Dying Flames (9 page)

“I was just a snotty-nosed schoolboy,” said Graham, with that false self-deprecation that gushing speeches often elicit from their victims.

“If you had been a snotty-nosed schoolboy, I wouldn't have been interested, darling,” said Peggy. “And I definitely was interested. What we had was short, but it was very beautiful. We weren't children, but we were young: we were starry-eyed, impulsive, and ill-prepared.” There was a little laugh, Graham thought from Vesta Halliburton. “I am sometimes surprised by how often girls get caught out these days, after all the education, and all the awful warnings in the soaps, but still they do. We—genuinely—knew nothing. Soon after the lovely, brief romance was over, I found I was pregnant. And I think all of you bright, intelligent people will have guessed what I am going to say. It seems like magic—the best, most lovely sort of magic. Suddenly my Terry here has not only a new mum, but a new dad.”

Graham had been transfixed by Peggy, by the awfulness of the speech, and dread of what was coming. Now he looked at Terry—something Peggy had not done during the entire speech. Terry's face was fixed on her, but imprinted on it was not joy or euphoric surprise. It was stupefaction, disgust, revulsion. Was it real emotion? Graham wondered. Or acting? Terry was after all Peggy's son. “Yes, the boy I had by that unexpected pregnancy was Terry, and Terry's natural father is, happily, with us tonight. It's a wonderful feeling at last to reunite father and son.”

There was a clatter. Terry had stood up with a vengeance, his chair flying behind him. The American tourists, perhaps thinking this was a rehearsal for a play, or perhaps that this was a family row involving one of Britain's foremost actresses, were taking snaps. Terry's face was certainly a picture—beetroot with rage.

“What is this crap? You're talking fucking nonsense—taking me for a fool. This man's not my natural father. I don't need a natural father. I know my natural father already.”

For the second time that evening an exit was made.

Like the first one, it was the exit of a pride-injured male, and it therefore had a similarity—it seemed to the watchers in the nature of a replay. What was quite different was Peggy's reaction to it. She gazed at the door shutting behind Terry, then looked distractedly round, first at one face, then at another, then to her various “things”—handbag, purse, makeup bag—on the table around her, then to her coat hanging on a stand by the door.

“I must go after him,” she said, seeming worried and upset. She gathered up the various receptacles, then put them back in a heap while she fetched her coat and put it over all the billowing voile. It was a light coat, in an interesting green, and it suited her. She knew it, and she posed while she looked round to see if there was anything she had forgotten.

“Adam didn't get this kind of concern from her,” whispered Graham to Ted Somers.

“And he's only fourteen,” said Ted. They watched as Peggy, without good-byes, sailed out of Luigi's and into the night.

“I think we'd better go after them,” said Graham. “Have you got your car?”

“Yes. I'm an old garageman, remember. Driving skills are the last things to go.”

“It seems like overkill: two perfectly capable young males. Still, Adam at least is still very much underage.”

“It's only Adam I'm worrying about. And Christa.”

“Me too. A twenty-five-year-old male should be perfectly safe in Romford on a Monday night. Still, it seems to be Terry that Peggy is looking for. We've got four people looking for two. Surely one of us must strike lucky.”

“You'd think so. But I'm not sure my eyesight's up to recognizing this new one.”

Graham took “this new one” to be Terry Telford and refrained from wondering whether Ted should be driving. They got themselves together and were starting for the door when they were confronted by Luigi and a large waiter who looked as if he'd originated from the north of Luigi's country—wide, hard-faced, and determined. It was Luigi who was brandishing a piece of paper.

“The bill, gen'lemen. The bill.”

Graham and Ted looked at each other.

“But Mrs. Webster—” Graham began.

“Oh, no, sir. This 'as 'appened before. You are friends and family. You 'ave good chance of getting the money. I—never!”

Ted and Graham looked at each other. Then they burst out laughing.

“Landed in it again!” said Ted. “At my age too. Only proves there's no fool like an old fool.”

They halved the bill, paid it—Ted with cash, Graham with credit card—and then they both went out into the night. A light drizzle was beginning to fall.

“We'd better keep in touch,” said Graham. “Have you got your mobile with you?”

“No. I stick to the law about not using a mobile: it's a sensible one. But I'll go back home periodically, in case Adam's there. It's 88 Silverdale Street. You can leave a note.”

“And I expect I'll come back here now and then. Both the lads were a bit hasty—annoying though Peggy is. They could have second thoughts and return to base, thinking we could still be eating.”

They separated, Graham noting that Ted had an old Jaguar, Ted noting that Graham had a newish Honda Civic. The other big difference between them, Graham decided as he set off, was that Ted knew the roads he was driving, where he did not. He could only cruise around the center and near-center of Romford, registering the odd place he already recognized—the Jeremy Bentham College, Milton Terrace (number twenty-five was shrouded in darkness), the Halliburtons' shop, and Luigi's, still busy and throbbing. He looked at the occasional body wrapped in blankets huddled in a shop or office doorway. Surely Adam couldn't be so well-
prepared as to be already equipped for sleeping rough? On the other hand, if he had been home, there was no reason why he shouldn't have grabbed a couple of blankets from a drawer and be getting what sleep he could in an unusual and frightening situation.

Now and again there was a halfhearted shower of rain. It was not cold, and there was no reason in the weather why a healthy fourteen-year-old shouldn't fare perfectly well during a night in the open. No reason in most weathers—there was the rub. The dangers came from people. A mixed-up adolescent, picked up by a pedophile or some still more dangerous kind of weirdo—the idea didn't bear thinking of.

Now and then in his cruising he raised a hand to Ted Somers doing likewise. Eventually, three-quarters of an hour into his search, he spotted Christa. He pulled to the curb beside her, glad to have found someone he knew, and who knew the area.

“No luck?” he asked. She shook her head miserably.

“Why don't you jump in? I'd be more effective with someone who knows him well, and you'd cover more ground.”

She thought for a moment, then hopped into the passenger seat.

“Any theories, any idea what to do next?” Graham asked.

“Not really. I thought about going to look at one or two of the people sleeping rough—”

“Risky. You'd very much better not try that. I thought about it, but cried off.”

“Oh, it wouldn't worry me,” said Christa airily, as if buxom young women ran no risks in a modern town. “But I just couldn't imagine Adam sleeping in a doorway. He thinks of himself as a hard man, but really he likes his creature comforts. Anyway, I thought I'd only do it if I recognized the blankets.”

“I suppose that makes sense. I've been past your house. It's in darkness. I suppose it's not inconceivable that Adam has simply gone home and gone to bed.”

“Pride would stop him, I reckon,” said Christa. “But we could go home and see if there's any sign of either of them.”

“Either of them? Did Terry have a key to your house?”

“Not that I know of, but he could have. But why would he go there if he's pissed off with Mum? I saw Grandad and he told me what happened. He was back at his house, checking up there. I should think Terry just caught the first train home. No, I meant Adam and Mother. If she's out looking for Terry, I can't understand why I haven't caught sight of her.”

“Right, then let's go to Milton Terrace. Direct me.”

It turned out to be an easy journey—a right turn, five minutes straight drive, then a turnoff from just above Halliburton's greengrocery into the maze of between-the-war semis. When Graham pulled up outside number twenty-five, he was frowning.

“Isn't that a light—a dim one?”

“Yes. I think it could be the light in the big cupboard-like thing Peggy had built in the hall for coats and macs and boots and Adam's sports things. She was going with a builder at the time.”

“Well, I think someone must have been back.”

“Maybe Mother came home for a warmer coat than the one she wore to Luigi's. It's a favorite with her, but it's really a summer coat. Or maybe Adam came for some of his sports things.”

“What on earth could he want with them?”

“Maybe he couldn't bear to leave them behind. Qualifying for the underfifteens would win out over rage at Mum any day. It's sort of Linus's blanket with him. I can imagine him sleeping rough with his football boots for comfort.”

“Come on. Let's go and have a look.”

Christa let them in and put the light on. The hall had been a good-sized one, but the cupboard to the right of the door cut down the space. The door was open and Christa looked in.

“Looks like I was wrong about Adam's sports things. They all seem to be here.”

“We could check upstairs. He could be in bed.”

“Maybe…Mother's coat she wore to Luigi's is here, and a thicker one has gone…and a pair of walking shoes. She wore high heels to Luigi's, because the Halliburtons took us in their car.”

“The changes make sense if she was going to tramp the streets looking for Adam or Terry.”

Christa screwed up her forehead. “Yes, apart from the fact that neither of us saw her doing any tramping.” She cast her eye around the hall, but saw nothing out of place. “Let's just have a look in the front room.” She opened the door and switched on the light. “Ah.”

A dining table dominated the room. On the table was a sheet of exercise-book paper, lined, and torn from its binder. They both went over and leant over it to read, Graham very conscious of the closeness of the girl. The note was in fact two notes, in different handwritings. The top one was in a childish hand that was just beginning to find individual characteristics of its own.

The other handwriting was undoubtedly adult, but with little flourishes and curlicues for effect.

“Sorry about that,” said Christa, embarrassed.

“Don't worry. Since I was never told about Terry, there wasn't much I could do.” He thought for a moment. “I wonder what I would have done if I had been told.”

“Anything but marry her. We mustn't show Adam this.”

“You mean he'll see it as some kind of challenge, and it'll make him still more determined to stay away?”

“Yes…I wonder if he's gone to Mickey Leatherby's.”

“Who's that? One of his friends?”

“Adam just has chums—mates he hangs about with but never really confides in. But Mickey's the one he's closest to. They share a mania for football—athletics too, but not so passionately.”

“Where does Mickey live?”

“I think it's Hamnet Street. I'll look him up.”

Hamnet Street it was, number forty-eight. Since it sounded as if this was the only “friend” Adam would have thought of going to, Graham agreed it was worth a try. Christa said it was a ten-minute drive away, and after a quick trip upstairs to check on Adam's bedroom, which was empty and undisturbed, they went out to the car again and Christa gave directions in intervals of talking.

“We left the light on in the hall cupboard,” she said as they drove away.

“I know. I thought about it, but decided we should leave things as they were when we arrived.”

She shot him a glance. “Why?”

“In case we have to call in the police.”

“Why would we?”

“Christa, women who go away leaving their children—sorry, one of their children—to fend for themselves, and any woman who disappears with ‘a friend,' are possible objects for the police to investigate. At some point we may have to decide among ourselves whether to call them in.”

Christa considered this.

“But she's done it before, more than once.”

“That makes it worse. What did you do? Just cope until she came back?”

“Yes. I can look after Adam. We got on all right.”

“I'm sure you did, but that's not the point. And this time there's the complicating factor that Adam had decided to leave home and announced it in his mother's presence.”

“Will the police take that seriously?”

“I don't know. We all did, didn't we? And the police won't think much of a mother who takes off just when her fourteen-year-old son has run away—and who leaves a note that says in effect that she doesn't give a damn.”

Christa pondered this.

“You don't like Mum much, do you?”

“No. I thought I might when I met her again, but, no: I don't like her, and I don't think much of her either.”

“This is Hamnet Street. Go slow—it's difficult to see the numbers…. That was thirty-six…. This is forty. We're going in the right direction…. This must be forty-eight.”

Graham stopped the car. The house was a detached one from the same era as the Milton Terrace house, and thousands more all over Romford. The hedges were low and well cared for, and they gave a view of the whole house. One room had lights on that blazed through their flimsy curtains.

“They're still up,” said Christa.

“It could be a family conference. There are no lights on anywhere else—kitchen or bedrooms, for example. We'd better think about whether we should interrupt it. If it's a conference about Adam, we might annoy him, especially if he thought they were about to let him stay. We could ruin our chances of influencing him.”

“Maybe I should go on my own—” Christa began.

“I was about to suggest that,” said Graham, grateful again for her fund of common sense. “I'm an unknown quantity to Adam, and there's no reason why he should like or trust me.”