Banks pushed his plate of half-eaten pie aside. Blackstone followed suit. ‘If it’s going to be that easy, we might as well throw in September and November as well, if that’s no problem.’
‘Not at all. Early afternoon good?’
‘Fine with me. Thanks, Ken.’
‘Right, then. You know where the place is?’
‘I ought to do.’
‘I’ll ring you in the morning, tell you who to ask for.’
‘In that case,’ said Banks, ‘I’ll put off interviewing Bradley and Chadwick’s daughter until Linda’s had a chance to examine the photos. Who knows, I might have a few more things to ask them about if we get lucky on this.’ He finished his Coke and stood up. ‘Shall we?’
The young woman with the children gave Banks a weary smile as they left.
Blackstone nudged him. ‘You could have been in there, mate. I saw the way she was eyeing you. Ready-made family.’
Banks laughed. ‘Just what I need right now.’
Wytherton was about a forty-five-minute drive from Eastvale. At the heart of the Heights estate, Southam Terrace was a narrow, potholed street of through terrace houses blackened by years of industrial smoke. The council might well have restored the Victorian town hall to its former sandstone glory, but nobody had bothered sandblasting the streets of Wytherton Heights. Even the sunlight didn’t do much to brighten up the sooty facades and grimy slate roofs. Gerry parked her lime-green Corsa across from the Moffat house, and she and Annie walked over the hot tarmac. The smell of warm tar provoked in Annie a sudden memory of sitting by the roadside on hot summer days when she was a child, picking off chunks of softened tar and rolling them into balls.
The gate was closed, peeling green paint in need of a touch-up, and beyond it two children played on a postage-stamp lawn littered with bright-coloured plastic toys. The children, one about two, the other about five, looked up suspiciously from the structure they were building of different-coloured interlocking blocks.
‘That’s nice,’ said Annie, crouching. ‘What is it, a castle?’
‘Prison,’ said the five-year-old, and sniggered.
‘They learn young around here,’ Annie muttered, standing up. ‘Mum and Dad in?’
‘Dunno.’
Gerry knocked on the door, and they waited almost a full minute before anyone answered. They could hear the TV playing loudly inside, some overexcited sporting commentary, but nothing else. Eventually the door opened and a man in a grubby string vest stood in front of them. ‘Yeah? What is it?’
Annie flashed her warrant card. ‘Mr Moffat?’
‘No. Lenny Thornton.’
‘Is Mr Moffat at home?’
Thornton scratched his head. ‘Well, he was here maybe ten years or so ago, but it’ll be the missus you’re after. Well, the girlfriend. You know. Her name’s Moffat.’
‘Mimsy?’ said Gerry.
‘Bloody hell, no, pet. That’s her young lass. Sinead’s her mother.’ He had a strong Geordie accent. Annie was used to hearing it, but she could see Gerry struggling to understand.
‘Is Sinead Moffat in, then?’ As Annie spoke, she and Gerry were edging forward into the front room. Lenny Thornton edged back politely as they moved forward. Eventually they were able to shut the door behind them. The closed curtains let in a faint glow, but the main source of light was a large flickering TV screen showing an international football game. Maybe there was a big tournament on somewhere that Annie hadn’t heard about, but she thought it more likely the game was a repeat. When she saw who was playing, she knew it was. She had watched it several days ago.
‘Sinead’s out,’ said Thornton, ‘but you’s welcome to a cuppa, if you’s like.’ He subsided into a well-worn armchair, lit a cigarette and gestured to a teapot and a cluster of stained mugs on the table under the window. ‘Kettle’s in the kitchen.’
‘No, thanks.’ Annie glanced around the room. It was untidy, with stacks of magazines and articles of clothing strewn here and there. An unpleasant odour hung about the place: cigarette smoke, old socks and boiled cabbage. Then there was Lenny Thornton.
There are some men, Annie thought, such as Daniel Craig and Aidan Turner, who should be shirtless as often as possible, but Lenny Thornton wasn’t one of them. His hairy belly drooped over his belt, little squares of fat pushing through the net of his string vest, and his man-breasts wobbled when he moved. He could also do with a shave and a haircut, and probably a wash, too. A tin of Carlsberg Special Brew rested on one arm of his armchair and an ashtray on the other. Annie also noticed, as her eyes adjusted, that there was another person in the room, a man with long, greasy hair and a lined unshaven face, who might well be dead for all the sound he’d made or movement he’d shown. Annie thought he resembled a zombie biker in the dim light. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked.
‘That’s Sinead’s brother,’ Lenny Thornton answered. ‘Hasna moved from that chair in ten years. Except to go to the local, that is. Say hello to the polis, Johnny.’
Johnny gave what sounded like a grunt without taking his eyes away from the football game. The door on the other side of the room was open, and Annie could see through the kitchen and the open back door to the yard beyond, with its high brick wall and latched wooden gate. A bicycle without wheels leaned against the wall. She knew without looking that beyond the gate would be a narrow cobbled alley, and on the opposite side another backyard exactly the same. People used to have their WCs out there, but most had got indoor toilets these days and only used the old outhouses as storage sheds. At least a light breeze blew in through the open door. There were two hard-backed chairs at the table by the window, and Annie decided they were probably the safest place to sit, after she had moved a pile of old Racing Posts from one of them.
‘Do you know how long Sinead will be?’ she asked.
‘No telling with her when she goes out and about.’
‘Do you know where we can find her?’
‘Could be anywhere.’
Annie pressed on. ‘And Mimsy?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. Her name’s Mimosa, by the way. Sinead says she named her after a posh drink she had at a wedding once. But everyone calls her Mimsy. ’Cept Sinead, that is.’
‘Any other children?’
‘She’s got an older brother.’
‘What’s he called? Buck’s Fizz?’
‘Come again?’
‘Never mind.’
‘Albert, he’s called. After his granddad. Silly name for a kid these days, I’d say.’
Albert and Mimosa, Annie thought. It sounded like a good stage name. What act would they perform? Magician and assistant? ‘Where’s Albert?’
‘He’s out an’ all.’
‘So there’s just you and Johnny here?’
‘That’s right, hen.’
Annie sighed. ‘Lucky us.’
‘So why don’t you just tell us what you want, then you can go about your business and we can get back to the footie.’
Annie glanced at the screen. ‘I’ve seen it,’ she said. ‘Croatia win 3–2 in extra time.’
Thornton glared at her. ‘You can be a right bitch, you know that, love?’
‘I’ve been called worse. Look,’ Annie went on, softening her tone. ‘I’ve got a serious job to do here, and you’re not being very helpful.’
‘I can’t tell you people are here when they’re not, can I? That’d be lying. You’re not asking me to lie to the polis, now, are you?’
‘OK, but I’m sure you could give us some idea of where Sinead is?’
‘I told you. I don’t know where she goes.’
‘What does she do? Has she got a job?’
‘Job? Nay, lass, none of us has a job. Everyone knows there’s no work around these parts, even the tarts what work at the Job Centre. Hasn’t been for years. The old uns’ll tell you it was Thatcher shutting down the steelworks and engineering factories. Even Johnny over there’s never had a job in his life, and he won’t see t’other s
ide of forty again. Job?’
So Mimsy Moffat was probably third-generation unemployed, Annie realised. She thought for a moment, then opened her briefcase and slipped out a copy of the artist’s impression. He had tried to make Mimsy appear as alive and unblemished as possible, and succeeded to a large extent. She showed the image to Lenny Thornton. ‘Could this be Mimsy?’
Thornton squinted, then took the sheet of paper to the window and inched open the curtains to let the direct light fall on it. ‘That’s her,’ he said, handing it back. ‘To a tee. It’s bloody good, that is. Who’s been drawing her, then? Is it one of her own?’
‘She draws?’
‘Aye. Anything and everything. She’d draw the bloody kitchen sink if there was nothing else around.’ He glanced from Annie to Gerry, and Annie thought she could see fear in his eyes. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘It’s never good news, having the polis around. Is something wrong?’
‘It’s not one of Mimsy’s drawings,’ Annie said. ‘Don’t you watch the news? Read the papers?’
Thornton sat down again. ‘Racing Post, some days. And Johnny won’t have the news on. Says it’s all lies and government conspiracies. We just watch Sky Sports. Look, love, come on, you’re making us nervous.’
Annie sighed. ‘Mr Thornton, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but we think Mimsy’s dead. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re asking questions.’
Thornton turned to her, slack-jawed. ‘Dead? What do you mean you think Mimsy’s dead?’
‘We believe she was murdered last Tuesday night. Have you seen her since then?’
‘No. No, I haven’t. But . . . murder? Our Mimsy? Who’d want to murder her? Johnny, will you turn that thing down?’
Johnny did something with the remote and the volume quietened a little.
‘That’s what we’d like to find out,’ Annie said. ‘We really need to talk to Sinead.’
‘But you can’t think she had anything to do with it.’
‘I’m not saying she did. But she’s Mimsy’s mother. She’ll have to be informed. And someone will have to come to Eastvale Infirmary and identify Mimsy. We’d prefer her mother to come if at all possible.’
‘Eastvale?’ Thornton lit a cigarette. His movements seemed to be in slow motion, mechanical. Annie realised he must be in shock, for all his apparent bravado. She didn’t think she could have broken the news any more gently. ‘Mr Thornton? Are you all right? Do you want me to call someone for you? Doctor? A neighbour?’
Thornton waved his cigarette. ‘Nay, nay. I’m all right, hen. Just give me a minute for it to sink in, like. Our Mimsy. Murdered. What happened? Who did it?’
‘Somebody gave her a beating. We don’t know who.’
Johnny still hadn’t reacted at all, and Annie doubted that he had even heard what she had said. She decided against trying to involve him for the time being. He was Mimsy’s uncle, and he was certainly weird, but there was no more reason to expect him to move out of his chair now than Thornton said he had in the last ten years. Johnny could wait.
‘When did you last see Mimsy, Mr Thornton?’ Annie pressed on.
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Come on, Mr Thornton. Try a bit harder. Please.’
Thornton furrowed his brow. ‘Few days ago, I suppose,’ he said finally.
‘She does live here, doesn’t she?’
‘When it suits her. She comes and goes. You know what they’re like.’ He let his head rest in his hands for a moment and rubbed his whiskered face. ‘Sorry, hen. I’ll miss her. She was a breath of fresh air around here, you know, when she was home.’ Then he got to his feet, knocking the Carlsberg Special Brew tin off the arm of the chair as he did so. Beer spilled over the threadbare carpet. ‘I need something a bit stronger than that,’ he said, taking a bottle of Johnnie Walker out of the cupboard and pouring himself a large glass before he returned to his armchair and took a gulp. Annie noticed that his hand was shaking.
‘Technically, she’s your stepdaughter, Lenny?’
‘Technically, me and Sinead aren’t actually married.’
‘How long have you been living here together?’
‘Six years.’
‘Common law, then. As good as. How old was Mimsy?’
‘Fifteen. And her brother Albert’s eighteen. Christ. Albert. He’ll be gutted. They’re both Sinead’s by her first husband. Les Moffat.’ He nodded towards the window. ‘The two wee uns out there are mine and Sinead’s.’
‘How many children altogether?’
‘Just the four.’
‘Where is Albert?’
‘He said he was off to go clubbing with some mates in Manchester. That were last Thursday.’
‘Do you know who these mates are? An address?’
‘Just mates of his.’
‘Where’s Les Moffat these days?’
‘No idea. Down south, somewhere, I think.’
‘So she stopped out a lot, Mimsy?’
‘Aye. I suppose you could say that.’
‘Nights as well?’
‘It were all the same to her.’
‘Where did she go?’
‘Search me. She never said. Mates. And asking Mimsy anything she didn’t want to tell you was like banging your head against a brick wall.’
‘Did she have a boyfriend?’
‘Not as far as I know. She might have had. I honestly don’t know what she got up to.’
‘Didn’t you worry about her?’
‘No sense worrying, is there? Que sera, sera.’
‘What about friends? Who did she hang out with?’
‘Just her mates as far as I know. That’s what she said if you ever asked her owt.’ He tried to mimic a young girl’s voice. ‘ “I’ve been with my mates”, “I’m going out with my mates.” ’
‘Know any of their names?’
‘Nah. Just, you know, they’re local kids.’
‘From school?’
Thornton reached for his cigarettes. ‘I suppose so. Where else do kids meet other kids?’
Gerry seemed uncomfortable, and Annie remembered that she came from a nice clean comfortable middle-class home and went to a posh school. She wasn’t used to this rough and ready way of life, the smells, the untidiness, the laissez-faire attitudes, the lack of discipline, the poverty. Annie had grown up in a messy and poor artists’ commune and lost her mother at an early age, but her childhood had not been without love, care and comfort. This, she thought, looking at Lenny and Johnny, is what becomes of certain people when they feel disenfranchised, get put down and ignored all the time and come to feel there’s no useful way through life for them, that nobody cares and nothing’s going to change for the better. The most extreme do what Johnny was doing and sit catatonic in their chairs, day in, day out. For the rest, there are drugs, drink, violence, crime or just simple apathy broken up by the distraction of video games, sex and mobile phones. Life is something to be got through. Days are hurdles, weeks are rivers to cross, months lakes and years oceans. Annie wondered if life had been like that for Mimsy, too.
‘Do you know where any of Mimsy’s friends live?’ she asked, without much hope.
‘No. Just here and there, around the estate, you know.’
‘Is there somewhere they hang out, some place in particular?’
‘Probably at the shopping mall or down on the Strip,’ said Thornton.
‘The Strip?’
‘Used to be the old Wytherton Town Street. It’s got a few shops and cafes, couple of pubs, little parks, places to hang out. The name’s a joke, like. The Strip. Las Vegas. There’s a bookie’s, but that’s as close to a casino as you’ll get down there. But it’s changed a lot. Too many Pakis for my liking. It’s like they’ve taken over everything. You might find some of her mates there if they don’t mind too much who they hang out with. It doesn’t really come alive until after dark. In daytime you’ll most likely find them at the shopping mall, hanging around the fountain, or painting each
other’s toenails in someone’s house.’
‘How far away is this Strip?’
‘Mile or so. There’s a bus goes from the next street over.’
Annie made a note. They could check out the shopping mall first, then come back later and see what they could find out on the Strip. In the meantime, their priority was to find Sinead Moffat. ‘So you’ve no idea where Mimsy’s mother is, Mr Thornton?’
Thornton drank some more whisky and took a deep drag on his cigarette. ‘You might as well know,’ he said. ‘You’d find out, anyway. Sinead’s a junkie. She goes off with her junkie friends and they spend all day on cloud fucking nine I don’t know where.’
‘Do you know their names?’
‘No. They never come here.’
‘You don’t share this life with her?’
‘No.’
Annie could see from his arms that he didn’t inject heroin, at any rate. ‘So Sinead is a heroin addict? That’s what you’re telling me?’
‘That’s right. Oh, she’s all official. Registered and all. And right now she’s on methadone and going for counselling at the treatment centre, so. For all the good it does.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Tried it all before, hasn’t she? She always goes back.’
‘But she shouldn’t be shooting up with the others at the moment, not if she’s on methadone?’
‘She shouldn’t be, no. When she’s clean, when she’s . . . oh, Christ, she can be the sweetest thing. She tries. My God, she tries. It just breaks your heart. I’m sorry. I really don’t know where she is. She went to the clinic for her dose. Then she was supposed to go for counselling. If she was feeling all right, she might have gone shopping in the town centre. Middlesbrough, like.’ Lenny Thornton had tears in his eyes. They had welled up so much that Annie was sure they would start to flow down his whiskery cheeks, but they didn’t; they just clung there stubbornly, moist and heavy, on the bottom rims of his eyelids.
Annie handed him a card. ‘I’m really sorry for your loss, Mr Thornton. You should be with your wife at a time like this. Will you try and get in touch with her and phone me when she comes back? And keep her here until I can get here?’
When the Music's Over: The 23rd DCI Banks Mystery Page 17