Authors: Ann Troup
It was a very succinct explanation for a situation that must have spawned a million reactions and motivations. Edie mulled it over for moment, trying to imagine what it must have been like for her father to come back to that, everything he’d ever held dear either gone or shattered. She could understand his grudge against the Whites, although she couldn’t agree with it, but had any of it been enough to drive a man to murder as Matt claimed? Even if it had, which she supposed might not be entirely impossible, why would his victims have been random young women, why would he have not taken his rage out on the people who he blamed, Lionel and his mother? It seemed that Lionel had presented her with yet more questions, rather than the answers and reassurance she had hoped for.
The photograph album lay open on top of the others, unexamined since he had shown her the picture of her and Rose at the Jubilee. This meeting had not been the cosy history lesson she’d been anticipating. She pointed to it, ‘May I have a look through?’ She wanted to put faces to the names, see these people that Lionel had talked about in the hope that their pictures would help her make sense of what she’d been told.
Lionel passed it across to her. ‘Of course, let me sit beside you and I can point out who is who.’
She shifted along the sofa to make room for him. ‘Do you know that I’ve never seen a photograph of my father as an adult? I suppose they got rid of them all when he left us.’
Lionel gave her that sly grin of his, the one that looked like a tic, ‘I suppose they must have.’ He flipped through the album.
‘There he is, that’s just before he got his call up.’
Edie looked closely at the young man, in the picture he was lounging against the front wall of Number 17 with his shirt sleeves rolled up and his face squinting to block out the sun. It was strange to look at a man she’d never met and contemplate an affinity with him, yet more strange to search his features and look for murderous intent. It was a picture just like a million others, one in every family album and there was nothing special that marked him out.
‘I have one of your mother too.’ He flicked through the pages and pointed to another street party scene. ‘The coronation –’ he said ‘– though the square was named for Edward’s, not the current Queen’s.’
Her mother was there, younger and slimmer than Edie remembered, but with the same pensive frown pinching her features that Edie recognised of old. Her father was there too, one arm around Lena’s shoulders, both of them laughing, heads thrown back, mouths open. ‘Is Mavis on here?’ Edie asked, curious about the dead wife, Rose’s birth mother and the woman who Edie was still trying to make real in her mind.
‘There.’ Lionel pointed to the page, his fingertip resting beneath the tiny image of a beautiful, ethereal looking woman. ‘That’s her. Quite the beauty eh?’
She was, and Rose certainly had the look of her, thought she had inherited Frank’s frame and lacked the thinness of her mother. Edie suddenly felt incredibly sad, not just for the woman on the page who had lost her life so tragically, but for Rose, and herself and even her mother. No wonder her own mother had been such a bitter pill, living up to Mavis – perhaps even living with the ghost of Mavis – must have been quite a chore. But could a loss like that and a second, bitter wife turn a man to murder? Edie didn’t know, but something had driven him away and Edie had always believed it must have been her unwanted self and her mother’s personality.
It seemed that no matter how deep she delved there were consistently more questions than answers. She turned the page to another picture of the coronation, this one a group of happy looking women, each bearing platefuls of cake and sandwiches. ‘Who are these, Lionel?’ she asked.
That look again… ‘My mother,’ he pointed to the only woman not laughing, a prim looking type sporting nothing more on her face than a tight lipped smile for the camera. The other women had life and humour written all over their faces. ‘That one is June Leonard, Lena’s mother, next to her is Edna Pollett and that lady there I’m surprised you don’t recognise, it’s Beattie, your grandmother.’
Edie stared at the faces. Lena’s mother she could see clearly, like mother like daughter, they had the same fox-like eyes that seemed to miss nothing. Edna Pollett must have been the mother of the girl who was killed – but Beattie was the biggest surprise. The Beattie that Edie remembered had been a silent, sombre and brooding woman who shuffled about the place leaving an air of quiet menace in her wake, she had not been the happy, laughing lipstick-wearing woman in the picture. ‘She didn’t look much like that when I was little.’
Lionel took the album from her and closed it. ‘I imagine seven years in prison changed her quite a lot. It can’t have been easy, especially coming back to a place where people would cross the road to avoid you. It must have taken its toll. And Frank had gone by then, he was always her favourite, she ruined that boy and in the end he ruined her.’
Edie had to wonder at just how many people he’d ruined. Everything seemed to fit – loss, grief, rage, humiliation… and he’d clearly known Sally Pollett given that Beattie had been friendly with her mother. The other girls had been local too, had Frank resented their youth and vitality when his own wife had been robbed of hers? Perhaps, but was it a motive for murder? Damn Matt Bastin and his accusations! Edie wondered what on earth her mother had seen in such a broken, damaged man. She turned to Lionel, ‘Why do you think he married my mother?’
Lionel carefully realigned the album on the table with its fellows. ‘I think it was because she made herself indispensable to him, she looked after Rose when Dolly faltered with it, befriended the family when no one else would. She’d wanted him for a long time, ever since we were children Shirley had been his shadow, it was a bitter blow for her when he married Mavis.’
Edie nodded, it made sense, her mother had never been a reasonable woman when it came to things that she wanted – Edie had never know anyone with such a dogged determination to get her own way, even when it had resulted in a breakdown. She shook her head in her habitual way, shaking off the maddening thoughts that were crowding her mind. Ignoring Lionel’s puzzled look she got to her feet. ‘You’ve been very kind and very informative Mr White, thank you, but I won’t take up any more of your time.’
A look of crushing disappointment suffused his features, making him look suddenly very old, much older than he first appeared. ‘Oh, but I had so much more to tell you!’
Edie felt for him, he was clearly lonely and loved an audience but she had heard enough for one day, she wasn’t sure she could take in any more. ‘I’m so sorry, I’d love to hear more, but I’m afraid I have to get on with clearing the house, perhaps I could call over again?’
This seemed to mollify him and he smiled again. ‘Oh yes, I’d enjoy that. But please, telephone me first, I am a creature of habit you know, I don’t enjoy surprises.’ He walked over to a bureau in the corner, opened it and took out a card with his name and number printed on it. Edie took it, puzzled as to why an elderly man would have business cards, but as he had said so many times, he was a creature of habit and Edie suspected that some of those habits might be quite strange.
***
Sam watched Edie leave Number 17 from his mother’s bedroom, if she came back to the house now his window of opportunity for that morning would have gone. He was relying on the fact that she would have taken the girl with her, but he had the sneaking feeling that he was rapidly running out of luck. The girl was still in there and that caused him a problem.
His mother’s answerphone message had created an urgency that he couldn’t ignore – if Pascoe was making house calls, things were getting serious. He needed to retrieve Pascoe’s property and he needed to do it fast. The first lot had been easy, the bearer bonds were still exactly where he’d left them all those years before. Pascoe had wanted them kept safe, and where safer than between the pages of a book in the house next door? He doubted Dolly dimple had ever read a book in her life, mad old bint, and as for Dickie, well, he might have been a reader but he certainly wasn’t a fastidious man and by then hardly left his room. Hiding the bonds amidst the neglected books had seemed like the safest place of all. The dust had been so thick it was clear they hadn’t been touched in years. It was even thicker when he had retrieved them under the guise of helping Edie. Had he hidden them in his mother’s house she’d have rooted them out within a week. In Number 17 they’d lain undisturbed for fifteen years.
Pascoe had been pleased enough to have them back, but in his mind half a debt was still a debt unpaid. The rest was due and Sam’s time was running out. If he didn’t deliver the rest of the goods everything he had built would be pulled out from underneath him and if Pascoe’s reputation was to be believed (and Sam had seen enough over the years to be convinced that it was) there was a decent likelihood that he wouldn’t survive to complain about it. He’d often wondered whether the whole thing had been some kind of test, an investment on Pascoe’s part to measure Sam’s long-term loyalty. Sam didn’t consider himself to be a stupid man, he knew well enough what Pascoe was capable of and had never once put a foot wrong. The window of opportunity for him to prove both his worth and his loyalty was closing fast, and if it fell he’d lose more than his fingers.
If the girl was still in the house, so be it, she was dealt with easily enough. Johnno had wanted her off the square for an age, but Sam had been too disinterested to get involved, he never thought about the girls unless they were earning him money – if they weren’t earning, they were none of his concern. He couldn’t care less that she was Johnno’s spawn, she sure as hell couldn’t be the only one and it was beyond him why Johnno found the kid so abhorrent. It was hardly as if he was a man who might feel guilty about what he’d fathered. Still, it wasn’t worth thinking about the annals of Johnno’s mind, the man was a Neanderthal and whether he had a mind at all was a debatable fact.
He watched until Edie had crossed the square and was hidden by the trees in the garden, then he watched for a few minutes more just to make sure that she hadn’t just gone to the shop. Knowing his luck the silly cow would come wandering back any minute carrying a pint of milk. After ten minutes she hadn’t; it was now or never, and the girl would just have to be counted as collateral damage. Fortunately his mother was out of the picture too, she’d taken herself off out an hour ago, wittering on about something or other. She hadn’t even plied him with tea, which was worrying, but he didn’t have time to think about it. If he was quick he could be in and out in no time.
***
Sophie never saw it coming, the banging on the front door had dragged her from her bed, bleary eyed, dopey and resentful of the intrusion into her lie in. She’d stomped down the stairs, heavy footed with joints stiff from sleep and fumbled with the lock, vaguely realising that Edie must have gone out. She’d barely had time to speak when Sam pushed his way in, forcing her backwards and slamming the door behind him. The ‘what the fuck?’ that she’d been intending to say never made it past her lips. It was silenced by the fist with its brass clad knuckles that slammed into her face, then totally obliterated by an inky black darkness which descended like a proscenium curtain and shut the world out.
Sam nudged the prone form with his foot, she looked as if she was out cold, but you never knew. The broken nose wasn’t going to do her any favours and unless he wanted to kill her now, which would be inconvenient, he wasn’t going to be able to tape her mouth shut. He fished in his pocket for a couple of cable ties, like a good boy scout he always came prepared. Having secured her arms and feet he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small plastic bag with two pills inside, removing them he squeezed her cheeks with the other hand and forced her mouth open, pushing the pills into her throat – hoping that with a bit of luck she wouldn’t choke to death. He clamped his hand over her mouth, knowing that as she couldn’t breathe through her nose the semi-conscious state she was beginning to regain would force her to swallow. To his relief she did, then he hit her again, sending her back into oblivion. It was an unsavoury business, and one he normally left to one of his acolytes, but this was one job he had to complete on his own.
Sure that she was out again, he heaved her up onto his shoulder and carried her through to the kitchen, out of the back door, through the yard and into the alley at the back, having checked that no one was about. The house opposite – almost derelict, but one that he had owned for a while and planned to turn into bedsits – would be the perfect place to leave her while he made his mind up what to do with her. She was too feisty to work on the square, but there were other options where she could make herself useful. Options where the punters wouldn’t care about the state of her face, or what she was on.
Still carrying her like a sack of coal, he rummaged for the keys and let himself in through the boarded-up back door. The advantage of this house was that it had a cellar, and the advantage of that was that if she woke up and started yelling, no one would hear her. The drugs would take care of that for a while anyway.
With the girl safely deposited in the filth and grime of the derelict house, he made his way back to Number 17, knocking first just to check that Edie hadn’t come back in his absence. She hadn’t. Without further hesitation he climbed the stairs and made his way into Dickie’s old room, the only one Edie hadn’t messed with, thank God! The old man’s junk was still everywhere, his whole sorry life summed up by the stupid little machines that he used to make, what kind of man did that? Sam had never stopped to study them, but had always laughed at Dickie and his hobby. Today his interest in the artefacts in Dickie’s room was less than it ever had been, but his interest in the built-in cupboard in the corner was intense and frenzied. He dragged a chair over to the cupboard and set it inside the door so that he could use it as a ladder to reach the small hatch that led to a crawl space above the cupboard. It was barely a crawl space at all, and only served the purpose of giving access to water pipes and cables that ran between the floors. There was a similar one in his mother’s house and as a child he had used it as a den, until he’d got too big to fit and Lena had caught him once too often and saw fit to nail it shut. When Pascoe had asked him to store the diamonds he’d been hard pressed to think of a place to put them where no one would think to look, find them by accident or otherwise relieve him of the responsibility, and by default relieve him of his personal safety. Number 17 was the house of the moribund, both Dickie and Dolly too stupid, too lazy and too set in their ways to go poking around. Sam had hidden the diamonds in the crawl space the day he’d had to go in and help Dickie off the floor where he’d fallen and broken nothing but his last shreds of confidence. The old man had never climbed the stairs again and Sam figured that the crawl space was as safe as houses. Until he reached into the space, groped around and found nothing. Shit! He felt in his jacket for his mobile phone, using the screen light as a torch. The space was empty, barring a few rat droppings and the stench of the dry rot that seemed to riddle the house. He checked again, sure that his eyes must be deceiving him. There was nothing.