AND DOING RIGHT’S THE RIGHT THING.
‘YOU’VE GOT TO TAKE IT TO YARROW,’ Percy Copper told Suzanne Fillmore. ‘I mean, he ought to know, it could be important.’
‘I don’t know, he’ll think I’m wasting his time. I mean, what have I got to go on? A vague suspicion, that’s all. I might have seen somebody at the house, but there was no answer when we knocked on the door. Not really very strong, is it? He’ll just think it’s stupid woman’s intuition and send me away again.’
‘I don’t think he will. Yarrow, he’s right approachable, you know, and even if he doesn’t take it on board, if he doesn’t take it seriously, I think he will, mind, but you’ve done your bit, done right, you’ve told him so you’re in the clear if owt ever comes out later. Besides, you got more than that, haven’t you? He’s told his mother he was printed at the Town Hall van, but there is no record of it. Could be his card’s gone astray, it might happen I suppose, but it’s a bit coincidental, in’t it? No, you’ve got to take it to Yarrow.’
Percy and Suzanne were sitting at a corner table of the station canteen. It was early morning, before they started their respective shifts, before they went out on the streets again, collecting fingerprints.
She cradled her mug in her hands, staring into it for a minute or two before speaking. ‘I need somebody I can talk to… and I don’t know who else to go to. I need some advice, I don’t know how to proceed and…’ Blacklee, she nodded in the direction of her fingerprinting partner who was sat on the other side of the canteen with other coppers seconded from Wakefield. However, he did not appear to be talking to anybody. ‘He’s no use. No help. He thinks I’m overreacting. Oh. I don’t know,’ she sighed.
‘We were printing on Effington Street,’ she continued, still staring into her tea, as if seeking an answer there, and proceeded to tell her story, the glimpse of a figure at the window, the lack of an answer when she called and knocked on the door, the follow-up visit when the mother said her son told her he had already been printed at the Town Hall van, and her subsequent check with the fingerprinting collators who told her his name was not on the list of the fingerprinted. That Blacklee simply dismissed her concerns and how she had felt sure there was something wrong but now was not so certain.
‘You’ve got to take it to Yarrow,’ Percy had told her.
She smiled, ‘Thanks, I think I will, yeah, it’s better to do something rather than nothing.’
‘You can’t do wrong by doing right.’ Percy said, ‘and doing right’s the right thing,’ and then wondered why it was such a stupid thing to say, his tongue was running away in all directions and he felt a right prat.
Still, she sat, her doubts dissolved, enjoying a quiet moment before she went to see Yarrow, before she went out on the streets again, another day out on her feet. When she had got home the night before, her feet were so sore she had soaked them in a bowl of hot salty water, her mother bringing another kettle of boiling water to heat up the water once it had gone cold, her mother’s disapproval of her daughter’s career choice barely concealed.