by Roberta Kray
31
Stanley Parrish had two messages when he checked with reception on Tuesday morning. He took the slips of paper from Liz, glanced at them and thanked her. One was from Ma Fenner, the other from his contact at the coroner’s office. Up in his office, he turned on the electric fire before sitting down at his desk and picking up the phone. He rang the coroner’s first and asked to be put through to Mr Miller.
‘It’s Stanley,’ he said. ‘What have you got for me?’
‘Nothing definitive, Mr Parrish, but I’ve had a chat with the pathologist and he’s checked his notes. There’s nothing in them to suggest Angela Bruce ever had a child, but then that wasn’t what he was looking for. Truth is, he can’t recall much about her – there’s a lot of bodies pass through the morgue.’
It struck Stanley as profoundly sad that even the man who had cut her open and removed all her vital organs couldn’t clearly remember her. She had been, apparently, as anonymous in death as she had been in life. ‘Okay, Charlie,’ he said. ‘Thanks for that.’
‘Sorry I couldn’t have been of more help. The trouble with these people is that they never want to say too much in case it comes back and bites them on the bum. But if you want my opinion – for what it’s worth – I reckon Mackenzie would have written down everything he’d seen. He’s the meticulous type, known for it. So if it isn’t there…’
‘It probably didn’t exist.’
‘Exactly.’
Stanley thanked him again and hung up. He wasn’t much further on as regards absolute evidence but he trusted Charlie’s judgement. And it tallied with what Ma Fenner had told him about Angela being barren. Ma was his next port of call. He felt a faint flurry of excitement as he dialled the number. She wasn’t the sort to get in touch unless she had something useful to say.
Ma picked up after a couple of rings. ‘Hello?’
‘Mrs Fenner? Hello, it’s Stanley Parrish. I’m sorry I missed your call. How are you?’
‘Still alive, thank the good Lord. It’s always a good sign when you wake up breathing at my age. But that’s beside the point. What I called you about was that Calvin. You remember? Angela’s boyfriend. Only my daughter was round yesterday and I mentioned your visit and she reckons he’s working at that bottling plant in Hoxton. Or at least he was six months back. Her old man had a job there too before… well, that’s another story, but she remembers Calvin. She used to see him around the estate.’
‘Is she sure?’ Stanley asked. ‘Only that’s quite a while ago. We’re talking fourteen years or so.’
‘Yes, she’s sure. Calvin Cross, that’s his name. She’d meet George at the plant occasionally and that’s when she saw him again.’
Stanley jotted it down in his notebook. ‘That could be useful. Thank you.’
‘If anyone knows about Angela’s past, he will.’
‘I don’t suppose you could give me a description?’
Ma sighed down the line. ‘No, it’s too far back for me. He’s a coloured fella, though. Well, half and half. Tall.’ She left a long pause as though she was searching her memory, but nothing else came to her. ‘Sorry. I could ring my Jeanie if you like. She’d be able to tell you more.’
‘No, it’s all right. I can ask at the plant.’
‘Do you have any news on Lolly? She was here at the weekend, on Sunday. Just standing there, staring at nothing. Pouring down with rain it was. I’m surprised she didn’t catch her death.’
Stanley didn’t want to say too much. ‘She’s gone to stay with a foster family in Kent. Hopefully, it will work out for her.’
‘Well, I hope so too. Can’t be any worse than living with the Cecils,’ Ma said bluntly. ‘Brenda’s oldest, that Tony, just got arrested again.’
‘Is that to do with the Joseph Clayton business?’
‘Yes, that’s it. Put the bloke’s eye out, by all accounts. He’s a wrong ’un, that lad, pure evil.’
‘He’s still alive, though? Clayton, I mean.’
‘So far as I know.’
Stanley made another quick note to call the hospital and get an update. He’d made Lolly a promise and felt obliged to keep it. ‘Okay, thanks, Mrs Fenner. I’m grateful for your help. It’s much appreciated.’
He replaced the receiver and checked his watch. It was almost eleven. Kettlers, the bottling plant, probably broke for lunch about midday. As he had nothing else to do – no new jobs had come in – he decided to head over to Hoxton and see if he could track down Calvin Cross. With luck, the man might have something useful to tell him.
He crouched down and turned off the fire, taking a moment to warm his hands. Winter was setting in and it was cold outside. As he straightened up, he could feel the creak of arthritis in his knees. It bothered him to think he might kick the bucket without ever getting to the bottom of the Fury case. Not that he was old, not really, but he was no spring chicken either. He no longer had the energy he used to have, or the drive. Sometimes it was an effort just to get up in the morning.
Stanley locked his office, went downstairs and walked round the corner to where his car was parked. He had a fog in his head from the brandy he’d drunk the night before. There was a bad taste in his mouth too. He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke through his nose. Maybe he should give up the booze, although he couldn’t think of what else he’d do with all the long, empty hours. It was a way of getting through, of lurching from one day to the next.
The traffic was bad, but he still had twenty minutes to kill by the time he got to Hoxton and found a place to park. He went into a newsagent and bought a birthday card for his nephew, Nick. Seventeen already. It saddened Stanley that he rarely saw the kid now that he was no longer welcome in his sister’s house. And that wasn’t down to her – he and Patsy had always been close – but her small-minded bigot of a husband, Maurice Trent.
Maurice couldn’t stomach the fact that his brother-in-law was homosexual. He had the same twisted view on queers as Joe Quinn, believing they should all be hung, drawn and quartered for their ‘unnatural desires’. And even that was too good for them. Of course, Stanley had always been discreet, even to the point of playing along with talk of girlfriends and ‘settling down’. But then there had been the trouble with Richard. It had been hushed up but somehow Maurice had found out – probably through his Masonic pals – and from that day forth Stanley had been persona non grata when it came to visiting the Trent household.
He didn’t blame Patsy – the poor woman had to live with the bastard – but he missed seeing Nick and watching him grow up. And he resented Maurice’s insinuations that he was in some way a threat to his nephew, an affront to morality, a contaminating force that had to be eliminated.
Back in the car, Stanley wrote out the card and enclosed a tenner. It was more than he could afford but he didn’t begrudge it. Perhaps, once Nick was eighteen, they would be able to re-establish some kind of relationship. Patsy rang occasionally, always when Maurice was out of the house. The marriage wasn’t a happy one but, like so many women, she lacked the will or the confidence to end it.
Stanley wrote the address on the envelope and attached a stamp. He got out of the car and walked across the road. ‘Happy birthday,’ he said as he slipped the card into the post box. ‘Have a good one.’
By the time he’d walked round the corner to the bottling plant, the workers were already filing out. Stanley scanned the crowd, looking for a likely candidate, but there were lots of black men in their thirties, any one of which could have been Calvin. In the end, he stopped a young woman and asked for her help. She gazed around for a while and then pointed towards a group coming through the door.
‘That’s him there, the one with the stripy shirt.’
The first things Stanley noticed were his height – he was over six foot tall – followed by the nut-brown eyes and then the gold wedding band on the third finger of his left hand. He went over and introduced himself, opening his wallet to show his ID. ‘I wonder if I could have a word? It’s abou
t Angela Martin.’
Calvin smiled, his eyes lighting up. ‘Ange? God, how is she? I haven’t seen her in years.’ But then his smile gradually faded. ‘Shit. Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’
‘Let me buy you a coffee,’ Stanley said. ‘I’ll tell you all about it.’
32
Calvin Cross put his elbows on the café table and rubbed his face with his hands. ‘Jesus, I still can’t believe it. Why’d she go and do a thing like that? Why would she?’
Stanley didn’t have a straightforward answer for him. ‘I don’t know. She had some serious problems, including a kind of psychosis, perhaps. I think it had been going on for a while. But why she finally decided to… I’ve no idea. Did you know she’d gone back to Kellston, that she was living on the Mansfield again?’
Calvin shook his head. ‘No, the last time I saw her… it was years ago. After we split up, we didn’t have any contact.’
‘She had a child with her, a girl called Lolita.’
‘A kid?’
‘I’ve heard that Angela couldn’t have children. Is that true? We think Lolly must have been adopted although we haven’t been able to find the paperwork.’
‘Yeah, it broke her heart. That’s all she wanted: kids and a family of her own. The doctors reckoned they couldn’t do anything for her.’ Calvin played with his wedding ring. ‘It’s why we broke up. She said it wasn’t fair on me, that one day I’d resent her for it. I told her it didn’t matter, as long as we had each other, but… it caused endless rows. She didn’t believe me, couldn’t believe me. I don’t know, she just couldn’t get beyond it. And maybe she was right. Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to cope. In the end it all got too much and we split up. Do you have kids, Mr Parrish?’
Stanley shook his head. ‘No.’
‘I’ve got two boys. My pride and joy. Now they’re here, I can’t imagine life without them. Perhaps she knew me better than I knew myself.’
Stanley nodded, lifted the mug to his mouth and took a few sips of the black coffee he’d ordered. ‘We’re trying to track down some family for Lolly, but it’s proving difficult. Angela was using the surname Martin when you met, wasn’t she?’
Calvin’s face twisted. ‘Yeah, she was still married to him. That bastard has a lot to answer for. If anyone screwed her up, it was him.’
Stanley leaned forward, keen to verify what he already suspected. ‘Are we talking about Billy Martin here?’
‘Who else? That lowlife was the biggest mistake of her life. Her family didn’t approve, and they were right. But she couldn’t see it, of course. She was mad about him, infatuated. When they tried to stop her seeing him, he persuaded her to do a runner. She was little more than a kid then – only sixteen – and he was twenty-five. They got married up in Gretna, and it was all downhill from there.’
‘I take it he wasn’t perfect husband material?’
‘He was a shit, Mr Parrish, if you’ll pardon my language. Once he’d got her, he stopped being interested, except as someone to torment. Handy with his fists too, when he was in the mood. She soon realised it had all been a big mistake, but she was too scared to leave him. Anyway, she had nowhere else to go. She was too ashamed, too humiliated, to go crawling back to her parents, so she stuck it out until she had a bit of luck. Billy got nicked for robbery and sent down for a long stretch. While he was away she got herself a job and a flat and began to realise there was more to life than being Billy Martin’s punchbag.’
‘And that’s when you met her?’
‘My sister worked in the same shop up West. She was the one who introduced us. I liked her straight off; there was something about her. She was a genuine sort of person.’
‘Was there any sign back then that she…’ Stanley paused, looking for the right way of putting it. ‘Would you say she was depressed or anything like that? Did she ever act irrationally?’
Calvin spooned some sugar into his mug and gave the tea a stir. ‘No, not at all. I mean, there was the whole business with not being able to have kids – that used to get her down – but she coped with it. And she was afraid of Billy. That was understandable. Of course, she didn’t have to worry about him so long as he was banged up. He wasn’t happy about her filing for divorce but there wasn’t much he could do about it.’
‘Until he got out,’ Stanley said. ‘And tracked her down.’
Calvin’s face grew dark. ‘Did he do that?’
Stanley nodded. ‘He did, unfortunately. For some reason, about eight years ago, she moved back to Kellston. She was calling herself Bruce by then, Angela Bruce, but he still managed to find her. Does that name mean anything to you? I’m thinking it could have been her maiden name or that she might have got married again, and that Lolly was her husband’s child.’
‘Why would she go back there? The estate would be the first place he’d look. He’d have had the address from the divorce papers.’
‘I don’t know,’ Stanley said. ‘It’s been bothering me too. There must have been something that drew her back, but I just can’t figure out what it was.’ He shared the frustration of the younger man, unable to fathom what Angela had been thinking in returning to the Mansfield. ‘What about the name? Does it ring any bells?’
Calvin waved a hand in a brief, dismissive gesture. ‘No, I’ve never heard it before. Parr was her maiden name. But if you’re thinking of contacting her parents about the kid, I wouldn’t bother. Her mum died years ago, and her dad wouldn’t be interested even if she was Angela’s flesh and blood.’
‘Is it Lambeth? Is that where she came from?’
‘That’s what she said.’
‘He might not even know she’s dead.’
‘Oh, she was dead to him years ago, from the moment she ran off with that lowlife.’ Calvin stared down at his untouched sandwich for a moment before lifting his head again. ‘Have you talked to him, to Billy?’
‘I can’t find him. No one seems to know where he is. He disappeared a few months after he caught up with Angela. And that’s another strange thing. You’d have thought she would be pleased, wouldn’t you? Glad to see the back of him. But apparently she kicked up a stink, reported him missing to the police and everything.’
‘He’s a manipulator, a control freak. He’d have found a way to get inside her head. That’s what he’s like.’
‘Rumour has it that he could be six foot under.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ Calvin said. ‘It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.’
Stanley heard the venom in his voice and wondered if he knew more than he was saying. ‘Have you heard something?’
Calvin hissed out a breath. ‘Shit, man, don’t start looking in my direction. I don’t know zilch about Billy Martin, other than he made Angela’s life a misery.’
‘I wasn’t suggesting that you did.’
‘I don’t even know what the bastard looks like.’
‘No, I understand,’ Stanley said. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it. I wasn’t implying… I’m just scrabbling around in the dark, trying to get some answers.’
A silence fell over the table. Then Calvin sighed. ‘Sorry. It’s been a shock. I still can’t believe she’s gone. What’s going to happen to the kid?’
‘We’ve found a place for her with a family in Kent. I guess she’ll stay there if we can’t trace anyone else.’
‘Bruce,’ Calvin murmured, his eyebrows coming together in a frown.