Antman (50 page)

'I know you,' said Mrs Blatt. ‘Who's he?' She nodded towards Tom.

'His name's Tom Fortius,' said Chris. 'He's helping me.'

Mrs Blatt's eyes narrowed. 'I thought you just asked questions.'

Chris couldn't begin to guess what was going on in Mrs Blatt's mind. ‘We're getting very wet. Could we talk inside?'

A gust of wind helped her argument. The door closed, then opened again with Mrs Blatt peering down at the sodden, weed-strewn path. 'I'm busy. You can come in for five minutes. He'll have to take his muddy shoes off.'

She led them through to the back parlour. 'You sit there,' she said to Tom, indicating the chair by the blazing fire. 'I like to see a man relax in an armchair.' Mrs Blatt kept glancing at him. He stretched out his legs to enable his trousers to dry and wriggled his toes in the heat from the flames.

Chris sat in the smaller chair on the far side. 'I can see there's more to pleasing you than meets the eye,' she whispered to Tom as they waited while Mrs Blatt fussed in the scullery. After a good deal of clattering and chinking of crockery, she emerged laden with a tray piled with teapot, teacups, plates, scones and Bakewell tarts.

'You caught me on a baking day,' she explained.

To say Mrs Blatt was talkative was an understatement. Chris saw a totally different side to her. It was ten minutes before she managed to slip in a few comments and eventually the question she wanted to ask.

'What puzzles me, Mrs Blatt, is why you didn't tell me about your son, and about Mr Blatt.'

Mrs Blatt was taken aback. 'You found out.'

'I was bound to,' said Chris.

Mrs Blatt sniffed, as though to announce her upset feelings. 'I thought if you found out about the father, I'd be in trouble and if you found out about the boy it would be even worse for me.'

'I'm not here to get you into trouble,' said Chris more softly. 'It happened a while ago.'

'I won't be in court for not telling you.' Mrs Blatt produced a tissue and dabbed her eyes.

'Of course not. It will save time, though, and save us bothering you or the court if you can tell us everything you remember.'

'I will, oh yes ma'am and you, sir, thank you so much.' She took an appreciative look at Tom as he tucked into his third Bakewell tart. 'I don't mind you bringing him again. I like to see a man fill his belly with good, honest food.'

'Have you an address for John?'

Mrs Blatt looked embarrassed. 'I haven't been in touch, like, recently. I did send him a Christmas card last year, or maybe the year before.' She reached across the table for a well-thumbed address book, flicked through the pages and pressed them down. She put it in front of Chris, who scribbled the details in her notebook.

'Thank you, that's very helpful,' said Chris. 'Now, the story, Mrs Blatt, if you can, please.'

'Oh yes, I saw this card in the newsagents. "Cook Wanted." At first I went once or twice a week, baked and followed the written notes he left, either putting it in the fridge or the freezer. He was a busy man, away a lot, you see. After a bit, he said he wanted a housekeeper.'

'You moved in?'

'No, he was renting. It was a poky little flat. I said why don't you lodge with me instead. I was on my own. It made sense.' She stared at the floor before continuing. 'I didn't live with him properly, not at first. He wasn't one of them, you know, men that attracts women physically. He was smart though, professional, something high at the University I think. I still had me figure then.'

She looked at Tom again, smoothing her skirt over the rippling fat where her waist had been.

'Was his son living with you?'

Mrs Blatt shook her head. 'He told me about the boy later. I didn't mind him living with us. It happened gradually.'

'Was the boy treated badly?'

Mrs Blatt's voice cracked. 'I can't swear he hit the boy.' She started to cry. 'He threatened John, though, I know he did. When I tried to stop him, he –'

Her sobs became uncontrollable and she left the room to go to the toilet. When she returned, Chris thought the conversation would be over, but she continued as though there was no interruption.

'Sometimes when it was really bad between them he'd threaten the boy with boarding school and pretend to ring the social and have him removed. He never gave his name or address though. A couple of times he locked him in the shed.'

Chris turned and looked through the window. Mrs Blatt saw her. 'Not that one, the little one for the coal. It's more of a bunker. He had to crawl in. It was very dark and cold on the concrete floor. Lionel stood there with a stick, so he had no choice.'

'We need to speak to your husband,' Mrs Blatt.

'Not about that.'

'It's a long time ago. We want other information from him.'

'That's all right then. I don't want any comeback. Anyway, he isn't my husband.'

Chris was surprised. ‘What's his name then?'

'Blatt, same as me. I used his name so people wouldn't ask questions. He's still married to her, his first wife, for all I know. I suppose she was his first, the lying bastard.' She rubbed her hands. 'I'd like to see his face when you two turn up.'

'Have you an address, Mrs Blatt?'

Mrs Blatt got up as shakily as a woman twenty years her senior and crossed to the mantelpiece. She pulled a battered envelope from behind the clock and passed it to Chris.

'There you are, that's what he was like.' She motioned to Chris to look at the contents.

Chris examined the letter – a final demand from a computer company threatening court proceedings for an unpaid bill. Chris gestured towards Tom. 'May I?'

Mrs Blatt nodded.

'I rang and gave them his address. It's in Camberley, there, on the back of the envelope.'

*  *  *

They left after forty-five minutes, with Mrs Blatt inviting them to call again. Chris was last out of the front door and she turned at the last minute: 'Thank you for all your help, Mrs Blatt. When we contact Mr Blatt, is there any message you'd like us to pass on?'

Mrs Blatt shook her head. 'Just make sure the bastard gets what he deserves.' She had an afterthought. 'Ask him how he's supporting his other son, Gavin. Hang on.' She disappeared into the parlour and emerged with a piece of paper which she handed to Chris. 'That's Gavin's address.' She rubbed her hands. 'I wish I could see Lionel's face.'

As they bundled into the car out of the rain, Chris couldn't wait to tackle Tom. 'She took quite a fancy to you.'

'Only because I returned for more of her Bakewell tarts.'

Chris was unconvinced. 'You're a dark horse. I'm going to have to watch you with women.'

Afterwards, when she was driving along with him, sitting quietly by her side, she thought, why did I say that? It sounded as though we were a couple.

*  *  *

It was a long drive back to Hull. The heavy rain petered out, but the grey, overcast sky persisted. There had been no messages from Morrison while they were away. Chris dropped Tom at the University and drove to the office to follow up various matters, including the latest information about Lionel Blatt. There were several messages from Bradshaw; on her voicemail, by e-mail and a note pushed under her office door. They all pointed the same way. He'd run out of patience and wanted her back on the case, in the office, under his eye. 'Hell can freeze first,' Chris muttered to herself between gritted teeth.

At eight the following morning Chris phoned Tom. He anticipated the call was from her and pretended he'd come in early. In fact, he'd stayed through the night in his office, telling the security staff he was working on a paper and to go ahead and lock him in. It was a piece of rule-breaking they were used to. God only knew the tales which went the rounds about his eccentricities. He would never admit he was avoiding Laura and home as much as possible.

'A slight hitch,' she said. 'Blatt is no longer at the address Mrs Blatt gave us. All isn't lost, though. We've had a stroke of luck. The address turned out to be a guest house listed in the local guide, which we tracked down at the tourist information office for the area. I found the landlady's name – a Mrs Maloney – and rang her, thinking she might remember him. She remembered him all right and the upshot of it is I've a pile of gossip about the peculiarities of Dr Lionel Blatt.'

'Doctor?'

'Not the medical variety, the scientific one. More important, she gave me his forwarding address. I'm about to set off to track it down. It's a little village called Cove, on the north-west Hampshire-Surrey border.' She paused to gauge his reaction.

'Haven't heard of it,' he said.

'The problem is, I can't drive and navigate at the same time.' Tom doubted this, but wasn't arguing.

'I know a fairly indifferent navigator who will be free in half an hour.' He thought he heard her chuckle.

'That'll do me.'

*  *  *

Whilst she drove, Chris filled Tom in on the gossip about Lionel Blatt. 'The story is that Dr Blatt is, or was, an aeronautical scientist who was abroad and after the War came to the RAE, that's the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough in Hampshire, half a dozen miles from Camberley. The son was from his first marriage. At that time, Blatt had a high-flying research job, literally high-flying, flying round the world in a jet, doing research in a flying laboratory.'

'All of which is feasible,' said Tom. 'The 1950s and 60s were the decades when British scientists were exploring the reasons for the Comet jet airliner crashes and were contributing to debates about supersonic passenger jet traffic, six miles up.'

'Blatt became a well-known local scientist and moved with his wife to Cambridge when he took a research fellowship. Several years later, he was head-hunted for an extremely lucrative contract in California and he pushed off to the USA on his own. He returned to Camberley when things went sour for him in the USA. He's wormed his way up the ladder at work, but according to Mrs Maloney he hasn't endeared himself to the ladies, being disloyal, dishonest and untrustworthy.'

'Not a good reference.'

'Added to which, she thinks he's physically unattractive – chinless, short, fat, bald with thick glasses, can't even read a cornflake packet without them, clumsy, often knocking chairs over and dropping cups. He turned up in Camberley looking for lodgings, whilst he went through an interviewing process for employment at Pyestock, where the RAE had some extension of their work on jet propulsion. He was being head-hunted by a team who also did a deal with members of his department including a certain Miss Stanmore or Stanmere. She was the PA whose name kept cropping up a lot and who organised the entire household at one point, simply by phoning and turning up at all hours to take dictation from the great man, or whisk him off in a taxi to this or that international conference, at the drop of a hat. Throughout all of which, he grew more and more insufferable and his wife more patient and self-sacrificing.'

'Sounds like a man to avoid.'

*  *  *

With Tom navigating they reached Cove, which turned out not to be a village so much as a busy suburb of Farnborough. The car had developed a knocking sound. Chris wasn't an expert and could tell from Tom's reaction it could be serious. He said he wasn't an expert either. It didn't sound like a cylinder head gasket, not yet, but he thought a garage needed to confirm what was going on. He offered to drive her car to find a local garage while she did some basic research on Blatt's whereabouts.

An hour passed. Tom texted her and confirmed he was returning with a restored car. The problem wasn't serious. Apparently, the engine desperately needed oil. A rather embarrassed Chris admitted she went for months without checking the oil level.

When they met, she brought Tom up to date.

'I had a call from Hull. Morrison's been finding out more about Dr Blatt in Texas.'

'Texas is a big place.'

'Blatt isn't too common a name in nuclear physics, even when the number of universities runs into double figures. He's been at Borderville, the State University, researcher in nuclear physics. Anyway, that's another story.'