A City of Strangers

by Robert Barnard

  “Geddaway.”

  “He didn’t?”

  “ ’Course ’e bloody didn’t!”

  “But what about the pools win?”

  “A hundred and eighty-nine pounds, forty-five pence. We bought a secondhand telly because ours was on the blink, and we got a crate of Tetleys beer and a bottle of whiskey, and we ate well for a week. And that was about it.”

  “So the suggestion that you were about to buy the house in Wynton Lane was—”

  The crack slowly crossed the face again.

  “Always did think himself a fucking wag, did our Jack. Now look where it’s got him.”

  “What do you mean? You think one of the people in the Lane started the fire?”

  “Well, what do you think? Bloody obvious, i’n’t it?”

  “Has your son Kevin been to see you in hospital?”

  “Bin in and out.”

  “Did he suggest that?”

  “He didn’t bloody need to. It’s obvious.”

  “Kevin himself burned his hands some time ago, didn’t he?”

  “I dunno. . . . You want to lay off our Kevin. Always picking on him, you lot.”

  It was said without an ounce of conviction or passion—one of the standard Phelan responses to police questioning.

  “So you don’t know how he burned his hands?”

  “No. He’s bin moved out months and months now. I’m not responsible for him anymore, thank Christ.”

  “And the idea that your husband had had a big pools win was nothing but a joke?”

  “ ’Course it was a bleeding joke. Just the sort of thing that tickled our Jack. When we got the win, first thing he did was he got the Estate talking, just by buying a round of drinks. Thought everyone would come buzzing round him like flies, licking his arse in the hope of a handout. But they never did. People were wary of our Jack. He could be right nasty at times. So then he got the idea of going to view the house in the Lane. There’s a wet week from the Social Security lives in one of them houses—he come to accuse us once of mistreating our kids. Bloody cheek. He was seen off, I can tell you. And there’s that bleeding headmistress or whatever she was, that used to come around about our June. Old Lady Nevershit—that’s what Jack used to call her. They’re a snotty-nosed lot, them that live there.”

  “But your husband went further, didn’t he? He went to see a solicitor.”

  “He wasn’t going to go to a solicitor. He was on his way to a bloody dogfight, down Barnsley way. But he saw that prick from the Social Security sitting at the back of the bus—saw him in the mirror at the top of the stairs. When he got off he saw him following him, so he went into the solicitor’s. Don’t reckon the solicitor took Jack all that seriously. Any road, we never heard from him. Just gave Jack a big laugh, to stir it up a bit more . . . Doesn’t look as if he had the last laugh, though, does it?”

  Oddie didn’t see any way of shaking her conviction that the people of Wynton Lane were responsible for the fire. Her son had put the idea into her head, and now nothing would get it out. Maybe she even had some dim idea of screwing compensation out of them. But at least the talk had cleared up one matter.

  He stood up.

  “The doctor said I wasn’t to have more than a quarter of an hour with you. Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”

  “No.”

  “There’s nobody else your husband got on the wrong side of?”

  “No. . . . Well, there’s one or two. Like I said, folk was wary of him. But them round the Estate’s fucking hopeless. There’s no way one of them would have done it.”

  By the door Oddie paused.

  “Well, that’s about it, for the moment.”

  But Mary Phelan was leaning forward in her bed, looking at him with an intensity and an interest which the substance of the interview had not aroused.

  “Could you do something for me?”

  “Well, yes, of course, if—”

  “The doctors here are right bastards. Could you fetch me in a couple o’ cans of light ale?”

  Chapter

  THIRTEEN

  Michael Phelan went back to school on the Monday after the fire. He was quiet, thoughtful—even a little dreamy. He was still staying, Carol knew, with the Crays, though he had plucked up courage and been round to talk to Mrs. Makepeace. What his emotions had been when he had seen the blackened shell of his former home could only be guessed at. Carol said, “It’s good to have you back, Michael. We were all very sorry.” He nodded and looked down at his desk. She gave him no special notice for the rest of the morning, though, in fact, she kept an eye on him.

  Bob McEvoy was a great help. He had the bright idea of scheduling an impromptu rehearsal for Speech Day in fourth period—the last before dinner break. Carol had the period free, and when she had marked a few books and listened to Dot Fenton ponificating about “children” in the common room, she went along and stood at the back of the gym to watch. Michael was now performing, and in the grip of the words. He had lost that trace of dreaminess and he was Growltiger the cat, realizing him bodily as well as verbally.

  Growltiger was a Bravo Cat, who travelled on a barge:

  In fact he was the roughest cat that ever roamed at large.

  From Gravesend up to Oxford he pursued his evil aims,

  Rejoicing in his title of “The Terror of the Thames.”

  This was not a reading but a performance. The thought occurred to Carol as the reading progressed (“Woe to the pampered Pekinese, that faced Growltiger’s rage. . . . But most to Cats of foreign race his hatred had been vowed . . . ”) that some hints for his interpretation could have been gained from a nonfeline creature very close to home. The thought caused her a twinge of embarrassment, but, of course, the poem for recitation had been chosen before his father’s death, and it would cause too many problems to change it now. The relish of Michael’s performance showed that the idea had not occurred to him. He stayed in character for as long as he went through details with Bob McEvoy—wrong stresses on words, dubious pronunciations, suggested movements at various points. Then—another small miracle—as soon as Bob had finished with him he reverted from actor to boy: Michael Phelan, unusually clean and spruce, but otherwise very much as he had always been.

  Carol stayed until the end. This was not just for Michael’s sake. There was niggling at the back of her mind the question of whether she just liked Bob McEvoy as a person, or whether—but it is unnecessary to be specific: It was the age-old question, as Carol was well aware, and the success or otherwise of a future marriage would depend on her finding the right answer to it. At the end of the rehearsal Michael came up to her and smiled, very much his old self.

  “Was I all right?”

  “You were good, very good, Michael.”

  Together they walked companionably back through the playground to the main school building.

  “You’re still with Mr. and Mrs. Cray, aren’t you, Michael?”

  “Yes. They’ve been smashing. They say I can stay until Mum comes out of hospital and they give us a new house.”

  “Have the housing people said when that will be?”

  “They’ve told Malcolm they’ll find us something. That Mrs. Bridewell has been on to them.”

  “Your mother will need a lot of support, now that your Dad’s not there.”

  As she said it, Carol realized that this was a cliché that in this case hardly applied.

  “I suppose so . . . though in a way it may be better.”

  “Maybe it will. Anyway, the main thing is that you’re getting over it all right.”

  “I suppose I am. But it was a rotten thing to do. He wasn’t much, but he was my Dad.”

  It was, Carol recognized, a moral judgment, a finely tuned epitaph. Michael was growing up.

  When the call from the police came through, Lynn Packard readily agreed to drop everything at Foodwise and talk to them. He had been intending to lunch at the Yuppiehole, a wine bar whose appeal to its intended clien
tele was as blatant as its overcharging. Lynn had gathered around him a little braying circle there who talked only of money, and then only in “thou’s” and “hundred-thou’s.” But he told Superintendent Oddie that he’d be only too happy to have a chat, though he didn’t see how he could help. No—he would come round to Police HQ. Visible policemen were always bad for business, even when a shoplifter had been caught, and they were always shuffled quickly away into the back of the store, like some unpresentable tradesmen. Also, Lynn didn’t want anyone at work to know he had been interviewed. Subordinates talked—it was the way they compensated for being subordinate.

  He wished he could be more relaxed. He had, after all, pretty much expected to be interviewed by the police ever since he had seen that flaming accusation, which, in spite of Daphne Bridewell’s decorator, still shrieked at passersby and brought the blood to his cheeks every time he drove down Wynton Lane. The fact was he had been unable to attain equanimity about the prospect. Only that morning Jennifer had said to him: “You’re scared, aren’t you?” Bloody Jennifer! She had been very odd lately. Saying a thing like that was hardly the way to bolster his confidence. Lynn believed firmly in the supportive role of wives. In fact, he needed it. Like most people who spoke too loudly, he was very unsure of himself.

  So when Mike Oddie had shown him into the interview room, and while his sergeant was fetching him a cup of quite deplorable coffee, Lynn stretched out his feet under the table and smiled with apparent ease at the superintendent on the other side of it, but there was in his stomach an aching emptiness of unease which found its expression in an audible rumble.

  “Sorry!” he said. “My usual eating time.”

  Mike Oddie nodded and smiled.

  “Sorry about that. Only time we could fit you in. Well, let’s get down to it, shall we? You’re probably not surprised at our wanting to talk to you. That accusation sprayed on the wall—”

  “That damned vandal!”

  Too loud. Lynn knew it as soon as the words were out. Oddie just smiled.

  “Ah, yes. Kevin Phelan. You’ll be pleased to know that we have him in custody—”

  “You have? That’s great! I always said this was a gutter crime. Any help I can give—”

  “—on another matter. We have arrested him on another matter.”

  The letdown was immense. It showed in Lynn’s face, and Lynn knew that it had shown in his face. Oddie went on:

  “We’ve found nothing yet to connect him with the fire at his old home. But since he’s in custody you can get on with wiping off that inscription without being afraid that he’ll come back and do it again the next night.”

  “Oh, yes. Thanks. Actually we’ve had someone trying to do something, but—”

  “They tend to stay visible. Yes, we know. Now, I’ve talked to Dr. Pickering, so I know what the accusation refers to. Perhaps in your own words you’d like to give me an account of the efforts the Wynton Lane residents made to stop Phelan moving in.”

  “Ah, yes.” Lynn stretched out still farther and, if anything, still more easily. Once again his stomach betrayed him. “Well, this all started with Algy Cartwright. No—I lie: It started with Mrs. Eastlake, an invalid lady in Willow Bank, the house next door to The Hollies. Lived in the Lane practically since the war. Well, she saw Phelan come to The Hollies, with a key, obviously with permission to view, and, though she hadn’t talked to anyone but her son for years, so far as I know, she got on the phone to Algy Cartwright. Both elderly people, you see, and understandably nervous. The rest of us felt we really had to do something to help.”

  “I see,” said Mike Oddie, letting no trace of skepticism seep into his voice. He did not doubt the facts of this account so much as the emphasis.

  “So we got together a little meeting. To see what could be done. Of course, we had to make it clear to the old people that there wasn’t a lot we could do—persuasion, warning, and so on—but at least we could try to set their minds a little at rest. So we all of us—the younger ones, mostly—did what we could: spoke to Pickering, the estate agents, the building societies, and so on. Alerting them about the Phelans. That’s about it, really. Not much we could do, when it came down to it.”

  “I see. Where was this meeting held, sir?”

  “Er, at my home.”

  “And were there any further meetings?”

  “Well, yes, we did get together after we’d talked to all these people.”

  “At your house?”

  “Er, yes.” The memory rang in his ears of his own voice, at the meeting, cleaving through the general hopelessness and depression with: “The best thing you can do with people like that is put them down, like animals.” He put the memory from him. He wasn’t the only one who’d gone too far. “We got together, pooled our experiences, and so on. We all felt that Pickering had been—well—less than helpful, to put it frankly. We were disappointed in him, as an old neighbor. But we had put people on their guard, made clear what very unreliable customers these Phelans were, so we felt we’d done all we could to calm fears.”

  “Of the older residents?”

  “Exactly”

  “You always regarded the threat as a real one?”

  “Of course. He’d had a big win on the pools. He even went to a solicitor.”

  “That’s as may be. Solicitors don’t see bank balances. You wouldn’t get far toward putting a deposit on The Hollies with a pools win of £180-odd.”

  Once again Lynn’s lack of self-control betrayed him: His face said as clearly as anything that the fuss had been for nothing, that he could have saved his efforts.

  “Not that it makes any difference, one way or the other,” Lynn spluttered at last. “We all found out there was nothing we could do about Phelan.”

  Mike Oddie decided to state the obvious.

  “Someone found something to do about him,” he said.

  When Jennifer Packard had got the boys off to school and her husband off to work—which were, in her mind, essentially the same operation—she pottered around the house for a bit, but soon landed up at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a rare cigarette. She needed to think.

  When she had accused Lynn that morning of being scared, she hadn’t meant anything more than that he’d got himself so deep into the drive to keep Phelan out of The Hollies that he was now afraid of being accused of setting fire to his house. She was quite sure—almost quite sure—that he had not done so, if only because it did not seem to her that he had the nerve. But watching Lynn in full cry this last couple of weeks or so had certainly hastened the process of seeing him in a new light.

  Funny: She remembered a time early in the marriage when she had been desperately afraid he was going to ditch her. She had got the idea that he had mentally stamped a “sell by” date on her bare shoulder—that after three or four years he would find he needed a fresher, younger partner. That was when she had thought of Lynn as a really high flyer. He hadn’t, in fact, flown as high as all that, certainly not as high as he had intended. And, beyond a few casual infidelities she could guess at more easily than she could care about, he had never shown any signs of wanting to split up. She had irritated him a lot recently, but he had taken it out on her in his usual way—braying recriminations, assertions of what he “had a right to expect” (a great deal too much, in Jennifer’s opinion). A marriage of the sort that they had established over the years obviously suited him.

  No, if the question of splitting up ever did come up now, it would be raised by her. She could draw up in her mind a kind of balance sheet. On the one side, there was the fact that Lynn no longer excited her or even pleased her in bed (common enough, no doubt); that she was by now unsure whether she even liked him, let alone loved him; that she was fed up with being an appendage, an automatic support, a nonpersonality hitched to his career. On the other side, there were the boys, who undoubtedly would be unhappy and disorientated if their parents split up; there was the question of where she would go and what she would do (
it was so long, so frighteningly long, since she had done anything); there was a residual feeling for Lynn that she rather suspected was pity; and there was a terrible doubt in her mind, a feeling that she would be no more happy and fulfilled outside marriage than she was inside it.

  She wished she had someone to talk to. Odd all her women friends had somehow fallen away—married, moved, got other interests. Perhaps all domesticated women found this. Or perhaps it was largely her fault: She had been so enthusiastically domestic in those early years, particularly after the births of Gareth and Tristram. She wished she knew better the woman Steven Copperwhite was living with. What was her name? Evie Soames. She looked like the sort one could talk this sort of thing over with.

  Margaret Copperwhite realized at once that she had made a big mistake. It had seemed sensible, on consideration, and less painful for her, to invite Steven out for a meal, rather than back to the house they had once shared. So easy for him to get the idea that he could treat it as some kind of second home. On no account would she go along with that. She had been twice to the Pot au Feu at lunchtime (once with Mike Oddie, as a matter of fact) and had found it a sensible, streamlined restaurant, catering to busy professional people. She had not realized that in the evening it went in for low, romantic lighting and faint, yearning string music that was probably recycled Mantovani.

  “Now this is nice,” Steven said, showing she’d got it exactly wrong. Quite apart from the fact that it was a damned sight more expensive than a vegetarian nosh-up at the Art Gallery.

  “Mmmm,” she murmured noncommittally.

  “This is a luxury,” said Steven when they had ordered. “It’s ages since I had dinner out, or—”

  He stopped himself in time. He had been going to say “or had dinner cooked for me, come to that.” But he didn’t want Margaret to think he was whingeing. She doubtless would think he had made his bed, and must lie on it. Might even, indeed, crow.

  In spite of his constant attempts at honesty with himself, Steven had never quite admitted what his motives were in resuming relations with his ex-wife. He was hedging his bets. At the back of his mind, he knew that Evie, so much younger than he, might well before long walk out on him. Then he would be alone, and slightly ridiculous. In fact, sometimes he thought he might make the first move himself—something in the nature (though he would never have used so militaristic a metaphor) of a preemptive strike. But these thoughts remained at the back of his mind. Steven’s honesty with himself was really part of his desire to think well of himself, and if realities were too brutal they were shunned.