women looked at each other, but said nothing.
There was a second ambulance by now, come to be in readiness, but it was a long time before it was needed. A police presence had also got to the scene, and Malcolm Cray could get away and come over to see his wife. He said “OK?” and they stood, arms around each other, in a closer communion than words could give. The hoses were giving the house a terrible dousing. From the little hallway the fire had spread, taking in every piece of gimcrack furniture, every pile of discarded clothes or toys that lay around the place. The furniture in the living room had been a firetrap—the suite, bought secondhand with a grant from the Social Security Office, was the main source of the acrid fumes. The fireman who penetrated it finally found a man there, but the word was immediately passed out that there was no question of his being alive. The ambulance men outside had a sheet, and when the body was stretchered out through the back door it was thrown over it, to keep it from the curious gaze of bystanders.
At her shoulder Selena Cray felt her husband’s body racked with sobs. She turned and put her face in the horrible-smelling blue material of his shirt.
“You couldn’t have saved him, love,” she whispered. “No one could.”
“God help me, I didn’t want to,” her husband sobbed.
Chapter
EIGHT
On the morning after the fire, Algy Cartwright was the only one from the houses in Wynton Lane to walk through the Belfield Grove Estate. He had had a breakfast of fried eggs and bacon, had washed up, and hadn’t turned the television on even for the news headlines. Now he was on his way to buy tobacco and his morning paper at the newsagent’s on Grange Street. At the blackened shell of the Phelans’ home he paused for some time, listening to the comments of the little knot of spectators, mostly women with small children, and unemployed men. At the newsagent’s he bought the Yorkshire Post as well as his usual Daily Mail, to see if it had anything about the fire.
None of the residents of the Wynton Lane houses spoke to each other face to face that morning, but there was a great deal of telephone activity.
“Mr. Cartwright? Algy?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Lynn—Lynn Packard here.”
“Oh, good morning, Mr. Packard.”
“Just a small point, Algy: I don’t know if you’ve heard about the fire last night.”
“Aye, I have. I’ve just been past there.”
“Ah. . . . It did occur to me when I heard—Jennifer phoned a few minutes ago; she’d heard about it from our cleaning lady—it did occur to me that we should . . . distance ourselves, as far as possible.”
“How do you mean?”
“I shouldn’t have to sp— . . . Sorry, just talking to one of the assistants. What I meant was that we shouldn’t shout it from the rooftops that we were . . . well, strongly opposed to his moving into the Lane.”
“Oh, aye, I get your drift.”
“Because he was, I believe . . . the main casualty.”
“That’s right. I heard the women talking on the Estate. The wife’s in hospital too, though, I gather, and very poorly.”
“Yes, well, I think we should be careful, because people could, well, get the wrong impression.”
“I reckon you’re right, Mr. Packard.”
“Of course, the likelihood is that it’s completely accidental, especially granted the man’s likely habits when he’s drunk . . . ”
“Oh, aye, that’s true enough.”
“But still, as I say, I think we should be careful. I thought perhaps you could talk to Mrs. Bridewell, as an old friend.”
“Yes, I could do that, though she’s a woman who knows her own mind, Mr. Packard, and you’ve got to remember she’s on the Council. I could ring Mrs. Eastlake, too. She’s the one who—”
“Started it. Right.”
“She’s taken a big interest. She was actually out in her garden the other day, so Mrs. Bridewell says.”
“Really? Well, I’ll ring the son. He seems to be a bit lacking in backbone. And I’ll ring Copperwhite too.”
“Yes, I’d rather you rang him, Mr. Packard.”
“We need to present a united front. It’s nothing to do with us, and we don’t want to get involved.”
“Right. Pity the thing came up really.”
“Yes . . . as it’s turned out.”
“Of course, I agree there’s no point in running along to the police and saying ‘We were trying to stop him buying a house in Wynton Lane.’ But you’ve got to remember I’m on the Council, Algy. I have to be very careful, the newspapers being what they are. I certainly couldn’t have anything to do with concealing things from the police.”
“No, no, I’m sure that’s not what Mr. Packard has in mind. Just that we shouldn’t go—”
“Advertising the fact? Well, that’s fair enough. But aren’t we jumping the gun a bit? Is there any evidence that the fire wasn’t completely accidental?”
“Mr. Packard made that point. All I have to go on is the women talking—the women from the Estate, as I walked through to get my paper. They were convinced it was arson. One of them thought they’d got the wrong house—there’s a black girl lives next door, apparently. But the rest thought it was the Phelans who were aimed at—and ‘good riddance’ was the general feeling as far as Jack Phelan was concerned, though it was thought terrible that the kiddies might have been hurt.”
“Yes, but can they know it was deliberately started? The man was probably drunk and started it with a lighted cigarette or something. Investigations by Fire Officers take quite some time, as a rule, so I don’t see how they can know.”
“I suppose they were just assuming. All the more reason, if it’s not certain yet, for us to sit tight and say nothing.”
“Quite. And I can stir things up a bit at Housing and see that something is done about getting the Phelans rehoused.”
“The remaining Phelans.”
“Yes. The remaining Phelans.”
“Mr. Copperwhite? It’s Lynn Packard here. I don’t know whether you’ve heard?—”
“Yes.”
“Right. It’s a bit of a stunner, isn’t it? Well, I’ve been talking to Algy Cartwright, who really started all this—”
“Ah.”
“—and we agreed that the best thing we can do is to keep quiet about our little efforts to . . . stop the Phelans moving into The Hollies.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
“It’s not, after all, as if we found there was very much that we could do, is it?”
“No. Perhaps fortunately, as it turned out.”
“Right. We said some rather silly things at our last meeting—”
“We did.”
“—but we did recognize there was nothing we could do. The question is, how many people know?”
“I was just going to bring that up. There’s the estate agents and the building society people, of course. No reason why they should say anything. But then there’s Dr. Pickering.”
“Yes, I’ve been thinking about him.”
“So far as I know he’s not the police doctor, but he did tell Adrian Eastlake he was the Phelans’ doctor, so it’s quite possible the police will talk to him.”
“Yes . . . He wasn’t very cooperative . . . ”
“Maybe we expected too much of him. It was his pocket that would have been hit, when all’s said and done. It’s not a seller’s market any longer, with interest rates soaring. But the point is, I have the impression that he’s a mite touchy, and if we approached him—”
“To keep quiet?”
“Well, yes—he might well get on his high horse. C
ould even talk about medical ethics, and so on. My feeling—it’s no more than that—is that we should let sleeping dogs lie.”
“I think you’re right. Of course, there may be others who know. Cartwright’s the sort of person who goes to pubs. He may have talked in the Belfield Arms. Then there are the people in the basement flats . . . ”
“Yes. They certainly know. Would they have talked? It hardly concerned them, really. Cartwright’s tenant seems to have a padlock on his mouth, I don’t know the woman in The Hollies, and then there’s the teacher in Daphne Bridewell’s basement.”
“I could ask Jennifer to have a word with her. Oh, yes, and I presume you’ll have a word with your wife.”
There was silence at the other end.
“Sorry, I meant your good lady.”
“Yes, of course. Well, I’ll try.”
“Adrian? Lynn Packard here. I suppose you’ve heard?”
“Heard?”
“About the Phelans.”
“What about them?”
“There was a fire at their house last night. He’s dead.”
“Oh my God! How . . . terrible.”
“The rest of the family were all right, or weren’t there, I don’t know the details. The mother, though, is in hospital and seems pretty ill, from what I heard.”
“Just him?”
“Just him. We don’t know anything about the fire yet, I mean how it started and so on, but we thought it best to be on the safe side—”
“The safe side?”
“About our . . . endeavors to keep him out.”
“I get you. Yes, absolutely.”
“We thought we wouldn’t rush into saying anything about those. They’ve got nothing to do with the matter.”
“Absolutely not!”
“They may come out, of course. It may be that there’s more who know than we’re reckoning on. And there’s Pickering . . . ”
“Yes.”
“Nothing to be done there, we decided. Anyway, all we’re saying is, we’re not rushing in to talk about it.”
“Right.”
“So keep mum, eh? Absolutely mum.”
“Not a word. . . . It’s terrible, but I’m glad he’s dead.”
“Absolutely quiet.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Eastlake, it’s Algy Cartwright.”
“Oh, hello, Algy. I’m afraid Adrian is at work, if it’s him you’re wanting to talk to.”
“No, it’s you, Mrs. Eastlake. I don’t suppose you’ll have heard about the fire at the Phelans’.”
“Oh, yes.”
“You mean you have?”
“Yes. I saw from the window that there’d been a fire on the Estate, and I waited downstairs for the milkman.”
“I see. So you’ll know that Jack Phelan is dead.”
“Yes. What a blessing . . . I mean that the others were saved. Though, really, to be absolutely honest, when I think how Adrian hated and feared that man—”
“What I’m ringing about, Mrs. Eastlake, is that we think we should be very careful about what we say.”
“But, of course.”
“We don’t know anything about what started the fire as yet, but we don’t want it thought that we were in any way involved.”
“Naturally.”
“It’s not something we’d have had anything to do with.”
“No . . . though it does seem in a way providential.”
“It’s that sort of talk we have to be careful about, Mrs. Eastlake. It’s very important you say nothing that could bring this thing back . . . well, to us here in Wynton Lane.”
“Oh, I quite understand. And you know that I don’t talk to anyone.”
Except, Algy noted, the milkman.
Thus the phone conversations on the morning after the fire. It was a brave effort, but quite unavailing. For, unseen by Lynn Packard as he drove off that morning, unseen by Algy Cartwright as he came down the slope from the Estate deep in the Yorkshire Post, unseen by Adrian Eastlake as he walked up Wynton Lane toward his bus stop, a message had been spray-painted in red on the side wall of Daphne Bridewell’s house—the first house in the Lane and the one whose wall faced up toward the Belfield Grove Estate. The message read:
ONE OF THIS LOT KILED MY DAD
Chapter
NINE
Margaret Copperwhite was busy all Friday morning at the Prosecutions Department of the West Yorkshire Police Headquarters in Sleate. Some big cases were coming before the courts the following week, and the department was more than usually snowed under with paperwork. It was not until twelve that she was able to snatch a break in the police canteen. At the self-service counter she got a pot of tea and an egg mayonnaise sandwich, and added a copy of the Yorkshire Evening Advertiser. She saw the headline FAMILY FIRE TRAGEDY as she settled down at her table, and, when she had poured herself a cup of tea and taken a bite at her sandwich, she began reading the story in the lower reaches of the front page. Her interest was immediately aroused.
“Good Lord!”
“What is it?”
She looked up and saw Mike Oddie, a superintendent and a good friend. He it was who had taught her most about liaising with the detective force in those strange first days back in a regular job. Perhaps his natural kindness had been strengthened by fellow feeling; like hers, his children were grown up and moved away; he had lost his wife, not through divorce but cancer. He understood that in her case this time of loss and loneliness was augmented by the strangeness of taking up a job, after years when domesticity had seemed all that she needed. He had been, Margaret acknowledged, a brick—covering up lapses and omissions even as he taught her the work and encouraged her in her special fields of interest. He was comfortably built, with a generous smile and a warm manner, though she was aware that both hid a steely backbone. She gestured to the seat opposite.
“Oh, nothing really. It’s just this fire on the Belfield Grove Estate—”
“Yes?”
“It seems to be a family that my ex-husband was talking about the other day when we met for lunch. An appalling slum family, he called them.”
“That would be them. Why was he interested?”
“Said they had got hold of some money and were planning to move into one of the houses in Wynton Lane, where he lives. I expect you can guess the scenario: usual middle-class panic, action groups and all that—we must protect our children, our environment, our house prices.”
“I can guess.”
“I shouldn’t be so cynical. I expect I would feel the same if I lived next door.”
“Maybe. Anyway that explains something.”
“What?”
“There was a message spray-painted on the wall of the end house in Wynton Lane this morning: ‘One of this lot killed my Dad.’ Couldn’t manage to spell ‘killed.’ Never took much to education, except street education, young Kevin Phelan.”
Margaret stirred her tea, frowning.
“He got in fast, didn’t he?”
“Very fast indeed.”
That was a matter that interested Mike Oddie. A policeman had banged at the door of the flatlet Kevin Phelan shared with a mate at 3 A.M. the previous night. There had been no problem with the address: Kevin was on their books. At the third bang Kevin had appeared at the door, rubbing sleep from his eyes and opening it no more than a cautious crack. He was wearing only boxer shorts, which flapped around his meager legs and gave him the appearance of something out of L.S. Lowry trying to look like something out of David Hockney. Even as the constable watched, the ratlike expression began creeping through the sleep and forming itself on his face.
“I ain’t done nothing.”
It was clearly an automatic response to any encounter with the police. The constable pushed himself inside, feeling his message was unsuitable for delivery on a first-floor landing. The flatlet smelled of sleep, and of much more. Kevin had been sleeping under a rug on the sofa, while his mate had the
tiny bedroom. The only decoration the flat had been given was a swastika banner on the wall, and a large poster depicting the army of the Third Reich marching in triumph into some unfortunate foreign capital. For the rest, the room was indescribably—or rather all too describably—dirty.
The constable, eager to escape from the concentrated smell of underclothes, told Kevin Phelan what had happened—quickly, but not without sympathy.
“Christ! Dead?”
Grief or feeling were obviously not within Kevin’s range of emotions.
“I’m afraid so. Your mother’s very, very sick, but the doctors haven’t given up hope that she’ll pull through. She’s in the Infirmary. The younger children are all all right, but we need to contact your sister June.”
A glint came into Kevin’s sharp, rodent eyes.
“I know where she might be. I’ll find her myself.”
The policeman had nodded and come away.
“Whether he did manage to find her or not we don’t know,” Mike Oddie said to Margaret Copperwhite in the canteen as he finished his account later that day. “What he obviously did do at some time was go over and spray this message on the house in Wynton Lane.”
“Some young people automatically resort to the spray gun at times of emotional crisis,” said Margaret.
“I have yet to be convinced that that young man is capable of emotion,” said Oddie. “Except hate, and anger, and vindictiveness, of course. Remember I’ve had dealings with him in the past.”
“ ‘Killed,’ ” said Margaret meditatively. “Why did Kevin Phelan jump to that conclusion? It’s not the obvious conclusion when there’s been a straightforward domestic fire.”
“It’s not, is it? Though, to be fair, the neighbors all seem to have jumped to that conclusion too. Probably that tells you something about the Phelans. Maybe Kevin is just self-aware enough to get that point.”
“Is there any evidence?”
“In confidence, yes. I’ve just had a preliminary word with the Chief Fire Officer. They don’t wrap things up in quite the jargon medics do. The fire seems to have started in the hallway, just by the front door. He thinks petrol was involved—you know, petrol-soaked rags, something like that.”
A City of Strangers Page 8
