I had carefully arranged Susie’s black wig over my red hair before I left home because it’s the sort of job you need a mirror for. I thought it looked pretty good. It also gave me a chance to get my own back.
‘You didn’t like my red hair,’ I told Ganesh, ‘so I borrowed this from Susie until I can get my own colour changed.’
He sniffed and said nothing, looking a bit non-plussed. He had grumbled about my red hair, after all.
‘Here you are,’ I went on. ‘Here’s her lunch.’ I handed him a small tin of pet food.
‘What’s in it?’ muttered Ganesh, trying to read the tiny print on the tin in the storeroom’s poor light. ‘These things always stink.’
‘It’s chicken.’
‘I’m a vegetarian; I shouldn’t have to handle this stuff.’
‘So use a long spoon. I’m not asking you to eat it, for goodness’ sake!’
Ganesh put the tin on a shelf. ‘What are you going to do all day? Or would I rather not know?’
‘I’m spending the day tailing Edna, just to see where she goes and if anyone speaks to her or if anyone else is doing as I am, following her.’
‘The mysterious guy in white, right? That’s the real reason for the Addams Family get-up.You don’t give a toss what I think of your hair.You’re in disguise.You’re imagining all this, you know, and that wig won’t fool anyone for very long.’
‘So, if I’m imagining it, it can’t do me any harm. Keep an eye on her water bowl, too, will you? She seems to get thirsty these days. Perhaps I ought to take her to the vet. It might be a symptom of something.’
Hari yelled at Ganesh that he needed him and could he stop gossiping and come pretty damn quick.
I nipped out quickly too. I had to be outside Edna’s hostel concealed somewhere before she left.
It was fortunate that there were so many trees in the road as I was able to station myself behind one with a fat trunk and lurk. If anyone in any of the houses noticed me they might wonder what I was doing. But one advantage of hanging around at that early hour was that everyone was busy getting ready to go to work or on the school run so no one had time to stare around them. There were quite a few school kids in this street, I discovered. The air resounded to cries of ‘Do hurry up, Clarissa!’ or the like, and 4x4s rattled past almost in a convoy. I wondered how these obviously well-heeled types liked having the hostel in their midst. Not much, I guessed.
Several people came and went at the hostel. It was quite busy. I saw Simon at the door a few times, but no sign of Nikki. I had to keep a lookout for her, in case she lived elsewhere and would arrive shortly and spot me. In the same way, I had to watch out for the man in white. I was glad Sandra hadn’t yet taken up her wailing position on the steps. She really freaked me out, to be honest.
A little after nine thirty, Edna came out of the front door and wobbled off down the road. I waited until she got to the corner and set off in pursuit, keeping to the other side of the street. When I reached the corner I could see her quite a way ahead of me. She moved faster than the impression she gave. I glanced round. No one else seemed interested either in me or in her.
Following Edna was intriguing and boring by turns. If she came across a cat sitting on someone’s wall she would stop and talk to it for ages. The cat would rub its head against her and, if I was near enough, I’d hear it chirrup in reply. It would be a regular old conversation. If she passed a wheelie bin she would stop, open the lid and rummage inside. Occasionally she found something she thought useful and then she added it to a growing collection of items in a crumpled supermarket carrier bag she had produced from her pocket. Joy glowed in her face when she found a rosebud lying on the pavement outside a florist shop, snapped off from some expensive bouquet. She picked it up, smoothed its crumpled petals with a gentle forefinger and held it to her nose before she fixed it carefully in the buttonhole of her baggy old coat. Nothing was missed.
What she did not do was stop and rest. In someone of her age that was remarkable and bore witness to how fit she was, despite appearances. She was accustomed to be on the move and I had to keep moving too.
Eventually we found ourselves proceeding up the Finchley Road past rows of respectable suburban houses and a kindergarten. I couldn’t imagine what had brought Edna out here. Suddenly the bobbing figure ahead of me veered to the right and turned up a side road. Now where was she off to? I saw a little sign and realised with quite a shock that she appeared to be heading for Golders Green crematorium.
But I was wrong. She ignored the massive red-brick complex of the crematorium and its chapels on the right and dodged across the road and through the equally impressive gates of the Jewish cemetery facing it.
What now? I followed uneasily at a distance. There was another red-brick building ahead of us. Edna trotted round the side of that. I followed discreetly after a pause. To my right was a vast area of graves surrounded by neatly raked gravel. A gardener or maintenance man worked in the distance but there was no sign of Edna. Then I looked to the left and my eye was attracted by a movement. I just caught a glimpse of her squat form heading down a path through an older grassed area of graves and elaborate headstones, so I tiptoed in her wake.
There she was. She had found a stone seat a little way down the path, with a background of rose trees, and taken up residence on it. It must be a familiar spot to her.
This really shouldn’t have surprised me. When I first knew her, she lived in a cemetery. She liked them. They were quiet dignified places where few visitors came and no chance passers-by. There no one bothered her. The company of the dead didn’t rattle her at all. For a living presence there were usually birds and butterflies and small mammals, all the friends she wanted or needed. She looked as if she was going to be there for a while so I retraced my steps to the red-brick building and saw another behind it which inspection informed me was a toilet block. I decided to take a comfort break. I didn’t know how much longer I was going to be out and about before I got the chance to take another.
When I came out again, Edna was still on her stone bench. She had taken some kind of food from the plastic bag and was turning it in her fingers. It was one of her gleanings from a wheelie bin. I supposed her picnic wouldn’t poison her. People throw out perfectly good grub. But she made no attempt to eat it though still fiddling with it. A row of small birds had lined up in anticipation on a headstone. She nodded at them amiably. I had been wrong. The picnic was being prepared for them. From time to time, she would stop destroying the bread crusts to turn up her wrinkled face to the sunshine and close her eyes, enjoying its warmth. A smile would then spread over her cheeks, full of the purest contentment. She was at peace with herself and the world and, watching her, I felt at peace too.
But if I just stood there she’d see me, sooner or later. I knew how sharp her eyes were. I’d have to wait somewhere nearby. I withdrew discreetly to find a spot. I went outside the gates and walked up and down past the crem. But though I kept an eye on the cemetery gates, Edna didn’t emerge through them. I crossed to the crematorium side and entered the complex, where I found a kind of walled courtyard with memorials attached to the brick. Many of them were to show-business personalities and I walked slowly round, reading them.
When I returned to the cemetery on the other side of the road, the whole area was empty. Edna had gone.
I thought at first she had just moved and was sitting on the ground some distance from her first location. I began to stroll round the graves, nonchalantly, playing it cool, and then more intently, throwing aside any pretence I wasn’t hunting. She had just dematerial-ised, or so it seemed. It was quite spooky, as if the ground had indeed swallowed her up. Only a little pile of carefully crumbled bread on the path before the stone bench showed that she had been there at all. It was being approached by cautious sparrows.
Had she spotted me earlier and waited until I’d temporarily withdrawn to make good her escape? She was a wily old bird. There was a movement somewhere to my left. I stepped behind a large headstone and peered down the rows.
There he was - and doing as I had been doing. A lanky white-clad figure in the trademark baseball or tennis cap, he was casting up and down the rows of burials like a patient hound. How on earth had he got here? Why was he so much better at this sort of thing than me? And what, above all, did he want? This time I meant to find out. He wouldn’t give me the slip. There was no one to help him out as the house painters had done. This time I had him.
I left my shelter when his back was turned and softly approached him across the grass. He wasn’t aware of me until I was just a couple of metres away and then he sensed my presence and whirled round in panic. He didn’t know whether I was a spectral apparition, a mugger or a site employee about to demand what he was doing.
He saw at once I wasn’t any of these, but the black wig threw him for a few moments before he recognised me. There was no doubt that he did so. He even raised a bony forefinger and pointed it at me. With his white clothing and headstone surrounds the gesture was spooky.
Ganesh had been right about the wig being a poor disguise. But having placed me, recognition served to unnerve the man almost as much as his previous confusion. A ludicrous expression of dismay crossed his face, replacing the initial panic. He seemed to debate whether to run and then changed his mind and just stood there, looking at me warily and waiting for me to make the next move.
‘Hi!’ I said conversationally. ‘Now, I wonder what you’re doing. No, please, don’t tell me you’re visiting a grave. Edna’s given us both the slip and I think it’s time you and I had a real old heart-to-heart. How did you know she was here?’
He spoke then and his voice was thin and rather weedy like the rest of him. ‘You followed her,’ he said. ‘I followed you. It was easy. You never looked round once.You were too scared you’d lose her. You just kept going and I just kept following. Mind you, I didn’t know it was
you
, I thought it might be someone else. I followed, anyway.’
It wasn’t just that he was better than me at this. It was that I was a blundering amateur. He’d been hanging around the hostel the previous day and I’d seen him. So this time, he’d made sure no one saw him. He learned from his mistakes. I didn’t.
I must have looked my discomfort because his features twisted maliciously and his pale eyes glittered with unkind amusement.
‘All right,’ I said, ‘my mistake. We still need to have that talk.’
He shook his head. ‘My business is my own. You mind yours.’
‘And you’ll mind mine, too, it seems!’ I snapped back. ‘You followed me. OK, you were using me to follow Edna, but you still owe me an explanation. Who are you? What’s your interest in her?’
‘What’s yours?’ he countered.
‘She’s an old friend from way back. We used to be neighbours of a sort.’
That grabbed his attention. His manner changed entirely, shedding the hostility. He really perked up. ‘Did you? Then perhaps we do need to talk.’
‘First you tell me your interest in her.’ If he now wanted to speak to me, that shifted the balance of power. I could insist on a few answers.
‘It’s my job,’ he said unwillingly, realising he had to give me something.
‘What do you mean?’ I scowled at him. ‘You don’t look as if you’re with the social and you don’t look like a charity worker.’
He was quite insulted at the suggestion he might be either of these respectable callings. ‘Do me a favour!’ he spluttered. ‘I’m a private detective.’
We made our way back down the Finchley Road in an unfriendly silence. Here at the busy junction with the Golders Green Road, we found ourselves seats in a diner belonging to a popular chain. Now he was seated across the table from me I could study him properly and I realised he wasn’t nearly as young as he first appeared. His clothing was teenage-style and he wasn’t carrying any middle-aged weight but he still had to be around thirty-eight to forty. Odd-looking bloke, truth to tell. He had a skin marked with old acne scars and that curious paleness, viewed closer to hand, was probably due to some defect of pigmentation. He wasn’t an albino but the paleness was permanent. In the sunshine, if he sat out in its full glare for too long, he’d probably turn as scarlet as a cooked lobster but he’d never get nicely tanned. The peaked cap was, I guessed, worn to protect him from too much sun and its painful results. His face was narrow with a long jawbone and a very small mouth.
It occurred to me that with his white clothes and my black wig, and seated opposite one another, we must look like chess pieces set out on a board. Perhaps the analogy was an apt one. We were both waiting for one of us to make a move. I pulled off the wig, put it on my lap and ran my fingers through my own hair. He’d been studying me with the same frankness I’d shown towards him. When I took off the wig a new look of assessment entered his eyes, as if making up his mind whether I looked better with it or without.