Stone Cold Red Hot - страница 45

“Come in, she’s in here.”

The house was the mirror image of Mrs Clerkenwell’s as far as its layout went, the front rooms off to the right of the passageway with the stairs at the left. The hall was dark, lots of deep polished wood, an antique umbrella and hat stand on the left. The floor was brown tiles with geometric border of blue and white triangles, a Victorian style. The kitchen door at the far end of the hall was ajar and through it spilt a ruby wedge of light from the setting sun. Like warmth in the distance. It didn’t stretch the length of the hallway and when it suddenly faded everything was sombre and melancholy again.

I gestured for Roger to open the door and braced myself. I followed him in.

“There’s someone to see you,” he said and withdrew.

She was sitting in a high-backed armchair, a crocheted rug over her legs and one of those v-shaped support pillows behind her. She looked haggard, her skin tone was yellow, she had a mob-cap on with lacy edge and I wondered whether the treatment had caused her hair to fall out. Her features were small, neat, and she wore bi-focals on a chain. I could discern a slight resemblance to Jennifer in the thin nose and the small mouth but not to Roger who presumably took after his father. In her hands she held a little magazine, a puzzle book, full of crosswords and word-searches. She lay it down on her lap.

“Are you from The Children?”

“Pardon?”

“The Children of Christ?”

“No. Are you expecting someone?”

“Tomorrow, I think. They’re very good.” Her voice was clear.

“You’re still involved with the church?”

She stared at me for a moment. “I am dedicated. The Children are my spiritual family, my one true family, surpassing all others. When all about is corruption…”

She stopped. I don’t know whether she was quoting something or making a social observation. I was still standing but there was nowhere for me to sit. A dining chair near to Mrs Pickering was covered in clothes and I didn’t want to perch on the bed.

“No, I’m not from the church,” I said, “I’m a private detective. I’ve come to talk to you about Jennifer.”

I thought she was going to keel over. Her eyes fluttered and she went even paler. She began to shake her head as though I were a noise she could dislodge.

“Jennifer has been missing since 1976,” I said. “I’m trying to trace her.”

“Go away,” she said quickly, her mouth trembling.

“I’d like your help.”

“I don’t know where she is, she went to university, after that I don’t know.”

“She didn’t go to Keele,” I said calmly, “she never got there. That’s what she had been planning to do, that’s what you told people but it wasn’t the truth.”

“Get out of here. Roger,” her voice rose, quavering.

I crouched down, better to talk to her at the same level. “I know she was pregnant, did she tell you? It must have been a terrible shock.”

“Why are you asking me all this?” she cried, anguish in her voice.

“Roger wants me to find his sister, he wants it desperately enough to go against your wishes.”

“She went to Keele,” she repeated.

“She didn’t, they’ve checked the records.”

“Roger,” she began to scream.

“Where did she really go?”

She got up and took a few steps still calling, “Roger, Roger, Roger.”

“Did you ever hear from Jennifer?”

“Roger!”

The door flew open and Roger came in.

I stood up. I know when I’ve overstayed my welcome. “I’ll wait in the kitchen,” I said to him.

It was quarter of an hour before Roger joined me. I stared at the notice-board with its neat list of names and numbers, clinic appointment cards and money off coupons. I considered ways to get Mrs Pickering to talk to me but couldn’t come up with anything that would get me past her hysteria. Why was she so agitated at the mention of Jennifer? Surely after twenty odd years the reaction to Jennifer’s pregnancy would have softened a little? Jennifer must have told them about the baby, that much seemed evident. Was Mrs Pickering’s illness affecting her emotional state? But according to Roger he’d had the same response a year previously.

I stared out of the back window to the house opposite where Frances Delaney had grown up and I worked out which had been her room. The stone wall separating the gardens was substantial, about six foot high, darkened by the smoke from the city before the Clean Air Act came in and they sand-blasted everything.