No Place of Safety (17 page)

The very large young man (only he did not give off the feel of being young) sat slumped in his chair on the other side of the dining table and told Oddie that his name was Simon Prentice. It was the first time Oddie had been favoured with a surname by any of the male residents in the refuge. He conjectured that, like Bett Southcott, this boy would eventually return home and resume some sort of place in the community, even if only as a supplicant for any state benefit going.

With his bulk went a strong feeling of lethargy: Oddie got the impression that what energy the boy had went into servicing his gross body – feeding it, putting clothes on it, propelling it around. The dull eyes, the absence of curiosity or even excitement about the events of the previous night, all suggested a torpor of intellect and spirit equal to the torpor of his body.

‘They were all on at me to get my weight down,' he whined: ‘the doc, the social workers, my parents . . . Never stopped nagging me.'

‘Wouldn't it have been sensible to try?' Oddie asked.

Something close to strong emotion came into his face.

‘It hurts! It's terrible wanting food and knowing you won't be eating for hours and hours, and then there won't be enough. And people like me never get any sympathy.'

‘And that was why you left home?' asked WPC Gould, incredulous.

‘That and other things . . . Well, that was the basic thing.'

Oddie tried another tack.

‘How do you live?'

‘Begging . . . People are mean to me, though.'

‘You can't be eating as well as you used to do at home.'

‘I manage. And I can eat what I want to.'

Shoplifting, thought Oddie. His clothes were still respectable enough not to make shop managers automatically suspicious. Probably shoplifting was the ‘other thing' that had led to the breach with his family: they'd put him on short commons and he'd supplemented it from elsewhere.

‘What can you tell me about what happened last night?'

‘Nothing . . . Well, I heard all the others going down, so I followed. There was some sort of a scene going on next door, here I mean, but they were all crowding the doorway and I couldn't see properly. So I went back up to bed.' He paused, remembering, and then he brought out his real grievance: ‘The police came and woke me up!'

Oddie had seldom had so strong a sense of death-in-life, of existence being stumbled through rather than lived.

 • • • 

When Charlie arrived back in Leeds he went straight to Portland Terrace. It was already after midday, and Alan was in the sitting room alone, eating a plate of toasted cheese and reading the morning paper.

‘Katy's doing the shopping,' he said. ‘We usually do it together, but we thought someone should be here.'

‘I heard my boss in the front room as I came in. How is the questioning going?'

‘They're getting through them. I don't suppose they're getting very much.'

‘Why not?'

‘Well, I was closest, wasn't I, and I was too late to see anything.'

‘True.'

‘And they tend to . . . keep out of things, if you know what I mean.'

‘Keep out of things involving the police?'

‘Yes. They wouldn't hurry when they heard the screams.'

‘Does that mean they'd lie if they did see anything?'

‘It might. But I doubt if they did.'

Charlie nodded. It made sense.

‘Is there any news of . . . your father?'

Alan raised his eyebrows.

‘Ben? I find it difficult to think of him as my father. The operation's over, he's still fighting, but it's touch and go. At least that's how I interpret what they told me on the phone. They're so cagey, and the language they use is so – I don't know – bland.'

‘Hospitals have always been a bit like that.'

‘It seems to make Ben into a
case
, not a human being.'

Charlie sat down and accepted a square of toasted cheese when Alan offered him the plate.

‘How did you and Ben meet up again?'

‘It wasn't again. We'd never met at all. He told me that almost the first thing. He's very honest, Ben.'

‘He came looking for you, then?'

‘That's right. He was waiting at the school gates – he'd asked someone to point me out. I was a bit suspicious at first.'

‘I should think so.'

‘But of course there were lots of others around, so there couldn't be a problem, and, well, I just looked at him, and he was explaining that he had something very important he wanted to talk to me about, and somehow I just knew he was on the level, knew it was important, and that he was going to be important in my life.'

Charlie could only think of what
might
have happened, remembering some of the child-molesters he had known.

‘What did you do?'

‘Went down to the St Mary's graveyard nearby, sat on one of the seats in the sun, and he told me he was my real father. You'd think I would have disbelieved him, thought he was having me on, but I didn't: I believed him right from the beginning. Ben's like that. You know you can trust him.'

Charlie, from his short conversation with Ben, could understand why Alan felt like that, dangerous though the feeling was. He hoped he was right.

‘Did he explain about – well, your birth and that?'

‘Oh yes. He was quite open. Said he had had a brief affair
with my mother, and that she must have married my father soon after I was born. “All credit to him”, I remember him saying. “He's your father, and I'm not trying to take his place”. He said he was young and irresponsible at the time.'

He would have been, Charlie estimated, in his mid twenties when Alan was born. Youngish, but hardly adolescent. He wondered whether Alan had done his mathematics.

‘Did he say why he and your mother didn't marry, or try to make a go of the relationship?'

Alan shook his head, untroubled.

‘Not really. Just said it didn't work out. But he said he was a bit of a Casanova, and he'd fathered other children. He said he thought one of them was also at Bramsey High.'

Charlie's brow was creased.

‘I don't really see why he suddenly contacted you both.'

‘Because he was back in the area. He'd been away for years – in Lincolnshire, then managing big estates first in Derbyshire, then near here. Recently he'd had a big lottery windfall, and he realized he'd got children walking the streets of Bramsey that he'd never seen. He said he'd sobered up a lot since his early days, but that thought really made him realize how irresponsible he'd been. Particularly as he was now working with homeless young people. It seemed to him that one day a kid might turn up at the door, and he'd find out that it was his own.'

‘Out came the children running' – the line came to Charlie's mind from his schooldays.

All the little boys and girls,

something, something, something

Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after

The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.

But was the Pied Piper a benign or a malign figure? And what was Ben Marchant?

‘Did he ask you to get in touch with Katy Bourne?'

‘Oh no. That wouldn't have been right. He talked to her himself. But a couple of days later we all three went and had tea and cakes together in a café.' He thought seriously
about the experience. ‘It was sort of odd, really. There was this girl who I'd never looked at twice at school, and she turned out to be my sister.'

‘What did you talk about?'

‘Oh, home, and school, and what we wanted to do when we left school. Ben talked about setting up the refuge, what he was trying to do here. Invited us round to see it.'

‘Yes.'

Charlie had known he would do that. But was he using their adolescent enthusiasm and conscience as a bait, or just providing it with a natural outlet?

‘And then, when he had to go and cook the meal here, Katy and I sat on for a bit talking, then we walked part of the way home together, and we – '

‘Decided to leave home and come and work in the refuge?'

Alan shook his head vigorously.

‘
No
. It wasn't like that at all. But we both felt we should have been told about Ben.'

‘Did it occur to you that your mothers may have known very little, and none of it recent?'

‘They could have told us what they knew. They could have told us the truth. But we didn't get all steamed up about it, and we didn't decide anything. It was just that . . . coming to help Ben was in the air.'

‘And a sense of grievance, anger?'

Alan grinned.

‘Something like that. Oh, I suppose we were over-reacting, but it's a big thing, finding your real father.'

‘Of course it is.'

‘So we went home feeling like that, and that evening I had it out with them – with Mum and Dad.'

‘That must have been nasty.'

‘Tearful, mostly. And Dad sort of embarrassed and blustery. I was still fuming the next day, and I rang Katy. And, well – you know the rest.'

‘Your mum and dad will be worried at the moment.'

‘Oh, I've rung them. I keep in touch, since we talked. Yes, they are worried, worried sick.'

‘Wouldn't it be sensible to go home?'

Alan looked surprised.

‘But how can I, even if I wanted to? Who would run the refuge? Ben will expect to find things in good order when he recovers.'

 • • • 

The last two residents of the Centre whom Oddie interviewed were at either end of its age spectrum. Tony he guessed was about thirteen or fourteen, and Oddie had to get a social worker to sit in on the interview. He also agreed to stay on for the formal interviews with Katy and Alan. Tony might be young, but he was fly. No amount of shock tactics or guile could get him to reveal his surname. At one point Oddie suspended the interview and got on the phone to police headquarters.

‘I want the full name of any missing boys in the Yorkshire/Lancashire area, aged around thirteen, with the Christian name Antony,' he demanded.

Tony didn't seem in the least concerned when the interview resumed.

‘How do I spend my days?' he responded to Oddie's first question. ‘Dodging you lot. It's a game, like. I can spot you coming a mile off. Pity you haven't got anything better to do.'

‘Why do you want to dodge us?'

‘Because you'd try to send me back home. Not that it would do any good. I'd be off and away again the next day.'

Oddie was sure this was true.

‘What was so awful about home?' he asked.

Tony looked genuinely surprised.

‘Home? Home wasn't awful. It was just dull. Nothing going on there. It's more exciting on the streets.'

‘Doesn't it worry you, what can happen to you? Drugs? The sexual perverts? There's a lot of violence on the streets.'

‘Don't you worry about me,' Tony said breezily. ‘I can take care of myself. There's no one can put one over on me, or get me to do anything I don't want to do.'

‘Why do you come to the hostel, then?'

‘To have a bit of proper cooked food, a bit of a wash, and a good bed. This is my second time here. First time I didn't
stay the whole fortnight. Got bored. Probably do the same this time. It's a bit of a break, that's all.'

‘What about last night?'

‘Oh – last night was exciting!'

But beyond giving a child's vividness to his account, Tony had nothing of substance to add.

The last resident made no bones about his name and age.

‘Derek Redshaw, and I'm twenty-seven. Came here for the first time yesterday – wanting a bit of peace and quiet.'

He gave a sad, self-deprecating grin.

‘Can get pretty violent among the people sleeping rough, I know,' agreed Oddie. But that wasn't his meaning.

‘So-so. I can cope with that. I used to be in the army. I just wanted a bit of time to think things through, start making some decisions.'

‘How come you left the army?'

‘Didn't have any choice. I was invalided out. I'd been in the Gulf War and after that things were never the same. I had headaches, got neurotic, irritable, couldn't handle any sort of problem or emergency, fell out with everybody. There were a lot the same. And since they were cutting army numbers they were pleased to get rid of us.'

‘Wasn't any help offered?'

‘Not a great deal . . .' Suddenly a great hurt showed in his face. ‘Tell you the truth, I couldn't believe how little. When you compared the propaganda hype we were given when we joined with what happened when they had no more use for us, it was disgusting. The army was, like, my family. My mother died when I was ten, and I was in a home after that. So I had nothing to come out to, and when the money ran out, that was it.'

‘What about organizations like the British Legion?'

‘As far as I'm concerned they're a lot of elderly wankers out for a boozy time.'

‘Did you say this was your first day at the refuge?'

‘That's right. First time I'd slept in a room for eighteen months or more. I was enjoying it. And I was thinking a lot, like I said. I felt I'd reached a turning point. I'd got myself together a bit in the last few months, and the headaches and
the rages were less frequent. I was thinking about whether I was going to make an effort to get off the streets.'

‘And were you?'

‘I'd pretty much decided. Without being very sure what I could actually do about it, what sort of job I might go after. I'm just telling you this to explain why I didn't notice a great deal. I had my meal – pretty good it tasted too – and I met some of the others, but they were all a bit young, and in any case because I was thinking things through I'd spent the day in my room, and I went back there after supper.'