No Place of Safety (6 page)

‘Can I talk to him?'

‘No, he's out. But I'm sure he'd talk to you if he were here. We've got nothing to hide.'

‘I didn't say you had . . . Will you go back home when the school holidays end?'

They both looked down.

‘I may,' said Alan. ‘I want to keep on with school.'

Katy looked up, an obstinate expression on her face.

‘I don't want to go back, ever,' she said.

‘You're too young to have left home, you know,' Charlie said gently.

Katy's chin went up.

‘I'm not. There's younger than me here.'

‘I don't doubt it. We do have experience in the police, you know, of the people who are on the streets. That doesn't alter the fact that you're both too young. The danger is, you'll get into a downward spiral – you'll have seen that here. Will you go back and see your parents? It would help. Help us to turn a blind eye to the situation, for the moment.'

That was a new thought. Some of the hostility went out of the set of their shoulders. After a moment they both nodded.

‘Well,' said Charlie, getting up. ‘I'm not sure there's much
else I can do at the moment. There doesn't seem to be anything to be gained by hauling you both back to your parents, only to have you take off again. But' – he turned to Alan – ‘you are the older, and I hold you responsible for Katy's welfare. If there is anything going on here that makes you uneasy, you get in touch with me – right?'

This time there was no hesitation in the boy's nodded response. When they said goodbye they were both almost friendly.

As he walked back to the car Charlie mulled over his impressions of Alan Coughlan. From the little he had learnt from his father he had got the picture of a normal boyhood in the nineties: fairly good at schoolwork, fashionable interests of the young, worry about future employment prospects – generally happy, or at least contented, and socially concerned.

And then, suddenly, something different. There was something
more
about the Alan Coughlan he had just seen. There was a stretching out towards maturity – and he had the feeling that it was due to something that had happened. It embraced in embryo all the aspects that maturity does embrace – considered responses, acceptance of responsibility, and ability to rise above his own egotistical concerns. If only the boy had not held back at that moment when he seemed to be about to say something revelatory. Or perhaps, knowing young people, what he had been about to say might have seemed revelatory to the boy himself, but would have seemed utterly trivial or beside the point to an outsider. Still, Charlie itched to know what had made the boy take that giant leap towards adulthood.

He got into his car and directed it towards the Coughlan family home.

He was pleased when the door was opened by Alan's mother. It was his first sight of her. She was fair, plump, mid-forties or later – a comfortable, undemanding mother, and obviously a loving one, though perhaps not a strong one in a crisis. She presented a pleasant contrast and comparison to Katy's self-absorbed parent.

‘Oh – you must be Mr Peace. Come in. Have you got any news?'

Charlie went through to the living room – tidier now, indeed well scrubbed and polished. Knowing her son was all right had clearly brought out Mrs Coughlan's house-proud instincts.

‘Yes, I have,' he said, sitting down. ‘I've just come from talking to him and Katy Bourne. I don't think they're together – I mean not romantically involved in any way. They're working – and working very hard, I would guess – at a sort of hostel or refuge for homeless young people in Bramsey.'

Her face fell a little.

‘Oh dear. I don't like the sound of that. I couldn't bear it if Alan got into drugs and that. There's someone at the bank that happened to, and she felt she just lost her daughter – she said it was like another person being in the same body.'

Charlie held up his hand.

‘Don't jump the gun, Mrs Coughlan! We did investigate the place a while ago and there was no evidence of drugs. As far as we could see – and as far as I could judge today – the place provides a bit of stability for young people who've dropped out. I would think that Alan is doing a very useful job there.'

‘Yes, but – '

‘He's so young. I know. But some time before very long you were going to lose him, he was going to fly the nest.'

‘But
sixteen
!'

‘I know. Children grow up younger than in your day, Mrs Coughlan. They have to. They're getting adult messages thrown at them all the time from school, from the media – even from the pop songs. What do you think made him leave home?'

‘Well, we had this row . . . about tidying his room.'

Charlie had to stop himself raising his eyebrows.

‘And yet he seems to have been a happy, normal boy before.'

‘Oh, he
was
.' She seized on his words as if they were a self-justification. ‘Always happy, always helpful. Alan was
never a rebel. And Arthur has always been good to him. We tried to be sensible – made his girlfriends welcome, let him go on holidays with a friend, did everything we could for him money-wise, though that hasn't been easy these last few years, what with Arthur on the dole, and only the odd bit of extra money coming in. He's down the Railway at the moment, helping. They're doing a wedding.'

Something in her words struck Charlie, and as she chattered on he tried to work out what it was. He interrupted her.

‘Mrs Coughlan, is your husband Alan's natural father?'

It had been the words ‘Arthur has always been good to him'. As if he had somehow taken Alan on. Mrs Coughlan looked down into her lap.

‘No, he isn't. I married him when Alan was one.'

‘And did Alan find out about this? Was that what the row was really about?'

It was a moment before she replied.

‘Yes. Yes, it was.'

‘Would you tell me the name of Alan's real father?'

She looked up, visibly distressed.

‘Oh, surely we don't have to rake all that up again, do we? I know I'm old-fashioned, and it's a bit ridiculous in the circumstances, but I don't like talking about it – it embarrasses me, and – '

‘Was his name Ben Marchant?'

There was silence, and then she nodded.

‘Yes. Ben was Alan's father. I haven't seen him for years.'

And Charlie was willing to bet that Ben was also the man who Mrs Bourne hadn't seen since shortly before the birth of Katy.

Mrs Alicia Ingram was quiet during dinner. She had cooked for her husband the sort of varied and delicate meal she cooked when she had little dinner parties for people who mattered, or might matter, though perhaps with less care and attention, for Alicia Ingram was someone with a strict sense of priorities. But she had eaten it with an absorbed air, staring at the cloth, her fine red hair flowing down her shoulders in more abandon than usual, her ample (but not too) bosom held back from the strawberry granita, her little red mouth pursed.

Her husband knew exactly what she was going to say, and eventually she said it.

‘I'm going to go for the candidacy, Randolph.'

His mouth did not show the tiny smile of self-congratulation that he was feeling.

‘Are you, Alicia?' he said, feigning mild surprise. ‘I'd have thought you'd be wiser to wait for Dickie Mavors to announce his intention of retiring?'

‘Oh – ' she brushed this aside with a reddened spoon. ‘He should have gone years ago. The Bramsey ward needs someone with twenty times his energy.'

‘Well, it's your business not mine,' said Randolph, who was not even a member of the party, ‘but I'd have thought you'd best go carefully. There's plenty around who would like to take Dickie Mavors's place on Leeds City Council.'

He had done his duty – warned his wife. She was, he knew, not wonderfully well-liked in Bramsey Conservative circles. Her manner was a bit domineering, and though it
was a gross exaggeration to say, as some did, that she oozed condescension as Liz Taylor oozed diamonds, still the tone of voice in which she spoke to people, the way she looked at them, grated on many. The trouble was, she had a need not only to feel superior to people, but to show them just how superior she felt. And it was not merely social: she made it clear that she knew she had a better mind than anyone around.

The other trouble was, her mind was really quite ordinary.

But, duty done, Randolph could have fun.

‘And who do you expect to support you?'

‘Luke Fossett, for one.'

‘The secretary? But it was the secretary's job you were thinking of standing for only a couple of months ago. You said that Luke was useless.'

She brushed this aside with a wave of her spoon, which left red spots like bloodstains over the white tablecloth.

‘He's a senior constituency party member. His endorsement will carry weight. And I think Rebecca Thane will support me.'

Randolph pressed a button.

‘She has a first-rate brain, and would be a good person to have,' he said.

Pressing this button never failed to amuse him. His wife was unable to listen to praise of other people, particularly of their brains, without some sort of disclaimer. Sometimes there was a long pause, followed by ‘Ye-e-es'; at other times there was a long pause followed by a forthright statement of the person's weak points in Alicia's opinion. Or alternatively there would just be an endless pause.

Tonight, because she wanted to emphasize the strength of her support, Alicia made the pause shorter, followed by: ‘She's a very good sort of person,' which in her language was a mild put-down.

Randolph set down his spoon and wiped his mouth.

‘I'm not really sure why you're bothering,' he said.

Alicia threw up her chin.

‘I'd be a very good councillor.'

‘I'd be the last to say you wouldn't.' I wouldn't dare, he
thought to himself. ‘But what value has the nomination? It may not be true that there's no safe Conservative seat in the country, but I'd say it was true that there is no safe Conservative ward in Leeds at the moment.'

Alicia shook her head dismissively.

‘Oh, the voters will come back. Conservative Leeds is true blue. All they need is someone who will fight.'

‘Oh, you'll fight all right.'

The chin went up again. Then she thought for a moment.

‘What I'll need is an issue.'

Randolph Ingram mimed thought.

‘All the issues seem to be with the other side at the moment: the privatized water companies, the closing down of Barry Proctor School, the emergency ward closures in Leeds hospitals . . .'

He almost seemed to say all this with relish.

‘Don't be so defeatist, Randolph!' She pursed her lips, as she did when she was being crossed. ‘Something will come to me. It always does.' She closed her eyes for a moment or two. ‘Hasn't someone said something about a hostel for druggies?'

 • • • 

A boy who had come to the refuge the night before was proving a problem. Young man, rather. He was very large, but not in a physically threatening way. He was six feet tall, but his bulk was largely fat, and he made no aggressive gestures. Even Katy felt no nervousness about being alone with him. The amount he had eaten at supper – and he would have eaten more if there had been more – had shown how the fat had accumulated. While forking it in he had said that his name was Simon, but that was the only thing he said. He had shown no interest in the talk going on around him – the talk of the day's events, of the dossers and drunks known to all those who sleep rough, of police tactics that for some was harassment, for others an elaborate and good-natured game. He had sat dull-eyed through all that. Afterwards he had gone up to his bedroom (which was the biggest bedroom in number twenty-two), and apparently had gone
straight to bed, because Alan had gone up there to talk to another refugee and had heard snores.

In the morning Ben had talked to him in the hallway, as he was on his way out.

‘Do you beg in town?' he asked, in the neutral tones he was so good at.

‘Yeah,' mumbled the young man.

‘Where's your pitch?'

‘Near the station. Don't get much.'

‘Oh?'

‘They think I'm fat and don't need it. I need it
more
.'

The last was said fiercely. Ben nodded calmly.

‘You ought to talk to some of the others about techniques. I think your clothes are too good. It's obvious that you haven't been on the streets long.'

Simon looked down at his oversize coverings – grey flannels, a clean blue hand-knitted pullover, uncracked shoes – with apparently no thought beyond the identifiable one that time would cure that. He turned to go to the door.