He shifted uneasily in his chair and swallowed a mouthful of brandy.
‘I went completely numb. For a long time I didn’t know what day of the week it was. If I hadn’t had Susan to look after I think I would’ve . . . well, I don’t know what I’d have done. You see, I’d always looked after someone. After mother died I looked after my brothers, then my father. So it was natural to transfer everything to you. I suppose I transferred the father-daughter relationship too. That’s what probably made it more difficult for you.
‘But I’ve never been as happy as when we had that police house in Norwood. The one with the damp in the sitting-room. I didn’t really mind when you went on night duty or different shifts or had to work over holidays. I knew you’d always come back. You’re right. It was nest building. So when you . . . When we broke up, it almost finished me.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because you think you know me and you don’t. You look surprised that I drink white wine. Surprised I know what Calvados is. I’ve seen you looking at my clothes. At me. I’m not the same Linda Brown you knew. Or even the same Linda Macrae.’ She paused and then said, ‘I hated you George, really hated you.’
‘For God’s sake!’
‘No, no, that’s over. Now I’m grateful to you. For two years I just sat watching Susan grow up and feeling sorry for myself. I had no skills, you see. I never learned anything. Except to look after people. And Susan was at school and you’d gone, so there wasn’t anyone to look after a lot of the time.
‘I remember thinking things would get better in the future. And then one day Susan had gone to school and the house was empty and I was having a cup of coffee and I think it was raining and I suddenly realised this was the future. Nothing was going to get better unless I made it get better. That’s when I took shorthand and typing and accountancy and word processing. And I did really well.’
‘You were always clever at school.’
‘That’s when little Linda changed. Now I’ve got a very good job. I know what good clothes are and I know what Calvados is. And I’ve been abroad and I’ve done a lot of reading. You once said I should read Great Expectations. Well, I’ve read it and half a dozen other Dickens’. And I know lots of things I didn’t know before. And the thing is I’ve got you to thank for it, George.’
He wanted to say something but there was nothing to say. When he’d begun his affair with Mandy, Linda had forgiven him. Forgive was not strong enough, he thought. She’d become a bloody martyr. He’d felt stifled and more guilt-ridden as a result. It had been like sinking gently into a thick soup, drowning in love and sentiment and forgiveness when all he wanted was to get out of the house and take Mandy to bed.
She finished her liqueur and put the glass down firmly on the table. He sensed her change of mood.
‘Susan?’ he said.
It was quickly told. Susan and her boyfriend wanted to do what many young people were doing – to wander through South-East Asia and Australia. They wanted to fly to Singapore then, using local transport and coasters, island-hop to Perth.
Linda outlined the plan as matter-of-factly as possible. Macrae listened, his head dropping slightly forward like a bull’s.
‘And?’ he said, when she’d finished.
‘She’ll need money, George.’
‘That’s what I thought it was about. How much?’
‘They’ve worked it out and they think they should have three thousand each.’
‘Three thousand!’
‘It’s not a lot these days, George. Not if you take fares into account.’
‘How long are they supposed to be away?’
‘As long as the money lasts.’
‘Three thousand!’ He shook his head slowly. ‘You might as well ask for ten thousand or a hundred thousand. Every penny I have goes on Bobbie and Margaret.’
Her face hardened. ‘Susan was your first child, George. You owe her just as much responsibility.’
‘I’ve discharged that. She’s twenty-one. She’s got a job. She doesn’t have to go to South-East bloody Asia. Bobbie and Margaret are still kids and—’
‘I don’t want to talk about them!’ Linda broke in. ‘I don’t want to hear either their names or their mother’s.’
‘Listen to me,’ George said, dropping his voice in the hope that she would take the hint. ‘It’s not only them. I’m still paying off the house.’
‘That has nothing to do with Susan. You know, George, from the moment I started earning I didn’t take a penny from you. So your other family has me to thank for extra maintenance. The only money you paid us was to help Susan. And that wasn’t a lot. We never badgered you. We’ve always wanted to be independent.’
‘I know that.’
‘Well, now your daughter wants to do something that’s important to her. She’s in love with a young man and she wants to be with him. I think it’s up to you to give her the opportunity, because it’ll never happen again.’
‘What about the boyfriend? If he loves her so much why doesn’t he pay for her?’
‘For God’s sake, he’s still a student. I’m sure he would if he could.’
‘So where’s he getting his money?’
‘From his father.’
‘He’s probably a bloody sight richer than I am. What’s his name anyway? What’s he do?’
‘Her boyfriend’s called Peter. Peter Kerman.’
‘Kerman . . . I knew a Kerman once. Ronnie Kerman. He was the fence for that Hatton Garden diamond robbery. Remember?’
‘He’s the same man.’
‘Christ, he got four years!’
‘I know. Peter told Susan.’
‘But I put him away!’
‘I know that.’
‘Do they?’
‘No.’
‘Jesus . . . and you want me to give her three thousand pounds to go—’
‘Keep your voice down,’ she said. ‘It’s not his fault. He was just a baby when it happened. You can’t blame him for something his father did.’
‘There’s a rotten streak in families.’
‘That’s simply nonsense. I’ve met Peter and he’s a sweet boy. Anyway, he’s the one Susan wants. You don’t have to see him or talk to him or do anything at all.’
‘Except cough up the money.’
‘That’s right.’
‘How the hell did she get mixed up with people like that?’
‘With people like what? She hasn’t got mixed up with the father. She’s got mixed up, as you put it, with a very nice boy who’s taking engineering at London University. Look, George, it’s got nothing to do with either of us. She’s twenty-one, it’s her life. And she doesn’t want you to give her the money, she wants to borrow it.’
‘It makes no bloody difference one way or the other. A, I haven’t got it and B, she probably couldn’t repay it.’
‘If you’d given any thought to us and your – your other responsibilities you’d have done something about it by now.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like got yourself promoted. You could have been a Commander by now. Everybody said so. And then you’d have had more money.’
‘Money! Money! I’m sick to death of the word.’
‘Well, you should have thought of that before you started an extended family and took on a couple of wives. George, I don’t want to spoil this evening by getting into an argument with you. I’ve told you what the problem is and now it’s up to you.’
He drove her home to Clapham and stopped in a street of Victorian terraced villas. They had been built at much the same time as his street. But this one was neat, with neatly parked cars and neatly tended gardens. It was middle class. A world away from the dereliction of his own street.
He half expected her to ask him in for a coffee. Instead, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek and said, ‘Thanks very much, George. I enjoyed that.’
‘I’ll ring you,’ he said.
‘Yes, do that.’
/>
He watched her go up the steps to her front door. She walked confidently. He thought what a nice pair of legs she had. Then he turned the car and drove back to Cannon Row.
Chapter Sixteen
Leo Silver was so tired he could hardly see straight. In the past thirty-six hours he had only had about four hours’ sleep. He and Macrae were in the Goodwood Sporting Club in an alley between the Strand and the river. It was nearly midnight and the club was full. Macrae was at the bar ordering drinks.
It was what was called in the trade a spieler, a club whose membership was almost totally made up of villains but of which a few coppers were honorary members.
It was a big room with a small bar at one corner. The decor was almost exclusively the Turf. There were pictures of Derby winners on the wall and a life-sized wooden carving of a jockey at the door.
It existed for gambling as much as drinking and at this time of night it was full, with half a dozen kalooki tables on the go and a small crowd standing round each one watching the play. Silver, who had been to the Goodwood several times with Macrae, found the game reminiscent of the gin-rummy he had played with his family when he was younger.
The first time he had visited the club, he had been surprised by the amount of money wagered on the cards. Players seemed to flaunt their ‘wedges’. Some had them in metal clips, some in loose piles on the table-top. Each wedge contained hundreds, perhaps thousands of pounds.
There was a distinct social stratification among the villains. There were the heavies, the robbery-with-violence merchants, flash in silk shirts, silk ties and cashmere suits, and adorned with gold chains and gold bracelets, all smoking Upmanns or Romeo y Julietas.
Then there were the lesser fry, the con artists and hoisters. Silver, in spite of his exhaustion, was interested to see how both sets reacted to Macrae. They all greeted him, but it was in the quality of the greeting that they differed. The robbers nodded briefly. They tolerated his presence without welcoming him. The others kept sliding up to him and greeting him by name, always the formal ‘Mr’ before it. Macrae himself nodded briefly to them all. He was the biggest man in the room and although not by yards the best dressed, easily the most impressive, Silver thought.
‘A dram and a pint,’ Macrae said, putting down a pint of bitter and a double shot of whisky in front of Silver. ‘And a dram and a pint for me.’
The room was filled with smoke and very warm and Macrae’s face was red and sweaty. Silver had been waiting for him in the Incident Room at Cannon Row, thinking of Zoe and knowing that the evening was wrecked. Macrae had arrived, reeking of curry, to check the messages on his desk.
Silver had said, ‘We’re still getting sightings from everywhere. Green hats are the flavour of the week.’
Macrae grunted. ‘I need a drink. Come on.’
They had driven up Whitehall into the Strand and parked outside the Goodwood. Now Macrae threw the whisky back into his throat and drank nearly a third of the pint of bitter.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘What d’you think about Mrs Rose-Mary-bloody-Foster?’
The post-mortem had been brought forward at Macrae’s request and afterwards they had gone down to interview the bereaved wife.
Silver said, ‘I think I’d have had a flat in London if I was married to her.’
Macrae nodded slowly. ‘She’s a female Svengali.’ He drained another third of his pint mug and rose. ‘Bloody chilli sauce,’ he said, and made for the door.
At first he had surprised Silver with his literary allusions. He had been equally surprised when he had seen the bookshelves in his house. There were modern novels but also Dickens and Trollope and Sir Walter Scott. It had taken Silver a little time to work out that Macrae deliberately gave the impression of being less clever than he was. In the case of Mrs Henry Foster, he was absolutely right.
*
They had left London in the early afternoon to drive to Sussex and the holiday traffic was building up. This meant that Eddie Twyford was in his element. Macrae had told him to get a move on and Eddie’s way of fulfilling his guv’nor’s wish was to abuse other motorists, and gun the car down quiet suburban streets to the terror of young mothers pushing prams. In this way he soon had them out in the open country.
Macrae sat in the back, enveloped in an overcoat and his own thoughts. Silver was in front with Eddie, who was never really happy outside London. ‘Too effing draughty down here,’ he said. ‘Look at them cows. Freeze their balls off, this weather.’ It was his proud boast that he had only ever been abroad once, on a day trip to Boulogne, and had not been near the seaside since he was a child.
The countryside was still in the grip of winter. Iron grey clouds were rushing over brown ploughed fields. Occasionally there was a splash of green where winter wheat made a brave showing, but spring was still a long way away.
Eddie drove fast. He had done his homework and as they entered Sussex he left the main roads and shot through tiny villages, deserted and forbidding.
Ninety minutes after leaving London they reached the Fosters’ house. It lay in the folds of the South Downs west of Chichester and stood among beech trees at the end of a muddy lane. Silver had been expecting something cottagey, hung with red tiles. But the house was starkly modern, built of timber and grey brick.
Mrs Rose-Mary Foster met them at the door and took them into the sitting-room. The fire was laid but not lit and the air in the room had the chill of a crypt. The furnishing and colour tones, pale greys and greens, seemed to make it colder.
‘I’m sorry to make you come all this way,’ Mrs Foster said, ‘but as I told your staff, one of my sons is ill and I can’t leave him.’
She was in her late forties, with short cropped greying hair, and was wearing a dark grey sweater over a white blouse, a dark blue skirt, dark claret-coloured woollen stockings and flat-heeled black brogues. She wore rimless glasses and her plain, sallow face was devoid of make-up.
‘I’m sure you’d like some tea. Gerald!’ she called into the silent house. They heard the pad of feet coming down the wooden staircase.
A boy of about eleven appeared. He was in pyjamas and a dressing-gown and his ancestry showed in his dark yellow skin.
‘My son has had chicken-pox,’ she said, ‘but he is no longer infectious. Gerald, would you please put the kettle on.’
The boy had a serious, wide-eyed face. ‘Yes, mother.’ Silver’s first impression of the house and its inhabitants was of a lack of emotional as well as physical warmth. There was no sound of music or TV coming from upstairs as there might have been in the sick-room of a child in an ordinary house.
For a moment he saw, in his mind’s eye, the council flat on the Douglas Garden Estate, with Sharlene watching the TV hour after hour. He had a momentary pang of gratitude for his own family. Infuriating, opinionated, aggressive – at least they throbbed with life.
‘Now, how can I help you?’ Mrs Foster said.
‘I’m sorry we have to intrude,’ Macrae began. ‘I realise what—’
She cut him off. ‘Yes, thank you, Superintendent, let us assume the niceties.’
She was dry-eyed, Silver noted, and there was no evidence that she had been weeping. ‘I’ll do whatever I can to help you,’ she said. ‘My main preoccupation now is trying to keep life on an even keel for the sake of my two boys. But I also very much want whoever killed Henry to be brought to justice. So . . . what do you wish to know?’
‘We want to know what sort of man your husband was, Mrs Foster,’ Macrae said. ‘We want a picture of him. We’re interviewing his colleagues, of course, but they will only know his professional side.’
‘What you’re really asking is how did someone like myself meet and marry a coloured man, isn’t that it?’
‘I wouldn’t—’
‘Superintendent, I’m a member of the West Sussex County Council and I sit on the Social Services Committee. I know exactly what the police think of coloured people. And what they do to them. I know you must be wondering ho
w a white English woman . . .’
‘Why you married him is your business,’ Macrae said, his heavy head falling slightly forward. ‘It is our business to find out what he was doing under Hungerford Bridge with knife wounds to the stomach.’ It was brutally phrased and Silver saw her flinch.
Gerald brought in a tea tray. ‘Thank you,’ his mother said. ‘Go back to bed now.’
‘Can I put the TV on?’
She hesitated. Silver thought she was about to refuse, but their presence must have made her change her mind. ‘All right. But only for half an hour.’
She waited in silence until the boy had gone upstairs, then she said, as though they were old friends and neighbours, ‘How do you like your tea?’
Silver watched her pour. There was something about her that made him uncomfortable. She reminded him of his sister, Ruth. When he was little he used to call her bossy-boots and regularly got a slap in the face. That’s what this woman was, a bossy-boots, and given her head she would grind them into the pale grey Wilton carpet.
But Macrae was not going to give her her head.
‘Do you want to expand on that?’ she said.
‘Not at the moment,’ Macrae said.
It was like watching two fencers, except that Macrae didn’t go to war with a foil but with a battle-axe.
She switched to attack again, ‘Have you arrested anyone?’
‘Not yet. If it’s all right with you, Mrs Foster, I’ll ask the questions.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, stiffly. ‘I have certain rights.’
Macrae put his cup down. His face was slightly flushed. ‘Of course you have. Now let’s start at the beginning.’
Mrs Foster must have realised that her time had not come. She retreated into a chilly dignity which exactly matched the room.
She spoke in short sentences without emotion. Henry Foster had been the son of a black solicitor whose practice was in an outer London suburb. Unlike most blacks in Britain, Henry had gone to a small private school and emerged with ambitions to become an actor. He had worked with amateur groups and then with a small repertory company, but after a year without a part had taken a job as a trainee TV announcer. From there he had moved over to TV journalism and gone into the provinces. It was while he was working for Hampshire Television that Rose-Mary had met him.
Dirty Weekend (Macrae and Silver Book 1) Page 11