Chapter 21

osie was a chubbier, freckled version of Susanna. She arrived by taxi without the money to pay for it and George handed the fare to the driver without comment. Fortunately she had had the sense to travel by bus to Reading and then by train to the local station but George got the impression that, if she had known he rather than her mother would pay, she would have taken a taxi from Heathrow. She and Valerie instantly went into a conclave from which he was very obviously excluded and he felt surplus to their needs. From time to time they remembered his presence and tried to include him but it was as an afterthought and he felt increasingly lonely. When Valerie’s sister arrived early the next morning, he was glad to be able to spend at least part of the day away from the house for his meeting with Helen Knight.

“George?” She had been sitting near the entrance to the cafeteria and, holding out her hand in greeting, she rose as he walked in. She was a handsome woman aged around forty, and almost as tall as him, with short hair. Her comfortable, white linen trouser suit, worn over a dark red tee shirt, looked expensive. The overall impression was of moderate elegance. George noticed she was not wearing a wedding ring and briefly wondered why before mentally checking himself for making such a stereotypically male observation. “I was pretty sure you would be on time so I got a pot of coffee for two. Is coffee okay?”

“Yes, fine. Thanks.” He sat down and allowed Helen to pour coffee into his cup. “I’m not really sure what I can do to help you. I wasn’t there when Susanna was taken hostage - in fact the last time I saw her was when we said goodbye at the airport.” He was surprised to find that saying that flooded him with sadness and a hollow sense of irrecoverable loss. It must have been visible in his face.

“I’m so sorry about Susanna, George. And that’s not just because she might have been able to help with my work. What did the police say about her death not being an accident?”

“Only that there were no tyre marks showing that the car tried to stop. Oh, and that they’ve found what they think is the car that hit her. It had been stolen a couple of days before. They found it burned out on some waste ground but from the damage to the front and the paint colour they seem pretty sure it’s the right car. I can’t believe though, that someone would want to kill her. Surely she can’t have known anything all that incriminating?”

“Who knows? I’ve been investigating this trade for about six months and there are some very nasty people running it, but you’re right, as far as I know they haven’t actually killed anyone yet. Maybe it was a mistake and they just meant to frighten her or to warn her – and others. That would be much more typical. I don’t mind telling you that I am now being even more careful. I’ve already had one or two nasty experiences and I don’t want any more. For example, you’ll forgive me if I don’t give you my home address or telephone number but, well, as I said, these people can be pretty nasty. There’s a lot of money involved and they have a lot to lose, so…” She gave him a tight smile. “And you should be careful, too, George. They don’t know what you might know about them; they will assume that you probably have some incriminating information and they will keep a close eye on you, at the very least.”

George wondered if his having used false names and a circuitous travel route might have had more beneficial results than just making it harder for Susan or the bank to trace him. “Thanks for the tip but, as it happens, I have been covering my tracks quite carefully for other reasons – a messy divorce,” he explained hastily. “If you know who these people are, shouldn’t you…we go to the police?”

“I don’t know specifically who killed Susanna, if that indeed is what happened. I can hardly go to the police and say that I know about the international people trafficking trade and some people who are involved in it. There’s no provable connection, is there, with Susanna’s death, no evidence? It’s only a theory and I expect they’d listen politely and probably follow it up but the people I know are unlikely to have been driving the car. Even if they were, which is a hell of a long shot, they will be able to prove they were somewhere else. We would need much more than vague ideas and remote possibilities, George and, well, actually, I was rather hoping you would be willing to help a bit with gathering some harder information. What are your plans now?”

“I haven’t really got any. There will be the funeral then I need to sort out something with this divorce business and do one or two other things but then I suppose I’ll go home – back to the island – at least for a bit. Frankly I’m not sure I want to get too mixed up in any of this, Helen. What exactly did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ve got a pretty good handle on how the girls are recruited, usually in Eastern Europe, and then brought to the UK. What I want to do next is somehow get to know more about what happens to them between the time they leave their homes and when they disappear into the sex trade or finally turn up in refuges, police stations and so on. It’s a difficult gap to investigate and as you can see, I’m a bit too far over the hill to work undercover in Soho.” She smiled disarmingly. George suspected that she was a pretty tough and experienced professional.

“I think ‘over the hill’ is going a bit too far but I can imagine that the sex trade prefers… well… more, er… adolescent applicants. Well, anyway I’m moving again tomorrow morning. I’ll give you the telephone number. We’ll see how things work out. If you think I can help, give me a call. If I think of anything I might do, I’ll ring you.” The germ of an idea was forming in his mind.

He could not face Valerie’s house and the trio of women hiding their grief behind banal chatter. He had told them he would be out most of the day and the prospect of turning up as an unexpected lunch guest was too horrible to contemplate. He toyed briefly with the idea of going to Croydon and looking up Deborah but quickly discarded it. That would reveal his loneliness and make him feel vulnerable. And Deborah might get the wrong idea about how keen he was to see her again, or the right idea. He turned up the volume of the radio, already tuned to a rock music station and tapped the steering wheel in time to the driving drumbeat. An advance warning sign for motorway service areas loomed and disappeared behind him. Surely not! He was not yet that desperate or so sad as to look forward to Sunday lunch in a motorway cafeteria. He took the next exit and went looking for a country pub.

Squeezed into the corner of a tastelessly renovated, mock-Tudor pub that tried and almost succeeding in satisfying the desire of commuters to be rural at weekends, George didn’t feel any more cheerful or any less lonely. If he had to be on his own, he would have much preferred to sit somewhere in the fresh air, even on the threadbare lawn in the tired garden but he had quailed at the sight of the scampering and screaming children around the unsupervised swings that squeaked on their rusting frame. It was not until you were alone that you noticed the noise in a pub, thought George. It was like a school classroom when the teacher left it. What began as a murmur eventually rose to a crescendo of din as each voice vied to be heard above its neighbour. But the pint was fine and the food plentiful and edible even if it had recently been micro waved back to life from its chilled condition. He had often eaten worse. He remembered earning his cook’s badge in the Scouts. The event had been some sort of mass cookout in a wood somewhere with individuals and groups bending over their pots and fires. There is a popular view that the usual product of Boy Scout campfire cooking is either rabbit stew undercooked in biscuit-tin ovens or flour and water dough dampers twisted around sticks and toasted to a charcoal coating over the embers. George had eaten both but for his cook’s badge he had to devise a more ambitious dish. And construct his own kitchen. And build his own fire. Forked sticks driven into the earth in front of a stump with cross pieces and a surface of trimmed and tied-down twigs had furnished a table and seat that met the hygiene requirement for an off-ground food preparation and consumption facility but left him short of firewood. His chosen dish, jam roly-poly pudding and custard, was not one he had made before but the suet and flour and water combined well enough and, smeared with jam and wrapped in a cloth, it eventually boiled happily away in the pan of water suspended on a primitive gantry- even more wood - over the fire. George had had to use both of the two matches he was allowed and the fire had caused some anxious minutes. Ordinarily the fire should have been allowed to die to hot embers, regularly replenished with dry wood without causing too much flame and only slight smoke. However, the fuel situation had become critical and he had thought it best to make the custard before he ran out of firewood. Avoiding lumps in one’s custard was an objective in camp cooking and he stirred the powder, sugar, milk and water continuously as the liquid came gradually to the boil. The fire was not as hot as it should have been and it took nearly as long to produce custard as was scheduled to boil the jam roly-poly. The regulations required that George consume his own pudding. It may have been some sort of revenge by the judges who had to taste it along with all the other culinary delights and disasters of the day. The roly-poly was barely cooked, slimy in the middle and only just edible. The custard was of the required consistency but thanks to the too-frequent lifting of the saucepan lid over the smoky fire, it was pale green. George was awarded his cook’s badge, more for effort than for outcome but for the rest of his scouting career he was famed for his green custard.

Back in Swindon it was still too early to return to Valerie’s house. Looking for a way to kill some time, George pulled into a space near the park gates and, failing to find a corner shop where he could buy a loaf to feed the ducks, strolled towards the refreshment kiosk thinking he might get a packet of sandwiches or biscuits that would fit the bill. He noticed a slightly overweight man half-heartedly and inexpertly playing football with a toddler. In a chocolate-brown suit, the man looked overdressed for a Sunday afternoon in August and George guessed he was a father exercising his rights of access by taking the child to the park at the weekend. The man, who appeared to be in his late thirties, looked as lonely as George felt and he slowed his pace to watch. The man’s gentle kick missed the toddler by a wide margin and rolled towards George.

“Okay. I’ve got it,” he called and gently kicked the ball towards the pair. He noticed the ball had a glaring, yellow Pokemon character printed on its mauve surface. George’s kick was even more inexpert than the tubby father’s had been and, in his effort to avoid kicking it too hard, George had kicked it too gently and it rolled to a stop well short of its intended recipients. “Sorry!” he called. “I’ll get it.” And he jogged the few metres to where the ball had come to rest on the lumpy grass. The child who, now, on closer examination, appeared to be a little girl, also ran towards the ball but stopped short, staring at George apprehensively. George noticed that she was dressed in what looked like a hand-knitted jumper under her dungarees and wore old-fashioned, button-up, patent leather shoes, one of which had a flapping strap. A pair of white-framed sunglasses was hooked around the strap of her dungarees.

“Hello!” he said gently, fearful that the child might cry at being confronted by a large, male stranger. The child stared at him, apparently uncertain what to do. The man puffed over and smiled at George.

“Thanks. Thanks very much.” George lightly tossed him the ball.

“No problem,” breezed George. The man stood facing him as if uncertain what to say or do next and to break the slightly awkward silence, George added, “your little girl’s shoe is undone. She might trip.”

“Oh, thanks. Come here, darling. Let’s do your shoe up shall we? This is always the hardest button to button, isn’t it?” George smiled and made his escape towards the kiosk while the man was doubled over the child’s shoe. A cheerful middle-aged woman behind the counter sold him an egg and cress sandwich but there were no ducks so he ate it himself sitting alone on a bench looking at the thick, green water.