Maybe I’d do better at the office. Aw, shit. The office. I’d managed to forget about the office over the last three days. Sigh. I hated to think what the Dobsons would be saying about me if I didn’t sort it out soon. Oh, well, maybe sorting it out would have a knock-on effect on my thought processes. Let a little light into my clouded mind.
I gathered together cleaning stuff, bin-bags, rubber gloves and a stanley knife to cut up the carpet. Made a flask and a sandwich.
The Dobsons were all out at school. I went down the cellar stairs, bracing myself for the shock. I got a surprise. Someone had cleared up. More than that, they’d sorted the room out. The carpet had gone, a faded but serviceable patterned rug in its place. All the walls and the ceiling had been painted white, faintly pink, one of those hint-of-a-touch numbers. Two collapsible garden chairs and a small plain desk had been set to one side of the room. Opposite, stood my filing cabinet, still streaked with lilac splashes. Beside it on the floor, two stacks of files, one lot smothered in paint, the other relatively unscathed.
Gratitude and guilt fought for the upper hand. There was a note on the desk next to the (clean) phone. ‘Sal – raided the attic, plus car-boot sale. You owe us a tenner! Girls displayed cringe-making propensity for nest-building. Jackie.’
I laughed. Jackie was terrified that her four daughters would all opt for marriage and children at an early age and rebel against her hopes that they would go on to further education and economic independence.
Now I had no excuse, I fished out some paper from the clean files and sat with pen poised. My head still buzzed with nothing. In the end, I resorted to talking aloud and making a list of things I needed to do. I still needed to establish whether Martin was at Fraser Mackinlay’s and, to do that, I needed to see whether Nina Zaleski had seen him.
RING NINA.
If he was there, I needed to find a time when Fraser was out, in order to see him. After my last visit, I knew Fraser wouldn’t let me see Martin and I wouldn’t trust him with the letter.
CLEAR COAST? DELIVER LETTER. I knew now that it was from his birth mother. How the hell was I to tell him she was dead, worse, murdered? I’m not a fucking social worker.
Plus, I’d promised Mrs Williams that I’d ask if Martin knew anything about Janice; if she had visited the house. There was something obscene about it. Shit, it was heavy enough going to see the lad and revealing that he was adopted. Then what would I say? ‘Oh and, by the way, your mother was murdered. Could even have happened here; she was headed this way. Ring any bells?’ I got to my feet, appalled at the scenes running through my head. I just couldn’t do this.
Who was Martin Hobbs? I was chasing a chimera. First, I’m looking for a runaway who doesn’t want finding. I find him and he turns into an incest survivor. Next thing I know, he’s a foundling, a precious child given up, a chosen child betrayed. Now he’s an orphan, maybe even a matricide. And I have a letter, with his name on, a message to Martin…
I walked back over to the desk. Looked down at my list. Concentrate on the job, I told myself. Don’t think about how he might or might not react. Just do it. I rang Nina Zaleski, but there was no reply. My frustration was tinged with relief.
I ate lunch, then decided to fish around a bit after Bruce Sharrocks, the man who’d accompanied Martin and Fraser to Barney’s; the leading light of the Dandelion Trust. A perky voice answered. When I asked to speak to Mr Sharrocks, she told me he wasn’t in the office. Could she help? I trotted out my cover story; I was doing a feature on local children’s charities, and the people behind them, for City Life. I wanted to interview Mr Sharrocks. The prospect of publicity did the trick. She explained that he worked elsewhere but she was sure I could contact him there. It was a Town Hall number, Social Services department.
I rang my friend and ex-lodger, Chris, and asked her if she could find anything out about Bruce Sharrocks; if she knew anyone in Social Services. I persuaded her I was just after general impressions – nothing dodgy about the request. She said she’d see what she could do, but I could tell that she didn’t really like being asked.
I sorted through the pile of paint-free files and put them back in the filing cabinet. The file on Martin wasn’t among them. My stomach tightened. If it wasn’t here, if it had been removed, then I couldn’t really go on acting as though the paint-job was just the work of local youths. I began to prise apart the files that were congealed with paint. It was there, drenched with lilac vinyl silk like the rest of them. I made sure the skeletal notes I’d had were actually inside, if illegible, and sighed with relief. Then I chucked the whole stack.
I drafted a small ad for the local weekly free-sheet, advertising my services. If I was back in business, it was about time I generated some. Discreet service, reasonable rates. On my way to deliver it, I called at the library. The newly-introduced computer system informed me that I owed three pounds and ninety-five pence, and charged me another fifty pence for a replacement ticket. I restricted myself to two books. A Loren D. Estleman crime thriller and the latest in the Sue Grafton Alphabet series. Least they were still buying books.
I cycled round to the Reporter office and dropped in my advert. A week on Saturday, they’d be beating a path to my door. I lived in hope.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Things were hotting up. Temperatures were in the eighties. Trouble in the air. The evening paper was full of it. ‘Heatwave – Crimewave,’ screamed the headline. ‘Brutal Violence Erupts In Night Of Terror.’ There’d been riots in Salford. Youths circling the police station, setting fire to the flats and shops. In Cheetham Hill, two teenagers had died in a gunfight and, further south, a young black man had been fished from the Mersey. Police were treating both these cases as part of the on-going drugs war, with rival teenage gangs competing for a share of the lucrative and expanding crack market.
I folded up the paper and chucked it on the grass. It was hot, wonderfully hot, though I didn’t think three days really rated as a heatwave. I relished every sweaty moment, every airless night. It couldn’t last.
Tom sat in the paddling pool, chortling and gasping for air, as Maddie doused him with buckets of water. I closed my eyes, seeing amber through my eyelids. Thoughts drifted past. What did Sharrocks, a married man and doer of good works, have in common with Fraser Mackinlay, who could afford an Aston Martin and had taken up with a homeless sixteen year old working as a rent boy? Did Fraser hand cash out to the Dandelion Trust? If Sharrocks was working to help children in need, wouldn’t the relationship between the wealthy Mackinlay and the poor teenager trouble his scruples just a little? Was I completely misreading it? Perhaps Fraser was a philanthropist, giving Martin the shelter he needed. But why deny knowing him, when I’d shown the photo? And if they were simply lovers, what about Martin’s fearful reaction at the nightclub?
Had Martin ever been told he was adopted? Did he know now? Had Janice reached him before death reached her? Maybe Fraser had shut her out, as he had me? She’d driven off; there’d been some trouble with the car, or something made her pull over on the motorway. The killer had struck. Any victim would do. But what if Martin had answered the door? Janice, distraught, had blurted out her story. My baby, my baby, I’m here now…Frightened, Martin had pushed her. She’d fallen…
Ray called me in to the phone. It was Nina Zaleski. ‘I just saw him, in the car.’
My guts clenched. This was it – back on the scent. He did exist. ‘Coming or going?’
‘Going. Fraser got back maybe an hour ago. I had to go collect something from the dry-cleaners, I was driving back and they went past.’ She was all excited, too.