Wednesday's Child (20 page)

At that moment, Mrs Johnson came in with a tray bearing cups and saucers, her best china, by the look of it, delicate pieces with rose patterns and gold around the rims, and a teapot covered by a quilted pink cosy. She set this down on the low polished-wood table in front of the settee.

“What's wrong?” she asked her husband.

He glanced at Susan. “Everything's changed, that's what. Oh, it's been going on for years, I know, but I just can't seem to get used to it, especially as I'm home most of the time now.”

“He got made redundant,” said Mrs Johnson, whispering as if she were telling someone a neighbour had cancer. “Had a good job as a clerk in the accounts department at British Home Stores, but they had staff cutbacks. I ask you, after nearly thirty years' loyal service. And how's a man to get a job at his age? It's young 'uns they want these days.” Her accent slipped as she expressed her disgust.

“Now that's enough of that, Edie,” he said, then looked at Susan again. “I'm as tolerant as the next man—I don't want you to think I'm not—but I'd say things have come to a pretty pass when you can buy all the poppadoms and samosas you want at the corner shop but you can't get a packet of Fox's blooming Custard Creams. What'll it be next? that's what I ask myself. Baked beans? Milk? Butter?
Tea
?”

“Well, you'll have to go to Taylor's in future won't you?” “Taylor's! Taylor's was bought out by Gandhi's or some such lot months back, woman. Shows how much shopping you do.”

“I go to the supermarket down on the main road.” She looked at Susan. “It's a Sainsbury's, you know, very nice.”

“Anyway,” said Mr Johnson, “the lass doesn't want to hear about our problems, does she? She's got a job to do.” He sat down and they all waited quietly as Mrs Johnson poured the tea.

“We do have some ginger biscuits,” she said to Susan, “if you'd like one.”

“No thanks. Tea'll be fine, Mrs Johnson, honest.”

“Where do you come from, lass?” asked Mr Johnson. “Sheffield.”

“I thought it were Yorkshire, but I couldn't quite place it.

Sheffield, eh.” He nodded, and kept on nodding, as if he couldn't think of anything else to say.

“I'm sorry to be calling at a time like this,” Susan said, accepting her cup and saucer from Mrs Johnson, “but it's important we get as much information as we can as soon as possible.” She placed the tea carefully at the edge of the low table and took out her notebook. In a crucial interrogation, either she would have someone along to do that, or she would be taking the notes while Banks asked the questions, but the Johnsons were hardly suspects, and all she hoped to get was a few names of their son's friends and acquaintances. “When did you last see Carl?” she asked first.

“Now then, when was it, love?” Mr Johnson asked his wife. “Seven years? Eight?”

“More like nine or ten, I'd say.”

“Nine years?” Susan grasped at a number. “You hadn't seen him in all that time?”

“Broke his mother's heart, Carl did,” said Mr Johnson, with the incongruous smile hovering as he spoke. “He never had no time for us.”

“Now that's not true,” said Mrs Johnson. “He fell in with bad company, that's what happened. He was always too easily led, our Carl.”

“Aye, and look where it got him.”

“Stop it, Bert, don't talk like that. You know I don't like it when you talk like that.”

Susan coughed and they both looked at her shamefacedly. “Sorry,” said Mrs Johnson. “I know we weren't close, but he
was
our son.”

“Yes,” said Susan. “What I was wondering was if you could tell me anything about him, his friends, what he liked to do.”

“We don't really know,” said Mrs Johnson, “do we, Bert?” Her husband shook his head. “It was nine years ago, I remember now. His twenty-first birthday. That was the last time we saw him.”

“What happened?”

“There was a local lass,” Mr Johnson explained. “Our Carl got her … well, you know. Anyway, instead of doing the honourable thing, he said it was her problem. She came round, right at his birthday party, and told us. We had a barney and Carl stormed out. We never saw him again. He sent us a postcard about a year later, just to let us know he was all right.”

“Where was it from?”

“London. It was a picture of Tower Bridge.”

“Always did have a temper, did Carl,” Mrs Johnson said. “What was the girl's name?” Susan asked.

Mr Johnson frowned. “Beryl, if I remember correctly,” he said. “I think she moved away years back, though.”

“Her mum and dad still live round the corner,” said Mrs Johnson. Susan got their address and made a note to call on them later.

“Did Carl keep in touch at all?”

“No. He wasn't even in much after he turned sixteen, but there's not been a dicky-bird since that postcard. He'd be thirty when he … when he … wouldn't he?”

“Yes,” Susan said.

“It's awful young to die,” Mrs Johnson muttered. “I blame bad company. Even when he was at school, whenever he got in trouble it was because somebody put him up to it, got him to do the dirty work. When he got caught shoplifting that time, it was that what's-his-name, you know, Bert, the lad with the spotty face.”

“They all had spotty faces,” said Mr Johnson, grinning at Susan.

“You know who I mean. Robert Naylor, that's the one. He was behind it all. He always looked up to the wrong people did our Carl. Always trusted the wrong ones. I'm sure he wasn't
bad
in himself, just too easily led. He always seemed to have this … this
fascination
for bad 'uns. He liked to watch those old James Cagney films on telly. Just loved them, he did. What was his favourite, Bert? You know, that one where James Cagney keeps getting these headaches, the one where he loves his mother.”

“White Heat.”
Mr Johnson looked at Susan. “You know the one. ‘Top of the world, Ma!'”

Susan didn't, but she nodded anyway.

“That's the one,” said Mrs Johnson. “Loved that film, our Carl did. I blame the telly myself for a lot of the violence that goes on these days, I really do. They can get away with anything now.”

“Did you know any of his other friends?” Susan asked her.

“Only when he was at school. He just wasn't home much after he left school.”

“You don't know the names of anyone else he went around with?”

“Sorry, dearie, no. It's so long ago I just can't remember. It's a miracle Robert Naylor came back to me, and that's only because of the shoplifting. Had the police round then, we did.”

“What about this Robert Naylor? Where does he live?”

Mrs Johnson shook her head. Susan made a note of the name anyway. It might be worth trying to track him down. If he was such a “bad 'un” he might even have a record by now. There didn't seem anything else to be gained from talking to the Johnsons, Susan thought. Best nip round the corner and find out about the girl Carl got pregnant, then head back to Eastvale. She finished her tea and stood up to leave.

“Nay, lass,” said Mr Johnson. “Have another cup.”

“No, I really must be going. Thank you very much.”

“Well,” he said, “I suppose you've got your job to do.”

“Thank you for your time,” Susan said, and opened the door.

“You can be sure of one thing, you mark my words,” said Mrs Johnson.

Susan paused in the doorway. “Yes?”

“There'll be someone behind this had an influence on our Carl. Put him up to things. A bad 'un. A
real
bad 'un, with no conscience.” And she nodded, as if to emphasize her words.

“I'll remember that,” said Susan, then walked out into the cobbled street where bed-sheets, shirts and underclothes flapped on a breeze that carried the fragrances of the east.

III

The man sitting under a graphic poster about the perils of drunken driving had the irritated, pursed-lipped look of an accountant
whose figures won't add up right. When he saw Gristhorpe coming, he got to his feet sharply.

“What are you going to do about it, then?” he asked.

Gristhorpe looked over to Sergeant Rowe, who raised his eyebrows and shook his head, then he led the man to one of the downstairs interview rooms. He was in his mid-thirties, Gristhorpe guessed, dressed neatly in a grey suit, white shirt and blue and red striped tie, fair hair combed back, wire-framed glasses, and his chin thrust out. His complexion had a scrubbed and faintly ruddy complexion that Gristhorpe always, rightly or wrongly, associated with the churchy crowd, and he smelled of Pears soap. When they sat down, Gristhorpe asked him what the problem was.

“My car's been stolen, that's what. Didn't the sergeant tell you?”

“You're here about a stolen car?”

“That's right. It's outside.”

Gristhorpe rubbed his brow. “I'm afraid I don't understand. Can you explain it from the beginning?”

The man sighed and looked at his watch. “Look,” he said, “I've been here twenty-two minutes already, first waiting to see the sergeant back there, then explaining everything to him. Are you telling me I have to go through it all again? Because if you are, you've got a nerve. I had trouble enough getting this time off from the office in the first place. Why don't you ask the other policeman what happened?”

Gristhorpe kept his silence throughout the tirade. He was used to impatient, precise and fastidious people like Mr Parkinson and found it best to let them carry on until they ran out of steam. “I'd rather hear it from you, sir,” he replied.

“Oh, very well. I've been away for a while. When I—”

“Since when?”

“When what?”

“When did you go away?”

“Last Monday morning, a week ago. As I was saying, I left my car in the garage as usual, then I—”

“What do you mean, ‘as usual'?”

“Exactly what I say. Now if—”

“You mean you were in the habit of doing this?”

“I think that's what ‘as usual' means, don't you, Inspector?”

“Carry on.” Gristhorpe didn't bother to correct him over rank. If the car turned out to be a useful lead, it would be important to find out how many people knew about Parkinson's habit of leaving his car for days at a time, and why he did so, but for now it was best to let him finish.

“When I returned this morning, it was exactly as I had left it, except for one thing.”

“Yes?”

“The mileage. I always keep a careful record of how many miles I've done on each journey. I find it's important these days, with the price of petrol the way it is. Anyway, when I left, the mileometer stood at 7655. I know this for a fact because I wrote it down in the log I keep. When I got back it read 7782. Now, that's a difference of one hundred and twenty-seven miles, Inspector. Someone has driven my car one hundred and twenty-seven miles in my absence. How do you explain that?”

Gristhorpe scratched his bristly chin. “It certainly sounds as if someone borrowed it. If you—”

“Borrowed?”
echoed Parkinson. “That implies I gave someone permission. I did no such thing. Someone stole my car, Inspector.
Stole
it. The fact that they returned it is irrelevant.”

“Mm, you've got a point,” said Gristhorpe. “Were there any signs of forced entry? Scratches around the door, that kind of thing?”

“There were scratches at the bottom of the chassis I'm positive weren't there before, but none at all around the door or windows. I imagine that today's criminal has more sophisticated means of entry than the wire coat-hanger some fools are reduced to when they lock themselves out of their cars?”

“You imagine right,” said Gristhorpe. “Keys aren't hard to come by. And garages are easy to get into. What make is the car?”

“Make. I don't see—”

“For our records.”

“Very well. It's a Toyota. I find the Japanese perfectly reliable when it comes to cars.”

“Of course. And what colour?”

“Dark blue. Look, you can save us both a lot of time if you come and have a look yourself. It's parked right outside.”

“Fine.” Gristhorpe stood up. “Let's go.”

Parkinson led. As he walked, he stuck his hands in his pockets and jingled keys and loose change. Outside the station, opposite the market square, Gristhorpe sniffed the air. His experienced dalesman's nose smelled rain. Already, clouds were blowing in from the northwest. He also smelled pub grub from the Queen's Arms, steak-and-kidney pie if he was right, and he realized he was getting hungry.

Parkinson's car was, indeed, a dark blue Toyota, illegally parked right in front of the police station.

“Look at that,” Parkinson said, pointing to scratched paintwork on the bottom of the chassis, just behind the left front wheel. “Careless driving that is. Must have caught against a stone or something. Well? Aren't you going to have a look inside?”

“The fewer people do that, the better, sir,” said Gristhorpe, looking to see what stones and dirt were trapped in the tread of the tires.

Parkinson frowned. “What on earth do you mean by that?” Gristhorpe turned to face him. “You say you left last Monday?” “Yes.”

“What time?”

“I took the eight-thirty flight from Leeds and Bradford.”

“To where?”

“I don't see as it's any of your business, but Brussels. EEC business.”

Gristhorpe nodded. They were standing in the middle of the pavement and passers-by had to get around them somehow. A woman with a pram asked Parkinson to step out of the way so she could get by. A teenager with cropped hair and a tattoo on his cheek swore at him. Parkinson was clearly uncomfortable talking in the street. A mark of his middle-class background, Gristhorpe thought. The working classes—both urban and rural—had always felt quite comfortable standing and chatting in the street. But Parkinson hopped from foot to foot, glancing irritably from the corners of his eyes as people brushed and jostled past them to get by. His glasses had slipped down his nose, and a stray lock of hair fell over his right eye.