He needed to be on his own. He set out for work with half an hour to spare. Perhaps the drive would give an excuse the chance to take shape, or a walk at the end of the drive would. After ten minutes' driving and not a word from the Count he switched on a local radio station to have a background against which his thoughts might roam.
"Mother Doreen of Clock Face there," a presenter was saying, 'bringing awareness to us all about the situation, if you like, concerning disabled play groups We all hope you find a place for your little one soon, Doreen, yes indeed."
For a moment Jack had thought she was a nun with an odd name, not a mother. It seemed the programme might be more distracting than he'd anticipated, but perhaps he could use the amusement. "Your calls are part and parcel of this show each and every day if you wish to add your voice," the presenter said. "Calls from here, there and everywhere on every subject under the sun. Let me just give you that item of traffic news again. An oil spillage has blocked the M53 near the Vauxhall terminal, so expect delays if you are travelling eastbound in any way, shape or form. We'd all be better drivers if we adhered to the signs."
"Thank you," Jack said, and left the motorway at the next exit. His route would take him through Bromborough onto the Chester road. He opened his window and listened to the song of the hot wind. He was aware only of snatches of dialogue, the presenter interjecting 'some thought in that' or 'a suggestion not to be decried or denied by any manner or means'. The van had almost reached the edge of Bromborough when a telephone voice seemed to grow sharp and close as though he had pressed a receiver against his ear, and he wound the window shut in order to listen. The caller had just said 'the Mersey Burner."
"Not the sort of person we like to think is roaming our local streets, Margaret. I'm sure every one of our listeners, be they pensioners or able-bodied, so to speak," the presenter said with a deprecatory giggle, 'must agree with that fact. Not that I'm suggesting pensioners aren't able or vice versa, perish the thought, very much so. Is there a hubby, Margaret, to make you feel a bit safer?"
"My husband's dead at the moment. Shut up. Get down. It's the dog," she explained over an outburst of barking.
"He sounds a good big one, is he, Margaret? I expect you feel more secure with him at your beck and call."
"She's a she. Basket," the caller shouted, presumably not at him. "What I'm saying is I blame your media for making folk of my age terrified to stir out of the house."
"You've given me a bit of a hot potato there, Margaret, no doubt of that at all. It was mooted to me the other day that the police never called him the Mersey Burner, it was one of the nationals that did, as if Merseyside hasn't enough bad press to compete and combat, as it were. Fair dos, though, the local media has been reporting as much of the police investigation as we've been kept abreast of, I'm led to believe."
"You oughtn't just Sit. Sit. Sit. I say you oughtn't just to be reporting. I thought your job was to investigate."
"Well now, Margaret, our newsroom's pretty sharp. You'd cut your fingers on some of our reporters, I can say without fear of contradiction," the presenter giggled, and adopted a serious tone. "Do you have an avenue, in so many words, that you think they should unravel?"
"Basket. Basket. What I'm saying is there's one thing your media never mentions. Whoever this maniac is, he's got to have a family, and you aren't telling me they don't know who he is. You should be trying to make them aware of their responsibilities before he does it to someone else."
"Margaret there from Higher Tranmere, turning the spotlight on a local angle that should concern each and every last one of us. What say' you? Is there a family out there offering -succour and sanctuary, shall we say, to a criminal when they should be going to the police? Your thoughts on this and any other subject are invited, whatever you wish to indulge me in conversation about..."
"I hear you," Jack said through his teeth, which were clamped together so hard that they ached. He swung the van around the cross in the centre of Bromborough and parked it by the library, and dashed back to the phone box opposite the bus shelter. The number which the presenter had kept repeating echoed in his head. He shoved a handful of change into the slot and dialled, and was answered almost at once. "Phone-in," a woman said briskly. "What's your point, please?"
"I want to talk about the so-called Mersey Burner."
"What's your view on that?"
"That it's grossly unfair to blame the family. Damn near libellous."
"Have you some special knowledge of this kind of thing?"
"I'd prefer to answer any questions on the air."
"And what's your name and number, please?"
"Bernard. Bernard from Bromborough," he said, and read her the number on the dial.
"If you'll put your phone down we'll call you back in a few minutes."
Most of his change spilled out of the coin-box, and he felt lucky at once, as though he'd beaten a fruit machine. The Count was back. He gazed across the road at the boarded-up front of Dail's Signs, noting with satisfaction that now it looked very much like Fine Films. When the phone rang, everyone waiting at the bus-stop looked ignored them and picked up the receiver woman said.
"As you say."
"We're putting you on air now. Don't speak until you're spoken to. Have you a radio on near you?"
"Hardly."
Almost at once he heard the presenter. "...Vi there from Allerton sharing her eyes and ears with us. Reminding us that we have due regard, as it were, to be proud of Merseyside. Now in a very second or two we'll be talking to Bernard from Bromborough. Do your friends call you Bernie, Bernard?"
"I wouldn't know," the Count said.
"We'll stick to Bernard then, shall we?"
"Whatever you think my name should be."
"You'll have heard Vi saying as such that the media detracts at him, but he "Bernard?" the employers from coming to Merseyside, and she made reference regarding books and films that seem to want to denounce and denigrate its name. Were you calling to bring some awareness to that subject, Bernard?"
"No, I wanted to defend the family you were attacking before."
"When we were making mention of the Mersey Burner, that's to say."
"If that's what you choose to call him."
"Or her, should we add? We don't know what the police know."
"Not much if they can't trace a motive."
They do moot that," the presenter admitted, and the Count grinned: it was good to have confirmation of what he had simply assumed. "So it's the family you're concerned with when all's said and done, is it, Bernard?"
"I should hope so. If anyone's name is being blackened, it's theirs."
"Some would say the Burner can't help giving him or herself away to them."
"The police would, but that's propaganda. They also say that every criminal makes a mistake sooner or later, but that's just meant to worry those who don't. If it was true, why did they never catch Jack the Ripper?"
"Well, Bernard, I've heard tell they did and it was hushed up."
"Unless you take that to mean they don't like to admit they were stumped."
The Ripper's a bit of a legend anyway, isn't he or she?"
"Like Robin Hood, shall we say?"
The presenter giggled, more with audible surprise than mirth. "I was reminding you that the Burner isn't historical by any stretch of the imagination. His victims die after receiving a catalogue of injuries, and he's doing what he's doing here and now."
"At this moment, do you mean?" the Count said, grinning at the shocked expression he was certain the presenter's face had just acquired. "We're straying off the subject. You let one of your callers accuse the family of being accomplices and pretty well agreed with her. Maybe you should wonder what would happen if your local luminary gave himself up to the police and proved his family never suspected for a moment who he really was. I'd say they could sue you and your station for a fortune."
"Well, Bernard, I'm going to put my neck, so to speak, on the block a
nd say I hope they try."
"I'll think of you in that position," the Count said, knuckling the receiver rest to terminate the conversation. He walked back to the van, not too fast, even though he wanted to hear the discussion that followed his call. As soon as he was in the driver's seat he switched on the radio. A caller was putting in a plea for play groups for the blind, and Jack heard no reference to the Count or his broadcast, though he took his time about driving to work.
He strode into the library with a sense of a job well done and more of the same ahead of him. "Thank heaven it's cooler in here," he remarked to Stella. He was stamping books when an old lady placed her dry pale hand on his. "I heard you," she said.
His throat was suddenly parched, and he had to swallow before he could speak. "You... heard..."
"I heard you saying how hot it is out. I think I'll just sit in here and read my book until there's not so much sun."
"With my blessing," Jack said, smiling gratefully at her. She'd thrown him only to remind him that the Count was still invisible, and in that moment of clarity he saw what the phone-in programme had told him. He had only to make sure that Laura and Julia didn't suspect who he was, and the closer to leaving for Crete he made his final visit, the less of an excuse he would need for absenting himself on some last-minute task. He felt at peace with himself and generous towards the world. He might even give the one remaining addressee a last chance.
FORTY-TWO
Halfway through Thursday morning Janys managed to persuade Tommy that he would like a nap. He'd begun the day by demonstrating that a poached egg was no longer his favourite breakfast except for throwing at the kitchen wall, where it had hung for a moment like a picture he might have made of the sun in a cloud. When she'd put him in the playpen he had only wanted to fling his alphabet bricks over the bars and had started to whinge because she wouldn't keep returning them to him, and as soon as she had picked him up he'd commenced howling and bending himself backwards as he often had as a baby when she was giving him the breast and calling him her little suckling pig. She'd tried leaving him in front of the television, a course she only ever followed as a last resort, but he'd kept playing with the controls until she'd had to trap him in his high chair while she attempted to sort out ingredients for his birthday cake. "You'll be lucky if you live to see another birthday at this rate," she'd said after a few minutes of his tantrum in the chair, and had carried him upstairs to his cot despite his protests. Once he was behind bars again he'd tried at once to climb over, and so she'd stroked his hair and sung him a lullaby she used to like her mother to sing to her even when Janys had supposedly been too old for it:
"Lavender's blue, dilly dilly, Lavender's green; When you are king, dilly dilly, I shall be queen...."
It hadn't seemed to work on Tommy. After performing half an encore she'd left him jumping up and down and screaming furiously while she went back to measuring ingredients. She was listening anxiously for a thud which would mean he'd managed to clamber out of the cot, but instead his protests trailed off, and before long she couldn't hear the faint vibrations which meant he was bouncing with rage. When she thought it was safe she crept upstairs and peeked into his room.
Perhaps the lullaby had worked after all, though she thought he had tired himself out. He was lying with one foot thrust into the pillow, his head resting on one small fist that dug into his cheek. His blond hair looked as though he'd been fighting a gale, his face was mottled and crumpled and sulky, a toned-down version of how it must have appeared when he was absolutely refusing to lie down. Janys was gazing at him, in the state of amazement she experienced whenever she realised how much she loved him, when the phone rang.
"Don't you dare wake," she murmured, and closing the door quietly, ran downstairs on tiptoe. "Janys Day," she said as she snatched up the receiver.
"Sorry, are you busy?"
"Just a mite. Didn't mean to snap at you. Can I help?"
"Are you free just now?"
"The studio's closed today, if that's what you mean."
"All day?"
"I'm afraid so." She could have told him it was Tommy's birthday, but that wasn't his business; besides, she was trying to recall where she'd heard his voice before. "Anything I can do for you?" she said.
There was a pause, and then: "Do you happen to remember speaking to me a few weeks back?"
"I'm trying. Give me a clue."
"About well, about luck."
She remembered, and her face grew hot. "You sent me a letter."
"That was me, yes. I was wondering if you'd let me explain. If you hear me out you might&mdash"
"If there's one thing I can't stand it's men who won't take no for an answer," Janys said. "If I hear from you again I'll be in touch with the police."
She slammed the receiver onto the cradle and stood breathing hard, eyes shut, until the anger faded from her cheeks. She'd thought door-to-door evangelists were difficult enough to repulse, but this clown was worse. Perhaps he was so persistent because what he was trying to sell made even less sense.
Thinking about him wouldn't get the cakes made. Janys listened to make sure the phone hadn't wakened Tommy -she would have been considerably less polite to the caller if she'd thought it had then she hurried into the kitchen. Eggs, margarine, sugar, flour... "Oh, you wretched man," she cried, instinctively blaming the caller, though of course it wasn't his fault that she had only enough flour for the birthday cake and none left over to make little ones to go with sandwiches and sausage rolls. Without them there wouldn't be sufficient for Tommy and his friends from the play group
She tiptoed upstairs and eased his door open. He was sound asleep, his hand flattened by his cheek now. If she wakened him he would be overtired for his party, and experience had taught her that she couldn't transfer him into the buggy without wakening him. She could be back from the corner shop in five minutes. She blew him a kiss and grabbed her handbag from the post at the end of the banisters, then let herself out of the house.
Apart from a woman wheeling a pramful of free newspapers, the street was deserted. Sunlight massed on Janys's scalp as she turned the sharp curve a hundred yards or so to the left of her house. Now she could see traffic on the conveyor belt of the main road, less than two minutes' walk beyond the junction where a street like hers crossed hers. As she ran past the junction, someone was parking a blue van in the cross street, but she barely noticed it; she was busy counting Tommy's guests again. The roar of traffic overwhelmed the scent of flowers in the front gardens as though one sense was being substituted for another, and then she was at the main road.
Frith's was on the corner. The window was crowded with sunglasses and toys and baby foods and washing-up bowls and rubber bones and felt-tipped pens and sandals, and there was even more variety inside the shop. Miss Frith, a large-boned woman in a voluminous floral dress, was serving as much conversation as goods to a customer, and her new assistant, a teenager with a round face and a frown that announced she was anxious to please, was finishing serving another. Janys saw packets of flour over the assistant's shoulder and went to her as the previous customer turned away, examining his change. "Just a packet of flour. No, make that two," Janys said.
The round-faced girl lifted two packets from the shelf and lowered them carefully onto the counter. "Thank you. Anything else?"
"Not today," Janys said, digging in her purse for something smaller than a ten-pound note. She had found only a few pence worth of copper when Miss Frith told her customer the amount of the bill and leaned across the counter. "Mrs. Day, could I have a word in just a moment while you're here?"
"Well, it's a little," Janys began, rummaging in her purse, but Miss Frith had already returned to her customer. The assistant would just have to accept a tenner, Janys thought, and was disentangling it from keys and an emergency tampon when the customer the girl had last served approached the counter. "Excuse me, I don't think you gave me the right change."
"Could I just Janys said, but the girl w
as directing her concerned frown at him. "You gave me a pound for kitchen roll and I gave you eleven pee change," she said.
"Right, but on the price tag it says eighty-seven pee."
The girl took the twin pack of kitchen roll and cocked it to one side while cocking her head to the other. "I'll have to ask," she said. "Miss Frith."
"Just a moment now." Miss Frith recommenced counting change onto her customer's palm, even more slowly than it took her to pronounce each amount. "Keep your hat on," she said, which sounded to Janys like a rebuke but which was apparently advice to the customer. "Now, Glenda, what?"
This gentleman gave me a pound for kitchen roll and I gave him eleven pee change because that's what the rolls cost that I sold yesterday, but he says the tag says eighty-seven pee."
"Let's see now," Miss Frith said, groping for her spectacles among packets of tobacco and cough sweets on a shelf. "Ah, that's an old tag."
"Could you take for the flour?" Janys said to the girl.
"I will do," the assistant said, then trained her frown on the ten-pound note. "We'll have to wait for Miss Frith. I have to tell her when I give change of a note."
"Miss Frith," Janys said, "I really do need&mdash"
"I won't be a moment. As soon as I've dealt with this." She lowered her face to the kitchen roll as if to blot out all distractions. "This is last month's tag. It should have been altered," she informed the customer. "It was our fault. Strictly speaking we're within our rights to charge you the current price, but I'll pay you back the two pee for your trouble."
"Don't bother. I just wanted to get things clear."
"If you're sure. I don't want to lose your goodwill."
Make your minds up for God's sake, Janys thought. Her scalp felt hotter than when she'd been under the sun. The customer picked up the kitchen rolls and dawdled towards the door as if he was considering accepting the two pence after all, and it wasn't until he was out of the shop that the assistant said "Ten pounds, Miss Frith."
"Ten pounds," Miss Frith agreed, and turned unhurriedly to Janys. "Now, Mrs. Day, I wonder if I could have a word."
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