"I simply don't see the point of portraying him as worse than he is."
"And how bad are you saying he is?"
"He's the son, not the father."
"Which just means you have to wonder how much he might have had to do with what his father did."
"I've no reason to suppose he had anything to do with it, and I should imagine you'd hope people survived their childhoods."
"If you still think so much of him, why did you get rid of him?" This no longer had enough to do with concern for Ian, Leslie thought, and she wasn't letting Roger think he was entitled to worry about her. "I don't want to talk about him any more."
"All I hope is he didn't get too close to you or Ian."
"You can ask Ian that yourself if you want to upset him," she said, and pushed the bench away from the table, making the concrete screech. "I'm going to have the bath I was meaning to have and then I won't feel so grubby. You might ask Ian to come up and tell me he's home when he brings Charlotte back."
THIRTY-ONE
The hotel where Jack had previously stayed was full. He had to phone three others before he found one with room for him. A Pimlico location sounded promising, especially once he learned it was close to Buckingham Palace Road, which made the room rate seem all the more reasonable. The reddish four-storey façade looked impressive enough, even if the stained pavement beneath the awning lacked both a doorman and a porter. The Iranian receptionist was so effusively welcoming that he almost made up for the sign requiring payment in advance. Not too long after Jack had paid for a night to be going on with, a porter in some of a uniform revealed his presence by exhaling a last puff on a cigarette and loaded Jack's bags into the solitary lift, leaving barely enough space for himself and Jack. The scratched grey box took its time about creaking to the top floor, where the porter struggled with the luggage down a narrow corridor not quite dim enough to hide how several patches of the furry chocolate wallpaper were worn down nearly to the plaster. He unlocked a door whose pair of digits leaned away from each other and, having manhandled the luggage into the room, loitered as though waiting for Jack to share the joke of it. "Everything all right?" he eventually said.
Very little if anything was, but abruptly Jack felt he deserved no better. He gave the man a pound, which failed to convince him Jack was satisfied, perhaps because he thought Jack was riding the lift down with him in order to complain. "Everything fine?" the receptionist not so much asked as declared, and Jack felt compelled to assure him it was.
Ten minutes' driving around the crowded side streets brought him to a dauntingly expensive car park, from which he walked through Westminster and Belgravia, seeing nothing he wanted to see, feeling far too much. When he found himself in Pimlico he bought more of an Indian meal than his stomach welcomed, and once he'd finished reassuring the staff of the otherwise empty restaurant that the food couldn't have been better he retreated to the hotel.
Having confirmed that the armchair squeezed between the wardrobe and the bed was quite as lumpily uncomfortable as it looked, he lay on the bed that was barely wider than himself to watch the dwarfish television. The swarming pointillist pictures gave him no reports of missing children; nor, when he managed to reinsert its insecure knob, did the boxy radio on the wall. His father had to realise that abducting any children risked betraying he was alive. That was clearly the last thing he wanted, Jack told himself, and tried to sleep.
He'd had to force the token window open, since the air-conditioning only raised the temperature and emitted a relentless rattle while it did. Now he had the uproar of a riotous Saturday night for company, and the sounds of both a coach station and a railway terminus to go with them. The continuing activities of his Indian dinner ensured he never dozed for long. The night was far from over when he started wishing he'd phoned Leslie before it was too late to call.
He ought to tell her everything. Suppose his father tried to contact Jack at her house or even went to find him? He had to tell her that his father was alive and that he himself had been an accomplice, however inadvertent. Once he'd told her he would be able to tell anyone, which meant the police, but he should tell her first so that she would be forewarned in case the media saw the truth about him as the basis of yet another accusation to fling at her. He mustn't care what she and Ian would think of the truth about him—he had to protect them if he could.
The streets outside the window had settled into an uneasy slumber broken by the occasional shout or scream and the whoops of police cars giving chase. He dozed, only to be wakened by a succession of glimpses, increasingly bright and detailed, of the unnecessarily elaborate pattern of the wallpaper that was almost touching the end of his nose. Then he was telling someone who'd knocked on the door to go away, which despite how it felt must have been hours later than his previous awakening, because the knocker shouted in approximate English that unless he planned to stay another night he would have to vacate the room. When he succeeded in rolling his almost immovably ponderous body over in far less space than it wanted to use, he had to strive to fumble his watch off the shelf that by no means compensated for the absence of a bedside table. It was twenty-five to twelve, and checkout time was noon.
He dragged himself to the edge of the bed to grab the phone from a corner of the dressing table. The outer curve of the flimsy receiver that had started its life white was cracked, and the digits of the keypad were discoloured with portions of fingerprints. The 9 was the grubbiest, but he had to tap it to obtain an outside line. As he dialled he had an unpleasant sense that traces of someone else's prints were adhering to his fingertips. He'd hardly roused Leslie's phone when the ringing was snatched away, and there was silence at his ear.
Someone was waiting for him to speak. For a moment that proved he wasn't as awake as he presumed, he wondered if it could somehow be his father. "Who's there?" that made him exclaim. "Hello?"
The silence seemed to intensify before it produced a voice. "Do I know you?"
It was more an accusation than a question, and threw Jack so badly that he had to speak while he tried to think. "That's Roger, isn't it?"
"Nobody else but. And you'll have to be—what am I supposed to call you?"
"Jack."
"Of course, Jack. We've been introduced. Pity we didn't have time for more of a chat. How's it looking for you now, Jack?"
"How's what looking?"
"Why, the thing that means most to you, I should think. The book you said you were going to write here."
"Oh, that. I—"
"You shouldn't make light of what you do, Jack. It isn't just how you earn your living and your reputation, is it? Haven't we got to assume it's what you are?"
"I guess. Not too much of a living in it right now. Anyway, listen, could—"
"Not doing too well at what you chose to be? This new book of yours is bound to change that, isn't it?"
"I don't know. It could if I write it. Anyway, could you let me—"
"You aren't having second thoughts, surely, Jack. Wasn't it your reason for coming here?"
"Where?"
"To this country. To a foreign land. Didn't you hear about all the things Hector Woollie had been found out for and decide what they needed was an American to write the story?"
"I see how it looks, but it wasn't as simple as that. Now could—"
"I appreciate that, Jack, of course I do. I know it's hard for an innocent like me to understand how a writer works. You won't think less of me for trying, will you?"
"Sure, go ahead, only maybe we could leave this for another time. I wanted—"
"You won't think it odd of me to be concerned. Once upon a time this was my family."
"Are they there?"
"Forgive me. We've been having such a fascinating conversation I forgot you wouldn't have rung to speak to me. I expect you were quite taken aback to find me picking you up."
"You bet. I thought you'd moved out."
"That makes two of us, doesn't it, Jack?"
"I'm
gone. I just want—"
This time it wasn't Roger who interrupted, it was a repetition of the knocking at the door. "How long are you now, please?" the chambermaid called.
"I'll be out by twelve," Jack shouted away from the mouthpiece, and was making to speak into it when Roger said "Why did you leave, Jack? Did you find something not to your taste?"
"Ask Leslie why," Jack was desperate enough to say. "Look, I haven't much time, and I need to speak to her. Is she there?"
"I'll take a message."
"No, I have to speak to her personally. It's something I ought to have told her while I had the chance."
"Tell me and I'll let you know if you should."
"I don't believe she'd want you to ask that or me to tell you."
"Then let me guess."
"I can't stop you doing that, but while you are can you bring—"
"You're going to say you're nothing like your father."
For several seconds Jack's pulse was as loud in his ears as the chambermaid's knock had been. "She told you," he said, not quite inaudibly enough.
"Better goddamn well believe it, as you might say if you were pretending to be American. Les and I are still closer than you hoped."
"I don't care about that right now. It isn't about me, what I have to say to her. Just tell her I'm on the phone, will you? You have to respect her enough to let her decide if she wants to talk to me."
"I said I'd take a message, Mr. Woollie. That's the best I can do for you, John. She's gone for a walk with Ian. Maybe you should wonder what she's having to explain to him about you."
"I'm sorry. I wish—" Jack wished he'd had a chance to speak to Ian before leaving, but it seemed inadvisable to tell Roger so. "Do you know how long they're likely to be?" he said.
"Hours, the way Ian's been made to feel." Roger sounded resigned as he added "I'll do this much. I'll take your number."
"And give it to Leslie when she comes back?"
"That would seem to be the idea, wouldn't it?"
"I'm out of here in a few minutes. I'll give you two numbers, and I'll be at one or the other this afternoon, say in a couple of hours."
"Sounds as if you're in demand."
Jack let that pass and read out the numbers from his notebook. "I can trust you, right?" he said.
"As much as she can you."
"Then I can."
"If you don't hear from her that means she wants nothing to do with you. Got that?"
"So long as you tell her it's very urgent. It's something she'll want to know, and it's not about me."
"I've no excuse not to tell her then, have I?"
Jack could think of nothing else to say that mightn't undermine the hold he appeared to have established. "Thanks," he said. The receiver was scarcely back on its stand when he was struggling past the chair toward the cupboard the hotel called a bathroom. He had to be swift, not just to check out. He needed to be at one of the numbers by the time Leslie tried to contact him.
THIRTY-TWO
As Leslie raised her face into a shower so fierce it drove away all thoughts, the phone rang downstairs. She was fumbling to turn off the taps when she heard the back door slam and Roger sprint into the hall. She twisted the taps hard and, having practically vaulted out of the bath, padded wetly to unbolt the door. "Who is it?" she shouted through a gap of no more than an inch.
"Wrong number."
Presumably having to pick up a call that wasn't even for her or Ian made him feel more out of place than ever. She bolted the door and treated herself to a shower that came close to overwhelming all her senses. When at last she emerged into the foggy bathroom, she had to extract water from her ears with a corner of the towel before she was able to hear. She rubbed herself pinker and wrapped herself in the towel, and opened the door just far enough to call "Where are you?"
"Where you left me. Can I do anything?"
"Nothing I can think of, thank you," she told him, and dodged into her room.
Once she'd covered up her crucial bits with underwear, she was frustrated to discover that she wasn't sure how else to dress. She was inclined to put on something shabby and shapeless to demonstrate how comfortable she felt in her own house, or how uncompelled to impress Roger she was, but since all her old clothes dated from their marriage, wouldn't they suggest an attempt to revive memories she had no desire to share? She slid back one of the mirrors that were doors, slimming her reflection in the process, then immediately closed the wardrobe, shutting up the sight of the elegant black number she'd bought to wear next time she went out for dinner with Jack. She was going to dress for herself, and if Roger dared so much as hint he wondered whether she'd done so for him... She pulled on a baggy T-shirt and tighter denim shorts, and when she caught herself reconsidering the latter she grabbed the towel that was looking woebegone on the double bed and stormed onto the landing to fling it into the laundry bin. She was trying to prepare to pick her way through another dialogue with Roger when she heard the scrape of a key in the front door lock.
Some seconds passed before Ian eased the door open and stepped into the hall, pushing his face forward and turning it from side to side. His expression looked uncertain what to be. Leslie was waiting for Charlotte to make her appearance as part of the game the youngsters were playing when Ian began to inch the door shut. "Don't do that," she said.
His arm jerked, the door slammed, and she saw he had been too preoccupied to notice her. As he raised his face, his eyelids drooped. "What?"
"Don't snarl at me like that, and don't shut poor Charlotte out if she wants to come in."
That was something of an if, she realised, and so she was confused when Ian said "Hasn't she?"
"What's wrong?" Roger said from the kitchen, and from the hall "Where's Charlotte?"
"Isn't she here?"
Leslie had forgotten how much longer family conversations took than any other kind, how much more strewn with repetitions they were. "What would she be doing here the way she feels about it?" Roger said not far short of Ian's face. "Why isn't she with you?"
"She was. She ran off. I thought she'd have come back."
"You were meant to be taking care of her, Ian," Leslie said, and before she'd finished Roger was demanding "Why did she—"
"Maybe she hid in the car. I'll look."
Ian was turning his back with, Leslie sensed, a good deal of relief when his father said "She can't be there, it's locked. You haven't told us why she ran away. Open the door while you're at it, will you."
Ian pulled the door wide. From the third stair up Leslie could see all the way along Jericho Close, which the sunlight emphasised was deserted. Either this or the continuing spectacle of lan's back put an edge on Roger's voice. "You're supposed to be answering my question."
lan's shoulders moved as if considering a shrug, but he said "We got bored in the park. I was taking her to see someone, only she made a scene. You know how she goes."
"Talk to our faces, Ian. Nobody out there wants to hear you." Before Ian had progressed much further than starting to obey, his father snapped "Who?"
"Who what?"
"I don't know whose time you think you're wasting or why. Who were you trying to make her see?"
"I didn't think I'd have to make her. I thought she'd want to go—"
Leslie wondered if he might be more responsive to a hint of gentleness, and so that was how she said "Who would it have been?"
"Crys Nolan."
"Shaun Nolan's sister?" Roger said in a tone that was determined to be answered. When it failed he tried "What was the idea of getting Charlotte mixed up with your gang?"
"She's the only girl I knew for Charlotte to play with."
"So what was the problem?" Leslie felt the need to learn.
"Her. Charlotte. Her not thinking I could know any girls."
"I can imagine," Roger said. "Thank God at least you didn't involve her with Shaun and the rest of that bunch. I'd have had some explaining to do to Hilene." His voice hadn't soften
ed much, and now it sharpened. "How long is it since you let Charlotte run away?"
"Don't know what you mean by let."
"I'm wondering, believe me," Roger said, and with all the fury he'd been withholding "Never mind playing word games with me, Ian. That's one of the things you can do without having picked up from your friend who was no kind of a friend. How long has it been since you last saw Charlotte?"
"However long it takes to come through the park."
"Were you running? Were you anxious for her?"
Ian's response might as well have been a shrug. "What do you think?"
Leslie was afraid his father might lash out at him for the first time in their lives, but as she moved close in case she had to intervene, Roger only said "Where did you lose sight of her?"
"On the North Circular by Shaun's."
"Which way was she going?"
"Didn't see. She ran into the traffic."
"Well, I hope you're happy with yourself. You're asked to take care of a child for an hour and you're incapable of even doing that. Try looking at me now and then when you're being spoken to. You can't make a situation go away by pretending you're somewhere else."
"Roger."
"All right, I know this isn't bringing Charlotte back any sooner. Tell me what will if you can."
"I was just going to ask you if you thought that call could have been her."
"Which?"
"The one you said was a wrong number."
"That's what it was, a wrong number."
"Who was it?"
"How should I know? It was a wrong number."
"It couldn't have been Charlotte trying to get through?"
"How, when she's got no money on her?"
"Then you wouldn't have heard her and known it was her."
"It wasn't."
"You're sure. You heard someone that wasn't Charlotte."
"Obviously," Roger said with a stare of disbelief that she'd pursued the subject this far.
"So there won't be any point in seeing if the phone can tell us where the call came from."
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