The Nameless Page 9

  At a quarter to eight a train carried her away. Stations idled by. Halfway there two Americans in deerstalkers got off at Baker Street, and there were still five stations to go. The Newton-Brown book at least was even better than she'd hoped, and she had submitted it at once. The Salt Has Lost Its Savour read like the first sign of madness, the vicar muttering to himself.

  At ten past eight she was running up the escalator at Ladbroke Grove, though part of her was sure that running was absurd: what on earth was the point of searching the empty house? She had enough complications for one day-- she had the news from an editor friend that Paul Gregory had been seen at lunch with a rival agent, Howard Eastwood. So that was why Paul was quibbling over contracts, why he was never available when she phoned.

  Still, the immediate problem was Margery. Barbara hurried through the whitish streets. Chalky dust blew in her face, houses played like radio sets, wave bands leaking from one window to the next. She reached Margery's house--number eight, flat three--and rang the bell.

  When there was no answer she felt momentarily relieved, but why? She had to meet Margery, to find out how to get in touch with Gerry Martin. Louise had called the ------------------------------------105

  Telegraph Information Service, but they had no listing for a journalist of that name on any newspaper. Perhaps the reporter had traced the people from the house by now--the people who might have killed Angela.

  After several tries at the bell she made for the overpass. It was just possible that Margery was waiting for her by the empty house. But when she reached the overpass there was no sign of Margery. Could she be inside the house? In any case, now that Barbara was here she might as well go in, get it over with.

  She was bracing herself for the onslaught of noise when a police car appeared from the direction of Ladbroke Grove. She turned quickly and pretended to stroll away beneath the overpass until the police car had gone. So long as they didn't see her entering the house, why should she be worried about them? Her furtiveness irritated her. She strode across to the broken armchair.

  Apart from the rush of traffic on the overpass she could see no movement anywhere. She made her way through the parched drooping grass, the scattered pages from a book or books, and climbed the steps to the porch. She pushed open the door and was almost in the house before she saw what was inside.

  Margery lay halfway down the first flight of stairs. For a grotesque moment Barbara thought she was standing on her head; certainly her head was bent back at too sharp an angle on the stair below the one that held her shoulders. Her skirt had ridden up, revealing a glimpse of pasty thigh above the black stockings. Her right hand was trapped beneath her body. She wasn't smiling now, even though she looked as if she were; her lips were wrenched back from her teeth.

  Barbara tried to think as she ran to the fence: would any of the call boxes be working, or ought she to ask to use someone's phone? When she saw the police car she began ------------------------------------106

  to wave frantically as she tried to climb one-handed over the shaky armchair. The car was drawing up before she wondered how much she would have to explain.

  The policeman was young. Like most young policemen, he wore a mustache to make himself look older. He vaulted over the bricked-up gate, then almost lost his footing. At once his face was a mask that warned her to take him seriously.

  "There's a lady in this house," she shouted into his ear. "I think she's dead. I think her back's broken."

  He waited for her to accompany him into the house. His breast pocket was crackling and muttering. As soon as he saw Margery he took out the radio and called an ambulance. Barbara turned away from the stairs; the dust that hovered about Margery's open mouth reminded her of flies.

  The policeman surveyed the ground floor, then went out to glance at the adjoining houses. "Were you and this lady together?" he said close to Barbara's ear.

  "We were supposed to meet here." He was so close that she could smell his uniform. "I was late, and I found her like that."

  "When the ambulance arrives I would like you to answer some questions at the station." He turned his back on her as though she had no choice, and went to collect the scattered contents of Margery's bag, which lay at the foot of the stairs. He brought the bag out with him and stood near her on the porch. His silence was a threat of questions. How much would she have to tell the police? How unconvincing would the whole thing sound?

  When the ambulance came he gestured the men into the house and gripped the handbag as though it were a suspect he was holding by the scruff of the neck. Barbara lingered-- perhaps Margery wasn't dead, she'd heard of people who had lived despite a broken back--while the men loaded Margery onto the stretcher. One of them glanced down at ------------------------------------107

  Barbara and shook his head, and she was about to go with the young policeman when the piece of paper came sailing downstairs.

  It was a torn page, which had been trapped beneath Margery's body. Had Margery been holding it when she fell? As Barbara hurried to the stairs the page settled almost at her feet. Though it was crumpled and fluttering slightly, she could make out what was drawn on it. It was a sketch of herself.

  At once she recognized the work of Margery's daughter, but why had she made Barbara look so young? Then it stopped fluttering for a moment, and she realized that it wasn't her face at all but a face that resembled hers. It was a sketch of a teenage girl who looked like her. Perhaps she cried out--nobody would have noticed, especially not her-- when she realized who it was.

  She was stooping so quickly that her vision blackened-- something was scribbled beneath the drawing but she hadn't time to decipher it now, not until she got hold of it--when the page sailed away from her, into one of the empty rooms. She felt as if a shutter were closing over her eyes, but she ran wildly after the paper, fast enough to see it flying through a gap where the sash of a window had been. She reached the window just in time to see the page fall on a bonfire of rubbish. The page blazed up at once. In a few moments it was black ash, tattering in a breeze.

  When she turned, feeling shaky and hollow and utterly bewildered, the policeman was waiting for her. "Are you ready now?" he said in a tone which suggested he thought that she'd tried to escape. But she made him wait, even if it made her situation worse, while she examined every one of the pages in the grass beside the porch. ------------------------------------108 ------------------------------------109

  109

  Thirteen

  "I'm afraid you've been the victim of a hoax," the inspector said.

  The walls of his office were the color of tripe, unnaturally bright beneath the chained fluorescent tubes. Blotches of light clung to his desk, to the leather padding of the chairs, to the bell of the spindly desk lamp; a blotch floated like turned milk on the surface of Barbara's untouched cup of tea. Everything looked flat as a page, on which she could see the drawing of Angela's face.

  She had to stay calm, however brittle she felt, or she might say too much. "No, I don't think so. I'm sure this cult exists." She was growing confused: had Margery said it was a cult? She'd had to pretend that Margery had said Angela was involved with the cult, and even that seemed to betray the promise of secrecy she had made to the voice on the phone. She was anxious to keep that promise now, ------------------------------------110

  but how much did she believe? "I don't understand why you think it's a hoax," she said.

  "Well, for example, if she was so worried that her daughter had joined this cult, why didn't she come to us?"

  "I assumed she had." Hadn't Margery said that they wouldn't help because Susan was over seventeen? "In fact, I believe she said so."

  "I think you must have misunderstood her, Mrs. Waugh. Perhaps she meant that she approached us when Susan originally left home." He was being gentle with her--his round placid face with its pipe-stained mustache made her think of someone's favorite uncle--but she sensed that he was building up to something. "Let me return to your point about
the hoax. You say that Turner got in touch with you and convinced you that your daughter was involved with a cult of some kind. I don't see how she could know that, but we'll let it pass for the moment," he said, to Barbara's relief. "Tonight you were supposed to meet her at her flat, but when she wasn't there you went to the house she described. Didn't it strike you as odd that she lived so near that house?"

  "No, not really. She'd moved there in the hope of finding her daughter."

  "That's the reason she gave you."

  All at once he was so gentle that she grew more nervous. "Yes," she said, "and she didn't like the people where she used to live. She was glad to move away."

  "I'm sure that's true, but did she tell you why?"

  "She didn't tell me in so many words, but I gathered she didn't trust them."

  "I'm afraid it was the other way round. She was glad to move somewhere the people didn't know her. You see, she was a convicted criminal."

  It didn't matter what Margery had been, that couldn't alter the truth of the drawing of Angela. Nevertheless the ------------------------------------111

  lurid room was flattening, losing perspective. "What had she done?" she demanded.

  "She was a thief. She underwent treatment for it at one time, but that didn't seem to do her any good. I suspect that when she reported that her daughter had left home we weren't very anxious to reunite them, under the circumstances. It must have been all to the good that the daughter made a life for herself, don't you think so? Excuse me," he said as someone knocked at the door.

  While he and another policeman murmured outside his office a scene was replaying itself relentlessly: Margery stumbled on the stairs of the wine bar, grabbed at someone's jacket, hurried away. What did her left hand do after it grabbed? Seize the banister to help her upstairs, or dart to her handbag? But there was something more important that Barbara must remember.

  Before she could, the inspector returned to his desk. "Did Turner ever ask you for money?" he said.

  "No, certainly not," she said, and then she remembered Margery's last words: "I couldn't pay for much traveling." What else was going to turn on her in retrospect? "At least," she said glumly, "not in so many words."

  "Well, you see what I'm getting at. In fact she was convicted of obtaining money under false pretenses. The Lord only knows what else she may have got up to. We're just now sorting through the contents of her flat."

  At once Barbara knew what she was trying to remember. "And her handbag too?"

  "Yes, obviously. Why do you ask?"

  "You think she invented this cult to extort money from me, but I can show you that's wrong. Among her things you'll find a letter from her daughter which proves it exists."

  He seemed to think better of objecting. "All her things are here. You may as well show me." ------------------------------------112

  He took her down to a basement room. There were no windows; fluorescent light had congealed on all the walls. A young policewoman, her face scrubbed and rigid, was sorting through the items on a table. "If you'll keep them in order," she said to Barbara.

  There were library books, a wad of money that looked as though it had come from a wallet, a selection of clothes which seemed never to have been worn, several pieces of jewelry. The sight of all this, exposed beneath the pitiless light, made Barbara uneasy: was there anything that belonged to Margery, any trace of her at all? Yes, there was a photograph of a schoolgirl holding a book, and there were homework books with "Susan Turner" written on the covers in a hand which became surer with the years, until at last it was exactly like the handwriting of the letter that Barbara had seen.

  But there was no letter. She shook the clothes and the library books, while the policewoman grew disapproving and the light seemed to intensify jerkily. "It must be in the house by the overpass," she said.

  "But you've searched there, Mrs. Waugh. The constable said you checked all the litter in the garden. I take it that was what you were looking for."

  Could she tell him about the sketch? It seemed too close to breaking her promise. She yearned to tell someone, anyone who might know what to do, and she might have given in to the temptation if he hadn't said, "I think you must face facts, Mrs. Waugh. Turner read about you in the newspaper and decided to see how much she could take you for."

  It took her a moment to see that she had been tricked, but not by Margery. "You knew all the time who I was. You think my daughter died nine years ago, and so nothing I've told you can possibly be true."

  "I'm sure nobody could forget what happened to your ------------------------------------113

  daughter, Mrs. Waugh. Rest assured that the case isn't closed. One day we may bring the culprits to justice. But you must see," he said, ushering her away from the policewoman who was sorting disdainfully through Margery's clothes, "that's the only hope we have now. You mustn't let people like Turner raise your hopes. Her sort feasts on the misfortunes of others."

  "No, she wasn't like that. That wasn't why she came to me. I accept she was a thief, but she was genuinely concerned about her daughter." Now she was determined to defend her, since Margery couldn't do so for herself. "Look, if it was all a hoax, why did she go into that house? That wouldn't have persuaded me of anything. She must have been looking for something."

  He closed his office door behind her. "Mrs. Waugh, you'll be telling me next that this cult pushed her downstairs to shut her up."

  Though she hadn't thought anything of the kind, the suggestion made her uneasy. "No, I'm sure she just lost her footing and fell downstairs. But that could have been because she was excited over something she'd found." A shudder went through her as she remembered vividly what that was.

  All at once he was less gentle: he was a policeman, and policemen don't like to be wrong; he seemed to resent her attempts to play detective. "All the evidence suggests that Turner invented this so-called cult and wrote the letter as well. If the letter had been as convincing as you want me to believe, she would have brought it to us."

  He took her silence for agreement, and became kindly. "You haven't drunk your tea. Would you like a fresh cup?"

  "If you've no further questions, I'd like to go home." She wanted time to think uninterrupted, but at once the idea dismayed her: she would be alone with the meaning of the sketch of Angela. ------------------------------------114

  "By all means." As he held open the door for her he said, "I know it must be difficult to believe that anyone would play such a cruel trick, but there's really no alternative to believing that, is there? You know that your daughter is dead, you had the courage to face that. Many people wouldn't have been able to rebuild their lives as well as you have."

  Outside, the roar of traffic was waiting for her. A dingy sports car sputtered past, belching fumes the color of the sky. In the dimness the white houses of Ladbroke Grove shifted and smouldered like ash. There were so many shadows where a watcher could hide, so many gardens obscured by bulging hedges. She hurried toward Holland Park Avenue, the carpet of light outside the shops, the underground.

  The tiled corridors were deserted. Escalators unfolded their steps and sent them down to crawl up the underside, back to the top. As they carried her down, faces with their eyes poked out sailed by, scrawled with gibberish. There was nobody on the platform, nobody was watching her except Roddy McDowall flattened like a pinned moth on the wall, and it didn't matter if anyone was; she had kept her promise.

  In the Barbican the walkways were shadowy and ominous as unknown empty streets; each pillar could hide an entire group of watchers. Inverted lamps trailed in the lake, beneath the hovering church. Her thoughts had chattered louder than the train, and they were still chattering: if Angela was still alive--and there seemed to be no other way to interpret the drawing--where was she now, and with whom? Were they the people whom the reporter Gerry Martin was trying to trace?

  Even when Barbara locked herself into her flat she felt watched. She was growing hollow, her nerves felt exposed, and there
was only one reason why she didn't feel ------------------------------------115

  completely helpless: she had to find Gerry Martin. But when she did so, wouldn't she have to break her promise? All at once her raw nerves felt worse. Even if the skepticism of the police had let her keep her secret in effect, if anyone had seen her going from the empty house to the police station--anyone who had Angela at his mercy--then she might as well have broken her promise. ------------------------------------116 ------------------------------------117

  117

  Fourteen

  The neck of the receiver was solid in her fist, the distant phone rang against her ear, but as soon as she glanced at Arthur's photograph she was back on the escalator. Dimness clung to everything like grime; she could feel it clinging to her. Perhaps it had seeped into the works, perhaps that was why the stairs kept jerking and faltering, and she felt she would never reach the top of the sloping tunnel. Was that it, the blotch of darkness high above her, or was that just more of the dimness, intensified by distance? The eyes of framed posters gleamed at her from the walls. Whenever she tried to climb, the stairs began to slip backward.

  Arthur went by on the downward escalator, and she had the impression that he wanted to tell her something. He couldn't, for he was only a photograph of himself, unable to speak or move. She watched him dwindle into the ------------------------------------118

  dimness where the trains were slithering. When she looked up she was nearly at the top, and there was Angela.

  Behind her was nothing but darkness, a darkness that seemed to be moving, but she was almost within reach. It was only when Barbara tried to run to her that she began to recede. The stairs were toppling downward too fast for Barbara to outrun, and something was happening to Angela's face. It wasn't Angela but a sketch of her, Barbara had told herself as the stairs rushed her down into the dark in which she woke, crying out and alone. Now she had forgotten in what way Angela's face had looked so dismaying, but the sense of it was still with her, so that when a voice said "Hello" it took her a moment to recall what she was doing.