The Overlooker (18 page)

Silence within. He threw it open, scarcely able to restrain his impatience. He was in no mood to deal with a difficult teenager. Tom's train would be arriving soon. Uncle Martin would be waiting.

The bedroom was empty. There was a pink satin cover on Thelma's bed, a tartan travelling rug over the folding bed in the corner where Millie slept. His eyes raked the bottles of cosmetics on the dressing table, Millie's open holdall on the floor. He turned in exasperation and ran down the stairs.

There was no one in the living room or the front room.

He rushed outside, half expecting to find her already on the gravel path, getting into the car. Only Suzie was there.

Nick flung open the car door. ‘She's not upstairs, or downstairs either.'

‘Did you try the bathroom?'

He flew upstairs and bounded down again. ‘No. There's no one there.'

Suzie frowned. ‘She didn't want to come to the hospital, did she?'

She got out of the car. He watched her go back indoors. She was wasting time. He had looked everywhere. Millie definitely wasn't in the house.

A fear was beginning to grow inside him. He looked wildly around him, as though she might be somewhere in the steeply sloping garden, among the gooseberry and currant buses. He had sworn that he wouldn't let her out of his sight. Inspector Heap might discount those phone calls, but she hadn't heard the cold menace in that voice.

VENGEANCE IS MINE. I WILL REPAY.
The words of the last text message came rushing back to haunt him.

But it wasn't possible. How could anyone have got at Millie, up here at High Bank, with her family around her?

N
ow Nick was trying to fight back the waves of panic that were telling him Inspector Heap was wrong: that the threats had been real and immediate; that someone had taken Millie from under their noses; that, even now, while they wasted time . . .

Suzie came out of the front door. She was holding a piece of white paper.

‘I found this on the dressing table.'

Nick started in shock. How could he have missed it?

She handed it to him. He found that his hand was shaking as he looked at it. It took a moment for his eyes to focus on the writing.

‘Gone shopping. I told you. I hate hospitals. See you later.'

He swore, uncharacteristically, with a mixture of rage and relief.

Nick read the same emotions in Suzie's face: the terror that the detective inspector had underestimated that warning phone call, now replaced by exasperation that it was simply Millie's unpredictable teenage behaviour.

He tossed the car keys furiously. ‘The little idiot! We're going to be late already.'

He was being pulled two ways. He so much wanted to meet again that frail ninety-three year old who was expecting them. But could he really risk leaving Millie alone in a strange town with that threat hanging over the family?

He could have kicked himself now for not sharing with her even the first phone call, let alone the chilling text message that had followed their visit to the police. He hadn't wanted to scare her. Now he wished he had scared her enough to make her want to keep close.

Suzie seemed to read his thoughts. ‘I think I know where she'll be. She was very taken with that beauty shop in the shopping mall. We didn't have time to go there when we went shopping after coffee yesterday. You get to the hospital. I'll go and read her the riot act and bring her there on the bus as soon as I can. It shouldn't take me too long. And, anyway, hospitals sometimes have rules about not allowing more than two visitors at a time. So if you and Tom go in and see him first, Millie and I can follow you. After all, you're his great-nephew. You're the one who's been following up the Fewings and Bootles. You'll have far more to talk to him about than Millie and I will.'

He knew it wasn't true. Suzie was the true family historian. She got just as much pleasure from helping him to follow up his own roots as she did in pursuing hers.

But he realized suddenly how much he had been looking forward to introducing Uncle Martin to Millie. Astonishingly, his great-uncle was old enough to remember that other Millicent Bootle who had scavenged under the looms as a child. The child from the 1861 census. It was an astonishing thought.

He came to with a start.

‘Right. I'll drop you off in the town centre. It's not much out of my way. I hope Tom got his train all right. He should be at the hospital any time now. He'll be wondering what's happened to us.'

‘Come on, then.' Suzie hurried back into the car. ‘I'll give that young lady a piece of my mind when I find her.'

Suzie had her phone on her knee, as Nick threaded his way down to the town centre.

‘I keep wondering whether I should ring her. Arrange to meet her somewhere. But I'm afraid it will be too easy for her to put the phone down on me, if I sound like I'm coming across as the heavy parent. If she thinks I'm on her track, she could take off to somewhere less predictable than the precinct.'

‘She's out of order. It's downright rude to Uncle Martin.'

‘Some people do have a thing about hospitals. Scared to be reminded of their own mortality. I've got a friend like that. She didn't even visit her own father.'

‘Well, it's a new one on me as far as Millie's concerned. When her friend Tamara was in hospital last summer, she went to see
her
.'

‘They change so fast at that age. She hardly knows who she is from one day to the next. Remember that day she came home from the hairdresser's a platinum blonde? But another day, she's just a little girl.'

‘I don't remember Tom being like that at her age.'

‘No. Tom was always just Tom.'

They fell silent. Nick thought about this afternoon's meeting with apprehension. It was only a few weeks since they had said goodbye to Tom. Was it possible that life as a university student could have changed their son to someone they no longer quite recognized? No longer the charismatic schoolboy whose blue eyes had cast a spell of enchantment over just about everyone he met? He felt a stab of jealousy that others were sharing these new experiences with Tom, and Nick, his father, was, for the first time, shut out.

He saw a splay in the pavement where he could pull over and headed for it.

‘Look. I've been thinking. Maybe we were wrong not to tell Millie about that phone call. It worries me to think of her wandering round town, not realizing that someone could be watching her.'

‘You really think that? I thought Inspector Heap wasn't taking that threat too seriously.'

‘There was something else. I'm sorry. I should have told you. Yesterday's message with the biblical text wasn't the only one I had. After we'd been to the police, I got a text message. All it said was “bad move”. Number withheld.' He halted the car at the kerbside.

Suzie gasped. ‘Nick! Why ever didn't you tell me? So he knew? He's been watching us. He may still be.'

Her hand was on the door handle, but she did not open it. She stared at him in disbelief.

‘I've said I'm sorry. I didn't want to frighten you. I told the inspector and she shrugged it off. She seems fixated on tracking down vice rings. I got the impression that a sweatshop is too much like small fry for her. She's passed it on to someone else. And she pointed out that it could be just a follow-up to the first call. “Bad move” might simply mean ringing the doorbell at sixteen Hugh Street. He didn't have to know we'd been to the police.'

A car honked behind them.

‘Look, I've got to go.'

Suzie got out. It hurt him to see how scared she looked now. There was no time to put it right. This was the wrong situation, the wrong place.

‘Try not to worry. Just get Millie and bring her back as soon as you can.'

She slammed the door.

There was nothing to do but seize a gap in the traffic and drive off. Through his wing mirror he saw her standing on the pavement irresolute with shock.

Nick cruised the hospital car park for a frustratingly long time. Then he spotted a car pulling out and darted into the space. He almost ran across to the hospital entrance.

Tom came striding across the foyer to meet him. His spirits soared instantly at the sight of his son. Tom was a younger version of the self Nick saw in the mirror every day. A shock of black, waving hair. A lean, mobile face. Unusually vivid blue eyes.

He felt his face flower into a smile more spontaneous than anything he had managed today. Words of greeting were on his lips. But Tom surprised him by enfolding him in a warm hug. It was not something they had felt they needed to do when Tom lived at home. It confirmed the difference in their situation now. Tom had become a separate person, to be reunited with his family only occasionally. Nick felt a sharp sorrow for his son's new experiences he had already missed.

‘Hi, Dad! Where's Mum and Millie?' Tom was looking around eagerly. It was not only Nick he had missed.

‘It's a long story. I'll fill you in later. Mum's gone to fetch Millie from town. They'll be here soon. Right now, we're late for Uncle Martin. It's Haworth Ward.'

Tom checked the multiple routes from the foyer. ‘Yup. Follow the red signs.'

‘How are you doing?'

‘Great. Wait till I tell you about our history lecturer. He's a scream.'

They were almost at the door of the ward when Tom's phone rang. A slip of a nurse, who looked hardly older than he was, reproved him. ‘Switch your mobiles off, please. They're not allowed on the ward.'

‘Sorry!' Tom favoured her with his dazzling smile.

Nick fished his own phone out reluctantly. He looked down at the screen, wondering if he dare check for messages, and decided not. He switched it off and watched the screen go blank.

It felt like a betrayal. It was the slender link between him and Suzie, who by now would be searching the shopping precinct for Millie. This was her only way of contacting him if she needed to.

Why did he think she might? The sort of shops that interested Millie were concentrated in a fairly small area. It shouldn't take Suzie long to locate her. Millie might protest, but he could hardly imagine she would defy her mother face to face and refuse to come.

They would be here quite soon. Wouldn't they?

‘What's up, Dad? Text from a girlfriend?'

Tom was already inside the ward door, grinning back at him.

Nick gave him a startled look and thrust the mobile back in his pocket.

Tom was ahead of him, scanning the beds on either side. Nick followed his eyes. Alarm caught hold of his heart. Uncle Martin's bed was empty. For a moment, he tried to convince himself he had got the wrong one. But there were visitors already at the bedside of the other patients. And surely that was where he had seen the old man lying on his pillows last night?

Then his eyes registered the figure in the dark-blue dressing gown, sitting in an armchair on the far side of the empty bed

As he started towards his great-uncle, the nurse hurried past them. She shot them an attractive smile.

‘He's amazing, isn't he? He gave us a bit of a fright yesterday, but he's doing fine now. Aren't you, Mr Fewings?'

She twitched the pillow behind the old man and helped him sit up straighter.

‘Here are your visitors, love. Would you like a cup of tea?'

Uncle Martin beamed at them as well as he could with his lop-sided face. ‘Eh, lad, it's grand to see you again. And this'll be Tom. He's the spitting image of you.'

Tom grasped his hand. ‘Good to see you. I've been hearing all sorts of things about you.'

‘No scandal, I hope.' The eyes twinkled.

Then he looked past Nick, as Tom had done. ‘Where's Suzie, then? And little Millie? I can't remember as I've ever seen her. How old would she be?'

‘Fourteen.' It came out more sharply than Nick intended. Old enough to know better, his tone suggested. But he knew that anxiety for her was sharpening his anger. ‘They'll be here soon. We thought you wouldn't want the whole clan descending on you at once.'

He felt, rather than saw, Tom's eyebrows rise at the white lie.

‘How are you, then?' he asked. Too late, he realized that he had meant to stop off at the hospital shop and buy a small present.

‘Fair to middling. I can't complain.'

To Nick's surprise, Tom drew a packet from the pocket of his fleece. ‘Old-fashioned humbugs. I hope that's OK.'

The old eyes sparkled. ‘Thelma's been telling you my little secrets. Thank you, lad.'

Again, Nick had that feeling of being cheated out of something. Tom and Thelma had obviously had conversations on the phone he knew nothing about.

‘Well, then.' Uncle Martin pointed Nick to a chair on the other side of the bed and patted the mattress at his side for Tom to sit down. ‘So,' he said to Nick. ‘You've come all the way north to talk to me about the family, after all these years?'

It was true, Nick thought wryly. It had only occurred to him to visit his northern relatives once he had been bitten by the family history bug. Before then, it had just been the annual Christmas letter exchanged with Thelma. For years, he had been the passive supporter of Suzie's enthusiasm for tracing her roots. Only this year had his interest in his own origins been quickened. And suddenly he had realized what a precious asset he had in Great-uncle Martin, the last survivor of his generation, and how little time there was left to tap his memories.

He felt an uncomfortable guilt that he was using this frail old man for his own ends. That he was in danger of failing to see him as a real person, facing his imminent mortality, and not just as an irreplaceable resource for genealogical information.

‘Well,' he tried to excuse himself. ‘People like you are important. All over the country, schools are sending out children to interview your generation. I realize that, since Granny Fewings died, you're our last link with the nineteenth century. That's incredible.'