Stone Cold Red Hot

by Cath Staincliffe

  Mrs Clerkenwell had made no mention of a possible pregnancy, presumably Barbara Pickering had not referred to the disgrace her daughter had brought on the family as she had when talking to her son.

  “Don’t you think it’s a bit extreme,” I asked her, “to sever all contact, just because she dropped out of university?”

  “Well, yes,” she said hesitantly, “but then Barbara gave me the impression that it was Jennifer’s doing.” She frowned and thought for a minute. “Mind you, I don’t know what sort of reception she’d have got if she had come back and wasn’t making anything of her life.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, they were awfully strict. Some of it was to do with all their rules, from their church, the do’s and don’ts. They wouldn’t touch a drink and everything was either approved or denied. I could see Jennifer was rejecting all that even before she left home. They were very...intolerant I thought. We had a bit of a run-in years back. I was trying to organise some ecumenical services, different churches coming together and I knew Barbara and Frank were ‘Children of Christ’ but they were impossible; they’d no interest in building bridges, you’d have thought I’d made an improper suggestion the way they reacted. He started going on about undesirables and riff-raff and how could they vet the people involved.” She laughed. “I don’t know. I never knew them well but it didn’t strike me as a very happy household.”

  “Were there arguments?”

  “Not between Frank and Barbara I don’t think, but sometimes I’d hear Jennifer shouting at her mother - teenage tantrums I suppose. And Frank would lay the law down every so often. I’d hear him shouting sometimes. He was very old-fashioned, all king and country. To be honest I think having Jennifer was probably completely bewildering for him.”

  “So you think it was Jennifer who made the break?”

  “From what I was told. And it didn’t sound as though they had done anything about finding her, I suppose they thought she was old enough to look after herself. And Frank was very ill, you know, that wasn’t long after.”

  “What was it?”

  I drained my cup and continued to make notes.

  “Angina. He stopped doing the garden. That used to be his pride and joy. We’d have a word over the fence. He struggled so hard during that summer with it, we couldn’t use hosepipes, you know, everything was so dry but Frank was determined to make it work. Then suddenly he had to leave it all. I could see everything going to seed. Heartbreaking really. He got very low, depression. I never heard that from them, you understand, but word gets out. I don’t think he ever really got better. It can take people like that can’t it, sudden illness, they have to give up work and they never really find their way again.” She glanced out of the window and snorted. “Look at that daft dog,” there was nothing but affection in her voice, “excuse me a minute.”

  She went out and into the garden where I watched her remove the hosepipe from the dogs’ mouths thus curtailing their tug of war. I took the chance to glance back at the list of questions I’d come with. When she returned I began again.

  “There’s just a few more points.”

  “Fine, it’s a break from work,” she tilted her head towards the front of the house, “there’s a pile of stuff waiting in there for me to finish. I’ve got a big fair in Mobberley at the weekend. I’ll show you before you go.”

  “Yes. You were able to remember some of Jennifer’s friends - Lisa and Frances and Caroline.”

  “Fluke, really, though I am good with names. I know Frances Delaney and her family from church - St Winifred’s. And it so happens that I used to give all four of the girls a lift up to the Bounty, it’s closed now but back then it had banqueting suites and they were waitresses. I was doing table decorations there for a while but I had to let it go. It didn’t really pay enough and it meant me missing some of the craft fairs. Anyway, the girls would come here and I’d give them a lift up on the Saturday morning, they’d share a taxi back or get a bus into town and another one out again.”

  “Were you aware of any boyfriends at the time?”

  “No, well nothing serious. Of course there was endless speculating and giggling but I was never privy to any secrets. I was just the next door neighbour with a car. Now I don’t know if Frances still hears from Jennifer, have you got her number?”

  I shook my head.

  “Right,” she stood up and crossed to the table by the sofa, picked up the phone. “She’s not far away,” she said as she pressed the buttons, “she’s in Burnage. Lovely girl, four kiddies. Mary?” she spoke into the phone, “its Norma Clerkenwell...I’m fine...you? Listen, I’ve someone with me who wants to get in touch with Jennifer Pickering, from next door to me, does your Frances ever hear from her now? No. She’s not said anything. Well, apparently they haven’t, not in all this time. I’d Roger here the other day and he says they’ve no address or anything. It is a shame, it is...yes, especially with Barbara so poorly. Look, can you give me Frances’ number and this lady might want to ask her a few questions - trying to trace Jennifer, you see. Great.” She wrote the number down on a pad by the phone. “Thank you Mary, bye for now...and you, bye bye.”

  She tore off the paper and gave me it. “Mary says Frances has never mentioned Jennifer. That’s her number. She’s still Frances Delaney, married a boy with the same name.”

  On the way out she opened the door to the front room to show me her wares. She’d put a large work table in the centre of the room and it was scattered with clumps of fabric, jam jars full of paint, trays with beads and coloured glass nuggets, small mirrors and assorted picture frames. Tools and brushes were stuck into a collection of vases in the centre. There was a smell of glue and varnish.

  “Looks like chaos doesn’t it,” she joked, “you can see the finished results over there.”

  The far wall was smothered with an array of fancy picture frames and mirrors, everything from tiny, stylish mosaic-edged mirrors to padded, frilled and be-ribboned portrait frames. There were plaques too, painted with house names and numbers and, at waist height, a long shelf held vases and jars decorated with vibrant glass mosaics.

  “They’re great,” I pointed to the vases, “I love the mosaics.”

  “They’re selling like hot cakes at the moment,” she admitted. She edged her way past the table and picked up a small urn-shaped vase. “Here,” she held it out, “do you like this one?”

  “Oh, no,” I protested, “I can’t.”

  “It’s good PR,” she insisted, “when your friends admire it you can tell them where you got it. Word gets round, it all helps the business.”

  “Thank you, it’s lovely. You manage to make a living out of it?”

  I thought of my friend Diane, a textile artist and printer whose income went up and down like a yoyo.

  “Now, I do. I’ll just wrap this.” She pushed back her long, grey hair and rummaged in a carrier bag for some bubble wrap. “The first few years were very hard. I made a loss for the first three. But I’ve a couple of big contracts with gift shops - that gives me a fairly regular return and the craft fairs and commissions top it up.” She tore some sellotape from a dispenser and stuck it round the bubble wrap. “There.”

  “Thank you, it’s lovely.”

  “And I’ll give you one of these,” she took a business card from a box on the table. “I do orders to design, too.”

  “Swap you,” I fished one of my cards from my pocket.

  She helped me to manoeuvre my bike out of the door and down the steps to the path. She wished me luck with my search for Jennifer. “I do hope you find her,” she said, “I’d love to know how she’s turned out, I always thought she’d make something of herself, you know.”

  I couldn’t make up my mind whether to keep the mosaic vase at the office or take it home where I’d see more of it. I dithered for a while. It looked great on the filing cabinet next to the cactus and the yucca, the tiny deep blue, turquoise and orange tiles complemented the colours in the r
oom but not many of Mrs Clerkenwell’s potential customers would see it there. I would leave it at work until I’d finished the job for Roger Pickering, a sort of talisman for the case. Then, whatever the outcome, I’d take it home and show it off.

  I rang the number for Frances Delaney but there was no reply. I glanced at the clock. She’d probably be doing the school run. It was that time already.

  Chapter four

  Lisa MacNeice rang me that evening. She sounded very cautious. Probably thought I was trying to flog her a new kitchen or a conservatory.

  “I’m a private detective,” I explained, “I’m trying to trace Jennifer Pickering on behalf of her family and I’d like to come and talk to you if I may.”

  “Jennifer! Is this a wind-up? What’s your name again?”

  I told her. “You can check with Roger Pickering if you like,” I said, “he’s still living at home.”

  She reeled off the Heaton Mersey number. “I can remember it after all this time. It’s OK,” she continued, “the private detective lark sounded a bit weird and I had some unwelcome attention from the press last year, dishing the dirt, you know. I thought it might be more of the same.”

  “No, it’s not.” I was intrigued; what dirt had been dished? I was dying to ask but I bit my tongue. “In fact Roger’s been to see your parents. That’s how I got your number in the first place - you can confirm it with them if that would help.”

  “No, it’s OK,” she said, “if you had been the press I’d be able to hear you squirming by now, spinning some yarn, either that or you’d have hung up. So you’re looking for Jenny, I haven’t seen her since I left home, I’ve no idea where she is now.”

  Oh no. I was disappointed. I’d been hoping for a break, wanting to hear that Jennifer had kept in touch with her friend and that Lisa could give me her phone number and address. Just like that.

  “I realise it’s a long time ago,” I said, “but as yet I’ve no recent sightings to follow up. I’m having to go way back. When is the best time for you, if I were to come over?”

  “Evenings, I’m usually home by seven.”

  “Eight o’clock,” I suggested, “tomorrow or the day after?”

  “Tomorrow, yes.”

  She gave me directions from the motorway and we said our goodbyes.

  I was burning with curiosity about her references to the press? Perhaps I’d hear more about it when I met her. Or I could trawl around the news sites on the Internet, Ray was online now and I was having fun and getting frustrated at what I could and couldn’t glean from it. If all else failed my friend Harry who was an investigative journalist turned Internet whizzkid would help out. He got a kick doing that sort of thing for friends, said it was light relief.

  It occurred to me that I could search for Jennifer Pickering on the Net too. If she had e-mail it could be quite easy to find her address. It was too late in the day to try it now, I always spent twice as long staring at the screen as I’d anticipated, but I made a mental note to give it a go the next day.

  I went down to the cellar to ask Ray if he’d be in the following evening - he hadn’t mentioned anything but his relationship with Laura involved plenty of last minute arrangements. He had headphones on while he worked, he was varnishing a cherry wood corner cupboard. He’d used fretwork for the doors and it looked beautiful, intricate like lace.

  “Ray.”

  He straightened up and slid his headphones down.

  “I have to work tomorrow night, someone I need to interview, I’ll be leaving about 7.15.”

  He nodded. “I’ll be here.”

  “I shouldn’t be too late back. That’s looking good.”

  “Bugger to varnish.”

  I waited a beat or two sensing a slight awkwardness in the exchange. Nothing obvious. Symptomatic of how things had felt to me since Ray and Laura got involved with each other. He was always preoccupied. As if the rest of us had become minor supporting characters, there in the background but taken for granted. We definitely spent less time together and talked less. The worst thing was not being able to work out if my observations about the atmosphere were objective or if it was just my perception. It bugged me, it bugged me a lot.

  Things were bound to change with a serious relationship, I kept telling myself, new lovers were notoriously selfish, maybe I was jealous (of Ray or of what they had?) Come on! I’d talk to Diane about it, my best friend, my confidante. She wouldn’t shy away from being honest with me.

  Thursday morning and I had an appointment with Mandy Bellows at the Town Hall. Withington is about four miles south of the City Centre and Wilmslow Road links the two in a straight line but I don’t like doing that journey by bike so I got the bus in. That stretch has the dubious reputation of being the busiest bus route in Europe and although there are cycle lanes for part of it they are often used as handy parking spaces by motorists. You end up weaving in and out of aggressive traffic and waiting for the inevitable moment when some nerd does a sharp left turn across your handlebars or opens their door into you. Painful.

  The bus journey was complicated by the annual intake of new students who were clutching maps and trying to find their way about, trying to get on the right bus to the right site on the right campus. Manchester boasts three universities and a handful of colleges and the city’s population leaps by thousands every autumn.

  They were a feature at every bus stop. Thankfully our driver was helpful and courteous. He patiently pointed out where the bus would go, corrected people’s mis-pronunciations and called out loudly when we reached the various buildings on Oxford Road.

  After living in Manchester, Keele would have seemed small to Jennifer Pickering, manageable. I’d a notion it was one of the out-of-town campus universities like Lancaster. I wasn’t even sure where it was, Midlands? Somewhere near Stoke perhaps.

  If Jennifer had got pregnant she must have met someone fairly early in the term. It takes a few weeks to make sure and I knew that she’d left Keele and had broken off contact by the Christmas. If I could find any people who were students with her, maybe people who shared her accommodation and did English with her they would be pretty likely to know who the man involved was, a student or a lecturer? Secrets were hard to keep in the close environment of university life. I remember in my own case we seemed to know everything about who was screwing who, who was into drugs or had debts or got violent when drunk.

  At the top of Oxford Road there were adverts for new apartments in the heart of the city. Some of them were selling for ludicrous prices. Manchester was the place to be. We had the best football team in the world (according to Ray) and had produced Oasis as well as Coronation Street. Time was people in Manchester felt overshadowed by the dominance of London; people moved south for the opportunity to develop. But these days Manchester was on a roll. The centre of the universe. A Manchester accent was an asset - chuck.

  The bus swung round past Central Library with its domed roof and pillars and I got off when it stopped near Albert Square.

  It was a mild, misty day, the air felt soft. The Gothic style Town Hall with its honey sandstone seemed to glow against the colours of the surrounding trees and the slate grey of the sky.

  The Neighbour Nuisance Unit is upstairs but I had to report to the security desk on the ground floor and they rang for Mandy to come down and collect me. She led the way up the stone staircase, between marble pillars with vaulted ceilings, everything rich with intricate stone mouldings and carvings. She made us coffee before we settled at her desk in the corner of the open plan office. She picked up a file from the sea of paperwork that cluttered her desk and spilled over onto a side table as well.

  “Mr Ibrahim and his family came here from Somalia in 98. Refugees. They had two children, now three. They managed to get asylum. They were in London originally then got moved up here. They were in homeless families accommodation for a while then we offered them a house in St Georges, in Hulme. They moved the first week of July. Since then there have been a series of inc
idents; verbal abuse, graffiti daubed on the house, stones thrown at the house, children threatened. They’ve reported it to the Housing Office and the police have cautioned some of those responsible.”

  “Kids?”

  “Not all of them. There’s a family on the Close who have a reputation for anti-social behaviour; the Brennans. Neighbours have made a number of complaints about them to the council already and some neighbours have been asked to keep a diary to record any incidents. We will be seeking a court injunction to get them to alter their behaviour but it’s going to take some time. However, there’s another family, the Whittakers, and they seem to be the ones who are particularly targeting the Ibrahims. We’ve not had prior complaints about the Whittakers though I believe Colin Whittaker is known to the police, he’s a member of some neo-Nazi group, he’s banned from football matches - that sort of scene. From what Mr Ibrahim tells me he wants them out and he’s making no bones about it.

  “Now we can see about re-housing the family but as you know we would prefer to tackle the issue of antisocial behaviour or racial harassment and deal with those responsible. For that we need firm evidence to enable the police to take those involved to court. That’s where you come in. We can give you a camcorder and one of the neighbours is prepared to let us use one of his rooms for surveillance. He’s told us a lot about what’s actually going on. I think he’d do it for us himself if we asked him but we need a professional job doing. You’ll have to sort out a cover story, visiting relative or some such.”

  My stomach missed a step. Surveillance is a mixture of dull and dangerous. But undercover work which I have done on occasion demands even more nerve and involves playing a part with enough aplomb to convince. Surveillance is covert; the main aim to observe without being noticed, ninety-nine percent of the time it’s a bore. Undercover work is both overt and covert, it involves being seen and being believed, fitting in or getting found out. The adrenalin never lets up, it can be terrifying. It is never boring.