Risking It All (18 page)

‘When did you last see your mother?’

Didn’t some old misery in a Puritan outfit ask a similar question of a kid in a silk suit standing in front of a table?

‘Yesterday afternoon,’ I told the latter-day female Roundhead interrogating me. ‘And yes, I did warn Sister Helen that you might turn up. I don’t care about your investigation. My business is to protect my mother.’

‘My business is to solve a murder,’ she countered.

‘Mum didn’t have anything to do with that. How could she?’

Morgan studied me, murmured, ‘Hmm . . .’ then asked, ‘How is she?’

I told her that my mother was hanging on.

Morgan said, ‘I really am sorry, Fran. I don’t like badgering you at a time like this, but, as I said, I’ve got to run down any lead. That means you.’

‘I can’t tell you anything about Rennie Duke,’ I said wearily. ‘I hardly knew the man.’

‘Then perhaps I can tell you something about him,’ Morgan said pleasantly. ‘He had been in business as a private detective for some years and we knew him quite well. We had nothing against him. He had been warned a few times for prying a little too enthusiastically on behalf of clients. He was twice charged with illegal use of surveillance equipment, but in the end there wasn’t enough evidence and the charges were dropped. In fact, over-enthusiasm was Rennie Duke’s main fault. There were never any official complaints. But noticeably, clients seldom used him twice, and it wasn’t because he hadn’t done as they wanted. The local solicitors stopped using him, and private detectives get a lot of work that way. No work coming in from the legal trade meant Rennie probably couldn’t be too fussy about the clients he did get. But as I said, even the dodgier ones shied off after one experience. No one could ever quite put a finger on what was wrong with Rennie,’ Morgan mused. ‘Perhaps there wasn’t anything and he was whiter than the driven snow.’

‘He was a creep,’ I said. ‘Even I could see that. But it’s not a crime, is it?’

‘No, Fran, it’s not a crime. But murder is, and—’ Morgan leaned towards me and I couldn’t prevent myself drawing back defensively – ‘nobody and nothing is going to get between me and solving this one. Just bear it in mind, would you, Fran?’

‘Will do,’ I promised. ‘Can I go now?’

‘Of course you’re free to go, Fran. You came here entirely voluntarily.’

Ho, ho, ho. I trudged out and went to find a chemist who’d sell me some arnica.

Chapter Nine

In the meantime, no matter what else pressed on my attention, there was another ongoing problem, that of my lack of accommodation. It was hardly fair on Hari, with the police hanging round, for me to stay on in the garage. It was taking advantage of his generosity and cruelly ignoring the damage to his tattered nerves. I don’t sponge off people in any way. I never have. I stand foursquare on my own bootsoles. I’d told Morgan I was flat-hunting and I ought to do something to back that up. I turned aforesaid boots reluctantly in the direction of Newspaper Norman’s home sweet home.

It would, if Norman had bothered to get the place done up, have been a highly desirable residence. I felt sorry for his neighbours, all of whom had kept their places in shape. It was a mid-Victorian terraced house with a flight of steps up to the front door and another down to the basement. Once it had been painted white, but over the years most of the paint had peeled like a bad case of sunburn. What hadn’t peeled had turned grey. The door had been painted black, but that too had cracked and flaked. Someone had removed the brass letterbox so that only a waist-high rectangular slit remained through which the wind must whistle and through which, if you felt like it, you could look into the hall. Or anyone inside could look out.

It was dark already despite the early hour, and I was pretty sure Norman would be home, sorting the day’s gleanings. Someone was home, at least. There was a light on the first floor and one on the ground floor to the left of the front door, filtering through faded curtains. The basement, which had a separate entrance, was also occupied.

I rang the bell. After a minute or two I heard sounds of movement. Shuffling footsteps reached the door and stopped. I stooped to the letter-hole and said, ‘It’s me, Norman, Fran.’

A voice at the level of the hole said, ‘Just a tick, dear.’

The door creaked open and a blast of fetid air hit me. Norman stood in front of me, now wearing an At Home outfit of red jogging pants teamed with an ancient velvet smoking jacket with moth-eaten quilted silk lapels.

‘Come about the room?’ he asked, before I could say anything. He stood back and waved me past him. ‘Very sensible. It hasn’t been snapped up yet but it will be.’

The hallway was cold and damp. The walls were covered with faded flowered wallpaper on which hung several pictures in Edwardian taste, including a reproduction of
The Monarch of the Glen
in an ornate gilded frame, caked in dust. The odour of boiling vegetables oozed from a room at the far end, presumably the kitchen. Through an open door into the lighted room on the left, I could see stacks of newsprint. It was everywhere, spilling from cardboard boxes and stacked in heaps, covering every surface and half the floor.

‘Follow me,’ invited Norman.

Ganesh was right. I had to be mad.

‘I don’t offer my rooms to just anyone,’ said Norman, preceding me up the creaking stairway. ‘I have to take a fancy to them.’

Help! Perhaps I should just turn and run right now. The stairway smelled of mice. I’ve lived in old buildings and I recognised it at once. Mice, I’ve been told, lack a muscle to control the flow of urine. They wee all the time.

We’d reached the landing. Four doors gave on to it, one to the left, one to the right and two straight ahead. Norman produced from his pocket a ring of keys of the sort gaolers carry, selected one, and stretched out his hand to a door in front of us. Before he could open it, the door to the right flew open and the hairiest man I’d ever seen stepped out.

Despite the chill in the place, he wore only a singlet and jeans. He was unshaven and his thick black eyebrows grew right across his brow in an unbroken line. More black hair sprouted across his shoulders, down his arms, and burst in a forest from his chest. It grew right up his throat. His bare feet were thrust into flip-flops and even his toes were hairy. Even from where I stood, I caught a whiff of acrid sweat. He pointed a finger at me and demanded in hoarse, heavily accented tones:

‘Who she?’

‘It’s all right, Zog,’ said Norman. ‘It’s only a nice young lady come about the room.’

Why not just describe me as a nice toothsome morsel? Zog was staring wildly at me from beneath his beetling brow.

‘You’re not to worry about Zog. It’s just that strangers upset him. He’s frightened of the immigration,’ whispered Norman. ‘He keeps thinking they’ll track him down. He’s a timid soul. The other night he came in late in a terrible state. Someone had pulled up in a car next to him as he was walking home. I dare say the driver was lost and only wanted to ask for directions, but poor Zog took to his heels. He was in such a panic he ran into the blind entrance to those garages you live in. That made things worse, of course. He got out of there and raced home here, shaking like a leaf.’

Well, that explained one thing. Now I knew who’d been outside the garage a couple of nights before Rennie Duke. If you’ve come into the country in the back of a lorry, you’ve got a lot to be scared of, and you must have been pretty desperate to start with.

‘He was coming home from work,’ Norman continued. ‘He works nights, cleaning. He feels safer then. He doesn’t go out much during the day.’

‘Don’t worry!’ I told Zog, but he twitched violently at the sound of my voice and looked as if he was going to pelt down the stairs and away. Hurriedly I asked Norman to tell him I was myself the child of an immigrant family and definitely sympathetic.

‘There, you see,’ said Norman. ‘That’s why you’ll get on all right here. You hear that?’ he added in a raised tone to Zog. ‘You and the young lady have a lot in common.’

Well, I hadn’t actually said that.

Zog grunted, scratched his chest hair and shambled back into his room.

Norman unlocked the door ahead of us and switched on the light, which glowed with all its forty-watt strength from a worn flex in the middle of the ceiling. No lampshade. Naturally.

‘Fully furnished,’ said Norman, gesturing widely to encompass the room’s fixtures and fittings.

Yes, it was. It had been furnished in his parents’, if not grandparents’, day. I guessed much of it stemmed from the late 1940s. The carpet was worn to the backing threads. There was a double bed with head – and footboards constructed of flat slats, so that the sleeper lay as if between a couple of picket fences. The mattress sagged in the middle and was stained ominously. I couldn’t help wondering about bugs. The bed stood high enough off the ground for you to keep a cabin trunk underneath if you wanted to. Rashly I peered underneath and saw a sea of fluffy dust and a receptacle with a handle, painted with roses.

‘Norm, you have got a loo?’ I asked in horror.

‘Bless you, dear, of course. It’s just next door in the bathroom. But you’ve got your own washing facilities.’ He pointed at a cracked washbasin hanging from the wall.

‘Fire escape?’ I ventured. I couldn’t ignore all that newspaper downstairs.

‘No problem,’ said Norman confidently. ‘You can always climb out the bathroom window and drop down on to the roof of the lean-to. From there to the ground it’s no more than eight feet.’

And two broken ankles.

I looked round despairingly. The rest of the furniture comprised a small wardrobe, a dressing table with an oval mirror and two hardbacked dining-room chairs. There were pictures on the walls up here, too. One showed children in black stockings and Holland pinafores, picking wild flowers. The other showed a sinking ship in mountainous seas with people clinging to spars. A girl with flying golden tresses was nobly rowing to their rescue in a tiny boat. A small brass plaque told me it was entitled
The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter.

‘Could probably find you an armchair downstairs. Put it over there by the window. Pity it’s dark and you can’t see the view.’ Norman padded to the window and peered into the night. ‘The sash is broken but I’ll fix it.’

I didn’t need to see the view. I’d seen enough.

‘Terms by arrangement,’ said Norman discreetly, coughing into his hand.

I couldn’t refuse outright. Norman, in his own way, was trying to be helpful – and get himself a reliable tenant. Besides, I mightn’t find anywhere else. Yet I balked at acceptance. Surely there must be something, somewhere? I went through the actions of a seriously interested applicant. I turned the tap in the sagging washbasin. The pipes coughed hollowly at me and a trickle of rust-tinged water ran out. The plughole was clogged with hairs and gunge. It whiffed a bit. I tugged open one of the dressing-table drawers. A knob came off in my hand. Having wrestled the drawer open, I then couldn’t shut it.

The close inspection was making Norman nervous. He removed the drawer knob from my hand with a tetchy ‘Gently!’ and thrust it back into place.

‘There we are, then!’ he said brightly. I was still looking round, so he decided on a diversion. ‘Nasty business over your way.’

It took a moment for me to realise he meant the murder. My surroundings exerted a horrid fascination which blotted out all else. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It was.’

‘Know him, did you? The dead feller?’

I concentrated on Norman with an effort. ‘Why do you ask?’

His gaze eluded mine. ‘Thought you might have known him. After all, what was he doing down there, parked by those garages? Dead end, that, ain’t it?’

‘He took a wrong turning,’ I said. ‘Like Zog.’

I didn’t want to discuss it and Norman knew I didn’t. In his crafty way he’d speeded up my departure before I wrecked the remaining fixtures and fittings. Nevertheless, on the way out, he insisted on showing me the bathroom. The promised fire-escape route through the window here was facilitated by the fact that the catch was broken, and despite the icy temperatures outside and the lack of heating inside, the window with its cracked frosted glass in a mouldering wooden frame was wedged permanently ajar. The huge old enamel bath stood on four lion’s paws and was rusted round the plughole and so eaten away elsewhere it brought to mind bodies being dissolved in acid. The cold had perhaps led to the cracking of a pipe running along the wall from the loo which was leaking into a pile of surplus newspapers stacked underneath in a festering yellow heap. Even Norman seemed to feel he should offer reassurance.