It was a relief to hit the motorway, hermetically sealed against the poverty of the lives I’d driven past. Tony Blair said a lot about new Labour giving new Britain new hope before he was elected; funny how nothing’s changed now he’s in power. It’s still, “get tough on single mums, strip the benefit from the long-term unemployed, close the mines and make the students pay for their education.”
I cruised past Stockport, admiring the huge glass pyramid of the Co-op Bank, glowing neon green and indigo against the looming redbrick of the old mills and factories behind it. It had stood empty for years, built on spec in the boom of the Thatcher years before the Co-op had rescued it from the indignity of emptiness. I bet they’d got a great deal on the rent; wish I’d thought of it.
I took the Princess Parkway exit, almost the only car on the road now. Anyone with any sense was behind closed doors, either home writing Christmas cards or partying till they didn’t notice how cold it was outside while they waited for the taxi home. Me, I was sitting in my car opposite the other deadheads in the vast expanse of the Southern Cemetery. Only one of us was using the A-Z, though.
The street I was searching for was inevitably in the less seedy end of Chorlton, one of those pleasant streets of 1930s semis near the primary school whose main claim to fame is the number of lesbian parents whose children it educates. To live comfortably in Chorlton, you need to have a social conscience, left-of-center politics and an unconventional relationship. Insurance salesmen married to building society clerks with two children and a Ford Mondeo are harder to find around there than hen’s teeth.
The house in question was beautifully maintained. Even in the dead of winter, the garden was neat, the roses pruned into symmetrical shapes, the lawn lacking the shaggy uneven look that comes from neglecting the last cut of autumn. The stucco on the upper story and the gable gleamed in the streetlight, and the stained glass in the top sections of the bay window was a perfect match for the panel in the door. Even the curtain linings matched. I walked up the path with a degree of reluctance, knowing only too well the kind of mayhem I was bringing to this orderliness.
Sometimes I wish I could just walk away, that I wasn’t driven by this compelling desire for unpicking subterfuge and digging like an auger into people’s lives. Then I realize that almost every person I care about suffers from the same affliction: Richard and Alexis are journalists, Della’s a detective, Ruth’s a lawyer, Gizmo’s a hacker, Shelley’s never taken a thing at face value in all the years I’ve worked with her. Even Dennis subjects the world around him to careful scrutiny before he decides how to scam it.
The need to know was obviously too deeply rooted in me to ignore. Sometimes it even seemed stronger than the urge for selfpreservation. Driven as I was by the prospect of finding out what lay behind the string of recent strange events, I had to remind
I took a deep breath and pressed the bell. A light went on in the hall, illuminating me with green and scarlet patterns from the stained glass. I saw a dark shape descend the stairs and loom towards me. The door opened and Dorothea Dawson’s genetic inheritance stood in front of me. I should have seen it, really. The features were so similar.
“Hi,” I said. “I’ve come for a chat about your mum.”
Chapter 18
SATURN OPPOSES URANUS
Whenever she seems about to carve out a destiny or even a destination, Uranus steps in to force her to kick over the traces and express her individuality. Something always disrupts her best-laid plans; she is forever having to include new elements in her arrangements. The rest of her chart indicates capability; she will succeed in a conventional world by unconventional means.
From Written in the Stars, by Dorothea Dawson
Freddie Littlewood blinked rapidly, dark eyes glittering. His thin lips twitched. It was hard to tell if he was furious or on the point of tears. I figured he was deciding whether to brazen it out or to deny all knowledge of what I was talking about. It was possible, after all, that I was only guessing. “My private life is no concern of yours,” he said eventually, sitting firmly on the fence.
I sighed. “That’s where you’re wrong, Freddie. I’m very concerned with the relationship between you and Dorothea. The nature of my concern rather depends on whether you killed her or not. If you did, it puts my client in the clear and it probably means Gloria isn’t the next target of a killer. If you didn’t, you can probably tell me things that would help me to protect her. Either from false accusation or from murder. So my concern is legitimate.”
“I’ve nothing to say to you,” he said, closing the door in my face.
I hate bad manners. Especially when it’s late and there are almost certainly more interesting things I could be doing with my time. I took out my mobile phone and pushed open the letterbox. “The police don’t know Dorothea was your mother.” I started to press numbers on the phone, hoping the beeping was evident on the other side of the door. “Want me to tell them now?”
Before I could have pressed the “send” button if I’d been serious, the door opened again. “There’s no need for this,” Freddie snapped. “I didn’t kill Dorothea. That’s all you need to know. And it’s all you’re getting from me. I don’t care if you tell the police she was my birth mother. It’s not like it was news to me. I’ve known for ages, and I can prove it. Even the police aren’t stupid enough to take that as a motive for murder.” He was probably right. The bitterness in his voice spelled motive to me, but acrimony’s never been grounds for arresting someone.
I leaned against the doorjamb and smiled. “Maybe so. But if you factor in the stories you’ve been selling to the papers, the picture looks very different. Intimate details that people have revealed to Dorothea, spiced with the snippets you’ve picked up, that’s what’s been tarted up in the tabloids. Maybe Dorothea decided she didn’t need a partner any more?”
His eyes widened and he flashed a panicky glance to either side of me, as if checking whether I was alone. “You’re talking rubbish,” he said, his voice venomous.
I smiled. “Have it your own way. But you didn’t get paid in cash. Somewhere there’s a paper trail. And one thing the stupid old plod is very good at is following a paper trail. Freddie, if what you’re saying is true, and you didn’t kill Dorothea, I’ve got no ax to grind with you. John Turpin isn’t paying me to find out who the Northerners mole is.” I refrained from mentioning that Ross Grant might be. There was no point in complicating things that were already difficult. “All I’m interested in is protecting Gloria. You like Gloria, for God’s sake, I know you do. I’ve seen the way you are with her. Can we not just sit down and talk about this? Or do I have to blow your life out of the water with NPTV as well as the cops?”
One side of his mouth lifted in a sneer. “Gloria said you were smart,” he said, opening the door wide enough to let me enter. He shooed me ahead of him into a small square dining room. There was an oak table with four matching chairs, all stripped back to the bare wood, oiled and polished till they gleamed in the soft glow of opalescent wall lights. A narrow sideboard in darker oak sat against the far wall. The only decoration came from the vibrant color of the
“How did you find out she was my birth mother?” he asked.