скачать книгу бесплатно
‘She doesn’t complain.’
‘No. It’s the only way she can get your attention for a little while. That’s what all this is about. The next stage is for you to stagger back downstairs, have a couple of drinks, eat your supper and then fall asleep beyond recall by anything less penetrative than Fat Andy’s voice. Well, tonight I’m getting in my howl first!’
Pascoe looked at her thoughtfully, finished his drink and leaned back on the sofa.
‘Howl away,’ he invited.
The Unusual Will item had caught other eyes that day too.
The Mid-Yorks Evening Post was one of several northern local papers in the Challenger group. The Challenger itself was a Sunday tabloid, published in Leeds with a mainly northern circulation though in recent years under the dynamic editorship of Ike Ogilby it had made some inroads into the Midlands. Nor did Ogilby’s ambitions end at Birmingham. In the next five years he aimed either to expand the Challenger into a full-blown national or use it as his personal springboard to an established editorial chair in Fleet Street, he didn’t much care which.
The other editors within the group were requested to bring to Ogilby’s notice any local item which might interest the Challenger. In addition Ogilby, who trusted his fellow journalists to share a story like the chimpanzee trusts its fellow chimps to share a banana, encouraged his own staff to scan the evening columns.
Henry Vollans, a young man who had recently joined the staff from a West Country weekly, spotted the piece about the Huby will at half past five. Boldly he took it straight to Ogilby who was preparing to go home. The older man, who admired cheek and recognized ambition to match his own, said dubiously, ‘Might be worth a go. What were you thinking of? Sob piece? Poor old mam, lost child, that sort of thing?’
‘Maybe,’ said Vollans who was slim, blond and tried not unsuccessfully to look like Robert Redford in All the President’s Men. ‘But this lot, Women For Empire, that rang a bell. There was a letter in the correspondence column a couple of weeks back when I was sorting them out. From a Mrs Laetitia Falkingham. I checked back and it had the heading. She lives at Ilkley and calls herself the founder and perpetual president of Women For Empire. The letter was about that bother in Bradford schools. She seemed to think it could be solved by sending all the white kids to Eton and educating the blacks under the trees in the public parks. I checked through the files. Seems she’s been writing to the paper off and on for years. We’ve published quite a few.’
‘Yes, of course. Rings a bell now,’ said Ogilby. ‘Sounds nicely batty, doesn’t she? OK. Check it out to see if there’s anything there for us. But I suspect the doting mum/lost kid angle will be the best. This racial vandal stuff at the Kemble theatre looks more interesting.’
‘Could be if there’s some bother on the opening night,’ said Vollans. ‘Shall I go? I could do a review anyway.’
‘Theatre correspondent too,’ mocked Ogilby, admiring the young man’s pushiness. ‘Why not? But talk to me again before you do anything on Mrs Falkingham. We’re treading very warily about Bradford.’
Bradford’s large and growing Asian community had highlighted by reversal the problems of mixed race schooling. It was the usual question of how best to cater for the classroom needs of a minority, only in this case the minority was frequently white. The Challenger’s natural bent was conservative, but Ogilby wasn’t about to alienate thousands of potential readers right on his doorstep.
‘OK, Henry,’ said Ogilby dismissively. ‘Well spotted.’
Vollans left, so pleased with himself that he forgot his Robert Redford walk for several paces.
Nor did interest in the will end there.
A few hours later the telephone was answered in a flat in north Leeds, quite close to the University. The conversation was short and guarded.
‘Yes?’
‘Something in the Mid-Yorks Evening Post that might interest. Women For Empire, that daft Falkingham woman’s little tea-circle out at Ilkley, could be in for a windfall.’
‘I know.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes. You’re way behind, as usual. All that’s long taken care of.’
‘Oh. Sorry I spoke.’
‘No, you were right. You’re in a call-box?’
‘Natch!’
‘Good. But don’t make a habit of calling. ’Bye.’
‘And up yours too,’ said the caller disgruntledly into the dead phone. ‘Condescending cunt!’
Not far away in the living-room of his small suburban flat, Sergeant Wield too reclined on a sofa but he was wide awake, the Evening Post with its news of wills and vandals lay unopened on the hall floor, and the ice cubes in his untouched Scotch had long since diluted the rich amber to a pale straw.
He was thinking about Maurice Eaton. And he was marvelling that he had managed to think so little about him for so long. Lovers beneath the singing sky of May, they had even wandered once close to the decision, momentous in that time and at that place and in those circumstances, of openly setting up house together. Then Maurice, a Post Office executive, had been transferred north to Newcastle.
It had seemed a God-sent compromise solution at the time - close enough for regular meetings but far enough to reduce the decision on setting up house to a problem of geography.
But even small distances work large disenchantments. Wield had once been proud of his fierce fidelity but now he saw it as a form of naïve self-centredness. He recalled with amazement and shame his near-hysterical outburst of jealous rage when Maurice had finally admitted he was seeing somebody else. For thirty minutes he had been the creature of the emotions he had controlled for as many years. And he had never seen Maurice again since that day.
The only person who ever got a hint of what he had gone through was Mary, his sister. They had never spoken openly of Wield’s sexuality, but a bond of loving understanding existed between them. Two years after the break with Maurice, she had left Yorkshire too when her husband was made redundant and decided that Canada held more hope for his family than this British wasteland.
So now Wield was alone. And had remained alone, despite all temptation, treating the core of his physical and emotional being as if it were some physiological disability, like alcoholism, requiring total abstinence for control.
There had been small crises. But from the first second he had heard Sharman’s voice on the phone, he had felt certain that this was the start of the last battle.
He went over their conversation again, as he might have gone over an interrogation transcript in the station.
‘Where’d you meet Maurice?’ he’d asked.
‘In London.’
‘London?’
‘Yeah. He moved down from the North a couple of years back, didn’t you know that?’
It was a redundant question, the boy knew the answer. Wield said, ‘New job? Is he still with the Post Office?’
‘British Telecom now. Onward and upward, that’s Mo.’
‘And he’s … well?’
Perhaps he shouldn’t have let the personal query, however muted, slip out. The boy had smiled as he replied, ‘He’s fine. Better than ever before, that’s what he says. It’s different down there, see. Up North, it may be the ’eighties in the calendar, but there’s still a ghetto mentality, know what I mean? I’m just quoting Mo, of course. Me, this is the first time I’ve got further north than Wembley!’
‘Oh aye? Why’s that?’
‘Why’s what?’
‘Why’ve you decided to explore, lad? Looking for Solomon’s mines, is it?’
‘Sorry? Coal mines, you mean?’
‘Forget it,’ said Wield. ‘Just tell us why you’ve come.’
The boy hesitated. Wield read this as a decision-making pause, choosing perhaps between soft-sell and hard-sell, between freeloading and blackmail.
‘Just fancied a change of scene,’ said Sharman at last. ‘Mo and me decided to have a bit of a hol from each other …’
‘You were living together?’
‘Yeah, natch.’ The youth grinned knowingly. ‘You two never managed that, did you? Always scared of the neighbours, Mo said. That’s why he likes it down there. No one gives a fuck who’s giving a fuck!’
‘So you decided to take a trip to Yorkshire and see me?’ said Wield.
‘No! I just set off hitching and today I got dumped here and the name of the place rang a bell and I said, hello, why not get in touch with Mo’s old mate and say hello? That’s all.’
He didn’t sound very convincing, but even if he had, Wield was not in a convincible mood. Hitchhikers didn’t get dropped at bus stations.
He said, ‘So Maurice told you all about me?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Sharman confidently. ‘He was showing me some old photos in bed one night and I said, Who’s that? and he told me all about you and the thing you had together and having to keep it quiet because you were a cop and all that!’
The real pain came at that moment, the pain of betrayal, sharp and burning still as on that first occasion, an old wound ripping wide.
‘It’s always nice to hear from old friends,’ said Wield softly. ‘How long are you planning on staying, Cliff?’
‘Don’t know,’ said the boy, clearly puzzled by this gentle response. ‘Might as well take a look round now I’m here, see the natives sort of thing. I’ll need to find somewhere to kip, not too pricey though. Any suggestions?’
The first squeeze? Well, he had to sleep somewhere and it made sense to keep a close eye on him till the situation got clearer. Wield examined this conclusion for self-deceiving edges, but quickly gave up. You didn’t devote your life to deceiving others without becoming expert at deceiving yourself.
‘You can sleep on my couch tonight,’ he had said.
‘Can I? Thanks a million,’ said the boy with a smile which hovered between gratitude and triumph. ‘I promise I’ll curl up so small that you’ll hardly know I’m there at all.’
But he was there, in the bathroom, splashing and singing like a careless child. Wield was acutely aware of his presence. His existence had been monastic for a long time. There had been another dark-skinned boy, a police cadet, who had ambushed his affections against his will, but nothing had come of it, and the cadet had been posted away. Sharman reminded him of that boy and he knew that, if anything, the danger was even greater now than then. But the danger to what? His way of life? What kind of life was it that a simple surge of desire put at risk?
The youth’s bag was lying on the floor. More to distract himself than anything else, Wield leaned forward, unzipped it and began to examine the contents. There wasn’t much. Some clothes, shoes, a couple of paperbacks and a wallet.
He opened the wallet. It contained about sixty or seventy pounds in fivers. In the other pocket were two pieces of paper. One had some names and telephone numbers scribbled on it. One name leapt out of the page. Mo. He made a note of the number and turned his attention to the other piece of paper. This was a timetable for coaches from London to the North. A departure time was underlined and the arrival time in Yorkshire. The latter was about ten minutes before Sharman’s call to the Station. The little bastard hadn’t hung about. So much for his talk of arriving here by chance!
He heard the water running from the bath. Quickly he returned everything to the bag. He had no doubt that Sharman would emerge all provocatively naked and he rehearsed his own coldly scornful response as he demanded explanations.
The door opened. The boy came into the room, his hair spiky from washing, his slim brown body enveloped in Wield’s old towelling robe.
‘God, I enjoyed that,’ he said. ‘Any chance of some cocoa and a choc biscuit?’
He sat on the sofa, curling his feet up beneath him. He looked little more than fourteen and as relaxed and uncalculating as a tired puppy.
Wield tried not to admit to himself he was postponing a confrontation but he knew that it was already postponed. By his old standards this was a mistake. But he had felt all the old parameters of duty and action begin to thaw and resolve the moment Pascoe had said there was a call for Mac Wield.
One word, one phone call. How could something so simple be allowed to change a whole life?
He stood and went to put the kettle on.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_c31cf276-e562-5de9-b054-2bb5200d6231)
‘Lexie! Lexie Huby! Hi. It’s your cousin, Rod. Remember me?’
‘Oh. Hello,’ said Lexie.
She wished that Messrs Thackeray etcetera would invest in some lightweight phones. These cumbersome old bakelite things were not made for small hands, nor for heads whose ears and mouth were not a foot apart.
‘Hello to you too,’ said the voice.
‘What do you want?’
‘Well, I’m up here again, didn’t expect to be so soon after the funeral, but sometimes things work out that way, don’t they? I’ll tell you all about it when we meet.’
‘Meet?’
‘Yes. We didn’t have much chance to talk after the funeral and I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to have lunch and a tête-à-tête with my little cousin Lexie.’
‘What do you want to talk about?’
‘Well, old times, the sort of thing cousins do talk about,’ said Lomas, sounding a little hurt.
What old times? wondered Lexie. Their blood relationship was so tenuous as to make the title cousin an unwanted courtesy. As for old times, they’d only met on those rare occasions when Mrs Windibanks’s hopeful forays north coincided with the Old Mill Inn Hubys’ monthly tea visit. Mrs Windibanks had always treated them like the lady of the manor acknowledging the peasants, and Rod ignored the two girls altogether. Prior to the funeral, the last time they’d met had been at Aunt Gwen’s sick bed some three years earlier. The old lady had suffered her first stroke shortly after returning from a trip abroad. Arthur Windibanks had died in a car accident only a fortnight later leaving his widow in dire financial straits, according to rumour.
‘Old Windypants was hoping to mend her fortunes with the old girl’s death!’ John Huby had chortled. ‘You should’ve seen her face when the doctor said she were on the mend!’
Rod Lomas, fresh out of drama school, had been as offhand as ever towards his young ‘cousins’, but some allowance had to be made for his black tie. Three years later he seemed ready to make amends and Jane, very susceptible to masculine charm, now reckoned he was lovely.
Lexie was not so easily won over, however.
‘Hello. You still there?’ inquired the voice.
‘Yes.’
‘Look. Do come and have lunch with me. To be honest, I don’t really know another soul in town and you’d be doing me a real favour.’
Three years in a solicitor’s office had taught Lexie to distrust openness above all things. But she was curious now and also she could hear her employer’s footsteps on the creaky stairs.
‘I only get an hour,’ she said.
‘Monstrous! They give them longer on the Gulag! So, a bar snack then, rather than a trifling foolish banquet. There’s a pub on the corner of Dextergate, the Black Bull, can’t be very far from you. Half an hour’s time, twelve-thirty?’
‘All right,’ she said and replaced the receiver as the door opened and Eden Thackeray appeared.
‘I don’t know why we have courts, Lexie,’ he said. ‘I could write out the verdicts if you just gave me a list of the magistrates. Have you been kept busy?’
Lexie followed him into his office. It was just what Hollywood required an English solicitor’s chambers to be, all oak-dark panelling and wine-dark upholstery, while behind tall cabinets of lozenged glass marched rank upon leathered rank of the army of unalterable law.
‘A few phone calls, Mr Eden,’ she said. ‘I’ve made a note. One was from a Mr Goodenough who said he was the General Secretary of the People’s Animal Welfare Society. He wanted to see you about Aunt Gwen’s will. He’s travelling up from London tomorrow afternoon, so I made an appointment for him to see you on Friday morning. I hope that’s all right.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘And there was another one to do with Aunt Gwen’s will. A Miss Brodsworth. She said she was something to do with Women For Empire and wondered if there’d been any developments.’
