Unforgotten (8 page)

‘By bus?’

‘I think so.’

They never worried about Lou, who at eighteen was responsible and level-headed, and far more organised than anyone else in the family. When she had finished trekking through India with her friend Chrissie she was going on to Sri Lanka to do two months’ voluntary work in an orphanage before coming home to read medicine at Edinburgh. She e-mailed at least once a week and regularly posted smiling snapshots on a travellers’ website.

They carried the supper to the table and Hugh went back for the wine.

‘By the way,’ he said as they sat down, ‘there was a hoodie-style kid hanging around the gate when I got back.’

‘Oh?’ she said calmly. ‘One of Charlie’s old crowd?’

‘Could have been.’

‘You’d think they’d have got the message by now. That he’s away at college.’

‘Ah, but they don’t get the message, do they? That’s their trouble – they’re too spaced out.’

‘You’re sure it wasn’t Joel? Back from wherever he’s been.’

‘Canada. No, it definitely wasn’t Joel.’ Joel was the son of the people who lived two houses away; a gangling monosyllabic youth with bad skin who shared Charlie’s passion for IT.

‘I can’t say I’ve ever really taken to Joel,’ Lizzie said, ‘but at least he’s not into anything worse than computers.’

‘Charlie gets on with him okay.’

‘Yes, that’s all that matters.’

Now they were back on to Charlie, Hugh was tempted to leave the subject of the youth behind. But he felt bound to add, ‘If you see the hoodie hanging around the gate again, you’ll call the police straight away, won’t you, Lizzie? Or get help from a neighbour.’

‘Oh, I’ll be all right, darling. Don’t forget, I deal with hoodies all day. They don’t worry me.’

‘Well, perhaps they should.’

She gazed at him for a moment before asking, ‘Is that how you got wet?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Talking to the hoodie?’

‘Well . . .
trying
to talk to him.’

‘Ah.’ She put on a solemn expression, to assure him of her sympathy. ‘He ran away?’

‘Sprinted, more like.’

‘Probably just as well you didn’t catch him.’

‘Huh. If I’d just had the chance!’

‘Well, what would you have done with him if you’d got him?’

‘I’d have given him a bloody good hiding.’

Lizzie’s eyes gleamed with a suppressed smile.

‘And why the hell not?’

‘You might have come out of it worse.’

‘No way.’

‘Anyway, with most of these kids it’s all show, isn’t it, the hood business. They’re just trying to look cool.’

‘He was up to no good.’

‘Why, because he ran away? He was probably scared out of his wits.’

‘It’d be nice to think so. Trouble is, Lizzie, you only get to see the hoodies who make it as far as the Citizens Advice, the ones who’re together enough to ask for help.’

‘Oh, I get some fairly untogether ones as well.’

‘Really? I thought they were too busy robbing off-licences and mugging old ladies.’

She shot him a look of tolerant rebuke, and he withdrew the remark with a wave of his glass. He loved this Merlot, so silky on the throat, so soothing on the brain. Already he felt the day’s problems miraculously postponed, his thoughts spiralling
happily around Lizzie, the meal, the hours till sleep. He asked, ‘What customers did you have today?’

‘Well, it was a Monday, so it was non-stop. I had a credit card debt, a couple of eviction notices, a loan-shark victim in hock for ten thousand. Oh and, last thing, Gloria James, the woman from the Carstairs who’s so desperate to be rehoused.’ Seeing that he was struggling to remember, she prompted, ‘The one with the agoraphobic son.’

‘Oh yes,’ Hugh said, as the story came back to him. The Carstairs was a notorious council estate on the northern borders of the city, a run-down concrete monolith with dark passageways, broken lifts, and litter-strewn landings that had long been a byword for drugs, crime, and anti-social behaviour. The only surprise was that all its residents didn’t besiege the offices of the council, the Citizens Advice, and every other agency in the city, demanding to be rehoused.

‘Agoraphobia?’ he murmured, as something else drifted into his memory. ‘I thought the son was living in fear of the gangs, of getting beaten up.’

‘That’s what Gloria says, yes . . .’ Lizzie frowned, as if turning something over in her mind. ‘But whatever the cause, the effect is the same. Wesley’s terrified of going out, and Gloria’s convinced he’ll never get better till they move.’

‘And he’s stayed cooped up
how
long?’

‘Two years. Since he was sixteen.’

‘He’s never been out in all that time?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘God . . .’ Hugh winced at the thought. ‘And they can’t be rehoused?’

‘At the moment they don’t score enough points to jump the housing queue. Gloria’s got a doctor’s certificate to say she’s suffering from stress, but then half the estate’s got stress-related illnesses so it’s not exactly a rarity.’

‘So who gets priority? Teenage mothers, I suppose. Lesbian asylum seekers.’

Used to his rumblings against the march of political
correctness Lizzie raised her eyebrows briefly. ‘The best hope,’ she went on, ‘is to get Wesley properly diagnosed with agoraphobia and depression and whatever else he’s suffering from, then between the two of them they should chalk up enough points. But the psychiatrist’s rushed off her feet at the moment. She can’t get to see him before the end of the month.’

Hugh said, ‘The word agoraphobia comes from the Greek for market-place, you know. It’s a fear of going to the market-place.’

Lizzie gave a snuffle of amusement. ‘Since when did you know any Greek?’

‘Since last week, when agoraphobia came up in a radio quiz.’

‘That’s cheating.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Well, in Wesley’s case it’s not fear of crowded places. It’s fear of going out at all. But at least he’s decided to talk to me, to trust me, which is more than he did before.’

A suspicion entered Hugh’s mind and settled there. ‘What’s he been saying?’ he asked lightly.

Distracted by some other thought, Lizzie murmured, ‘Oh . . . how much he’d like to live somewhere else. That sort of thing.’

He waited for her to say more, but she was concentrating on her food. ‘When did you last see him?’ he asked, as the suspicion deepened.

‘Mmm?’

‘Wesley?’

She stabbed at some pasta before glancing up with a quick smile. ‘Oh, this evening.’

Hugh absorbed this slowly. ‘That was your late meeting?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought it was a Citizens Advice meeting.’

‘Well, it was.’

As the anxiety bunched in his stomach, Hugh gave up on his food. ‘You went to the estate?’

‘Yes.’

He gave an unhappy sigh. ‘Lizzie . . .’

‘It was perfectly safe.’

‘I don’t think anyone could ever class the Carstairs Estate as
safe
. And certainly not after dark.’

‘But I went with Gloria. And John walked me back to the car afterwards.’

‘John?’ Hugh muttered.

‘The community pastor.’

‘And he deters the local gangs, does he?’

‘No one would try anything with John.’

‘You mean the muggers stop long enough to check that he’s wearing a dog-collar before they attack? Well, I’m glad they’ve got so much respect for a man of the cloth.’

‘Oh, it’s not the dog-collar. It’s the fact that he’s six foot four and perfectly capable of looking after himself.’

Hugh rapidly amended his picture of John from a saintly grey-haired Bible-pusher to something far more robust, a former army chaplain perhaps, or a Born Again bodybuilder. ‘All the same, I can’t pretend I’m happy about it, Lizzie. You being there after dark.’

‘It’s much safer than it used to be even a year ago.’

‘But not enough to make Gloria feel secure.’

‘That’s because she’s so worried about Wesley.’

‘Well, maybe she’s got good reason.’ Hearing himself in this mood, topping each point like some smart-arse lawyer, he took a moment to slow down. ‘Trouble is, you’re always going to be a prime target. White middle-class. A handbag full of credit cards. Everything that’s fair game.’

Lizzie shook her head a little, as if the comment was unworthy of an answer. ‘I never carry much in my handbag.’

‘But they’re not going to realise that till they’ve mugged you, are they?’ If he had disliked himself in the role of point-scorer, the part of fretful husband didn’t suit him much better. ‘Can’t you meet people in a café or something?’

‘Not if they’re old and disabled. Not if they’ve got children to care for.’

He made an uncertain face.

‘I take care. Really I do.’

It was the Denzel Lewis case that had first taken her to the Carstairs Estate, he remembered with an echo of misgiving. Denzel was a twenty-one-year-old serving life for stabbing a youth to death. When Denzel was refused leave to appeal, his sisters had come to Lizzie for advice on raising money for a new legal fight. But then – and Hugh could never work out quite what had triggered it – Lizzie’s interest in the case had deepened. Ignoring the training guidelines to keep an emotional distance from her work, she had got involved in the campaign to free Denzel. Perhaps it was Denzel’s proud, articulate sisters Jacqui and Sophia who’d convinced her of his innocence, perhaps it was the word on the block, which had it that he’d been framed, but she began to read up on the evidence and talk to Denzel’s friends and accompany his sisters to meetings with the new lawyers. Even then Hugh hadn’t appreciated how much she’d taken the case to heart until she announced she was going to visit Denzel in prison, and subsequently spoke out for him at a campaign meeting.

If Hugh had been forced to say whether he thought Lizzie’s time well spent, he would have been pushed to answer. There was the small matter of the forensic evidence, a jacket splattered with the dead man’s blood which had been found in Denzel’s bedroom, planted there, according to Denzel, by someone out to frame him. And there was his alibi, which had changed rather too often to inspire confidence. But Hugh tried to keep his doubts to himself. Once, in the early days, he’d uttered a rather sweeping opinion on Denzel’s chances of getting off, and been accused by Lizzie of jumping to conclusions without being in full possession of the facts, a charge hard to deny either as a lawyer or a husband. Since then he’d taken a seat very much at the back of the campaign bus, acting as home supporter and sounding board.

‘So . . .’ he said brightly. ‘What’s the latest with the Denzel campaign?’

‘The solicitor’s drafting a new application for leave to appeal but it’s not likely to get very far.’

‘So, what next?’

‘Well, the sisters are planning a new campaign to appeal for witnesses. Sophia’s targeting the local radio stations, newspapers and churches, while Jacqui’s organising a leafleting operation to cover every household in the neighbourhood – the Carstairs and Summerfields Estates, as well as the shops and offices.’

‘Quite an undertaking.’

‘Well, there has to be a witness out there somewhere, someone who can support Denzel’s alibi.’

‘It’s been quite a while,’ Hugh ventured.

‘But that might just work to their advantage. There might be someone who’s had the case on his or her conscience all this time and might finally be ready to come forward.’ Catching the reservation in Hugh’s face, Lizzie added, ‘Some people do have consciences, you know. Even on the roughest estates.’

‘But their whole culture’s about steering clear of trouble, isn’t it? And witness statements and court cases are serious trouble.’

‘You’re not allowing for people’s better natures.’

Hugh said, ‘That’s the difference between you and me, Lizzie. You still believe in people’s better natures.’

‘So do you,’ she said firmly.

Basking briefly in her good opinion, he rather wished he shared it.

Lizzie took some salad. ‘Anyway, if anyone’s that nervous about coming forward there’s always the witness protection scheme.’

It was all Hugh could do to maintain a neutral expression. The idea was so wildly unrealistic he thought she must have abandoned it weeks ago.

She went on, ‘I’m seeing Chief Inspector Montgomery tomorrow actually.’

‘And what does he say?’

She looked up from her food. ‘Well, darling, I don’t know till I see him, do I?’

‘But . . . he knows you’re coming to talk about witness protection?’

‘Oh yes. We’ve talked about it before.’

Hugh stared at her unhappily until she glanced up again, when he busily topped up her drink.

Lizzie put her knife and fork down and, with the air of getting things out into the open, said calmly, ‘You’re worried about it?’

‘Well . . . yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because . . .’ He hesitated, aware that he was about to overstep his self-imposed boundary and give an opinion. ‘Because so far as the police are concerned the case is done and dusted. They’ve got their man banged to rights. The last thing they want is a new witness crawling out of the woodwork, someone a foxy defence lawyer could use to launch an appeal and get their hard-won conviction overturned.’ He stopped abruptly before he could say more and drained the last of the bottle into his glass.

‘So why would Montgomery tell me witness protection is definitely a possibility?’

Because he’s lazy and incompetent and out to impress you, Hugh felt like saying. Instead, he said with a shrug, ‘Who knows?’

‘I think I’d realise if he was stringing me along.’

Ah, but would you?
Hugh thought with a pang. It seemed to him that her innate optimism, her wondrous belief in the possible, could sometimes lead her to take too much on trust.

‘And you’re assuming the police don’t have any interest in justice,’ she said, with a hint of challenge.

‘Well, yes – I mean,
no
. Their idea of justice is a conviction, isn’t it?’ He got up to fetch another bottle from the rack. ‘And no matter how well-intentioned a cop might be, he’s never going to want to accept that he might have put the wrong man away, not when the evidence is as strong as it was in the Denzel Lewis case.’