The House Across the Street Read online

  ‘I can’t argue with that,’ he said. ‘Okay, can you meet me at Charing Cross mainline station, at nine thirty? I’ll wait under the clock.’

  By the time they got to Dover the next morning, Jilly had decided Charles was one of the nicest men she’d ever met. He might be posh and highly intelligent, but he didn’t make her feel uncomfortable or stupid. He was kind, nice-looking and he had a good sense of humour. Not that there was anything to laugh about right now, and there wouldn’t be until they got Katy back, but with Charles on the case she felt much more confident of a happy outcome.

  She had to hang on to the idea that one day soon the three of them would be having dinner together and laughing. Not laughing about Katy being captured, of course – somehow she knew there would never be anything funny about that – but about something else. Jilly had to hang on to that, because she didn’t dare consider what life would be like without her best friend.

  She didn’t care that she’d had to back out of renting the flat. She didn’t care if she lost her job at the zoo and had to go back to Bexhill and all that entailed. Nothing mattered except finding Katy.

  ‘My friend Pat managed to get me a bit of information about the Reilly family last night,’ Charles said while they were on the train. ‘I’ve got an address for Susan Gosling and Dolly Meek too, both aunts. They are his mother’s sisters. Dolly runs a boarding house.’

  ‘I’ve never been to Dover before,’ Jilly said. ‘Is it a nice place?’

  ‘I’ve always found it a bit oppressive,’ Charles said. ‘You go to Folkestone, its close neighbour, and that’s all light and bright, but Dover has a greyness about it. Maybe it’s the castle or just the docks, with the ferries going in and out, or the high cliffs, but the crime rate is higher, and it is a bit sleazy.’

  ‘You’ve really sold it to me,’ Jilly grinned. ‘So a fitting town for Edward Reilly to be born in!’

  ‘We’ll go and see his aunt Dolly first,’ Charles said. ‘It’s close to the docks, so I think we’ll find it’s going to be more of a dosshouse than a boarding house.’

  ‘Has Katy’s mother started showing any emotion yet?’ Jilly asked. ‘My mum phones me nearly every day to ask if there’s any news, but she went round to see Mrs Speed and she more or less told her to sling her hook.’

  Charles shook his head in bewilderment. ‘It’s not my place to comment on relatives’ attitudes. But I am finding it increasingly impossible to understand her.’

  ‘Katy couldn’t understand her, either. I think she would’ve preferred to live in squalor with my family than in her own squeaky-clean and ordered house.’

  Charles liked the way Jilly spoke bluntly about her home and family. It was clear she loved them and that they were a very happy family, but he rarely came across such unabashed honesty and he found it refreshing. ‘My family don’t go in for squeaky clean either,’ he said. ‘The dogs rule the house, the furniture is old and the kitchen is usually a shambles. I’m actually very suspicious of anyone who keeps a too tidy house.’ He went on to tell her what Pat had said about Reilly’s house. ‘I rest my case,’ he laughed. ‘Such incredible order shows a twisted mind.’

  Charles was right about White Cliffs Boarding House. It was by the docks, on the busy road, and it was the kind of guest house that only the most desperate would book into.

  It was red brick but painted white; the paint had turned green with mould, and it was peeling off, making the house look diseased. The windows and net curtains didn’t look as if they’d been washed for years.

  The door was opened by Dolly Meek, who could have been a model for saucy seaside postcards: a huge bust, legs like tree trunks, her grey hair in curlers and a cigarette hanging from her lips. She wore a floral crossover overall that was none to clean.

  ‘Yeah, our Mavis was dumb enough to tangle with Angelo Reilly,’ she said on the doorstep, her voice loud enough to act as a foghorn. ‘She never married ’im, ’e never stayed around long enough for that, but she changed ’er name to his when she got up the spout with Ed. I told her then, “Get down and see Ma Grady what sorts girls out.” But she wouldn’t. She said she loved ’im and wanted ’is baby.’

  Charles could hardly believe she would boom out such information on the street. He suggested she invite them in, as it was so cold and noisy outside.

  ‘I ain’t cleared away breakfast yet,’ Dolly said, hiking her formidable breasts up a little higher and throwing her fag end out into the street. ‘So you’ll just have to take me as you find me.’

  The stink of stale fried food and cigarettes was overpowering, but at least the living room she led them into was warm, with a big fire. A large table took up the centre of the room, covered in a red-and-white chequered oilcloth. There were about seven used place settings, cigarettes stubbed out amongst the remains of a cooked breakfast. The whole room was strewn with clutter, everything from old newspapers to boxes of tinned food and a great many bottles, both full and empty.

  Dolly swept some clothes off a couch for them to sit down.

  ‘It’s really Edward, your nephew, I need to ask you about,’ Charles said after a few minutes of Dolly rattling on about how her sister spoiled her chances by getting involved with a worthless ship’s stoker who was half Irish and half Italian.

  ‘Our Ed was a good kid, really,’ she said, smoothing down her overall and taking a seat on one of the dining chairs. ‘Never ’ad a chance, like, not when our Mavis took to the bottle and kept having more sprogs. Ed was the one what did most of the looking after ’em. But ’e got the idea in ’is ’ead that ’e was meant for better things. Always dangerous, that one.’

  Charles and Jilly listened to Dolly in amazement. She just spewed out personal stuff about her sister without any embarrassment. ‘She’d open ’er legs for any bloke who’d buy ’er a few drinks. I caught her one day in this very room giving one of my boarders a blow job. She’d done it for two shillings. Christ Almighty! I’d need more than two shillings to touch my boarders’ cocks, let alone stick one in me gob.’

  Charles tried again and again to get her to talk about Edward, and finally she got there. ‘Going in the army was a good thing for ’im. I don’t think ’e did much fighting, mind you. He used to boast about being trapped in a burning tank and stuff like that. But that was all make-believe. But ’e ’ad money when he was demobbed, so I reckon ’e must ’ave got some kind of fiddle going on in the army. He’d got as ’ard as bleedin’ nails an’ all. He wouldn’t give his mum any money, or any of us. Knocked Mavis about too, broke a couple of her teeth. Then ’e disappeared for some years. He come back once in a flash car and a hundred-pound suit. That time ’e gave us all money, ’e wanted to show off cos he’d got this building firm. But he lost it all, didn’t ’e? We read about it in the papers. Came down one time with this girl he’d married. She was probably a nice little thing, but too soft for a bloke like ’im. I told ’er she’d got to stand up to ’im, but she just smiled, like she didn’t believe me.’

  ‘Dolly, he nearly killed her, and she finally ran away from him.’ Charles felt he had to make the woman see how serious this inquiry was, and he didn’t want a trip down memory lane unless there was some point to it. ‘Since then he’s burned down a house and killed two women in the fire, one of whom was the woman who’d helped his wife escape.’

  At this Dolly’s mouth fell open, and the cigarette she’d only just lit and stuck between her lips dropped on to the floor. ‘Oh my God!’ she exclaimed. ‘Are the police looking for him?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I expect they’ll be searching around here very soon. But my real concern is a young woman called Katy Speed. He’s abducted her, and I am afraid he’ll kill her, too. So please tell us if you know anywhere in Dover he could have taken her to.’

  ‘I ain’t seen him for years. But a mate of mine told me she saw ’im ’ere just before Christmas.’

  ‘Where did she see him?’

  ‘In the ’igh street.’

  ‘Tell me, D
olly, is his mother still alive?’

  ‘No, she died back in 1956. It were the booze what done it. Only other person in our family left here now is our Susan, she’s my sister. She ain’t like me. She got religion, joined the Sally Army.’

  ‘What about his friends, boys he knew when he was at school? Do you know any of them?’

  ‘There’s four or five blokes ’e used to hang around with. They drink in the King’s Head. John Sloane is the one to ask for. But be careful what you say to ’im, ’e’s got a nasty temper.’

  ‘I want you to promise me something, Dolly.’ Charles moved closer to her, looking right into her eyes. ‘If Ed should come here in the next couple of weeks, or someone tells you they’ve seen him, will you ring me or the police immediately? And please promise me you won’t warn him I’ve been asking questions.’

  ‘I promise. I wouldn’t piss on ’im if ’e was on fire,’ she said, and her washed-out blue eyes flashed, proving she meant it. ‘Ain’t likely he’ll come to me, but if ’e does I’ll kick ’im in the goolies and slam the door on ’im.’

  ‘One good thing about seeing a really rough person, in their own grubby habitat,’ Jilly said as they walked back into the town to find Ed’s Aunt Susan, ‘is that it makes you realize you and your family are quite civilized.’

  Charles laughed. He found Jilly very refreshing with her complete candour. There was a great deal to like about her. Although not conventionally pretty, she had a good face. Her height, the graceful way she moved, and her flirty eyes framed with impossibly long lashes, all reminded him of a giraffe. She was wearing a tartan miniskirt and long boots, and she had sensational legs. She’d told him on the way down to Dover that her Auntie Joan disapproved of miniskirts, but she was gradually shortening all her skirts a little at a time so the sudden shock of seeing so much leg exposed wouldn’t kill her aunt. Charles was very amused by the things she came out with.

  ‘Dolly was rough, Mavis was a tramp,’ Charles said as they neared Aunt Susan’s. ‘It makes you wonder what their mother was like. Yet I got the idea that Dolly actually had a good heart.’

  ‘Well, let’s face it, she had to have something going for her,’ Jilly laughed. ‘When she came out with that story about Mavis doing that for two bob, I wanted the floor to open and swallow me. But to be fair to Dolly, she probably creates a warm home from home for the men who stay in her boarding house.’

  Susan’s home was a tiny terraced house in a narrow backstreet. It was a dirty little street with the front doors opening straight on to the pavement, but Jilly remarked that number 9 was the only one with a scrubbed doorstep and dazzling white nets at the sparkling windows.

  ‘But then she’s in God’s Army,’ Jilly added, arching her eyebrows. ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness, after all.’

  The door was opened by a very small, thin woman with snow-white hair, dressed in black. She looked enquiringly at them.

  ‘Mrs Susan Gosling?’ Charles asked. For a second he thought they’d got the wrong house, as it was difficult to imagine this woman coming out of the same womb as Dolly. When she nodded, he handed her his card. ‘I’m a lawyer making some inquiries about your sister Mavis’s son, Edward, and this is my assistant, Miss Carter. May we come in?’

  ‘Is he dead?’ Susan asked as she led them down a narrow passage to a living room cum kitchen at the back. It was a bleak room devoid of any real comforts except for a fire. A plain wooden crucifix hung above the mantelpiece. She beckoned to the chairs around the oilcloth-covered table.

  ‘No, he’s not, but he is in serious trouble and wanted by the police. But our real concern is for a young woman, Katy Speed, who he abducted ten days ago now. We are afraid he will kill her.’

  Susan Gosling was the kind of elderly woman you would never be able to pick out in a crowd, not unless she was wearing an unusual hat or coat. She had no distinguishing features; just a soft, little old lady sort of face, with a shrunken mouth. Her expression didn’t even change at what Charles had said. She displayed no shock or horror, or even any indignation at him saying such a terrible thing about her nephew.

  ‘Ever since he was twenty or so, I’ve half expected something like this,’ she said. ‘I knew he had turned wicked, I pray for him all the time. But he never stood a chance, not with my sister Mavis. She was a terrible mother, all her children suffered, but him most of all.’

  She offered them a cup of tea and opened the cupboard to get the cups. Charles noted there were just four cups and saucers; he suspected she had very few personal possessions.

  ‘Tell us about his suffering,’ Jilly asked. She looked at Charles, as if to remind him he’d called her his assistant. ‘Did his mother beat him, or was it your sister’s men friends?’

  ‘She took everything out on him, because he looked like Angelo, his father. If that man had loved her as she loved him, she might have turned out a good person. So poor little Eddie took the brunt of all her anger and hurt. She hit him, she belittled him. She even burned him with cigarettes. I threatened to call the cruelty man lots of times, but she used to just laugh at me. She kept having more kids, too. And Eddie, at seven or eight, mostly took care of them as best he could.

  ‘She taught him to be cruel, though I never saw it in him till he was older – all the time he was caring for the little ones he was kind and patient. But then he took up bare-knuckle fighting, and he became a champion. People started to look up to him where once he’d been like the dirt under their feet.’

  ‘He enlisted for the war, didn’t he?’ Jilly asked.

  Susan nodded as she warmed the teapot. ‘He wanted to the moment war broke out, but he was just seventeen then. He couldn’t wait to go. Who could blame him?’

  ‘How come you are so different from your sister?’ Jilly asked. ‘I know you are in the Salvation Army, but were you always the good one?’

  The older woman smiled at that. ‘We all start out the same in God’s eyes,’ she said. ‘It’s what happens to us as we grow – the paths we take – that change us. I was married young to Sydney, a farm labourer, and we were very happy in our little cottage over towards Folkestone. First we lost our daughter at the age of two to diphtheria, and three years later Sydney was killed in an accident with the threshing machine on the farm.’

  ‘I am so sorry.’ Charles and Jilly spoke in unison.

  Susan put the pot of tea on the table and got a little jug of milk from the pantry. ‘It was a long time ago now. But thankfully I was helped by a member of the Salvation Army who saw how lost and afraid I was. You see, I had to leave the farm cottage and come back to Dover. I had nothing. Well, I had my two sisters, but I never wanted to be like either of them. Oddly enough, it was young Eddie who was a comfort to me. I regret now I didn’t take him from Mavis and bring him up myself. Maybe I could have saved him from taking that wrong turning later.’

  They all had a cup of tea, and Susan offered them each a rock cake. She said she’d made them early that morning because she couldn’t sleep. ‘I must have sensed I was going to get visitors,’ she said with a sad smile.

  Charles explained to her about Ed’s crimes. He said now he had Katy, and they were hoping to find someone in Dover who might have an idea of where he could’ve taken her.

  ‘Has he come to visit you recently?’ Charles asked.

  ‘No, he hasn’t. But he wouldn’t, because the last time he came here he threatened me. That was around the time his wife left him. I thought he was going to kill me, he was so angry. He really believed I knew where she’d gone, but I didn’t. I only met her once, when he brought her here after they were married. I used to write to her, send cards and a little present for the children’s birthdays. But I didn’t see her. I’m not even on the telephone, so I can’t ring her.’

  ‘So what did you do?’ Jilly asked.

  ‘I screamed for my neighbour’s husband to come. He threw Ed out, but not before I told Eddie that he alone was to blame for Deirdre leaving and he wasn’t welcome here any more. H
e has been back to Dover, people have told me. The last time was around three months ago. But he didn’t come here.’

  Jilly asked her what she did in the Salvation Army, and she said she helped at the homeless men’s hostel, down by the docks, about three or four times a week.

  ‘Dover is a sad town, I realize that now. People arrive on the ferry, hoping for a new life in England, and often they don’t leave Dover. We get foreign sailors who’ve jumped ship, often because of a woman, we seem to have more alcoholics here than other towns, and now drugs are creeping in too, mostly used by the youngsters. If I had been aware of it when I was younger, maybe I would’ve moved away. But I didn’t, so here I am still, trying to help others to find their way.’

  ‘I think the police will be coming to question you very soon. But if your nephew comes to you before that, you’d better phone the police yourself,’ Charles said.

  ‘He won’t come here, because he knows that is exactly what I’d do. I might be small but I’ve learned to stand up for myself.’

  ‘Are you sure there isn’t a place he might take Katy? Somewhere he played as a child? Somewhere he could’ve bought when he was in the money?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know of any such place. But if I think of anywhere, I’ll tell the police.’

  She asked Jilly then how well she knew Katy.

  ‘She’s my best friend, as close as a sister,’ Jilly said simply, a tear trickling down her cheek. ‘I must get her home safely.’

  Susan got up, went over to Jilly and put her arms around her, drawing the girl to her chest. ‘I’ll pray for you to be reunited,’ she said. ‘And I am so sorry my nephew has brought you such heartache.’

  ‘She was a good woman,’ Jilly said as she and Charles walked back down the street. ‘But I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Ed. The abused became the abuser.’

  ‘It’s off to the King’s Head now,’ Charles said, ignoring her sympathy for Ed. He felt a twinge of it himself, and didn’t want to admit it. ‘Let’s hope they do some decent food in there.’