Flesh And Blood (36 page)

‘Until now.’

Bryan picked up his tea but didn’t drink it.

‘Is it important?’ he asked.

‘Now I don’t honestly know,’ Elder said. ‘But to Susan Blacklock it was.’

As Elder was leaving, a white van was drawing up outside to take away the departing lodger’s things.

‘If you do find out anything,’ Bryan said, ‘about Susan, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know.’

‘I will,’ Elder said as the two men shook hands. ‘And I’ll listen out for you on – what was it? –
Back Row
?’

‘
Back Row
,
Front Row
, all the same.’

Bryan raised a hand as Elder got into his car and then pitched in to help clear the mess from his hall.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Helen Blacklock, eyes bleary from sleep, struggled to focus on Elder’s face looming above her in the doorway. She was wearing the lime-green uniform she wore at the shop on the quay.

‘I’m sorry, I must have dropped off after work. What did you say?’

‘I said, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘What?’

‘The truth.’

It was relatively early, eight thirty at best, a late summer evening with, as yet, no taint of autumn. Whitby Abbey, as Elder topped the gradient of Blue Bank, had stood out clear and precise against the sea.

Ice had all but melted in the glass Helen had filled with tonic and a splash of gin; the butts of two cigarettes were stubbed out in the ashtray; a magazine lay open and upside down on the floor where it had slid from her hands.

‘I’m going to have another drink.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘D’you want one?’

‘No,’ Elder said a little too sharply, and then, ‘Yes. Yes, all right then. I will.’

‘Gin? I don’t think I’ve got anything else.’

‘Gin’s fine.’

The room seemed smaller than in his memory, but then he realised he was comparing it to the spaciousness of Stephen Bryan’s house in Leicester.

‘Ice and lemon?’ Helen called from the kitchen.

‘Please.’

‘Both?’

‘Both.’

The hand with which she passed him the glass was less than steady and her eyes held his for no more than moments before angling away. She waited for him to sit down and then did the same, opposite and just beyond arm’s reach should either of them have felt and acted out the need.

‘When you say the truth,’ Helen said, ‘you mean about Dave?’

‘I don’t know his name.’

‘Susan’s father.’

‘Yes.’

‘David Ulney.’

‘You never mentioned him.’

‘No.’

‘Let everyone believe Trevor was Susan’s father.’

Helen nodded, still avoiding his eyes.

‘The police, me, everyone.’

‘Yes.’

‘But not Susan herself?’

‘I tried.’

‘But she knew.’

Helen looked at him then. ‘She found a photograph. She was nine, rising ten. Rooting through my things one day, you know the way kids do. Why I’d clung on to it, God alone knows. Dave Ulney in his brothel creepers and his Edwardian suit, velvet collar, drape jacket, the whole Teddy boy bit.’ She paused to light a cigarette. ‘Susan asked who it was and before you know it there I was telling her.’

‘Everything?’

‘That he’d gone off and left me, deserted her. Never given either of us a penny. Not that I’d asked. Yes, I told her that, why shouldn’t I? And then I tore the damned thing up into little pieces in front of her eyes and threw them in the bin.’

Helen drew hard on her cigarette, holding down the smoke, then releasing it slowly. ‘God, I fancied him. Fancied him rotten.’ Her laughter was raw and self-deprecating. ‘I was sixteen. What did I know about anything? I didn’t even know enough to keep my legs together.’

‘You knew enough to keep the baby; you made a choice.’

‘I was afraid, terrified. Of having an abortion, I mean. And besides, my parents, it was what they wanted, when they knew. “We’ll stick by you,” they said. “Good riddance to the likes of him.” My mum came with me up to school to see the head teacher, the doctor, everything. She was brilliant. She’s in a home now, Scarborough, one of those big old hotels on the North Cliff. When my dad died, she fell apart.’ For several moments she was silent, thinking her own thoughts. ‘I’m sorry, where was I?’

‘Having Susan.’

‘Yes. I was lucky. It was a doddle, like shelling peas. And then, when she was no more than six months old, there was Trevor, so gobsmacked, bless him, that he practically worshipped the ground I walked on. For a time, anyway. Or was that Susan? Now I’m not so sure. Anyhow, he was prepared to take me on, complete with a little baby, ready-made family, I suppose, and I thought, if I’m to be honest, well, I’ll not likely get a better offer. So we got married, just a small registry office job, his folk and mine, no fuss. If anyone asks, he said, tell them the baby’s mine. And so I did. It didn’t seem too much to ask, after all.’

Elder reached for his glass. Helen seemed to have used a more than liberal amount of gin and he was glad.

‘How did Susan act when you told her?’

‘How d’you think? Knocked her sideways, poor love. At first she went all quiet, you know, dead quiet. Thoughtful. And then she began to barrage me with questions, on and on, until eventually she twigged I was never going to answer them, and after that she stopped.’

‘And do you know if she ever talked about it with Trevor? Asked him?’

‘No, I don’t think so. He’d have said. Had to.’

‘Does that surprise you?’

Helen didn’t answer right away. Somewhere a clock was striking nine. ‘Now I think about it, yes, I suppose it does. They used to row enough once she was into her teens, heaven knows. Trevor was over-protective sometimes, interfering. He didn’t mean to be, meant it all for the best but… It was as if he had to try harder, prove to himself he was being a good father, doing what he thought was his duty. She could have blurted it out then, in the middle of one of their set-tos, just to get back at him, you know, in anger, but no, I don’t think she ever did.’

‘And her father, Dave I mean, did she ever have any contact with him?’

‘No, not ever.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’d have known, wouldn’t I?’

♦

They walked around the near side of the harbour, out to the West Pier. There was the usual smattering of fishermen, a few courting couples snuggling on the wooden benches, men in topcoats and flat caps walking small dogs. The lights from Sandsend just over a mile away were small and steady along the edges of the tide. Helen had changed into a pair of grey cord trousers and a bottle-green hooded sweatshirt; Elder had pulled an old anorak from the boot of the car. Anyone seeing them might have thought they were old friends, little more.

‘If I’d told you right off, about Dave,’ Helen said, ‘it wouldn’t have made any difference, would it? To finding Susan. I mean, How could it?’

‘I don’t know. You’re probably right, but I don’t know. I mean, we’d have been interested, certainly, followed it up along with everything else…’

‘And when it didn’t lead anywhere?’

Elder didn’t answer. A little way along the pier they paused to watch a boat heading out of the harbour, night fishing, lights shining strongly.

When Helen turned to walk on, Elder stayed put where he was. ‘Dave Ulney,’ he said, ‘what happened to him?’

‘How should I know?’

‘He just disappeared?’

‘As good as. Buggered off to the ends of the earth, first chance he got.’

Elder looked at her questioningly.

‘New Zealand. He sent me a card – one – out of the blue after two years. Karori, wherever that is. ‘
Settled here now. Hope you’re well. Dave
.’ He didn’t even mention Susan, the rotten bastard. He never as much as asked after his own child.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘I set light to it there and then.’

‘Susan didn’t see it? She didn’t know?’

‘She was two years old.’

‘But you didn’t tell her about it later? After she’d found the photograph?’

‘Why would I do that? It was hard enough for her as it was.’

There was anger still, resentment mixed up with the tears.

‘You’ve never heard from him since? Heard anything about him?’

‘Not a word.’

They walked on out to the end of the second, smaller pier and stood there gazing at the lights of a container ship creeping, snail-like, along the horizon. There was wind enough now for the waves to strike the underpinnings with force, water spraying up into their faces.

‘I wondered if I’d see you again,’ Helen said.

Elder kissed her and she took his hand and slid it up beneath her sweatshirt and held it against her breast. At home, he undressed her slowly, kissing the roll and curve of her body, before turning on to his back so that she could undress him, looking down at him in the half-light, his shirt first and then his trousers. She made a slight gasp as she lowered herself on to him, and then it was slow and knowing, her nipple in his mouth and a tightening shudder of her body his final, all too sudden, undoing.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, as she rolled off him.

‘That’s okay, pet,’ she said, smiling. ‘You rest, get your strength back.’

But both were sleeping when the sound of the phone awoke them, Elder uncertain for that moment where he was and not immediately recognising the sound of his mobile. Joanne’s voice was distant and uneven. ‘Frank, it’s Kate. She’s not come home. I’m worried sick.’

Elder lifted his watch from the bedside table, Helen’s alarmed eyes following him. It was half past one.

‘Have you called the police?’

‘No. I wasn’t sure what to do.’

‘Phone them now. I’m a couple of hours’ drive away. Maybe a little more. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

Helen was standing, naked, by the bedroom door. ‘I’ll make some coffee while you’re getting dressed. A Thermos for the car.’

‘Okay, thanks.’ He was dialling Maureen Prior’s number as he reached for his shirt.

Elder drove too fast, coming close to losing control at a curve on the narrow road between Pickering and Malton, then just catching himself drifting asleep, his eyes closing momentarily on the ouside lane of the M18 at between eighty and ninety, all that he could urge out of his ageing Ford. The touch of his outer wheels against the road’s edge was enough to jar him awake before he drifted into the central reservation, and at the first service station he came to after switching motorways, he splashed cold water in his face and drank the remainder of the coffee Helen had made for him.

‘She’ll be all right, Frank. Don’t worry.’

The irony of his own words, almost, coming back at him.

The fact that his mind was speeding, skidding from one scenario to another, proved a kind of blessing and prevented him from lingering over whatever images his imagination might have delivered. Imagination and experience.

There was a single police car outside Joanne’s house, another, a blue Vauxhall that he recognised as Maureen’s, parked close behind it. A uniformed officer opened the front door and made Elder identify himself as he tried to push past. Joanne was standing in the centre of the vast living-room, adrift in space. When she saw Elder she ran towards him, stopped, and, as he reached out his arms, tumbled against him, the tears that she had choked back earlier falling without let or hindrance. Eyes closed, he pressed his face against her hair, her fingers gripping him tightly, her face pressed damp against his chest.

Embarrassed, the young WPC who had been talking to Joanne, going over the notes she had made earlier, looked away. Standing near the spiral staircase, Maureen Prior waited for Elder to raise his head and then exchanged a quick glance with him, a brief sideways shake of her head.

Elder held Joanne, allowing her to cry.

‘I’ll make coffee, Frank,’ Maureen said.

The constable followed her in search of the kitchen, leaving Elder and Joanne alone and faintly reflected in a wall of glass, the garden dark behind.

‘Oh, Frank…’

Elder led her carefully towards the long settee and, prising free her hands, gently lowered her down.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘When you’re ready, tell me what happened.’

Joanne felt for a tissue and wiped her eyes, blew her nose.

‘Kate was… she was out at training, the usual, you know… Harvey Hadden Stadium… she’d finish somewhere around… oh, anywhere between eight and nine…’

‘Surely by then it’s dark?’ Elder interrupted.

‘Well, maybe it was half past eight, I don’t know. Besides, it doesn’t matter.’

‘It might.’

‘Frank, please.’

‘I’m sorry, carry on.’ He gave her hand a squeeze.

‘Sometimes she’d come straight home, but not always. Quite often, I think she’d go for a drink or something, just, you know, hanging out.’

‘You didn’t know where she was, where she was going?’

‘For God’s sake, Frank, she’s sixteen.’

‘Exactly.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means that if she’s only sixteen I’d have thought you wanted to know where she was of an evening.’

‘Really? Then maybe if you were that concerned you should have stayed around.’

Elder bit his tongue.

‘I’m sorry,’ Joanne said.

‘No, it’s okay. Go on.’

‘If she did stay out,’ Joanne said, ‘she was usually in by half past ten, eleven at the latest. Mid-week especially. When she wasn’t here by twelve I started ringing round her friends, those I knew. Several of them from the athletics club had seen her at training earlier on, but not since.’

‘Since when? Exactly, I mean?’

‘Frank, I didn’t get a precise time, I was too worried, I…’

‘It’s all right, it’s okay. We can check…’