“It’s a Hockney print,” she said proudly. “We bought it at the photography museum when we went to see his exhibition. It brightens up the place a bit, doesn’t it? He’s a local lad, you know, Hockney.” Her accent sounded
vaguely posh and wholly put-on.
“Yes,” said Susan. She remembered Sandra Banks telling her about David Hockney once. A local lad he might be, but he lived near the sea now in southern California, a far cry from Bradford. “It’s very nice,” she added.
“I think so,” said Mrs Johnson. “I’ve always had an eye for a good painting, you know. Sometimes I think if I’d stuck at it and not… .” She looked around. “Well … it’s too late for that now, isn’t it? Cup of tea?”
“Yes, please.”
“Sit down, dearie, there you go. Won’t be a minute. Mr Johnson’s just gone to the corner shop. He won’t be long.”
Susan sat in one of the dark blue armchairs. It was upholstered in some velvety kind of material, and she didn’t like the feel of it against her fingertips, so she folded her hands in her lap. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece. Beside it stood a couple of postcards from sunny beaches, and three cards of condolence, from neighbours no doubt. Below was a brown tiled hearth and fireplace, its grate covered by a gas-fire with fake glowing coals. Even though it was still warm enough indoors, Susan could make out a faint glow and hear the hiss of the gas supply. The Johnsons obviously didn’t want her to think they were stingy.
Before Mrs Johnson returned with the tea, the front door opened and a tall, thin man in baggy jeans and a red short-sleeved jumper over a white shirt walked in. When he saw Susan, he smiled and held out his hand. He had a narrow, lined face, a long nose, and a few fluffy grey hairs around the edges of his predominantly bald head. The corners of his thin lips were perpetually upturned as if on the verge of a conspiratorial smile.
“You must be from the police?” he said. “Pleased to
see you.
It was an odd greeting, certainly not the kind Susan was used to, but she shook his hand and mumbled her condolences.
“Fox’s Custard Creams,” he said.
“Pardon?”
“That’s what Mother sent me out for. Fox’s Custard Creams.” He shook his head. “She thought they’d go nice with a cup of tea.” Unlike his wife’s, Mr Johnson’s accent was clearly and unashamedly West Riding. “You think I could get any, though? Could I hell-as-like.”
At that moment, Mrs Johnson came in with a tray bearing cups and saucers, her best china, by the look of it, delicate pieces with rose patterns and gold around the rims, and a teapot covered by a quilted pink cosy. She set this down on the low polished-wood table in front of the settee.
“What’s wrong?” she asked her husband.
He glanced at Susan. “Everything’s changed, that’s what. Oh, it’s been going on for years, I know, but I just can’t seem to get used to it, especially as I’m home most of the time now.”
“He got made redundant,” said Mrs Johnson, whispering as if she were telling someone a neighbour had cancer. “Had a good job as a clerk in the accounts department at British Home Stores, but they had staff cutbacks. I ask you, after nearly thirty years’ loyal service. And how’s a man to get a job at his age? It’s young ‘uns they want these days.” Her accent slipped as she expressed her disgust.
“Now that’s enough of that, Edie,” he said, then looked at Susan again. “I’m as tolerant as the next man?I don’t want you to think I’m not?but I’d say things have come to a pretty pass when you can buy all the poppadoms and samosas you want at the corner shop
but you can’t get a packet of Fox’s blooming Custard Creams. What’ll it be next? that’s what I ask myself. Baked beans? Milk? Butter? Teal”
“Well, you’ll have to go to Taylor’s in future won’t you?”
“Taylor’s! Taylor’s was bought out by Gandhi’s or some such lot months back, woman. Shows how much shopping you do.”
“I go to the supermarket down on the main road.” She looked at Susan. “It’s a Sainsbury’s, you know, very nice.”
“Anyway,” said Mr Johnson, “the lass doesn’t want to hear about our problems, does she? She’s got a job to do.” He sat down and they all waited quietly as Mrs Johnson poured the tea.
“We do have some ginger biscuits,” she said to Susan, “if you’d like one.”
“No thanks. Tea’ll be fine, Mrs Johnson, honest.”
“Where do you come from, lass?” asked Mr Johnson.
“Sheffield.”
“I thought it were Yorkshire, but I couldn’t quite place it. Sheffield, eh.” He nodded, and kept on nodding, as if he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“I’m sorry to be calling at a time like this,” Susan said, accepting her cup and saucer from Mrs Johnson, “but it’s important we get as much information as we can as soon as possible.” She placed the tea carefully at the edge of the low table and took out her notebook. In a crucial interrogation, either she would have someone along to do that, or she would be taking the notes while Banks asked the questions, but the Johnsons were hardly suspects, and all she hoped to get was a few names of their son’s friends and acquaintances. “When did you last see Carl?” she asked first.
“Now then, when was it, love?” Mr Johnson asked his
wife. “Seven years? Eight?”
“More like nine or ten, I’d say.”
“Nine years?” Susan grasped at a number. “You hadn’t seen him in all that time?”
“Broke his mother’s heart, Carl did,” said Mr Johnson, with the incongruous smile hovering as he spoke. “He never had no time for us.”
“Now that’s not true,” said Mrs Johnson. “He fell in with bad company, that’s what happened. He was always too easily led, our Carl.”
