A City of Strangers

by Robert Barnard

  “Oh God! Like that Pakistani family earlier this year.”

  “I’m afraid so. Otherwise I’d probably have assumed that the man did it himself, knowing he was a soak, if not an outright drunk, and generally slovenly and hopeless. As is the wife, by all accounts. But she was asleep, and I can’t see that either can be involved, not if it started by the front door. I’m talking to Phelan’s doctor in ten minutes, but I think we’re going to be treating this as murder. . . . Your ex-husband, Margaret—what’s his name?”

  “Copperwhite. I kept the name. I’d got used to it over the twenty-four years, and I didn’t see why he should rob me of that as well. Steven Copperwhite he’s called. He’s in the English Department at the University.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  So Margaret told him. It was on the whole an accurate, unbilious account.

  “I suppose you could say he is an idealist, in his way,” she ended. “Or has been in the past. But even in the past Steven always seemed able to make his ideals square with his own inclinations.” She grinned. “Bitch! I hear you cry.”

  “Not at all. What about this bid to keep the Phelans out of his quiet little middle-class patch? That doesn’t seem quite to square with the high-mindedness.”

  “I’m sure it could be made to.”

  “And this was a communal effort? All the Wynton Lane people ganging up?”

  “So far as I could gather. I don’t know anything about it beyond what he told me. I rather suspect it was doomed to failure, because what, after all, could they do?”

  “Did he say how on earth the Phelans could be thinking of buying a house of that kind?”

  “I think he said a win on the pools.”

  Mike Oddie made a note in his little pad.

  “Have to look into that.” He looked at his watch. “I must go. If you meet up with that ex-husband of yours again—”

  “I do owe him an invitation, though that was one debt I was thinking of welshing on. What am I to do?”

  “Just pump him on his neighbors, who they are, how they found out, what they were thinking of doing—that kind of thing. Now I’ll get off and talk to Jack Phelan’s doctor.”

  He found his man waiting for him outside his office. Eric Pickering was a smallish, neat man, with a peremptory mustache and pale-blue eyes. His manner could be brusque, and Oddie thought of him as slightly Scottish—brisk, buttoned-up—though one had only to hear his accent to know he was the local article. He was not a doctor the police employed in a regular way, but he had always been sympathetic to police problems, and had been involved in enough cases to know his way around the Police Headquarters.

  “I hope I’m not wasting your time,” Oddie said, opening up his door.

  “Not to worry. I was on my way to the Infirmary, to see the mother. Not much more than a courtesy call, in fact, because they say she’s in no condition to talk.”

  “Yes, that’s what they told us.” Oddie motioned him to a chair. “What can you tell us about the father?”

  “Jack?” Pickering raised his eyebrows. “Not much that you don’t know yourselves, I should have thought. The man had form, didn’t he?”

  “Oh, yes, of a minor kind. Any small fiddle that was going—not much more than that. I was wondering about his personal habits. Could he have done it inadvertently himself?”

  “Eminently probable, I’d say. It started at night, didn’t it?”

  “Yes. Some time approaching midnight, it seems.”

  “Well, if he’d been down the pub it’s quite likely he came home, settled down with a can and a fag in front of the telly, and set fire to himself or the sofa. But the Fire Chief would be able to tell you more than I can.”

  “Of course. But that was the sort of thing Jack Phelan would do, is it?”

  “Oh, yes. Hyper-inactive is how I’d describe him. In common parlance: a lazy layabout. Eating, drinking, and sleeping was what he lived for, with stirring up trouble a subsidiary occupation. It must be all of ten or twelve years since he had any sort of a job, so he can’t even be seen as a victim of the Thatcher recession.”

  “But I hear he’s laid his hands on some money recently,” put in Mike Oddie. “Have you heard anything about that?”

  “Yes, I was just about to tell you about it—though to be fair to my ex-neighbors I don’t think it’s relevant. I don’t know if you know, but I used to live in a house on Wynton Lane, just by the Belfield Grove Estate.”

  “Ah, yes—Wynton Lane.”

  “Well, we moved six months ago to Marley—better area, houses appreciate more in value, and I’m a bit more out of reach of my patients. I like to be able to go down the road to the pub without having symptoms confided to me with my pint. Anyway, the house has been on the market since then. Well, last week I started getting anguished calls from my old neighbors: Apparently Phelan and family had been to look over the house, and one of them had overheard him declare his intention of buying.”

  “What did they expect you to do about it?”

  Pickering shrugged.

  “Refuse to sell, so far as I can gather. Wonderful, isn’t it, what people can convince themselves other people ought to do? It was bloody unreasonable, and possibly not even legal. It didn’t seem to occur to them that, after all this time, I would be keen to get the house off my hands.”

  “Did you tell them to get lost?”

  “Not in so many words, but that was the gist. Said I’d alert the estate agent about Phelan, but I’d have done that anyway. The last I heard he’d been to see a solicitor.” He grinned wryly. “I suppose I can wave goodbye to that sale now.”

  “You’ve no idea how Phelan came by that sort of money?”

  “Not my business. So long as he had it and stumped up, that was all I worried about. Something dodgy, do you think?”

  “They say the pools. He’s got a history of dodgy deals, as I say, though most of them have been small. What kind of health was he in?”

  “Pretty much what you’d expect of someone who drank too much, smoked too much, ate too much of all the wrong things. Oh, and never took any exercise that he could avoid.”

  “But there were no major problems?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “And you’d know.”

  “If he came to me with them I’d know. People get the wrong idea about family doctors—we’re not some sort of medical clairvoyants. Mostly he’d come to me with minor things or imaginary things—that would be when the Social Security people were on to him to take some job or other. I don’t remember ever giving him any certificate, but he got out of the jobs all the same.”

  “I see,” said Oddie. He hesitated and then said, “I’m afraid a lot of this is beside the point. According to the preliminary report the fire didn’t start with Jack Phelan.”

  “Ah! Well, having listened to some talk today, I can’t say I’m altogether surprised.”

  “It started in the little hallway, and there seems to have been petrol involved—rags soaked in it shoved through the letter box, that sort of thing.”

  “Paki-bashing. I never thought of that. I say, Oddie, there’s a black girl lives next door. I know because she’s pregnant and one of my patients.”

  “That would be our Malcolm Cray’s wife. She’s not Pakistani.”

  “I didn’t say she was: To people round there that think like that, anyone who’s not white, red, and blotchy is ‘Paki.’ This is exactly like what happened to that family that were Pakistani earlier this year in the Armstead area.”

  Mike Oddie smiled sadly.

  “I know. It’s a pity, in a way, that we can’t pin this on Kevin Phelan—meant to burn the Crays out, but managed to get the wrong house.”

  “He’s a pernicious little thug, and pig-ignorant, but he’s sharp as a razor and not stupid,” agreed Pickering.

  “Still, if he set it up with a mate who was . . . ” said Oddie. “I can imagine Kevin having mates who do all the dirty work. There might be some sort of p
oetic justice in that. Whoever started the fire that killed that poor woman and her child was someone after Kevin Phelan’s heart.”

  “What does Macbeth say about ‘bloody instruction’?” asked Pickering. “Somebody seems to have learned from that fire. My betting is it’ll be one of the Phelans’ neighbors. It’s a working-class crime, to my way of thinking.”

  Mike Oddie privately thought that only the most slovenly thinking policeman could go along with the idea of there being such a thing as a working-class crime. But he merely said:

  “You said earlier that you didn’t think the Wynton Lane factor was relevant. Why?”

  Pickering screwed up his face.

  “Knowledge of the people. They’re all pretty peaceable, reasonable sorts, however much they may howl when they feel threatened. They’ve simply not got the nerve. Even Packard, who I suspect was behind the moves to keep Phelan out, is the sort of man who watches vigilante movies but would be useless behind a flamethrower.”

  “Maybe,” said Oddie noncommittally. “But maybe he could screw himself up to oily rags and a box of matches. Have you talked to any of the Phelans’ neighbors?”

  “Of course. I’ve had plenty from the Estate in my surgery this morning.”

  “What do they think?”

  “About the intended victim they’re divided. As to who did it, they don’t seem to have much idea. All that unites them is pleasure that he’s gone, though none of them comes right out and says it.”

  The question of who was the intended victim of the fire came up again later in the day when Oddie talked to Malcolm Cray. He had arrived on duty at the usual time, where others might have taken the day off. With the elasticity of youth Malcolm had bouts of exhilaration, of pride in his own achievements of the night before, but they alternated with moments of pensiveness and puzzlement.

  “I still feel smoky, do you know that?” he said as he sat down in Oddie’s office. “I’ve had one bath and two showers and the feel of it is still on me. The sort of smoke it was was indescribable. Thick, clinging.”

  “Cheap furniture,” said Oddie, nodding. “They’re banning the worst sort of synthetic stuffing, but the old sofas and chairs will be around forever.”

  “I hear from the boys downstairs it was deliberate, sir?”

  “Pretty definitely. Does that surprise you?”

  “The Phelans being what they are, only mildly.”

  “Have you considered the idea that it may have been aimed at you—or rather your wife?”

  “The idea came up. One of the neighbors in the street last night just assumed it—not unpleasantly, she was very indignant—but she did assume it. The boys who’ve been on duty there say the idea’s still around on the Estate, though nobody much takes it seriously. Was it one of them suggested it?”

  “No, the Phelans’ doctor brought it up earlier. He’s your wife’s doctor too, he says. It did just occur to me that Kevin Phelan might have got one of his mates to do it, and he got the wrong house. It may sound farfetched, but most of these infant-Fascists are thick as pig shit.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that, sir. We’ve attracted their attention now and then. But if the National Front boys are involved, and if it was aimed at us, I doubt whether Kevin Phelan’s one of them.”

  “Why?”

  “He’d have warned his own family, wouldn’t he? They were just next door, with a common wall. But anyway I’ve thought of that idea, and I don’t think it’s a starter.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’d been in that house for nearly a year. If anything had been going to be done, it would’ve been done earlier. We planned to move next week, and everyone knew that. Then, again, if you’ve seen the Phelans’ front garden you’ll know it’s unmistakably theirs. No, if this is a ‘Get out of our neighborhood’ crime, it was the Phelans it was aimed at.”

  “Fair enough. Have relationships between you two and the others on the Estate been OK?”

  “Perfectly all right, apart from the Phelans. There’s always the odd problem. It’s not always easy for me in the Force, you know, and sometimes I get a bit of stick from Selena’s relations—joshing, mostly. Luckily Selena gets on well with pretty much everybody. Some of the people on the Estate were suspicious of me, as a cop, but it never came to anything. By the way, Selena says that the woman who assumed it had been aimed at her, as soon as she heard it was the Phelans’ house that had gone up said, ‘No, it was aimed at the Phelans.’ ”

  “Ah—they’re the sort of family people wanted to do something like that to.”

  “That’s right. Or hoped somebody else would. And there’s another thing: the actual night that was chosen.”

  “Last night? What was so special about it?”

  “Normally there’d be six or seven in the house—depending on whether June was there or not. Last night there were only four sleeping there when it happened. I reckon the night of the theatre trip was chosen deliberately.”

  “You could be right—though it’s a bloody enough crime, heaven knows, with four possible casualties.”

  “Agreed. Michael, the boy who went on the trip to Manchester, is with us, by the way.”

  “What—staying next door?”

  “No—we couldn’t bear to sleep with all that smoke around. Half our furniture is in the new house anyway, and everything’s turned on because we’ve been doing odd jobs there any spare time we’ve had. So we just went along there, and we took Michael with us. He would naturally have stayed next door with Mrs. Makepeace, who’s a great mate of his. But she’s an old woman, and though she’s tough she was pretty much bowled over by the fire, so we took him with us to get him out of the area.”

  “Good of you. How is he?”

  “Thoughtful, as you’d expect. He’s a nice child—the pick of the bunch by far.”

  “Does he know anything, do you think?”

  “Not that he’s so far said. But, as I say, the whole thing is still sinking in. He doesn’t know yet it was deliberately started, though I think the possibility has occurred to him. If he says anything later, I’ll pass it on.”

  “Had you heard anything about Phelan trying to buy one of the houses in Wynton Lane?”

  Malcolm Cray burst out laughing.

  “No! That would be popular with the people there! Mind you, I had heard something about a pools win. Chat around the neighborhood. But I never imagined for one moment that it was that sort of sum. It would need to be around eighty or ninety thousand.”

  “We’re going to have to look into this pools win—if it existed. Will you be going back to the Belfield Estate, Malcolm?”

  “Of course. We’ve still got a lot of our things there.”

  “Take the weekend off. You’ve earned it. Spend as much time as you can on the Estate. Talk to the neighbors—ones who’ve lived there longer than you have. Find out what you can about the Phelans. I know you’re uniform branch and this is not quite regular, but they’re used to you, and they may talk more to you than they would to one of my detectives.”

  Malcolm Cray stood up, grinning.

  “You have the oddest idea of a weekend off, sir. Well, I’ll give it a try. They may talk more openly to me, and certainly they would to Selena. I’ll make sure she goes along with me, or, better still, I’ll get her to talk to some of them on her own.” He stood up, turned to go, then stopped and looked at Oddie. “This pools win, or this money, however he got it. It hadn’t occurred to me before that it was such a big sum. It’s a terrible thought, but that does seem to give one hell of a motive to Kevin Phelan, doesn’t it?”

  Chapter

  TEN

  It was easy to miss the message sprayed on the end house in Wynton Lane when leaving in the morning, impossible to ignore it on the way home. Whether they were walking down the slope from the Belfield Grove Estate, like Carol on her way back from school, or driving down the Lane from Battersby Road, like Lynn Packard and Steven Copperwhite on their way home from work, the red painted le
tters screamed their accusation at the Lane’s residents.

  Carol, very troubled, went straight through her little basement flat and out into the back garden. Daphne Bridewell was there, kneeling on the stone path that ran to the gate, prizing out with a long, vicious tool a weed that had poked up between the flags, and then sprinkling salt on the exposed earth underneath. Carol watched her, unnoticed, for a few moments.

  “Is there any point in weeding now?” she asked, curious. “Don’t weeds give up for winter?”

  Daphne looked swiftly round and smiled a greeting.

  “Weeds never give up,” she said determinedly.

  It occurred to Carol that she was always seeing Daphne with sprays against ground elder, with moss killers, anti-slug powders, anti-aphid sprays, and all sorts of vile-looking chemicals from the local nursery. She must be one of the least ecologically minded members the Democratic party had. Carol had always rejected the sub-Wordsworthianism of “One is nearer to God in a garden,” but it seemed particularly untrue in Daphne Bridewell’s.

  “Perpetual warfare,” she said.

  “To the death,” agreed Daphne, standing up. “I don’t know why I do it.”

  “Why do you?”

  “I suppose I sort of inherited the garden when my husband left.” She grimaced. “Somehow one can’t just let a garden go to waste, not in a nice, middle-class house in a nice, middle-class area. . . . You saw the slogan on the wall?”

  “Yes. Everyone must have. Kevin Phelan, I suppose?”

  “Bound to be. I’ve been on the phone to Paul Dean, the chap who does my decorating jobs. He’ll be round over the weekend, but he’s pessimistic. He can make it less . . . glaring, he says, but in the long run the best we can do is let time do its work.”

  “It means that the . . . accusation is very much out in the open.”

  “Yes. That won’t please young Mr. Packard. I shouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t call one of his meetings. If so, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be there this time.”