Last Rights (25 page)

Of course, this latest bit of information didn’t solve anything so much as add further complications. If Kevin Dooley was
an iron, then what was he doing having something with Martine – if indeed he had been? And where had Martine, and maybe Johnny
too, been that night? I, at least, still didn’t feel sure. If Martine had been out, had she seen Kevin maybe, been disgusted
by what he was doing with another man and killed him? Kevin did, after all, say that ‘she’ had stabbed him, which seemed to
rule out his iron chum. Maybe ‘she’ was Pearl after all. How did I know that Dot Harris had really done that abortion on her?
I didn’t. Pearl and Velma could be lying very well, and with some knowledge regarding Dot, about the whole thing. Then again
there was what I’d overheard Sister Teresa say to Blatt about people who ‘knew’ something about, I had to presume, Pearl and
Ruby’s predicaments. I’d have to go and talk to Mr Blatt, be straight with him and tell him what I’d overheard if I wanted
to go any further with all this. But before I did that, I’d have to do something else first and that was speak, if I could,
to Sister Teresa.

Between sobering up, talking to Fred Bryant down the police station, and not being able to get through on the telephone, I
only managed to speak to Sister Teresa at near on ten o’clock.

When she came on the line she said, ‘Do you have any idea how late it is?’

‘Do you have any idea how it feels sitting here with the telephone not knowing if the Luftwaffe are going to cut
your call short?’ I said. Yes, I knew that nuns went to bed early: I’d had it chapter and verse from my mother before I called.

‘So what do you want?’ she said.

I didn’t go into detail, but I did tell her there was a possibility someone else, a man, could have been involved in Kevin
Dooley’s murder. ‘So if you think your father may still have some angry relatives or mates out there . . .’

‘Were you listening in on my conversation this morning, Mr Hancock?’

‘Yes,’ I responded calmly. I could hear that she was outraged so I got it all over with quickly. ‘So I know Mr Blatt knows
where your sister Opal is,’ I said. ‘I also know that he lied about that to me. I don’t know why he did that, except that
your family seem to have more secrets than most, Sister Teresa, and not for any reason I can easily fathom.’

‘Our mother—’

‘Yes, your mother killed somebody a long time ago,’ I said. ‘But that’s not you, and I don’t know why you and your sisters
seem to be so worried about people having some sort of grudge against you. And what is it people might know or find out?’

‘You—’

‘I’m not trying to accuse anyone here,’ I said. ‘I just think that those who kill people should be punished.’

‘I don’t know where Opal is!’

‘Yes, I know that,’ I said. ‘But what about these enemies and what—’

‘My dad, Neilson, he did once speak about another kid he had a long time ago—’

The line went dead before she could say any more. I was tempted to throw the bloody telephone down the stairs I was that frustrated
with it. But that Bakelite stuff breaks easily and, besides, what would getting into a paddy about it do? Talking to the nun
had been a waste of time, but what of it? Talking to Fred Bryant hadn’t been a walk in the park either. I couldn’t tell him
who’d told me about Kevin Dooley’s ‘thing’ for blokes so Fred said he couldn’t go any further with it.

‘But you must know some of the local pansy boys. You’re a copper,’ I’d said. ‘Ask around them.’

But all Fred would say was that he’d mention what I’d said to Sergeant Hill. I think he’s afraid of irons myself.

‘Any case the Dooleys won’t like that iron business one bit if they find out,’ Fred had said, as I’d left.

I thought, Tough.

As the sirens started up for another night’s entertainment, I passed Velma in the hall on her way down to the shelter. She
looked at me and smiled. ‘Seeing me mum tomorrow, eh, Mr Hancock?’

Even with the raid about to start, she was so excited.

‘Y-yes, l-love,’ I said.

No one slept that night. No one. Not my family, not me – out and about on my run once again. Not the firemen I saw lift a
burning girder off a little girl who’d been pinned underneath it. Her legs had melted. I started to shake apart when I heard
her scream, ‘I’m going to die! I’m going to die!’ And, yes, she was, I knew that. But one of
the firemen, I don’t know how he bore it, said, ‘No, you ain’t, love. We’ll soon have you out of here and back to your mum.’
I heard the death rattle in her throat only seconds after that. Then her eyes closed and she was gone. Me, screaming inside
and useless, I went over to the firemen and said, ‘I am an undertaker.’ They ignored me. They behaved as if I was, for all
the world, really back on the Somme, my hell instead of this new hell that they lived inside.

‘What are you doing, Frank?’ Aggie wheezed, as she watched Velma and me step out of the shop on to what was left of the pavement.
You get days when, for some reason, all the brick-dust just gets right down on your chest. Aggie’s poor pipes sounded like
a couple of busted-up old bellows.

‘We’re going to see my mum’s lawyer,’ Velma said brightly. I’d found a couple of tennis balls that had once belonged to my
nephew and Velma was enjoying herself juggling with them.

‘I didn’t think that was until this afternoon,’ my sister said doubtfully, as she took out and lit up a fag. ‘Mum said—’

‘I have a few things I need to speak to Mr Blatt about first,’ I said, in a way that I thought sounded reasonable.

‘You know you’re not right, don’t you, Frank?’ Aggie rasped.

‘Why don’t you go and play ball up against that wall for a minute?’ I said to Velma, pointing to the bit of blank brick down
the side of the pub.

The kid went with a smile and no questions.

I turned to Aggie. ‘What do you mean?’ I said, knowing full well exactly what she meant.

‘Wish I’d never put it into your head Kevin Dooley could’ve been stabbed,’ Aggie said. ‘If I’d never spoke maybe you would’ve
just thought he was barmy and left it alone.’

‘But then we’d never have known he was murdered,’ I said. ‘A killer would be out there with no policemen on his trail.’

‘Oh, what, you mean police like Fred Bryant, do you?’ Aggie sneered. ‘There’s a lot of Jerries causing a bit of death and
destruction here and there if you haven’t noticed, Frank. Some oik from Canning Town gets what’s coming to him, possibly from
his poor old missus. No one cares!’

‘I do.’

My sister pursed her heavily painted lips.

I moved in closer towards her. ‘I’ve killed people, Aggie,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know them, they didn’t know me, but if I could
find their relatives, show them who I am, then I think it might help them. It’s important to know the truth about the dead.’

‘Frank, you killed people in battle.’

‘It’s no different!’ I said, as I felt tears of frustration form in my eyes. Why couldn’t Aggie understand this? ‘Kevin Dooley
came to me for help. I let him down and he died! Who killed him, the truth, it’s important for him!’

‘But he was a right—’

‘It doesn’t matter what he was like,’ I said.

‘Oh, so if that poor cow Pearl did, beyond doubt, do him in, then you’ll grass her up with her kid under our roof, will you?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If she’s guilty I will.’

‘All for the memory of a bloke who got drunk and beat up women?’

‘He was a human being!’ I said.

‘Yes, but what are you getting out of all this, Frank?’

I didn’t answer her. I knew I could never make her understand. She can be very clinical. But, then, she’s never killed anyone.
She can’t understand what it’s like to know you’ll never put right what you did – ever. The guilt that robs you of any notion
of peace of mind.

‘You don’t understand,’ I said softly.

‘No.’ Aggie stopped for a moment to catch her breath and then said, ‘But what I do know is, no one saw nothing so anything
could’ve happened that night. Not that that bothers me at all. It’s you I’m worried about. All this “investigating”, it’s
taking you over. Stop it – you can’t do no good. Look even more like a bleedin’ ghost than you do usually.’

She was right, of course. I would’ve had to be blind not to see how sick I was starting to look. Because I’m dark I’ve always
had to shave more than most so I’d been treated to my wan face at least twice a day. Not that it had registered. The other
side of it is that when I get really sick, my eyes get very bright and there’s a sort of a wild urgency to everything that
makes me forget about how I look or how I might be feeling. I thought about all of these things as I swung along with Velma,
on foot and then on
whatever buses or trams that were running, to Mr Blatt’s Knightsbridge office. But I knew I couldn’t change either myself
or what the Kevin Dooley affair was doing to me. I had to see it through, whatever the outcome.

The West End, though scarred by bombing, like Paddington, is still recognisable. Blokes with a few readies still take their
girls dancing up the Astoria on Tottenham Court Road, and the Corner Houses are as full as they’ve ever been. But when we
got to Piccadilly Circus it was sad to see poor old Eros boarded up and everything around that area looking run-down, dismal
and piled up with sandbags. Apparently up on Oxford Street there has been some bomb damage, the National Bank having caught
it only a few weeks back, as, I heard, had John Lewis’s. But round Blatt’s office, down Hans Crescent, opposite Harrods, things
– if you can forget the tape on the windows and the sandbags – look almost normal. Not much there to provide a target for
the Jerries, I suppose. No docks or warehouses or anything that might help to break us down if it were hit, like St Paul’s
Cathedral or Buckingham Palace. Just a big department store, a lot of women wearing high heels and furs, and Mr Blatt in his
wood-panelled office, not looking very pleased at all.

‘You’ve got no right to ask me anything, Hancock,’ he said, after I told him I knew that he knew where Opal Reynolds lived.
‘How dare you listen in to a private conversation? Who do you think you are?’

I’d left Velma out in the reception area because what was being said wasn’t suitable for a child. But in view of all
the shouting I imagined she could hear it anyway. I lowered my voice in an attempt to lessen the volume.

‘I’m someone who’s looking after Pearl Dooley’s daughter,’ I said. ‘I’m also—’

‘You’re an undertaker, Hancock!’ Blatt shouted. ‘Not a policeman! Good God, if it wasn’t for you none of this would have happened
anyway!’

‘If it wasn’t—’

‘It was you, wasn’t it, who insisted that the awful Dooley had been murdered?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And I was right.’ Coming on top of Aggie’s little rant Blatt was giving me the ’ump now and I made sure he
knew it. ‘Why? Would you rather a man had been murdered and no one know?’

‘Well, of course not.’ Blatt ran a hand through his heavily brilliantined hair. ‘But Pearl Reynolds, who I know is an innocent
woman, wouldn’t now be in Holloway if you’d left it alone.’

‘No, she’d be on the street with Velma, cut off from the rest of her kids . . .’

‘Yes, but she’d be free,’ he said, and then he threw himself down into the chair behind his desk. ‘And I wouldn’t be involved.’

‘Yes, but you are, aren’t you, Blatt?’ I said tightly. ‘You’ve been involved since long before Kevin Dooley . . .’

‘What do you mean?’

I looked at him as his eyes darted back and forth across his desk, as if searching for something. Eventually he lit up a fag,
without offering one to me, his fingers shaking as
they wrapped themselves round the Passing Cloud. Blatt was a worried man.

‘I thought you’re defending Pearl because you want to,’ I said.

‘Because of her mother I feel obliged,’ he answered.

I didn’t say anything about what Sister Teresa and Ruby had told me regarding Blatt’s seeming incompetence. But then, surely,
if he had done a less than perfect job for Victorine, maybe he felt more than obliged to try to help her daughter. Not that
any of that explained why he’d felt the need to keep Opal’s whereabouts secret.

‘So is Opal—’

‘She has nothing to do with Kevin Dooley or you! Opal Reynolds is completely safe, as I told her sister,’ Blatt said. ‘I don’t
know why some people seem fixated on the idea of a conspiracy against these women. All right, I know the authorities are probably
prejudiced on account of Victorine and all that, but as for “others” out to “get” these women . . .’

‘And I don’t know about that either,’ I said. ‘But what you can’t get away from, Mr Blatt, is that Ruby Reynolds left what
was a very safe place for her, with someone unknown, who used my name to get at her, and has now disappeared. I know Sister
Teresa has fears. I heard—’

‘Amber Reynolds has probably spent too long brooding on the past,’ Blatt said, ‘sequestered away in that convent.’

‘Yes, but, Mr Blatt, there must be some basis for all this. I heard you and her talk about someone “knowing” something.’

‘Amber and the rest of them are all hysterical over an old crime they didn’t commit,’ Blatt said, as he ground out his fag
in the ashtray and lit another. ‘They’re all as mad as hatters, always have been. I, to some extent, humour them. Not that
their insanity is in itself surprising, given their background. But you have to remember, Mr Hancock, that the Reynolds women,
though not with any criminal intent, of course, cannot be relied upon. They see enemies everywhere. Ever since their mother
died they have been like this. I, for instance, did my best for their mother yet they all insist that it was entirely my fault
that Victorine eventually went to the gallows.’

I wanted to ask him some more about his involvement, possibly of a personal nature, and, in particular, with Victorine Reynolds
herself, but I didn’t. Beyond knowing where she was, I couldn’t prove that Blatt had anything to do with Opal Reynolds, much
less that he was her father. So instead I said, ‘And yet you think that what Pearl has told you about the night Kevin died
can be relied on?’