brass fittings on the front door. There were a couple of elderly survivors from the old days, living on in their unreconstructed cottages. The Fleming family belonged in this party since the house had been rented by the family for at least three generations. To their despairing landlord they seemed like sitting tenants in perpetuity.
‘I don’t like you doing his washing.’
‘Oh fiddle. The money’s good.’ She was more or less working her way through the Polytechnic A-levels course, with a firm eye on Oxford. She was bright and knew it. ‘Old Brocklebank did us a good turn. Besides, I only take it down the laundrette, and then iron it. He could do it himself if he thought about it.’ From John Coffin she had earned enough money to buy two books she badly wanted: she created a kind of study for herself in a corner of the kitchen, with a table and bookshelves where she could work in peace. Like everything Sal did, it had a kind of imaginative elegance.
Now she was setting the table for a meal, moving briskly about. A kettle was humming on the old gas stove with a big brown teapot hung over the spout to get warm. In a little while there was toast on the table, a pot of jam, and a row of six cups to fill.
‘Call the kids.’
‘We’re here waiting, Sal,’ said a soft small voice.
‘Yes, you are, Weenie, but not the others.’
Weenie was the little girl whose skirt had been so firmly grasped. Food was Weenie’s delight, she was always hungry.
‘They’re under the table, Sal.’
Weenie lifted the cloth to reveal her three brothers crouched there. Their ages went up in steps. Then there was a big gap until Sal and her sibling, Peter. Mr Fleming had been away at sea for a good spell after their births, then he came back and the family progression started again. Mrs Fleming never seemed to get the hang of birth control, to Sal’s fury. Even in those days, she had known what would be best for the family. Less of them, far less. Preferably just her and Peter.
At the table, watching them eat, she felt this even more strongly. They were a responsibility.
‘You certainly eat well, Weenie, but you don’t grow on it.’
Something had gone wrong with the genes, she felt, when it came to Weenie and the others. She and Peter were all right. She knew herself to be clever and there were times when she felt beautiful, and Peter was certainly good to look at and he was very practical if not scholastically inclined. But the others, well, it was hard to be sure, she was watching them and trying to make up her mind. Not like me, she felt.
She knew she was doing what was right, but she didn’t have to like it. The little ones could go into care, the social worker had said when their parents died, but Sarah had turned this down. It wasn’t that she loved them so much, probably she didn’t, but she had the feeling that there was something strange and secret about them as a family that was better kept private. So a special arrangement had been made with the social services.
‘Give me some money,’ she had said, ‘we’ve got the house. We’ll manage, thank you.’
They were a burden she had hoisted on her own back and it was heavy there.
Weenie, Tom, Lester, and Eddy.
‘Where have you boys been putting your feet? Black marks all over the carpet,’ she said, then pressed on without waiting for an answer. ‘Your turn tomorrow,’ she said to Peter. ‘I’m at the Poly.’
She had had to leave school before her A-levels, but she was continuing her studies at the Local Polytechnic College. It was her intention to get a place at Oxford. Balliol, she believed, would suit her as it seemed a radical place. She was left-wing in her politics.
He grunted assent; he never argued with her.
‘The Pitts are back,’ he said. By which he meant he would rather be with them than her, wanted to be invited by them and hadn’t been.
‘I noticed.’
‘Nona’s home.’ But he hadn’t seen her. That was what he meant.
‘Three years is a long time, Pete.’ A long time for a girl like Nona; she had been twelve when the two had been inseparable and Peter only fifteen. Now she was fifteen, nearly sixteen. She would have changed. Sal knew how a girl could change. Especially a girl with Nona’s background. But Peter had not changed. People like Peter don’t. They become what they have it in them to become at an early age and stay that way. Possibly for ever.
‘You couldn’t expect things to be the same.’
‘It was her mother’s fault. I blame her. Everyone knows she was having an affair with that MP. And because Mr Pitt was angry he took it out on me.’
It hadn’t been the way it was, and she thought he knew it, but she could sympathize with his anger. Compared with the Pitts, what did he have?
‘Nona was only a kid,’ was all she said.
He was silent. Then he said: ‘That chap you’re doing the washing for is a policeman.’
‘I know.’
It was the only thing she had against him.
John Coffin, policeman, was not someone she wanted to work for. Why couldn’t he be a dustman or a bank clerk?
There was a telephone call for John Coffin when he got home from work that night. He was early, for once, and the telephone sounded within minutes of his arrival, as if it had been ringing at intervals hoping to get him.
‘John? Bernard here.’ The sergeant’s voice was urgent. ‘There’s been a body found. You’ll hear about this through channels, but I’m telling you now. I don’t know how you’ll get the message but take it seriously. If I were you I’d get down there now and see what they’ve got. Go through the Wolsey Road entrance to the Park.’ And he rang off.
A green and wooded hill stretches down Greenwich Park towards the river. The ground is uneven with many little dips and hollows. The body of Malcolm Kincaid, the suicide, had been found in one such. John Coffin had walked home that way after parking his car in the garage he rented. He enjoyed the walk but felt alone on it, undressed. Every other walker seemed to have either a dog or a child. Perhaps he might get a dog. Except for his sister Lætitia, his life was empty of close personal relations at the moment. Lætitia, a long-lost sister who had come back into his life some years ago, was a joy. But she was rarely in the same country he was or indeed in any country for long. As well as a rich and itinerant husband, she had a successful career as a lawyer which seemed to involve a great deal of travelling.
There was their other sibling, of course, related by half blood through their mother to them both. But at the moment he or she was more hypothetical than real because they had not managed to track him down. Or her. It was strange to think that his mother had given birth to yet another child about whom he had known hardly anything until Lætitia had told him. But she had their mother’s word for it. ‘Born between you and me and given for adoption,’ Lætitia had said.
Their mother seemed to shed children like lost parcels.
As he walked down the hill towards Church Row he had seen a police car speeding up the hill. Trouble somewhere, he had thought, dragging his feet free from a patch of wet tarmac that lay across the pavement. Now he knew what it meant and where to go.
In through the gate, along the path towards the chestnut walk, always the ground rising. A small crowd of people standing watching from a distance, barriers being put into position and the whole area corded off.
Yes, he was here in good time.
He was known; his rank and his position smoothed the way.
Among the trees was a thicket of shrubs with a small path which led to a tiny brick pavilion with a bench in it.
Crouching against the bench as if he was praying was the figure of a man. His back was towards Coffin.
He walked right up to him and