No Place of Safety (21 page)

‘So far as I recall, yes. I suppose I was a bit surprised because I'd always thought of Ben as a country person, and kids on the streets are a town problem, if you get my drift.'

‘Was Ben a country person by birth?'

‘Now that you mention it, I think not. Leeds, I think. So he was going home.'

‘When I asked you how you reacted to Ben's idea, I really meant: did it seem to you to be in character? Did it follow on from anything you knew about him?'

They looked at each other, rather at a loss.

‘I think so,' said Sir George slowly. ‘There was a high degree of concern for the environment. Hedgerows, anti-battery hens, that sort of thing. A bit schoolchildish, if that doesn't sound too nasty. Nature and farming have always had their brutal sides. And then he always had a great interest in children. We sometimes have school parties out to the farm – told them a thing or two about what we were doing, then gave them the freedom of the place. Ben always enjoyed that.'

‘But you say he never talked about his own children?'

‘Never. I'm right, aren't I, Susan?'

‘Oh, absolutely. Apart from the CSA letter, I had no idea. Though now I come to think about it, I did get a notion once – '

‘Yes?'

She sat for a moment in thought.

‘It was just watching Ben once, with one of the farm
workers. They have a spastic child, and I saw Ben with it, and he was so . . . so tender, and loving and concerned that I
did
wonder if he'd had such a child. It was just a guess. It was probably nothing more than Ben being Ben. He was – sorry, is – naturally a concerned person. Always
involved
with whatever he was doing.'

‘It was a good guess, as a matter of fact, Lady Mallaby . . . By the way, where were you both two nights ago – the night Marchant was stabbed?'

‘I was here,' said Sir George. ‘Check with our Filipinos; if you can make them understand. Oh, and one of our tenant farmers, Alf Arden, was here about half past nine.'

‘And I was at a Conservative Party do at the Royal in Leeds,' said Susan Mallaby. ‘Can't think why – politics has no appeal these days. But there'll be plenty of people you can check it with.'

‘Well, I don't think I have any more questions.' Oddie looked at Charlie, who briefly shook his head. ‘If you should think of anything, either of you, any little thing that could be of relevance, please call us at once.'

‘Of course,' said Sir George.

‘I take it from your questions,' said his wife, ‘that you are looking outside the refuge for your attacker?'

‘We're looking both outside and inside,' said Oddie carefully. ‘It seems the attacker may have left by the front door, but that tells us precisely that and little more. It doesn't rule out people from the second house, or even people from number twenty-four, because they could have come back in in the confusion. All options are still open. Obviously we have to remember that Marchant has a life outside the refuge, and a past as well as a present.'

‘He is a good man,' said Susan Mallaby stoutly. ‘Past or no past.'

As they drove out of the gates Oddie said: ‘Ring road, and then quickest way back to Leeds.' Charlie nodded, and turned left to the village. It was two miles from the Manor, was called Monkton, and it had a village shop that fulfilled the multiple function of newsagents, general store and post office.

‘One of Marchant's ladyfriends runs that, I suppose,' said Oddie. ‘And here's the pub. They'll be discussing Ben Marchant here, I'll be bound.'

It was nearly lunchtime, and outside the Black Heifer there was indeed a knot of what looked like locals, drinking in the sun and deep in conversation.

‘One thing,' said Charlie, then stopped for thought.

‘Spit it out.'

‘You talked about Ben having a past as well as a present. But thinking about the present: so far we haven't had any suggestion of a lady friend in the Bramsey area, or anywhere else, at the moment.'

‘Too busy, maybe.'

‘With his past, does it sound likely that he wouldn't have a woman, however busy he was?'

‘Maybe not . . . No, you're right. Do you think Alan and Katy know and aren't telling, or just don't know?'

‘Shouldn't be too hard to find out . . . The lottery story sounded OK as they told it.'

‘Yes. Or really you mean as
he
told it to
them
. He may have been having them on.'

‘Of course. Though it's difficult to see why.'

‘Any number of reasons if he'd come by the money in some illegal or dubious way. Anyway, it's something that has to be checked. Not something I've ever done before, though I don't suppose they will make any difficulties. Would you like to investigate possible girlfriends while I get on to Camelot? Camelot! What a name! The modern version of the holy grail – a lottery win.'

Charlie nodded his acceptance. In fact the possible girlfriend was only one of several avenues that he felt minded to explore.

When they got back to Leeds, Charlie dropped Oddie off at police headquarters, then drove off once again to Portland Terrace. The scene-of-crime people had finished now and had departed with their bagged loot of dust, mud and blood specimens. The place should have been regaining an air of normality, but just one policeman on the door was enough to prevent that. Inside, however, there was only a single representative of the law tucked away in each house, and in number twenty-four Charlie found Derek putting the dining room to rights.

‘I don't know that anyone will fancy eating here tonight,' he said dubiously. ‘Katy was talking in terms of a fork meal, which is probably sensible. Still, we've got to come back in here some time, and nobody's dead.'

‘Nobody's dead yet.'

‘The kids have had a message from the hospital. They can go and see Ben, but he won't be able to talk to them.'

‘Great,' said Charlie, unenthusiastically. ‘I suppose that means we can go and question him in Morse code.'

‘He may be up to writing his answers. Or you could ask him questions that need a yes or no answer, and he could make signs,' Derek suggested. ‘Do I gather that Ben is a long-lost father, suddenly reappeared out of the blue, for Katy and Alan?'

‘Very much so.'

‘Bit too like a bloody fairy story for my taste.'

‘Are they around?'

‘Upstairs in Katy's room, discussing what they'll say to
him. They're very excited – over the moon, in fact. Otherwise most people have gone back to take up their begging positions, and to dispute them if anyone's tried to take them over.'

Charlie lingered in the doorway.

‘Do I detect a note of scorn?'

‘For the kids? Not a bit. I used to play my mouth organ – “Tunes You Have Loved” – and sell the
Big Issue
, and I used to tell myself it wasn't begging. But it was only a step or two up, wasn't it? No, if there's scorn it's for the politicians. What a way to treat our young people. And even if they're not sleeping rough but mooching around all day – what a load of trouble they're storing up for the future.'

‘Yeah – and look who'll be carrying the can and mopping up the trouble,' said Charlie bitterly.

He shut the door and went softly up the stairs. Going softly was a good idea if you were a policeman, and if you could manage it. There was a threadbare carpet on the stairs, carefully laid. Ben must be quite a handyman. On the landing WPC Gould was sitting. Charlie nodded to her, but went in the direction of the voices he could hear.

‘Obviously we'll talk to him about Mehjabean,' Alan was saying in his nearly adult voice, in the bedroom at the end of the corridor. ‘But maybe not too much. And of course we'll say that things are fine here at the refuge.'

‘Well, they
are
,' said Katy defensively.

‘As fine as they can be with policemen everywhere. And then should we say we'll stay here for as long as necessary?'

‘Of course,' said Katy, simply and finally.

‘Yes. It's what Ben would want, and it's what we want too . . . Lucky it coincides, isn't it?' The next words came more uncertainly. ‘Do you think we need help?'

Katy was silent for a moment.

‘Well, we might. If we got anyone like Mouse again. Or Mouse himself, trying to come back . . . I wish it was Mouse that did it, Alan.'

‘Maybe it was. But even if he was carted off, there's more like him out there.'

‘But we've got Derek now, and there are others – Zak, for example: he'd help us.'

‘Zak's fine, but I'm not sure that in a crisis . . .'

Charlie thought it was time to interrupt. He knocked on the door and went in.

‘They've told us we can see Ben,' Alan said excitedly, as if that was all that mattered.

‘So I hear. Maybe we'll be able to talk to him too.' He sat down with them on the bed. ‘Tell me, how long have you two been at the refuge now?'

They had to screw their minds back to answer the question.

‘Three, nearly four weeks,' said Alan, after counting.

‘That's about what I thought. I suppose for Ben it was pretty much a full-time job, wasn't it?'

‘Oh yes. We're still at the stage of setting it up and getting it known.'

‘So he was here twenty-four hours a day, mostly?'

‘Not necessarily,' said Katy. ‘There were people to see, people who could help, or people who were making trouble: local councillors, that sort of thing. And of course he had to have a bit of time to himself.'

‘What sort of thing would he do with that time?' Charlie asked.

‘Mostly he'd go to the pub,' Alan said.

‘How often?'

‘Maybe two or three times a week.'

‘You didn't go with him?'

‘Of course not. We're under age. Anyway, there had to be someone here.'

‘Do you think he really went there?'

‘What do you mean?' Alan said, indignantly, getting a little red. ‘You don't think we tried to smell his breath, do you? That's the sort of thing my mum would do if I'd been at a party – thought she could do it so's I wouldn't notice.'

‘What I'm wondering,' said Charlie carefully, ‘is whether Ben might have had a girlfriend around here.'

That floored them for a bit. They looked at each other, then back at Charlie.

‘It had never occurred to us,' admitted Katy. ‘What you're meaning is that when he said he was going to the pub, he was really going to her, right?'

‘Makes sense, doesn't it? Or maybe a bit of both. He seems to have . . . spent his life with ladies around him.'

‘You don't have to pussyfoot around about it, you know,' said Alan.

‘I suppose it does make sense,' admitted Katy. ‘I don't suppose he even liked my mother very much, but they . . .'

‘Did he ever say what pub he was going to?'

‘No,' said Alan. ‘But he never took the car.'

‘What does that give us? The Portland Arms – that's a pretty rough joint.'

‘That wouldn't worry Ben,' said Alan proudly. ‘He wouldn't have set up this place if he was scared of rough types.'

‘True. But he may have found the Portland a bit too much of a home from home. Then there's the Ale Machine and the Dodo. Those would be the only ones within easy walking distance of here, wouldn't they?'

‘I suppose so,' said Alan. ‘I'm not into pubs.'

It was said with a touch of the priggishness of the young – that same priggishness, maybe, that had made him and Katy such enthusiastic workers at the refuge. They obviously wanted to get back to what they were going to tell Ben when they visited him in hospital, so Charlie left them to it.

The nearest pub was the Portland Arms, and it showed every sign of being a rough pub: the stuffing was coming out of several of the seats, one window was boarded up, the music was too loud, and the landlord had tattooed arms and a fag hanging out of his mouth. When Charlie, fearing a succession of pub sessions, ordered a fruit juice, he was treated like something out of
Star Trek
. In this environment anything but a pint of bitter needed justifying, so Charlie flicked his ID at the barman.

‘Oh Gawd, what is it this time? Has Jimmy Bates been flogging things out the back yard? You lot know I can't keep an eye on what goes on out there. You can see how short-staffed I am – '

‘It's the attempted murder,' said Charlie succinctly. Even in the vicinity of the Portland Arms attempted murder was a rarity.

‘Oh aye, that. It's got people talking, has that.'

‘Did he drink here?'

‘Who? Him that was knifed? Not that I remember myself, but people were saying last night that he come in here once or twice when he first bought the house. Mike, wasn't it you as said he'd been in?'