A City of Strangers (25 page)

“That's right. A little girl—well, one of about twelve or thirteen.”

“Cilla,” said Mike Oddie with a sigh. “A girl it seems impossible to get anything out of.”

“She was the one I saw first. She came through the gate and stood at the front door. I could see her skirt—a revolting purple skirt. Then she disappeared. Of course, she could have flattened herself against the door for some reason or other. But Algy and I tried an experiment, and we think she went down the steps to the basement flat. In each of these houses the part with the flat is set back a bit from the rest, and the steps down go from just by the front door.”

“Yes, I saw that.”

“Of course, it may have no significance at all. Children are naturally curious, and you say this one is a secretive little girl. She may just have gone down to look, and then come up again.”

“How long was the time when you couldn't see her?”

She thought, trying hard to help him, wanting to please him.

“Oh—so hard to say after this time. A little while. I mean, not a matter of a few seconds. A minute or more.”

“Do you know the woman in the basement flat of The Hollies?”

“Oh, dear, no. I only know the people who've been here a long time—since before I . . . withdrew myself. Just Algy and . . . Daphne, really. I gather this woman in the flat has only been there a few months. I don't know her at all.”

“We do,” said Oddie grimly, standing up. “We know Mrs. Hobbs from way back.”

They thanked Rosamund Eastlake and made their way to the front door. Mike Oddie congratulated her on confronting the horror in her past, and assured her she would feel better for it, though as they said goodbye it struck him that she was already quite indistinguishable from any other middle-aged woman of great charm and with a strong sense of self-preservation. He and Stokes waved, and then went next door to The Hollies. They took the steps down to the basement flat, but it was darkened, and there was no response to their rings. They had expected as much from Algy Cartwright's account.

“Perhaps it's just as well,” said Oddie, back in the car. “I think it might be best if I did a bit of homework on Mrs. Hobbs before I speak to her.”

On the way back to police headquarters, Sergeant Stokes said:

“She seemed a nice woman, that Mrs. Eastlake. Odd story, but charming woman.”

“Ye-es.”

“You don't agree, sir?”

“I certainly agree she's very charming. Also that she knows how to use her charm, whether she's conscious of that or not. Somebody said that in any love affair there's one who loves and one who consents to be loved. I think Mrs. Eastlake consents to be loved—has done it all these last years with her son.”

“You think she's selfish?”

“Self-absorbed, anyway.”

“But at least it all seems to have a happy ending, sir. She's coming out of seclusion. The son will be liberated.”

“Liberated into what, after all these years when his life has revolved around her? Nothingness, I suspect. But I shouldn't be too harsh. There are worse kinds of love. I'm going to be looking into one of them now.”

M
rs. Valerie Hobbs arrived back at her basement flat at about ten past four. Mike Oddie heard this not from any plainclothesman left on watch (any such would be conspicuous in Wynton Lane, which contained only those six houses, and led nowhere), but from Algy Cartwright on the phone. They had not asked him to keep watch, but he had kept watch.

“The KGB of Suburbia strikes again,” said Mike Oddie to Stokes. “Who needs Neighborhood Watch? We'll give her half an hour to settle down.”

When they drove up it was five o'clock, and they left the car some doors away, outside Daphne Bridewell's, though from Mrs. Hobbs's flat, they guessed, there was no sort of view of the road. As they drew up they took in the painted accusation on Daphne Bridewell's wall, now fainter but still easily legible. The residents would only be saved from embarrassment by a much more ruthless treatment, or by an arrest. They walked casually to the flat, through an overgrown front garden and down the steps. From the flat itself, as they stood momentarily outside before ringing, there came the sound of music—Radio One—but not voices. Then they rang the bell.

“Yes?”

The woman who opened the door had a practiced social smile. She was wearing a cardigan, that guarantor of respectability. It was a close machine-knitted affair in pink, above a russet-colored skirt and a blouse with a small, decorous frill running down the length of it. She had a capable, attractive body, a carefully made-up face, and the image created was of one who could organize tea at a Women's Institute meeting or man the Save the Children shop single-handed. As no doubt she could.

“Mrs. Hobbs? We're police officers.”

She glanced briefly at their identification to hide her eyes, then flashed at them her five-carat smile.

“Oh, yes. Is it that nasty business on the Estate? The house fire? I saw that dreadful slogan on the wall. Would you care to come in?”

The accent was neutral middle-class but practiced, like her smile, and it had an underlay of something less socially acceptable, something that would have prevented her from ever gaining employment with the BBC. She led the way down a poky passage that led to a dark staircase up to the main part of the house. They, however, turned aside into a brightly lit sitting-room-cum-kitchen. It was furnished with assorted sofas and chairs, secondhand furniture-shop stuff, though the general effect was not really seedy. Trouble had been taken, though not much money had been spent. There was no sign of cooking around the little sink and stove, which stood under a high window that gave out onto the back garden and the lane. Mrs. Hobbs lowered the lighting, which was unflattering, and gestured them toward the chairs.

“Not much room, I'm afraid. I'll be getting out of here soon, when I've found a place of my own.”

“Did you know the Phelan family?” began Mike casually.

“The Phelan—? Oh, that's the family whose house was burned down, is it? No, not that I recall. Of course, it's not an uncommon name—Irish, isn't it? And I meet a lot of people. . . . ”

Talking too much, thought Mike. Nervous . . .

“I thought you might have met them through your daughter—”

“Oh—well—”

“—your daughter who is in care.”

Her lips tautened immediately, and Oddie saw that behind the social smile there was a tight, mean mouth.

“That was totally unfair. The Welfare Services people were quite out of order. I've got my lawyer onto it, but you know how long anything like that takes.”

Mike Oddie raised his eyebrows and shifted in his seat, still watching her closely.

“Mrs. Hobbs, let's not beat about the bush. It wasn't just the Welfare Services people who were involved in that matter, it was the police as well.”

“You lot can make a mistake as well as them, can't you? It was downright defamation of character.”

“It was a question of belatedly protecting a young child. Your daughter was involved in the Carrock child prostitution racket, and so was June Phelan.”

“She wasn't taken into care, though, was she? Tell me why that was? Look at the sort of family she has, and then look at the home I was providing for my little girl.”

“Ah, so you do know them.” Oddie gave a grim smile of satisfaction and it was her turn to shift in her chair. “Now, I've been looking at the notes on that case. June Phelan was only caught up in it just before we swooped—a matter of weeks, no more. Her involvement was marginal, and she was thirteen going on fourteen at the time. Your daughter had been deeply involved for some time, she was eleven—
eleven
, Mrs. Hobbs—and she was seriously disturbed. Still, I gather, is.”

She shot him a poisonous look.

“We were a one-parent family. You can't give a child the sort of twenty-four-hours-a-day mothering these days like they used to in the past.”

“Come off it,” said Mike, letting his dislike briefly show through. “You had no paid job at the time. Your position was hardly different from any other mother's.”

“Men!” she spat out viciously. “You think we ought to be chained to the kitchen sink every hour of the day, don't you?”

“We took the view at the time,” Oddie went on, ignoring her, “that since Mandy, your daughter, had been involved for some time—over a year, we were sure—and had been getting more and more unmanageable, so that they were seriously worried at Burtle Middle School, where she went—we took the view that there must have been gross negligence, to say the least, on your part. It never occurred to us that there might be anything worse than that.”

“Why should it? What are you trying to land on me now?”

“I think the investigating officer assumed, since you were living comfortably, that you were getting good alimony payments from your ex-husband. But I've made some inquiries of your ex-neighbors. There never was any husband, was there? Nor, as far as we can see, was there any maintenance order against the father of your child.”

“Well, what of it? Are you still living in the nineteenth century or something?”

“Not at all. But the question arises, doesn't it, Mrs. Hobbs: How come you were living so comfortably?”

“It's taken me a while to realize, to sort things out in my mind.” Steven Copperwhite was watching his ex-wife as he said it. She gave no sign of a reaction, merely sipped her glass of red wine. He had collected her from work, and they had gone to the Saddle of Mutton in Head Street, which was newly tarted-up Victorian, but quite warm and cozy. He had weighed in with the topic almost at once. “I suppose pride is involved, isn't it? I think underneath
I realized my mistake early on. I expect a lot of people who go into second . . . relationships do. What takes the time is acknowledging it to yourself.”

Margaret nodded neutrally.

“I mean, the fact is we're miles apart mentally. Evie is so totally committed—really committed, no question of that. But—I don't know—I find I'm too old or too tired for that sort of all-round commitment. I haven't got the fire, the energy. These days I take it easier.”

So you want to come back to me as someone you can take it easier with, Margaret thought. She said:

“Of course, one does slow down, at our age.”

“Yes. And you start asking yourself: All this activism and commitment—where does it get you, what good does it ever do? Evie seems like a throwback to the sixties. Remember when we used to laugh at Feiffer and Peanuts, and sing ‘Little Boxes'? And where did it all get us? A decade of Thatcher and the market as God. No, I realize now that Evie and I were never close. It was an illusion. And we're getting further and further apart all the time. Another red wine?”

Margaret nodded. It would give her time to think.

“The fact is, I made a mistake,” said Steven, coming back with two glasses. “I'm not too proud to acknowledge it. I thought it was a great love, a consuming passion, but it was one of those purely physical things.”

“Itchy prick?” suggested Margaret.

“Well . . . I suppose so.” He threw her a glance and laughed uneasily. “You've changed, Meg. I don't think you'd have used an expression like that when we were married.”

“I suppose not. Working in a male environment you pick up the language. Policemen lead pretty dangerous, unpleasant lives these days. They don't mince their words. And, of course, there are plenty of men in the Force who are going through that phase.”

“Are there? Yes, I suppose I was suffering from a pretty universal malady. But it
is
only a temporary thing, Meg. I don't know what causes it—fantasy, vanity, all sorts of things you can't disentangle. But I do know now that I made a fool of myself, and I do know that I've come through it.”

Margaret nodded slowly.

“Meg, I'm going to ask you to do a big, brave thing.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Let me move back. I know things can never be quite the same—I'm not such a fool as to think they can—but there's no reason why they shouldn't be pretty good. We really jogged along very pleasantly in the past, didn't we? I won't mention the children, because they're grown up and moved away now, but they
would
be happy if we got together again.”

“What about Evie?”

“She wouldn't suffer. The house is in both our names. I'd just let her have my share. I'd leave the furniture. It's not much anyway. I could get together my things quite easily—clothes and books is really all it amounts to. It
would
work this time, Meg dear. I know what a fool I've been. I'd sweat to make sure it worked. Please say yes. I could just pile my things into the car and be with you tomorrow night.”

She looked ahead of her, expressionless, thinking. Then silently she dipped her hand into her handbag, took out a key, and handed it over the table to him.