Nameless (33 page)

‘Good man, uh? He’d do a kid in acid.’

‘It was a little black bastard. What else would any decent man have done?’

Even Corah felt sick at this. He liked kids, he had four little ankle-biters of his own. He stood up, put the chair neatly to one side.

‘Give him a bit more,’ he said, and left the cell to let his two friends attend to Charlie Darke.

Charlie was in the hospital wing by that evening, and by the following day he was making enquiries and planning a rematch in which John Corah would be carried out as a corpse. Fuck good behaviour, that bastard had it coming. But he was too late. Corah had already been moved to Leicester. And the governor had turned down Charlie’s parole.

81

1970

‘No,’ said Aunt Ju. ‘Absolutely not, Daisy. Out of the question.’

That was Aunt Ju’s reaction to Daisy’s request that she come up to London to stay for a little while. She was bored with the country. She wanted to be in London again, near her friends, and she
also
wanted to be there because that enigmatic guy called Kit Miller had never called her and so she had decided that she was going to take the initiative and track him down at Ward Security.

Daisy wasn’t the type of girl to be deterred if a man didn’t contact her.
She
would contact him instead. Why not? Everyone was liberated these days, you didn’t have to wait for a man to do the running any more.

But why hadn’t he? She was very good looking. She was young. She was fanciable. She had made it clear that she wanted him to get in touch. What was his problem?

‘Oh please, Aunt Ju,’ she whined. ‘I’m really sorry I messed up. And I’d so love to see you.’

‘Daisy – no.’

Daisy pulled a face and put the phone down. She found Vanessa in the drawing room, engrossed in gardening books as always, and got straight to the point.

‘I’m thinking of going up to London for a while to stay with Aunt Ju,’ she said.

Vanessa looked at her daughter and sighed. It was horrible to admit, but she found Daisy such hard work.
But then – she’s not your daughter, is she?
floated into her brain.

Certainly, Daisy was nothing like her at all. In looks, she was very like her Aunt Ju, very like her father. Very blonde, very blue-eyed, robust and clear-skinned. And in character, she was just so
wild
.

If I’d ever had a child, my own child, would she have been like this?

Vanessa didn’t think so. She was genteel, reserved. Daisy was just crazy, making up her own rules as she went along. Crashing cars. Attending those awful parties, getting herself deflowered – for the love of God! – at such an early age. So fortunate there had been nothing to show for that, but there could have been. She really didn’t know what Daisy was going to get up to next.

But at the same time, she felt bad about her own antipathy towards Daisy. She had been so desperate for a child that she had thought she could handle it, taking on a child that her husband had fathered on another woman. Now she knew that she should never have done it.

Over the years the whole thing had become harder and harder to bear. Every misdemeanour Daisy committed only reinforced the truth: that she was not Vanessa’s child, and that she would have to struggle forever to maintain an appearance of affection for the girl, even when – more often than not – she didn’t feel it. All Daisy did was remind her that her husband had cheated on her, that she was a failure as a wife, and a failure as a mother too.

Daisy looked at her mother, who was watching her again with that
judgemental
look on her face. As usual, she felt the full weight of Vanessa’s disapproval. Ever since she could remember, she’d felt that she was a great disappointment, that she could never live up to her mother’s expectations.

‘I can go and stay with Aunt Ju for a while, can’t I?’ said Daisy. ‘What do you think? If you suggested it to her, I could go. Could you do that?’

Daisy knew that if Vanessa asked, Aunt Ju would cave in.

‘All right,’ said Vanessa. ‘Why not? I’ll phone her tonight.’ And she couldn’t suppress it even though she tried – that tiny, treacherous prickle of feeling that she later identified as relief. She was
glad
Daisy was going back to town. She could tend her garden, immerse herself in it. And forget about the rest.

82

Two of Michael Ward’s men went over to Finsbury Park to see if there was any hope of tracking down Hugh Burton after all this time.

‘Probably dead,’ said Kit to his companion, Rob.

Certainly the house – the
row
of houses – wasn’t there any more. Instead, there was a cable factory on the site. It was early morning and workers were flooding in through the gates to start their day’s labour.

The two men stood there and watched all this activity.

‘Parish records . . . ?’ suggested Rob. ‘Electoral register? Don’t they keep that in the library?’

They went to the library first, but there was – unsurprisingly – no Hugh Burton on the register.

Next were the parish records. There were several churches in the area – Anglican, Roman Catholic, Methodist. If Hugh Burton had been in his forties during the war, then his birth date had to be around 1900 to 1910.

‘Shit, this is going to take for ever,’ complained Rob.

‘What, you got a date or something?’ asked Kit.

‘Yeah, with a pie and a pint.’

‘Later.’

The Methodist and Roman Catholic church records yielded nothing of interest, but the Anglican showed up not only Hugh Burton, born to a cabinet-maker and his wife, but a year later a sister called Anthea and a year after
that,
another sister, called Jennifer. The two men made a note of the address of Hugh, Anthea and Jennifer’s parents, and gave the vicar a large donation to the church funds by way of thanks.

They went to the address. Finsbury Park again. And this time, the house, a Victorian villa in the middle of a row of others, was still standing. They knocked on the door.

A woman answered, looking flustered. She was a young, hard-faced blonde, heavily pregnant, a prodigious bump ballooning the front of her lime-green T-shirt. Above the bump her breasts drooped tiredly. There was a two-year-old perched on her hip and a four- or five-year-old clinging to her denim-clad leg.

Kit thought that someone
really
ought to tell the poor cow about Durex.

‘Whoever it is, tell them we’re not buying,’ called a female voice from inside.

‘Yes?’ snapped the young woman, eyeing the two men.

‘Hi,’ said Kit, smiling. ‘We’re just down from Blackpool and we’re trying to find a friend of our late father’s called Hugh Burton. Or maybe his sisters? Anthea and Jennifer. Our dad always said we had to look them up.’

‘No, sorry,’ she said, and was shutting the door.

‘Wait,’ said Kit. ‘Just a minute. I haven’t told you the full story. Dad’s just died and he’s left Hugh and his sisters something in the will. So we’d really like to find them.’

The mention of a will stilled the girl’s hand on the door. She hesitated. The two-year-old squirmed and she set him down on the rug. The four- or five-year-old promptly pulled the little one’s hair with a grin, and the baby set up a howling fit to wake the dead.

‘Hush, for God’s sake,’ said the young woman, and now another woman appeared behind her, an older, tireder-looking version of the ludicrously fecund woman in the doorway. Had to be her mother. She grabbed up the baby, shushing and rocking her. The four- or five-year-old ran off down the hall.

‘It’s a sad situation,’ said Kit, looking sincerely into the mother’s eyes. ‘Dad often spoke about Hugh and his sisters, and now Dad’s died but he’s left them gifts of money in the will, and he always said he wanted Hugh and the girls to come to his funeral, and out of respect for his wishes, we’ve come down to find them.’

‘Money?’ The mother’s ears had pricked up. ‘How much money?’

‘Why, do you know them?’ he asked.

‘Jennifer’s my mother,’ she said.

‘Really? That’s great.’

‘Not really, it ain’t,’ said the older woman sourly. ‘Her brother died during the war. And Aunt Anthea passed over a couple of years back.’

‘Right. I’m sorry to hear that.’ So that was the end of it. Hugh Burton was dead and gone, long since. Kit considered the situation. Michael would want details. ‘Could I see Jennifer? Talk to her?’

‘Well,’ said the older woman as the four- or five-year-old decided now was the perfect moment to play trains up and down the hall, very loudly. Added to the wailing baby, it was hellish, the noise in there. ‘You can try.’

83

‘Hey!’

That evening, Kit was in the bar at Michael Ward’s place. He turned at the girl’s call. She was hurrying towards him. Blonde, pretty, young. Done up in a frilled smock, feathers hanging off beads around her neck, like a crazy milkmaid.

‘Hi,’ she grinned. ‘Remember me?’

And now of course he did.

‘You crashed my car,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Kit. ‘
You
crashed your car, because you were driving like a maniac.’

‘Pleased to see me?’

Kit gave her a reluctant half-smile. He seriously hadn’t expected ever to see her again. He’d ‘lost’ her phone number. Eager young posh bints weren’t on his agenda. He had beautiful Gilda with the sea-green eyes and the knowledgeable hands, jingling with gold and lush with promise. He was in love with her. Could never wait to see her.

Also, he had plenty of business to keep him occupied. He was off tomorrow to visit Jennifer Phelps at a place called High Firs, and he had told Michael just an hour ago how the whole Hugh Burton thing was going.

‘That’s good,’ Michael had said.

‘It’s probably not,’ said Kit. ‘The daughter and granddaughter gave the impression we wouldn’t get much out of the old girl.’

Michael was looking very fit and suntanned and relaxed, fresh back from the South of France. ‘This is important to me.’

‘Right.’

‘So keep going with it, son,’ he said.

Kit nodded.

‘And well done. Didn’t think you’d get this far with it, let alone any further.’

Then Kit had come out to the bar, and now . . . Daisy had turned up.

‘How did you find me?’ he asked her.

‘So you’re
not
pleased to see me,’ she pouted.

‘Have a drink and shut up,’ said Kit, half-amused and half-irritated. ‘White wine?’

‘Please.’

Kit relayed their order to the bartender, who delivered their drinks.

‘So,’ he said, turning to Daisy. ‘How . . . ?’

‘Yellow Pages. Looked up Ward Security.
Went
to Ward Security, and was directed here.’

‘That easy.’

‘That easy, yes.’

Kit took a swallow of his beer and eyed her beadily. ‘You know, some men would find that a massive turn-off. A woman chasing after them like that.’

‘Do you find it a massive turn-off?’ she asked coyly, and gulped down a mouthful of wine.

‘That’s good stuff, you should sip it.’

‘Do you?’ It was as if he hadn’t spoken.

Kit shrugged and sighed. This was getting tedious. ‘Daisy . . .’

‘Are you involved with somebody? Is that it?’

‘I’m involved with somebody, yes.’ Involved right up to the hilt.
Now
would she take the hint?

‘Is she as gorgeous as me?’ asked Daisy with a smile, but he could see the hurt in her eyes.

Poor little rich girl, she just wants to be loved
, he thought.

Gilda had filled him in about Daisy’s father Lord Bray – a public school product with perverted sexual appetites. And Mummy? She did charity and the church flowers down in the country, probably. She was never really seen around town.

But somewhere in this batty little cow, Kit could see a faint echo of his own insecurities. He had pulled a crew of men together under Michael Ward’s guidance, and
they
were his family. He liked his mates around him, because . . . he had never before had that strong feeling of belonging that he got from working for the firm. In the children’s home it had been all shoes-off-slippers-on, all rules and regulations. He’d been glad to get out of there.

Now he made his own rules, up to a point. But the scars from his institutionalized upbringing were always there. He had a chip of ice in his heart. Only Gilda had ever come close to melting it.

‘Let me buy you dinner,’ he said, surprising himself. What the hell? He wasn’t due to see Gilda until eleven; he had time to kill. The poor little mare didn’t mean any harm.

‘Great,’ she said instantly, and drained her glass. ‘I’m starving.’

84

1970

High Firs was a pretty nineteenth-century lodge set in a country park. Once it could have been the home of a prosperous wool-merchant. Now it was God’s waiting room, stuffed full of the elderly.

Kit and Rob were led inside by a blue-coated young woman, through a day room where lots of old folks sat. Some slept, their heads drooping onto their chests, some watched TV on the small screen in the corner of the room. A couple of them looked up and smiled as Kit and Rob passed by. One of them, her face spotted with age, said to Rob: ‘Do you speak Russian?’

Rob shook his head and they moved on.

There was a scent in the air that reminded Kit of the homes he’d grown up in – boiled cabbage, onions and Dettol, mingled with human body odours and strong soap. Holding his breath, he followed as the girl led them through the day room and out into a conservatory that had a look of long-faded grandeur.

Three more inmates were sitting out here, blankets made of multicoloured knitted squares draped over their laps. Two were dozing. One was letting her glasses fall down onto the chain around her neck. There was a little notepad on her lap, and in her shaking hands she held a ballpoint pen. She was watching them, her bony head with its thin white fuzz of hair wobbling on a neck that looked hardly strong enough to hold it up. Her cheeks were like softly collapsed balloons. Her bright blue eyes were hazed with age, but hopeful.