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“But you've stopped here?”

Eve had noticed his propensity for making snide remarks about Scotland and Scottishness, and she was intrigued as to why he had stayed. Perhaps in order to offend by making remarks like these?

“Yes, well, it was a good school. Still is, though the poorer for my leaving. With my height and my accent, I could be in real trouble in some schools, but this one—well, they were nicely brought up kids, there was always some real artistic talent there, and the ones who weren't interested did just enough to get through exams and inspections. I could have done worse, much worse. I had the itch to go to London after art college. Think what would have happened to me in a London comprehensive.”

By now the two men were tucking in to their steak and kidney and Eve into her sea bass.

“Do you remember what happened when May got her job in Crossley?”

“I do,” said Harry. “That was later. Wilson was PM by then—you can put a date to it mebbe. It was no a complete break, you see. He was around the
Tribune
office two days a week, so we'd often go out for a bevvy at lunchtime.”

“Why did they insist he come back every week? It can't have been necessary for the McTavish cartoons.”

“The paper didn't insist. He was a freelance. But it was by mutual agreement. He was getting better and better at the political cartoons, and that meant that the editor and the moneybags behind the
Tribune
were becoming interested in having at least one a week in the paper. There was
always a political agenda behind the cartoons in the paper. There needed to be a weekly discussion on what the cartoons would be about, and also what line John was to take. He might not have liked the situation, but he was makin' a name for himself wi' them.”

“So he had a flat in Glasgow still?”

“Oh aye, the old flat. A one-bedroom one down Mackie Street. It was getting too small for the family anyway, wi' the babby on the way, but it was plenty big enough for him on his own.”

“You're talking to her, the ‘babby,' you Scottish loon,” said Jewell. “I remember you, my dear, the night before they took the train for Yorkshire. We had a small farewell party, just a couple of drinks, and we went back to the flat for a last one, and because we couldn't see them off in the morning. You were only a bump in your Mam's stomach, but you made your presence felt.”

“How far gone in the pregnancy was my mother then?”

“Oh—just a guess: three or four months.”

“And there was no problem with John becoming more or less a househusband?”

“None in the world. He was looking forward to it. He knew there might be problems when you were a wee bit older, but he was cock-a-hoop about it. And they'd fixed up maternity leave with the school in Yorkshire.”

They were all nearly finished with their pies and their fish, and Jamie was long finished with his ale and was beginning to rattle his empty glass on the tabletop. Eve signaled to a passing waitress to bring their sweets and, after consideration, two more glasses of bitter. Jamie Jewell perceptibly brightened.

“John was a marvelous father,” he said. “They both were tip-top parents.”

“Did you see John much after he left here?”

“Quite a bit. His hours were more flexible then, so we saw each other pretty regularly.”

“Things were going well with them?”

“They were, especially John. He was having the odd cartoon taken by
Private Eye,
he had a pretty good income from the
Tribune
and other papers that took the McTavish cartoons—all in all they were fine.”

“Does that include May?”

“Well, I never saw her after they moved. John said she was loving the job, and later loving the responsibility of being deputy head.” He took a second big swig from his new pint. “I can't think of anything I'd like less than being deputy head.”

“
But,
” urged Eve. “You're talking as if there was a but.”

Jamie Jewell went cagey. There was something else too—he looked slimy as well, Eve thought.

“Mind your foot, Harry . . . Oh, I never heard much about that. It wasn't John's business. She and the head didn't get on. There were . . . awkwardnesses. The head was a difficult woman.”

Harry was leaning forward eagerly.

“I think Jamie is exaggerating,” he said. “It was rather up and down. May was given a good deal of responsibility, and she liked that. But it meant that sometimes disputes about who was in charge of what took place. It was no life threatening. Just normal work politics.”

“And when my father left the country?”

“It was no to do wi' that. It was medical.”

“It was his chest,” said Jamie. “He'd always had a weak chest.”

Eve chanced her arm.

“It seems somehow an extreme solution to the problem.”

“Does it? Sounds ideal to me. If a damp, sunless climate is part of the problem, then a good, warm climate is the answer.”

“But an answer that means separating husband and wife?”

“I know nowt about that. Think about it: there could be any number of reasons for that. The marriage could have been collapsing before the change of scene was recommended. John could have met someone after he got to Australia. May could have met a man with more personality, more get-up-and-go than John had.”

“Or a woman,” said Eve.

There was silence at the table.

“You've lost us,” Jamie said eventually. “I never heard of anything like that, and I've no reason to think there
was
anything of that sort.”

Eve let it go. They were not the people to enlighten her about that part of May's life.

“What about the Glasgow flat?” she asked. “Did he give it up before he left? Sell it?”

“It wasn't his to sell. He flew out—that was rare then—as soon as he made the decision. He wrote to me from Australia, asking me to get rid of all the furniture to the Sally Army and give notice to the landlord. That was soon done, and I sent him some kind of money order for what his records, books and odds and sods fetched.”

“Where did you send it?”

“Australia.”

Eve had to stifle her irritation.

“But where in Australia?”

Jamie shrugged, again looking cagey and slimy.

“I can't remember that. This was thirty-odd years ago.”

“Can't you remember which state?”

“State? No, I can't. It was all just Australia to me. Beaches, cattle, desert—that's all Australia meant. We didn't have all those soaps, making young people want to go there. I must have a leak.”

He pushed back his chair, and almost ran toward the stairs and down them.

“There's a gents over there,” said Eve. Harry shook his head.

“He'll no come back. You began to press him too hard.”

“What else could I do? There was nothing very terrible in the questions. I'd have liked to ask him if there were any later contacts with my dad.”

“You canna be sure he'd have told you the truth.”

“Why shouldn't he have told me the truth?”

“Out of some kind of loyalty to John, mebbe.”

“Are you suggesting he's told me lies already?”

“Who can say? I can't. But if there was something odd about the breakup of the marriage he could have held back things about your mother as well as your father.”

“He didn't have the same long friendship with her.”

“Long eno'. And you gave him a pretty good idea of what direction the questions were heading in. So mebbe he thought, I don't want anything to do wi' that sort o' thing. So he makes off into the night wi' his belly and bladder full, an' his loyalty to John intact.”

“I wish he hadn't been so vague about dates.”

“That may have been just one o' his fancies. He could mind perfectly well what happened when.”

“I suppose so. Though in my experience most people don't.”

“What did you want to know?”

“A lot of things. But especially when did John go to Australia.”

Harry thought hard.

“I'd have said John left the country sometime in 1972 or mebbe three. It was spring, that I do remember.”

“And how long after that was it you heard that he was dead?”

“I'd say it was about two years later, roughly.”

“Was it new news when you heard it?”

“No. Remember none of us—not even Jamie, so far as I know—had had recent contact with him. People just began saying he was dead.”

“No details?”

“No details at all. Just as if John'd told them to start spreading it around . . . Are you tryin' to believe your father might be still alive?”

Eve shook her head, but that was precisely what she was thinking.

When Eve got back to Crossley, she found a message from Rani on her—her mother's—answer machine.

“Ring me at work or at home.”

Eve tried him at work—it was about three—and got him.

“Eve. It's wonderful to hear from you. How did things go in Glasgow?”

“Well—let me think: I discovered that my father went to Australia. I also believe—this is conjecture—that something about him is being covered up.”

“What sort of thing?”

“No idea. But one possibility could be the reason why he upped and left.”

“‘Upped and left.' I love English expressions like that. You think there was some mystery about it?”

“I doubt if people with chest problems went—
flew
—to Australia back in the early 1970s. Plenty of better places nearer.”

“Maybe. But a lot of old people won't go to Spain or
Portugal even now, even to somewhere like Benidorm: more English than Blackpool.”

“Point taken. But I don't think my father was that sort of person. His McTavish family cartoons often satirized little Englandism—or in their case little Scotlandism. And he certainly wasn't old then. Why did you want to talk to me, Rani?”

“Eve, were you serious about the PR job here in Leeds?”

“Yes,” said Eve, after pausing to think. “Not desperate to get it, but
interested
.”

“I've had a word with the super who's organizing the rescue operation for the PR department. He paid attention. Like you, he was interested.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I was. Not because he wasn't right to be interested in you, but surprised because I'm too junior to have my opinions listened to. But they were.”

“There you are—you suffer from low self-esteem.”

“Ha! If you only knew me.”

“Well, I look forward to knowing you better.”

She was surprised to hear a little giggle at that. Then he became serious again.

“I say, Eve.”

“Yes?”

“He said to emphasize that this isn't any sort of job interview. He wants to see you, have a chat with you, get an idea of your personality, to see whether you'd fit in. Very important after what we have just gone through. What happens after that, if he thinks you would fit in, he says he hasn't even thought about.”

“Sounds fine and dandy to me. What do I do to set it up?”

“Phone his assistant. The number is 0118 2696 842. She's very nice—Catherine Peters is her name. Good luck.”

Eve rang the number and they fixed an appointment for the next day, Thursday, at three fifteen. “He just wants to have a chat,” said Catherine, and Eve said that would be fine by her.

She occupied the rest of the day in trying to chart the married life of her father and mother chronologically, but she ended feeling that the indications that had been given were too vague. Purposely so, very probably. Then she began thinking that her father's life in Australia—however long, however short—would surely have left some traces in the form of newspaper work. She contemplated going to the British Library, but then another thought struck her: the best stocks of Australian newspapers would be in Australia.

Why not go?

If she got a job with the West Yorkshire police, she could hardly take a week off as soon as she had started. She got on to the Internet and began to research the cheapest flights to Australia. She was not yet used to being comparatively well-off.

When next day she arrived at the Millgarth Police Headquarters in Leeds, she was received politely and was escorted by a very young-looking policeman, who must have been bored out of his mind with his duties, to the office of Chief Superintendent Collins, where she made
pleasant small talk with his secretary and his assistant until she was called into his office.

He was a chunky, brusque man, with a spark in his eye that might suggest a sense of humor but equally might connote a ruthless pleasure in exercising power and clearing out the dead wood of his department. Eve guessed that he might wink at inadequate performance by his underlings once, even twice, but after that he would gain satisfaction in showing the sinner the door. He was, Eve thought, an efficient, cool but probably honorable man. He got down almost at once to the nitty-gritty of their meeting.