The Overlooker (7 page)

But it had not just been what had happened in Hugh Street.

Accidents can happen. To any of your family.

It was that phone call which had turned a suspicion of lawbreaking, in which the Fewings would be public-spirited people reporting the irregular goings-on they had witnessed, into a far more menacing scenario.

He heard again that harsh voice and shivered.

‘Right!' he said, sounding brighter than he felt. ‘Let's get on with it.'

They drove down the precipitously steep hill from High Bank into the town centre. Nick had not wanted to ask Thelma where the police headquarters was. There was no point in alarming her unnecessarily. She had enough on her mind.

He glanced in the rear-view mirror at Millie. For all her glamorously blonde haircut, the face beneath looked small and childish this morning. He had not warned her about last night's phone call. Should he?

Suzie had said, ‘Let's tell the police first, and see what they advise. If they take it seriously, we'll probably need to tell Millie. Just so that she's careful.'

Neither of them had wanted to discuss just what they imagined might happen.

Nick drove into an almost empty car park. The town had a dead feel. Too many people who had no jobs to get up for. He saw another man getting out of his car and went across to him.

‘Excuse me. Can you tell me where I can find the police station?'

‘It's out of town a bit. Follow the Halifax road and it's on your right, about half a mile up.' He pointed.

‘So, no friendly blue light in the middle of town,' Nick said, getting back into the car.

They found it without difficulty. Modern buildings, with a magistrates' court. The morning sun lit up the slopes of Skygill Hill beyond it. Nick looked up at it wistfully. ‘We have to find a time to climb that when Tom's here.'

‘It looks a long way up,' Millie said gloomily. ‘And steep.'

‘We can drive up some of the way, and then take the footpath.' Nick ruffled her hair.

She squirmed away. ‘Dad! Do you know how long it took to get my hair right this morning?'

‘Sorry.' He sensed the vibes were not right today. He hoped desperately that Millie was not going to be difficult about visiting Uncle Martin in hospital. He told himself it was just a teenage thing. A super-sensitivity, perhaps. She'd be all right when they got there.

‘Well then,' he tried. ‘Let's get this over.'

There was a sergeant at the reception desk. Nick cast a questioning look at Suzie. His head jerked fractionally towards Millie.

Suzie took the hint. ‘Come on,' she said to Millie. ‘Let's find a seat over by the window. Dad can tell them about the queer goings-on at Hugh Street.'

Nick kept his voice low as he addressed the sergeant. ‘I've got two things to report. I assume they're related.'

He gave a brief account of their visit to his grandparents' old address, the agitated woman, the glimpse of another in the boarded-up house, the strange behaviour of the man she had called Mr Harrison.

‘And then last evening, I got this phone call.'

‘Was it the same man, sir?'

‘Hard to be certain. It was a very short call before he rang off. But I'd say not.'

He tried to keep his voice level as he detailed the words of the call as accurately as he could remember them. They still had the power to scare him.‘How the heck did he get my phone number? How did he know who I was?'

‘So he threatened you and your family, if you came to us? But you're here.'

‘It seemed like the right thing to do. Whoever it is, I want him caught and stopped. I couldn't go around with a threat like that hanging over me and not do anything about it.'

‘Quite right, sir. Not everyone is as public spirited. Probably it's nothing. Just some petty felon trying to sound big. But you did right to report it. I'll put you through to Inspector Heap. If you wouldn't mind taking a seat.'

They were kept waiting long enough for some of Nick's hard-won certainty to seep away. For a while this morning, he had wondered whether the whole thing had been too trivial to take to the police. Now he had other reasons for questioning whether he had really done the right thing. It was not just his own safety at stake.

Was it possible that something worse was going on at Hugh Street than the illegal sweatshop they had imagined? He struggled to think what. His imagination showed him the closed face of Mr Harrison, barring to the door to the frantic woman.

But it was the memory of the voice on his mobile that really chilled him. He took the phone out and glanced down at it. No calls, no messages, since then. He put it away again.

At last the duty sergeant called to them. ‘Inspector Heap will see you now. Down that corridor. Second on the right.'

Suzie rose to join him. Millie made a movement too, but Suzie put a hand on her shoulder, restraining her.

‘Stay here, sweetie. Two's enough.'

Nick saw the rebellious jut of Millie's lip. Too late he wondered again whether they should have taken her into their confidence about the menacing phone call. Still, he could imagine her explosive reaction if he told the inspector about it while she was present. It was better that she stayed where she was until they knew how seriously the police would take it.

‘But I'm a witness too!' she was protesting. ‘I was there when we met that woman with the little boy, wasn't I? And when that man told her he didn't know her and practically slammed the door in your face. How do you know I didn't notice something you two didn't?'

‘If the inspector wants to talk to you as well, I'll come and fetch you. Promise.'

He could feel the indignation seething inside her. For a moment, he was afraid it would erupt into a violent scene of teenage tantrums there in the police station foyer. But she glared at both of them and flounced back into her seat.

They made their way down the corridor the sergeant had indicated. A backward glance showed Nick only Millie's hunched shoulders and short-cropped blonde hair.

Detective Inspector Heap's door was half open. Nick tapped on it.

‘Come in.' She was already rising from behind the desk.

Mary Heap was a tall, angular woman. She wore a black skirt with a white blouse. Only the red scarf at her neck counteracted the initial impression that she was in police uniform. Her fair hair was drawn back into a chignon.

‘Please. Sit down,' she said when they had introduced themselves.

She stared at them steadily across the desk. There was something chilling about the light blue eyes. Nick sensed no warm curiosity in her smile. A businesslike woman.

‘Sergeant Manners tells me you had a strange encounter yesterday in the Canal Street area. Would you like to tell me about it?'

Although it had been Nick who had reported it at the desk, the question seemed addressed to Suzie. Nick noticed the little start she gave. She, too, had assumed that he would take the lead.

She told the detective inspector about their family history quest and their reasons for wanting to find if Hugh Street was still standing. About the unsettling meeting in Canal Street with the woman in the shalwar kameez, who was so visibly upset. How the woman had handed over the little boy and then disappeared down a side street. Finally, she told the detective inspector about the demolished area and then finding Hugh Street still standing but boarded-up, with just this one house that seemed accessible.

‘It was the house we were looking for. The one where Nick's grandmother had lived, before they came south.'

Inspector Heap's voice was clipped. ‘It's not the past I'm interested in, but what's going on there now.'

‘Nick rang the bell, to see if they'd let us look inside. We thought no one was going to answer. Then this man appeared. Sort of peering round the half-open door.'

‘Describe him.'

Suzie looked for help to Nick. He had been the one standing on the doorstep with the closest view.

‘Shorter than me. And fleshier. Dark hair, going grey, slicked back. Big brown eyes.'

‘Asian?'

‘I couldn't be sure. There wasn't much light in the room, and he didn't come out into the daylight. His voice sounded typically northern. No foreign accent. He wasn't obviously from the sub-continent.'

He told her how he had explained his reason for coming, and his hope that they might be allowed to have a look at the house he barely remembered from his boyhood.

‘Then something caught my eye, and when I looked up there was another woman in a shalwar kameez, standing at the top of the stairs. As soon as she saw me looking at her, she vanished. And then the first woman arrived. The one we'd met in Canal Street after she'd collected her son from playschool.'

He went over the tearful encounter. The fact that the woman had arrived apologetic for being late and obviously expecting to begin work. The man's denial that he knew her.

‘I'm sure he was lying. The woman just looked bewildered. And she was devastated when he told her not to come back. It all seemed very strange,' he finished. ‘We thought there must be something illegal going on. An unregistered workshop, perhaps. The house is quite small, but if they managed to open a way into other houses in the street, they'd have any amount of work-space to play with.'

The detective inspector's fingernails drummed on the desk. ‘Describe this woman.' Again she turned back to Suzie.

‘Hard to say. She wasn't wearing a burka, or anything like that. But she had a scarf around her face. She was quite tall. A little more than me. Slim. She had beautiful dark eyes.'

‘Young?'

‘I'd guess in her twenties. The boy looked about four. But, of course, she may have older children.'

‘Attractive?'

Suzie seemed taken by surprise by the question. ‘It didn't occur to me to think of her like that. She was so obviously upset. I just wanted to know if there was anything we could do to help.'

‘But cast your mind back. Take away the tears. Try to imagine her smiling. Would you say she was an attractive young woman?'

‘Well, yes. In ordinary circumstances.'

Mary Heap turned sharply to Nick. ‘You say you were the only one who saw the second woman. The one at the top of the stairs. Was she attractive too?'

Nick had a vivid picture of the young Asian woman. The slim figure in the close-fitting pink kameez. Raven hair escaping from her headscarf. The delicate features that had looked in the dim light to be the palest shade of brown.

‘Yes, frankly,' he admitted. ‘She was. But what's that got to do with working at a sewing machine, or whatever they do, probably for far less than the minimum wage?'

The light blue eyes became steely. ‘Perhaps it would be better if you left the detective work to us, sir. There are more ways an attractive woman could be coerced into earning money than with a sewing machine.'

Nick heard Suzie's little gasp beside him.

‘You mean . . . it could be a brothel?'

Nick winced. He had a sudden shocked vision of how his grandmother would have reacted to the suggestion that this was the use to which her childhood home was now being put.

Was it possible?

The inspector looked thoughtful.

‘Using women from the sub-continent isn't typical. It's mostly Eastern Europeans who get shipped across, ostensibly to work as maids or something, and then find that the deal isn't what they thought it was. Some things here don't fit. The second woman might be being kept against her will, but the one you met in the street obviously isn't. That doesn't mean the man she called Harrison doesn't have some kind of hold over her. Suppose she's not British born. A dodgy visa, perhaps? A forged work permit?'

Again the nails tapped on the desk. A light was beginning to grow in her face. She picked up a phone.

‘Send Nichols through to me.'

‘There was something else,' Nick said, suddenly remembering what had changed the whole strange episode into something far more sinister. ‘It was after we got back to my cousin's. We're staying with her up at High Bank. It was about five o'clock. My mobile rang.'

He repeated, as carefully as he could, the words of that short but chilling phone call.

Again he saw the light sparkling in the detective's eyes.

‘But what I don't understand,' he finished, ‘is how he could have got my number. I'd given this Harrison man my name when I introduced myself. But not my phone number. Whoever it was even knew my architectural qualifications.'

She stared at him, momentarily disconcerted.

Then she said carefully, ‘There are some very unpleasant, controlling people behind these prostitution rings. There can be big money involved. I can't immediately answer your questions about how your caller knew so much. But there's not much you can't find out on the internet these days.'

Of course. It was something of a relief to Nick that there might be a simple explanation. His firm had a website. It was just possible that the man had traced him from there.

Knowledge is power, and the man's unexpected knowledge of Nick had heightened the scary feeling that he held a dangerous power over him.

‘He warned me not to approach you. But I have. He can't really find that out, can he? And where we're staying?'

These were things no website could tell him.

Her eyes were serious now. ‘You didn't say anything to this Mr Harrison about staying with your cousin?'

Nick tried to think back. It had been a brief exchange. ‘No. I'm pretty sure I didn't. Just that I was tracing my ancestors.'

‘Hm. Of course, if he knows your name, and he's been able to find out your profession, it won't take him long to discover your home address.'

The new thought chilled Nick. How stupid of him not to have thought of that. Anyone knowing the cathedral city where his architectural practice was could certainly find his home address in the phone book.