The Cuckoo Child (37 page)
Corky laughed dutifully. ‘No, none of them things, mister,’ he said. ‘I’m lookin’ for Constable McNamara; is he about?’
‘Well he ain’t in the station, that’s for sure,’ the sergeant said. He turned away from the counter and raised his voice. ‘Jenkins! Where’s Ollie this morning?’
A door behind the long counter opened and a head popped round it, a young head with a lot of curly light brown hair, and a mouth which was chewing vigorously. ‘Who wants him?’ the head enquired, spraying crumbs. He saw Corky and grinned in a friendly way. ‘Oh, it’s you, lad, is it? All the kids like old Ollie ’cos his tunic pockets is always full of aniseed balls and gobstoppers. He hands ’em out to any kid what looks hungry, so they say. Eh, wharritis to be a scuffer wi’ a private income!’
‘Private income?’ Corky chirped up. ‘Scuffers don’t have private incomes, do they?’
The face grinned more broadly than ever. ‘Not as a rule, worse luck,’ he said cheerfully. ‘But Ollie’s an only child and a bachelor, and first his old man died and left him a right nice little cottage in the country, then his old uncle – his mam’s elder brother – what didn’t have no kids of his own, upped and died as well. He were real well-to-do and left every penny of it to lucky old Ollie. So no wonder he’s always smiling and cheerful, and no wonder he give sweets to the kiddies.’
‘Gosh,’ Corky said, rather inadequately. So that was how Ollie explained his sudden affluence to his fellow officers. It was pretty clever when you came to think about it. Ollie could spend like a sailor and no one would ever ask where the money came from because they thought they knew. But, useful though the information was, it was not what he had come to seek. ‘Well, I ain’t after sweets, all the same,’ he said, rather reproachfully. ‘I just want to know where I can find Mr McNamara.’
‘At home in bed, I guess,’ the face announced. ‘He were on a double shift last night, so he’ll be off all day. Anything anyone else can do?’
‘No thanks, I really want to speak to Mr McNamara,’ Corky said. ‘To tell you the truth, I was supposed to do a message for Miss Grieves, from the jeweller’s shop in Church Street, only when I went in there she’d not come in to work and – and someone said they thought they’d seen her talkin’ to the constable last evening, so I thought it were possible Mr McNamara might know where she’d gone.’
Both policemen shook their heads. ‘No, I were on duty when Ollie signed off this morning and he said nothing to me,’ the head said. ‘Sorry, lad; can’t help you.’ With that he withdrew, closing the door behind him.
Corky moved away from the counter. He was halfway to the door when a thought struck him and he turned; the sergeant was writing laboriously in a large red ledger. ‘’Scuse me, sarge,’ Corky said respectfully. ‘But I dunno where Mr McNamara lodges. Could you give me his address?’
The sergeant looked up, tapping his teeth thoughtfully with the pencil he held and staring rather too hard at Corky. ‘Now just what would you be wantin’ with Mr McNamara’s address?’ he said suspiciously. ‘Scuffers needs their sleep and some time to theirselves – goodness knows, we get little enough of it – so you just scarper, young man. Mr McNamara will be in tomorrow, no doubt; you can talk to him then.’
‘Fair enough,’ Corky said cheerfully. It was a nuisance, but the reply had been the one he had expected and since it seemed likely that Mr McNamara would spend most of the day in bed there would be little point in lurking outside his lodgings. Besides, every kid in the neighbourhood would be able to pass on the constable’s address.
Corky found Nick leaning against a lamp post, newspaper in hand, and told him what had happened in the police station. Nick nodded and folded his paper, tucking it under his arm. ‘Well done. Tell you what, you say any kid in the neighbourhood can tell you McNamara’s address. Go and get the information while I stroll along to Rathbone’s – they could be keeping Emma there – then you can nip off to the churchyard and check for clues. I dare say you won’t find any – clues, I mean – but at least we’ll have tried; we’ve got to explore every avenue, as they say.’
‘Right,’ Corky said briskly. He went off and returned before Nick had walked a hundred yards to give him the address he wanted. ‘Danby Street is just off Heyworth Street, not very far from Rathbone’s shop,’ he told his friend. ‘So if you walk up and down there, casual like, then I’ll find you easy enough when I’ve checked out the churchyard.’
Nick agreed to this and Corky set off at a fast run. He reached the churchyard wall, slithered over and was halfway across when he saw a small figure in a print dress, trowel in hand. She appeared to be digging in the same grave where he had first met Dot. Cursing silently to himself, Corky dropped on all fours and crawled towards the church along the path they had made, feeling extremely undignified. But better the loss of a bit of dignity, he told himself, than having a small child poking around.
He reached the shelter of the church’s crumbling walls and stood up, trying to ignore the scratches and stings inflicted on him by the foliage he had crawled through, and was immediately rewarded. One glance was enough to tell him that someone had not only been here but had been successful, for the triangular piece of stone lay on the ground and Corky knew that, had the necklace still been in its hiding place, Emma would have pushed the stone back and lowered the curtain of ivy which was still hooked back against the rest of the wall. Corky looked around him. Had Emma been surprised here by someone and taken captive? He did not think so. There were no signs of a struggle and Emma had not disturbed the tall grasses which grew inside the walls, but had woven her way between them as Corky himself had done. Had a stranger been present, he was sure there would have been an area of broken and trodden grass. He went over to the crevice and peered within. Because it was daylight he had no torch, but even so, he could see inside tolerably well. There was nothing. Then he noticed a long groove in the dust and, beside it, a sort of swirl. Grinning delightedly, he picked up the triangular piece of stone and wedged it back into place, then untangled the ivy and let that, too, return to its former position. The marks in the dust, slight though they were, had told him a good deal. The straight groove was where Emma had pushed some sort of stick into the crevice and the swirl simply must be the necklace, moving the dust as it was brought up from the depths.
Corky stepped back, dusting his hands; he had something to tell Nick now! He was sure it must have been Emma who had got the necklace from its hiding place, for had not Dot discovered one of the magnets from the fishing game outside Emma’s back door? And she had not been attacked in the churchyard, so it was just possible that Rathbone and McNamara did not know even now who held the necklace. If this was so, he did not think they would have harmed Emma; they would hold on to her as a bargaining point. They would offer to release her in return for the necklace because, of course, they would think that that was the only thing which connected them to the robbery and subsequent murder. They could not possibly know that Dot had been hiding in the dustbin; that she would tell her story to the authorities just as soon as Emma was safe once more.
‘What’s you doing here, boy?’
Corky had heard of people jumping out of their skin but this was the first time it had happened to him and very unpleasant it was. His entire body prickled with shock, as though an electric current had been passed through it, and his sturdy Redwood Grange boots must, he felt, have been six inches from the earth. Heart hammering, he turned to confront the speaker. It was the small girl in the pink print dress; what had Dot told him her name was? Sadie.
‘You don’t oughta sneak up behind fellers,’ Corky said reproachfully. ‘What are
you
doing here, come to that?’
you
doing here, come to that?’
‘Followin’ you; only I didn’t crawl an’ make me knees all green and get stung by the nettles,’ Sadie said, glancing scornfully at Corky’s trousers. He looked down and saw that the kid was right: crawling had certainly done his clothing no favours, but if he let his things dry off, no doubt a good brushing would set all to rights. ‘Go on, boy, what are you doing here?’
Corky shrugged rather helplessly. What gimlet eyes the kid had for a small child. But he did not intend to tell her what he had been doing, innocent though it had been. He said repressively: ‘I were looking for a pal; I know she comes to the churchyard sometimes and I just wondered if she might have come in here. It’s dangerous though; we neither of us should be in here, so let’s get back out into the sunshine.’ As they made their way out of what remained of the building, he added: ‘Do you know Dot? She’s the pal I were hopin’ to meet here.’
‘I know everyone who comes to the churchyard,’ Sadie said complacently. ‘I’m here often, I am. Dot hid things here, I know she did, so that’s what I do. And she liked the little baby’s grave in the corner over there . . .’ She waved a small and grubby hand in the direction of Rhiannon’s resting place. ‘Were you going to surprise Dot, like I surprised you? Was that why you were crawling instead of walking upright?’
Corky seized on this thankfully. ‘That’s right. You’re a clever kid, you are,’ he said admiringly. ‘Who else have you seen in the churchyard?’
By now, they were out in the sunlight once more, but Sadie did not answer him until they had reached the grave in which she had been so industriously digging. Corky saw that she had planted a number of rather weary-looking pansies on the tiny mound and had decorated the small stone with wreaths of ivy and some slightly overblown red roses. ‘I say, you’ve made this rare pretty, young lady.’
Sadie beamed at him. ‘Yes I have, haven’t I?’ she agreed. ‘Now let me see, who’ve I seen in this churchyard? Well, there was Dot, she’s really nice. She plays with me when she has time. And there’s the old tramp what lives round the back of the church somewhere. Then there’s the very, very old vicar, only he’s got a key to the padlock and I hid when I saw him because he brung in that big fat policeman an’ I don’t like him, even though he’ll give you a sweet if you ask.’
Corky felt the hair rise up on the nape of his neck. So Constable McNamara had been here! ‘When was this, Sadie?’ he asked, keeping his voice flat and unexcited with considerable difficulty. ‘When did you last see the fat policeman? In here, I mean?’
Sadie flopped down on the grass and began to pat another pansy plant into place. ‘I’m not sure . . . a week, two weeks ago, I should think?’ she said vaguely. ‘They weren’t here long and I think the old vicar was cross with the policeman ’cos I heard him say no thieves were likely to come rooting round in an empty churchyard and that there were no hiding places for lost treasure inside the church itself, ’cos all the – the ’terior had gone long since.’
‘I see. And you’ve not seen anyone else? No shopkeepers? There’s a butcher on Heyworth Street who’s friendly with Constable McNamara – the fat policeman – I s’pose you’ve not seen him?’
Sadie shook her head positively; she was, thought Corky, a very positive child. ‘No, no one else,’ she assured him. ‘And I come here most days.’
‘Well, thanks very much, Sadie . . . you are Sadie, aren’t you?’ Corky said. ‘Dot told me she’d met a very nice girl in the churchyard called Sadie, so I reckon she must have meant you.’
Sadie beamed at him. ‘That’s right, I’m Sadie,’ she agreed. She looked at him hopefully. ‘Daddy’s gardener says you should always put young plants in with water, but I’d got nothing to carry it in and besides, the tap is miles away. I suppose . . . I suppose you’ll be too busy to stay and give me a hand?’
Corky agreed that this was so but promised to come back another day. ‘Though there’s bound to be a change in the weather soon, and then the rain will do the job for you,’ he told her. ‘’Bye, Sadie; see you soon.’
Elated with his discovery, Corky stood by the wall until no one was looking his way, then climbed over it and set off for his rendezvous with Nick.
Nick had spent an uneventful time strolling up and down Heyworth Street. He had actually turned into Danby Street a couple of times and checked McNamara’s lodgings but there had been no sign of life there. The downstairs curtains were drawn back but the room he assumed to be what landladies referred to as ‘the best front’ had its heavy dark blue curtains drawn across and Nick guessed that this was where McNamara slept. As for the butcher’s shop, it was very busy indeed with housewives buying their weekend joint and even the odd child or two entering, though a trifle apprehensively, with a list of messages for its parent.
When Corky came into view, Nick greeted him thankfully and steered him into the nearest café where they shared a pot of tea whilst Corky told Nick everything that had happened since they had parted. Nick listened attentively, then gave it as his opinion that Corky should take over the task of watching for McNamara whilst he, Nick, visited the office of the
Liverpool Echo
. ‘I’ve been using it as a base since I came to Liverpool, and I know the people there pretty well. Believe me, if anything of interest occurs in the city, then the journalists from the
Echo
will be on to it like a pack of wolves,’ he said. ‘News is news and if you ask me, newspapers are likely to get hold of a good story even ahead of the police. If I go in and tell the fellows that the pretty young girl who inherited Mitchell & Grieves from her grandfather has gone missing in mysterious circumstances, then everyone, even old Cartwright, who’s only a stringer for the
News Chronicle
after all, will be on the lookout. I don’t know that I dare hint at police corruption at this stage, but when I do, I can tell you, nothing will stop journalists from trying to get the story. We always co-operate with the old bill when we can, though they don’t always reciprocate, but in a case like this the press will be prepared to keep it under their hats until they’ve got the full story.’
Liverpool Echo
. ‘I’ve been using it as a base since I came to Liverpool, and I know the people there pretty well. Believe me, if anything of interest occurs in the city, then the journalists from the
Echo
will be on to it like a pack of wolves,’ he said. ‘News is news and if you ask me, newspapers are likely to get hold of a good story even ahead of the police. If I go in and tell the fellows that the pretty young girl who inherited Mitchell & Grieves from her grandfather has gone missing in mysterious circumstances, then everyone, even old Cartwright, who’s only a stringer for the
News Chronicle
after all, will be on the lookout. I don’t know that I dare hint at police corruption at this stage, but when I do, I can tell you, nothing will stop journalists from trying to get the story. We always co-operate with the old bill when we can, though they don’t always reciprocate, but in a case like this the press will be prepared to keep it under their hats until they’ve got the full story.’
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