The Overlooker (19 page)

‘Hey, up! I'm not that old!'

‘Sorry! I don't mean you lived then, but you knew people who did. I hardly know where to start my questions. Anything you can tell us about those people. Your parents, for instance. My great-grandparents . . . But you mustn't let us tire you.'

Uncle Martin managed a crooked smile. ‘If Thelma was here, she'd tell you you'd have a hard job stopping me talking, once I get on to the old days. It's a funny thing, as you get older, what happened when you were young comes back as clear as yesterday. But you've a job remembering what you did last week. You saw that suitcase, did you? Thelma got it down from the loft. You might as well have it.' He lay back in the chair looking suddenly tired. ‘I've no grandchildren of my own to pass those things on to, more's the pity. She never married, Thelma. But she's a good girl. Looks after me.'

‘Yes. She showed us it yesterday. It was terrific. A real treasure trove.' Nick turned to Tom. ‘You have to see this. There's this whole suitcase full of old photographs, newspaper cuttings, all sorts. And best of all are the letters. Written by Fewings in the nineteenth century. They're full of things, like your great-great-great-great-grandfather suffering from diabetes, even in those days. And how the family fell out with the bailiffs, because they were solid chapel-goers who wouldn't pay tithes to the Church of England.'

‘Great stuff! You mean we've got revolutionaries in the family?'

‘We went out to Briershaw this morning. Millie found some graves.'

The enthusiasm in his voice tailed away. The coincidence of Harry Redfern's car parked outside. The nightmare of his foolishness, driving back down the lane. The hooded cyclist who would not let him past. The bend rushing towards him too fast. The silver-grey car. And the irrevocable smash against the wall. The crumpled wing and the bruise on Suzie's head.

‘Aye, the chapel,' Uncle Martin murmured. ‘That was a big thing in our family. Of course, in my time it wasn't Briershaw Chapel out in the dales. We all went to Stoneyham Methodist on the road into town. Ah, we had some grand times. You young ones won't understand.' He looked at Tom. ‘You're all for pubs and getting drunk and beating each other up nowadays. Beats me how you can think that's a good night out.'

‘Hang on!' Tom protested. ‘We're not all like that. I don't mind a pint of beer, but I don't get blind drunk.'

‘No, well. In my day, it was the chapel youth club. There was badminton on Friday nights, and we used to go cycling of a weekend. I remember one Saturday, clear as anything, about forty of us cycling through the Trough of Bowland. Lovely sunshine, it were, when we set out, and we'd gone ten mile when the heavens opened and we had to get home in a thunderstorm. Like drowned rats, we were. But you don't care, do you, when you're that age? That was the day I fell in love with Netta.'

He looked beyond them with dreaming eyes. Then his expression sharpened.

‘Didn't Thelma say you had a girl?'

‘Millie,' said Nick.

‘That's right . . . I forget things.'

A sudden stab of consciousness brought Nick back to the present. His eyes flew to the ward door. There was still no sign of Suzie and Millie. Where
were
they?

‘Ay, Millie. Now there's a name that takes me back. Millie Bootle.'

With an effort, Nick turned his head back to the old man. ‘You knew her? The old Millie, I mean? Suzie found her in the census. Millicent Bootle, daughter of James Bootle, the herbalist. She was born in the 1850s.'

Uncle Martin's half-immobilised face registered surprise. ‘You know about her? All those years back? Well, isn't it wonderful what they can find out these days? It'll be these computers, I suppose.'

‘Yes. What was she like? You must have been born in . . .'

‘In 1920.' Tom had done the calculations first.

‘So she'd have been in her sixties, seventies, before you met her.'

‘You didn't ask a lady's age in them days. But she had white hair. Going deaf she was. Talked at the top of her voice. Of course, if you've spent your working life with hundreds of looms clattering and the steam engine going, it was either shouting your head off or learning to lip-read. Used to tell us how she worked in the mills from when she was a girl. Of course, we all did. I was a beamer. I used to spin the yarn on to rollers for the weavers. But I got to be an underlooker, first, then an overlooker.'

‘An underlooker?' Tom seized on the word with relish. ‘Is that what you call someone who crawls under the machine to pick up the waste?'

‘No, lad. That's a scavenger. Millie Bootle used to do that when she started. No, you've got your underlooker. He's a sort of trainee foreman. And then there's the overlooker. He's the man that inspects every bit of cloth that comes out of the mill. And if it's not good enough, you'll not get paid for it. All the weavers used to fear him. He'd got your day's wage in his power. Time was, when the overlooker used to beat the children, too, to make them work when they were falling asleep on their feet. And he'd have his underlooker helping him. You had to have an eye for it. I know good cloth when I see it. If there's owt wrong with it, it was my job to spot it. But I'm glad to say, we didn't have the young 'uns working in the mills when I were on the job.'

Nick's mind was racing with questions he would love to ask: about Uncle Martin's work, about his parents and grandparents, and the memories Millicent Bootle carried with her into old age. Questions about life outside the mill, too: their homes, their pastimes, their food, the songs they sang. There was such achingly little time, and so much to tell.

But he could not concentrate. His anxiety was growing. Why wasn't Suzie here to listen to this? Had she found Millie in the shopping centre? Had she persuaded or scolded her into coming to the hospital? Thelma had said there was a bus every fifteen minutes from the town centre. Surely they should be here soon?

He told himself he was panicking unnecessarily. They might be outside in the corridor, waiting their turn to see Uncle Martin.

He was pushing down his worst fear. That Suzie had not been able to find their daughter. That, in the short time between lunch and their finding her note, something had happened to Millie. Millie had left the house alone. Someone had been watching. But surely Suzie would have rung?

He felt the slight weight of his mobile phone in his leather jacket like an unexploded bomb. Of course, he had switched it off in the hospital. If Suzie was trying to get through to him, he wouldn't know. He imagined her growing panic. Suddenly he had to get out of the ward. Somewhere where he could switch on his phone and make contact with her.

‘. . . Eh, they were good times.' Uncle Martin was in animated conversation with Tom. ‘We never had much money, but you didn't expect it. You learned to do without. Of course, there were the wars. Two of them. I was only a nipper then, but I remember Uncle Harold. He'd come back from the first one, gassed. He never could breathe properly after that. Died before he was forty. And then I got called up for Hitler's one. Twenty-three, I was, and just married.' His face clouded. ‘I was away four years. North Africa, mostly. I won't tell you what I saw there. But it's hard coming back to civvie life after that. We only ever had the one girl, Netta and me. Thelma. Still, she's been a good daughter to me.'

His voice was failing. Nick noticed a nurse hovering near. He started to rise.

‘It's been lovely seeing you, Uncle. There's so much more we'd like to talk to you about. But we're tiring you. Why don't we come back tomorrow?'

‘Suzie. You said she was outside. And your girl. Millie.'

His short-term memory was not so bad, after all. Nick tried to smile. ‘I expect they're waiting for us. I can send them in for a few minutes, if you're sure it won't be too much. That nurse is looking anxious.'

‘I'd like to see the girl. Millie. That's a good old name. She was a bit of a character, Millie Bootle, as I remember.'

There was no doubt his voice was fading now. Nick glanced at the nurse again. Would she let two more visitors see Uncle Martin? Supposing they
were
there.

He pressed the thin old hand, feeling the knuckles through the loose skin. ‘Tomorrow. We'll come and see you tomorrow. All of us.'

He hoped desperately that he could make that promise good.

S
uzie and Millie were not in the corridor.

A door led out into a gravelled garden with a fishpond. Nick's mobile was in his hand before he stepped through it. Hungrily, he watched the little screen spring to life. He checked for messages. Nothing. No voicemail, no text. He tried to stifle his anxiety by telling himself that this must be good news. Suzie had found Millie. They were on their way. There was nothing untoward to report. At any moment they would be here.

If Suzie arrived now, how would she find him here, in this secluded garden? Would she go straight past to the ward, or wait for him to appear in the hospital concourse?

He was striding back towards the corridor, almost at a run, when a hand gripped his arm. His nerves were so on edge that he gasped.

It took him a moment to realize that it was only Tom.

His son stood looking at him with concern.

‘What's up, Dad? Your nerves are shot to pieces. You've come all this way up here to see him, but half the time Uncle Martin was talking, you weren't really paying attention. And what was all that about Mum and Millie not being here? You said it was a long story. Shoot.'

It would be a relief to share it with someone else. Nick rubbed his hand over his face, trying to order his teeming thoughts.

‘It was our first day here. We had this queer experience. I thought I'd go over to Hugh Street, where my grandparents lived. Thelma said they had plans to demolish it, but she thought it was still there. And it was, but all the houses were empty and boarded up. At least, that's what it looked like. Only . . . Oh, I forgot. Something happened before that. We met this woman. I guess she was from Pakistan or Bangladesh. Muslim dress. She'd collected her little boy from nursery school, and she was crying, but she wouldn't tell us why. And then we got to Hugh Street, and I was just going to take a photograph and go away, when we saw a movement. Like there was someone inside. So I rang the bell. And the guy that answered looked at me suspiciously around the door, like he didn't want me to see inside.'

He could see Tom's eyes brightening with excitement. Nick rushed on. ‘I'd been hoping he'd let us in for a last look round. But he clearly wanted to get rid of us. And then I saw another woman at the top of the stairs. Dressed like the first. The one we met in the street. And then
she
came along. The one who was crying. I could swear she was turning up to work because she was apologizing for being late. But the guy pretended he didn't know her and sent her away. Then he shut the door in my face.'

‘Great stuff!' Tom cried. ‘What did you think was going on there? A bomb factory?'

‘You watch too many thrillers. No, my guess is it's something more prosaic. But still illegal. Probably a sweatshop, using vulnerable women on starvation wages. Unemployment's rocketing here. That's what the police think, anyway.'

‘Hang on, Dad. You've got a stereotype about downtrodden Asian women. They could be more proactive, couldn't they? A terrorist cell?'

‘If it was, you'd expect the man at the door to be lot more subtle. And the woman we talked to didn't look nearly as hard-bitten as that. She had a little boy. But here comes the really scary bit. Even before we had time to report it to anyone, I got this call on my mobile. A man's voice. No number. He warned me not to go to the police. He didn't just know my name, which I'd told to the guy at the door. There was a whole lot more. He'd got my mobile number, my architect's qualifications. He was threatening not just me but my family.'

Tom whistled. ‘But you
did
tell the police. Right?'

‘Of course I did. We went to the police station next morning. And at first the inspector seemed really interested. She had her own theory. It was a brothel, run by an international vice ring. I think she's holding a brief for that sort of thing. You could tell she was really keen to catch them. Then, later that morning, I got a text message. All it said was “bad move”. Like he knew we'd been to the police. And there have been two more threatening messages since then.'

He started down the corridor towards the hospital concourse. He would not be easy until he saw that Millie was safe. Tom's long legs almost had to run to keep up with him.

‘So the guy knew you'd reported him?'

‘It looks like that. Of course, I got back to the inspector. But she's gone cool on the whole thing. Seems they've got the house under covert surveillance but she's ruled out the brothel thing. Handed it over to someone else. She didn't think that text message meant what I thought it did. Just a follow-up to the first call. “Bad move” meaning our calling at the house, not going to the police. But I'm convinced someone's following us.'

‘See? I wasn't exaggerating. Who's going to be that scary about a sweatshop? It's got to be something worse.'

‘Millie was nervous about hospital visiting and when we came here yesterday, there were curtains round his bed. She thought he'd died. She didn't want to come today. I thought we'd talked her round, but when it was time to leave this afternoon we found a note. She's gone into town on her own. Mum's gone to fetch her and bring her up here.'

Tom gave a low whistle. ‘And they haven't shown up?'

They came in sight of the hospital concourse, with the reception desk and shop and the colour-coded trails to different departments.

Nick scanned it eagerly. People were sitting near the doors, waiting for transport. Others were arriving, looking around for where to go.