A City of Strangers (14 page)

“Ah—they're the sort of family people wanted to do something like that to.”

“That's right. Or hoped somebody else would. And there's another thing: the actual night that was chosen.”

“Last night? What was so special about it?”

“Normally there'd be six or seven in the house—depending on whether June was there or not. Last night there were only four sleeping there when it happened. I reckon the night of the theatre trip was chosen deliberately.”

“You could be right—though it's a bloody enough crime, heaven knows, with four possible casualties.”

“Agreed. Michael, the boy who went on the trip to Manchester, is with us, by the way.”

“What—staying next door?”

“No—we couldn't bear to sleep with all that smoke around. Half our furniture is in the new house anyway, and everything's turned on because we've been doing odd jobs there any spare time we've had. So we just went along there, and we took Michael with us. He would naturally have stayed next door with Mrs. Makepeace, who's a great mate of his. But she's an old woman, and though she's tough she was pretty much bowled over by the fire, so we took him with us to get him out of the area.”

“Good of you. How is he?”

“Thoughtful, as you'd expect. He's a nice child—the pick of the bunch by far.”

“Does he know anything, do you think?”

“Not that he's so far said. But, as I say, the whole thing is still sinking in. He doesn't know yet it was deliberately started, though I think the possibility has occurred to him. If he says anything later, I'll pass it on.”

“Had you heard anything about Phelan trying to buy one of the houses in Wynton Lane?”

Malcolm Cray burst out laughing.

“No! That would be popular with the people there! Mind you, I had heard something about a pools win. Chat around the neighborhood. But I never imagined for one moment that it was that sort of sum. It would need to be around eighty or ninety thousand.”

“We're going to have to look into this pools win—if it existed. Will you be going back to the Belfield Estate, Malcolm?”

“Of course. We've still got a lot of our things there.”

“Take the weekend off. You've earned it. Spend as much time as you can on the Estate. Talk to the neighbors—ones who've lived there longer than you have. Find out what you can about the Phelans. I know you're uniform branch and this is not quite regular, but they're used to you, and they may talk more to you than they would to one of my detectives.”

Malcolm Cray stood up, grinning.

“You have the oddest idea of a weekend off, sir. Well, I'll give it a try. They may talk more openly to me, and certainly they would to Selena. I'll make sure she goes along with me, or, better still, I'll get her to talk to some of them on her own.” He stood up, turned to go, then stopped and looked at Oddie. “This pools win, or this money, however he got it. It hadn't occurred to me before that it was such a
big
sum. It's a terrible thought, but that does seem to give one hell of a motive to Kevin Phelan, doesn't it?”

I
t was easy to miss the message sprayed on the end house in Wynton Lane when leaving in the morning, impossible to ignore it on the way home. Whether they were walking down the slope from the Belfield Grove Estate, like Carol on her way back from school, or driving down the Lane from Battersby Road, like Lynn Packard and Steven Copperwhite on their way home from work, the red painted letters screamed their accusation at the Lane's residents.

Carol, very troubled, went straight through her little basement flat and out into the back garden. Daphne Bridewell was there, kneeling on the stone path that ran to the gate, prizing out with a long, vicious tool a weed that had poked up between the flags, and then sprinkling salt on the exposed earth underneath. Carol watched her, unnoticed, for a few moments.

“Is there any point in weeding now?” she asked, curious. “Don't weeds give up for winter?”

Daphne looked swiftly round and smiled a greeting.

“Weeds never give up,” she said determinedly.

It occurred to Carol that she was always seeing Daphne with sprays against ground elder, with moss killers, anti-slug powders, anti-aphid sprays, and all sorts of vile-looking chemicals from the local nursery. She must be one of the least ecologically minded members the Democratic party had. Carol had always rejected the sub-Wordsworthianism of “One is nearer to God in a garden,” but it seemed particularly untrue in Daphne Bridewell's.

“Perpetual warfare,” she said.

“To the death,” agreed Daphne, standing up. “I don't know why I do it.”

“Why do you?”

“I suppose I sort of inherited the garden when my husband left.” She
grimaced. “Somehow one can't just let a garden go to waste, not in a nice, middle-class house in a nice, middle-class area. . . . You saw the slogan on the wall?”

“Yes. Everyone must have. Kevin Phelan, I suppose?”

“Bound to be. I've been on the phone to Paul Dean, the chap who does my decorating jobs. He'll be round over the weekend, but he's pessimistic. He can make it less . . . glaring, he says, but in the long run the best we can do is let time do its work.”

“It means that the . . . accusation is very much out in the open.”

“Yes. That won't please young Mr. Packard. I shouldn't be surprised if he didn't call one of his meetings. If so, there's no reason why you shouldn't be there this time.”

“No,” said Carol thoughtfully. “Perhaps this time I will go along.”

When Lynn Packard drove, too fast, down Wynton Lane from the Battersby Road the inscription hit him. He turned very red from anger, and braked. Then he shoved his foot on the accelerator again. As he drove up the dirt path to the back of the houses, the scarlet message looming to his right seemed both to accuse and to mock. The space behind the back gardens of the Wynton Lane houses was common to all, but usually Lynn was very proprietorial about “his” space, drawing white lines around where he imagined it to be, or blocking the exit of any car parked on it. Today there was such a car—he thought it belonged to the woman in the basement flat of The Hollies—but he lacked the stomach for aggressive gestures. He went in through the kitchen, shouted at his sons to keep the noise down, and got on to the phone.

Adrian Eastlake felt oddly flattered when Lynn Packard suggested that he should host a further meeting of Wynton Lane residents that evening. Adrian was used to being put down, disregarded, or treated as not quite whole. Lynn's request seemed to accord him full status as a human being.

It did not occur to him that Lynn was trying to minimize his own role as prime mover in the attempts to keep the Phelans out.

When he had heated up a portion of frozen stew from the deep freeze for
his mother's dinner, he set to work making sandwiches. It was the end of the week, and he found that there wasn't a great deal in the larder or the fridge. What it came down to was fish paste, tomato and cheese, cheese and pickle, and luncheon meat. Adrian had learned a lot about housekeeping over the years: He was quite good at cutting thin slices of bread, but he found they tended to disintegrate as soon as he tried to butter them. He was coping with this problem when to his surprise his mother drifted into the kitchen.

“Mother! What are you doing up?”

“Let me help, darling.”

“No, of course not. I can manage.”

“You should have softened the butter, dear. Let's put it on the radiator in the hall. We can use margarine for the cheese and pickle and the fish paste. And really they should have given us more notice.”

“Mother, you shouldn't be doing this—”

“Don't fuss, Adrian. I'm not
ill.”

It didn't occur to Adrian to wonder what she had been all these years if not ill. He retreated uneasily and let her potter at the kitchen table, putting margarine on bread at first inexpertly, then gaining in confidence, and slicing up tomatoes and cheese. A feeling nagged at his heart, and he realized with a shock that part of him did not want his mother to get well, resume a normal life; part of him had loved having her shut away there, his alone, to minister to. It had made his life orderly, useful, circumscribed—in just the way he would have chosen to have it circumscribed. He repressed the feeling savagely. How selfish could you get? Of course, it would be wonderful, a miracle, if his mother emerged into life again. But he stood there watching, awkwardly, feeling superfluous.

As she was finishing the neat little piles and was setting them out daintily on two plates, he asked:

“Are you going to come to the meeting, darling?”

“The meeting? Oh, no, I don't think so, dear. That's men's business, isn't it?”

He smiled affectionately.

“There's no such thing these days, Mother. Daphne will be there. . . . I thought you might like to meet people a little. I thought perhaps that now that he's gone . . . ”

He found it impossible to put his thought into words.

“Gone?”

“Dead. Now that Jack Phelan is dead . . . ”

She looked at him with beautiful incomprehension and drifted out of the kitchen.

“Sleate 226458.”

“Oh, hello. Is Steven there, please?”

“No, he's just gone out. Can I give him a message?”

“Oh, no, I don't think . . . That's Eve, is it?”

“Evie. People call me Evie.”

“Ah. This is Margaret, his ex-wife.”

“Oh, hello, Margaret. Nice to be able to talk to you. Well, Steven is at a sort of neighborhood meeting. All the local bourgeoisie being vigilante.”

“Oh, yes, he told me about that.”

“You've met up—I'm so glad. And he told you about Citizens Against Jack Phelan, did he? I must say if it had been me I'd have kept quiet. Anyway, the whole thing's blown up in their faces, because the man they were getting all vigilante about is
dead,
and in rather odd circumstances.”

“Yes, I heard about that too.”

“And today we've had a great slogan painted on one of the walls accusing us. Too
Scarlet Letter!”

“Poor old Steven. He does so prefer a quiet life.”

“Yes,
doesn't
he!”

“Look, Evie, I was going to ask Steven over for a meal—would you care to come too?”

“I'd love to, but probably I'd better not. Steven didn't tell me that you two were meeting again. The poor sod's probably embarrassed, God knows why. Anyway, you two will have private things to talk about.”

“Actually, decidedly
not
. I found it difficult to find things to chat about when we had lunch.” The two women laughed. “Probably you and I would have had more to chew over. . . . ”