overhead at the same time. Double-glazing would be an essential.
The name of the house on the brass plate by the front door was Rosalind. It should have been Neglect. I’m an expert on neglected houses, my own being an outstanding example, but this one had mine beat to a frazzle. The tiles on the porch had cracked and lifted as weeds pushed up through them. A tangle of shrubs and weeds and creepers had invaded the porch and the window ledges. Small gardens grew in the guttering, spilling out to trickle down the brick walls.
I rang the electric bell and got no result so I knocked hard on the door, dislodging flakes of paint. High heels clicked on boards and I heard a muttered curse as a step was missed. She flung the door open and looked at me with the same deep, dark eyes as her mother. ‘Mister Hardy, please do come in.’
She was tall and thin, wearing a blue silk dress that would have fitted better if she had another kilo or two of meat on her bones. Her dark hair, with a little grey in it, was swept back and held with a blue headband in a style ten years too young for her. I put her age at about forty-five. I took the hand she extended-the free one, the other carried a glass-and shook it. ‘It’s good of you to see me like this,’ I said. I reached inside my jacket. ‘You wanted some identification.’
She waved that away and swayed slightly but regained her balance quickly. ‘Now that I’ve seen you I have no doubt whatsoever that you’re who you say you are. Not that I really care. Come in and have a drink.’
I followed her into the house, which smelled of damp and dust, through to a big tiled kitchen with French windows letting out onto a back garden more wild than the one in front. The windows were open and a train rattled by, shaking the cocktail fixings set out on an old-fashioned card table. She pointed to a pair of deckchairs with slightly torn canvas. ‘Sit you down. I was just having a martini. You’ll join me?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
She slugged back the rest of the drink she’d carried and poured two more from a crystal pitcher. Her hand shook but she managed to get the glasses two-thirds full. Then she dropped an olive in each and added more gin. ‘Gilbey’s gin keeps you thin,’ she said. ‘I believe that, I really do.’
I reached forward to take the glass, doubting her ability to get it to me. She smiled, lifted her own and steered herself into her chair. ‘Cheers.’
I drank. The vermouth bottle was on the table but it might just as well have stayed in the cupboard. The drinks were almost pure gin, diluted a bit by melted ice. Not that I minded. She took a hefty pull and extracted a cigarette from the packet on the table. It gave me a chance to study her. My original guess at her age was way off-she couldn’t have been more than thirty-five, but cigarettes and booze had put ten years on her. Her hands were slender and young-looking, but the fingers were heavily nicotine-stained; the flesh around her neck was firm although her chin was sagging and her fine eyes were disfigured by deep pouches and a mass of premature wrinkles.
‘So, you’ve been out to see Rose and now you’ve come to see me. All about poor Lee. That’s strange. I haven’t thought about Lee in ages. Mind you, at one time I used to think about him a lot.’
‘It must have been a shock, to hear of his death in that way.’
‘Not really’. She sucked on her cigarette and then on her drink, taking in smoke and gin as if they were tea and toast. ‘He did two tours in Vietnam and he always said that if Charlie didn’t get him some jealous husband would. Drink up.’
She was almost through hers and staring at the blueish pitcher. She had a long start on me and I had almost twice her body weight, I reckoned I could stay the pace. When we’d replenished and she’d got another cigarette going she asked me about her mother and seemed satisfied with the account I gave.
‘We never got along, and I never got along with Peter. Only with Lee. Lovely Lee.’ She laughed and smoked jerkily. ‘Never got along with my husband either. He’s a film producer and I’m an actress. Was an actress. Bad combination. He gave me this house in the divorce settlement, the bastard. Bought it for me, and my fuckwit of a lawyer let him get away with it. What’s the name of that movie? Planes, Trains and Automobiles — that’s this place.’
The words were tumbling out, alternately slurred and too precise as the liquor got to her. She topped up her glass and raised it to her mouth. It was lipstick smeared around the whole rim and she didn’t quite make the contact, a few drops spilled down her chin. I looked away and she caught the reaction.
‘I know, I know. I’m a sloppy drunk. Can’t help it. Nothing else to live for. What d’you want?’ She gazed at me blearily through her cigarette smoke, forcing her eyes to focus, imprinting more wrinkles. Suddenly she appeared to get everything together and to have a moment of clarity. I’d seen it before in hopeless drunks- a flash of sobriety before the shutters come down. ‘You’re not a journalist. Haven’t taken a single note, not one! What do you want?’
I judged that I only had her attention for a short time and that it was worth the risk. I took out the photograph of David Trumble and put it down in front of her. ‘Do you know who that is?’
She barely glanced at the picture. ‘Course I do. It’s Lee.’
‘It’s Sean Trumble’s son, David. Trumble hired me to investigate his suspicion that Lee North was the boy’s real father.’
She threw back her head and let out a shriek of laughter. The sound was cut short as she gasped for breath. Alarmed, I got out of my chair but she made a fierce gesture for me to stay away. She gulped in air somehow and followed it with a couple of lungsful of smoke and more gin. When she spoke her voice was wheezy and thin.
‘Of course he fucking was. Of course! Lee fucked everything. He fucked me when I was fourteen and let me tell you those were the best fucks I ever had. Best ever! Best!’
‘But his mate’s wife… ‘
‘He fucked her the night of the wedding. Sean passed out and Lee did the job.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The silly bitch told me. Told me when she heard she had cancer. Wanted to know whether she should tell Sean. Idiot. Oh, Lee. Oh, lovely, lovely Lee
She was weeping now, the tears falling into her glass and down the front of her dress. She dropped her cigarette and I bent down and retrieved it from the dusty floor. I picked up the photograph and put it in my pocket.
‘Is there anything I can do for you, Maria?’
‘Yes,’ she sobbed. ‘You can piss off.’
Families are hell. Who said that? I drove back to Glebe, feeling none of the satisfaction that usually comes with having got the answers to the questions. I opened a can of beer and sat down to consider my next move. There was no proof of either discovery-that Eric Trumble had fathered Lee North and that Lee North had fathered David Trumble-but I had no doubt that both things were true. But could I communicate that certainty to my client? And should I? I’m no social worker, but you’d have to have the sensitivity of a sewer pipe not to be concerned about how the revelation could affect the prospects of young David,
One can became two and I switched to cask white without getting any inspiration. I fed myself and the cat out of cans and settled down to scribble some notes on the meeting with Maria North-Barr. Of the three people I’d met so far in the case, only Rose North had any serenity and it was partly due to senile dementia. An unhappy business. I flicked on the television and turned it off almost straight away. I picked up Theroux’s Happy Isles of Oceania but put it down after a few pages. I had all the spleen and depression I needed.
The sound of the doorbell was welcome. I took another swig of wine and wandered down the passage to open the door. Sean Trumble stood there, pale and tense, his hands thrust in the deep pockets of an anorak. The night had become cold without me noticing.
‘Well, what’ve you found out?’
I told the first lie to come into my head. ‘I haven’t started on it yet.’
His right hand came out, holding a heavy pistol. ‘I know you’re lying, Hardy. Get back in there and keep your hands in sight or I’ll put a bullet in you.’
You don’t argue with a Vietnam veteran and an ex-mercenary. I backed down the corridor towards the stairs. He stepped inside and flicked the door closed with his foot.
‘Anyone else here?’
‘Yeah. Three cops. We’re playing a little poker.’
