This changed when I turned off into the road where the Stallards lived. Here it was empty and quiet. The advantage I’d had of blending in with the crowd was lost. I was on my own. Time for a new strategy. I strolled down the street to the end, passing the number I sought, and then crossed over, strolled back again and took out Ganesh’s mobile. Although my normal lifestyle didn’t include walking round with a piece of plastic clamped to my ear, I was well aware that doing so could act as a cover for a multitude of activities. Pereira had noticed me at Paddington because I had spoken aloud to myself. If I’d had a mobile stuck to the side of my head, she’d have passed it off as normal. Another thing you can do with a mobile phone is stand still in the middle of the pavement. Pedestrians just part like the Red Sea and walk round you. They don’t think it odd, because you are on your mobile. Half of them are doing the same, only they’re walking along and carrying on a conversation across the airwaves. Ganesh has no one to ring, but walking along with the mobile clasped in his hand, he feels like everyone else.
So now I leaned nonchalantly on the wall of the house opposite the Stallards’, put the phone to my ear and, remembering to mutter into it from time to time and give it the occasional grin, I observed the house in detail. (You see what I mean? If you saw me leaning on your wall, muttering and grinning without a plastic ear appendage, you’d be on the phone to social services, wouldn’t you?) The muttering and grinning were necessary. I had dramatic training and always did a thing properly. Besides, although there were no Neighbourhood Watch notices in any windows in this street, it didn’t mean the neighbours weren’t watching. It’s what neighbours do. If my mouth didn’t move and my face muscles twitch from time to time, they’d suss I was snooping and the phone was a cover. Then they wouldn’t call social services, they’d call the police. The way my luck went, Pereira would probably roll up in her little car and haul me off again.
The Stallards’ home, like others in the street, was a small terraced house with a bow front upstairs and down. It looked about the same age as Beryl’s house. It had one peculiarity distinguishing it from its fellows. A shallow ramp had been built from the front door nearly across the narrow forecourt to the gap representing a gate. If there had ever been a gate it had long gone. The same was true of other houses in the road. Perhaps they’d all been taken in a wartime scrap metal collection. The ramp did away with the front doorstep and suggested one thing only. Somebody in this house moved around on wheels.
Even as I watched, the front door opened. It took me by surprise and I let my hand drop from my ear for a moment before remembering I was in the middle of a telephone conversation and returned the mobile to its roost. Someone appeared in the open doorway. I had the rear view of a woman who was exiting the house backwards. This, it soon became obvious, was because she was pulling a wheelchair out with her. She backed carefully down the ramp out of the gate gap and only then turned the chair so that it faced up the road towards the shopping area I’d passed through earlier. The chair contained a man who, despite the balmy evening, was wearing a blue pullover and a little blue peaked cap. He looked considerably underweight and when she leaned over him to say something he raised a thin hand in acknowledgement. She went back to the house and pulled the front door shut. I noticed she didn’t call out to anyone within. That didn’t necessarily mean anything, but I was looking for signs that Lisa Stallard was there.
I was as certain as anyone could be that the couple were her parents. The ramp indicated they lived there and weren’t just visitors. I put the mobile away with some relief - I was beginning to get cramp in my arm from having it stuck up in the air for so long - and followed discreetly after the Stallards as they set off down the street. I did not want them to be aware of me haunting their footsteps and I hoped they hadn’t noticed me across the street when they’d come out of the house. If I was intending to call there the following day, it wouldn’t help if they’d seen me hanging out the evening before. But the woman was completely taken up with her husband, talking to him in what seemed to be an encouraging tone as she pushed his chair along. I couldn’t hear if he replied.
They reached the parade of shops and turned right along it. I crossed the road and followed them from there, keeping well back. From time to time they stopped before a shop front and looked in the window. When this happened I had to pretend to do the same. The Stallards then moved on at the same leisurely pace, not appearing to be in any hurry or to have a specific purpose. When they reached the end of the shopping parade they continued. Occasionally they would pass someone they knew and exchange a brief word. These passers-by didn’t appear to be surprised to see them and I realised now what was happening. Mrs Stallard was taking Mr Stallard out for a regular evening outing, a breath of fresh air when the pavements were relatively empty, traffic lighter on the road and altogether fewer obstacles lay in their path.
I stopped short where I was, overcome with shame. What business had I, dogging them like this? These were people who had their own very real problems. Now they had the additional one of the sudden return of Lisa to the family home, supposing that Lisa had done that. How were they coping? Did Mickey Allerton know that Mr Stallard was in a wheelchair? I hated every part I was being obliged to play in this messy, embarrassing and underhand business. However, it was time to be professional about my task and not get caught up in personal emotions. The Stallards would be out for a while and I could go back to the house and check whether anyone else was there. I wanted, if possible, to talk to Lisa without contacting any other member of her family.
This time I walked down the road fairly briskly. I rang the front-door bell and waited. No one answered. I stepped back and considered the house frontage. I’d have to pay a return visit. That Lisa wasn’t there now didn’t mean she wasn’t there at all.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a curtain twitch at the upper front bay of the house next door. Time to move on. I turned and strolled away. I had passed about half a dozen doors when my ear caught the faint click of a door closing some distance behind me down the street. I didn’t break my stride. Animals have the advantage over humans in being able to move their ears to catch sounds behind them. I couldn’t do that, but even so, I was sure there was a soft footfall keeping time with my steps. I reached the shopping precinct again, and crossed the main road with the intention of stopping by the first bus stop I reached to wait for a bus to take me back. The person following me crossed over too. He or she was a novice at trailing someone. This was reassuring but also annoying. I didn’t want this busybody, whoever he or she was, reporting back to the Stallards.
I passed a quaint old pub called the Dewdrop which had survived intact between modern buildings with shops below and offices above. There was a bus stop here. I halted and turned round.
My tracker was a young man in jeans and a black T-shirt with trainer-shod feet. When he caught my eye he looked guilty and dithered between diving into the pub and putting a bold face on it and continuing. He decided in for a penny, in for a pound. He walked up to the bus stop and stood there with me.
The situation was bordering on the ridiculous. There we were, side by side, staring at the passing traffic, and painfully aware of one another. He’d been following me and he knew that I’d guessed it. No sensible person would have tried to bluff it out as he was doing. I ventured a glance sideways but he kept his eyes resolutely to the front and his spine ramrod straight in a way which would have done credit to a sentry at Buckingham Palace. Amateurs, huh!
Just then a bus did come along and I hopped on. Would you believe it? Sherlock Holmes hopped on behind me. I wondered, when we reached the city centre, if he’d get off there. But he stuck with me. The bus crossed the river over Magdalen Bridge and rounded the central shrub-planted area of the Plain, halting just at the beginning of the Iffley Road. I got off and yes, he got off too.
This was now just exasperating. Instead of walking towards my destination I stood still on the pavement. Holmes dithered again not knowing whether to walk past me and risk me doubling back behind him. I decided to put him out of his misery.
‘You’re following me,’ I said to him, not unpleasantly. I even gave him a kindly smile, just to rattle him further.
He turned beetroot-red, right up into his tousled fair hair. ‘No, I’m not.’ His gaze was shifting all over the place now, unable to meet mine.
‘Do me a favour. Do I look as if I arrived from the moon yesterday? You’ve followed me from Summertown. If you didn’t want me to notice you, well, all I can say is, you’re lousy at tailing someone. If you didn’t care if I saw you, then perhaps you thought it would worry me. No chance. Where I come from, if you worried about the people you met on the street, you’d never go out. So don’t mess me around. What do you want?’
With unexpected pugnacity he retorted, ‘I ought to ask you that!’
‘Why?’ I countered.
‘What do you want with the Stallards?’ He was glaring at me now, trying to put the frighteners on me.
There was no way he was going to gain an advantage by blustering, not here on the open pavement, and certainly not now he’d tipped his hand by mentioning the Stallards. I wasn’t alarmed by him but I was seriously annoyed. This was another unwished complication.
‘Who are they?’ I asked.
‘I saw you!’ He jutted his jaw at me. He was beginning to sweat now; I could see the pearls forming on his forehead. He was a good-looking guy in a sporty sort of way, the sleeves of the black T-shirt stretched over well-developed biceps. Probably he had more brawn than brain-power, judging by what I’d seen of him so far, but that didn’t make him less of a problem. I wasn’t only annoyed with him but with myself and abashed at my own conceit. I’d flattered myself I’d done a good job looking over the Stallards’ house and trailing them. Obviously, I hadn’t. My companion might be a bumbling amateur but I’d made it too easy for him. I also had a lot to learn about being inconspicuous.
He confirmed this. ‘You came wandering down our road. You hung about on the other side talking on your mobile. Who were you talking to? Were you making some kind of report? Then you went after Jennifer when she pushed Paul out for their evening stroll. I thought that was odd and kept watching. Good job I did. You came back and rang their doorbell. You knew they were out. So either you’re planning a burglary or you want to see Lisa. She’s not in.’
The last words were spoken a little too defiantly. I interpreted this to mean she wasn’t there that particular evening but she was staying at the house. This, in itself was useful knowledge. I had always had a small doubt that Mickey was right in saying she’d gone home. Now my companion had obligingly tipped me off. This guy was an interfering blunderer but evidently knew the family well. What was he? Just a neighbour? A friend? Lisa’s boyfriend?
‘That’s it, is it?’ I asked. ‘A first-class snoop on your neighbours, aren’t you?’
He reddened again, this time with anger not with embarrassment. ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve! You were behaving in a suspicious manner. I ought to have called the police.’
‘No,’ I contradicted, ‘I ought to call the police. You’ve admitted you’ve followed me. I call that harassment. ’
A sarcastic grin spread briefly over his face. ‘You won’t call the police,’ he said.
Well, he was right. ‘Listen,’ I told him. ‘Just go home, will you? This has nothing to do with you.’
‘Perhaps it does!’ he returned, cocky now. He thought he had me on the run. ‘Who are you, anyway?’
‘Sod off, will you?’ I repeated my request less politely. I turned and walked away. There was nothing else I could do. He walked boldly behind me now.
‘Listen, chum,’ I growled at him. ‘You are seriously getting up my nose!’
‘It’s a free country,’ he replied. ‘I can walk along this pavement. If you think I’m harassing you, like you said, ring the cops. You’ve got a mobile phone on you. I won’t try and grab it off you. I’m not daft.’
He was going to stick with me until he saw where I was headed. There wasn’t anything I could do about it. He knew that, I did my best to ignore him and carried on until I reached Beryl’s guest house. Here we stopped.
‘This is it,’ I said, turning to him. ‘This is where I’m staying. Now you know you can toddle off back home.’
‘I’ll wait until you go inside,’ he said obstinately.
Another one! Every time I set foot on the streets of this city, was some concerned citizen going to insist on escorting me to a safe haven? First Pereira, now this Neighbourhood Watch fanatic?
‘Fine,’ I said nonchalantly. I climbed the steps to the front door and put the key Beryl had given me into the lock. That convinced him.
‘Wait!’ he called urgently.
I should have ignored him but if he had something he wanted to say he was stupid enough to come knocking on the door. I didn’t want Beryl - and ultimately Mickey - finding out about this pest. Mickey would be likely to arrange a small accident for the guy. I turned back. ‘What?’