They checked streets, alleys and yards. They peered into narrow, walled-in back gardens. They joined the beat constables and searched multi-storey car parks. They saw more vagrants than they would have given the town credit for. The most sheltered floors of the multi-storeys furthest from the town centre, and consequently the least used, looked more like an African shanty town than a suburban car park. Trevor took one side of the square while Brooke and a beat constable took the other. They peered into cardboard boxes, unravelled bundles of rags, shook sleeping bodies awake, shone torches into comatose faces, but none bore any resemblance to the one they sought, and although they flashed photographs of “Tony” at the more lucid vagrants, none would admit to seeing him at all, let alone recently.
It was three in the morning, when footsore, weary and chilled to the bone, Trevor and Chris finally made it to High Street.
‘Where to now, sir?’ Chris wondered if they were going to work through the night without a break.
‘Check out the underpass, and hopefully meet up with the Inspector.’
‘Which end do you want to enter?’ The underpass in High Street had as many legs as a spider. It was built at a crossroads, and sunk below a high walled roundabout. Twelve feet below the wall the planners had drawn up a detailed blueprint for a sunken garden which the council had meticulously copied right down to the stone nymph in the centre of the flowerbeds, but the area had long since degenerated into a dumping ground for tin cans, rubbish and dog mess. The spider’s arms that led out from the centre to the feeder roads had originally been tiled in pastel colours which had soon become hidden beneath layers of graffiti, and the tunnels themselves stank of urine and worse. Each street sported two entrances, one with steps, one with a ramp. Linking all of them was a circular walkway.
The areas sheltered by the ramps, the steps and, in fine weather, the central open area, were the ones most prized by the homeless. Like the hostel, spaces had to be claimed early, but not too early. The police kept the area clear until the cinemas and pubs closed. As Trevor and Chris walked down the ramp closest to the High Street end they heard a soft hubbub of voices.
‘Officers, you look frozen, can I interest you in a cup of soup?’ Standing behind a make-shift barrow stand and surrounded by a group of teenagers, Tom Morris and Captain Arkwright had set up a soup kitchen.
‘What kind of soup?’ Chris asked the Salvation Army officer, who managed to look young and attractive despite her uniform.
‘Tinned vegetable. One of the manufacturers has kindly donated catering packs to our project.’
Trevor reached into his pocket as he watched a young girl hold a steaming polystyrene cup to the mouth of a toothless old man who was shaking with cold. He pulled out a couple of pound coins.
‘We’ll have two.’
‘It’s not for sale,’ Captain Arkwright protested.
‘Call it a donation.’
As the girl dropped the coins into a collecting box, Tom ladled the soup into cups and handed them over.
‘We’re trying to do our bit to help.’ Tom pointed to a photograph of “Tony” that he’d pasted on the side of the barrow.
‘That the Inspector’s idea, or yours?’ Trevor asked.
‘Bit of both. Thought it might save time. We’ve pinned them up in all the hostels too. After the terrible events of yesterday it’s the least we can do.’
He handed his ladle over to one of the teenagers and he, Trevor and Chris walked down one of the tunnels. Trevor and Chris were using their cups to warm their hands.
‘I saw you outside the factory yesterday,’
Trevor said.
‘Captain Arkwright and myself were in there when it went up.’
‘You shinned up that rope?’
‘No, although I heard about it. Late yesterday afternoon someone snapped through one of the steel padlocks on a ground floor door. Captain Arkwright heard about it and we thought it would be a good idea to go in and see if we could help any of the youngsters. We got more than we bargained for.’
‘Have you talked to anyone about this?’
‘I spoke to Constable Murphy in the hospital last night. But I didn’t see anything useful. One minute I was talking to a couple of young lads who’d made their way down from Scotland in the hope of finding work, the next the air was full of smoke and screaming.’
‘I saw you helping people.’
‘Not out of the building, Sergeant. Only away from it. The firemen rescued those who were trapped, and I led them to the paramedics. Captain Arkwright, not me, was the real heroine. She went up to the second floor to help the people who were trapped. If it hadn’t been for her the death toll would have been much higher.’
‘I had no idea.’ Trevor resolved to talk to Dan to see if he thought it was worth putting all the statements that had been taken after the fire on to a computer to get an overview of who had been in the building when the blaze had started.
‘I was sorry to hear that two of your sergeants were injured,’ Tom commiserated.
‘Given time, they’ll both be fine. Do you do this kind of thing often?’ Trevor nodded back in the direction of the soup wagon.
‘Captain Arkwright and I try to make sure that someone goes out with the cart every night in winter, and a couple of times a week in summer.’
‘Your helpers?’
‘Most of them are either young Salvationists from the citadel, or Christians from the local Evangelical church. They’ve put in a lot of effort.
Raising the money for the wagon, begging manufacturers and the chamber of commerce for donations of food, it wasn’t easy. Most of the town’s retailers believed that vandalism would escalate if we attracted the homeless into the centre of town late at night. I don’t think they realise just how many are already here. And, even after the retailers had been won over, the customers were sceptical of our motives. I think they expected us to give out bible tracts along with the food.’
‘You’ve forgotten to mention the police.’
‘We’ve never had any hassle from the bobbies on the beat, only assistance. I think that’s fair comment, Constable Brooke, don’t you?’
Trevor looked at Chris. ‘You’ve worked this area too?’
‘Once or twice.’
‘Inspector Evans was here half an hour ago. He checked everyone then.’
‘In that case there’s no point in us doing it again. Needless to say you’ve seen no sign of our man?’
‘If I do, you’ll be the first to know.’
‘Then we’ll move on. There are a few more places we need to look at before dawn.’ They turned and began to walk back in the direction of the cart.
As an afterthought, Trevor asked, ‘you haven’t seen a girl with a couple of boys have you? One with purple hair and one with a bald head with a swastika tattooed on it.’
‘Have they done anything?’
‘Nothing I know about. But they could have been in that factory when it went up yesterday. I was too concerned about my colleagues last night to ask about them in the hospital, and I haven’t seen them since.’
‘They were in the building, but they got out,’
Tom said. ‘If you want to talk to them, they’re around the corner.’
‘I will have a word with them.’
‘Sergeant,’ Tom warned. ‘Tread easy. It’s taken us a long time to get them to come near us.’
‘I only want to talk to them.’ As they rounded the corner, Trevor recognised the small group of teenagers huddled on the ground as the same one he had encountered in Jubilee Street the day before.
They each had a blanket, thick grey, old army issue that the volunteers had been handing out. Trevor walked up to them and crouched down beside the girl.
‘You got a bloody nerve coming near us after what you did to our squat.’
‘You all right?’ Trevor asked in concern.
‘Fine in this bloody freezing hole,’ the boy with the bald head retorted angrily. ‘And before you ask, no we haven’t seen that bloody man you’re after.
And that’s the last time you talk us into helping the fucking pigs.’
‘We think the man we’re looking for might have set the factory on fire. And, if we hadn’t been watching the building a lot more people might have been hurt.’
‘Ten are dead.’ The girl looked at him with dark, accusing eyes.
‘I know, and I’m really sorry, but with that number of people and all those candles it was bound to happen sooner or later.’
‘Burn in there. Freeze out here, what’s the bloody difference? We’ll all end up dead now that, thanks to you, we’ve nowhere to go.’
‘That’s what I wanted a word with you about.’
‘You going to let us move into your place then?’ the boy with the purple hair demanded belligerently.
‘No, but I know an agency where you can rent bed-sits without a deposit.’
‘Oh yeah. Where’s that then? Never Never Land?’
Trevor handed the girl a piece of paper with an address on it. ‘Go and see that lady in the morning.
Mention my name. She’s expecting you and she will help. All of you. I’ve seen the bed-sits. They’re not up to much, but they’re a start. You can stay together if you want.’
‘Why you doing this?’ the girl asked suspiciously.
‘Like the man said, I could be the reason your squat burned down.’
‘As you said, it was bound to happen sooner or later. That’s not the first squat we’ve lost.’
‘I was down on my luck once.’
‘You’re a pig.’
‘Even pigs can be down on their luck. You have any trouble with money, you telephone me. You still got my number?’
‘Yes.’ The girl flashed a defiant look at the boys.
‘Ring me after you move in. And if you need anything, contact Father Sam down the hostel or me.’
‘Pig?’ Jason called after him as he moved away.
‘What?’ Trevor turned around.
‘You’re not as bad as most of your kind. If we see that man, we’ll let you know.’
‘Thanks,’ Trevor smiled as he returned to Chris.
‘Nice place,’ Trevor commented as he dropped Chris off outside the gates of an expensive suburban mansion.
‘My parents,’ Chris explained. ‘I’m saving for a place of my own.’
‘I wouldn’t be in a hurry to leave this if I were you.’
‘It’s theirs, not mine.’
Trevor revved the engine and drove the half a mile to his own house. There were no lights on and none of the curtains were drawn. Fighting a sinking feeling he walked up the path and let himself in. A crushing silence greeted him. He closed the door, went into the living room and switched on the light.
Everything was in its place. It was the same in the kitchen and dining room. Leaving his coat and shoes at the foot of the stairs he raced up them. The bed had been re-made with clean linen. He opened the door between the bedroom and dressing room. His clothes were hanging as he’d left them, but the left-hand rail where Lyn had hung hers was empty.
The bathroom shelf where she had kept her cosmetics and perfume was bare and wiped clean.
There never had been anything else of hers on display. Perhaps that had been part of the problem.
Nothing in the house had ever belonged to Lyn or been chosen by her, other than her own personal possessions.
Tony remembered someone in his past telling him that people could get used to anything, given time.
Experience had taught him it wasn’t true. He’d never grown accustomed to living on the streets. He was constantly waiting to move on to better times and better places. It was as though he were playing a role in a long-running series. He had been given the part of a vagrant, and at first he’d treated the situation as if he were researching a role. He immersed himself in the character of a down-and-out, ready to play it to the absolute hilt. He’d frozen in winter, baked during a heat wave, and, apart from the odd shower when he’d slept in a hostel, he hadn’t washed. He was verminous, his hair was so thickly matted a comb would never run through it again unless it was cut, and he stank. He knew he stank because he’d seen people recoil from him in the streets, but he could no longer smell the stench.
He lived minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, waiting for the man in charge of this particular production to shout “cut” so he could go back to his old, clean, comfortable way of life.
In the meantime he survived as best he could.
He learned to cope with invisibility. If he put out a cardboard tray, with
Homeless Please Help
written on it, people passed as though he wasn’t there. If he slept in a doorway or the underpass, the only ones who saw him were the police when they moved him on. But suddenly everything had changed, and not into the bright cosy world he’d been waiting for.
Now, he felt as though he could never be invisible enough again.
He entered a small, narrow cul-de-sac. It was residential, well away from the usual haunts of the homeless, but he dare not risk going to those places.
Because, if found, he’d be finished. It was cold, he was hungry, but he couldn’t go to the DHSS and ask for money, because his picture was plastered all over the local newspaper stands with the headline printed above it.
ARMED AND DANGEROUS. SHOULD NOT
BE APPROACHED BY ANY MEMBER OF THE
PUBLIC.
He stepped back into the shadows and looked around. There were lights on in most of the houses, but one or two were in darkness. Would it be easy to get into them? Would they be empty? And if they were, would they yield enough food and warm clothes to set him up for another day or two? He crept along, careful to keep his back hunched below the line of the garden walls. Once or twice he stopped and peered cautiously over the brickwork.
Darkness was no guarantee that a house would be empty. The occupants could be sitting in a front room, lights off, television on.
The curtains were open in one house and he saw a woman washing dishes at a sink in front of the window facing him. The house next door was in darkness – empty – or were the occupants in another room? He shuddered. How long had it been since he’d eaten? There’d been nothing yesterday and just beans cold from the tin the day before. Strange, he didn’t feel hungry, only thirsty. Terribly thirsty.
Even if someone was home, they weren’t sitting close to the back of the house and there might be an outside tap. Lots of houses had outside taps for garden hoses.