A City of Strangers (17 page)

“You feel bitter about him, don't you?”

She sipped her tea.

“This was a good place to live until he came. But it's not just that. He gave people an excuse, you see. . . . There's a nasty spirit about—a mean spirit that enjoys kicking the helpless, and taking away from the really poor what little they've got. It hasn't been as bad as this since I was a girl. I don't feel ashamed at being poor. My Tom worked at the Infirmary almost all his life—wheeled patients around, humped machinery from here to there, took the dead to the mortuary. He brought precious little home for it, but I'm not ashamed for that. I'm proud. But there's plenty want to make me hang my head because we never did better. And it's people like Jack Phelan who provide them with their excuse: Look at the poor, they say, and point to him—shiftless, dirty, lying, work-shy. And there's nobody to point out that there are a hundred decent souls for every Jack Phelan you see around.”

Malcolm nodded sadly.

“So you think it was mischief made Jack Phelan tick?”

Lottie Makepeace nodded.

“Yes, he wanted to make mischief. And that usually meant riling people. If he'd had a car he'd have been the one who drives through puddles at high speed and sprays the people on the pavement with muddy water. Some do that because they don't give a damn about other people, others because they really get a kick out of playing dirty tricks on people. Jack Phelan was the last sort.”

Malcolm said, “Well, he's done it once too often.”

“You're right there. You realize Kevin's a chip off the old block—a joker too? Only with him any element of fun there might have been in Jack—and there wasn't much—has disappeared, and just the viciousness is left.”

At the door, as he was going, Malcolm paused.

“I wonder—do you think Jack Phelan really did have that win on the pools?”

She looked at him shrewdly.

“If he'd had that sort of win—I mean a win of fifty thousand, a hundred thousand, which is what he'd have needed if he was going to buy Dr. Pickering's house—what do you think would be the first thing he'd do?”

Malcolm considered.

“Broadcast it around?”

“ 'Course he would. The moment he'd checked his coupon and realized it was a big win. He'd have been out in the street, in the shops, down the pub, bragging about it. The man was a loudmouth. Instead of which he quietly—quietly
for Jack
—buys drinks all round at the Railway King later in the week. No—if he had a win it was a small one, and he was playing his tricks as usual.”

Malcolm nodded.

“Jack Phelan's final jape.”

Selena, when she came to Mrs. Thornton's house, on the edge of the Estate where it turned into Grange Road, found she knew the woman. It was she who had talked to her on the night of the fire, and assumed Selena was its intended victim. She was welcomed in, and the two of them had a good gossip about the fire, Jack's death, the probability of arson, eventually getting round to the family in general.

“It sounds heartless, but everyone around here is hoping the family'll be rehoused on another estate,” Mrs. Thornton said, offering a plate of brightly iced cream cakes. “The fact that Jack has gone doesn't make the rest of the Phelans into the sort of people you'd want as neighbors. Well, you'd know that as well as anyone.”

“I hear you've had more than your fill of the children,” said Selena, munching.

Mrs. Thornton raised her eyebrows.

“I have that. And it's all due to that woman next door. Maggie Mattingley's as silly as a wet hen. All those years that Kevin was best mates with her Jason, leading him astray from the word ‘Go,' and all she could ever say was ‘Boys will be boys!' Kevin Phelan! Who everybody knew was a vicious little beast. Now they've got a flat together, and a right lot of mayhem they'll be creating, I'll be bound! So, not content with that, Maggie Mattingley's letting the same thing happen all over again. Now it's Cilla and her Gail. Cilla's staying with them at the moment. If I speak to the mother over the back fence it's ‘Wasn't it terrible about poor Jack?' and ‘Aren't children lovely
together and isn't it a pity they have to grow up?' She wants her head reading. Imagine a world of children, especially a world of Cilla Phelans.” She got up and went over to the sitting room window. “They're out there now. Do they strike you as angelic children?”

Selena came over and looked out into the neighboring garden. Two girls were playing there, both rather lumpish thirteen-years-olds. Cilla she recognized; the other gave her the impression of being a Cilla in the making. There was about them nothing of the nascent sexuality which might have been expected, and which certainly was a feature of the oldest sister, June. These two skipped, ran around in the overgrown grass, had mock fights. But mostly they stood around, talking, whispering, sniggering. That was hardly unusual in adolescent girls, and Selena found it difficult to pin down the uncomfortable impression they gave the observer: Perhaps it was the expressions on their faces as they whispered and sniggered—gloating, ravenous, relishing.

“Awful to say this, about
children,
” said Mrs. Thornton, “but they always remind me of slugs—slugs when they lie there on the path, all fattened up.”

“They look sort of . . . corrupt,” said Selena at last.

“That's it! That's the word! It was the same with Kevin, only there it was more open. . . . And the silly bitch next door looks at those two out there and says: ‘Poor little mite, isn't it wonderful she can still laugh and play when she's lost her Daddy?' Some people seem to have lost all their sense of . . . ”

“Evil?”

“Yes. Something like that. Yes, I suppose that's the word.”

S
uperintendent Oddie had thoroughly researched the background of Kevin Phelan before he went along to talk to him: He knew his record, he knew his associates, and he even knew a bit about the house in which he lived. This was a decaying Victorian property in the Kirkby district of Sleate, whose landlord lived next door. He was an elderly and unsavory right-wing fanatic who had lived much of his life on the windy side of the law, profiting by the ambiguities of that gray area where free speech shades off into downright intimidation. Two years previously he had acquired the house next to his own, when the owners had defaulted on their mortgage repayments, and he had turned it into a collection of bedsitters and flatlets ranging from the dingy to the downright squalid. He had let them mainly to young sympathizers with his own views, hence Kevin Phelan's surprising independence from his family. The landlord did not let politics interfere with his right to collect rents from his tenants, so presumably Kevin Phelan and his flatmate, Jason Mattingley, had somehow the means of paying it. Whether these means had been acquired by exploiting loopholes in the Social Security rules, in the approved Phelan tradition, or by some less legal means Oddie had not yet discovered.

Kevin Phelan's record could have been used as a textbook example of the early career of the archetypal criminal thug. His schooldays had been as spectacular as his father's: No fewer than five of his teachers had called for police protection from him. He had been charged with maliciously wounding a fellow pupil—an Indian boy two years younger than himself. His persecution of this boy had been so vicious and so long-lasting that it had created its own reaction: The boy had acquired a whole army of protectors from among
his own schoolfellows, so that he seldom had to go anywhere alone. Kevin Phelan had been frustrated, for he preferred attacking the weak and solitary.

Since leaving school he had been prominent in football thuggery (the Sleate football ground was a notorious recruiting shop for the National Front, and black players were barbarously treated by the parts of the stands where the thugs congregated, a fact to which the management board of Sleate United turned a decorous blind eye). The Saturday night fracas, the concerted racial intimidation, and one suspected grievous bodily harm charge were the main components of Kevin's adult form. It was fairly clear, however, that he was an accomplished shoplifter and a specialist in the quick theft of salable items like TVs and videos from people's homes, though such lightning burglaries were so commonplace in a crime-ridden Britain that the police could give them little attention, so they had never got a case against him which they thought they could make stick. These were the bare bones of his record. Comments by policemen who had interviewed him were unprintable.

Oddie took two men with him to Kirkby, on the principle of safety in numbers. They left their car a street away and walked to Kevin's abode, 14 Market Street. There was no market now, though on the main road just down from the house there was a fish and chip shop, a newsagent's, and a bookmaker's. Kirkby had always been a working-class rising to lower-middle-class area of Sleate. In its time Market Street had been one of the “better” areas: There were patches of green and a church which looked as if it had once seen substantial congregations and fair pickings in the collection box. The area had started going downhill, though, long before the advent of Kevin Phelan and Jason Mattingley had set the seal on the process. They were below the present social mix, presages of some future rock bottom.

The three men approached the house slowly, casually. Oddie spoke under his breath to Sergeant Stokes and Detective P. C. Bramley, who were on either side of him.

“Nice house, once. Built around 1890, I'd say. No garage, of course. But there is a path from the front round to the back. There may be some kind of garden shed back there. Will you take that, Bramley? Especially keep an eye out for any petrol or paraffin there may be there, or signs that anything like that has been there until recently. Get down on your bloody hands and knees and sniff like a beagle if necessary. We'll take Prince Charming himself, Stokes.”

The main door to the house could be opened from outside, and inside each room had been fitted with a Yale lock. None of the residents, probably, had much to lose. In the hallway the two men paused and got their bearings: The place was predictably fusty, and there hung about it lodging-house smells of baked beans cooked on gas rings, stale sleep, and horsehair armchairs. The
stairs were uncarpeted, so their approach to the first-floor flatlet could not be kept quiet. There were two names on the door, but no doorbell. When they banged there was an interval before it opened, but no sound of footsteps. The boy who opened it was not Kevin Phelan, but his friend Jason Mattingley.

“Hello,” he said. “Come on in.”

It was friendly, or at least it attempted to be ingratiating. He was a heavier version of Kevin—fleshier, with better shoulders. His hair was cropped, his hands and neck tattooed, and though his face wore habitually an aggressive expression, it battled with a contrary expression of vacancy. Oddie immediately had a strong sense of the boy having been taken over, used.

The two policemen went into the room. Oddie had heard about this room from the constable who had brought the news in the middle of the night to Kevin Phelan. It would be too much to say that it had been transformed, but it certainly had been inexpertly cleaned up. There were no stray garments, no unwashed cups or plates; the bedclothes from the ancient sofa had been put away, and the poster of triumphant Nazi troops had been taken down. The room had been comprehensively aired, so that only faint traces of its unwholesome smells lingered. Oddie had a strong sense of unreality.

He also had a strong sense of being expected, of this encounter being staged, at least in intention. As they came in through the door Jason Mattingley had looked out, expecting a third policeman; Kevin Phelan was seated at the little dining table over by the wall, and nodded at their entrance with a feint at amiability; the old sofa and armchair were arranged in a sort of group for interview purposes, though Oddie noted that from none of them could one get a very good view of Kevin Phelan. They were expected, had been seen coming—that was understandable. The boys were concerned to make as good an impression as possible—that was not. Making a good impression was as foreign as it could possibly be to Kevin Phelan, or for that matter most of his family. Nor was he an obvious suspect for an attempt on the lives of his own family. So why were the pair trying to put on a show?

Oddie pushed the heavy armchair round to where he could get a better view of Kevin Phelan behind the table. He sat down and decided not to waste time expressing sympathy. It would be as difficult for Kevin to receive as it would be for him to give. He adopted a businesslike tone short on resonances.

“It's the business of your father's death.”

“Aye.”

“We're pretty sure that the fire was started deliberately.”

“Bastards.”

It was said without passion, routinely. Oddie looked at Kevin, curious.