'Yes.' He was tall and broad-shouldered, with rolled-up shirtsleeves and tattoos on his muscular arms. Behind him, somewhere down the corridor, a television blared at full blast, overlayed by the sound of girls arguing. He wiped his hands on a towel and smiled inquiringly. 'Sorry about the row. What can I do for you?'
George pulled one of her faces. 'If they're killing each other, I can always come back later.'
He listened for a moment. 'Nn-nn. It's fairly mild tonight. They only get really het up when they find the other one's nicked their clothes.'
'Your daughters?'
He nodded. 'Identical twins with fiery hair and fiery tempers.' He grinned amiably. 'You can have them if you like. We'll pay good money to be rid ... the wife's close to strangling them.'
George laughed. 'How old?'
'Sixteen. I keep telling them they're old enough to marry but they won't take the hint.' He flicked the towel over his shoulder and started to unroll his sleeves. 'To be honest, I'm not sure there'd be any takers. The lads can hear 'em coming a mile off and they do a runner immediately.' He chuckled. 'How can I help?'
He was too nice to be related to Priscilla Fletcher, George thought, raising a clipboard with a photocopied page from the electoral register. 'Are you William Burton?'
'That's me.'
She offered a hand. 'My name's George Gardener. I'm a councillor. I'm canvasing for the local elections on May 1.' It had seemed a reasonable cover story to detain him long enough to ask a few questions-the elections were certainly happening-but she realized it was a mistake when his face closed immediately.
He released her hand and started to close the door. 'Sorry, not interested. We won't be voting.'
'May I ask why not?'
'I'm a fireman,' he said, nodding to a cap and uniform jacket hanging on a hook in his hallway, 'and I'm sick to death of politicians telling me I'm unpatriotic because they chose to declare war while I was trying to strike for a decent salary. How does that make me unpatriotic?'
'Oh dear,' said George, pulling a face. The withdrawal of labor had been very divisive. 'The only answer I can give you is that I'm against both the war and the strikes. I've always believed that negotiation is the only way to solve problems.'
'Yes, well, war was declared in our names without anyone asking our permission to do it.' He obviously felt strongly enough to elevate George to the position of Prime Minister because he glared at her as if she were responsible for sending the troops in. 'Over a million people said no, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. For every
'Were you on it, Mr. Burton?'
'Mm. Fat lot of good it did.'
'Me, too.' She put a hand on the door to prevent him closing it. 'Were your daughters with you?'
'Yes.'
'Then that's the good it did, Mr. Burton,' she said earnestly. 'Youth's been quiet for too long, but it found a voice over this. I've been campaigning for nuclear disarmament for thirty years but I've never seen anything like that march.' She lowered her clipboard but kept her other hand on the door. 'You can't vote for me because this isn't my ward-and I'm an independent, so I have no clout at Westminster. My view is that abstention is a perfectly honorable tradition, so I won't waste your time trying to persuade you out of it.'
He exerted mild pressure against her hand and came up against resistance. 'But?'
'The person I really want to speak to is Louise Burton. I assumed the Mr. and Mrs. Burton in this house were her parents, but obviously not. You must be her brother, unless it's pure coincidence that Burtons have been registered here since the seventies.'
The question was clearly one he'd answered before, because he didn't seem put out by it. 'It's getting on for thirty years since Lou left. The folks bought the house off the council at the end of the 1980s and I took it over seven years ago when they retired to Cornwall. I don't think Lou's been back once in all that time.'
'Do you know where she is now?'
He shook his head. 'We lost track of her after she got married.'
'Do you know what she's calling herself?'
Billy didn't answer immediately. 'Are you a private detective?'
'No,' she said in surprise. 'I'm what I said I was-a councillor ... for Highdown ward. Also a care worker at the Birches in Hathaway Avenue. I live in Mullin Street, where you and your family used to live before you were transferred here.' She paused. 'Do you have many private detectives looking for your sister?'
'I presume it's Cill Trevelyan you're interested in-it was Lou's only fifteen minutes of fame.' She nodded. 'OK, well, the Trevelyan parents pay up every so often to see if a private agency can track her down. The last one came about three years ago. They always get to Lou eventually-at least to the fact that she used to live here-but it doesn't help them. Apart from the fact we don't know where she is, she had no more idea than the rest of us what happened to Cill.' He shrugged apologetically. 'Sorry.'
'What about your parents? Have they kept in touch with her?'
'No.' He seemed to feel his parents needed defending. 'It wasn't their fault. They did their best, but she always thought the grass was greener somewhere else. She left school at sixteen, became a hairdresser and got married almost immediately ... then we lost track. There was a rumor she went to Australia, but I don't know if that's true.'
George looked crestfallen. 'Oh dear! I was so hopeful of being able to speak to her when I found that Burtons were still registered here.'
