Running Scared (16 page)

My mind was working overtime. If I went on this errand for Tig, it’d take me out of London for a whole day. That would mean, in present circumstances, a whole day without having to look over my shoulder and jump at shadows. I liked the idea of that. On the other hand, with Ganesh in his fragile state of health, I couldn’t leave him to manage on his own in the shop. I’d have to go on a Sunday when Dilip could help out doing the morning papers.

‘We need to talk serious business,’ I said. ‘If, and it is only if, I do this for you, there are things I need to know. For starters, why you left home in the first place and why, all of a sudden, you want to go back. And it’s no use clamming up on me. I’m not going into a situation like that blind, OK? Another thing, I can’t just get on a train and go to this Dorridge place. Suppose I turned up and your parents had gone out for the day? Or like you said before, they might’ve moved. I’d have to phone first and make an appointment. They’re going to ask questions. Also, does Jo Jo know what you’re planning and what’s he likely to do when you take off? Follow?’

‘He can’t,’ she said quickly. ‘He doesn’t know what I’m going to do or where my family lives. I’ve never told him where I come from and he hasn’t asked. You don’t, do you?’

She was right. The homeless respect one another’s privacy and the right to keep stum about an individual’s past. If you want to tell everyone, fine. If you don’t, they don’t press you. It’s a rule.

She hunched over her empty coffee cup. ‘If I tell you, you’ll do it?’

‘I’m not bargaining,’ I told her. ‘I’m telling you my terms. Take it or leave it.’

The waiter was giving us funny looks. I told Tig to wait and went up to the counter to get us another couple of coffees. Thanks to the lay-out of the place, it would be difficult for her to slip past me and out while I was away from the table. But I kept an eye on her, in case.

She’d taken the time given by my absence to think it over and had reached a decision. ‘All right, I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I’ll give you the phone number and you can ring them. But if you do, you’re not to say where they can find me, right? The last bloody thing I want is them driving down here.’

‘Understood.’

‘I’ll write their names and address and phone number down for you.’

Neither of us had a bit of paper though I had a stub of pencil. There was a card on the table telling customers of some Christmas offer the café was running – coffee, choice of sandwich and a cake for £2.50, something like that. Tig turned it over and wrote on the back.

‘Their name is Quayle, Colin and Sheila. My name’s Jane, really. That’s what you’ll have to call me when you talk to them.’ She pushed the card towards me. She’d written it all down, with address and phone number.

A thought had struck me. ‘You need to send a personal message, or tell me something that I couldn’t know about you or them unless I knew you well. I mean, I’ve got to convince them I really am speaking on your behalf.’

She gave an odd little smile. ‘All right. Wish my mum a happy birthday. It’s her birthday tomorrow.’

It was personal, all right, but I wished she’d thought of something else.

Tig found giving out the practical details easier than the next thing she had to tell me. I could see her bracing herself. ‘Jo Jo and I,’ she said, ‘we had a place to doss but we lost it. The last few nights, we’ve been sleeping over Waterloo way, in an underpass. You know the place? It’s under the road system, a big empty space. There used to be lots of people sleeping there. Most of them have gone now, moved out. They’re building there now. But there’s still space to doss if you haven’t got anywhere else. They try and move you on, of course.’

I nodded. I knew the place she meant. It had been the site of Cardboard City, that squatters’ camp in the maze of subterranean walkways between Waterloo and the South Bank complex. I’d never slept there but I’d been there in its heyday, looking for someone or just passing through. Each inhabitant had had his space, with his sleeping bag and plastic carriers of personal belongings, his dog, his transistor radio – some even had a scrap of dirty carpet down and a broken old armchair or two. Some were young, some old, some in sound mind and some way out of theirs. Some had been there years. When I was at school, our art teacher had been keen on the painting of a guy called Bosch who’d turned out stuff which looked as if it had all been painted when he was as high as a kite – but which she reckoned was symbolic. The old Cardboard City had put me in mind of one of those paintings by Bosch – a world of weird things which were normal to those caught up in the nightmare.

But even down there the homeless hadn’t been secure. The area was being developed, as Tig said – luxury flats and a monster cinema going up. The debris of the streets was being swept up and moved elsewhere as the men in the hard hats and their equipment moved in.

Tig was avoiding my eye, her face turned down, her stringy fair hair falling forward. Her voice was muffled. ‘Coupla nights ago,’ she said, ‘someone died there.’

People do die on the streets. I waited. There had to be more.

‘It was a girl, about the same age as me. She was sleeping right near us. She’d got a little dog. Nice dog, friendly. Some people have those big dogs that go for you. Jo Jo had one once and I was glad when he sold it on to someone. You had to watch it all the time or it’d have you. Anyhow, this girl, I didn’t know her name or anything, but I’d talked a bit to her that evening. I’d made friends with the dog and that’s mostly what we talked about, the dog. Later she went off somewhere and she didn’t come back until after midnight. She’d had a couple of drinks, I could smell the booze – and I guess she might’ve got hold of some stuff and been shooting up somewhere. Sunday morning, she never got up. Never stirred. No one bothered much at first. But then the dog started whining and sniffing at her. I got a really bad feeling. I went over and shook her shoulder. She was cold already. Her eyes were open and bulging and her jaw had fallen open and stiffened like that. She looked horrible. It was the scariest thing I ever saw in my life. Like a horror film only worse, because it was real.’

Tig shook back her hair and looked up, meeting my gaze firmly. ‘And I thought, that’s me. That’s how I’m going to end up and pretty soon. It’s true, isn’t it?’ She stared at me defiantly.

‘Unless you do something about it,’ I said.

‘Right. That’s what I thought. I won’t like it, I won’t like going home and facing them. Perhaps they won’t even have me. But I’ve got to try because it’s the only way out I’ve got. Some people get out of it other ways. They get a permanent place to live and they get a job. Like you, you’ve got out of it. You always were smart. But that’s not going to work for me. I haven’t time enough for that. I get out now or by spring, I’m dead.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it.’

She relaxed and I felt a stab of unease. She’d be relying on me. Supposing I messed the whole thing up? Said the wrong thing on the phone? It’d be Tig’s lifeline snapping. I forced the worry away but I did venture, ‘You could ring them yourself and then I could go up—’

‘No!’ Her voice was fierce. ‘I won’t talk to them until—They’d ask too many questions.’

They were going to ask me questions, but I took her point. ‘So, why’d you leave in the first place?’ I asked. ‘Just general.’

She shook her head. ‘I told you what my mum’s like, everything so perfect. Dad’s worse. It didn’t matter how hard I tried at school, he’d find some subject I’d done poorly at, and ask, what about that? I went to a good school, they paid –private.’

‘So did I,’ I said glumly. ‘Until it threw me out.’

‘Well, then, you know how it is. Parents have spent money and they want results, don’t they?’

She was turning the knife in my conscience, though she didn’t know it. Her parents had probably found the money without too much difficulty, but Dad and Grandma Varady had really scrimped to send me. When I’d been expelled, they hadn’t moaned, just sympathised and rallied round. But I knew I’d let them down and would have it on my conscience to my dying day. For Tig, it was different, however. She’d worked hard, apparently, but it hadn’t been enough.

‘He – my father – kept talking about university,’ Tig was saying. ‘But I didn’t want to go to university. He said I’d never get a really good job without a degree. He kept on and on. Then there was Mum with her “you-can’t-go-out-looking-like-that” and “be-careful-to-make-nice-friends”! And, of course, “you-don’t-want-to-be-thinking-about-boys-you’ve-got-your-studies”.’

Tig shook her head and leaned forward, her pale face flushed. ‘Look, I know it doesn’t sound so bad, talking to you now. They weren’t beating me up. Dad hadn’t got his hand in my knickers, there was nothing like that. It was just day in, day out, pressure. I couldn’t get away from it, not there. So – I left.’

Everyone’s got their reasons. It doesn’t matter whether they sound good or bad reasons to anyone else. They’re good enough for the person concerned.

‘You see,’ Tig said sadly, ‘how hard it is to talk about going back. How disappointed they’ll be, how shocked, horrified. I don’t know if they can cope with it. That’s why you’ve got to find out first.’ ‘I’ll really do my best, Tig,’ I promised. ‘Honestly, I will.’ I hoped I hadn’t bitten off more than I could chew.

Chapter Nine

With all the trouble I was causing Daphne at the moment, I didn’t feel I could ask to phone long-distance to Dorridge from her place. I don’t mean I wouldn’t pay her. I always paid for my calls from Daphne’s. But I might find myself explaining about Tig. Daphne would be interested and I was pretty sure, sympathetic, but she’d worry about it. Besides, I needed time to think out what I’d say. The more I thought, the less I liked the whole idea.

The next morning, I explained it all to Ganesh. He was feeling better and had got rid of the bandages, but still had a large plaster on his head. I told him to sit on a stool behind the counter and stay there. I’d do any running around and would stay all day till closing time. At least I was spared Hitch and Marco creating havoc in the washroom. It seemed they couldn’t come in and finish today.

‘He’s got a problem with his supplier over the floortiles,’ said Ganesh.

I made no comment on this, but privately decided they were both keeping clear of the place while there was any chance of running into the police on the premises. Neither of them, I fancied, liked answering questions. Instead, over our coffee-break, I explained about Tig.

‘You ought to have steered clear of that,’ said Ganesh. ‘No way are you going to come out a winner. Tell her you’ve changed your mind.’

‘You told me you thought she ought to go home,’ I protested.

‘I know I did. I still do. But I didn’t mean you should set it up. Families,’ said Ganesh, who knew about these things, ‘are tricky.’

‘It’s her only chance, Gan. She’s right. She’s not really a survivor. She looks sick. She’s had to take up with the awful Jo Jo just to get protection. She’s got to get out fast.’ I added sadly, ‘And I did offer to help.’

‘More fool you,’ said Ganesh. His sore head was making him grumpy. But his thinking was still clearer than mine. ‘Look at it from the point of view of her people,’ he went on. ‘They will have been waiting to hear from Tig for months. Suddenly, out of the blue, they get a call from a complete stranger who claims to know their missing daughter. The stranger wants to come and see them and arrange the daughter’s return home. What does that sound like to you?’

‘A scam,’ I said miserably.

‘Too right. The first thing they’ll want to know is, what’s in it for you?’

‘My fee,’ I said. ‘And it won’t be much once I’ve paid the train fare out of what Tig gave me.’

‘Who cares about your couple of quid fee from Tig? She’s got no money – there’s no point in you trying to get it from her. The Quayles will think you want money from
them
–because from the sound of it, they’re pretty well set up. So, they’ll be expecting you to ask them to pay you for acting as middleman. They won’t believe you if you say you don’t want anything. Look, who knows what they’ll think? Maybe that you’ve got Tig locked in a cellar and don’t mean to let her out until the Quayles have coughed up a really big amount. You’ll turn up in this place, what’s it called?’

‘Dorridge.’

‘Are you sure you’ve got that right? You’ll turn up and find a police reception committee. At the very least, they’ll call their solicitor. You know what I think you should do? You should tell Harford about it, ask his advice. At least, tell him what you’re going to do so that you’re covered if the Quayles turn nasty.’

‘I can’t!’ I exclaimed in horror. ‘Not Harford! He’d sneer. Besides, it’s nothing to do with him. Nor have I got Tig’s permission to bring the police into it – and I wouldn’t get it. Tig would just disappear if I mentioned the cops.’