A City of Strangers (21 page)

“Michael? Oh, fine. It's rather odd . . . ”

“Oh?”

“He seems to be a nice, normal, well-adjusted boy.”

“But?”

“There are no buts. That's what's odd.”

“Oh, I see—with that family. Well, I've seen it happen before. A family of absolute crooks and no-hopers and one of them turns out to be a perfectly normal, nice, law-abiding person. Malcolm, do you know if Michael is close to his sister Cilla?”

“I don't know. They're close in age. But it's funny—I don't get the impression he's close to any of them. As if he—I don't know—holds himself aloof.”

“Maybe that's part of the process of self-protection. Do you think he could get something out of her?”

“I don't know about that. Isn't she rather a secretive child? That's how she struck me. And remember—they've all been trained to see the police as The Enemy, Michael as well.”

“Don't I know it! I've just had a basinful of the unlovely Cilla myself. But this isn't anything criminal. I just want the name of any man June Phelan might be associating with. When I was talking to Cilla I had the distinct impression that she knew a name but wasn't going to let on about it to me.”

“I'll do what I can. I'll be off duty by the time school is out. I'll alert Selena and we'll go at it together.”

“Mike!”

It was a shout from the doorway. Oddie turned and saw the duty sergeant.

“Are you coming in? There's someone here I think you'll want to talk to.”

“I hear that you've arrested Kevin Phelan.”

Mr. Latif was stocky, of medium height, with a rather handsome dark mustache and a worried expression. In normal circumstances, Oddie would have thought him more than a match physically for Kevin Phelan, but, of course, Kevin always saw to it that circumstances were not normal.

“That's right,” he said, gesturing toward the other chair in his office. “How did you know? It hasn't been in the local paper.”

Mr. Latif spread his hands wide.

“There is a small shop down from his place in Market Street. They saw him and his friend being bundled into a police car. We have a good network.”

“Small shopkeepers?”

“That's right. We each have a small area that we serve, so we are not competitors. Often we have family ties too. And we are all, sometimes, threatened. I was asked to come to you because I have better English than most, but I speak for all of us.”

“Right. Well, tell me what's been going on. I take it as read, with that boy, that something has been.”

Mr. Latif put his hands on his knees and bent forward, his face suffused with urgency.

“What has been going on is intimidation. I have no evidence of anything worse than that, but what has happened is bad enough. What happens is this. They pick on someone—Moslems, Sikhs, members of any of the minorities—anyone who has moved in to a mainly white area, or who owns a shop there. Someone who's feeling a bit insecure anyway. Then the first thing that happens is, during the night they put a lot of rags soaked in petrol through the letter box.”

“Ah. . . . When you say they, you mean—?”

“Kevin Phelan and Jason Mattingley. We know their names, you see. We have to inform ourselves, for our own protection. That is the first thing that happens. Then they leave the people alone for a couple of weeks. I tell you, sir, it is very unnerving!”

“You've been one of their victims yourself?”

“Yes, indeed! Then the second time, there are the rags again, and this time there is a note. In my case it said: ‘We'll light it next time.' Of course, I am very unhappy about this. I have a young family, a boy and a girl, and we live over the shop.”

“Then you're just the sort of people they would choose. What happens next?”

“They come to the shop, the two of them. They come in, stand in front of the counter, and then they take out a box of matches and they light one. Just that. Not to light a cigarette—they just light the match and stand there watching it burn down. They are smiling—that Phelan has a really horrible smile. Then he comes up to the counter and he says: ‘I'm skint, mate. Could you lend us fifty?' ”

“I see. It's pure extortion. And you paid?”

“As I say, I have a family. I paid.”

“You should have come to us.”

Latif shrugged.

“Maybe, maybe. Sometimes the police are very helpful to us—sometimes, you understand, not so much. We talked about it, but in the end. . . . After all, what crime had been committed? And if they were put away, they weren't alone. They're members of a party, so-called. If they weren't around, there would be others to take their places. By paying fifty pounds I got peace for several months. There are plenty of small shopkeepers around to frighten, so it is a long time before they get back to me.”

“Why have you come to us now?”

Latif smiled, self-depreciatingly.

“Maybe it is easier to do the right thing when your enemy is already in the bag. One of us was at the magistrates' court yesterday, and he said Phelan was up for assaulting a policeman. So his friends will not associate his arrest with us. But if we can get him put away for longer, so much the better. But there is one thing more.” He leaned forward, now even more urgent, his eyes fixed on Oddie. “We want you to remember the family that was burned out earlier this year in Armstead. They lived too over their own shop. We think that was a message to all of us: Pay up, or else. We ask you to remember that family.”

Oddie nodded.

“We're remembering.”

“The police came to talk to Cilla Phelan this morning,” said Carol Southgate to Bob McEvoy. It was after school, and they were walking up the hill on their way to Carol's flat and to their first meal together.

“Much good it did them, I imagine.”

“No, I can't imagine a stranger getting much out of her, when none of the teachers whom she knows quite well can. She's a strange child—unnerving. That's why I wondered whether she was being abused.”

Bob McEvoy nodded. For him it was almost a routine question.

“There have certainly been children in the school who have been—still are: Betty Morton, Mandy Hobbs, for instance. The first shows all the signs, and Mandy's actually with foster parents, who are having a hell of a time with her. But their behavior is open, flagrant. That's not like Cilla Phelan. Hers is the reverse.”

“The whisper is the police wanted to know where June might be. She wouldn't even help them with that. I get this feeling all the time that she's
hugging
herself, somehow—over something she knows. And that's not likely to be just where her sister is.”

“Something to do with the fire, you mean?”

“Well, it could be, couldn't it?”

“Equally it could be just anything. Children of that age don't have the experience needed to weigh up what they know. She might have seen or heard something that she thinks is wildly interesting and important—and it is, to her. But only to her.”

“What sort of thing do you mean?”

“Something silly about someone in her class, for example.”

“Maybe. I don't get the impression that that's what Cilla finds interesting.” They had turned into the Estate, and were in sight of the burned-out hulk of the Phelans' home. Carol shivered. “She seems such a
knowing
girl. It's not as though her parents would ever have not talked about anything in front of the kids. She seems to have adult curiosity, adult knowledge. I think she would be able to estimate how much a piece of information was worth—how much it could hurt.”

Bob McEvoy looked skeptical, and they went the rest of the way in silence.

In the front garden of The Laburnums Daphne Bridewell was bending down, presenting her backside to them. She had found nestling under a hedge a trail of ground elder, her pet hate, and she was spraying it with Tumbleweed through a toilet-roll tube. When she heard the gate, she straightened up.

“Oh, hello, Carol.”

Carol was about to introduce Bob to her when she caught directed at him
a look of such concentrated disapproval that she just smiled and walked on, down the steps to her basement flat.

Later that evening, after dinner with wine, when they were on the sofa and closer than they had ever been—though not
that
close, for Carol had still not made her decision—Bob said:

“Your landlady didn't like my coming here.”

“No, she
didn't!
I saw that. Well, she needn't think I'm going to take any notice. If she disapproves of my having men in the flat, she should have told me when I took it.”

“And you wouldn't have, I hope?”

“Of course not. It's none of her business.”

“What's she done since she left teaching?”

“Don't ask her that. She's been on the City Council. It would be like asking Ronald Reagan what he'd been doing since giving up acting.”

“What has he been doing since giving up acting?”

“Very funny. She's been active in all sorts of things—parks, the arts, better buildings. She's a bit of a do-gooder, and rather likes the publicity, I think.”

“I just wondered whether time had hung heavy. People can get odd fancies when that happens.”

“Oh, no, she's been very busy. I've always found her very committed and interested in what I'm doing. I admire her in a lot of ways. She's made a new life for herself after retirement.”

After a moment's thought, Bob said:

“Do you remember when I first saw these houses I said I smelled fear?”

“Yes. I've remembered that a lot recently.”

“Thinking about it, I suppose middle-class people are always a bit afraid. They have something to lose, but no great power to protect themselves. Maybe having the Estate next door to them, and the Phelans, has just sharpened the fear. . . . ”

Later, nestling in the crook of Bob's arm, Carol suddenly started.

“I've just had a thought.”

“What?”

“Whenever Mrs. Bridewell thinks of her husband she grimaces. Isn't that funny? Perhaps she does have a thing about men.” She giggled. “Odd she should think I ought to share it.”

Kevin Phelan had been improved in appearance by his stay in the police cells. They had fetched the most presentable of his clothes from the flatlet, and had forced him to have a bath. Now he sat opposite Oddie in jeans and check shirt and looked almost like a normal, undersized teenager—if you ignored the BLACKS OUT tattoo on his neck, his cropped hair, and his vicious expression. And his language, which now was free of all restraints.

“You're gonna f- - -ing let me out of here, Copper. You got nothing on me. I got mates and if you don't f- - -ing let me go you're gonna be done over so your own mother wouldn't know you.”

The language was from bad films, but the voice came out in a low, loaded, vicious stream. Oddie was reminded of a snake—not the big, coily ones the charmers use, but a small, thin, deadly one, that might dart out of the undergrowth at you, kill, and dart back. He sighed.