High-Wired (22 page)

He kept her standing, as she explained what had happened with Mrs Trussler’s visit, and pointed out the opportunity to go over the club’s office before its regular cleaner got in there. The man sat stony-faced while she explained that she had the woman’s statement with her, which he took without a word, then informed her that it would be passed to the ‘relevant department’, before dismissing her without a smile or a courteous word.

‘Just keep your nose out of this one,’ he said as she exited his office, relieved that the ordeal was over with. ‘Those three men’s deaths will be paid for without any interference from you or your well-meaning but short-sighted inspector.’

That evening, Ben didn’t get back until nearly midnight, to find both his parents sitting fretting about where he’d got to, and whether he’d found out anything further about his sister’s disappearance.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ asked Olivia, her face ashen.

‘Give me a chance, Ma, I’ve just walked through the door. Anyway, you could have phoned me to ask for an update.’

‘We didn’t want to disturb whatever you were doing,’ replied his mother. ‘Come on, did you find out anything?’

‘Let me get a cup of tea and I’ll tell you,’ Ben replied, infuriatingly.

‘I’ll get it. You sit down and tell your mother what you’ve discovered,’ said Hal, rising from his seat. ‘I’ll make us all one.’

‘Come on, come on,’ said Olivia impatiently. ‘Did you or did you not find out anything?’

‘I found out where she really is,’ declared Ben with some triumph. ‘She’s not gone to London at all.’

‘Thank God for that,’ replied Olivia, putting her palms up to her face, one on each cheek. ‘Where is she, then?’

‘Down Portsmouth way. Apparently Michael’s got family or friends, or something, down there. They wanted to get a place of their own, but Michael hasn’t got a decent credit rating, so they couldn’t pass the financial checks, even with Hibbie working.’

‘Whereabouts down Portsmouth way? Have you got any more detailed information?’

‘I haven’t exactly got an address, but I have an area covering a few streets where she probably is,’ he said, going over to the computer and pulling up a map site. ‘I’ll print it off for you so you can see.’

‘So what have you been doing all day, son?’ asked Hal, coming through from the kitchen with a loaded tray.

‘I had some early visits to make, then I had some calls to make. After I’d stopped for some lunch, I had some later calls to make, then I took that girl out from the office and milked her for everything she had. She was like putty in my hands.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t go into details,’ commented Hal.

‘Did you get her mobile number?’ asked Olivia, more prosaically.

‘Of course I did, Ma. What love machine would be worth his salt if he didn’t get the babe’s number?’

‘Give it here. I want to ring her.’

‘Liv, it’s much too late,’ Hal cautioned her.

‘It’s never too late,’ she said, punching in numbers on her mobile. ‘Hello, I don’t know your name but this is Hibbie Hardy’s mother, and I’m going out of my mind with worry.’

When the call had ended, Olivia looked like she had been struck. ‘Apparently she told this girl that life was hell at home, and that she needed to get away. She and Michael loved each other and wanted to live together without us interfering. How could she say all that when we didn’t even realise her relationship with him? We still don’t know his surname.’

Taking the map that Ben held out to her, warm from the printer, she looked imploringly at Hal, who shook his head emphatically.

‘No, no. There’s no way we’re driving down to Portsmouth now. We need to get a good night’s rest so that we’re ready for a long, hard search. It may only be a few streets, but it could take hours to find her. And what if she’s not in? We wouldn’t recognise this Michael if we tripped over him. No, you’re going to bed now, and we’ll talk it over in the morning.’

Olivia fleetingly considered driving down there herself straight away, but soon dismissed it. She knew she would be too tired by the time she got there to be of any use searching through the dark sleeping streets.

She was eager that they got an early start the next morning, but Hal put on the brakes even before they’d retired for the night. ‘You know Hibbie,’ he stated. ‘She likes to be busy, and if I know her, she’s already got a job, even if that waster who’s lured her away from us isn’t working. We’d be better going later in the day, we’d be more likely to catch her at home.’ The last two words stuck in his throat, as Hal’s mind shouted that this was her home, not some anonymous terrace in Portsmouth. He’d had a look at Google Maps and he could see that it was not a salubrious area.

Like Hal, Olivia had to be content with waiting, but she went huffily off to bed convinced that she wouldn’t sleep. The stress had exhausted her so much, though, that she was gone even as her head hit the pillow.

It was early afternoon when Olivia and Hal set out the next day, Ben in the car too, as he and his sister had been very close at one time, and his powers of persuasion might prove better than that of their parents, considering what she had told her colleague at work about her home life. It might have been fiction, but it had to come from somewhere, and they had to find out what had caused her to get into such a state that she had run away like this.

There were about six streets in all that made up the area indicated by Ben’s source, and all had names like Ladysmith or Mafeking – evidently products of a bygone age and, as they discovered, mostly in a state of disrepair that would lead, not too far in the future, to demolition and redevelopment. It was not an area that had been adopted by young professionals, prettied up and modernised. It was just a neglected corner of this city that, it seemed, nobody cared about.

They parked the car outside a Cash Converter shop, and each of them took two streets to nonchalantly stroll down, looking for any signs of Hibbie, but there was nothing to indicate that she had even passed through.

After twice swapping routes so that they wouldn’t be seen traversing the same two streets more than once, they headed back to the car for a cup of coffee from a vacuum flask that Olivia had prepared before they left. She had also made a few rounds of sandwiches to keep them going, and handed these round to the other two.

‘Now, don’t get downhearted,’ said Hal. ‘She may be out at work. We’ll keep watch from here where we can see down this main road, and if she hasn’t appeared in an hour or so we’ll do our little reconnaissance trip again.’

‘And if nothing comes from that?’ his wife asked anxiously.

‘Then, we’ll start knocking on doors to see if anyone’s noticed her coming and going.’ For now, there was nothing else they could do, and Olivia felt frustrated with helplessness. Somewhere, out in those mean dingy streets, her daughter was sleeping and living and eating and drinking, and Olivia didn’t have a clue where.

About forty-five minutes later the leaden sky began to weep rain. It wasn’t a lazy, gentle rain, but one that stung with its iciness and threatened to turn to sleet. It matched Olivia’s mood precisely, as she got out of the car again to recommence her hopeful trudging.

It wasn’t until she had turned into the second of her streets, that she noticed a hunched, sodden figure, trudging exhaustedly down the road though the winter darkness, illuminated only by the street lamps. Her heart lifted: she knew that outline – she would recognise it anywhere. Flooded with joy and success, she quickly noted the number of the neglected property it let itself into, and gathered her troops together for a confrontation.

Dripping and tense as they were, it was Olivia who volunteered to knock at the door, for there was no bell. To their surprise, it was answered by a tall, lean man with long hair and in tatty clothes, who looked like a modern-day hippy. He remained mute, just staring at them, until Olivia broke the silence with, ‘We’re here to see Hibbie.’

He was in the middle of saying that there was no one by that name there when a cry from behind him of, ‘Mum!’ sounded, and their elusive daughter slipped through to the front by the simple tactic of ducking under his arm.

Now the man became vocal. ‘She’s left you and she’s never coming back,’ he declared confidently. ‘She’s with me now, and she doesn’t need or want you anymore.’

Completely against the run of his statements, Hibbie threw herself into her mother’s arms, and drew in her father and brother, clinging tightly to them as if they were saving her from drowning. Then, without a word, she pulled herself away and stood next to Michael, who put his arm possessively around her shoulders.

‘She’s made her choice, and she’s with me now. She doesn’t want to live with you anymore. She’s like a little bird that needed its freedom,’ he said with a maddening grin of triumph on his face.

‘Are you working, Little Flower?’ asked Hal, his face serious and concerned.

‘I’ve got three jobs,’ she said with an air of defiance.

‘What do you do?’ Olivia had decided to leave this bit to Hal, who could remain calm more easily than she could.

‘I clean in some offices from six to seven thirty; at eight thirty I start in a local factory, and I get off at five. Then, at seven, I go on shift at a local pub.’ She was definitely defiant.

‘Well, at least ask us in for a cup of tea and a sit down after we came all the way down here’

As she stood aside to let them in, she said, ‘We haven’t got any tea. Or coffee,’ and just shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’ve got to get something to eat before I go in for my shift,’ she added, heading for what was evidently the tiny kitchen.

‘Then I’ll come through for a drink of water, if you don’t mind,’ announced Olivia, scurrying after the tiny figure of her daughter, shoulders bowed, her head sunk down on to her chest. She could hear Hal back in the bed-sitting room asking Michael what job
he
did.

Taking the opportunity to be alone with her daughter, she firstly opened the wall cupboards to see what sort of food stock she had in, only to discover a lone packet of rice, a packet of noodles, and a tub of gravy granules. ‘Is this all the food you have?’ she asked, incredulous. Hibbie had always been very fussy about what she ate.

‘We haven’t got any money,’ the girl answered in an exhausted voice. ‘We had to find a deposit for a place of our own before we could move in, and everything I’d earned went on that.’

‘And what does Michael do while you’re working three jobs?’

‘He’s unemployed at the moment,’ she replied defensively.

‘I asked what he did, not what he didn’t do,’ Olivia shot at her.

‘Oh, Mum,’ Hibbie wailed. ‘He just sits around watching cartoons on the television.’

She rushed into her mother’s arms, to be enfolded the way she used to be when she was younger. ‘Hibbie,’ crooned Olivia softly into her daughter’s ear. ‘I’ve tidied your room, changed the bedding, put up a small Christmas tree for you, and Mr Bo-Bo’s lying on the bed waiting for you to come home.’ She felt that Mr Bo-Bo was a bit of a low blow, one that may have finally lost its power to affect her daughter, but she was wrong.

‘I want Mr Bo-Bo,’ Hibbie sniffled, like the small child she once was, what seemed like such a short time ago.

‘Will you come back with us? I’m sure I can persuade the office to take you back.’

‘Yes, Mum, only …’

‘Only, what?’

‘Can I have a kitten for Christmas?’

‘Of course you can,’ replied Olivia, breaking the ‘no pets’ rule that had reigned for so long in their household. ‘You can have a baby elephant, if you want, as long as you come home.’ Olivia was now in tears, and held on to her daughter as if she would never let her go again.

‘I don’t fancy a baby elephant,’ the girl replied, with a tiny giggle, ‘but a kitten would be fabulous. Mum?’

‘What, my darling?’

‘Can we go home now?’

‘Nothing in the world would give me greater pleasure than to bring you home and put all this sordid business behind us.’

‘I thought he loved me, and I thought I loved him, but he just wants someone to live with him and pay the bills.’

‘That’s a valuable life lesson you’ve learnt. Don’t forget it. I don’t want you doing anything like this again. It’s just about broken your father’s heart. It just about killed all of us, especially after what we’d been through with Ben.’

‘What about Ben?’

‘I’ll tell you later, or, better still, he can. Now, come along,’ ordered Olivia, still with her arm around her daughter’s shoulders.

They walked back into the bed-sitting room and announced to Michael, Hal, and Ben that they would be going now, headed for home. Michael stood up abruptly and whirled round to face the enemy, his girlfriend’s mother.

‘She’s not going with you. She’s staying here. We love each other,’ he shouted, raising his arms into the air threateningly.

‘No we don’t,’ Hibbie said in a small voice. ‘You just want someone to earn the money, wash, cook and clean for you. What you really need is a servant or your mother.’

‘Don’t you mention my mother,’ he screamed, betraying a raw patch in his past. He made to advance on Olivia and Hibbie, but then, Hal stood up, towering over the skinny young man with hatred in his eyes, and a determined expression on his face.

‘You will not lay a finger on any member of my family,’ he said in a calm but authoritarian voice; the one he had used to control many an unruly class in his teaching days. Michael stopped in his tracks, and Olivia made good her opportunity to rush Hibbie towards and out of the front door, closely followed by Ben and Hal, still looking over his shoulder to make sure that Michael didn’t try to follow them.

As he, as last man out, reached the comparative safety of the pavement, a heavy glass vase shot over his head and shattered on the paving stones in front of him. ‘To the car,’ he shouted, rushing away from the house, the four of them in a tight little bunch. When they were in the vehicle, he started it with all speed, and left the dingy street with a scream of tyres, noticing that Michael had been running down the road after them. The sooner they were out of this neighbourhood, the better.