A City of Strangers

by Robert Barnard

  “I saw it,” she said. “I saw him realize that he’d been tricked. And I saw something else, I swear: I saw him gripped by the conviction that he was being watched.”

  “He’s going now,” said Evie. “Scuttling away I’d call it, wouldn’t you? . . . You know, I’m rather ashamed of enjoying this so much. I’m not a cruel person as a rule.”

  “I owe him one,” said Margaret grimly.

  “For his leaving you?”

  “The way he left me. I’d gone to Peterborough to fetch my mother for a stay with us. I arrived back to find my husband gone, leaving the male equivalent of a ‘Dear John’ letter on the kitchen table. My marriage blown apart under the relentless gaze of my mother.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I wasn’t accusing you of anything. . . . I wonder where he’ll go now.”

  “Well, the lock on the back door of Ashdene should be changed by now. There’s a nice man on the Estate who helps with the youth club—he was going down to change it as soon as the lights were off in the house. The front door bolts, so it doesn’t matter. Do you think he’ll go to one of the children?”

  “No. The nearest is Susan—she lives at York. But he doesn’t get on with her husband. Maybe a colleague—oh, no: Steven can’t stand ridicule.”

  “That’s true. Though he’s quite good at jokes, isn’t he? When I said I was going to Grantham tonight (actually it’s tomorrow) he said: ‘The Holy City!’ Quite funny, I thought.”

  “He’ll work it into one of his lectures soon. He’s got a big repertoire of anti-Thatcher jokes. Do you know he said he was coming back to me because he needed rest? I nearly said I wasn’t a Slumberdown mattress. Why do we always bite back remarks because we think we would regret them later, forgetting that we would thoroughly enjoy saying them at the time?”

  “Women’s conditioning. Still, this was better than a conversational put-down. . . . I suppose he’ll go and stay in a hotel and start looking around for something to rent.”

  “At least I shan’t get any calls from him in the future.”

  “Hardly. Do you think you’ll marry again?”

  “If somebody asks me.” When Evie’s expression showed the shock of the young and liberated, she explained, “Sorry. I meant if someone in particular were to ask me. What about you?”

  “Never. I’m so glad to be rid of him, you’ve no idea! And so painlessly, thanks to you. Now I’ve escaped, I’ll never try marriage again.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t really marriage you tried.”

  “It was near enough!” said Evie feelingly.

  When Oddie and Stokes drew up in the little car park beside the handsome and substantial stone house that served the Burtle Group Practice it was eight o’clock and near the end of surgery time. They had been delayed because the duty sergeant had made the elementary error of putting a black youth in the same custody cell as Kevin Phelan. The delay had served its purpose, though, for there was by now only one receptionist on duty, and she was in a hurry to get home.

  “I wonder if you could help me,” said Oddie, showing his ID to the pleasant middle-aged woman when she slipped open the glass panel of the reception desk. “I know Dr. Pickering isn’t on duty tonight, but it’s a little matter concerning one of his patients—just a small matter, no question of confidentiality or anything.”

  “That’s quite all right,” said the woman, bustling away to the filing cabinet. “I know Dr. Pickering is always happy to help the police. Who is it?”

  “Kevin Phelan.”

  “Oh, that family,” said the receptionist feelingly, bringing the file over and laying it on the desk top in front of the reception window. “What was it you wanted to know?”

  “I want to know the date Kevin Phelan came to surgery here with burns on his hands. . . . Oh, and I had a question about Mr. Adrian Eastlake too.”

  The receptionist bustled away to the files again, leaving Kevin Phelan’s file open. Oddie briskly cast his eyes down the upside-down entries. The woman soon came back with the second file, and opened it.

  “I’d like to know when Adrian Eastlake last consulted Dr. Pickering for himself.”

  “Oh, that was a long time ago. March 1985. It’s usually the mother, isn’t it? . . . And Kevin Phelan seems to have consulted about burns in February this year—the twentieth.”

  “That’s very kind of you—very helpful.”

  “Dr. Pickering’s not on duty tonight, but he is in his consulting room if you want to have a word with him. He’s catching up on some of the paper work.”

  Oddie took an instant decision.

  “That might be useful.”

  “Just go through the archway there. His door is the first on the left. Just knock—but there’s no one with him.”

  There was a firm “Come in” to their knock on the door. The doctor was writing when they went in, but he folded the paper and shook hands with both of them, ushering them to worn leather armchairs that had felt the backsides of thousands of Burtle’s sick and malingering.

  “Saw you arrive. Anything you wanted?”

  “Well, your receptionist has helped me a bit. But there’s something odd that I don’t quite understand. It’s about Kevin Phelan’s visit to you—the time when he came with burns on his hands.”

  “Oh, yes. Actually it was Evans who saw him, I think.”

  “That was what was puzzling me. I saw the file on him in the office, and the entries—”

  “Oh, you’ve just seen the office file.” Pickering bustled up and started toward a filing cabinet in the corner of the consulting room. “That’s just a duplicate. I keep the originals here, and I can show you—”

  Mike Oddie could never really blame himself for his slowness. He could see only the man’s back as he bent over the files, and it was only when he turned slightly back toward the light that he saw he had taken from within the files a pistol, and by then it was in his mouth. By the time he was out of his chair, the shot had rung out and Pickering was crumpling to the floor.

  Later, when his colleagues on duty had pronounced him dead, and as Oddie and Stokes waited for the technical staff from headquarters to arrive, the flurry of photographers and measurers, the first official undertakers of the violently dead, Oddie went over to the desk and found the note on Pickering’s blotter. It was barely legible, in doctor’s scrawl, probably begun when he saw the men arrive in the car park outside.

  Dear Oddie,

  I wish I could explain how there came a time when fantasy was not enough, when I had to have the reality, and how, once I’d had it I needed it again—needed it so much, and so often. Better men, stronger men, would have resisted, that I know, and I have nothing to plead but

  The note had broken off as the policemen had knocked at his door.

  Chapter

  NINETEEN

  Algy?”

  This is becoming a habit, Algy Cartwright thought. Who would have imagined a few weeks ago that he and Rosamund Eastlake would become linked on a near-permanent chat-line? Still, it broke the day up pleasantly enough.

  “Yes, Rosamund.”

  “Algy, I’m going to ask you to do something for me. Just refuse if it’s inconvenient. I wondered if you would be awfully kind and come up with me to the shops.”

  “Of course, Rosamund. Delighted that you feel you want to. Or would you prefer me to drive you to the shopping center?”

  “No, Algy, not the shopping center yet. I don’t think I could cope yet with the trollies and the crowds. So just the little local shops today. But perhaps in the future, if you were free . . . ?”

  “Of course. Always happy to oblige.”

  “I have these plans—little plans—of taking things stage by stage. Eventually I want to go into Sleate, go shopping at Schreiber’s again, though I know it will be sadly changed like everything else. Then before long I want to take in a matinee at the Palace, morning coffee somewhere pleasant . . . ”

  “Well, any time you want me to squire you, I�
��d be proud and happy to.”

  “Would you, Algy? I should be awfully grateful. It does take time to get confidence back, you know.”

  “I’m sure it does. Well, any time you want to do anything while Adrian is at work, you just give me a bell. . . . One thing, though, Rosamund: You don’t think Adrian will resent my muscling in, do you?”

  “Oh, Algy, the whole point is that I want to leave Adrian free to lead his own life at last—have friends, go to things, get out and about. All those years the poor boy has been waiting hand and foot on me—I want to make up to him for them. And really, Algy, I’ll feel much happier with somebody of my own generation. So if you were willing . . . ”

  “More than willing, delighted. When shall we have our little expedition to the shops?”

  “Well, the children have all gone to school, so there won’t be too many people around. Say in twenty minutes?”

  “I’ll be round then.”

  As he put down the phone Algy Cartwright felt a surge of pleasurable anticipation jog through his veins. It was something, at his age, to have the prospect of squiring a good-looking woman around. That Rosamund Eastlake was still eye-catching he knew from the glimpses he had had of her in her garden in recent weeks. He thought: She’s asked me rather than Daphne. Quite an honor, really. When it comes to the point women do feel a man is more of a protection. He foresaw many pleasant expeditions with Rosamund Eastlake under his wing. A moment’s doubt whether she would consider him—well, good enough for matinees at the Palace or morning coffee quickly evaporated: After all, who else was there? And he would be doing a good turn to that poor-spirited son of hers too. It was wonderful how life was reacquiring an interest, a savor.

  He went upstairs, opened his wardrobe, and on consideration changed into his good suit.

  “Mum’s coming out of hospital tomorrow,” said Michael.

  Mrs. Makepeace wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. “That will be nice” hardly corresponded to the facts of Phelan family life.

  “Where will you be living?”

  “They’ve put us in a house at the bottom of the hill—the Snowcroft Estate. It’ll be nearer the school.”

  Mrs. Makepeace’s heart sank a little. She enjoyed her visits from Michael, even if they often involved other young Phelans as well. There was a warmth and a joy about sitting with him, as now, in her kitchen, watching him eat, watching him stay normal, wholesome, and good-natured. It renewed her faith in life. She’d see less of him if he was down the hill, though the fact that he’d come to see her now, in his dinner hour, must mean he didn’t want to throw off the connection.

  “What about furniture?” Lottie asked. “There won’t be much left from next door after the fire.”

  “There’s a bit, but it smells horrible,” said Michael, wrinkling up his nose. “The Social Security say they can’t give us a grant for furniture, only a loan that we have to repay. But how’s my Mum going to do that? I think it’s daft. My Dad used to screw all sorts of special grants out of them and spend them down the Railway King, but my Mum can’t get things that we need. Why?”

  Because your Dad was a loud-mouthed bully and your Mum hasn’t got what it takes, Lottie Makepeace felt like saying. Instead she suggested, “Maybe Malcolm Cray could help.”

  Michael nodded.

  “He said he would try, but he says they’re very strict these days. Malcolm and Selena have got some furniture they don’t want in the new house. . . . ” Michael toyed with the slice of fruit cake, fresh from the oven, that Lottie had pressed on him. “I don’t think my Mum will be able to cope.”

  “Oh, she’ll cope if she has to,” said Lottie, with a brisk confidence she was far from feeling.

  “I don’t think she will. . . . If Kevin’s in jail that’ll help, and if June’s not around much. But there’s the little ones, and there’s Cilla. . . . Did you know Dr. Pickering shot himself?”

  “Yes, I knew.”

  “It was Cilla as caused all that. She’s odd.”

  “She didn’t cause it, you know, Michael. What caused it was going on long before Cilla took a hand. What about you? You’ll be able to help your mother a bit, won’t you?”

  “I’ll try. But I’m only twelve.”

  “Oh, nobody’s asking you to take the world’s problems on your shoulders, young man! You could bring the two little ones up to see me now and again, though, couldn’t you? Give your Mum a bit of a break.”

  “Yes, I’ll do that. I’ll still have you, won’t I?”

  “You will, Michael. Always welcome here.”

  “And Malcolm and Selena. They said I was to come back whenever I wanted, even when the baby’s born.”

  There seemed to be about him an urge for self-protection, a feeling that the Phelan family’s situation in the future might be still more hopeless than it had been in the past, a morass that might suck him down. She felt in him a consciousness that he was something different, that he might have something in himself that needed to be saved from corruption.

  “And there’s your teacher,” she said, “that nice Miss Southgate. She’s very interested in you.

  “Yes, she is. And Mr. McEvoy. They say I should try for the school play. Dad wouldn’t have let me, but I don’t suppose Mum will bother.”

  “You’ll be all right,” said Lottie Makepeace. “You’ll see: Somehow or other you’ll come through.”

  “Any chance of your taking an early lunch?”

  Margaret Copperwhite turned and saw Mike Oddie leaning over her shoulder. His bulky geniality always made her smile with a warmth that Steven had never evoked.

  “Oh, I think so. I’d have to ask the boss, but there’s nothing pressing on at the moment.”

  “I’ve asked Malcolm Cray and his wife to meet me and Stokes in the Bowler’s Arms at twelve-fifteen. They do one of the worst pub lunches in Sleate at the Bowler’s, so we should be able to get a bit of privacy. I’m filling them in on the Phelan case—it was Cray saved the rest of the family, after all, and, of course, they’re involved with Michael now. Thought you might like to come along, since your husband was involved too.”

  “Ex-husband.”

  “Seen him recently?”

  “Seen. Not to talk to.”

  “That’s all over, isn’t it?”

  “Super specially over.”

  “See you there at twelve-fifteen.”

  It has nothing to do with Steven, Margaret thought. He’s involving me in his work. Life for Margaret, as for Algy Cartwright, seemed to be gaining a new savor.

  Later, seated at a table at the Bowler’s well away from the other early lunchtime eaters, with a plate of regrettable lasagne complete with chips and peas in front of her, Margaret suddenly thought: Is this going to be my life in the future—talking and socializing with policemen and their wives? She looked around at Malcolm and Selena Cray, at Sergeant Stokes and Mike Oddie. Compared with the academics she had been used to socializing with in the past, the new group would certainly be pleasanter, and probably more intelligent. Better-looking too.

  I must not count my chickens, she told herself.

  “It was a shock to us,” Malcolm Cray was saying. “He was our doctor. I hadn’t had much to do with him myself, but Selena’d been going to him all through the pregnancy.”

  “How did you find him?” Oddie asked her.

  “Perfectly pleasant. Brisk, businesslike, maybe even a bit short, but that’s not surprising in a G.P. these days.” She thought for a moment. “Perhaps, looking back, there was something . . . somehow secretive about him. Some feeling that he was knotted up inside. But that’s probably hindsight coming into it.”

  “His colleagues at the group practice say they felt they never really knew him,” said Oddie. “But that’s said of so many people, especially when they’ve committed suicide or got involved with a mucky case like this. The colleagues have always put it down to something in his personal life: He has a wife with a history of mental problems.”

&n
bsp; “Did his sexual orientation spring from her mental problems, or did her mental problems spring from his sexual orientation?” asked Margaret.

  “Exactly,” said Oddie approvingly. “The unanswerable chicken and egg conundrum. We’ll never know. What is true is that she’s coping surprisingly well with his death. Maybe it’s a relief and a liberation.”

  “What put you on to him in the first place?” Malcolm asked.

  Oddie’s forehead crinkled.

  “The first place—that’s rather difficult to say. What made it clear we had to move him into the picture was the discovery that Mrs. Hobbs had a past and was connected with the Carrock business. Maybe if we’d looked at the houses in Wynton Lane a bit more thoroughly we’d have suspected something fishy earlier.”

  “Why?” asked Selena.

  “Who lets the flat in his house just as he puts the house on the market? Even though Mrs. Hobbs told anyone who asked that it was just short-term, it obviously reduced its salability. Even these days it’s notoriously difficult to unseat sitting tenants. If she’d had her daughter living with her, it could have been seen as a ‘kind gesture.’ But she hadn’t. She was a perfectly capable woman on her own. That flat in the basement would be a very attractive ‘plus’ for anyone looking for a house with a granny flat, for example. Having the flat occupied—and with rather limited access, I imagine—made the house as a whole much less attractive commercially.”

  “Do you think she blackmailed him into letting her have it?” Selena asked.

  “I doubt it. Mrs. Hobbs is very hot on the miserable ethics of her horrible trade. Blackmail involves a threat of exposure, and she kept her clients by an assurance of absolute secrecy. No—I think he let her have it because she promised him the sort of services he’d made use of in Carrock until two years ago. She was getting a ring together again.”

  “What did his note say?” remembered Sergeant Stokes. “Something about how once he’d had it he needed it again—like it was a drug, and the need kept increasing.”