Missing Person (31 page)

In the downstairs bedroom, Dan was sleeping the sleep of a man whose ownership of two precocious infants made him feel he couldn’t ask for much more, apart from a marriage certificate. His sleep, therefore, was less disturbed than Tilly’s, for Tilly, much to her disgust, was worrying far more about that certificate than he was. In the bedroom next to hers, Bubbles and Penny-Farving slept like perfect cherubs. Tilly, for her part, turned over again.

Hearing nothing, Sammy closed the door very quietly. Something, however, made Tilly sit up. Boots and his brothers ghosted noiselessly through the passage to the back door that was next to the kitchen, the door dustmen used to get into back yards to pick up dustbins. Again the intruders paused to listen. Upstairs, the shapely lodger, a young woman with a warm heart and formidable spirit, sat in her bed, listening. She thought she might have heard one of the girls sigh aloud in her sleep. The poor mites both had something to sigh about. But it was probably her subconscious that had been disturbed by the sighing intrusion of night air through the open front door. Hearing nothing more, Tilly sank back, turned on her
side
, put her face into the pillow and sought new slumber in the hope that if the female fatty appeared again, she’d fall off her tightrope and break her neck.

Boots groped for the door handle. He turned it, gently pulled, and the door opened. He smiled again. Locked or bolted doors were foreign to Walworth families. He stepped into the dark yard, the June night soft and balmy, the air free of the sooty elements of winter. Tommy and Sammy followed, Sammy again making himself responsible for the quiet closure of a door. It meant they’d left no trace of their intrusion.

The rooftops of the clustered houses, swallowed up by the moonless sky, were invisible. Not so the very faint light touching a blind drawn down over the window of the bedroom above the kitchen of the adjoining house, the house that counted. It was the darkness itself that made such a faint light perceptible. Boots touched Tommy’s arm and pointed. Tommy looked up, and so did Sammy, and all three brothers took in the fact that there was a tiny light in the room shielded by the blind. They knew which room it was, the upstairs back. They knew too, without having to say so, that if Chinese Lady’s better half was in that house, he was almost certainly in that particular room.

Sammy and Tommy left the next move to Boots. He gave his torch and stump to Tommy, placed his hands on the top of the thick dividing wall, and levered himself up. Over he went, landing on his plimsolled feet. Tommy handed him two stumps and two torches, then up and over he went too, with no more sound than that made by clothes and body brushing stone. Sammy followed, and all three of them moved to the back door that was to the left of the kitchen. They moved with extra caution, nail-bitingly conscious of
the
need to avoid touching any obstacles. A switched-on torch would have helped, but now was not the time to show a beam of light.

Boots, reaching the door, tried the handle. It turned, but the door failed to yield. It was bolted. That, thought Boots, was either unusual or, if dirty work was going on, not unexpected. He said nothing. He began to move again, along the yard to the back door of the scullery, Tommy and Sammy behind him. If Sammy considered himself a businessman with a sharp eye, and Tommy considered himself a bloke who could master the mechanics of machines, they rarely failed to allow Boots the initiative in matters seriously affecting the family.

Tommy’s foot brushed a running rat. He was conscious of the contact, light though it was, and he froze for a moment, though not because he knew the thing was a rat. No sound ensued. Boots reached the scullery door. Again they all paused, ears acutely alert. Boots found the handle after a few moments and slowly turned it. The door opened. Silence greeted them. Boots did not consider this a time to dwell on memories, but they rushed into his mind all the same. Here was what had once been the home of an acidulous, complaining mother and her gentle-mannered daughter whose soft myopic eyes hid her need to be a living breathing woman. If he had loved anyone when he was young, it had been Elsie Chivers, despite her age being well in advance of his. Time had not erased the affection he still felt for her.

Tommy nudged him. The light of a torch was necessary now. Boots knew the three of them could not negotiate the scullery and the kitchen in this kind of darkness. The kitchen would be full of obstacles. Would it also contain a watchdog? He
thought
not. His feeling that Edwin Finch was here strengthened, for a parrot that paid a tribute to Adolf Hitler, star of the increasingly powerful Naxi organization in Germany, was a bird that had heard it from the lips of a German, surely. And it was Germans, of all people, who might claim the right to quarrel with a man who had once been a singularly successful German spy.

Boots stepped into the scullery and, transferring his stump from his left hand to his right, he switched on the torch, retained in his left hand. The beam of light guided him. He turned left into the kitchen, Tommy and Sammy close behind him. The torchlight revealed a table and chairs. On the table stood a hooded birdcage. Boots took the light away from the cage and noted that the door to the passage was open. Now, he thought, where does the woman sleep? Upstairs with one of the men? Cassie had said one man was her husband, the other her brother-in-law. All the same, he had to assume the downstairs bedroom might be occupied, even if both men were upstairs. Leaving the kitchen, with Tommy and Sammy still close behind him, he switched off the torch. The ascending banisters were on his right, the bedroom on his left. Inside, in her bed, Mrs Harper, the bitter daughter of a semi-crippled German father, slept heavily, her breathing slightly bubbly. If the two men wanted her for anything in a hurry, one would come down and wake her. That had not happened yet, neither tonight nor last night. The prisoner’s behaviour had been completely untroublesome. Lucky for him, or he might have got his arm broken. In her sleep, the woman was triumphant and ghost-free as Chinese Lady’s quiet-footed sons passed her door. They turned in the passage and faced the stairs. The silence
could
have denoted that every occupant was asleep.

Problem, thought Boots. Should he change his idea about all three of them committing themselves to the upstairs rooms? Would the woman be in this downstairs bedroom with one of the men? No, not on your life. If they had Edwin here, then both men would be close to him, one man with him, watching him, the other resting or sleeping in an adjacent room.

Boots began a slow careful ascent of the stairs, keeping close to the wall. Tommy and Sammy followed, each with a cricket stump in his right hand, a torch in his left. Despite their slow careful tread, a stair faintly creaked, and they checked and held their breath as they clearly heard the feet of a chair scraping lino. But it was a natural sound, made by someone getting up or by shifting the chair, someone with no awareness that a stair had lightly creaked. Bless me lawful wedded wife and her agitated boz, thought Sammy, there
is
a bloke up there who’s awake in the middle of the night, and what’s he awake for when honest Walworth citizens should be asleep? Unless they’re nightwatchmen.

They tensed to complete stillness as the door to the upstairs back opened. They discerned light, small light, the light of a candle, and out of the room walked a man. Tommy took a tighter grip of his cricket stump. The man went straight to the lavatory on the landing, opened the door and walked in. The door closed.

Boots moved fast. The opportunity couldn’t have been sweeter if it had been the result of one of Chinese Lady’s prayers. Up he went, and up went Tommy and Sammy. On went their torches. Boots ran into the back room, Sammy into the front, Tommy into the middle, all doors being open. Boots
saw
who was in the back room, his stepfather, legs chained. Mr Finch came awake.

‘Won’t be a tick,’ said Boots, and out he went, just as the lavatory chain was pulled. Sammy came out of the front bedroom, the beam of his torch running ahead of him. It preceded him into the middle room, where Tommy, beside the bed, had his cricket stump angled, its point planted in the chest of a man lying recumbent in the bed, blanket drawn back. The man’s face was a study in astonishment edged with fury.

‘Don’t move, mate,’ said Tommy, ‘or I’ll make a nasty hole in yer armoury.’

‘Don’t make him bleed,’ said Sammy, ‘it’s messy. Hope we haven’t hit a blank.’ Out he went. Boots was on the landing. Framed in the open lavatory door was a tall, square-shouldered man, the beam from Boots’s torch flooding his livid face.

‘Fair cop, I think,’ said Boots. The man’s right arm executed a lighting-fast movement, and down came his hand to chop. It hit a cricket stump raised in a movement just as fast. The stump cracked and split, but the impact of hand against hard wood instead of the side of a neck broke fingers.

‘You ruddy ’ooligan,’ said Sammy, and hit the man in the solar plexus. He doubled up. ‘How we doin’, Boots?’ asked Sammy.

‘Not bad,’ said Boots, watching the groaning man.

‘But what’ve we got out of it?’ asked Sammy. ‘Who’s in there?’ He pointed his torch at the back room. ‘Anyone?’

‘Yes,’ said Boots, ‘your Ma’s better half.’

‘Well, I’ll admit it,’ said Sammy, making for the room, ‘you ain’t just a pretty face, Boots.’

Mrs Harper slept on.

EMILY WAS ON
her third pot of tea. I’ll be awash in a minute, she thought, and then it’ll be sink or swim. Still, if I go back to bed I don’t suppose I’ll get to sleep. I mean, how can Boots possibly think his stepdad is actually being held in that house where that witch, old Mrs Chivers, used to live? Oh, now I’d better do penitence or something for speaking ill of the dead. I hope all this tea isn’t making me drunk. Oh, gawd, look at the time, it’s gone two.

The kitchen door opened and Rosie looked in.

‘I knew it,’ she said, ‘you’re still up, Mum.’ Wearing her nightie, she came in.

‘Rosie, go back to bed,’ said Emily, ‘you’ve got school in the mornin’.’

‘Oh, I keep waking up,’ said Rosie, and sat down at the table. ‘I’ll have some of the tea if it’s still hot, may I?’

‘You really ought to go back to bed, lovey,’ said Emily, dark-auburn hair glinting with touches of fire, ‘or you won’t be fit for school.’

‘Oh, I never suffer morning tiredness,’ said Rosie, pouring herself some tea and modestly sugaring it. ‘Mum, you’re sitting and waiting for Daddy, aren’t you?’

‘I’m sittin’ and waitin’ in the hope that your grandpa’s goin’ to come home to your grandma.’

‘Well, he will,’ said Rosie, ‘he and Daddy will arrive together.’

‘Rosie, we can’t be sure of that.’

‘Daddy’s sure,’ said Rosie.

‘No, he isn’t,’ said Emily.

‘Well, I am,’ said Rosie.

‘You shouldn’t expect too much from Boots,’ said Emily, ‘he’s only gone to Walworth in hope.’

‘Mummy, we’ve got to have faith,’ said Rosie. ‘Nana’s got faith. That’s why she went to bed and didn’t stay up drinking tea.’

‘She went to bed because she was all worn out,’ said Emily, ‘and, anyway, if you’ve got faith yourself, what made you keep wakin’ up?’

‘Excitement,’ said Rosie. ‘I’d have a piece of cake if I didn’t feel excited. Were you able to eat cake on your wedding day?’

‘Lor’, what a question,’ said Emily. ‘I can’t remember if I did or not.’

‘Did Daddy have lots of girlfriends before he became engaged to you?’

‘Well, I’m blessed,’ said Emily, ‘don’t tell me you came down ’ere to ask me these kind of questions, you funny girl.’

‘But I like knowing all about you and Daddy.’

‘You’re at the age of curiosity, you are,’ said Emily, fidgeting and giving the kitchen clock another look.

‘Well, it can’t be helped,’ said Rosie, ‘so did Daddy have lots of girls?’

‘He knew lots,’ said Emily, ‘and they all knew him, but he never had anyone steady, he was too busy learnin’ how to grow up a bit superior so’s he could get a good job.’

‘Well, he failed, thank goodness,’ said Rosie.

‘No, he didn’t,’ said Emily, ‘he got himself a nice respectable clerkin’ job.’

‘I mean he failed to become a bit superior,’ said Rosie.

‘Still, he did get a bit posh, lovey.’

‘Crikey, Mum, Daddy’s the most natural man in the world,’ said Rosie.

‘We’re all natural, like God made us,’ said Emily. ‘Anyway, your grandma wanted your dad to grow up a gent, she was always very set on all her children learnin’ to speak proper and behave proper.’

‘Well, Daddy doesn’t behave very proper at parties, not when he’s in charge of Forfeits,’ said Rosie, casting a covert look at the clock herself. ‘Mum, was it sort of sublime when you were engaged? I mean, knowing then that you’d been Daddy’s one and only?’

‘Was it sort of
what
?’

‘Sublime,’ said Rosie.

‘Well, I think I liked it, if that’s what you mean,’ smiled Emily.

‘Oh, jolly good,’ said Rosie.

Boots, Tommy and Sammy were in the upstairs front bedroom, Boots standing at the window and looking down at the cul-de-sac. Its single lamp-post, outside the printing factory, cast the street’s solitary patch of light. His parked car was in darkness.

Mrs Harper, very conveniently, was still heavily asleep. Sammy had checked.

Mr Finch, out of his chains, was still in the room in which he’d been held, and so were the two Germans. He’d asked to have time alone with them, after Tommy had searched them for weapons. Neither had been armed. Sammy and Tommy thought it peculiar, their stepfather wanting to talk to the men in private. Boots thought otherwise, but didn’t say so. Once the two men had been revealed as German, he had a fairly
good
idea of why they had laid his stepfather out in the hotel car park and brought him here. He’d eat his damaged cricket stump if the reason didn’t relate to Edwin’s years in German Intelligence and his switch of allegiance to the British. It was on the cards that Edwin was now negotiating a mutually satisfying end to the matter. He would prefer no publicity, the kind that would come about if the men were handed over to the police. He had secrets to keep, and Boots himself had always thought it wise to keep them.