It took Tony about five days to get the information, calling in favours from numerous contacts and then just waiting while they dug around. The records were old, archived, and his contacts told him that some had – mysteriously – gone missing. But there was enough to piece it together. All they needed was an address, really, and they got that, and passed it on to Tony. Tony passed it to Annie, and they got in the Jag and he drove her over there, to a large council estate full of weary-looking identical pebble-dashed cream houses, many of them with old sofas and fridges in the front gardens. The roads around the estate were littered with burned-out cars.
A young woman answered the door to them. She was mousy blonde, anorexic-thin, wearing a pink T-shirt and tight-fitting ripped jeans. Annie put her at about twenty years old, and hard-faced.
‘Yeah?’ she asked, seeing Annie standing there with Tony behind her.
‘The Biggs family live here?’ asked Annie.
‘Nah,’ said the girl, and went to shut the door.
Annie stuck her foot in it.
‘You mean they don’t?’ she asked.
‘Get your fuckin’ foot out my door,’ said the girl.
Annie shoved forward and the girl teetered into the hallway. Annie grabbed her by the throat and pushed her back against the wall. Her rib protested, but she ignored it. Tony came inside too, and stood there watching.
‘The Biggs family. I’ve asked you politely, but there are other ways. They live here?’ said Annie.
The girl squirmed. ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you? I said no, didn’t I. They used to live here, sure, not any more.’
‘And they moved where?’
‘That was years ago. When my mum and dad moved in here, I was ten.’
‘And they moved where?’ repeated Annie.
‘Gawd, how would I know? There was some sort of family scandal, I know that. They were a bad lot, something happened and they moved away, got out of the area.’
Annie glanced around the hall, wondering if Arthur Biggs had topped himself right here; hung himself from these very stairs.
She let the girl go. ‘You’ve been very helpful. Thanks.’
When they left the house, Tony went to one side of it, Annie to the other, and they started knocking on doors. Did anyone remember the Biggs family that used to live here? No one did. Time had closed over the scandals of the past. Tony went on knocking, and Annie was getting pissed off with the whole thing when he came and fetched her.
‘Got something,’ he said. ‘And by the way, saw your mate Hunter going into the old address just now. His car’s parked up over there, see? Reckon they’re on the same track as us – don’t you?’
Nine doors along from the old Biggs home, a grey-haired woman with large bulging brown eyes was leaning eagerly out of the front door. When they approached, she smiled and ushered them inside, straight into a tiny lounge with chairs and a TV. Most of the room was taken up by a bed, and in it lay a very old woman, sunken-cheeked, white-haired, but beautifully clean and turned out lovely in a mint-green bed jacket tied with ribbons at her wrinkled throat.
‘Mum?’ shouted the woman who’d come to the door. ‘These people are asking about the Biggs, you remember them?’
The old lady cocked her head and stared at her daughter. ‘Biggs?’ she said in a cracked voice.
‘You remember, don’t you? The old man hung hisself, there was an accident on the railways. He was a train driver.’
‘Course I remember Biggs,’ said the old lady.
‘Take a seat,’ said the daughter, who was pushing seventy. The old girl in the bed had to be ninety-five if she was a day, but she was sharp.
Annie and Tony sat down.
‘These people are friends of the family, they want to find out where they’ve moved to,’ said the daughter, shouting.
‘Bad do, that was,’ said the old lady. ‘Broke the wife’s heart when he did that to hisself. She passed on not long after he did it. His married daughter found him, you know. Let herself in with her key one morning and there he was. Hanging from the sodding hall stairs. She had to go and wake her mother up, tell her.’
‘God, that’s awful,’ said Annie.
‘This your fancy man?’ asked the old lady, smiling toothlessly at Annie, at Tony.
‘Mum!’ said the daughter. ‘That’s not your business.’
‘No, this is my friend,’ said Annie. ‘Do you have an address for the married daughter? Any contact details?’ she asked, thinking that the old lady would say no.
‘Of course I have,’ said the old woman scornfully. ‘I get a hundred and twenty cards every Christmas. My daughter Susan and me keep in touch with all our old pals, and Clarry Biggs is on her list. Or Clarry Jameson, as she is now. Clarissa, posh name that, always called her Clarry. Susan and her went to school together.’
‘Can we have her address then? Please?’