A City of Strangers

by Robert Barnard

  “Did your Dad ever tell you how much he’d won on the pools?”

  “No.” Her face assumed an expression of scorn. “I knew it must be chicken feed.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I knew my Dad. Right bloody joker he was. If he’d really won a tidy sum on the pools he wouldn’t have bought a house with it. I tell you, the first thing he’d ’a’ done was go out and buy a car. Loved cars, my Dad, and he hadn’t had one for ever so many years. Since he’d last had a job. It was the only thing he never managed to get out of Social Security.”

  “I see. So you’ve been here since then. How did you come to know Mr. Waley?”

  “Oh, I’ve known him years.” She said it airily, as if she were a middle-aged woman, not a teenaged small-time tart.

  “But how did you get to know him?”

  “Met him, di’n’t I?”

  “Where?”

  “Oh—here and there.”

  “He’s a customer of yours?”

  She shrugged. “You could say that if you liked.”

  “You were involved in the Carrock business three years ago, weren’t you? Did you meet him then?”

  “May have done.”

  “Likes little girls, does he?”

  She giggled. The subject of men and their sexual habits made her more communicative.

  “I take all this off before he comes home. Put on a skinny nightdress, suck me thumb.” She perched herself on the arm of her chair and acted it out for them. Neither of them felt greatly aroused. “Silly old bugger. Playing games like that at his age.”

  She talked of sex—like many prostitutes—as if it were a lot of silly nonsense with which she had nothing to do.

  “Has he got a wife?” Oddie asked.

  “Had to fly to New Zealand, didn’t she? Father died. I moved in soon as the old cat went. Some of her clothes are brilliant, though. Do you think this suits me?”

  She was about to get up to parade her slinky finery when the telephone rang. June sank back in her armchair and stayed put.

  “I never answer it. He told me not to. It might be her.”

  Oddie watched her as she waited for it to stop. She exuded something that was not sexuality, merely availability.

  “Are you still . . . working in the Carrock area?” he asked when the ringing stopped.

  “On and off. When it suits me. Got a girlfriend there with a flat. We use it alternate nights. She goes out with her boyfriend and I take them back there.”

  “Your customers?”

  “Yeah. That was before old Waley with the limp willy got me to come back here. Cost him a packet, it did. . . . Poor old bugger, he’s terrified of the neighbors finding out. Tells me I mustn’t have the telly on while he’s out, mustn’t have the radio on, mustn’t go out in the garden. F- - - him.”

  “You must have met a lot of interesting people in your work. Important people.”

  “May have done.” It was said with another shrug. It had been the wrong approach. June was not interested in important people, only in June.

  “Anybody spring to mind?”

  “We don’t talk about the men we go with.”

  “Professional ethics?”

  “Yer what?”

  “Never mind. . . . Are they all a bit kinky, like your Mr. Waley?”

  “Varies. Some of them like it straight, some of them like a bit of dressing up, and that. There’s plenty like the little girl stuff, but I’m getting a bit past that.” She giggled and pushed her breasts forward at them. “I’m a big girl. Old Waley wouldn’t be so keen if he could get anybody younger.”

  “Not so easy now, I suppose, since the police got wise to what was going on in Carrock.”

  “F- - -ing police! Always poking their bloody noses in! What’s it to you how I earn my bloody money?”

  It was the voice of the dreadful, dead Jack Phelan again, this time the voice of the right-of-Thatcher libertarian. Oddie didn’t pursue the argument.

  “We never got who was really behind the Carrock business, did we?”

  June was not to be caught like that. She smiled unappetizingly and said nothing.

  “How did you come to get in with that game?”

  “Friend at school. Said there was money to be made out of these old kinks. . . . Didn’t even know the word then. Innocent, warn’t I? . . . Anyway I was interested so she took me along, and—well, that was that.”

  “Who was the friend?”

  “Mind yer own business.”

  “And what sort of thing did you do?”

  “What the f- - - do you think I did? Had sex with men. Want me to spell it out? They put their—”

  “Didn’t your Mum or Dad try to stop you?”

  “They didn’t bloody know, did they? Wouldn’t have done much if they had. My Dad never stopped me doing anything in his life, ’cept if it was annoying him.”

  “And this went on until we stepped in?”

  “Bloody filth! What’s it to you? You should have seen my Dad with that policewoman who came round, though. She practically went purple.”

  “And you’ve been on the game again—how long?”

  “Since I left school. Since July. I must have been off my rocker, giving it to boys for free.”

  “So recently you’ve been sometimes at home and sometimes—well, at Carrock and around, on the game?”

  June nodded.

  “So anyone who did this to your home couldn’t have expected that you’d be inside?”

  “You’re bleeding daft, you know that? There’s no one’d want to get me. Think of all those bloody backs my Dad put up, and then you say they weren’t out to get him at all. No wonder it took you years to catch the f- - -ing Yorkshire Ripper!”

  She was stopped short by a sound. There was a key being put in the front door. Her eyes widened into something like a genuine emotion: fear. Oddie jumped up and darted out into the hall.

  “What’s going on? I rang from the station—”

  It was a smart, tough-looking woman, weary and travel-stained. As Oddie went toward her she caught a flash of blue from inside the living room.

  “Oh, I get it. He’s been up to his tricks again, has he? And in my bloody clothes—I’ll teach you, you—”

  She charged in, and for the next five minutes Oddie and Stokes were busy practicing the techniques learned long ago in their uniform days—the techniques for breaking up a “domestic.”

  Chapter

  SIXTEEN

  Since Algy Cartwright had become a widower he had fetched his newspaper each morning from the newsagent’s on the other side of the Belfield Grove Estate. This gave to his mornings an element of choice (though he always did choose to get his newspaper, for otherwise what would he read?) as well as a ten-minute walk. So on the morning when Mike Oddie finally caught up with June Phelan, Algy, after a breakfast of poached eggs—which had failed to solve the problem of why, when they looked right, they always turned out to be nearly solid—fetched his copy of the Daily Express and walked back past the blackened Phelan house and down the slope toward Wynton Lane.

  He spotted her at once, the Jehovah’s Witness. Well—Peculiar Person, Mormon, British Israelite, one of those. Algy hated all kinds of canvasser. Badgerers, he called them. He seldom swore, but people who phoned to ask whether he had thought of double-glazing were told to piss off, and canvassers from political parties were told in no uncertain terms that the ballot was supposed to be secret. Religious badgerers were in his opinion the worst of all, for there was no certain way of getting rid of them. Algy’s usual tactic of telling them he was a Roman Catholic had once unleashed a passionate diatribe against the Pope as Anti-Christ.

  This religious canvasser—her drab clothes and earnest, intense expression gave her away, as well as her handful of leaflets—was being dealt with firmly but politely by Daphne Bridewell. Algy skulked past them to Rosetree Cottage, locked the door, turned off the lights, and retreated upstairs. He went into the spare bedroom fr
om which he had watched the Phelans leaving after their visit to The Hollies and watched the progress of the proselytizer. He had done a lot of watching from that window since the Phelan visitation, a lot of watching and wondering. The murder had certainly given a zest to his drab existence. Mrs. Packard was very short with the woman, ten seconds maybe from door opening to door closing. Evie Soames—she came out of the door, so he could see her—took longer: Perhaps she was doing a bit of proselytizing of her own. Algy had her down in his mind as a good-cause lady. The two had a conversation lasting all of three minutes. Mrs. Eastlake (Algy couldn’t see her, but he had seen Adrian go off to work) did open the door, but, like Mrs. Packard, she was brief and decisive. Lovers of the Royal Family tended to be Anglican in sympathy if not in attendance. Nobody much, after all, was Anglican in attendance.

  Then the woman went next door to The Hollies. Dr. Pickering had left old curtains up in the windows of the house, to suggest occupancy and discourage squatters. The canvasser went up to the door, rang the bell, then rang again. Algy could see her skirt and legs from beneath the overhanging lintel above the door. After the second ring she disappeared, doubtless down the steps to the basement flat.

  Something stirred in Algy’s mind. Something Mrs. Eastlake had said when she had first rung him that day of the Phelan visit . . . What was it? . . . The woman had emerged now and was going down to the gate, Christian fortitude in disappointment visible in the set of her shoulders. Algy retreated from his window and went out onto the darkened landing. His doorbell rang, then after a few seconds rang again. A conscientious seeker of souls, this one. A few moments later, he heard the doorbell ring in the basement flat. She wouldn’t find him in, not his graceless tenant. Out reading gas meters. Cautiously he went back into the bedroom and watched the canvasser retrace her steps, then go up the slope toward the Belfield Grove Estate. Perhaps she would find more fertile ground there. Algy went downstairs, his mind still working, and put on the kettle for a cup of Nescafé.

  When the cup was half drunk he went into his hall and got on the phone to Rosamund Eastlake.

  “Mrs. Eastlake? Sorry to bother you. It’s Algy Cartwright.”

  “Oh, Algy. No bother.”

  The voice sounded quite normal now, just like any other housewife. As if she had never withdrawn from the world.

  “You’ll probably think this is a bit odd, but I’ve been thinking things over—in connection with this murder, like.”

  “I’m sure we all have. I would like to see the thing over and done with, for Adrian’s sake.”

  But you’ve enjoyed it, too, Algy thought.

  “Yes, well, I was remembering what you told me on the phone that first time when you rang—about what you saw when the little girl came on in advance of the family. Can you remember? Could you go over it again?”

  She could. When she finished Algy said:

  “Look, could we try an experiment? I’m going to go next door to The Hollies. I’ll stand in the porch and ring on the doorbell. Then I’ll go downstairs to the basement. Will you stand at your window, as you did that day, and tell me what you see?”

  Five minutes later, having rung on the doorbell of The Hollies and gone down the steps to the basement flat, which was in darkness, Algy was back in his house and on the phone again.

  “Now Mrs. Eastlake, Rosamund, what did you see? Did you see me all the time I was on the doorstep of The Hollies?”

  “Yes, I could see your legs the whole time. Then you disappeared when you went down to the flat.”

  “Just like the little girl.”

  “Yes. But why should that be so significant?”

  “Probably it’s not. But I was talking to Daphne Bridewell yesterday, and apparently according to that young teacher she’s got in her basement flat that Phelan girl is hugging some secret to herself at the moment. And I’ve been watching a lot recently—”

  “Oh, so have I, Algy!”

  “—and I’ve seen that Mrs. Hobbs from the basement flat . . . Well, I won’t go into what I saw. . . . I wonder, Mrs. Eastlake, if I were to get on to the police—I know it’s a lot to ask—would you be willing to talk to them?”

  There was no more than a second’s hesitation.

  “Of course, Algy. I’m all right now. I’m coming round.”

  When he had talked to Mike Oddie at the police headquarters, Algy Cartwright on an impulse got on to Lynn Packard at Foodwise in town and told him what he had done.

  “You bloody fool!” Lynn brayed. “That brings it back to us!”

  “Not really. If I’m right it would bring it back to Mrs. Hobbs.”

  “Well, maybe,” conceded Lynn. “I suppose that’s true.”

  But he didn’t have the grace to apologize for swearing at him.

  Mike Oddie had taken Algy’s phone call soon after his return from the house in Park View Heights. He had a minor cut and a spectacular scratch across his cheek, and he was far from happy. At first he had been unimpressed by Algy, who had been nervous and long in coming to the point. Just another busybody neighbor, he had said to himself. But he had struck gold as well as dross with busybody neighbors in the past, and he had listened on. By the end he was half-convinced that the man just might have a point. At the very least, it was something that was worth checking.

  Five minutes on the police computer left him cursing himself for his slackness. He collected Sergeant Stokes from the canteen and together they drove to the houses in Wynton Lane.

  When Rosamund Eastlake opened the door of Willow Bank he was immediately struck by her fragile charm. Her dress was too large and faintly musty, but she moved beautifully and her face had the remains of what could only be described as loveliness. Rosamund was the kind of older person for whom the word “policeman” suggests security, comfort in distress. She took to Mike Oddie at once, and instinctively made him feel protective.

  “Do come in, Inspector. Is it Inspector? Oh dear, what have you done to your face?”

  “Superintendent.” Oddie grinned. “The curse of the Phelans, I’m afraid.”

  “That dreadful family. It’s about time we heard the last of them. I have the kettle on for tea.”

  She led them through to a sitting room that was clean and airy, yet somehow had an underused air, as if any human habitation it had had in the last few years had sat lightly on it. While Mrs. Eastlake went back into the kitchen to busy herself with the tea, Oddie wandered around the room looking at the books in the glass-fronted case, and at the records by the rather elderly record player. Housman, Swinburne, Mahler, Richard Strauss. Romanticism in decay, swoonings toward death. . . . On the other hand, there was Wisden, and the ghosted autobiographies of cricketers.

  He bustled to help Mrs. Eastlake as she came in with the tray, and as they settled themselves down he gestured to Sergeant Stokes to take a seat slightly back. Mrs. Eastlake, he could see, was shy, or at any rate nervous: best if she could concentrate on him and forget there was a second man in the room.

  “I hope everything is all right,” she said, faintly distracted, and gazing at the tray. “It’s so long since I’ve had visitors.”

  “You’ve been ill?” Mike’s voice was warm and concerned. She responded to it at once.

  “Yes. And for so long. . . . Though I sometimes think, now I’m coming out of it, that I’ve been not so much ill as weak.”

  “You . . . had a nasty experience, people say.”

  Mike Oddie had done his homework on the people in Wynton Lane, though he had not found out anything concrete enough to justify interviewing all of them.

  “Yes. Best not to talk about that. But I’m beginning to wonder if I didn’t—”

  “Imagine it?”

  “Oh, no, no. I didn’t imagine it. But whether I didn’t . . . seize on it in some way.”

  “As an excuse to—what? To give up the world?”

  “Something like that. Give up the struggle.” She poured the tea and handed it round, then proffered the plate of biscuits. She
did not drink the tea herself, but seemed to warm her hands at the side of her cup. “My husband, Desmond, died very young, you see. He was never completely well after the war. We had been very happy—so happy—and quite suddenly, it seemed—because he had hidden things from me, his state of health, what the doctors said—quite suddenly he faded and died. And I was on my own with Adrian.”

  “Was it a financial struggle?”

  “Not really. We’ve always had just sufficient coming in—Desmond saw to that. But I’d never been the one to take the lead, take decisions. That had been for Desmond to do, and I’d been quite happy to have it like that. I suppose I’m naturally the type who likes to be led. Or perhaps it’s a sort of laziness. Then suddenly, on top of the grief, there was this great burden: responsibilities, decisions.”

  “How old was your boy?”

  “Seven. Just seven. And I had to be father as well as mother to him. Of course, I’d always loved Adrian, but somehow—I suppose this sounds dreadful—my life had always centered around Desmond. Then suddenly the center was gone and I had to devote myself entirely to Adrian: give the lead, take decisions, make him look up to me, have confidence in me, as he had had in Desmond. It seemed so wrong: What the boy needed was a father.”

  “I’m sure you did it very well.”

  “Perhaps. Well enough. He’s a dear boy, and very loving. But when he was grown up and had got this job with the Social Security office, which a friend of Desmond’s got for him, because poor Adrian didn’t have many qualifications—it’s been a grief to me that he never had his father’s brains, or his looks—when he was settled at last I remember feeling a great wave of relief, and tiredness. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “I think so. You’d done your job.”

  She smiled gratefully. She liked confident men who understood her and sympathized with her.

  “That’s it! That was it entirely. I felt: Now I can relax, now I can shrug off the burden.”

  “And then you had your . . . nasty experience.”

  “Yes.” She looked down again, into her tea cup, which was still nearly full. “Yes, it was when Adrian was about twenty-two.”