A Fall from Grace (5 page)

“And they called the police?”

“Three days ago. That sort of thing isn't a priority—no crime involved—and by the time a couple of PCs arrived the children had gone. Apparently they generally are gone by nine o'clock—bedtime, presumably.”

“What did the police advise?”

“That the Nortons try talking to the children, find out what's bugging them, why they've got it in for people they don't even know.”

“I can't see
that
doing much good,” said Felicity tartly.

“No, it's not that impressive. But what would you advise?” Charlie often did this when she criticized police tactics.

Felicity thought. “I admit I can't think of much. The same thing but done by a policeman, I suppose: old people would probably appear dim bunglers to these kids, whereas the police would be no-nonsense and know what they were doing.”

“Touching. But bring in the police and that would be giving the matter a sort of importance it hardly deserves—priority over burglary, drunken violence, domestics—could you justify that?”

And Felicity had to admit that she couldn't.

* * *

It was two days later, when Charlie was just back from Leeds and changing out of his working clothes in the bedroom upstairs, that he saw the pack of children again. They must be the same children. They corresponded to Felicity's description: tidy, well-dressed and
scrubbed, not a mob of cheerful urchins, but something more menacing. They were going past the house, very visible in the streetlights, not talking or giggling together as might be expected, but walking slightly apart, and silently, as if on a secret mission or a raid—which probably was how it had been presented to the younger children, to add further spice and excitement. As they passed the house each of them, as if at some invisible sign, took out masks—rubber masks from pockets, handheld masks from under jerseys and jackets. Then they turned, still silent, into the Hatton Homes estate and soon passed from view.

Charlie ran downstairs and got on the phone to Peter Harridance, but got little joy.

“Not a chance of getting anyone out there for the next hour or so, Charlie.”

“Any objection if I go along and have a look?”

“None at all. But Slepton is a small place. Everyone knows everyone else's business, and you stand out. I bet you're well known already as a Leeds copper, and at the sight of you they'll melt away like snow in April.”

Charlie was pretty sure that Peter would be proved right, but the initial signs were encouraging. As he approached the turnoff that the children had taken, he heard them giving raucous voice to a variation on their earlier chant.

“Man, man, nowhere man,

Shove a pigstick up his arse,

And chuck him down the pan.”

This was succeeded by cries louder and more disciplined than any he had heard before. He turned up into the estate, but when he made the second turn into Willow Crescent he realized the noise had suddenly ceased, and all he saw were legs and bottoms disappearing around the corner at the far end of the crescent.

He kept on his way, and stopped outside number thirty-five. Lights were on in the living room and in what was probably the kitchen at the back. No human form was visible. The main door was on the near side of the house, and it seemed to open into an unlit hallway. Charlie rang the doorbell, then waited in utter silence. He bent down and opened the letterbox.

“Mr. Norton! Mrs. Norton! I'm a policeman. Inspector Peace. I'd like to talk to you about the children, please.”

The silence remained unbroken. He could imagine them cowering in the dark little hall. He tried a second time, with no better result. Then he turned and left the estate, where everything was “new and worked.” Except the human relations, perhaps.

Once home he phoned Directory Inquiries and got the Nortons' number. When he rang it, he was answered cautiously.

“Er . . . yes?”

“Mr. Norton, my name is Peace. Inspector Peace. I was just round at your house—”

“Oh yes, Mr. Peace. Er, Inspector Peace. We didn't want to open the door, in case there were still any children
around, and they saw. Telephone is much better.”

“Just as you like, Mr. Norton. I'm not a Halifax policeman, by the way. I'm a Leeds one, but I've come to live fairly close to you, in Walsh Street. I'm interested in these children, and wonder why they've fixed on you and your wife for this . . . persecution, shall we call it?”

“It's that all right! If only we knew why, Inspector, we might be able to make some sense of it. But we don't know, just can't fathom it. You can imagine how upset my wife is. We'd thought of this little place as ideal for our retirement. Now it's like taking up residence in prison, I tell you.”

“You've had no contact with these particular children before?”

“None. We don't recognize any of them.”

“There's nothing in your past that they could take exception to? Anything you've said that's been reported?”

“Good Lord, no. We're not public figures, Inspector. There's no reason why any reporter should get on to anything I've ever said. Anyway, what could it be about? And where could they have seen it, because we're not from round here? I'm not even the sort of person who sounds off about the younger generation. There's good and bad in every generation, that's what I say.”

“You've no criminal record?”

“No, I haven't. You're thinking of pedophiles, aren't you, and the one that was hounded to death in the Northeast? No, there's nothing like that, Inspector. It's just . . .
unbelievable. I tell you, we can't stand much more of it. We've put the house on the market—tactfully, like: no boards up or anything. But if someone came to view, how could we
not
tell them about what's happened and why we're leaving? They'd have a real grievance if they moved here and the same thing happened. I tell you, we're at our wits' ends!”

And Charlie felt the same way, as far as offering any advice or comfort was concerned. He gave them his home phone number, said he'd keep as much of an eye as was possible on how things were going, but in his mind there hung over the whole matter an air of the bizarre, of something totally irrational. Or was he just failing to get into the minds of the children?

He was just slipping into his car next morning when he saw Chris Carlson's car approaching from his home two streets away. The backseat was loaded with an easel and the equipment for a day's painting.

“I don't want to keep you from your art—,” began Charlie.

“Sarky bugger.”

“Not at all. It's my kind of art. I just wondered what you know about these children who've been terrorizing an elderly couple on the Hatton estate.”

Chris Carlson frowned. Charlie had the impression that Chris was beginning to expect to know pretty well everything that happened in Slepton.

“Nothing at all. I've not even heard about it.”

“That's unusual for you.”

“Maybe it's because it's the estate. The people there tend to keep themselves to themselves. The younger
ones go off to pubs and clubs on the local circuit, and the older ones don't seem to feel the need to go to the pubs here. So what's been going on?”

Charlie told him, and Chris Carlson's expression told of a mixture of interest and bewilderment.

“Three points that interest me,” Charlie ended up, “are these. First, the Nortons don't recognize the children. That may be because the Nortons are new here, but it seems odd. Then, the children are very well organized by the elder ones. What I heard last night was disciplined chanting and disciplined shouting of abuse. And the third thing is just an oddity: the basis of the chanting seems to be some lines from
The Tempest,
according to Felicity.”

“Ah!” Light seemed to flood into Chris's eyes.

“ ‘'Ban, 'Ban, Ca-Caliban—' ”

“ ‘Has a new master—Get a new man.' ”

“That's it. Where would they have come across that in today's schools?”

“Try talking to Harvey Buckworth. He's a teacher. Came up to me with rather an interesting story the other night.”

“The night we were in the pub?”

“I think it may have been.”

“I picked out one of your ‘patients' as a schoolmaster right away.”

“Smartarse.”

“Not at all. Usually when I do that the ‘schoolmaster' turns out to be an SAS man in mufti. Where does this man teach?”

“That's the interesting thing. He's at Westowram
High, a couple of miles down the road. It's where the kids from here go, and it has a very strong drama and stage tradition. Several kids from there have got parts on television—bit parts in police dramas, or long-term child parts in soaps. Harvey is part of the drama setup, part of its great success. But he's worried.”

“What about?”

“I'd better let him tell you that, hadn't I? And perhaps get you a look at the class that's doing
The Tempest
. I'll arrange it. Harvey will be keen to talk to you. I'll phone you tonight.”

And raising his hand he went off to capture on canvas Bolton Abbey or Haworth moors or the main street of Heptonstall, happy as a sandboy with his life of fulfillment and liberation.

Charlie's next few days were taken up with work—work that seemed nonstop and utterly exhausting—after a uniformed sergeant was severely injured in a shooting incident in the center of Leeds. Charlie's involvement with affairs at Slepton Edge was restricted to talking about them with Felicity over a nightcap, or actually in bed. The talking was a relief and a change, but it did not notably advance them in the ticklish matter of Rupert Coggenhoe and his curiously abrupt departure from his former home. He remained in their lives an unknown quantity and an unlovely figure, now more than ever surrounded by question marks and even by downright mystery.

“I still can't face the prospect of ringing round and trying to find out what went on down in Coombe Barton,” Felicity said to a near totally exhausted Charlie. “In the papers you read nothing these days but lectures about ageism and the old needing their independence and their dignity.”

“Your father has always had a surplus of dignity,” said Charlie.

“It's not dignity, it's prickliness. But all this newspaper talk about dignity just paralyzes me. A niggling little voice tells me I ought to be challenging him, getting him to explain himself, tell us what went on. But I can't.”

“Quite apart from the fact that you wouldn't be told the truth,” Charlie pointed out. This undoubted fact stymied Felicity, who had been about to suggest that since he spent much of his professional life ferreting around in other people's private affairs, he would be the best one to challenge her father. Charlie rubbed in his advantage. “So don't suggest that I take him on, because he'd be just as likely to lie to me as he would to you. More. Because I know him less well and he'd be more likely to think he could put one over on me. Your father is a godawful human being, but he's not stupid.”

Felicity never gave up easily.

“That is true. But it doesn't apply to Madge Easton. You would be much better at working the truth out of her.”

“Why? I'm used to getting the truth out of suspects and others who are involved on the margins of criminal cases. Madge Easton is a quite different kettle of fish, and most probably a model citizen. She'd be much more likely to talk openly to you.”

“Why?”

“Because you're white, because you're his daughter and the one left who is closest to him. You have a
claim to know, and I only have any claim at all through being married to you.”

That was so obviously true that it silenced Felicity for a while. When she took the matter up again, she was on quite a different tack.

“I really can't believe it's anything to do with children.”

“Why on earth should it be?” Charlie demanded sleepily.

“He's never shown the slightest interest in underage girls, not interest of a sexual sort.”

Charlie took some time to digest this.

“Your thought processes are giving me difficulty. Are you thinking of children because of the gang that's persecuting the Nortons? It must be the two things getting jumbled together in your mind if so, because there's no known connection. Or when you said ‘not of a sexual sort,' was it because there
was
some other sort, something less criminal, but a bit unsavory?”

“Neither criminal nor unsavory really,” Felicity said. It was a while before she went on. “He's always loved being the center of attention as you know. Particularly from women. Attention, shading off into devotion, shading off into discipleship. He got that, discipleship, from Mother. It made it very difficult for me to get close to her. I always felt he hoped—expected, even—to get the same from me: the daughter who kept his flame alive and worshiped his memory. But I grew up with him, and by the time I reached puberty I'd seen through him. Good and proper, as you know. It could be that he's looking round for a replacement for the
daughter who never came up to scratch.”