Looking for Trouble (17 page)

We sat on the cottage suite in the living room. Tea in mugs. Framed photographs covered the top of a small sideboard. Three oil paintings hung on the cream walls. A ship, a dockside scene, a woman holding an umbrella. Mrs Williams saw me looking at them.

‘Martin did them, my second husband. He loved to paint.’

‘That was Natalie’s father?’

‘Yes,’ she nodded. Leant forward and removed her glasses, placed them and her mug on the coffee table. I followed suit. It was time to talk.

‘I’m sorry about Janice,’ I began. ‘As I said on the phone, I was working for her, that’s how I met her. She asked me to trace a teenager, a boy who’d run away from home.’ I looked across at her. Did this sound bizarre? How much had Natalie told her? I couldn’t read anything in her face.

‘He was called Martin Hobbs,’ I said. ‘The strange thing is, Janice claimed to be his mother – I knew her as Mrs Hobbs. I thought I was looking for her son. I did trace him eventually. He didn’t want anything to do with his family; he claimed his father had abused him.’ Mrs Williams regarded me steadily; only a slight nod indicated that I should continue.

‘Well, I told Janice, Mrs Hobbs as I thought she was, what I’d found out. End of case. She was very upset.’ I sighed. ‘That was the Saturday. On the Sunday she rang me. She was very distressed, not making sense really, except it was clear she wanted to see Martin.’ My chest tightened as I remembered the phone call. When I spoke again, I couldn’t keep the tremor from my voice. ‘I didn’t know the address. I knew which street Martin was staying in and I knew what sort of car to look out for. That came out during the phone call. I shouldn’t have said anything, but I gave enough away. I didn’t think she should pursue him. She said she’d write, and would I deliver a letter? I agreed to that, mainly to keep her away...’ But it hadn’t worked. I swallowed saliva. Mrs Williams still said nothing.

I spoke again. ‘The place where they found her, it’s not far from where Martin was staying. I think she went there. I don’t know if that’s why she was killed, or whether that was some awful coincidence. And I still don’t know why she wanted to find Martin, how she knew him, why she pretended that he was her son.’

‘He was.’

I only just caught the words. ‘But he can’t be. I’ve met his real mother and...’

‘Janice was his real mother. She gave him up for adoption when he was born. He was her son.’

‘I even offered to raise the child myself, but Janice wasn’t having it. Social worker didn’t like the idea either...’ She stopped, caught by a memory, then just as suddenly resumed her story. ‘I never knew whether she made the right choice. All I could do was stand by her. It wasn’t easy for her, but it was the child she was thinking of. She said it wouldn’t be fair on the baby if she got ill again. And she couldn’t bear the thought of growing close and then losing the child.’

‘But surely with treatment, with support...’ I protested.

‘I don’t know.’ She ran her hands through the thick white hair. ‘Janice had plenty of treatment. Never seemed to make much difference. She was in hospital again within the year. That was her third time. Who can say whether it would have been the same if she’d kept him? I really don’t know. She was hurt, over the adoption.’ She sighed. ‘There’s no easy way to lose a child.’ Her mouth pulled and I remembered her own loss. She rummaged in her pocket and drew out a large white hanky. Wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

‘I still keep forgetting,’ she said, smiling gently, ‘that she’s gone. You’d think it would have sunk in by now.’

‘When did she first trace Martin?’

‘Way back. He was five. She’d thought about it a lot. Reckoned it’d be easier to trace him once he was registered at school. She used a private investigator then. Didn’t let on to me till it was all done.’

‘Did she think you’d disapprove?’

She nodded. ‘Raking up the past. I thought it’d hurt her even more. She’d given up all claim on him. That’s what adoption is. Was then, anyway. He had a new family, a new name. Anyway, this bloke knew what he was doing; followed up birth certificates and this and that and came back to Janice with two possibilities. He’d got photos. One of them was Martin.’

‘How could you be sure?’

‘He was the spitting image of Janice at that age. To a ‘t’. She was over the moon. She went and watched him going to school one day. It was then that she told me about it.’

‘And after that?’ I asked.

‘She was happy enough to know where he was. Now and then, she’d drop by the school or pass by his house. Few times a year. She never said much about it – just that she’d seen Martin. I used to worry that it’d stir things up, you know, open up old wounds, but she coped alright. In the end, I suppose I thought it was harmless enough. Then, this last couple of years she starts worrying about when he leaves home; how she’ll know where he is, which college will he go to? Janice was always bright, you see; she’d have gone a long way if it hadn’t have been for her troubles. More brains than the rest of us put together.’ She grinned and I saw again the smile of Janice in the paper, the smile of Martin with his fish. ‘Anyway,’ she paused for a moment as if searching for the best way to tell me something awkward, ‘she began to talk about making contact. Martin was nearly sixteen, she reckoned he’d a right to know.’ She sighed with exasperation. ‘We argued about it. I thought it was wrong. He might not even know he was adopted. When she gave him up, she gave up all those rights.’ She cut the air with her hands to emphasise the point. ‘1 couldn’t get her to see sense, but she never mentioned it again. I hoped she’d given up on the idea.’

‘She didn’t tell you about coming to me?’

‘No.’ She leant across and retrieved her glasses, wove the chain between her fingers as she talked. ‘She told me Martin had left home. She rang up in a right state. She’d not seen him at school, so she’d gone to the house and watched there. In the end, she rang the house; pretended to be some careers advisor or some such thing. Mrs Hobbs tells her Martin’s in hospital, that he’s had a breakdown. Well, you can imagine what that did to Janice.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘I persuaded her to come and stay here for a couple of nights. She was worrying herself sick. Which hospital was he in, had he been sectioned? She wouldn’t let up. In the end, we rang all the hospitals. No trace of him. We didn’t know what on earth was going on.’

‘When was this?’

‘Towards the end of May. Knowing he wasn’t in hospital calmed her down. We began to think there’d been some strange mix-up. Anyway, I let her go home. Next thing I know, she’s on the phone, terribly agitated, talking about Martin being,’ she struggled with the word, pulling the spectacle chain taut across her palm, ‘well, being abused, you know, by his father.’

She leant forward, clasping the glasses in her lap, looking at them as she spoke. ‘I thought she’d flipped. That she was getting it all mixed up...losing touch. If I’d only realised...’ I kept quiet, sensing there was more to come, ‘it was bad enough her hearing that Martin had got ill, but then that...’ Her breathing came fast and shallow. ‘To find out...just the same...the same.’

The penny dropped. Janice Brookes had been a victim of abuse too. Mrs Williams still bent forward, her face obscured by the cap of white hair falling over it.

I had to break the silence; acknowledge what I’d heard.

‘Was it her father?’ I asked. My voice sounded thin and reedy.

She nodded her head. ‘Bastard.’ She whispered the curse, but there was anguish in her quiet delivery of the words. ‘She was only a kid. I had no idea.’ She looked up at me now, hiding nothing of the pain in her brown eyes and the tremors that shook her lips. ‘I’ve never forgiven myself. How could I not know, in my own house? When you can’t even protect your own...’ Her Scouse accent was more pronounced now. ‘I threw him out sharp enough once I found out, but it was too late, too late for Janice. That’s what made her ill. I’m sure of it.’

In the silence that followed, I heard the sing-song of a siren approaching the hospital and the shrieks and calls of children playing in some nearby school.

And I thought of Janice, whose childhood had been stolen; of Martin. I felt the pain of the white-haired woman opposite me and thought of my own daughter, of the passion that bound me to her. I could never bear for her to suffer in the ways that Janice had. How could any mother bear it? My throat ached and tears started in my own eyes.

‘I don’t know about you,’ Mrs Williams said huskily, tears coursing down her cheeks, her nose reddening, ‘but I’m ready for another cuppa.’

‘Yes,’ I smiled, ‘that’d be great.’

I’d managed to regain my composure by the time she returned. I concentrated on filling in the factual gaps in Janice’s story. Janice hadn’t been in touch again after the Saturday. Mrs Williams knew of no reason for her daughter, who lived in Bolton, to be in South Manchester. Janice had been working part-time in a sandwich bar. She gave me the address. She’d been friendly with staff there and also with her next door neighbour. No other friends her mother knew about. She hadn’t been involved with anyone romantically.

The police hadn’t been back in touch with Mrs Williams since their initial interview. At that time, she’d had no reason to connect Martin with her daughter’s sudden death. Natalie had never known about her half-sister’s child. She’d only been nine when Martin was born.

I asked her whether she knew who the father was.

‘Yes. Edward Mullins.’ She screwed her face up into a grimace. ‘Right waste of space, he was. Janice was working in his shop. He flattered her – he could turn on the charm. She caught first time. She never told him. Tell me about Martin.’

The question took me by surprise. Though he was her grandson...I described the shy schoolboy, with his love of fishing, and the distraught young man I’d talked to at the nightclub. It wasn’t a particularly rosy portrait. I showed her the pictures that Janice had left with me.

‘She never showed me these; probably thought I wouldn’t approve,’ she said regretfully. ‘He’s got a look of her, in the smile.’

‘Why didn’t she tell me what her real relationship to Martin was?’ I asked. ‘Why all the pretence? After all, she’d used a private eye to trace him before.’

‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged. ‘Maybe the fact that she wanted to make contact this time. It is illegal, isn’t it?’

‘No, not really.’

‘Janice probably thought it was. You still have the letter she wrote him?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to find out if Martin is still staying in Cheadle. If he is, I’ll try and deliver it. The man who owns the house denies ever having met him.’

‘If Janice told Martin who she really was, if he was upset anyway...you say he had these outbursts...’

The question, though unspoken, was clear. ‘I don’t know. He wasn’t a violent boy; there’s only been the odd occasion. It’s not...’

‘It would explain why he’s missing,’ she insisted.

I didn’t reply. She needed to consider the worst possible version of events, a sort of protection policy. Nothing could be worse, could it, than discovering that Martin had murdered his mother?

‘You’ll ask him, won’t you, if you find him?’

‘The police have made it clear I’m not...’

‘I don’t give a damn about the police.’ She reined in her anger, keeping her voice low, but her eyes flashed. ‘My daughter’s dead and there’s some sort of connection with Martin Hobbs. He must know something. Even if she never got to the house, that tells us something...’

I wasn’t going to start asking about Janice’s murder. I just wanted to find Martin and give him the letter. Finish. Anything else was beyond me. ‘I’ve told the police most of this; they’ll have interviewed anyone...’

‘I’m not asking the police’ she was exasperated with me, stood up and marched over to the fireplace, ‘I’m asking you. If it’s a question of money, I’ll pay whatever it takes.’

‘It’s not, it’s not money...’ What could I say? I’m scared. I’m a coward. Someone killed your daughter and they might do the same to me. I sighed and looked

over at Mrs Williams. She stood, head up, waiting for my answer. It was a foregone conclusion. ‘Alright, if I find Martin and if I get the chance, I’ll see whether he knows anything about Janice. And if other information comes my way, I’ll let you know; but that’s it. I haven’t the resources or the authority to take it as far as the police can. And if they hear about this – you’ve employed me. It wasn’t my idea.’

‘Fair enough.’ I saw her shoulders relax. The clock on the mantelpiece had traced the afternoon round. I had to go. She saw me to the door.

‘When you find him...’

‘If I find him.’

‘Yes, if it’s alright, if you don’t think he’s...’ she paused, searching for a word other than guilty ‘...involved, will you tell him I’m here, if he ever needs anybody, if he wants to know about her?’

I nodded, struggling again with sudden tears, impressed by her dignity and generosity.

Mrs Williams stood on the doorstep, watching, while I got in the car. She waved once and disappeared into the house.

I started back for Manchester.

I’d agreed to do more than I wanted and that promise sat like a stone in my stomach. Why couldn’t I have said no? Admitted my fears and inadequacies? Just said no.