Эндрю Тэйлор – The Four Last Things (страница 9)

It was raining, sending slivers of gold through the halos of the streetlamps. As Sally drove, she wondered whether Lucy had forgotten the conjuring set. It was unlikely. For one so young she could be inconveniently tenacious.

Sally left the car double-parked outside Carla’s house and ran through the rain to the front door. The door opened before she reached it.

Carla was on the threshold, her hands outstretched, her face crumpled, her eyes squeezed into slits and the tears slithering down her dark cheeks. The big living room behind her was in turmoil: it seethed with adults and children; and the television shimmered in the fireplace. A uniformed policewoman put her hand on Carla’s arm. She said something but Sally didn’t listen.

Michael was there too, talking angrily into the phone, slashing his free hand against his leg to emphasize what he was saying. He stared in Sally’s direction but seemed not to register her presence: he was looking past her at something unimaginable.

2

‘I am naturally bashful; nor hath conversation, age, or travel, been able to effront or enharden me …’

Religio Medici, I, 40

Eddie called her Angel and so had the children. He knew the name pleased her but not why. Lucy Appleyard refused to call Angel anything at all. In that, as in so much else, Lucy was different.

Lucy Philippa Appleyard was unlike the others even in the way Angel chose her. It was only afterwards, of course, that Eddie began to suspect that Angel had a particular reason for wanting Lucy. Yet again he had been manipulated. The questions were: how much, how far back did it go – and why?

At the time everything seemed to happen by chance. Eddie often bought the Evening Standard, though he did not always read it. (Angel rarely read newspapers, partly because she had little interest in news for its own sake, and partly because they made her hands dirty.) Frank Howell’s feature on St George’s, Kensal Vale, appeared on a Friday. Angel chanced – if that was the appropriate word – to see it the following Tuesday. They had eaten their supper and Eddie was clearing up. Angel wanted to clean her shoes, a job which like anything to do with her appearance was too important to be delegated to Eddie.

She spread the newspaper over the kitchen table and fetched the shoes and the cleaning materials. There were two pairs of court shoes, one navy and the other black, and a pair of tan leather sandals. She smeared the first shoe with polish. Then she stopped. Eddie, always aware of her movements, watched as she pushed the shoes off the newspaper and sat down at the table. He put the cutlery away, a manoeuvre which allowed him to glance at the paper. He glimpsed a photograph of a fair-haired man in dog collar and denim jacket, holding a black baby in the crook of his left arm.

‘Wouldn’t like to meet him on a dark night,’ Eddie said. ‘Looks like a ferret.’ Imagine having him running up your trousers, he thought; but he did not say this aloud for fear of offending Angel.

She looked up. ‘A curate and a policeman.’

‘He’s a policeman, too?’

‘Not him. There’s a woman deacon in the parish. And she’s married to a policeman.’

Angel bent her shining head over the newspaper. Eddie pottered about the kitchen, wiping the cooker and the work surfaces. Angel’s stillness made him uneasy.

To break the silence, he said, ‘They’re not really like vicars any more, are they? I mean – that jacket. It’s pathetic.’

Angel stared at him. ‘It says they have a little girl.’

His attention sharpened. ‘The ferret?’

‘Not him. The curate and the policeman. Look, there’s a picture of the woman.’

Her name was Sally Appleyard, and she had short dark hair and a thin face with large eyes.

‘These women priests. If you ask me, it’s not natural.’ Eddie hesitated. ‘If Jesus had wanted women to be priests, he’d have chosen women apostles. Well, wouldn’t he? It makes sense.’

‘Do you think she’s pretty?’

‘No.’ He frowned, wanting to find words which Angel might want to hear. ‘She looks drab, doesn’t she? Mousy.’

‘You’re right. She’s let herself go, too. One of those people who just won’t make the effort.’

‘The little girl. How old is she? Does it say?’

‘Four. Her name’s Lucy.’

Angel went back to her shoes. Later that evening, Eddie heard her moving around the basement as he watched television in the sitting room above. It was over a year since he had been down there. The memories made him feel restless. He returned to the kitchen to make some tea. While he was there he reread the article about St George’s, Kensal Vale. He was not surprised when Angel announced her decision the following morning over breakfast.

‘Won’t it be dangerous?’ Eddie stabbed his spoon at the photograph of Sally Appleyard. ‘If her husband’s in the CID, they’ll pull out all the stops.’

‘It won’t be more dangerous if we plan it carefully. You’ve never really understood that, have you? That’s why you came a cropper before you met me. A plan’s like a clock. If it’s properly made it has to work. All you should need to do is wind it up and off it goes. Tick tock, tick tock.’

‘Are we all right for money?’

She smiled, a teacher rewarding an apt pupil. ‘I shall have to do a certain amount extra to build up the contingency fund. But it’s important not to break the routine in any way. I think I might warn Mrs Hawley-Minton that I may have some time off around Christmas.’

During the next two months, from mid-September to mid-November, Angel worked on average four days a week. Sometimes these included evenings and nights. Mrs Hawley-Minton’s agency was small and expensive. Word of mouth was all the advertising it needed. Most of the clients were either foreign business people or expatriates paying brief visits home. They were prepared to pay good money for reliable and fully qualified freelance nannies with excellent references and the knack of controlling spoiled children. The tips were good, in some cases extravagantly generous.

‘It’s a sort of blood money,’ Angel explained to Eddie. ‘It’s not that the parents feel grateful. They feel guilty. That’s because they’re not doing their duty – they’re leaving their children to be brought up by strangers. It’s not right, is it? Money can’t buy love.’

They were very busy. On the agency days, Angel took the tube down from Belsize Park and made her way to Westminster, Belgravia, Knightsbridge and Kensington. She looked very smart in her navy-blue outfit, her blonde hair tied back, the hem of her skirt swinging just below the knee. Mrs Hawley-Minton’s girls did not have a uniform – after all, they were ladies, not servants – but they were encouraged to conform to a discreetly professional house style. Meanwhile, Eddie saw to the cooking, the cleaning and most of the shopping.

In their spare time they made their preparations. For one thing, Angel insisted on repainting the basement, a refinement which Eddie thought unnecessary.

‘What’s the point? We only did it eighteen months ago.’

‘I want everything to be nice and fresh.’

They shared the outside research. Angel liked to say there was no such thing as useless knowledge. If you gathered all the information that could possibly be relevant, and tried to predict every contingency, then your plan could not fail. Working separately, they quartered the broad crescent of north London between Kentish Town in the east and Willesden Junction in the west. They went in the van, on foot and by public transport. Afterwards Angel would set little tests.

‘Suppose you’re travelling from Kensal Vale: it’s rush hour, and there are roadworks on Kilburn High Road, and you want to cut down to Maida Vale: what’s your best route?’

The riskier part of the research involved the surveillance of Lucy and her parents. Angel insisted that they be even more cautious than they had been on other occasions because of Michael Appleyard’s job. It was easier once they had worked out the geography of the Appleyards’ routine. Like the majority of Londoners, the Appleyards spent most of their lives at a handful of locations or travelling to and from them; their city was really an invisible village.

Angel spread out the map on the kitchen table. ‘Four main possibilities. St George’s, the flat in Hercules Road, the child minder’s house, Kensal Vale library.’

‘What about shops?’ Eddie put in. ‘She and her mother often go down West End Lane. And they’ve driven up to Brent Cross at least twice since we started.’

Angel shook her head. ‘I don’t like it. Too many video cameras around, especially at Brent Cross. Remember that boy Jamie. Jamie Bulger.’

That year a dank autumn slid imperceptibly into a winter characterized by cutting winds and relentless rain; pedestrians wrapped up warmly and hurried half-disguised along the pavements. On research trips Angel usually wore her long, hooded raincoat, often with the black wig and glasses.

‘It makes you look like a monk,’ Eddie said with a chuckle as she checked her appearance in the hall mirror one evening. ‘Or rather, a nun.’

She slapped him. ‘Don’t ever say that again, Eddie.’