The Villain’s Daughter (7 page)

Iris felt her heart begin to hammer. The Weasel? She sensed that this might not be the time to tell the truth. Instead, she tried to look nonplussed. Pretending to think about it, she furrowed her brow. ‘Oh,
him
,’ she eventually managed to say. ‘You mean the old tramp, the smelly bloke? He was only asking me the time.’

‘And?’

She shrugged. ‘That was it.’

A hard edge entered his voice. ‘It doesn’t take that long to ask the time.’

Iris stared up at him, her hands clenching into two tight fists in her pockets. She was still scared, but now she was oddly uplifted too. If he was so concerned about what the old man had said then maybe there was some truth in it. ‘I don’t know. He was going on about how busy the place was. I think he was trying to tap me for a few quid. I-I wasn’t taking much notice. I just wanted to get rid of him.’

Chris Street gave her a long, hard look and then his features gradually relaxed. ‘That’s all right then,’ he said smoothly. He reached out and gave her a friendly pat on the arm. ‘I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t bothering you. He has a habit of making up all kinds of stories. I’m afraid old Jenks isn’t all there in the head department.’

And it took one to know one, Iris thought. ‘Right.’

Finally, he stood aside. ‘Well, take care of yourself.’

Iris looked into his cold eyes and didn’t like what she saw. ‘Thank you. I will.’

Kathleen, with all those crazy Catholic notions of hers, had blamed herself, had believed it was all her fault, but it wasn’t - unless loving someone was a sin. He scowls. The Church, he thinks, has a lot to answer for. But he’d agreed to let them go
. . .
if not completely. For the past nineteen years he’s been paying someone to keep track of their movements, to deliver one treasured photograph of Iris every year. He deserves that one small consolation, doesn’t he?

It was Thursday morning and time was dragging by. Iris found herself constantly raising her head to look at the clock on the wall, frustrated by how slowly the red second hand was revolving, by how much longer she would have to wait. She was counting down the hours until her appointment with Jenks and it wasn’t doing much for her concentration. William Grand had already returned two letters with an embarrassing number of typos.

‘Er, sorry, I’m afraid there are . . .’ He was not a man who liked to complain and had passed the sheets over with stumbling apologies, as if the fault was somehow his rather than hers.

The letters were important, both concerning an increasingly complicated repatriation. The dead man, being held in cold storage downstairs, had been with them for two months now, his body at the centre of an acrimonious family row. The wife wanted Connor Hills returned to Ireland, the son to have him buried in England. Solicitors had become involved and irate letters were flying back and forth.

At one o’clock, the corrections having been made, Iris went to the kitchen and put the kettle on. She retrieved her tuna sandwich from the fridge, peeled off the plastic wrapper and stared at it. Anxiety had blunted her hunger. She hadn’t eaten since the half slice of toast she had forced down at breakfast and butterflies were flapping in her stomach. She hadn’t told anyone about her meeting with Jenks, not even Luke. Not that she’d had the opportunity. He hadn’t rolled in until after midnight and by then she’d already been in bed. A year ago she’d have given him hell - he hadn’t even bothered to call her - but instead she had closed her eyes tight and pretended to be asleep.

Alice Avery came into the kitchen with a tentative smile. She seemed, if it was possible, more jittery than usual. ‘No Toby today?’ she said, her eyes darting left and right as if he might suddenly jump out and start tormenting her again.

Iris, glad of the distraction, raised her brows and grinned. ‘Don’t worry. He’s probably sleeping it off.’

‘Sorry?’

‘He went clubbing last night, out on the town with the delightful Danny Street. He wouldn’t be my choice for a dancing partner but hey, there’s no accounting for taste.’

‘No,’ Alice said.

There was a short silence.

As that conversation clearly wasn’t going anywhere, Iris tried a different tack. ‘Keeping busy?’

Alice sat down. ‘So-so.’ As she placed her hands on the tabletop, Iris noticed that they were trembling.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine.’

Iris frowned. She neither looked nor sounded fine. Usually they got on pretty well; they weren’t exactly bosom buddies but had developed what she liked to think of as a decent working relationship. At the very least, Alice was usually fairly relaxed with her. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ she replied with unusual brusqueness. But then, having second thoughts, she shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Could I ask you something?’ It was a purely rhetorical question so Iris didn’t bother to reply. ‘Have you ever . . . I mean . . . have you ever done . . . have you ever . . . I don’t mean anything illegal but . . .’

Iris waited patiently, willing her to spit it out. She didn’t believe her capable of anything even faintly immoral; Alice was one of the most upright people she had ever met. After a few seconds had passed, she gently urged her on. ‘But?’

‘Well, have you ever done something that you knew was—’

Unfortunately, William Grand chose that very moment to walk into the kitchen. Iris silently cursed him for his bad timing. He nodded at them both, switched on the kettle and hovered while it boiled again. Unlike Gerald, he didn’t consider tea-making to be part of Iris’s duties and always made his own. He looked over his shoulder at Alice. ‘Everything all right with Mr Bayle?’

She lowered her head, avoiding his gaze. ‘Yes, all done. He’s ready for viewing.’

‘Good, that’s good. I’ll have him moved.’ He paused as if about to say more, gave her an odd look and then turned abruptly back to the kettle.

Iris glanced from one to the other, sensing an atmosphere. Alice was blushing bright red and she wondered, not for the first time, what made her tick. The woman must be in her early forties, but still had all the awkwardness of a teenager. However, Toby was right - there was a certain frisson between her and William Grand. Well, so what if there was? Alice could do worse. If she liked the quiet sort, then William wasn’t a bad bet. Iris made a brief study of him, ticking off the usual boxes: he was the right age, early forties, a bit on the grey side but nice-looking enough, solvent and interested.

Maybe, in the interests of love, she should make herself scarce.

But before she had the chance, Alice grabbed her mug, muttered some garbled words about having things to do and rushed back downstairs.

William, who was looking rather pink himself, departed shortly after.

Iris stared down at her uneaten sandwich and sighed. The course of true love, as she was more than aware, rarely ran smoothly. Should she go after Alice? She decided not. For one, the contents of the basement always made her feel uncomfortable and for two, the moment had passed. Whatever Alice had been trying to say, she was clearly not in the mood to proceed with it now.

Iris dumped the sandwich in the bin, and with nothing else to do went back to work.

The afternoon rolled by with more speed than the morning. Gerald Grand was back in the office and, like the devil, believed in making work for idle hands. As such, she had a heap of filing dumped on her desk. The phone was busy too, a response perhaps to the publicity over Lizzie Street’s funeral. By four o’clock there were three new funerals booked in with all the accompanying arrangements to sort out. There were also a couple of viewings that fortunately passed with none of the drama of the last one. With bereaved relatives to deal with, flowers to order and plenty of paperwork, Iris didn’t have time to dwell on her own worries.

When five-thirty came around, she still had an hour to kill before her meeting with Jenks. She could go home and wait, but was worried that Luke might be there; it was unlikely - he never usually got back before seven - but not impossible. And if he was there, how was she going to explain why she needed to go out again? If she told him the truth he would try to talk her out of it or, at best, insist on going with her. And she didn’t want that. This was something she had to do alone.

Iris gazed up at the two high windows. For privacy’s sake, the lower ones were obscured so no one could see in. Snow had started to fall, drifting gently down from the sky. She watched as the flakes fell lightly against the panes, clinging briefly to the glass before melting away. Stay or go? If she went, she’d only be walking around in the cold for the next hour or so. Better to stay here in the warm. There was, much as it grieved her, plenty of filing left to do.

 

Iris strode briskly down Market Road, hearing the thin layer of ice crunch under her boots. There was still ten minutes before her appointment, but having worried so much about being early, she was now afraid of being late. She followed the road down to the large square where a general market was held every Saturday. In the centre, known to the locals as the Monny, was the War Monument, a tall, concrete obelisk flanked on all sides by a flight of steps.

Despite the weather, a few drunks were lounging around on the steps, either disinclined to give up their regular spots or simply too inebriated to move. Iris slowly circled round, making sure that Jenks wasn’t there. She glanced at her watch. Still eight minutes to go. Withdrawing to the north side, she shook out her umbrella and went to stand in the covered area outside the cinema, joining a couple of other girls who were probably waiting for their dates to arrive.

From here she could easily monitor the two entrances to the square and she kept her eyes peeled while her thoughts began to wander. It had never been entirely clear to her why her father had left. Mild interrogations of her mother - she always got upset, even tearful, if Iris pressed too hard - resulted only in the repetitive and by now almost word-perfect response: ‘Things weren’t working out between us, darling. It was no one’s fault, but we decided it was better to split up.’ None of which adequately explained why he hadn’t been in touch again. Some men could leave their children without a backward glance, but not him - he had not been the type, she was certain of it. Iris could still feel her small hand held securely in his. He would never have abandoned her like that. There was something she hadn’t being told. And Jenks, surely, had confirmed that suspicion last night. Why else would he have approached her?

Iris, feeling the cold, stamped her feet on the ground and made another fast survey of the square. Unlike Luke, she never felt nervous when she was walking around this area alone. The difference was that his head was full of horror stories about the East End - most of them historical - and hers full of nice, safe memories from her childhood. In truth, neither of them was right: he was too cautious and she was probably too careless.

This evening, however, she couldn’t see any danger in what she was doing. There were plenty of other people, mainly commuters cutting through the square on their way home. Some were walking straight across, others stopping off for a drink at the pub on the corner. The Hare & Hounds was doing brisk business; as the door opened and closed, a brief snatch of the Stereophonics floated out across the air.