this was still the Hills, and that for his being in plain clothes a policeman still stood out a mile here. He began to wonder if the charm of taking such a walk wasn’t wearing off? He was also aware that for all Derek’s apparent energy, his aged guide was only one day out of hospital, and that by the time they got back the round trip would have been a long one.
It was after school hours, and at the corners of buildings already gangs of youths were forming, watching only with curiosity for now the copper and the old guy with his patchwork of injuries passing through their borough. Derek didn’t even seem to notice them — perhaps he often came this way, though this time able to voice the theories usually kept inside? He was evidently still concerned with the mindset of those town planners nearly forty years ago,
‘Without intending it they made a haven for crime and despondency. I saw your reticence back there just now, Inspector, your unwillingness to follow this way. You’ll know yourself how unpoliceable such places are, the spaces they offer for vice to dwell, for vandalism, for the mugger to lay in wait along these pathways or hide from the police if being chased.
‘And what of the other crime? An even worse one if possible, the true offense such estates commit against their population: the psychological effect on people of being stranded in a place where you literally cannot see a way out: where you can’t see a main road or a bus route even from the end of your street; where it’s hard to direct a taxi or visitor to within half a mile of your house or flat; where those who’ve lived here all their lives can still get lost; where what you see around you is the collapse into squalor of a built environment not maintained and a planted environment literally gone to seed.
‘To live here is to have an address you keep a secret for fear of how people judge your area; to feel yourself abandoned by life and holding the belief that you’ve been left to rot, that you’ve been told by your nation that you aren’t worth any better and that they have no other use for you. To live here is to feel left in a maze that you can never get above roof-level to see your way out of, a place where the ground seems to rise in all directions, where there’s no horizon line.
‘The planners thought the simple application of modern social principles could make a better world, when all they did was make a more confusing one. With best intentions they consigned a generation to a lesser life than they might otherwise have had. People were buried in these estates, Inspector, literally buried — lost in the mire and never scrambling out.’
The relentlessness of Waldron’s argument began to grate on Grey, the way a conversation can when you want to go quiet awhile yet someone else is on a favourite topic: it wasn’t always healthy to offer free reign.
‘But they were products of their times,’ said Grey. ‘What else could they do, how else could they build?’
‘You’re right of course; and at least they gave good room-sizes, believed people deserved the space to swing a cat. And what have we got now instead? New estates of blinking Hovis houses, a retreat into a non-existent past, people clustered up in plasterboard cells, peeking out through tiny thick-framed windows. There are times when I feel I’m not sad to leave the future to the young.’
It was still only spring, and the sun for all its brightness was fading. Grey didn’t want to be here without colleagues once it was gone. This wasn’t cowardice or fear of attack, only that an officer being here without on obvious purpose and not in sufficient force could unsettle people, prove agitative, and create a scene requiring officers and cars and blue lights that took all evening to calm down.
They reached the Prove site, and there for some reason was a patrol car still guarding that patch of cordoned tarmac. Like a traveller in a far-off land making a vital connection, Grey made for them and requested they radio for a second car to come and pick them up. He was told that there was no other patrol in the area, and so they would have to wait for the next one to leave the station. Grey wondered if being transported in the back of a squad car wouldn’t be a little too close for comfort for Waldron, given his recent fears of incarceration? But it was either that or a taxi, and Grey couldn’t see it made much difference which.
As they stood by the car waiting, Waldron, the afternoon guttering, sped up the narrative as if this was the last chance he’d ever get to say the rush of things suddenly on his mind,
‘This was what Stella was fighting for; not against the notion that people needed homes, not just exercising some personal NIMBY reaction, but expounding the belief that this was a bad design, a bad estate; and that a new spirit of social collective goodwill may indeed illuminate such a place, and let those living there be the first ever generation not plagued by the old social ills, but the odds were always going to be against it; and that this was no ones fault, not a failure of hope or skill, just the realistic understanding of one not caught up in the spirit of her times. She knew this was a bad design, and that the money would never be found to build it well or to keep it up properly; and for that the visionaries and utopianists of her age hated her.
‘The same people thought the classroom could become a playroom, that the feelings of the children were more important than their grumpiness at hours spent having knowledge implanted in their heads, not even the tiniest concession allowed for the ends of the finest education system the world had ever known to justify its means. Again Stella was out of step.
‘And that was what you bought me here for really, wasn’t it, to ask about Stella and Charlie.’
Grey had by now quite forgotten. He took out the document he had found on his desk earlier and passed it to Waldron,
‘Do you recognise this? A researcher found it for my Sergeant when we were following up the Council connection, before we learnt about Patrick Mars. I found it on my desk this morning. It’s a copy of the Councillors’ Directory, Nineteen Seventy-four, including a piece, “In honour of the contribution made by the recently retired Councillor Mrs Stella Mars”, written by “Mr Derek Waldron, Assistant to the Town Planning Officer.”’
The author held it in his hands, ‘I‘d forgotten writing this.’
Grey took it back and read from the photocopy:
‘”…Though young and relatively new to local politics, Councillor Mars invigorated the Chamber with her enthusiasm and with the passion of her arguments, leaving no one in doubt of her commitment to do the best she could for the people of the town, even when her ideas of how to achieve this common good differed greatly from those proposed by her fellow Councillors.
‘“In both her personal and professional dealings these recent years she has been a beacon, a model of how a Councillor, indeed how any citizen, can conduct themselves with dignity and purpose. As such she has been a credit to the democratic process and the civic life of the areas she served. Southney Council, indeed Southney itself, have been illuminated by her presence and will be the lesser for her leaving public service. We can only wish her well.”’
The man flushed.
‘It reads like you greatly admired her.’
‘I just though it was a shame, how she left: we’d all heard the rumours of the separation, her leaving the family home. The other Councillors seemed glad to see her gone, free to force their plans through. Someone had to write it.’
‘And Charlie?’
‘He wouldn’t gloat, he wasn’t bad like that.’
‘But you were on her side?’
‘I wasn’t really anything back then. It was my job just to bring the right plans to the meetings and to take them away again afterwards. It shouldn’t have been me writing this.’
‘I’m sure we’d all like something like that written about us.’
‘We can hope.’
‘It sounds like more than a professional admiration. And no one guessed your feelings?’
He shook his head.
‘Even after reading that?’
‘Oh, no one reads those things, and they were glad she was gone. Only I missed her.’
‘Look, forgive me for saying this, and I get why you couldn’t do anything back then with her being married and all; but couldn’t you have pursued it once you were both at the Cedars? Both single, both alone… You could have told her, you could have broken through the ice.’
‘That wasn’t ice around her, Inspector. It was permafrost. She wouldn’t have wanted it, trust me: that calm she had cultivated was her only comfort, and raising feelings she imagined belonging only to her past would have shuddered that calm away.’
The man shook his head, the memories now returning,
