A City of Strangers (18 page)

“Whom are you referring to?”

“The bastards who done it.”

“Who do you think they would be?”

“Those bastards in Wynton Lane.”

“Yes, we . . . got your message about them.”

An evil smile of self-satisfaction forced its way forward onto Kevin's face.

“The bastards asked for it!”

“Well, we'll say nothing for the moment about the malicious damage aspect of it. What interests me is this: We send a man here in the middle of the night to tell you that your father has died. By daybreak you've announced to the world that one of the people in Wynton Lane did it.”

“Well?” More aggressively now.

“You assumed it was deliberate, and you assumed it was one of them who did it.”

“People hated my Dad.” This was said with real relish.

“Then why assume it was them?”

“He was going to move in there. They'd do anything to stop him. Toffee-nosed gits.”

“I still think those are two pretty breathtaking assumptions to make.”

Kevin thought. He had trouble with words of over two syllables.

“I told you why.”

“Well—let's let that pass for the moment. We gather your Dad had had a win on the football pools.”

“That's right.”

“A big win?”

“S'pose so.”

“You don't know?”

“No.”

“That seems odd. Why not?”

“Wouldn't tell me. He bought me a drink at the Railway King, but he wouldn't tell me. Crafty old bugger, me Dad.” Once again this was said with relish: Kevin admired craftiness and villainy wherever it was to be found.

“Who would have known how big it was?”

“Me Mam. . . . Maybe me Mam. You never knew wi' me Dad. He could have not told her either.”

“But so far as you know your father was intending to buy the house in Wynton Lane?”

“ 'Course he was. Been to a s'licitor an' all.”

“Yes. . . . Getting back to the night of the fire. Where were you during the evening?”

“Here.” It came a fraction too fast and too loud. It was followed up glibly. “Jason and me was both here. Watching the telly. We was skint.”

“I see. Any independent confirmation of this?”

“What?”

“Anyone visit you? You talk to anyone?”

“Don't think so. What's it matter? Jason was here wi' me the whole time.”

Oddie merely raised his eyebrows. He would soon make it clear, if necessary, how much it mattered.

“So you went to bed—when?”

“About half past ten.”

“Right. And you slept until you were woken up by one of our policemen?”

“That's right.”

“Then you went to find and tell your sister June.”

“Yeah.”

“How long did that take?”

“We went to Carrock on Jason's motorbike his mother give him for his eighteenth, lucky git.”

“How long did it take you to find her?”

“We never did.”

“So you went on to Burtle and did your spray job?”

“That's right. Back here and got the spray gun, then out and done it. Bet that set people talking.”

His tongue flicked round his lips in pleasure.

“Where had your sister June been that night?”

“I dunno, do I?”

“You didn't ask her?”

“I ain't seen her, have I?”

“What?”
The truth struck Oddie suddenly. “You mean she doesn't know about the fire, about her father's death?”

“I dunno. Not as far as I know.”

Oddie swore, and turned to Sergeant Stokes.

“We've been bloody fools. Get on to HQ. I want her found, told, and questioned. How could we have forgotten her?” Stokes got up, but they were interrupted by a knock at the door. Jason Mattingley had been lurking in the background during Kevin's questioning, and now he went to open the door. Detective Constable Bramley came in and leaned over to whisper in Oddie's ear.

“There's been a can of petrol in the shed round the back. You can see the outline on the floor, and there are recent spillages that still smell strongly. It's been got rid of.”

Oddie sat back in his chair. The room was very quiet. He was being watched by the two boys, who nevertheless were quiet, tense. They had tried to stage this meeting, and it had not worked. He looked at Kevin, sitting on the other side of the table. . . . Why in their staging had Kevin sat
at table?

Because on the sofa, in the armchairs, he would be too exposed—was that it? What was he trying to hide?

An idea struck him.

“Let me see your hands.”

“What?”

“I want to see your hands.”

Slowly, his lips tightened, Kevin drew up his hands from their position under the table. The right hand was puffy, shiny, unnaturally red. At some time, though not recently, Oddie felt sure that that right hand had been badly burned.

“So that's what you've been trying to hide.”

“I never tried to hide it. I went to Pickering with it.”

“I'm going to have to ask you to come with us—” he began. But only began. Now Kevin had done with playacting and restraint, and he launched himself on them, abetted by his mate, with a vicious frenzy that made Oddie grateful for his foresight in bringing two other men with him.

It was good to have them behind bars. Both of them behind bars, and separately. Magistrates always took a serious view of assaults on police officers. When they were both on remand he could probably get Jason Mattingley holed up in Apsely Jail with a sympathetic old lag who would give him good advice about shopping a mate who was obviously nothing but bad news.

Even without Jason's help Oddie thought he would be a match for Kevin Phelan, but with Jason he could nail him much more quickly.

When the formalities were over, and with his ears ringing with a more concentrated dose of obscenities than even he could remember, Oddie went to his office and found a message waiting for him from the Sleate Infirmary: Mrs. Phelan was through the worst and could be interviewed, though the session would have to be brief and not confrontational. Good. Just the thing, to let Kevin Phelan cool his heels alone for a few hours. He put Sergeant Stokes in charge of the search for June Phelan. “That was a bad mistake we made,” he said, “assuming Kevin had got in touch with her. Concentrate on Carrock, then on any of the other red light districts.”

Just before setting off an idea hit him. He phoned through to the Chief Superintendent for authorization to use a member of uniformed branch, then got a message through to Malcolm Cray, who was on the beat in the University area to meet him outside the Sleate Infirmary. Having her rescuer in on
the interview might help soften Mrs. Phelan's view of the police. Well, it
might.
It was worth trying. Oddie was not too hopeful.

The Infirmary was a warren writ large, a squat pile which had been built in Victorian times and had expanded to meet needs with little regard for architectural niceties, and precious little for convenience either. The corridors were pretty much the same as they had been when Tom Makepeace wheeled patients from the wards to the operating theatres or the mortuary—indeed, they were pretty much as they had been when the old queen was on the throne. Bright new equipment that could do everything except abolish death stood in solid, shabby rooms which told of a Victorian propensity to do good, and to feel good about doing it. Colored lines on the floor in the corridors led you to where you wanted to go, supposing you were in on the secret of the colors. Oddie and Malcolm Cray lost their way twice before they found themselves outside Mary Phelan's room—a single-bed ward, with intensive care. Two nurses, one brown and one white, were fiddling with a collection of bowls and unpleasant-looking probing instruments on a trolley outside the door.

“I've come to talk to Mrs. Phelan,” said Oddie in a low voice. “I'm a police officer—it's been arranged.”

One of the nurses nodded and pointed to the door.

“How is she mentally?” asked Oddie. The two looked at each other and suppressed giggles.

“It's difficult to say,” said the white one.

“You'll
see,” said the other, and they wheeled their trolley away down the corridor, talking in a whisper and giggling.

Mike Oddie raised his eyebrows at Cray and walked in.

Mary Phelan's room was in half light, but her heavy figure could be made out on the bed, more rock than jelly. She was wearing a hospital nightdress, but nothing could have softened the square shoulders, the breasts like boulders on the Icelandic tundra. She was gazing ahead of her—not blankly, but with a kind of purposiveness that did not include her visitors. She made no acknowledgment of their arrival beyond a glance at them as they came through the door.

“Mrs. Phelan? I'm Superintendent Oddie and this is P. C. Cray. You'll know him, of course—your neighbor. It was P. C. Cray who got you out the other night.”

He waited. Several seconds of silence.

“Oh, yes?”

He waited again. She added no thanks. Malcolm Cray thought: They're not in her repertoire either. The two men sat down on either side of the bed. Mary Phelan continued to look straight ahead.

“Mrs. Phelan, you probably know that we think the fire was started deliberately. Tell me, do you have a clear memory of the evening before the fire?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me what happened?”

She had obviously realized she was going to be questioned, was used to police questioning. She spoke in short bursts, as if she had other, more important things on her mind.

“Jack was down the King. Kids went to bed about half past nine. I went down to have a light ale with Jack. Come back about quarter past ten. Went straight to bed.”

“And you don't remember anything after that?”

“No.”

“Did your husband come home with you?”

“No. Mean bugger—he'd only buy me one. Stayed on to have a last one himself.”

“Did you hear him come in?”

“No. I was right off. Knew he'd stay downstairs anyway, front of the telly.”

“You say your husband wouldn't buy you a second drink, Mrs. Phelan. But he did, in fact, have plenty of money, didn't he?”

Something happened on her face that was not a smile, more like the slow cracking of the rockface.

“Geddaway.”

“He didn't?”

“ 'Course 'e bloody didn't!”

“But what about the pools win?”

“A hundred and eighty-nine pounds, forty-five pence. We bought a secondhand telly because ours was on the blink, and we got a crate of Tetleys beer and a bottle of whiskey, and we ate well for a week. And that was about it.”

“So the suggestion that you were about to buy the house in Wynton Lane was—”

The crack slowly crossed the face again.

“Always did think himself a fucking wag, did our Jack. Now look where it's got him.”

“What do you mean? You think one of the people in the Lane started the fire?”

“Well, what do you think? Bloody obvious, i'n't it?”

“Has your son Kevin been to see you in hospital?”

“Bin in and out.”

“Did he suggest that?”

“He didn't bloody need to. It's obvious.”

“Kevin himself burned his hands some time ago, didn't he?”

“I dunno. . . . You want to lay off our Kevin. Always picking on him, you lot.”

It was said without an ounce of conviction or passion—one of the standard Phelan responses to police questioning.

“So you don't know how he burned his hands?”

“No. He's bin moved out months and months now. I'm not responsible for
him
anymore, thank Christ.”

“And the idea that your husband had had a big pools win was nothing but a joke?”

“ 'Course it was a bleeding joke. Just the sort of thing that tickled our Jack. When we got the win, first thing he did was he got the Estate talking, just by buying a round of drinks. Thought everyone would come buzzing round him like flies, licking his arse in the hope of a handout. But they never did. People were wary of our Jack. He could be right nasty at times. So then he got the idea of going to view the house in the Lane. There's a wet week from the Social Security lives in one of them houses—he come to accuse us once of mistreating our kids. Bloody cheek. He was seen off, I can tell you.
And
there's that bleeding headmistress or whatever she was, that used to come around about our June. Old Lady Nevershit—that's what Jack used to call her. They're a snotty-nosed lot, them that live there.”

“But your husband went further, didn't he? He went to see a solicitor.”

“He wasn't going to go to a solicitor. He was on his way to a bloody dogfight, down Barnsley way. But he saw that prick from the Social Security sitting at the back of the bus—saw him in the mirror at the top of the stairs. When he got off he saw him following him, so he went into the solicitor's. Don't reckon the solicitor took Jack all that seriously. Any road, we never heard from him. Just gave Jack a big laugh, to stir it up a bit more . . . Doesn't look as if he had the last laugh, though, does it?”