He just looked at her, and it seemed to Fifi that any moment he was going to cry. It was clear something had been said that was worrying the life out of him.
"Just tell me, you"ll feel better if you share it."
"It"s that evil b.i.t.c.h Molly," he hissed. "I reckon she"s told them it was me who killed Angela."
"Oh, Frank." She half smiled. "I don"t doubt Molly has tried to blame half the people in the street, but the police aren"t going to believe her, not about you. You wouldn"t hurt a fly, and anyone around here would vouch for that."
"I"ve been tempted to kill Molly several times in the past," he said brokenly. "She knows that, and now she"s up to her neck in this, she"s trying to wriggle out of it by pinning it on me."
Fifi might have laughed if Frank hadn"t sounded so completely serious.
"I think you"ve misunderstood what the police said "
"That slag told them stuff about her and me," Frank interrupted her before she could finish. "She told them we"d been having an affair and that I wanted her to leave Alfie. She reckons I killed Angela because she turned me down."
Fifi did laugh then, she couldn"t help it. "I"m sorry, Frank," she said, putting her hand over her mouth. "I didn"t think anything could make me laugh today, but that is so absurd!"
"It might make me laugh too if it wasn"t for the fact someone else told them that I was overheard saying I was going to kill one of her children so it looked like Alfie"s work."
Fifi sat down heavily on a garden chair. "No, Frank, no one would say something like that about you!"
"It wasn"t a lie, it was true, at least partly." Frank hung his head. "It was a sort of joke with Stan. We were in the pub the night after Dan was attacked, everyone was saying Alfie must have been in on it and that. I said I"d cheerfully kill any of the Muckles, even their kids. Stan said something about we could kill one of them and let Alfie get blamed for it."
"Who told the police this?" Fifi asked.
Frank shrugged his shoulders. "G.o.d knows, someone who was in the pub that night, I suppose. It were just a joke. I can"t stand any of that family, not even the kids, but I wouldn"t kill them."
"Of course you wouldn"t," Fifi said soothingly. "Everyone around here makes remarks like that. I"ve even heard Mrs Jarvis saying she wished someone would set fire to their house with them all in it. If the police took all the death threats made about the Muckles seriously they"d need the entire London police force here in Kennington to deal with them. But you mustn"t worry about this, Frank. The police like to shake people up. It"s the way they get information."
"Well, they shook me right enough," he retorted. "I mean, if they can find out about a joke you made a few weeks ago, what else can they dig up? I"m really worried about it."
"You mustn"t be. For a start, if they thought you"d had any kind of hand in this, they"d have taken you down to the station for questioning."
"But they asked me stuff about being in the Army during the war. I got the idea they wanted to know if I"d ever killed anyone."
"Had you?"
"I don"t know for sure. You fire your gun and you see men fall, but there"s lots of others shooting too. You don"t know if it was one of your bullets necessarily."
"Well, Angela wasn"t killed with a gun," Fifi said. "Did they tell you how she was killed?"
Frank shook his head.
"Well, they think she was smothered with a pillow. That"s hardly the work of an old soldier, is it? Now, let me make you a cup of tea."
Fifi made the tea, and sat down again in the garden to drinks hers. She wanted to go now, Frank"s gloom was making her feel even worse than she had before. But her customary curiosity wouldn"t quite let her excuse herself and leave. She could see there was something more on his mind, and she felt compelled to winkle it out of him.
"Tell me what"s bothering you," she said after a little while. "You know what they say, "A trouble shared" and all that."
"If I tell you, will you promise to keep it to yourself?" he asked.
Fifi promised.
Frank stumbled, faltered and at times stopped altogether as he told her the story of how he"d met Molly on the night of VE Day in Soho. Fifi forgot her own troubles as she listened, hardly believing that staid, rather prim Frank could have s.e.x in a back alley with anyone. But as his story unfolded and he told her of the coincidence that he"d come to live right across the road to the woman, who then blackmailed him, all at once she knew it was entirely true.
"She s.n.a.t.c.hed everything from me," he said bitterly. "My savings, the chance of happiness with my daughter and grandchildren in Australia. I could just about forgive all that if she"d left me with peace of mind while June was dying. But she never let up taunting me. Every day I expected that she"d tell June and break her heart."
"Are you saying she told the police about this?" Fifi asked incredulously.
"Not the truth, so I had to tell them. Like I said before, she said we"d had an affair and I asked her to leave Alfie and run away with me. She claims that I never stopped pestering her, and then when she wouldn"t do as I asked, I got bitter and kept making trouble for her. She reckons I saw them go out for the day and I slipped round the back and killed Angela to spite her."
"That is the most preposterous thing I"ve ever heard," Fifi exclaimed. "But you really mustn"t worry about this. The police know what Molly"s like, and they"ll see this story of hers for what it is, a desperate attempt to blame someone else. If they really thought you"d done it they would"ve arrested you." She felt very sorry for Frank and gave him a hug, saying that the police would have to find his fingerprints or some other evidence to prove he"d been in that house.
"How were you supposed to know they were going out for the day and leaving Angela behind anyway?" she said firmly. "Even if you had known, and wanted to kill her, you weren"t likely to risk going in there first thing in the morning when so many people might spot you."
He didn"t respond to that, just sat there with his head hanging down, a picture of misery.
"You"ve been very kind, Fifi," he said eventually. "But leave me alone now, there"s a good girl. I don"t want to talk about it any more."
That felt like a real rebuff, and it hurt because she was only trying to help him. She wanted to ask Frank how the police had left it, whether he was a real suspect or not. But she realized that she wasn"t going to get any real sense out of him, and feeling even sorrier for herself than she had earlier, she went over to see Yvette.
When she didn"t answer the door, Fifi tapped on the window. She could hear the radio so she knew she was in.
Yvette came to the front door eventually, but she only opened it a crack, and her eyes were red with crying. "Oh, Fifi!" she said. "I cannot talk to you now, I am too upset, ze police have been "ere, and all the time they are banging and moving things next door. I must go out to get away."
"Come over to my flat then," Fifi suggested. "I"ll make you some tea and we can talk."
"Non, I cannot," she said, her hands fluttering in agitation. "I "ave the need to be alone."
It seemed to Fifi that everyone needed to be alone but her. "Okay," she said. "But if you change your mind, you know where I am."
A little later Fifi went along to the corner shop to get some bread, and walked into a coven of half a dozen middle-aged woman all gossiping about Angela"s death. None of them actually lived in Dale Street, but all their faces were ones she"d seen around the area.
A woman with a headscarf tied round her curlers and a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth was holding forth about Alfie. "He"s been doing it to his girls for years," she said with authority. "He got the two older ones up the spout and then threw them out. A man that does that ought to be hung up by his feet and a bit chopped off him every day."
When she saw Fifi, her eyes lit up. "You found the kid, didn"t you? What did she look like? How did he kill her?"
Fifi could understand curiosity, but the phrasing of this woman"s questions was utterly repellent and ghoulish. "If you"ve got any questions, go and ask the police," she said snootily.
The woman was so surprised that the cigarette fell out of her mouth on to the floor. "Hoity-toity," she said as she picked it up. "I suppose your s.h.i.t don"t stink either."
Fifi turned on her heel and left the shop without any bread, her face burning. Until yesterday she had felt at home here, now it was as though she was an alien. If it was true that Alfie had got his two older daughters pregnant, why hadn"t someone reported it? What was the matter with everyone round here? Why were they all so spineless?
As she marched indignantly up the street she could see a man at the door of number 3 talking to Mrs Blackstock who lived on the ground floor. She and her husband were frail and elderly, and Fifi had only spoken to them once or twice as they rarely came out of their house.
She guessed the man was a journalist. He was short and thin, with gla.s.ses and a very cheap baggy suit.
"I don"t know anything," Mrs Blackstock was saying. "My husband and I keep ourselves to ourselves."
Fifi could see Mrs Blackstock felt intimidated. She was holding on to her walking stick so hard that her knuckles were white.
Fifi tapped the reporter on the shoulder. "Leave her alone," she said. "And I don"t think you should be pestering people for information when a little girl has just died," she added as he turned to face her.
"Would you be Felicity Reynolds?" he asked, his eyes lighting up behind his gla.s.ses. "You found her, didn"t you? Would you like to tell me about it?"
"No, I wouldn"t," Fifi said. "Now clear off back to whatever cesspit you crawled out of and leave this lady in peace."
He looked surprised and backed away. Mrs Blackstock quickly shut her front door and Fifi went home.
As she closed the front door behind her and walked up the stairs she began to cry.
She couldn"t cope with all this, the horror in her own head, police questions, journalists and now other people trying to put their anxieties on to her. She"d lost her baby, got a broken arm, her parents had disowned her, and even Dan wouldn"t stay home to look after her.
What had happened to her life? Before she met Dan it was all so easy and nice. She liked her job, she had good friends, she came home every evening to a hot dinner and even her clothes were washed and ironed for her. Now she was living in a slum, and everything was falling around her ears.
And it wasn"t going to get any better either. She"d have to go to court when the trial began, forced to give evidence with that monster Alfie sitting there in the dock looking at her.
Why was all this happening to her? Cut off from her family just because she chose a man they didn"t approve of, no one to turn to for comfort or advice. She wanted Patty, but she couldn"t even phone her and tell her what had happened without having to go through her mother and she knew she wouldn"t get any sympathy from that quarter.
Once upstairs she flung herself on to her bed and cried bitterly.
She was still lying there sobbing when Dan came home. "What on earth"s the matter?" he asked. "Has something else happened?"
"Fat lot you"d care if it had," she sobbed out. "n.o.body cares about me."
"I"m knackered and hungry, Fifi," he said, his voice strained and weary. "If you"ve got some grievance, spit it out now. Then I"ll go and get some fish and chips for us both."
"Grievance?" Fifi spat at him. "I"ve had a horrible day, everyone"s been mean to me. And all you think about is eating fish and chips!"
"Can"t you just think about someone else for a change?" he snapped at her. "Look at me, I"m filthy, I"ve been working in eighty degrees for ten hours. I"ll try to be sympathetic when I"ve had a bath, changed and had some food."
He didn"t wait for her reply but grabbed a bath towel and stomped off down to the bathroom.
Fifi could only cry harder then. If Dan had no time for her, there was no one left.
Chapter eleven.
"Fer f.u.c.k"s sake slow down, Dan, it ain"t a bleedin" race!" Chas exclaimed as Dan s.n.a.t.c.hed a brick from the hod before Chas had even had a chance to take the bricks out and stack them.
Dan looked askance at his labourer. He had been so immersed in thinking about Fifi he hadn"t been aware he"d been laying the bricks like a madman.
"Sorry, mate," he said. "I"ll stop for a f.a.g."
Once Dan had sat down on the edge of the scaffolding platform, his legs dangling over the side, he lit up a cigarette. Chas sat down beside him. "What"s up with you anyway? You"ve been on another planet for days now. Is the old woman giving you grief?"
Dan didn"t like Chas Bovey. He thought the man was a lazy and dishonest thug who would sell his own grandmother for a few bob. He only did labouring work in the summer because he liked to build up muscle and get a suntan. The rest of the year he probably spent housebreaking or stealing cars. But Dan always did his best to get on with workmates, so he held out a cigarette to him. "I wouldn"t say she"s giving me grief," he sighed. "But she ain"t herself. That kid being killed has knocked her for six."
A fortnight ago tomorrow, Dan had been looking forward to surprising Fifi by taking her to Brighton. He could remember wondering where she kept her swimsuit, and how he could manage to pack it into a bag with his trunks and two towels without her seeing it. He decided he couldn"t, so instead he"d make out they were going to a swimming pool. He wasn"t going to tell her where they were really going until they were on the tube heading for Victoria.
Two hours later that same day as he had made his way home, he was still trying to dream up a good excuse for setting off so early in the morning. Then he"d turned into Dale Street to be confronted with the sight of police cars and a hysterical horde of neighbours.
As soon as he was told that Angela was dead and Fifi had found her body, his first thought had been that this was way too much for her so soon after losing the baby.
Now, a fortnight later, he just didn"t know what to do for the best. Fifi was either locked into brooding silence or going on and on about the murder to the point where he felt he might scream. Moving away from Dale Street was clearly vital, but it would take time to find another place, and any decent accommodation required a hefty deposit and advance rent. As their savings had taken a hammering in the two weeks he was off work without pay, they just didn"t have that kind of money right now.
The only way to get some extra money was to go back to working all day Sat.u.r.days. But as Fifi"s moods were so unpredictable, she might go spare when he told her. Only the other night she"d said that if he"d come home at lunch-time that day as he always used to on Sat.u.r.days, she wouldn"t have been the one that found Angela.
He cla.s.sed the evening of that day as the very worst in his life. On top of all the noise and police activity out in the street, Fifi"s distress and the tension in the air as they waited for the Muckles to come home, he was tormented with guilt.
He should have gone to the police and the NSPCC when Angela was hurt before. But he"d smugly thought that the kid would be safe once he marked Alfie"s card. How could anyone be so stupid as to believe a nutcase like that could be stopped by just the threat of a good kicking?
Alfie and Molly had been charged jointly with the murder and were remanded in Brixton and Holloway prisons respectively. Mike was also in Brixton, charged with being an accessory. No one knew for certain where Dora was, but it was generally thought she had been placed in a mental inst.i.tution. Dan really hoped that Alfie and Molly would be hanged, but he would always be ashamed of himself for not having done more to protect Angela.
The more Fifi told him about what had happened to her, the angrier he felt with himself. He knew the right thing was to let Fifi talk and talk about it until she"d got it out of her system, but he couldn"t bear to hear it.
"You two ain"t havin" much luck lately," Chas remarked, breaking Dan"s reverie.
"You can say that again," Dan said with a weary sigh.
Just a few weeks ago in the first spell of hot weather, he could remember sitting up on some scaffolding, just like he and Chas were doing now, smoking a f.a.g and basking in the sunshine. Down below was all the usual chaos of a building site, the churning of cement-mixers, clonking of scaffolding poles, buzz of saws, shouted banter between the men and the occasional wolf whistle when a pretty girl walked past the site. He thought that day that he was the man who had everything. A beautiful wife, a baby on the way, a job he loved, good mates, and he hoped he"d soon have enough money for a deposit on a house of their own.
Then he was attacked, and Fifi lost their baby. Then Angela"s death.
Now it looked as though their marriage was falling apart.
"If I was you, mate, I"d slap "er and pack "er off to her mum"s for a while," Chas said with a chuckle. "You could come down the pub with us of an evening, pull a few birds, "ave a laugh."
Dan bristled. Chas often talked about slapping women and by his own admission he"d abandoned his wife and two children. He was older than Dan, in his mid-thirties, but with his Beatle-style haircut and seemingly innocent-looking blue eyes he looked far younger, and young girls made a beeline for him. "I"ve done all the bird-pulling I want to do," Dan said sharply. "And I"ve never slapped a woman in my life. I despise blokes that do."
He got up then and went back to the bricklaying, leaving Chas staring at him open-mouthed.
As Dan carried on laying his bricks and mentally calculating how many Sat.u.r.day afternoons he"d have to work to get the money they needed, Fifi was crying.
She had spent a lot of time crying in the past two weeks. Anything could start it. The frustration of not being able to use her right hand, brooding on something Dan had said or not said. That there was still no letter from her mother, and because she wanted to tell her family about what she was going through, but couldn"t. Sometimes she was afraid she was going mad.
Ray Charles"s "Take These Chains from My Heart" was playing on the radio, and that"s just how she felt, as if she was chained. She might be able to get up and walk about, she could go out if she wanted to, but her mind was chained to this hideous business.
She could actually feel the suspicion, hate and fear in Dale Street. People who had always been gregarious were now scuttling by without so much as a h.e.l.lo or a smile. Those who had always lingered outside their doors gossiping hurried indoors now. Children had stopped playing in the street, and when the pub turned out at night there was no jovial laughter or loud goodbyes.
Malevolence wafted out from number 11, even though it lay empty. Police were still coming and going there, often carrying out boxes or bags which could possibly be evidence. Reporters came to the street frequently, searching for people who would talk to them. Then there were the sightseers, some even taking photographs of the house.
After two weeks there should have been signs that people were recovering from the shock, but the continuing unease and gloom left an impression that the neighbourhood had been permanently shattered.