A Place Of Safety Read online

  ‘Yes. Well, I think that’s—’ Barnaby, rising, was cut off.

  ‘And now they are old—’

  ‘Old?’ said Sergeant Troy. ‘Mrs Lawrence isn’t old. Thirty-five if she’s a day.’

  ‘Thirty—’

  ‘Nice looking, too.’ On their way to the door Troy stopped at the tacky white table and peered into the Amaretti tin. It was full of rubber bands. ‘Slim, blonde. Lovely—’

  ‘Open the door, Sergeant.’

  Miss Calthrop was still vibrating at full throttle as the DCI thanked her and the two men left.

  As they got into the car Troy said, ‘Talk about well built. I bet one of her legs weighs more than our garden shed.’ Then, when there was no reply, ‘We’re really meeting them today.’

  ‘We meet them all the time, Sergeant. The trouble with you is, you’ve no relish for eccentrics.’

  ‘If you say so, sir.’

  Relish, huh. What’s to relish? As far as Sergeant Troy was concerned, eccentrics was just a poncy word for weirdos. He liked people who ran along predictable lines. The others just tossed a spanner in the works and screwed up life for everybody else. He put the keys in the ignition, revved hard with showy and quite unnecessary vigour and asked if they would be going straight to the address they had just been given for Carlotta Ryan.

  ‘May as well.’

  ‘Good. I like driving in London. It’s a real challenge.’

  Barnaby winced. Then, as they drove away, his thoughts turned again to Vivienne Calthrop. Her pretty face: blue eyes, perfect small nose and soft, rosy lips lost in a surrounding sea of wobbly fat and double chins. The wonderful hennaed hair tumbling over her shoulders, and eyebrows dyed exactly to match. It was the eyebrows, Barnaby decided, that got to him. There was something touching about the trouble taken.

  ‘I’d love to hear her sing.’

  ‘Yeah, great.’ Troy spoke absently. He was watching the mirror, signalling, pulling out. ‘Who?’

  ‘Who? Didn’t you hear that woman’s voice? It was practically operatic.’

  ‘Me and opera, chief.’ Troy sighed then shook his head, feigning regret at this mutual lack of enchantment.

  ‘You don’t know what the word Philistine means, do you, Troy?’

  ‘Certainly I do,’ Sergeant Troy responded quickly, on solid ground for once. ‘My Auntie Doll takes it for her blood pressure.’

  Lomax Road was a turning to the left halfway down Whitechapel just past the London Hospital. A tall narrow house which looked to be as grotty inside as it was out. A blanket was pinned up at the ground-floor window, grimy nets at the one upstairs.

  ‘Be a laugh if she’s in there, won’t it? Feet up, watching the box, having a bevvy.’

  ‘Nothing would please me more.’ Barnaby studied the various bells. The wooden backing was half hanging off the wall, the wires rusty. Benson. Ducane (Chas). Walker. Ryan. He pressed them all. A few minutes later a small sash window was pushed up and a young girl looked out.

  ‘Whaddya want?’

  ‘Police,’ said Sergeant Troy.

  ‘No police in here. Sorry.’

  ‘We’re looking for Carlotta Ryan.’

  ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘Could you perhaps spare a minute?’ asked DCI Barnaby.

  ‘’Ang about.’ The window slammed shut.

  Troy muttered, ‘What a dump. Just look at that.’ The concrete front garden was full of splitting bin bags, festering rubbish and dog mess. ‘I bet the rats queue up to have it away on that lot.’

  They could hear her clattering downstairs, clopetty clop, clopetty clop, like a little pony. Which meant stone steps or old lino, about what you’d expect in a dump like this.

  A tall, slim girl stood facing them. She wore sprayed-on leather hipsters and a once-white jumper, well short of her waist. Her hair was apricot with bronze tips, in a rough poodle cut. Glitter dust bloomed and sparkled on her cheeks and eyelids. Her navel was pierced with a ring from which depended a very large, shiny stone. Her hands were grubby with bitten nails. Barnaby thought she looked like a shop-soiled angel.

  He introduced himself and Troy then asked if they might come in for a minute. She looked up and down the road, for all the world like a suburban housewife embarrassed at having the police on the doorstep. A comparison dispelled by her first words.

  ‘You gotta be sharp round ’ere.’ She closed the door behind them. ‘They see you co-operating with the old Bill . . .’

  The stairs were stone and the walls covered with dirty anaglypta. They had been painted so often that the original pattern of swirling feathers had been almost obliterated, at the moment by an unpleasant brownish yellow gloss.

  It was not a large house - there were two doors on the ground floor and two on the top - but it was tall and the stairs were very steep. As they climbed after the girl, Barnaby, holding the banister, huffed and puffed. Troy enjoyed his rear view of the leather trousers. Halfway up they passed what looked like a very grotty bathroom and toilet. The window which the girl had looked through was still open.

  ‘Which . . . which flat is Miss Ryan’s?’ wheezed the chief inspector.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Huhh . . . huhh . . .’

  ‘I should come and sit down before you fall down.’

  ‘I’m fine. Thank you.’ Barnaby hated to reveal any physical weakness and he made a point of wandering round the girl’s room for several moments before he actually did find a seat on a zebra-striped Dralon settee, splitting its sides with fair wear and tear.

  ‘Carlotta lived next door.’

  ‘Could you give me your name, please?’ Sergeant Troy lowered himself carefully onto a pink furry stool with purple leatherette trim and a little sequin fringe. He felt like a poser in a clip joint showered by sardonic abuse along the lines of ‘get your kit off, sailor’ or ‘ooh, look - a chipolata’.

  ‘Tanya.’

  ‘Very exotic.’ He smiled across at her. ‘Russian.’

  ‘Yeah. If me mum could’ve said no to the Smirnoff, I wouldn’t be here today.’

  Barnaby laughed and Troy turned his head, surprised and resentful. He had lost count of the little witticisms he had polished up and delivered to the chief to ease the boredom of the daily grind. If he got a half-smile he reckoned he’d won the jackpot. Now he couldn’t even console himself with the thought that the DCI had no sense of humour.

  ‘Surname?’

  ‘Walker.’ She stared at them both. ‘What’s she done now then, Carlotta?’

  ‘How well did you know her?’ asked Barnaby, leaning forward in his usual friendly fashion.

  ‘We got on OK, considering.’

  ‘Considering what?’

  ‘Different backgrounds and that. I were at Bethnal Green Comprehensive, she went to some posh school in the Lake District. Way she described it, you’d’ve been better off slagging round the Pentonville Road.’

  ‘Did you ever think she might be making it all up?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. She were a dreadful liar, except she called it imagination. “You can imagine yourself anybody, Tarn,” she used to say. And I’d say, like, “Get real, Lottie.” ’Cause when you’ve finished imagining, it’s the real world you’re stuck with, right?’

  ‘Right,’ said Sergeant Troy and smiled again. He couldn’t help it. In spite of the screwy gunge decorating her face and the stridently sexy clothes, there was something almost innocent about her. Her gelled hair stuck up in little points all over her head, like the soft spines of a baby porcupine.

  ‘We’ve been given some background from the Caritas office.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘An organisation that helps young offenders.’ Barnaby read over the main points of his notes. ‘Could you add anything to that?’

  ‘Not really. I know she’d been thieving for ages before she were caught. And then she goes straight back to it. Seemed to think she were invisible. Like I said, living in a dream.’

  ‘Did Carlotta talk much
about the theatre?’ Barnaby waved his hands in a vaguely all-inclusive gesture. ‘Acting, that sort of thing.’

  ‘She were dead keen. Had this paper with jobs in—’

  ‘The Stage?’

  ‘Mind reader, ain’tcha?’

  ‘My daughter’s in the business.’

  ‘She’d follow the ads up but never get anywhere. Reckoned you had to have this special card.’

  ‘Equity.’ Barnaby remembered the excitement and delight on the day Cully got hers.

  ‘Spent all her money on classes. Dancing, working on her voice. I mean, who needs it these days? That lot in EastEnders sound like they was dragged up in Limehouse.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where she went for lessons?’

  ‘Somewhere up West. Look, you still ain’t told me what this is about. Is she OK, Lottie?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Troy. ‘She’s disappeared.’

  ‘I ain’t surprised. She were bored rigid down in Fern whatsit. Bugger all to do. The old man always jawin’ and his wife treating her like dirt.’

  Barnaby thought that didn’t sound like Ann Lawrence. ‘You talked to her, then?’

  ‘She’d ring up sometimes.’

  Barnaby glanced around the cluttered little room.

  ‘There’s a pay phone in the ’all.’

  ‘And she didn’t come back here?’

  Tanya shook her head. ‘I’d’ve heard her moving about.’

  ‘Maybe you were at work.’

  ‘I only work nights. Lap dancing in a club off Wardour Street.’ Tanya noticed Troy’s expression change and added, with affecting dignity, ‘It’s nothin’ like that. They’re not even allowed to touch you.’

  ‘How about visitors? Did Carlotta have any?’

  ‘Men, I suppose you mean.’

  ‘Not necessarily. We’re looking to contact anyone who knew her.’

  ‘Well, the answer’s no. She went out a lot but nobody came to the flat.’

  ‘Who has the place now?’

  ‘Nobody. You have to pay three months in advance so it ain’t run out yet.’

  ‘Do you have a spare key?’

  Another head shake. ‘I can give you the landlord’s number if you want.’

  As Troy wrote it down, Barnaby wandered over to the window. The back view was only slightly less depressing than the front. Tiny concrete yards or squares of hard-packed earth almost invisible under abandoned domestic detritus. There was a rusty fire escape that he wouldn’t have liked to trust his life to. He turned back into the room and asked Tanya about the people in the downstairs flat.

  ‘Benson’s a Rasta, spends most of his time over at Peckham with his girl friend and the baby. Charlie’s a porter at Seven Dials. But they both moved in after Carlotta left so they won’t know nothing.’

  ‘I believe she received several airmail letters at the Rectory.’

  ‘They’d be from her dad. In Bahrain.’

  ‘We heard,’ said Sergeant Troy, ‘she threw them away unopened. ’

  ‘Blimey.’ Tanya’s face became pinched and wistful. ‘Catch me chucking letters from my dad away. Always assuming I could find out who he was.’

  ‘If you can think of anything else, Tanya, give me a call.’ Barnaby gave her his card. ‘And, of course, if Carlotta turns up. Day or night - there’s an answering machine.’

  On their way out Troy took down the number of the pay phone. Barnaby opened the front door and the two policemen were once more exposed to the weak autumn sunshine.

  Sergeant Troy thought of his family: parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles. Although at any given moment at least half of these assorted relatives would be driving him up the wall he couldn’t imagine life without them.

  ‘Poor kid. Not much of a start, is it? Not even knowing who your dad is.’

  ‘You’re not going soft on me, are you, Sergeant?’

  Tanya stood at the window watching them walk away. She let the curtain fall and heard a soft click as the wardrobe door was opened in the bedroom. Then someone moving about.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘You can come out now. They’ve gone.’

  As Barnaby and Troy were driving along the City Road on their way to Camden Town, Ann Lawrence was in the kitchen of the Old Rectory brushing a leg of lamb with branches of rosemary soaked in olive oil. Hetty Leathers sat next to her at the table shelling peas. Candy had twisted and rolled off her cushion and was now hobbling and hopping towards them.

  ‘She can smell the meat.’ Ann smiled down at the little dog. ‘We’re a bit dot and carry one today, I’m afraid,’ said Hetty and produced a biscuit from the pocket of her flowered overall. While Candy snapped it up, she looked at Ann with some concern. ‘Are you sure you’re up to things, Mrs Lawrence? You look ever so flushed.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ said Ann. ‘I feel much better, honestly.’

  She meant this and for more than one reason. First, her vow to tell the truth and shame the devil had not faltered throughout yesterday and when she woke up this morning the resolve was as strong as ever. Secondly, although she could never have admitted this to Hetty the flush was actually one of emotional intoxication following an argument with her husband.

  ‘It was ever so good of the Reverend to agree to take Charlie’s funeral,’ said Hetty, uncannily picking up her train of thought. ‘Him being retired and everything.’

  ‘He was only too pleased.’

  This was not quite true. Lionel had been really put out when Ann had made the suggestion. Had argued that to appear publicly in his vestments when for the last ten years he had been regarded by the village as a lay person would confuse everyone. She told him not to be ridiculous and a free and frank exchange of views occurred, to Lionel’s alarm and Ann’s surprise and increasing exhilaration.

  ‘This man worked at the Old Rectory for years.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, my dear.’

  ‘It would mean a great deal to Hetty. The day will be painful enough without a complete stranger holding forth from the altar steps. And it’s not as if you’ve pulled much weight on the pastoral front so far.’

  ‘What do you mean, Ann?’

  ‘I mean the counselling, Lionel. The tender loving care, the patient listening and ongoing support - I thought that was your speciality.’

  ‘I fear little will be gained by continuing this conversation.’

  ‘No doubt if she was eighteen and pretty and accused of selling drugs Hetty’d have had all that plus pocket money, a nice little flat and a new ironing board.’

  ‘You’re shouting.’

  ‘If you think I’m shouting now just keep walking towards the door.’

  ‘I can’t think what has got into you.’

  Ann stood very still and a feeling of tremendous caution possessed her. She realised it was not so much something getting into her but something that was already in her about to get out. Was that what she really wanted? But after a moment her mind, so recently tumultuous and chaotic, clarified. Resentments and desires that she had not even known she possessed came into focus.

  How grey and sterile her gentle, orderly life suddenly seemed. How spineless her behaviour. For years she had struggled to accommodate her husband’s way of life. Had seen him, if not as a good person, at least as a better human being than herself. Now this self-imposed martyrdom was coming to an end.

  Lionel had stopped walking. Perched on the edge of the nearest chair, he had started patting the arm in a soothing manner as if the very furniture might be the next thing to turn against him.

  Ann watched with a lack of emotion which quite disturbed her. Lionel had gone his own way without let or hindrance for so long that she had forgotten how he reacted when crossed. The mouth had become petulant, the lower lip, soft and rather wet, pouted in a sulk that might have been appealing in a tiny child. In a 58-year-old man it was simply pathetic.

  ‘We can’t go on like this, Lionel.’

  ‘Like what?’ Genuinely puz
zled, he gaped at her. ‘What’s wrong with you, Ann?’

  ‘I’m not blaming you—’

  ‘I should hope not.’ Lionel was righteously indignant. ‘I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘If anyone’s to blame it’s myself. I’ve let things drift partly out of laziness but also because I wanted us to be happy—’

  ‘We are happy.’

  ‘I haven’t been happy for years,’ said Ann.

  Lionel gulped and said, ‘Then I think it’s high time you started counting your blessings, my dear.’ He levered himself upright, his eyes sliding anxiously towards the door. ‘Perhaps you should take one of your tranquillisers.’

  ‘I’ve thrown them down the lavatory.’

  ‘Was that altogether wise?’ When his wife did not reply, Lionel took a cautious step sideways. ‘And now I really must go. I’m due at the juvenile court by ten thirty.’

  ‘Why are other people’s troubles always more important to you than our own?’

  ‘This is a special case.’

  ‘I’m a special case.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be late back.’

  ‘Ring them up. Tell them you’ve got a crisis in the family.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘I will, then.’

  ‘No.’

  Lionel had spoken so quickly and so quickly sat down again that Ann knew the court appointment was a lie. She felt the first flicker of pity yet never considered for a moment letting things go. There was too much at stake. She took a deep breath to calm herself. Though her heart was full, she found herself wondering if the words to clearly express her feelings could be found. The main thing to remember was there was to be no going back. Or forward either, if that meant treading the old, well-worn, soul-crushing path.

  ‘Lionel, I came to a decision a little while ago. There are various things I need to say and I hope you’ll hear me out.’

  Lionel had decided to take a leaf out of the book of Job. Long-suffering, patient, eyes glazed with inattention, fingers drumming an awkward rhythm on bony knees.

  ‘First, I can no longer agree to have strangers staying here.’