AS LAMBERT WALKED towards Wordsworth House, a plastic bag containing vodka and cans of Pepsi in one hand, and his document case under the other arm, his mobile rang. He shoved the case hurriedly under the arm carrying the plastic bag and struggled to extricate his mobile from his pocket.
‘Hi, Kevin,’ he said as he pressed the button. ‘You’re not still at the airport, are you? It’s gone eight o’clock.’
‘I don’t think the car’s here, Harry. I’ve been over every square metre of the long stay car park – twice!’
‘Maybe that’s not how he got to the airport. He might have parked the car somewhere else and taken a taxi.’
‘So where’s the old woman’s car now then?’
‘I’ve no idea. But at least Debbie got that oil sample off the garage floor. Presumably forensics will have it by now.’
‘I think so, but I haven’t heard if they’ve got a result and matched it yet. Are you on your way back?’
‘No, it looks like I’ll be catching the 10.45 train. Gets in to Swansea at 2.15. I’ve yet to talk to Keith Hilden’s mother. She’s a dipsomaniac, so that could be tricky, and I think …’
He stopped, unable to hear any sound from Kevin’s end. ‘Hello? Hello? Kevin?’
Shit! Last night he’d forgotten to charge his mobile, and with all the calls he’d made throughout the day, the battery had just died. Not that it made much difference now. Once he finished questioning Hilden’s mother, he could head for home. And first thing tomorrow they would meet with DCS Marden and present him with all the evidence and make the arrest.
When he arrived at the gloomy building, he pressed the buzzer for Flat 12. After a while a croaky voice asked who it was. Taking a deep breath, he replied, ‘It’s me, Mum. Keith.’
He thought he heard an excited intake of breath and the door buzzed as it was released. He pushed it open, hurried up the stairs and along the balcony. He thought she might be out on the balcony, waiting to greet her son, but her door was shut. He knocked loudly and waited. From further along the balcony he could hear the cheers and then the disappointed groans from the crowd as a striker failed to score in a televised football match.
Perhaps she hadn’t heard him. He knocked again, twice as loud this time. And then he saw her form through the mottled glass on the top half of the door. When she opened the door and saw it wasn’t her son, she screamed at him.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘It’s Harry.’
‘I don’t know any Harry.’
‘Barbara! Just unlock the chain and let me in, I want to talk to you.’
‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you.’
‘I thought we could have a nice drink together. I’ve brought a bottle of vodka with me.’
He saw the cogs grinding slowly in her addled brain while she thought about this. After the smallest of pauses, she unlatched the security chain and stared up at him, like a small chimp hoping for a handout.
He smiled reassuringly and showed her the vodka. Her eyes lit up and her hand reached out to grab it, but he held it out of reach.
‘No, no, Barbara! I just want a quiet talk while we have a few drinks together. There’s no harm in that, is there?’
Reluctantly, and still eyeing his bag of temptation, she stepped aside to let him enter. ‘Door down the end,’ she said.
He walked into the living room, expecting to find filth and untidiness. What surprised him was the chaotic neatness of the room. Piles of old newspapers and magazines had been stacked in bundles. The dining table contained three neat stacks, each about a foot high, and there were also piles of books on the floor, but they were positioned carefully, like building blocks. Lambert imagined, during her more sober moments, she was obsessively compulsive, and had a misguided need to create order in her life. But the room smelt musty and damp, and the one-bar electric fire gave out little warmth.
An oak sideboard had a fruit bowl on the top, containing one black rotting banana. Lambert nodded towards the sideboard cupboard. ‘You got any glasses for our drinks?’
She darted across the room, waving him out of the way, opened the door and grabbed two crystal glasses. ‘We’ll have the posh ones.’ She placed them carefully on top of the sideboard. ‘Waterford,’ she explained.
After he’d poured the drinks, taking a smaller measure himself, he settled into a garishly patterned two-seater sofa with wooden arms. She scurried across and sat in a tattered easy chair close to the fire. He watched as she sipped her vodka and Pepsi, and saw the relief, followed by a return of sociability as she turned towards him with a smile.
‘What’s this in aid of?’ she said.
‘I just wanted to have a talk with you about Keith.’
She raised the glass to her mouth for a sip, rather too quickly, and the drink spilled out of the side of her mouth. She wiped it with the back of her hand and looked Lambert in the eye, defying him to comment on the accident.
‘So why did Keith choose to go and live in Wales?’ Lambert asked.
‘Who said anything about him living in Wales?’
‘I know where he lives, Barbara. He’s married and he has children, and they have a big house.’
Like a parody of a drunk, she put a finger to her lips, covering a secret smile. ‘Shh! It’s private. I’m not supposed to tell no one about him.’
‘But I know all about him, Barbara. Where he lives, what he does for a living. And he’s got a flat in London. Did you know that?’
She stared at the bottom of her glass, which was now almost empty. ‘Course I did. I’ve been there. Nice flat it is too. He’s very good to me is Keith; looks after me when he comes to London. He won’t let me go to Wales though. He said if I ever do, he—’ She stopped and examined her glass again.
‘He’d what, Barbara?’
Confusion clouded her gaze, and she shrugged.
‘Let me get you another drink.’
Lambert poured her another generous measure of vodka with a small top-up of Pepsi. As he handed it to her, she looked up at him trustingly, as if he was the only person who understood her problems.
‘It’s good to have—’ She searched for the words ‘—congenial company.’
‘So you’ve never been to Wales to visit Keith, Barbara. But you rang him at his home there a few weeks ago.’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.’
She smirked. ‘Oh yeah. We had a long chat.’
‘He wasn’t angry you rang then?’
‘Was he? I don’t remember.’
‘Didn’t he wonder how you’d got the number?’
A crafty smile as she tapped the side of her nose. ‘It was when I went to his flat in … somewhere in London.’ She waved a hand at one of the walls. ‘Keith was in the bathroom, and I found a letter with his address on it. So I copied the number.’
Her grin widened at the memory, proud of her alcoholic deviousness.
‘Do you know who Gavin Lloyd is?’
Her smile vanished and she looked like a cornered animal.
‘He made me promise never to tell anyone. You won’t ever tell anyone, will you?’
Lambert shook his head and said, ‘No reason to,’ before asking her some more questions, this time in a light conversational tone, plying her with a few more drinks, until he thought she had reached the stage when she might remember what happened in 1975. Her long-term memory, he guessed, would probably be sharper than the short term.
‘When you lived in your other house, when Keith was still at school, do you remember his friend, Con?’
‘Oh, him! Didn’t have two words to say for himself. I can’t think why my Keith was his mate. Keith was bright. But Con was … he seemed a bit thick.’
‘Do you remember the night he came round to stay at your place, and his father was attacked and killed?’
‘Yeah, they was in watching a film on the telly. The police came and had a look round my house afterwards. Dunno what for. They didn’t find nothing.’
‘Did they ask about the car?’
She screwed up her face in confusion. ‘What bleedin’ car?’
‘I thought you had a car belonging to your husband parked outside. Did the police search the car?’
‘No, we never had no keys. Keith said we lost ’em.’ She tapped the side of her nose again, as if she enjoyed the gesture. ‘But I think he had ’em all along.’
‘Why would he want to keep that a secret?’
She shrugged hugely. ‘It’s kids, innit. I mean, what did it matter if he did have the keys? I couldn’t drive. And neither could he. He was probably just playing games.’
‘Did he ever keep things in the car?’
‘He might have done. But it didn’t bother me.’
‘What happened to Mr Hilden, his father?’
Her mouth contorted into a grimace, and Lambert watched as she struggled with a painful memory.
‘Did he leave you?’
She shook her head violently. ‘No, not in the way you mean. He was doing so well at first. Started his own business in East Ham. He poured his heart and soul into it, working all hours.’
She paused, lost in her memories.
‘What sort of business did he run?’ Lambert prompted gently.
‘He used to design and fit kitchens for people.’
‘And what went wrong?’
‘What didn’t go wrong? He had a couple of people working for him, and they was ripping him off. And he got cancelled orders and then the suppliers wanted paying. He was going bust when it happened.’
There was a silence, even though Lambert was aware of the strident football commentary through the paper-thin walls.
‘When what happened?’
Her eyes became distant. ‘Dennis went out early one morning – I thought he was going to work. Instead, he went to that park by the river – near where the tunnel to walk to Greenwich is. I can’t understand what made him do it. He should’ve thought of his family first.’
‘How did he kill himself?’
‘He stuck his head in a plastic bag so he couldn’t breathe no more. Just lay down in the park and stopped breathing.’
She knocked back her drink and held it out for Lambert to refill. After handing it to her, he said, ‘How old was Keith when this happened?’
‘He was ten.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘That’s why I thought it was funny, Keith growing up and going off to live in Wales. Maybe he wanted to be like his dad.’
Lambert, more alert now than at any time during their talk, remained standing. ‘When you say he wanted to be like his dad, you mean what exactly?’
‘His father was Welsh.’
‘And he had a strong Welsh accent and everything?’
She looked up at him, a puzzled expression on her face. ‘Of course he bloody did. He was Welsh, wasn’t he?’
Deep inside, Lambert felt a small vibration of satisfaction. ‘So Keith grew up listening to his father’s Welsh voice.’
‘Yeah. He really used to enjoy talking with his dad. And then Dennis went and killed himself. It took Keith a while to get over it. At least a year, and then he became – well, whenever I talked about his father he became angry. Said he’d never be like him. Keith used to upset me by calling his dad a failure. Keith reckoned he was going places. Not like his dad, he said, who just ended up sticking his head in a bag.’
She looked up at him, pleading, eyes brimming with tears.
‘Keith is successful, isn’t he? Not like his dad.’
Like one of his suspects, Lambert broke eye contact with her as he lied. ‘Keith’s done all right for himself. He’s a very successful television producer and he’s won all kinds of awards.’
It was what she wanted to hear. When he looked at her again, he saw the smile of gratitude, and the tears which had threatened to become a torrent had miraculously vanished.
He glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got to catch the 10.45 to Swansea. And that doesn’t get in until 2.15 in the morning,’ he said. ‘So if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get across to Paddington.’
He noticed the alcoholic desperation as she stared at the vodka bottle, hoping he wasn’t going to take what was left with him, and he felt deeply sorry for the woman.
‘I’ll see myself out,’ he said as he picked up his document case.
As she watched him move away from the sideboard, and more importantly the bottle, she relaxed. She could enjoy the remaining vodka during the rest of the evening, while she watched The Apprentice. She liked that programme, and there was a young man in it who reminded her of Keith.
Keith! She needed to tell this bloke not to tell Keith what she’d said.
‘Wait!’ she said as Lambert was about to leave. ‘You won’t tell him, will you?’
He stopped at the door. ‘Keith, you mean?’
Her brain fuzzy, she struggled to find the words. ‘His name,’ she slurred. ‘I didn’t tell you his name. Gavin … that’s his name … he … he’ll get angry with me if he knows I told you.’
Lambert patted her on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Barbara. It never came from you. We already knew his name.’
With barely a backward glance at her, Lambert moved swiftly to the front door and let himself out.
As soon as she heard it close, she refilled her glass, without the Pepsi this time, and knocked back the neat spirit with one swift gulp. Confused now, she wondered who that man was she had spoken to. Something to do with Keith, she thought. And then, through the thick fog of her mind, she saw an image materialize. Christ! He was a copper. She’d been speaking to a copper. And what was it Keith had told her? It was something to do with his name.
Jesus Christ! She had told that copper his name, and after she’d promised him she wouldn’t.
Don’t tell anyone I’m Gavin Lloyd. Not anyone. Understand?
‘Yes, Kevin,’ she mumbled drunkenly, and then corrected herself, ‘Gavin! That’s it! Gavin! Oh Christ! I shouldn’t have told that copper your name, Gavin. I’d better ring you.’
But where had she put his number? Her misty eyes surveyed the bundles of newspapers and magazines stacked neatly on the table. It wasn’t there. She could remember having a clear up earlier in the day, restacking the bundles so there was barely an untidy overlap with the pages, but where was his number?
And then she remembered the kitchen! The noticeboard! Carefully tacked to the cork, all the things she needed to remember, all in neat rows with coloured tacks. She thought she remembered putting Keith’s number in a row of red tacks.
She staggered out to the kitchen and lurched towards the noticeboard on the wall above the mottled green work surface. She narrowed her eyes and focused on the noticeboard. And there it was, in big, bold letters. Keith stroke Gavin.
She unpinned the number from the board, rushed back into the living room and picked up the phone. After several attempts to dial, knowing she had pressed the wrong digits numerous times, she eventually heard the phone ring at the other end. She slumped to the floor and sat cradling the phone, humming a tune as she waited.
‘Keith!’ she shouted when it was answered. ‘Is that you?’
It was. It was him. Her Keith. She hadn’t misdialled after all. She felt pleased about that. But she wanted him to know how sorry she was.
Speech slurring heavily now, she said, ‘A man came here to see me. I think he was a copper. I’m sorry, Keith! I’m sorry! What? Yeah, I think he said that was his name when he first came round. I think that’s what it was. Yes! Lambert! Yes, I’m sure of it. And he’s just on his way back to Swansea on a late train. Oh, Keith. I’m sorry. I never meant to tell him you was Gavin. He knows you’re two people. Keith and Gavin. I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to tell him who you are. Keith! Listen! I know what we’ll do….’
But her son had already hung up. After sobbing for a bit, she got up off the floor and poured the remaining vodka into her glass.