Dead on Arrival Read online

  ‘Which day?’

  ‘When Doc Mallard would go around spreading Sweetness and light.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Thanet grinned. ‘He didn’t even complain about the fug in here.’

  ‘That’s what I mean! Mark my words, sir, something’s up.’

  ‘Such as? No, don’t bother to answer that. We’ve better things to do than sit around gossiping. Come on, let’s get all this organised.’

  Half an hour later they were parking in front of Mrs May’s neglected council house.

  ‘Let’s hope she’s up,’ said Lineham.

  ‘You haven’t met her yet, have you?’

  Lineham shook his head.

  ‘You’re in for a treat.’

  Mrs May answered the door wearing the sleazy pink satin dressing gown. Once again she was heavily made up, with green eye-shadow this time, and orange lipstick. Thanet was startled to see that today her hair was a bright, glossy brown and much longer, falling in elaborate curls about her shoulders. A wig, then. He wondered what her own hair was like.

  ‘Oh, it’s you again.’

  She led them into the sitting room. The gas fire was on and the room was stiflingly hot. A plate covered with toast crumbs and a half-empty cup of coffee showed that she had been having her breakfast.

  ‘Want a cup?’

  Thanet shook his head. ‘This won’t take long.’

  ‘Take a pew.’ She drained the cup, fished a packet of cigarettes out of her pocket and lit one. ‘What is it this time?’

  ‘The night before last … Could you tell us where you were?’

  Her eyes narrowed and she blew out a long, thin stream of smoke before answering. ‘The night Steve was killed, you mean? What are you getting at?’

  ‘Nothing. Just checking something, that’s all.’

  She shrugged. ‘What’s the odds? I got nothing to hide. I was here, of course. Where else would I have been?’

  Thanet smiled. ‘Bingo? Darts match? Having a drink with friends?’

  Her mouth twisted. ‘What friends?’

  She glanced at the new bottle of gin on the sideboard and Thanet heard the words as clearly as if they had been spoken. That’s the only friend I’ve got.

  ‘So you stay in most evenings?’

  ‘Yeah. Anything wrong in that?’

  ‘Oh no, not at all. And you’re sure you were here on Tuesday?’

  ‘I told you.’ She stubbed out her cigarette, glanced at the sideboard again and laced her fingers together so tightly that the knuckles gleamed white.

  Thanet recognised the signs. She wanted a drink. Badly.

  ‘Did you have any visitors that night?’

  She stared at him. ‘Visitors?’

  He nodded, waited.

  She frowned and her eyes glazed as she thought back, trying to penetrate the alcoholic haze in which her evenings were spent. ‘No,’ she said at last.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I was tired,’ she said defensively. ‘I fell asleep, in my chair. If anyone came, I didn’t hear them.’

  ‘And last night?’

  ‘My son came to see me.’ Her expression softened. ‘Chris. Thought I might be upset, you know, about Steve.’

  So there were still vestiges of maternal feeling beneath that unlikely exterior. Thanet was glad that he had not asked her outright if Chris had been here the night Steve died. It looked as though she would be prepared to lie, to protect him.

  Outside, at the gate, Thanet paused. ‘Well, Mike, either he didn’t come at all, or he came and she didn’t hear him, or he came, spent some time with her and she was so drunk she doesn’t remember. Take your pick.’

  ‘She remembered him coming last night, all right.’

  ‘I agree, the third possibility is the least likely.’

  Lineham shrugged. ‘If he did come, and she didn’t hear him knocking, he obviously didn’t mention it when he saw her last night.’

  ‘That could be significant. It might well mean he’s innocent and it simply didn’t occur to him that he’d need an alibi. If he were our man and knew he would need one, I’d have thought it would have been easy enough to persuade her into thinking either that he did come and spend some time with her the previous evening but she simply didn’t remember, or to lie outright to protect him. Anyway, we might as well try and check, while we’re here. You take the next couple of houses on that side, I’ll take this.’

  As Thanet approached the front door of the house next to Mrs May’s he saw the curtains twitch at the downstairs window. Good, a nosy neighbour, he thought. Just what I need.

  He had to wait several minutes before the door opened on the chain. A segment of wrinkled cheek and a wisp of grey hair appeared in the crack, and a bright eye peered up at him.

  ‘Yes?’

  Thanet introduced himself and produced his warrant card, cursing a society which forces its frail and elderly to bar themselves into even greater isolation than old age already brings, through fear of violence.

  A little claw of a hand plucked it from him and he saw the dull yellow glow as the hall light went on. He waited, beginning to wonder if there was any point, if he was simply wasting time. But he remembered the twitching curtain and that bright, knowing eye and schooled himself to patience. By now Lineham had visited three houses on the far side of Mrs May’s and was approaching this one.

  ‘Anything?’ asked Thanet.

  Lineham shook his head. ‘No answer at two of them, the other saw nothing, heard nothing.’ He nodded at the door. ‘What gives?’ he added, lowering his voice.

  ‘Old lady being cautious.’

  The eye reappeared at the crack. ‘What are you whispering about, on my doorstep?’

  There was a rattle as the chain was released, and the door swung open.

  Mrs May’s neighbour was small and thin to the point of emaciation. She was supporting herself on an aluminium walking frame. She held out Thanet’s card. ‘What do you want?’

  He took it from her. ‘Thank you. We were wondering if by any chance you might have noticed any visitors at Mrs May’s house, next door, the night before last.’

  ‘The night before last …’ She thought for a moment, then said, ‘Chris came round, knocked on her door. But he couldn’t get an answer, went away again.’ The sharp old eyes said, And we both know why, don’t we? ‘Came round last night, too, but that time she let him in. Two nights running, miracles will never cease. Sometimes he don’t come near her for months.’

  ‘He hasn’t got a key?’

  ‘Why should he? Got a house of his own now, I hear.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Look, it’s all right for you, with coats on, but I’ll freeze to death if I stand here much longer. You better come in.’

  They followed her painfully slow progress along the hall into the sitting room, where she shuffled to an upright armchair in front of the gas fire and subsided into it with a sigh of relief. ‘That’s better.’ The large marmalade cat on the hearth glanced sleepily up at her as she spread a blanket knitted in brightly coloured patchwork squares over her knees. She looked at Thanet expectantly. ‘What were you saying?’

  ‘I was wondering if you could remember what time it was that you heard Chris knocking on his mother’s door, the night before last.’

  ‘Just before the nine o’clock news,’ she said promptly.

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘My joints might be a bit creaky, but I’ve still got all me marbles, you know.’ And she tapped her head, as if to demonstrate the soundness of her brain. ‘I’ve got arthritis, see, and once an hour I makes meself get up and walk around a bit. Otherwise I’d seize up altogether. And I always takes my little stroll around the room just before nine o’clock because I likes to sit down after, and watch the news. And one of the things I always does is take a look out of the window. That’s when I saw Chris.’

  ‘You’re sure it was him?’

  ‘Dead sure. I’ve lived in this house for forty
years, haven’t I? Known him since the day he was born. Known the lot of them.’

  ‘Have you indeed?’

  Thanet’s tone had betrayed his interest and she gave a high-pitched cackle of laughter and rocked a little, hugging herself with glee. ‘I have. If you want to know all about them next door you’ve come to the right place.’

  FOURTEEN

  Thanet glanced at Lineham, who unobtrusively took out his notebook.

  ‘So, Mrs …’

  ‘Sparrow,’ she said, with so broad a smile that her false teeth slipped. She pushed them back in impatiently, in a gesture that was clearly habitual.

  Thanet looked at the small, bent figure with its little beak of a nose, twig-like limbs and tiny claws of hands and wondered if the name had always suited her as well as it did now. He smiled back.

  ‘So, Mrs Sparrow, you’re saying that you’ve lived next door to Mrs May ever since her first marriage?’

  The cat stood up, stretched and looked at its mistress, and she patted her lap. It jumped up, turning round and round several times before finally settling down with its front paws neatly tucked under. She began to stroke it and it started to purr.

  She nodded. ‘Seen her husbands come and go, haven’t I? And a rotten picker she was, too. Bad apples, both of them, not like my Bert. Mind, I’m not saying they had much of a bargain, either. Though to be fair, her and Fred, her first, didn’t have much of a chance, really. Not much more than kids, either of them, and to be lumbered with twins before they’d been married five minutes …’

  ‘She didn’t keep both babies, though, did she?’

  ‘No. That sister of hers, that Mavis, adopted one of them. Insisted on taking her pick, though, so Lena was left with the sickly one, Steve. I tell you, the first time I laid eyes on him I never thought he’d make it. Puny little thing he was, never stopped crying. He used to go on and on and on, you could hear it right through the wall. Really got on our nerves it did. We had to change our bedroom in the end, sleep at the back. Wasn’t surprising Fred up and went. Well, I mean, youngsters like that haven’t got the patience, have they? I mean, they want to be out having a good time, and a baby soon puts a stop to all that, don’t it? And, like I said, Steve was enough to get on anyone’s nerves …’

  ‘How old was he when his father left?’

  ‘Three or four months. Something like that. But Lena wasn’t on her own for long. Fred had only been gone a couple of months when Stan moved in.’

  ‘How did she meet him?’

  ‘At the pub, I s’pose. A couple of weeks after Fred went she came to me and said she was desperate to earn a bit of money and she’d heard there was this job at the pub, lunchtimes. Would I look after Steve for her, for a couple of hours each day? I had a cleaning job at the time, but I was home by half past eleven and I was always here midday because Bert used to come home for a bit of dinner, so I said yes. Well, I felt sorry for her … Anyway, it wasn’t long before Stan was coming home with her and before we knew where we were he’d moved in. Never took to him meself.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  Mrs Sparrow shifted uncomfortably in her chair. ‘Great big bear of a man, he was. Couldn’t understand what Lena saw in him. Still, there’s no accounting for taste …’

  ‘He made you nervous?’

  ‘You could say that … Well, to tell you the truth, I didn’t like the way he treated the baby … He couldn’t stand the sight of it, if you ask me. They was always asking me if I would babysit for them, and some of the things I saw … Well, I mean, I know Steve was enough to get anyone down, with that never-ending crying and that, but …’

  ‘He used to ill-treat the child?’

  Mrs Sparrow nodded, lips compressed. ‘You ought to have seen the bruises that baby had on him, sometimes.’

  ‘What was his mother’s attitude to all this?’

  Mrs Sparrow shrugged. ‘I don’t think she cared, really. I don’t think she ever really took to him. Blamed him, I shouldn’t wonder, for Fred leaving her.’

  ‘Did you report this ill-treatment to the NSPCC?’

  The old lady frowned, looked guilty. ‘Not to begin with. I kept hoping Stan would move out, or things would improve, as Steve got older and didn’t cry so much.’

  ‘But you did later?’

  ‘Well, Stan and Lena got married, and first Chris then Frank came along, and I kept on hoping that with other kids … But things didn’t get better, they got worse.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, Steve was the one they always picked on, both Lena and Stan. He just couldn’t do anything right. For instance, the number of times I’ve seen that kid walking round with his left hand tied behind his back …’

  ‘Why? Because he was naturally left-handed, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. I used to say to Lena, what does it matter whether he does things with his right hand or his left, but she wouldn’t listen. “It’s all wrong,” she’d say. Or, “Stan says we’ve got to get him out of the habit somehow.” But to tell you the truth, I think it was just that they had to have something to pick on, as far as Steve was concerned. I mean, I didn’t particularly like him, always whining he was, but then that wasn’t surprising, was it, in the circumstances?’

  ‘So what happened, in the end, to make you report them?’

  ‘Well, like I said, Steve used to aggravate Stan that bad … One day, when Steve was about four, it was summer, I remember, and I was hanging the washing out in the back garden. There’s a high fence that separates us, and I could hear the kids playing next door. Then suddenly I hears Stan’s voice. “Steve!” he shouts, in that great roaring voice of his, “what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  ‘Well, I was curious to know what Steve had been up to, so I put down the clothes basket and went over to the fence. There was an old box beside it and I stood on that and looked over. I got there just in time to see Stan give Steve a great clout on the side of the head, and then pick him up off the floor and throw him, yes, throw him away from him, towards the back of the house. Steve’s head went crack against the kitchen windowsill, and as he fell his foot got caught in one of them little concrete squares they put around drains … The ambulance came, that time, and carted him off to hospital. He had a broken leg and concussion, and when I heard Stan and Lena was putting it about that Steve had had an accident by falling off a swing I decided that enough was enough. I put on my hat and coat and went straight off to the hospital. Told them what I’d seen. After that they had the social worker in keeping an eye on Steve. There was talk about putting him into care, but that didn’t come off. Stan knew he had to toe the line, or there’d be trouble.’

  ‘Did they know who’d given them away?’

  Mrs Sparrow grimaced. ‘Stan saw me looking over the garden fence, didn’t he, so he didn’t take long to put two and two together. Came round here breathing threats, but my Bert soon told him where to get off. “You lay a finger on her and I’ll get the police round,” he said. “And you’re in enough trouble over Steve, already.”’

  ‘So that was that? When Steve came home there were no more problems?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. Six months later Stan upped and went, and Lena always blamed me for that. Said Stan couldn’t stand having the social services breathing down his neck all the time, and it was all my fault he’d gone. I was an interfering busybody and if I’d kept my mouth shut everything would have been all right. “Yes,” I said, “for everyone but Steve. What about him? You can’t just stand by and see a kid being knocked about like that.”’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Nothing. Just gave me a look as if to say, “Why not? It didn’t worry me.”’

  ‘So what happened after her husband left? How did she treat Steve then?’

  ‘Well, at least she didn’t knock him about, I’ll grant her that. Stan was the one who did that. But she still used to pick on him something terrible. Not that we was ever on what you might call visiting terms, after that b
ust-up over reporting them to the hospital. But living next door you can’t help hearing sometimes, can you? I mean, in the summer the windows are open, and sometimes you’re in the garden … Nothing he ever did was right. It’s not surprising he turned out like he did.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, he got into this way of needling people, if you see what I mean. Like as if he’d said to himself, nothing I can say or do is going to make people like me, so I might as well give them a good reason.’

  ‘He used to behave like that with his brothers?’

  ‘Oh yes. Especially with Chris. Chris was his mum’s favourite, see, and it was as plain as the nose on your face that Steve was jealous. Not surprising, really. Used to make me sick to see the difference in the way those kids were treated.’

  ‘What about Frank?’

  ‘He was sort of pig in the middle. He wasn’t favoured in the same way as Chris, but he wasn’t picked on, like Steve.’

  ‘And Geoff?’

  ‘Who? Oh, that twin of Steve’s … Haven’t set eyes on him for years. Mavis went up in the world like a sky-rocket, by all accounts, and he’s much too posh for the likes of the Orchard Estate.’ The twisted hands were stil rhythmically stroking the cat and for a few moments there was silence while they all thought over what she had been saying. Then she sighed. ‘And now look what’s happened. Poor Steve. Went a bit too far, this time, I daresay.’

  ‘So it doesn’t surprise you, that it came to this in the end?’

  ‘Not really. Can’t help feeling sorry for him, though. He never really had a chance to make the best of himself.’

  The cat raised its head sharply, there was a knock at the door, and Mrs Sparrow looked at the clock. ‘That’ll be Janet, my home help. D’you think you could let her in?’

  Lineham stood up. ‘Sure.’

  The girl who followed Lineham into the sitting room was a surprise to Thanet. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen and was wearing jeans and a boxy nineteen-forties-style fur jacket. Her hair was brilliantly streaked in fluorescent colours, orange, green and yellow.

  ‘Hullo Janet, love,’ said Mrs Sparrow, her face lighting up with pleasure.