Risking It All (23 page)

I went to the hatch and called through it. ‘Susie, do you know anyone with the initials EM?’

She thought and shook her head. ‘Don’t think so.’

Right. Gleefully I copied down the phone number. Morgan had removed all Duke’s records, but she and her minions had missed this.

Outside the block of flats kids were racing round on roller blades. They nearly knocked me over. I yelled at them. They took no notice. In a gloomy corner, someone was breaking into a parked car foolishly left there by its owner. I pushed my hands into my pockets and walked quickly away. Sartre wrote a play about a lot of people stuck in a place with a bunch of others they can’t get on with and can’t leave. It turns out to be Hell. Something like this place, I thought. Still, I was leaving here with a couple of leads, and no one could say my journey had been wasted.

I didn’t want Ganesh to know what I was up to. So the following morning I decided not to ask to use the shop phone to ring the number I’d cribbed from Susie’s kitchen board. I’d nip down the road and hope to find an unvandalised kiosk.

Before I could do so, however, Ganesh appeared in the garage and asked, ‘Where did you get to yesterday evening? Were you with that woman copper?’

I could have lied and told him I had been, but I don’t lie to Ganesh. I filter the truth sometimes, when necessary, or refuse to answer, but I don’t lie.

‘No, only for about an hour. She bought me tea and cake. After that I was just out and about. Why?’

‘We didn’t see you all yesterday!’ he said accusingly. ‘Not until you waltzed in late afternoon and out again with Inspector Morgan. I waited up. I thought you’d call by and tell me what she wanted.’

Waiting up late for me, when he had to get up so early the next morning, had been a sacrifice. My not turning up had made it useless. No wonder he was grumpy.

I countered with, ‘What is this? Have I got to report in, or what?’

‘Don’t give me that. You’re always in and out of the shop. You usually turn up for a coffee at some point in the day if nothing else – or lately, to sneak a look at the A to Z! You weren’t here yesterday evening. So where were you?’ He sat down on a packing case and folded his arms with the air of a man who wouldn’t go without getting an answer. ‘You know,’ he went on, ‘you’re getting really furtive. I don’t like it. Don’t you trust me?’

‘Come off it, of course I do.’

‘So tell me what’s going on. Starting with yesterday evening.’

I know Gan well enough to realise that I had to give him some sort of explanation. So I told him the truth, that I’d been to see Susie Duke.

‘Why?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘Give her my condolences. Be polite.’

Gan unfolded his arms and stabbed a finger in my direction. ‘Don’t come the sweet innocent with me! You’ve been playing detective again.’

I told him I didn’t play at detective. I reminded him that I had, on previous occasions, detected for real with some success.

‘Don’t get big-headed about it,’ he retorted. ‘You’ve been lucky. Luck doesn’t last for ever. It runs out. Duke’s did, and he was a proper professional. I suppose you think you can find out who killed him?’

‘Gan,’ I said, ‘I
have
to find out who killed Duke.’

‘I don’t see why,’ he replied. ‘Or if you’ve got a reason, you’re not telling me what it is.’

‘He died out there!’ I flung out my hand to indicate the area before the garages. ‘He was waiting for me. I know he was. He wanted to talk to me. He was scrabbling at the door during the night but I didn’t open up. If I had, he might be alive today. What did he want? Who wanted to stop him? It all makes me very nervous.’

‘
You
make me nervous,’ said Ganesh. ‘Honestly, Fran, I just can’t trust you an inch. I never know what you’re going to do next.’

‘Believe me,’ I told him, ‘it’s better that way.’

He stomped off back to the shop. I felt really bad about not confiding in him. I knew his feelings were hurt. Yesterday, I’d been ready to tell him everything, and had it not been for Morgan, would’ve done. But overnight I’d got over my weakness, as I now saw it. I’d started on this alone and I’d see it out alone. God willing, as Grandma Varady would’ve piously added.

I went out and managed to find a public telephone that was in working order, though plastered with pictures of girls offering their services with assurances that everything was real. But it isn’t, and any woman working like that has some pimp taking most of the dosh. It makes me mad.

I knew I was through to the right number as soon as someone answered. In the background I could hear children’s voices and the discordant jangle of a toy xylophone. ‘Mrs Marks?’

‘Speaking.’ She sounded harassed.

‘My name is Francesca Varady. I’m the daughter of Eva Varady. I think—’

She interrupted. ‘The police have been here already, asking about Eva. I couldn’t tell them anything. I looked after the baby for a couple of weeks, no more. It’s nothing to do with me.’

‘Please,’ I begged. ‘Can I come and talk to you?’

‘I’m busy,’ she snapped. ‘I run a crèche.’

‘Ten minutes,’ I said. ‘I won’t be in the way. I’m good with poster paint.’

That was a lie. My infant encounters with poster paint had generally ended with more of it on my clothes than on the paper.

‘Come this afternoon, around three thirty,’ she said. ‘Several of the kids will have been picked up by then. It’ll be quieter. But you’re wasting your time.’

‘Great. Can I have your address?’

She gave a hiss but told me the address before hanging up with a clatter of the receiver that made my eardrum zing.

After I’d arranged to see the child-minder, I set off for Waterloo station. I had to get out to Egham to see my mother and warn her that officialdom was taking a hand in things. I also had somehow to put Sister Helen on the alert without spilling the beans. There’s nothing like making life difficult for yourself, and just to add insult to injury, I discovered that the zip of one of my nice new boots was knackered. I had to put on my old lace-ups, and as I was doing that, one of the laces broke, which made it too short, and I could only lace halfway up the ankle. As a result my lower right leg moved freely in the unlaced leather, whereas the left one was tightly supported. It gave me a lopsided gait.

‘She was a little poorly during the night,’ Sister Helen told me. ‘But she’s awake this morning and anxious to see you. Brightened up quite a bit. It is your coming to see her which keeps her going, you know.’

In a sense. It was the hope that I’d find Nicola which kept her going. But my resentment at that was fading. I was slowly coming to terms with it. News that my mother hadn’t been doing so well since my last visit, however, worried me.

‘Jackson’s not been back?’ I asked.

Sister Helen shook her head.

‘Look,’ I told her, ‘I don’t want to upset my mother, but there’s something I’ve got to mention to her. Things might be getting a little sticky. You see, the police might come back, and next time they could insist on seeing her. I know you’ve kept them at bay until now and I’m really grateful. But I know the cops, and they’re not sensitive souls.’

She was listening to this, head tilted, eyes thoughtful. ‘Has all this anything to do with Mr Duke’s death?’

‘Tangentially,’ I admitted. ‘I may have to tell her he’s dead, if I can find a way. It’s better she hears it from me than from the police. But that’s not what I’ve come to talk to her about. It’s a – a family matter.’

‘If you feel you must mention it to her, whatever it is,’ Sister Helen said in her calm way, ‘then you will. It’s for you to decide. However, she has a choice too. Her choice might be not to discuss it. If that is what she decides, then you must accept it. We can always ask questions. We don’t always get answers. It’s a fact of life. Eva mustn’t be harassed. After all, that’s what we’re both trying to stop the police doing to her, isn’t it?’

I told her once more that I understood the rules. As I set off towards my mother’s room, I heard Sister Helen speak again.

‘Fran? You know, nobody’s perfect, and no one becomes perfect because he or she happens to be dying. We love people in life as we love them in death, with all their imperfections. That is what love is about. Without sacrifice, love is nothing.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I do love her, and I have to believe that in her own way she loves me, no matter what happened years ago. I can’t tell you I’m completely happy in my own mind about it, but I’m getting there.’

My mother put out her hand to me in greeting. I took it and she gave my fingers a weak squeeze. Her bed was still by the window but today the clerk of the weather was supplying drizzle and the panes were streaked, obscuring the view.

‘Mum,’ I said, ‘I want to do what’s right. You want to do what’s right, don’t you?’

‘I am,’ she replied. ‘I’m putting things right.’

‘No, you’re not.’ I tried to keep my voice gentle and not to let the frustration show. ‘You’re stirring things up.’

She answered in the slow, considered, confident way which I had learned meant she wouldn’t budge. ‘I’m making them right for me.’

Sister Helen’s voice seemed to echo in my ears. This was what she’d been trying to tell me. My mother was one of those people who are incapable of seeing anything in any way other than from their own internal viewpoint. Everything, for such people, is judged by how it affects them, never how it will affect anyone else. Even love is judged by this benchmark. My mother took comfort in the fact that by doing her bidding in searching for Nicola, I was showing love for her. She couldn’t see how desperate I was for some token from her. It didn’t mean she didn’t care about me. It was just that there was a pattern to her thinking and she was in the middle of it. Me, Dad, Grandma, the Wildes, Nicola, everyone else in her life, had always turned slowly round her like a model of planets circling the sun.

I knew now what she wanted of Nicola. Not to know what she looked like. Not to know what sort of things she did or liked. What she wanted was Nicola’s love. She was asking me to get it for her, and I couldn’t do that. No one could.

I’d never get her to see it the way I did, and there was no point in trying. However, for all the weakness of her body, I was confident that my mother’s mind was tough. I had to tell her about the police’s discovery, and that meant mentioning the subject I had spent all my time with her trying to avoid.

‘Rennie Duke,’ I began awkwardly.

She blinked, and I noticed her eyelids were lashless. The look in her eyes was furtive. ‘What about him?’

‘I think he may have been asking around about you – about the time, years ago, before you knew him, after you left Dad.’

She drew her knees up beneath the coverlet and wrapped her arms round them in a curiously foetal gesture. ‘Then you’ve got to stop him, Fran.’

Me again. But as it happened, this time someone had already done the job. I omitted that detail and went on, ‘It’s like this. Duke’s stirred things up a bit. He’s found Mrs Marks.’

Now she looked frightened. ‘Impossible! She’s old. She can’t still be around. You’ve got it all wrong, Fran. Mrs Marks? Even if he has found her, she wouldn’t remember me.’

‘I don’t know about that. All I know is, others may be getting interested in baby Miranda Varady.’

‘Why?’ She was bewildered. ‘Who?’

‘Duke may have tipped off the police somehow. They may come here, wanting to know what happened to your baby.’

I thought she’d panic. I was even ready to ring for help. But oddly, at the word ‘police’ she looked more relaxed. ‘Oh, the police,’ she said. ‘I’m not worried about them.’

‘You’re not?’ I asked in surprise.

‘Bless you, darling. Of course not. What can they do to me? They can’t make me answer any questions. They can’t arrest me. They can’t haul me off to gaol.’ She gave a little gurgling laugh. ‘They can’t do anything to me, Fran.’

I had no answer to that. I sat silent. She stopped looking amused and frowned.

‘But Rennie’s different. Rennie’s got to be stopped.’

‘He won’t do any more harm now,’ I said, unthinking.

Her eyes were suddenly bright with intelligence. ‘Rennie’s dead, isn’t he? Something’s happened to him.’

So, in the end, I’d let the cat out of the bag myself, clumsily. But there wouldn’t have been a kind way to break the news. She must have counted him as some sort of friend. ‘He had an accident,’ I told her.