The Unbaited Trap

by Catherine Cookson

  She stopped at the doorway leading into the hall and looked at him then came hurrying forward and pushed the boy backwards before saying, ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you. Now get away; I want no more trouble with you.’

  He felt the colour draining from his face. ‘My father sent me,’ he said quietly.

  He watched her concern. He watched her wet her lips, look round to where her son was, then grudgingly, ‘Come in.’

  In the room she walked swiftly towards the fireplace. Then turning to him, she said, ‘Well?’

  He was standing some distance from her, to the side of the couch, his hat in his hand. He felt utterly nonplussed. He looked from her towards the boy who was standing as if he were looking out of the window, then said quietly, ‘My father’s worried about…’ He inclined his head towards Pat. ‘He tells me he was taking the case. He wasn’t able to explain it all to me; he wondered if you might give me the details. Something about a greengrocer, a Mr Bolton.’

  He stood looking at her, watching her rapid breathing. Her body was swaying slightly from side to side and she was moving her hands in long stroking movements up and down her hips, the whole attitude showing her extreme agitation, and it came over in her voice as she said, ‘I don’t see what you can do. Mr Ransome’s dealing with it.’

  ‘Mam. Mam.’ The boy turned and came towards her, his voice as agitated as hers. ‘He said he had written to him. That’s all, that’s all, Mam. It’s no good just writin’ to Mr Bolton, he’ll just write back. I told you, I told you. You’ve got to go to him. I told you.’

  ‘I’ve been to him, haven’t I? I’ve been to him twice. You know what he said, if I went to him again, I…’ She closed her eyes for a moment, shook her head, then pushed at the boy, saying, ‘Go on, get yourself out and leave this to me.’

  The boy looked from her to Laurie. Then, his head drooping, he walked listlessly across the room and out into the hall. But the moment she heard the flat door opening she was running across the room, calling, ‘Don’t go away, just round the block mind. Be back here in ten minutes. Do you hear?’

  There was no answer to this, and then she returned to the room, and as she walked past him, said, ‘I’ve left the door open; there’s nothing you can do.’

  ‘Is it any use saying I’m sorry?’

  ‘No, it’s no use saying you’re sorry.’ She rounded on him, her voice bitter. ‘You come into my house and insult me, you show me up in front of all my neighbours, but worst of all, you cause your father to have a heart attack, and then you think you can get over it by saying you’re sorry. You don’t know the meaning of being sorry for anything, not your crowd.’ She began to move about the room, throwing her words at him. ‘You’re so cocksure about everything, you’re of the chosen few. You’ve been set up in the world, you’ve got a position in the town, and because of it you think you can kick people around. Have a good address, belong to the right societies and clubs, and you’re infallible. You can carry on how you like but nobody can point a finger at you; they can’t come into your house and insult you…Oh no, because you are the right people.’

  He followed her movements as she upbraided him, and he was reminded of his mother the other night, only he didn’t think this girl would lose her head. He said quietly, ‘You’re wrong; you’ve got it all wrong.’

  ‘Am I?’ She was confronting him squarely now, standing still. ‘Look, I’ve been in business for years and I’ve met your type. You said you knew my type, well, I know yours. I meet them all the time, and they’re ten-a-penny little upstarts. They’re in their jobs because of their father’s money, or their mother’s money, or because they’ve got friends at court. If they had to rely on their own brains they’d be on the dole, half of them…three-quarters of them, and I’m telling you.’

  ‘Did you think that way about my father?’ There was an edge to his voice now.

  ‘No, I didn’t. Your father’s different, a different breed altogether to you and your kind. Your father’s a solicitor, I know, but in his mind he’s still a simple man, living in the farmhouse where he was born. Besides, your father’s a lost, lonely man, and he’s out of his element; there’s nothing brash about him. He needs ordinary things, ordinary people. He’s lonely…lonely.’ There were tears in her voice now, and in the back of her eyes, and she swallowed twice before she went on. ‘I’ve never met anybody in my life so alone, so lonely, as that man. And there’s a cause for it; there must be a cause for it. I didn’t know what it was, but after having seen you and your mother, it isn’t far to seek.’

  ‘Thank you. Do you feel better?’

  Her eyes widened, her mouth opened, and she gulped before she said, ‘There you go, expert at the cool, smart answer. It puts everything and everybody in their place, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘forget personalities for a moment. You say you liked my father, then ease his mind by letting me do something about this business.’

  ‘You can do nothing more than is being done at the moment, and as much as I would like to please your father I don’t want any help from you, is that final?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said; ‘I think it is.’ He was staring at her and she at him. Then, only because he couldn’t stand the pained look in the depth of her eyes, he looked away from her and around the room. It was a wrong move, as he found out when she cried at him. ‘Go on and ask me how I came by all this.’

  He screwed up his face in question but made no comment, and she went on. ‘But there’s no need, is there? You know how I’ve got all this stuff. It’s the men I have, dozens of them. At times they queue up on the stairs. That’s what you think, don’t you?’

  ‘Please don’t talk rot.’

  ‘Rot, you say? I’m talking rot? When you entered this house the other night you treated me as if I were a prostitute from Bog’s End. Rot! Now look.’ She put out her arm at full stretch, the hand vertical. ‘Don’t say any more. I don’t want to hear your excuses, I just want you to go. And I’ll thank you not to come back here. Is that clear?’

  Slowly he turned his head to the side and looked towards the floor, and as slowly he turned round and walked out. As she had said, the door was open.

  As he neared the first landing he heard a door click closed and it wasn’t the one he had just come through. He realised that the private eyes were on duty, but the knowledge aroused no ire, for he felt numb. It was a humiliating numbness. He’d been given the treatment he had wanted to hand out to Wilcox. Metaphorically he was lying on the floor in a heap, and the indignity of it was weighing heavily on him. Wilcox had dressed him down, but that was different, very different.

  He was getting into the car when he heard someone say ‘Psst! Psst!’ and looking to the corner round which led to the back of the buildings, he saw the boy beckoning. He paused a full minute before going to him, and when he did the boy put out his hand and pulled him into the shadow of the wall, and looking up at him he said, ‘She’s not going to let you, is she?’

  ‘You mean help?’

  He nodded.

  ‘No; she doesn’t want me to help.’

  The boy now rubbed the nails of his thumb and first finger up and down the sides of his front tooth; then sticking his four fingers in his mouth he bit on them hard before looking up at Laurie again and saying, ‘I didn’t do it, I swear. I swear I know nothin’ about it.’

  ‘That’s the truth?’

  ‘Yes, it’s the truth. Oh yes, it’s the truth.’

  ‘Come here.’ Laurie drew him further up the alleyway that led to the garages, and when they stopped he stared hard into the boy’s face before saying. ‘Tell me exactly what happened on that Saturday morning.’

  ‘Well, it was like this.’ Pat sucked in his lips, swallowed and went on, ‘I go to Mr Bolton’s every Saturday to help make up the orders, taties and things. I get there on nine and I leave about one, and then I go to a café near the market wher
e I meet me mam and help her carry the groceries back. I’ve been doin’ it for a long time like that. Mr Bolton sometimes gives me two bob and sometimes three, depending, but I keep out of the way in the back ’cos I’m not supposed to work ’cos I’m just on ten, see, and he can’t set them on until they’re fourteen, an’ he tells me to keep out in the back an’ if anybody comes, strange like, to make on an’ just play about like I was one of the lads come scrounging for bruised fruit in the boxes outside. It’s near the dump you know, the car dump. You know where it is?’

  ‘Yes.’ Laurie nodded.

  ‘Well, on Saturday mornin’ I finished the orders an’ I said to Mr Bolton are there any more and he said no, and I said it’s five to one and he gave me three bob, and as I went down the street I remember the Town Hall clock striking one. Then I was passing the dump and Barrie Rice, a boy I know, and Tim Brooks, another boy, he’s older than me, nearly fourteen, came running down the side, dodging like, and Tim Brooks grabbed me by the shoulder and pulls me with him, and I say, “Leave over! leave over! What’s up with you?” and he pulls me beyond a car, and I thought they were having a game, or being chased by the other gang or somethin’. An’ I said again, “What’s up?” an’ I said I had to go because me mam was waitin’ but Tim Brooks, he kept hold me and he made Barrie do the same, though Barrie told him to let go. Then they pulled me to the dugout, that’s a place beyond Tollington’s factory, and they wouldn’t let me out, at least Tim Brooks wouldn’t. And he kept saying to me, “You’re in this, Pat Thorpe. You’re in this.” An’ I got frightened ’cos he had got me into trouble afore. You see he used to lead a gang I was in, an’ one day he swopped me a ball-pen and a key case for some medals I had, and then he swore he never did and that I had pinched them from Smith’s. When the gang went round on Saturday they had a sort of game to see who could pinch most from Woolworth’s, or Smith’s, or Craig’s, but I never did ’cos of me mam. But he said I did, and he said I never gave him no medals. Well, anyway, there I was in the dugout, and then the polis came, an’ I didn’t know what it was all about and I told them, but he said—Tim Brooks, that is—he said, I was just playing dumb and I was in it, and then the polis said was this my tie, and he said didn’t I tell you so. He said that to the polis. An’ it was my tie, but I hadn’t worn it, I’d lost it last week, with my pullover; it’d been swiped when I had stripped for gym. Then the polis asked Barrie Rice had I been with them an’ he said yes. He’s frightened of Tim Brooks, an’ he had to say yes…An’ that’s the truth, mister, that’s the truth. I would have never have done such a thing, I wouldn’t hurt me mam; ’cos she was upset the last time and frightened. I wouldn’t upset her again. Anyway I’d never do a thing like they said.’

  When he hung his head Laurie said, ‘Were you wearing a tie when the police spoke to you?’

  ‘No, just an open-necked shirt.’

  ‘Where does this Barrie Rice live?’

  ‘In Portland Street, number four.’

  ‘And your mother’s been to see Mr Bolton?’

  ‘Yes. She’s been twice, but he takes no notice of her because she’s a woman.’ He moved his head slowly as he repeated, ‘She’s a woman, you see.’ This statement conveyed his opinion of why his mother had failed to make any impression on Mr Bolton.

  As Laurie looked down on the boy he saw him standing in front of old Wilcox. He heard the magistrate’s voice leading off, his holier-than-thou attitude well to the fore. ‘You and your kind are a menace to our community and I intend to make an example of you. You are depraved and the only hope for you is strict supervision. I am assured that this would never have happened if you’d had the proper parental control …’ At this point he saw her face as Wilcox carried out his intention of making the town too hot for her.

  ‘Where’s his shop?’ he said.

  ‘Cox Road.’

  ‘Does he employ anybody else?’

  ‘No. Not now. He used to have bigger lads, but he got wrong once about something that happened in the shop. I don’t know what it was, but after he didn’t have any help for a long time.’

  ‘Well now, listen,’ said Laurie. ‘You go upstairs and look after your mother. Don’t tell her you’ve seen me or told me anything, understand?’

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded.

  ‘And I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Thanks. Thanks, Mister.’ He went to move away. Then turning and looking up into Laurie’s face, he said, soberly, ‘Me mam isn’t bad, she isn’t. She isn’t a bad woman. She’s good. I’m in the house all the time. Me mam isn’t bad.’

  God, this was dreadful, terrible! Laurie’s gaze dropped towards the ground. Then raising his eyes again to the boy’s face, he said softly, ‘You go on thinking that way about your mother.’

  ‘But it’s the truth.’ The nervousness had disappeared from the lad’s voice, there was a touch of aggressiveness in it now. ‘Everybody likes me mam. She’s jolly, she’s happy, at least she was…and funny, fun to be with I mean. Except this last week, and this business, and since Mr Emmerson took bad. She likes Mr Emmerson. But she’s good. She could get married the morrow but she doesn’t want to. Ted, Mr Glazier, him that lives at the bottom, he’s getting a divorce and wants to marry her but she told him no, I heard her. He’s going to live down south, but she doesn’t want to marry anybody, ever. And nobody ever stays in our house at night…She’s good.’

  Ten years old and defending his mother. ‘Nobody ever stays in our house at night.’ He bent down until his face was on a level with Pat’s. ‘Don’t worry about it. I believe your mother’s good, I do. Go on now; go on, keep her company.’ He pushed him away gently, then said, ‘Wait. Where am I likely to find you if I want you?’

  ‘I go to Remington Road School.’

  ‘Very good. Pat.’ He reached out and touched the boy’s shoulder. ‘If I need you I’ll come there after school.’

  Pat nodded solemnly, then walked into the street, and when Laurie reached the pavement he saw him entering the flats.

  He got into his car, drove down to Cox Road, and there drew up opposite the greengrocer’s shop. It was closed, and he sat in the car looking across at it. It was a double-fronted shop and had been newly painted, as had the windows above it. These were nicely curtained and looked like a flat. To the right side of the shop window was a door painted a vivid red, the private door to the flat, he supposed. It could be that Mr Bolton lived above his shop.

  He got out of the car and crossed the road, and after a moment’s hesitation he rang the bell. The door opened slowly, but no-one confronted him until a voice from the top of the stairway shouted, ‘Yes, what is it?’

  He put his head back and looked up to see a woman with her hand on a pulley.

  ‘Does Mr Bolton live here?’

  ‘Yes, who wants him?’

  ‘I wonder if I could have a word with him?’

  ‘He’s busy bookin’.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t keep him a minute.’

  ‘Who is it?’ A man had now joined the woman, and he bent forward and looked down the stairs as he asked, ‘What you want?’

  ‘I…I just wanted to have a word with you about the boy, Pat Thorpe.’

  He watched the woman move back on the landing as she said under her breath, ‘I knew it was about that, I knew. You tell him where to go to.’

  ‘Look.’ The man bent his knees and heaved further forward, but made no attempt to come down the stairs. ‘I’m havin’ nothin’ more to say about that little nipper. What I’d to say I’ve said to the polis.’

  Laurie stepped into the passageway and looked up to the man. ‘You still mean to say you didn’t employ him on that particular Saturday morning?’

  ‘Not on that particular Saturday mornin’, or on any other mornin’. I’ve got me work cut out to keep the little bastards out of the back shop, thieves and scroungers the lot of them.’

  Laurie let a moment elapse before he said, ‘You remember the boy, Pat Thorpe, don’t you?’


  ‘Aye, I remember him all right because I was always tellin’ him where to go to. And look…I don’t know who you are, and I don’t bloody well care, so get goin’ an’ shut the door behind you.’

  Laurie kept Mr Bolton under narrow scrutiny for another few seconds, then he turned around and closed the door after him.

  As he drove away he thought: Types. My God! The types, and he was a liar. His short acquaintance with him had convinced him of that.

  Bolton. Bolton. The name kept repeating itself in his mind. Bolton. Bolton. He had an orderly mind for names, he rarely ever forgot a name. Bolton. Bolton. Was he on their books? Not on his. He didn’t do any work for anyone of that name. But he had seen the name Bolton on a file somewhere. Now where would he have seen that, except in the office? Bolton. Bolton. There came a little click, Bolton. Wilcox. That’s where he had seen Bolton’s name, in the old man’s files. He had a number of clients whom he attended to himself. He couldn’t remember how long it was since he had seen the name, definitely before the old man started locking things away. It could have been years ago, and Bolton could have transferred his business elsewhere, but there was a chance he hadn’t. There came another click in his mind which told him he was sure he hadn’t. He was in the Wilcoxes’ dining room, where every week-end, summer and winter, was displayed a great bowl of fruit. James was so fond of fruit, he could hear May Wilcox remarking, and he had thought more than once that they spent a lot on fruit, and this had seemed out of line with Aunt May’s cheese paring budget. The only time she went to town with regards to food was for the ‘dinners-at-eight’. Of course, he could be barking up the wrong tree. It could all be surmise, wishful thinking. But anyway he’d look into it tomorrow. Long shots sometimes paid off.

  And now for this Barrie Rice’s abode.

  When he reached number four Portland Street, he hesitated before getting out of the car, because, standing at the open door, her arms folded on the top of her stomach, was a woman of more than ample proportions. Moreover, she was in loud conversation with another woman. She might or might not be the boy’s mother, but he felt chary of approaching her. Still, as he had stopped the car and was now under scrutiny from the two women he thought it best to make the approach.