by Ann Troup
That look again… ‘My mother,’ he pointed to the only woman not laughing, a prim looking type sporting nothing more on her face than a tight lipped smile for the camera. The other women had life and humour written all over their faces. ‘That one is June Leonard, Lena’s mother, next to her is Edna Pollett and that lady there I’m surprised you don’t recognise, it’s Beattie, your grandmother.’
Edie stared at the faces. Lena’s mother she could see clearly, like mother like daughter, they had the same fox-like eyes that seemed to miss nothing. Edna Pollett must have been the mother of the girl who was killed – but Beattie was the biggest surprise. The Beattie that Edie remembered had been a silent, sombre and brooding woman who shuffled about the place leaving an air of quiet menace in her wake, she had not been the happy, laughing lipstick-wearing woman in the picture. ‘She didn’t look much like that when I was little.’
Lionel took the album from her and closed it. ‘I imagine seven years in prison changed her quite a lot. It can’t have been easy, especially coming back to a place where people would cross the road to avoid you. It must have taken its toll. And Frank had gone by then, he was always her favourite, she ruined that boy and in the end he ruined her.’
Edie had to wonder at just how many people he’d ruined. Everything seemed to fit – loss, grief, rage, humiliation… and he’d clearly known Sally Pollett given that Beattie had been friendly with her mother. The other girls had been local too, had Frank resented their youth and vitality when his own wife had been robbed of hers? Perhaps, but was it a motive for murder? Damn Matt Bastin and his accusations! Edie wondered what on earth her mother had seen in such a broken, damaged man. She turned to Lionel, ‘Why do you think he married my mother?’
Lionel carefully realigned the album on the table with its fellows. ‘I think it was because she made herself indispensable to him, she looked after Rose when Dolly faltered with it, befriended the family when no one else would. She’d wanted him for a long time, ever since we were children Shirley had been his shadow, it was a bitter blow for her when he married Mavis.’
Edie nodded, it made sense, her mother had never been a reasonable woman when it came to things that she wanted – Edie had never know anyone with such a dogged determination to get her own way, even when it had resulted in a breakdown. She shook her head in her habitual way, shaking off the maddening thoughts that were crowding her mind. Ignoring Lionel’s puzzled look she got to her feet. ‘You’ve been very kind and very informative Mr White, thank you, but I won’t take up any more of your time.’
A look of crushing disappointment suffused his features, making him look suddenly very old, much older than he first appeared. ‘Oh, but I had so much more to tell you!’
Edie felt for him, he was clearly lonely and loved an audience but she had heard enough for one day, she wasn’t sure she could take in any more. ‘I’m so sorry, I’d love to hear more, but I’m afraid I have to get on with clearing the house, perhaps I could call over again?’
This seemed to mollify him and he smiled again. ‘Oh yes, I’d enjoy that. But please, telephone me first, I am a creature of habit you know, I don’t enjoy surprises.’ He walked over to a bureau in the corner, opened it and took out a card with his name and number printed on it. Edie took it, puzzled as to why an elderly man would have business cards, but as he had said so many times, he was a creature of habit and Edie suspected that some of those habits might be quite strange.
***
Sam watched Edie leave Number 17 from his mother’s bedroom, if she came back to the house now his window of opportunity for that morning would have gone. He was relying on the fact that she would have taken the girl with her, but he had the sneaking feeling that he was rapidly running out of luck. The girl was still in there and that caused him a problem.
His mother’s answerphone message had created an urgency that he couldn’t ignore – if Pascoe was making house calls, things were getting serious. He needed to retrieve Pascoe’s property and he needed to do it fast. The first lot had been easy, the bearer bonds were still exactly where he’d left them all those years before. Pascoe had wanted them kept safe, and where safer than between the pages of a book in the house next door? He doubted Dolly dimple had ever read a book in her life, mad old bint, and as for Dickie, well, he might have been a reader but he certainly wasn’t a fastidious man and by then hardly left his room. Hiding the bonds amidst the neglected books had seemed like the safest place of all. The dust had been so thick it was clear they hadn’t been touched in years. It was even thicker when he had retrieved them under the guise of helping Edie. Had he hidden them in his mother’s house she’d have rooted them out within a week. In Number 17 they’d lain undisturbed for fifteen years.
Pascoe had been pleased enough to have them back, but in his mind half a debt was still a debt unpaid. The rest was due and Sam’s time was running out. If he didn’t deliver the rest of the goods everything he had built would be pulled out from underneath him and if Pascoe’s reputation was to be believed (and Sam had seen enough over the years to be convinced that it was) there was a decent likelihood that he wouldn’t survive to complain about it. He’d often wondered whether the whole thing had been some kind of test, an investment on Pascoe’s part to measure Sam’s long-term loyalty. Sam didn’t consider himself to be a stupid man, he knew well enough what Pascoe was capable of and had never once put a foot wrong. The window of opportunity for him to prove both his worth and his loyalty was closing fast, and if it fell he’d lose more than his fingers.
If the girl was still in the house, so be it, she was dealt with easily enough. Johnno had wanted her off the square for an age, but Sam had been too disinterested to get involved, he never thought about the girls unless they were earning him money – if they weren’t earning, they were none of his concern. He couldn’t care less that she was Johnno’s spawn, she sure as hell couldn’t be the only one and it was beyond him why Johnno found the kid so abhorrent. It was hardly as if he was a man who might feel guilty about what he’d fathered. Still, it wasn’t worth thinking about the annals of Johnno’s mind, the man was a Neanderthal and whether he had a mind at all was a debatable fact.
He watched until Edie had crossed the square and was hidden by the trees in the garden, then he watched for a few minutes more just to make sure that she hadn’t just gone to the shop. Knowing his luck the silly cow would come wandering back any minute carrying a pint of milk. After ten minutes she hadn’t; it was now or never, and the girl would just have to be counted as collateral damage. Fortunately his mother was out of the picture too, she’d taken herself off out an hour ago, wittering on about something or other. She hadn’t even plied him with tea, which was worrying, but he didn’t have time to think about it. If he was quick he could be in and out in no time.
***
Sophie never saw it coming, the banging on the front door had dragged her from her bed, bleary eyed, dopey and resentful of the intrusion into her lie in. She’d stomped down the stairs, heavy footed with joints stiff from sleep and fumbled with the lock, vaguely realising that Edie must have gone out. She’d barely had time to speak when Sam pushed his way in, forcing her backwards and slamming the door behind him. The ‘what the fuck?’ that she’d been intending to say never made it past her lips. It was silenced by the fist with its brass clad knuckles that slammed into her face, then totally obliterated by an inky black darkness which descended like a proscenium curtain and shut the world out.
Chapter Fifteen
Sam nudged the prone form with his foot, she looked as if she was out cold, but you never knew. The broken nose wasn’t going to do her any favours and unless he wanted to kill her now, which would be inconvenient, he wasn’t going to be able to tape her mouth shut. He fished in his pocket for a couple of cable ties, like a good boy scout he always came prepared. Having secured her arms and feet he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small plastic bag with two pills inside, removing them he squeezed her cheeks wit
h the other hand and forced her mouth open, pushing the pills into her throat – hoping that with a bit of luck she wouldn’t choke to death. He clamped his hand over her mouth, knowing that as she couldn’t breathe through her nose the semi-conscious state she was beginning to regain would force her to swallow. To his relief she did, then he hit her again, sending her back into oblivion. It was an unsavoury business, and one he normally left to one of his acolytes, but this was one job he had to complete on his own.
Sure that she was out again, he heaved her up onto his shoulder and carried her through to the kitchen, out of the back door, through the yard and into the alley at the back, having checked that no one was about. The house opposite – almost derelict, but one that he had owned for a while and planned to turn into bedsits – would be the perfect place to leave her while he made his mind up what to do with her. She was too feisty to work on the square, but there were other options where she could make herself useful. Options where the punters wouldn’t care about the state of her face, or what she was on.
Still carrying her like a sack of coal, he rummaged for the keys and let himself in through the boarded-up back door. The advantage of this house was that it had a cellar, and the advantage of that was that if she woke up and started yelling, no one would hear her. The drugs would take care of that for a while anyway.
With the girl safely deposited in the filth and grime of the derelict house, he made his way back to Number 17, knocking first just to check that Edie hadn’t come back in his absence. She hadn’t. Without further hesitation he climbed the stairs and made his way into Dickie’s old room, the only one Edie hadn’t messed with, thank God! The old man’s junk was still everywhere, his whole sorry life summed up by the stupid little machines that he used to make, what kind of man did that? Sam had never stopped to study them, but had always laughed at Dickie and his hobby. Today his interest in the artefacts in Dickie’s room was less than it ever had been, but his interest in the built-in cupboard in the corner was intense and frenzied. He dragged a chair over to the cupboard and set it inside the door so that he could use it as a ladder to reach the small hatch that led to a crawl space above the cupboard. It was barely a crawl space at all, and only served the purpose of giving access to water pipes and cables that ran between the floors. There was a similar one in his mother’s house and as a child he had used it as a den, until he’d got too big to fit and Lena had caught him once too often and saw fit to nail it shut. When Pascoe had asked him to store the diamonds he’d been hard pressed to think of a place to put them where no one would think to look, find them by accident or otherwise relieve him of the responsibility, and by default relieve him of his personal safety. Number 17 was the house of the moribund, both Dickie and Dolly too stupid, too lazy and too set in their ways to go poking around. Sam had hidden the diamonds in the crawl space the day he’d had to go in and help Dickie off the floor where he’d fallen and broken nothing but his last shreds of confidence. The old man had never climbed the stairs again and Sam figured that the crawl space was as safe as houses. Until he reached into the space, groped around and found nothing. Shit! He felt in his jacket for his mobile phone, using the screen light as a torch. The space was empty, barring a few rat droppings and the stench of the dry rot that seemed to riddle the house. He checked again, sure that his eyes must be deceiving him. There was nothing.
His first instinct was to tear the place apart, use the chair and smash the place to smithereens and sort through the wreckage until he found what he wanted. But that would bring trouble. Though the girl had been easy enough to dispose of, Edie wouldn’t be. Rage coursed through him, making his hands shake and his jaw clench; he needed to think. There wasn’t time to search the house, there wasn’t time to do anything but give Pascoe what he wanted and have the whole thing over with. Shit!
Taking a huge breath he forced himself to put everything back as he’d found it, he’d disturbed some dust, but hoped that Edie would put it down to the girl poking round. The girl! She might be the answer. She’d stayed in the house, she’d been helping with the clear out, she might know something – and if she didn’t, she might be useful in other ways. Hadn’t his mother said that Edie had become excessively fond of the kid?
Sam wasn’t sure how far he’d need to take this yet – Edie was a sap, it wouldn’t take much to push her where he needed her to go. The girl might need to play a part in that, and when it was done, when he got what he came for, well, a tragic fire wouldn’t be out of the way. It would serve her right, she should have agreed to let him take the place off her hands and left everything the way it was. He’d given her an easy option and she’d turned it down. He thought about the girl again, her value as his trump card… he needed to think it through first, work out how best to play it, and for that he needed Edie to think the girl had left of her own accord.
It didn’t take long to find her backpack and the few bits of clothing she’d left lying on the bedroom floor. He took it all and let himself out of the back door. There was no way he was going to lug the girl’s junk around with him and the car was parked two streets away, well out of the sight of any of Pascoe’s cronies. His intention was to throw the bag into the nearest dustbin, but unfortunately someone else was having the same idea and heaving a black sack into their bin when Sam emerged into the alley. Rather than be spotted doing something unusual he simply nodded at the man, walked through the gate of the empty house and dumped the bag in the garden. He waited five minutes, checked that the coast was clear and walked back to collect his car.
***
Edie made her way back from Lionel’s, skirting the now familiar sight of the murder tourists as she crossed the communal garden. She paused for a moment, listening to the guide’s spiel, wondering if it was really possible that they had got it all wrong and that her father had been responsible for the terrible things the man was describing. The insipid dishwater-and-perfume tea washed around her stomach and threatened to make a re-appearance as he described in graphic detail what had happened to Jean Lockwood, the girl who had been found strangled, assaulted and mutilated on a park bench.
Edie turned away. She didn’t want to hear any more, not from this man with his salacious spin on past events. Reaching the end of the short path that led up to the door of Number 17, she hesitated. Raking through the detritus of Dolly’s neglect seemed about as appealing in that moment as the thought of another cup of the foul tea. The last place she wanted to be was inside Number 17, there seemed to be more skeletons lurking inside the closet than she could throw a stick at and she felt as if she was all out of sticks anyway.
For a moment she contemplated visiting Lena, but something about Number 15 told her that the house was empty – besides, Lena wasn’t the person she really wanted to see. That person was Matt, and she was loath to admit it, even to herself.
There was only one problem, she had no idea where he lived. It had to be on or near the square – Sophie knew, but asking her would mean going back into the house and she wasn’t ready to do that, not yet anyway. If she was going to go back in there and face her demons she wanted to get the measure of them first. Someone in the square would know, but who to ask? It occurred to her that, being a single man of a certain age, it was possible that one of the street girls might know, that he might have had dealings with them. The thought was easily shaken off – her yardstick for judging men was Simon, and just because he was the sort to take it where he could get it, it didn’t mean that every man was the same. Besides, Matt might be full of accusations and aspersions but he’d never given her the impression that he had contempt for women. In fact, he was the type more likely to give the girls money for a hot meal than cross their palms for sex. They would probably laugh at him for it, but take his money anyway and spend it on their next bag of smack.
She sighed, the square was getting to her. Its inherent toxicity was seeping into her bones and making her as mean spirited and feral as the rest of its inhabitants. She turned away from the house a
nd this time walked around the edge of the gardens, eyeing the tourists as if they were zoo animals separated from her by the bars of the metal fence. She was so focused on the flickering, intermittent image of the tightly clustered group that she didn’t notice the man coming towards her, and in her second serendipitous meeting that week, bumped smack bang into Matt.
He’d put his arm out to stop her, and the physical contact shot through her like a bolt. ‘Sorry, I was miles away, I wasn’t looking where I was going.’ she mumbled, stupidly unable to meet his eyes and feeling as though her thoughts had conjured him out of the ether as some kind of mockery.
He gave that frown, the one that made him look like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. ‘Are you all right?’
She laughed; it felt more like hysteria than humour. ‘Honestly? I don’t know. I’ve been brushing up on my family history this morning, and it’s been quite a revelation. Funnily enough I was looking for you, we need to talk.’
He looked surprised. ‘We do?’
Edie knew that she had treated him as if he was public enemy number one, and he had no reason to want to comply with her after the way she had behaved the night before, yet she also knew that he needed her to believe him, no matter what it might cost her. ‘If you don’t mind. I’d like to see what you’ve found.’
Sophie breaking in had been one thing, voluntarily taking Edie to the seedy bedsit was another. Letting someone in to willingly observe his obsessions made Matt feel distinctly uncomfortable – he felt exposed and embarrassed by his collection, realising that to Edie’s eyes it marked him out as a weirdo. She took it all in good part, quietly ignoring his unmade bed, the clothes piled on the back of the chair and the remains of his last takeaway which still languished on the draining board, congealed and attracting flies. Her attention was taken by the desk, its contents and what lay above pinned to the wall and looking like a bad mock-up of something from CSI – though he’d never thought of it like that before. A flush of embarrassment threatened to ravage the last of his dignity as he recognised how it all must look to someone else.