‘Hello. I’m sorry to disturb you. My name’s Trish Maguire. I’m—’
‘Not Paddy’s famous daughter?’ The lightly drawling voice sounded full of amusement.
‘You mean he told you about me?’
‘Never stopped boasting about you, my dear. Banged on and on for hours and hours about how clever you were, how successful, how beautiful. I used to think you must be the most exasperating brat in the entire world.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ Beautiful? Trish considered her spiky hair and beaked nose. What was he thinking of? But of course, he didn’t know me then. ‘I can’t imagine why he should have done anything like that. He hadn’t seen me for over twenty years.’
‘He knew more than enough about you. He could have bored for England on the subject. How is the old bastard anyway?’
‘Not bad. He had a heart attack, then a bypass, last year. But he’s over both now.’
‘Did he ask you to get in touch with me?’
‘God no! No, this is private enterprise. I wanted to ask you … This is frightfully difficult, you know.’ Trish thought that Mrs Bantell’s Kensington idiom must be catching. ‘Frightful’ wasn’t one of her words. ‘I wanted to know whether you and he …’
‘We had a bit of gallop and jump together, if that’s what you’re asking. But we were both unmarried at the time and well over the age of consent. What’s the problem?’
‘No problem. Look, I’m sorry, it’s a hard thing to say, but you and he never had a child, did you?’ She wondered why it seemed so much easier to ask a total stranger than her father.
A chime of musical laughter sounded through the phone.
‘Oh, poor Trish. Have you been worrying about losing your status as Paddy’s unique and perfect offspring?’
‘Not quite that.’ Suddenly she was back in the A & E department at Dowting’s, looking not at David’s mashed-up face, but at the sympathetic nurse who’d told her what to expect after her miscarriage.
‘Well, you don’t have to worry. If you could see me you wouldn’t have had to ask. I’m a year or two older than Paddy and even when we were together I was well past the Change.’
‘Oh, I see. I’m so sorry. It’s very kind of you to have been so frank. And I’m sorry to have bothered you.’
‘That’s all right. I find the idea quite funny actually. But you obviously don’t. What exactly is it that’s bugging you so much? Paddy hasn’t been winding you up and telling you I had his infant, has he?’
‘Absolutely not. And he doesn’t know I’m asking questions. You won’t tell him, will you?’
‘My dear, I wouldn’t dream of it. We haven’t been in contact for nine years or more,’ Sylvia Bantell said drily. ‘But if you see the old bastard, you might tell him I’ve forgiven him.’
‘Forgiven him for what?’
‘He’ll know,’ said Mrs Bantell darkly. After a moment’s silence, she added in an unconvincingly casual voice, ‘Actually, I booted him out when I found I hadn’t acquired exclusive rights to his attention. He was a shocker, you know.’
Now, why are you telling me this, Trish wondered. It sounds like punishment, but you can’t still want retribution for the boredom of listening to him talk about my supposed virtues all those years ago. Is it Paddy himself you’re after?
She said nothing, assuming there was more to come.
‘And, Trish?’
‘Yes?’
‘You don’t actually sound quite as exasperating as I thought you would.’
‘I’m glad,’ Trish said, still waiting. There were a lot of questions she wanted to ask, but she wasn’t going to join in whatever game Sylvia might be playing with her.
‘Oh, all right, I’ll tell you.’ The drawly voice had sharpened. ‘You see, one evening he let something slip that made it clear he was seeing someone else. I was so angry I put private detectives on him.’
‘Ah, I see. Thank you for telling me.’
‘Don’t you even want to know who she was?’
‘Only if you want to tell me.’
‘She was a prostitute called Jeannie Nest, and she lived in a disgusting slum south of the river. When I found out … Well, I can tell you I was round to the quack straight away to get checked out.’
This is definitely punishment, thought Trish, torn between an instinct to choke off Sylvia’s vindictiveness and a need to know everything. The mention of ‘south of the river’ seemed too significant to ignore.
‘Where exactly did she live?’
‘I thought you might ask that,’ Sylvia said, sounding satisfied enough to justify Trish’s suspicion. ‘Hang on and I’ll get the report.’
Four minutes later she was back. ‘The Mull Estate, Southwark. Sixty-three, Kingston Buildings specifically. It’ll be tough for you if there really was a baby from that relationship. I can’t imagine many successful barristers wanting to acknowledge some tart’s child from the slums as their half-sibling.’
‘I’m surprised you kept a report like that for so long,’ Trish said, too angry now to suppress everything she felt. ‘What were you planning to do with it? Blackmail him?’
‘That’s offensive – and ridiculous. If you must know, I assumed he was suffering a temporary bout of nostalgie de la boue. Some chaps do. So I waited until he was ready to come back. Then, when I had him at my mercy, I was going to rub his nose in the filth of what he’d been doing.’
‘Ah,’ Trish said, glad to know she hadn’t been unfair to the woman. ‘So that you could punish him, you mean?’
‘So that I could show him precisely why I would never have anything to do with him ever again. Touch a tart’s leavings? Ugh!’
‘It must have been very frustrating when he didn’t even try to come back.’
‘What makes you think he didn’t?’ Now the Kensington voice was seriously sharp.
Because I wouldn’t have, Trish thought. We’re alike in that, Paddy and I, just as we’re alike in our terror of being shut up in a chintzy suburban prison. Aloud she gave the easier answer: ‘Because you’d have binned the report by now if he had come back and been made to face it. But I’m glad you kept it, and I’m grateful for the information. Goodbye.’
Sylvia Bantell put down the telephone and looked around her immaculate drawing room. It had seemed appallingly dull for the past nine years, in spite of all the new bits and pieces she’d bought for it and the three expensive redecorations she’d lavished on it. Without Paddy Maguire’s fiery presence, the room – like her life – had felt empty, however many other people she’d imported to take his place.
Odd to have had the most exciting year of your life at fifty-five, she thought. Paddy had never let her feel secure and so she’d never been bored with him. He’d made her laugh; he’d opened her eyes to life beyond her own little world; and in bed he’d led her into delights that could still make her blush whenever she thought about them.
The edges of the detective’s report were digging into her hands. She looked down, rather ashamed of herself. Paddy wasn’t ever coming back and it was rather undignified to have betrayed him to his daughter. Sylvia ripped the stiff card covers from the report and wrenched at the tough plastic spiral that bound it. Somewhere in the house was a portable shredder. She’d put the pages through that and forget the whole business: forget that Paddy had once made her feel like a tart herself. And that she’d loved every grubby, painful, thrilling minute of it.
Could his daughter have any idea of what he was really like?
Sylvia didn’t think so. With her intelligently attractive voice and the loyalty that had made her reject all implicit criticism of her father, Trish had sounded quite unaware of the truth. Poor Trish.
Later, Sylvia watched each page of the report sliding through the dusty old shredder. It really was over now.
Trish reminded herself that she was supposed to be working on Nick Gurles’s case, not delving into her father’s sexual past. She stuffed the envelope he’d given her into her bag and got ba
ck to work, wishing that the nervous-sounding trainee from Sprindlers had managed to track down the missing note. When Trish phoned to chase it up, the assistant said she was still trying to find it.
Two whole lever-arch files were finished by the time one of Trish’s fellow tenants looked in to suggest a drink later in El Vino’s.
‘Not tonight, Bill,’ she said, faking regret. He’d never tried to wind her up like Robert Anstey, even though he’d been Antony’s preferred junior for the past two years, but she had other things to do. ‘I’ve got to chase up a loose end. But thank you. Have a good time.’
When he’d gone, she packed up her papers. She was pleased she’d made herself work. There were still at least four hours of daylight, which would be plenty to check out Jeannie Nest and still drop in to see David afterwards. Trish looked up the Mull Estate in Southwark and was amazed to see that it was only a little way south of her own warehouse flat on the far side of Borough High Street. It shouldn’t take more than ten minutes to walk there.
She shut down her laptop and left chambers to take her usual route home over Blackfriars Bridge, envying all the people who had flats in the Oxo Building. She loved the river and its openness, but when she’d been looking for somewhere to buy, internal space had seemed much more important than any view, however glorious. She’d stretched herself to the limit to buy and convert the huge top floor of an old engineering works and had watched both her earnings and the prices of Southwark lofts climb steadily ever since.
Tempted to go in and change as she passed the iron staircase that led up to her own front door, she resisted, fearing that she might never drive herself out again if she did. Instead she walked on, turning right, left, then right again until she’d reached her destination. It was as though she’d stepped across a frontier. She was facing the most depressing housing estate she’d ever seen.
Built of dirty redbrick, probably between the wars, it looked cramped as well as broken down. Each of the four long blocks was six storeys high, and each storey consisted of a row of front doors ranged along a walkway. Washing hung there and rubbish lay in heaps everywhere she looked.
Trish could see a white metal cube on the top balcony to her left; it looked like a washing machine, or perhaps a fridge. Suddenly the weird statistic that something ‘was less likely to kill you than a fridge falling on your head’ made sense.
There was no grass anywhere, or trees; only cracked concrete. The area between the blocks was half-filled with rusty cars. Weeds grew in the cracks, and muddy puddles showed how bad the ground drainage must be. A group of small children were throwing stones at the worst of the cars. It had only one tyre left and the windscreen was smashed. Above them a skein of geese flew in arrow-straight formation across the gold-and-blue sky, as though to show the inhabitants of this desolate place just how firmly shackled they were.
Trish found it hard to imagine her father coming here. Even if he’d wanted a prostitute, surely there were more alluring places to find one. Still, if Sylvia Bantell’s private detective had been any good, this was the place where Paddy had come on several occasions nine years ago. The lead had to be worth pursuing.
Once she’d double-checked that she had the right address, Trish asked the staring children which block held number 63. One, a blonde girl with gappy teeth and sharp eyes, asked why she wanted to know.
‘I’m looking for someone called Jeannie Nest,’ she said. ‘Do any of you know her?’
‘No.’ After a second the child’s face brightened. ‘But I’ll show you sixty-three if you give me a pound.’
‘Oh, I think that’s a bit expensive,’ Trish said lightly.
‘Then you can fuck off,’ said the child, turning and running towards the far side of the concreted space. The others casually went back to dismantling the wing mirror on one of the cars.
Trish blinked, then looked around to get her bearings, before picking her way up a stinking brick staircase to the second floor of the furthest block. Finding number 63 painted beside a peeling, dirty-yellow door, she rang the bell.
There was no sound, so she assumed the bell had been disconnected. She banged on the door. Eventually it was opened by a tall, youngish man wearing black trousers and nothing else. His skin was very white, his hair very black, and he hadn’t shaved for days. He said something incomprehensible.
‘Could I speak to Jeannie Nest?’ Trish said, enunciating carefully.
‘Who?’
‘Jeannie Nest. Doesn’t she live here? She used to.’
The man scratched his bare chest, blinking sleepily, and told her in heavily accented, hesitant English that he’d moved in only a week ago, had never heard of anyone called Nest, didn’t know anyone else on the estate, hated it, and wanted to go home. Then he shut the door.
Trish couldn’t blame him. But she was here now, and she wasn’t leaving until she’d collected some information. She could hear the children in the forecourt yelling at each other; she could hear reggae music beating out from several flats, and people were calling – or shouting – all round her. Someone screamed, but it was a short, unfrightened kind of noise. Trish wasn’t sure that she’d have done anything even if it hadn’t been, but she was glad she didn’t have to worry about it.
She looked along the row of doors for one that gave any sign of welcome. Three down from the flat she’d already tried was a door carefully painted in bright turquoise. The net curtains in the window beside it looked clean. There was even a wrought-iron hook that might once have held a hanging basket. Someone who cared lived there. She tried the bell.
A much older black man opened the door. His back was very straight, and he wore his clothes well. He looked her up and down carefully, before asking what he could do for her. Encouraged, Trish told him she was looking for Jeannie Nest.
‘She hasn’t lived here for years,’ he said.
‘But she once did, didn’t she?’
‘Oh, yes. Number sixty-three.’
‘When did she go?’
‘Six years ago.’
‘Why?’
He didn’t answer, and he hardly moved, but the slight backwards pull in his body and the withdrawal in his big toffee-coloured eyes made Trish curious. She asked again.
‘I don’t want to talk about it. You should understand that,’ he said, pointing at her briefcase.
‘OK.’ Trish wondered if he took her for a social worker. ‘It’s not really her I’m interested in. It’s her child.’
‘The boy? Why? What’s he done?’
‘So, there was a boy?’
‘A toddler. He must have been about two when they went. Three maybe.’
‘What was his name?’
For a second he looked as though he might answer, then he started to shut the door.
‘Please,’ Trish said, moving forwards. She didn’t jam her foot in the door; it wasn’t her style and in any case she had no right.
‘I have to go,’ said the man, breathing hard.
Surprised, Trish looked along the walkway in both directions. There was nobody there except a watchful-looking white man, very young and much better dressed than the one who inhabited Jeannie Nest’s old flat. He caught Trish’s eye and smiled pleasantly. He looked as if he’d been running.
‘Can I help? You look lost.’ His voice had an accent that Professor Higgins might have identified. Trish couldn’t.
‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling back and envying him his almost perfect teeth. ‘I’m not lost, but I am looking for someone who once lived here and seems to have disappeared. No one can tell me anything about her.’
‘Tough, that. What’s the name?’
‘Nest. Jeannie Nest. Does it mean anything?’
He rubbed his chin, biting his lower lip at the same time, then shrugged. ‘What sort of name’s Nest?’
‘I don’t know. But it’s all I’ve got to go on. Have you lived here long?’
He looked amused, perhaps at the idea that a stranger might think she had the right to
ask questions like that. ‘Four years.’
‘Oh, I see. I think she left here before that.’
‘Why d’you want her?’
Trish wasn’t going to risk betraying her real interest, even to someone as uninvolved as this. She tried to think of a plausible excuse for her search.
‘It’s just possible that she might have inherited something from one of our clients.’
‘That’s nice. I could ask around, if you like. See if anyone’s heard of her, knows where she’s gone. You got a card? I could phone you.’
‘Not on me,’ Trish said, uncomfortable and wanting to get out of the place as soon as possible without giving herself away. ‘I left them in the office. Don’t worry; I’ll try the next address my boss gave me.’
‘Where’s that then?’
‘My boss’ll have it back at the office. He only gave me this one.’ It was a stupid story; she wished she’d prepared something marginally more credible.
The young man was between her and the stairs. Trish told herself to stop overreacting. Just because he lived in this poverty-stricken place, that didn’t mean he was either violent or criminal. He’d been exceedingly polite. But she couldn’t stop her heart thumping or her throat drying. The handle of her briefcase felt suddenly slippery. She wasn’t usually this pathetic.
‘What’s your boss’s firm, then? I’ll phone when I’ve found something out.’
Trish smiled again and told him it didn’t matter. Her voice sounded high and tight. She made herself walk firmly towards him. He moved, but into her path rather than leaving her more space.
‘I can help you, honest. I know lots of people here. I can talk to them for you. They’ll tell me a lot more than they’d ever tell someone like you.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of troubling you.’ For a sickening moment she thought he was going to stop her, but when she was within touching distance, he stood back and she got past. Finding she was a couple of inches taller than him made her feel better. They were so close that she could smell him.
Out of the Dark Page 6