by Mark Hill
As soon as he saw her, the singer picked up a red rose from a pile next to the CD player providing his orchestral backing tracks, and threaded his way through the clutter of sofas and chairs to drop to one knee in front of Flick and serenade her. ‘Ma n’atu sole, Cchiù bello, oje ne’, O sole mio, Sta ’nfronte a te!’
Dying a little inside, Flick politely accepted the rose. She was relieved to spot Harry at a patio table in the garden, and quickly skirted around the edge of the room. If her father was pleased that his youngest daughter had unexpectedly walked back into his life, he didn’t show it.
‘Ladies,’ Harry vaguely gestured to two women at the table, ‘this is my daughter.’
Flick was surprised to see how much weight he had lost. Harry’s wavy silver hair still curdled over his head, but his skin sucked in sharply below the cheeks, and a trembling fin of skin hung beneath his jaw. He wore a lurid Hawaiian shirt, long shorts and desert boots. A trilby was placed on the table in front of him.
‘Sit yourself down.’ He gestured to a chair. ‘Becca, Claire, meet Felicity.’
Inside, the backing track changed to a jolly tune Flick recognised from a million TV ads. The baritone pumped his arms as he sang.
‘That’s not your daughter,’ said one of the women.
‘You’re thinking of my eldest. I got two daughters. This is Felicity, she’s followed in her old man’s footsteps. She’s a constable, a Murder Detective!’
‘I’m a DS now,’ corrected Flick, but he would have known that, Nina would have told him.
‘The single one,’ said Claire. ‘Can’t keep a man.’
‘She’d have more success with men if she smiled,’ said Becca.
‘Can we talk?’ Flick asked her father, impatient.
‘Perhaps she’s not interested in men. Perhaps she’s one of those.’
‘What have I told you about reading those magazines?’ Harry wagged a finger at Becca. ‘Putting ideas into your head!’ He tilted the hat quickly onto his head as if trapping a mouse beneath it. ‘Now, ladies, I expect Felicity won’t staying long, so perhaps you could excuse us.’
The two women took an age pulling on their cardigans and gathering up their things – Flick had cleared crime scenes more quickly – and clung to each other as they made the treacherous journey inside.
‘My harem.’ Harry laughed, as Flick took in the view of the landscaped garden and new-build bungalows on either side. ‘Don’t pay no mind. At their age, they get the wrong end of the stick. You’re still with that Alex, of course.’
‘We broke up,’ said Flick. Years ago, as he well knew.
‘Play the field while you can, girl, but remember the clock’s ticking. You don’t want to end up on your own.’
‘I’m not here to talk about that,’ she said quickly. ‘When you were based at Hackney nick in the eighties there was a children’s home.’ She took out her notebook and pen. ‘Run by a man called Gordon …’
‘Tallis.’ Harry sipped from a mug. ‘That’s a name that takes me back.’
‘What can you tell me about him?’
‘He was a squalid little man who ran a squalid little home on a squalid little street. It would have been closed down in a heartbeat these days. The whole area was bulldozed and redeveloped a long time ago. It’s all swanky apartments now, and vegan restaurants.’
‘He was abusive?’
‘Not only that, but he used the kids to shift heroin around North London.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Everyone knew. Well, certain people did.’ Harry took off the hat to pat his hair, tipped it back in place. ‘You hate me because I’ve never lived up to standards you consider acceptable, but you have to remember it was a different world back then. Yes, I was on the take, but I wasn’t the only one. Tallis paid money to keep certain officers off his back. I was the conduit, the channel, if you will. He delivered cash to me and I distributed it to cops, councillors and numerous petty officials, who would turn a blind eye to his using the home to move drugs. A clever little operation, nobody would suspect a children’s home, not back then. A vulnerable young woman called Sally Raynor came to make the payment. She was upper class but preferred the gutter, and you couldn’t get more lowlife than Gordon Tallis. Nice girl but a mess, an addict. She disappeared off the face off the earth.’
‘You think Tallis had something to do with it.’
‘He was a combustible chap.’ He drilled a finger into his temple. ‘Not right upstairs. A creepy fellow with a smile that made your skin crawl.’
‘And he died in a fire at the home.’
‘The Longacre burned to the ground, with him inside. Not a great loss to society. I imagine the kids did a jig for joy.’
‘Was it started on purpose?’
‘Word is, Gordon’s friends in the drugs business were becoming very unhappy with the way he was running things. When his body was found inside it was handcuffed to a radiator.’
Flick sat bolt upright. ‘Handcuffed?’
‘Yeah.’ Harry winced. ‘My handcuffs, as it happens.’ When she stared, he said, ‘Don’t look at me like that, they were stolen.’
‘By whom?’ asked Flick.
‘By a nasty little shit called Connor Laird.’
Flick felt the blood accelerate around her veins. Inside, the baritone threw his hands up at the climax to the song, and his audience clapped.
‘Connor Laird. Do you know what became of him?’
‘Oh, yeah.’ Harry smiled at her eager question. ‘He also burned to death in that fire.’
Inside, the backing track on the opera singer’s CD player changed, and the singer’s baritone soared over the first notes of ‘Nessun Dorma’.
‘What a racket.’ Harry shook his head. ‘We have to listen to that every week. It’s terrible what they do to pensioners. Take my advice, Felicity, don’t get old.’ He sighed at his daughter’s obvious impatience. ‘Look, we didn’t have the fancy forensics you people rely on these days. An unidentified body was found next to Tallis, and Connor Laird was the only kid not to come out of that home. All the others, every single one of them, were accounted for.’
‘You’re absolutely sure it was him?’
‘As sure as we could be.’
‘But how do you know?’
‘Because,’ said Harry patiently, ‘Tallis and Connor had got into some kind of conflict that escalated out of control, and it looks like he took the kid with him.’
‘And this fire, these deaths, were never investigated; why?’
‘There would be a few coppers, my love, with prosperous retirements to look forward to, who would have to answer some very difficult questions if their relationship with Gordon Tallis was put under a microscope. There was no paperwork connected to Connor, no birth certificate, no family or dependents. He came out of nowhere and he died.’ He tugged at the pouch of skin beneath his jaw. ‘And nobody cared, because it was in a lot of people’s interests, mine included, that they didn’t.’
‘And what if he wasn’t dead?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Hypothetically, what would become of him?’
He thought about it. ‘Connor Laird was a bad seed. I met him once, I looked into his eyes and they were – what’s the word? – feral. He was full of contempt for the world, and everyone in it. Nothing good would come of him. If he grew up … well, woe betide anybody who got in his way.’ Harry narrowed his eyes. ‘I remember the fire occurred just after that judge and his wife visited the place.’
Flick gripped her pen. ‘Leonard Drake?’
‘That was him. One of our detectives went to his house for a statement and the old boy told him in no uncertain terms to sling his hook.’
‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Already?’ asked Harry. ‘Got what you wanted and now you’re going?’
‘Yes.’
‘Listen to that.’ Harry smiled at the baritone, whose hands were clasped to his chest as he serenaded an old couple on a
sofa. ‘He’s singing something slow and sad and lonesome. Must be for us, Felicity.’
So Nina had already told him she was going to Australia.
‘I’m too old for all this nonsense,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to go on fighting this war, can’t we call a truce? It makes me sad that Nina can find it in her heart to forgive and you can’t.’
‘I’m going.’
‘I’m holding out an olive branch here,’ he said, exasperated.
‘You couldn’t even be bothered to see mum.’ Flick threw the notebook and pen in her bag. ‘I asked and asked, but you didn’t go. You took no interest in us,’ Flick said bitterly, ‘in me or Nina or Daniel.’
‘Look,’ Harry said softly, ‘the affairs, leaving your mum, not taking an interest when she was ill, and, of course, my misadventures in uniform – I’ve never lived up to your lofty standards and never will. But let’s be honest. What you really hate me for is the one thing I that I could do nothing about. Dan.’
‘That’s not true,’ she said, and her phone went off in her bag. By the time she snatched it up, it had rung off.
‘Well, let me tell you something.’ His expression darkened. ‘He was your brother, but he was my son, my only son, and you will never know what it’s like to lose a child. To spend every day wondering whether he’s out there somewhere or buried in a shallow grave.’
‘I’m not listening to this.’
It had always been like this between them, they couldn’t spend more than twenty minutes in each other’s company without the usual resentments rising to the surface.
‘Nina, who is a loving and caring person, has always known how much his disappearance hit me, here.’ Harry thumped his chest. ‘So don’t for one second believe you’ve got a monopoly in suffering. And I’ll tell you something else: she deserves a life away from me and from you.’
Flick flinched. ‘That’s not true, she loves—’
‘Me and you, we’re parasites, Felicity.’ He always knew how to play on her anxieties. ‘And as far as I’m concerned, she and that family of hers deserve every happiness.’ Harry looked at the residents and staff enraptured by the singer’s performance. ‘And one last thing, Flick—’
‘Don’t call me that.’
‘When you get all twisted up about how much you dislike me, just remember, I got people around me night and day. I sometimes have to go and sit in my room to get away from the hectic social whirl. So, yeah, I’ll regret not seeing you if that’s the way it has to be, but I will never be lonely. Can you honestly say the same?’
Right at that moment, the singer reached the big climax of ‘Nessun Dorma’, and there was a smattering of applause. He bowed low and moved around the room giving out roses. The patio doors opened and a female staff member stood at the door. ‘Everything okay, Harry?’
‘Grand, love.’ A big smile lit up his face. ‘Got a visitor.’
Flick waited for him to say, my daughter. But he didn’t.
‘You missed the performance,’ said the woman.
‘I’ll catch it next week, or maybe the week after that.’ He winked. ‘I’m just coming in now.’
When the woman left, Harry sidled up to his daughter. ‘Pop in again if you’re in the neighbourhood. Make it a longer visit next time.’
Before he’d taken two steps inside he was grinning and laughing, the life and soul, surrounded by a group of residents. Flick was wondering if there was another way she could get to reception when her phone rang again.
37
Ray Drake rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘You’re being unreasonable.’
Myra perched on the edge of a frayed and tatty sofa that had been in the house since before she was born. When Laura refurbished, Myra insisted it stayed. It was good for her spine, she said, but everyone knew she was just being bloody-minded. She folded the Telegraph she had been reading and dropped it beside her.
‘Remind me again why I should leave my home?’
‘The matter we spoke about the other night.’
‘The killings,’ she said. ‘Children from that place.’
‘We’re looking into it, but—’
‘I trust you are.’ She watched him pace restlessly over the top of her reading glasses. ‘That policewoman came to see me today.’
Drake stopped dead. ‘Flick Crowley.’
‘You invited her to the funeral, I recall, although goodness knows how it was any of her business.’
Flick was proving stubborn in her determination to look into the Longacre. He’d speak to Harris about getting her removed from the investigation, but knew that if Amelia Troy had already contacted her, his life would spiral out of control very quickly.
‘What did she say?’
‘She asked me about the home. I sent her away with a flea in her ear. My advice to you, Raymond, is to sack her immediately.’
‘You haven’t answered me. Will you go away, just for a short while? I’m not going to be able to be here all the time.’
Myra took off the glasses. ‘And what does that matter to me?’
She was forcing him to say it out loud. ‘You may be in danger, Myra.’
The old woman rubbed the scuffed metal of the oval locket around her neck. ‘But where would I go?’
‘Out of town,’ he said. ‘To family. Take a holiday.’
‘I’m eighty-seven years old. A holiday would finish me off.’
‘There must be people you can …’ He racked his brains, annoyed that he still knew so little about this infuriating and intensely private woman. Many years ago, after what happened at the home, she’d cut herself off from family – or, at least, the few family members she had been on speaking terms with. Most of those had, presumably, died of old age.
‘I’ll take my chances here.’
‘I’d rather you—’
‘Stop. You’re talking to me now, Raymond, not some idiot colleague.’ When she heaved herself from the sofa, Drake went to help but she waved him off. ‘Is that why you look like you’ve been dragged through a bush backwards? Did someone attack you?’
‘It’s just … a precaution.’
‘Now you listen to me. When Leonard and I became involved with the fallout from that damned home, we understood the consequences of what we were doing. I’m not going to leave everything behind because some pipsqueak is threatening me.’
She’d never given an inch. Never compromised, never backed down.
‘He’s killed many times, Myra. He’s dangerous.’
‘And I have great faith in your ability to stop him.’
‘At least let me get someone to stay with you.’ It wouldn’t be impossible to hire some discreet muscle. He knew people who could ensure her safety. ‘Just until I can sort out this problem.’
‘I will not have strangers in my home.’
‘He’s coming for me and he’ll come for you, too.’
‘And how do you know that?’
‘Because he told me,’ he snapped. ‘I’m begging you, be reasonable.’
‘I didn’t bring you up to be the kind of man to beg,’ she hissed.
She touched the edges of her hair. Once upon a time it was a fierce helmet, a towering Thatcheresque construction. Now there were large patches where Drake could see her scalp, plastered with scurf.
‘My grandparents lived in this house,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve lived here all my life, and I hope you will remain here when I am gone, even though I know you’ve been unhappy here lately.’ That, he knew, was the nearest she’d get to mentioning Laura. ‘I will not run away, it is simply not in my nature.’
He nodded at the locket. ‘May I see?’
After a moment’s consideration, she said: ‘If you wish.’
She lifted the wisps of fine hair drifting down the back of her neck and Drake stepped behind her to undo the tiny clasp. Myra opened the locket. Inside was a small photograph, its edges clipped in a rough hexagonal. He’d never seen it before and she’d never offered to show it. Her crooked finger
trembled over the photo, as if she were afraid to touch it, afraid the image would fade beneath her touch.
‘I’ve never thanked you,’ he said. ‘For everything you’ve done for me.’
A look that he’d never seen before, the faintest suggestion of vulnerability, passed across Myra’s face, and she turned away.
‘You were not the easiest boy, but Leonard was very fond of you. He may not have shown it, but be sure of it. And I have … loved you, I hope, in my own way.’ She snapped the locket shut and her voice hardened. ‘The most important thing now is that you protect your daughter. April needs you, even if the selfish child doesn’t realise it. She must be your only responsibility.’
‘All my life,’ he bit down on his annoyance, ‘I’ve done what you said.’
Her mouth twitched in distaste. ‘You’re embarrassing yourself, Raymond.’
‘And now I want you to do as I tell you.’
‘This is my—’
‘You’ll do as I say!’
She considered him, coldly.
‘There’s a nephew,’ she said finally. ‘He lives in Kent. I shall telephone to inform him he shall have the pleasure of my company for a few days. I can only imagine his surprise. Does that suit?’ Drake nodded, but a part of him wasn’t convinced of her intentions. ‘In the meantime, I’ve something that you may find useful.’
She went to a drawer and took out a folded piece of cloth, carefully unwrapped the fabric …
To reveal a small handgun.
He stepped forward. ‘Where on earth did you get that?’
‘We’ve had it many years. Leonard brought it back from the war.’
Drake removed the magazine from the grip, which was full. Snapped it back in.
‘It’s a Beretta, I believe,’ said Myra, watching him weigh the pistol in his hand. ‘It should work; he took very good care of it. I hope for your sake it does.’
‘Myra, you’re a marvel.’ He shook his head in amazement. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this before?’
‘It would not have been very wise to let you play with such an object when you were younger.’ She fixed her gaze on his. ‘Do what you have to do, Raymond, so that we can get back to normal.’