Fatlands (2 page)

I kept my foot at an even 70 m.p.h. Around Andover the dawn arrived, sneaking up from behind, pink-wash streaks giving way, against March odds, to a porcelain-blue sky. The sunrise was still singing as I sped down the long, open hill bottoming out into a wide-angle view of Stonehenge half a mile to the right. At this distance the stones looked like something out of a kid's building box. You could almost imagine reaching out and picking them up one by one, rearranging them at will. I thought of the alternative version: the Druids and the slow pull from the coastal quarries to the silence of the Wiltshire Plain. I thought of Tess, with much thanks to Hardy and little to Polanski, and saw how—in a clear, deserted morning on the edge of spring—there would have been worse places to complete a tragedy. Then I thought about all the other things I could be doing with my life at this moment, like waking to the same alarm at the same time in order to do the same job at the end of the same tube stop. And I felt OK in a quiet sort of way.

On the seat next to me lay a brown envelope. I had read Frank's brief already. Simple and stylish. The Met must have missed him when he went. Her name was Mattie Shepherd, fourteen yesterday, father's name Tom. Her birthday present was supposed to have been a weekend
in London with all the trimmings, but his work had intervened. I was the substitute parent. It was my job to pick her up, show her the sights, and deliver her to her dad's house in time for him to take her to the theatre. My contact at the school was one Patricia Parkin, the assistant head. She would meet me in the front reception with Mattie at 8:00 a.m. sharp. As for trouble, well, all I had was a name, Christine, and a brief description which made her sound like every woman in the street. She was, according to Tom Shepherd, ‘disturbed' , definitely not to be trusted with her daughter. And that was about it. Maybe Mattie would tell me more.

If, that is, I had the stamina to get that far. My stomach, always an alert companion, had joined the conversation. Half a mile on, a Happy Easter appeared in the distance. I pulled in behind the large red dinosaur and went to the main desk. I ordered bacon, toast and coffee to go. The bacon, toast and coffee they could do, the ‘to go' was a little harder. We discussed it for a while. I toyed with the idea of recreating the ‘hold the mayonnaise'scene in
Five Easy Pieces
, but one of the problems with growing older is that waitresses get younger, and homage only works when you both know what you're worshipping. So I went for pragmatism over poetrystuck the bacon between the toast, poured the coffee into a plastic water cup and exited, leaving what I computed to be a subtly derisory tip on the table behind me.

The bacon smelt wonderful, which was more than could be said for the way it tasted. Or didn't. Ah well, another day, another hit of cholesterol. Who wants to grow old, anyway, particularly if you're the only one you know who doesn't have a pension plan. I rifled through the glove compartment and found a badly recorded dub of the Who's greatest hits. Hope I die before I advertise American Express.

I left the A303 and reached Debringham with twenty minutes to spare. It looked familiar. Either I had been there before or it was exactly the same as a number of other well-scrubbed country towns, all civic pride and real estate with no sign of mud or cattle markets. The kind of place that makes you wonder if the country really exists any more, or if it's all just a marketing construct of Habitat. Theme-park Britain. Something in it for everyone. If you've got the entrance fee.

The school was on the outskirts and well signposted. The people of Debringham were obviously proud of it. Huge stone pillars beckoned you on to a wide tarmac drive and up towards a suitably stately pile, very nineteenth-century Gothic. According to the recently repainted sign, this was Debringham College for Girls, established 1912; no doubt once the instant ancestral home of some Victorian industrialist who had hit bad times and had to sacrifice the dynasty. The faç ade of the house, like the town, looked familiar magazine territory. Maybe in the holidays they made money by renting out the exterior for horror movies—the kind where unspeakable evil affl icts young virgins until Peter Cushing manages to coax them out of it.

It would be an exaggeration to say I hated it on sight. On the other hand, as a child of aspiring but struggling middle-class parents, I have always had a healthy class dislike for the hothouses of the rich. It's a prejudice reinforced by three years at a university where most of the men's entrance credentials had been earned on the river, and where they were happier playing with a rugby ball than a woman. And a good deal more adroit. It's one of the many topics that can still wreck a dinner-table conversation between my brother-in-law and me: the misnomer of public school education. Except Colin is not even to the manner born, just an eighties upstart with
more money than his father and determined to show it. Sister Kate says we never give each other a chance and that we'd like each other a lot if we could get past the politics. But then, as we all know, the political is personal.

OK, Hannah. Enough. I wiped the froth from the corners of my mouth, parked the car in the front drive and went in to pick up the child. Inside, a wide entrance hall lifted my footsteps and flung their echo up a grand stone staircase towards a vaulted ceiling. Very
Mädchen in Uniform
. I looked at my watch. 8:00 a.m. sharp. Frank would have approved. I was looking for someone to talk to, when she appeared. She'd been around too long to be the one you'd have a crush on, but she looked OK, if a little tweedy around the edges.

‘Miss Wolfe?'

‘Miss Parkin?'

‘Mrs,'she corrected gently and not without a certain humour. ‘You're very prompt.'

‘I left early,' I said, with a touch more belligerence than I intended.

‘I'm sure you did. Mattie will be down in a minute.'She paused. ‘She's looking forward to it.'

‘Good.' I wished I could say the same.

‘You haven't met her before?'

‘No.'

She smiled. ‘She's an interesting girl. Although you may find her a little upset that her father's not here. We only told her this morning.' The inference was that she might have wrecked the joint if she'd found out any earlier. Great. Humiliating enough to be baby-sitting without the tantrums thrown in. Surprising her mother wanted her back, really.

‘Mr Shepherd mentioned his wife, Christine … Mattie's mother. I wondered if you'd had any dealings with her?'

She looked at me, as if sizing me up. When it came, her
answer was non-committal enough for me to realize I had failed the test. ‘She visited the school once, yes.'

The tension was killing me. ‘What happened?'

‘Mattie felt she didn't want to see her, so the matter was taken out of our hands.' Her eyes flicked slightly to one side of my head. Behind me I heard the tap-tap of some seriously heeled shoes. Work calls. I turned to greet the day.

You know what they say about the past being another country. Well, for this one you'd need a visa. She was fourteen going on twenty-four. Tall, maybe five-five or five-six already, with a mane of dark hair caught up in one of those frou-frou elastic velveteen bands that were all the rage. Her clothes—skirt and sweater—were smart, veering towards well groomed, the kind of garments where the label told you more than the washing instructions. Mattie Shepherd—self-possession on legs, and a nice line in Lycra tights. Just what I wanted most for my weekend—a day in the company of a budding Harvey Nichols buyer. But while the clothes gave off one message, the scowl gave off another.

I put out my hand—the better to keep her at arm's length. ‘Hello,' I said cheerfully. ‘You must be Mattie.' Nice one, Hannah. Narrative and smarm all in one.

She regarded me as one might regard a lump of bird shit. Hard to know what had disgusted her most, my face or my personality. Then, murmuring what was obviously an obligatory ‘good morning' in the general direction of Miss—sorry, Mrs—Parkin, she sailed straight past me and out the door into the morning sunshine.

I watched her go, that neat little butt shimmying across the tiled floor. I thought of the money. And suddenly it didn't seem so generous. Mrs Parkin took pity on my outstretched hand. Her face had just the ghost of a smile as she pumped my fingers and said briskly, ‘Well, have a
wonderful day. Please give my regards to Mattie's father. Tell him she's doing fine and we'll look forward to seeing him next time.' Then she stood and watched as I followed my charge out to the car.

At least she had the grace to wait by the passenger door. I looked at her snarling little face over the roof of the car, and I have to say it played into all my worst prejudices. ‘The name is Hannah,' I said with an accent plucked from the playground of a South London comprehensive. ‘And I just want you to know I'm looking forward to this every bit as much as you are.'

The scowl got bigger. I unlocked the car and we both got in. I strapped on my seatbelt and put the key in the ignition. She didn't move. ‘I think you'd better put on your belt, sweetheart. It's going to be a long drive.'

She was staring out through the windscreen, as if she hadn't heard me. I waited, counting to ten silently. Out through the corner of my eye I saw Mrs Parkin come out on to the front steps, getting ready to wave. Five thousand pounds a year and they can't even get them to put on their seatbelts. Somebody should tell their parents. I started the engine, moved into first, then hit the accelerator at the same time as I released the clutch. The car shot forward, flinging us both back against the seats. Then I hit the brake. The seatbelt bit into my chest. She stuck out her hands against the dashboard, but she was still winded enough to let out a cry.

‘Sorry,' I said with genuine gaiety.

She shot me a glance of pure malice, then pulled the belt off its hook. This time, at normal speed, I executed a swift three-point turn and headed for the front gates. In the back mirror I saw Mrs Parkin standing, a trifl e anxiously, on the gravel. I gave her a cheery wave. Eight o'clock to five-thirty. Nine and a half sodding hours. Just you wait, Frank Comfort. I'll get you for this.

T
he first hour was pure murder. But then, as a private detective, it's my job to get a perverted pleasure out of that kind of thing.

Beside me the Harvey Nichols trainee was fast turning into a bit of a slob. She had arranged herself extravagantly on the front seat, one leg tucked up underneath the other, skirt halfway to her crotch, head back against the headrest as if the world outside was just too boring to warrant her attention. Mind you, she had a point. As we passed, Debringham High Street was tarting itself up ready for business. A classy collection of retail outlets they were, too: a couple of antique shops, an auction house, and a book shop with a display of Dorothy Dun-nett and Kingsley Amis in the window (now there's one for
Blind Date
, Cilla). Just the kind of place to drive teenagers into solvent abuse. If, that was, they were allowed to use their tuck money outside school grounds. I wondered if it was worth letting off a small salvo in the hope of attracting a conversation.

‘Picturesque little place,' I said with what I felt to be well-judged irony. ‘Do they let you out?'

She humphed a bit, then said, ‘Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons.'

‘What d'you do?'

‘Shoplift.'

The remark came out gin-dry. I found it genuinely funny but thought it wiser to suppress my admiration. I stopped to let an old lady with an old dog cross the road. The dog was moving slower than she was. It was not a life-enhancing sight. ‘Do I gather you don't like it here?'

‘It's a dung heap.'

I thought of Mrs Parkin's sensible shoes and the bill that must come flying through her father's letter box every term. ‘But an expensive one.'

She snorted. ‘He can afford it.'

‘You're sure about that, are you?'

We were on the outskirts of the town now, the smart thatched cottages giving way to open land, rich rolling fields with early sunlight playing across them. Big farms. I wondered what they grew. But then in my experience the country is always a mystery to girls born in Hammersmith. There didn't seem much point in asking Mattie, since whatever she was looking at it wasn't the countryside. Instead she had her head halfway inside her voluminous shoulder bag, rummaging frantically. She came up triumphant, an unopened packet of Dunhill cigarettes in one hand and a cute little Bic lighter in the other. Bedside me the cellophane crinkled and a flame licked up. I cleared my throat loudly.

It's a difficult one, smoking. I mean all the best PIs hurtle towards death in a wreath of cigarette smoke, and I'd certainly paid my dues to that myth for long enough. But then I met a man who couldn't stand the smell and I surrendered to lust. It would make a better story if it had taken six months of nicotine patches and Mars bars. As it turned out I wasn't quite the addictive personality I had thought. For him or the cigarettes. So I let them both go together. And, yes, my teeth do shine more in the dark, which just means I have to keep my mouth closed on night jobs. It also means that now, of course, I have all the
tolerance of the converted. I coughed again. She held out the packet.

‘Filthy habit, isn't it?'she said tartly. ‘D' you want one?'

I thought of the litany of horrors one should recite to an adolescent about smoking. ‘No.' Worth a try? ‘And neither do you.'

‘It's
my
body,'she growled, still at the stage when death is preferable to reaching thirty.

‘But it's my car,' I said sweetly. ‘And I'm asthmatic. Cigarette smoke brings on fits.'

She stared at me, and you could see she didn't believe me but wasn't sure how to call my bluff. With bad grace she stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray, then carefully pushed it back into the packet. And suddenly I was fourteen all over again. ‘However,' I said ‘there's some dope in the glove compartment if you want to roll a joint. I haven't had one all morning.'