Stone Cold Red Hot - [37]

I gestured for Roger to open the door and braced myself. I followed him in.

“There’s someone to see you,” he said and withdrew.

She was sitting in a high-backed armchair, a crocheted rug over her legs and one of those v-shaped support pillows behind her. She looked haggard, her skin tone was yellow, she had a mob-cap on with lacy edge and I wondered whether the treatment had caused her hair to fall out. Her features were small, neat, and she wore bi-focals on a chain. I could discern a slight resemblance to Jennifer in the thin nose and the small mouth but not to Roger who presumably took after his father. In her hands she held a little magazine, a puzzle book, full of crosswords and word-searches. She lay it down on her lap.

“Are you from The Children?”

“Pardon?”

“The Children of Christ?”

“No. Are you expecting someone?”

“Tomorrow, I think. They’re very good.” Her voice was clear.

“You’re still involved with the church?”

She stared at me for a moment. “I am dedicated. The Children are my spiritual family, my one true family, surpassing all others. When all about is corruption…”

She stopped. I don’t know whether she was quoting something or making a social observation. I was still standing but there was nowhere for me to sit. A dining chair near to Mrs Pickering was covered in clothes and I didn’t want to perch on the bed.

“No, I’m not from the church,” I said, “I’m a private detective. I’ve come to talk to you about Jennifer.”

I thought she was going to keel over. Her eyes fluttered and she went even paler. She began to shake her head as though I were a noise she could dislodge.

“Jennifer has been missing since 1976,” I said. “I’m trying to trace her.”

“Go away,” she said quickly, her mouth trembling.

“I’d like your help.”

“I don’t know where she is, she went to university, after that I don’t know.”

“She didn’t go to Keele,” I said calmly, “she never got there. That’s what she had been planning to do, that’s what you told people but it wasn’t the truth.”

“Get out of here. Roger,” her voice rose, quavering.

I crouched down, better to talk to her at the same level. “I know she was pregnant, did she tell you? It must have been a terrible shock.”

“Why are you asking me all this?” she cried, anguish in her voice.

“Roger wants me to find his sister, he wants it desperately enough to go against your wishes.”

“She went to Keele,” she repeated.

“She didn’t, they’ve checked the records.”

“Roger,” she began to scream.

“Where did she really go?”

She got up and took a few steps still calling, “Roger, Roger, Roger.”

“Did you ever hear from Jennifer?”

“Roger!”

The door flew open and Roger came in.

I stood up. I know when I’ve overstayed my welcome. “I’ll wait in the kitchen,” I said to him.

It was quarter of an hour before Roger joined me. I stared at the notice-board with its neat list of names and numbers, clinic appointment cards and money off coupons. I considered ways to get Mrs Pickering to talk to me but couldn’t come up with anything that would get me past her hysteria. Why was she so agitated at the mention of Jennifer? Surely after twenty odd years the reaction to Jennifer’s pregnancy would have softened a little? Jennifer must have told them about the baby, that much seemed evident. Was Mrs Pickering’s illness affecting her emotional state? But according to Roger he’d had the same response a year previously.

I stared out of the back window to the house opposite where Frances Delaney had grown up and I worked out which had been her room. The stone wall separating the gardens was substantial, about six foot high, darkened by the smoke from the city before the Clean Air Act came in and they sand-blasted everything.

When Frances talked about Jennifer climbing over the wall and becoming distraught I thought perhaps she’d been imagining what waited for her at home and it had all been too much. I re-considered. Could she have seen something? There was a large garden shed at the bottom of the Pickering’s garden and it would be about the only thing you’d see from the Delaney’s wall. Had she seen something in the shed? I opened the door at the side of the kitchen and walked round to the back garden. It was uninspiring. Roger definitely hadn’t inherited his father’s green fingers. A couple of rhododendron bushes, some lavender and geraniums were all that stocked the borders, weeds were rampant in-between. The rest of the place was lawn, dotted with dandelions. I walked over to the shed and circled it, no windows. I went to the wall which was about four feet from the shed. I easily found foot holds in the stones and hoisted myself up until I was sitting on the top. A startled cat leapt down and shot away into the large trees at the bottom of the garden next-door. From my vantage point the shed obscured any view of the Pickering’s house. I shuffled along to the left and found I could see the upper floors of Mrs Clerkenwell’s. From the other end the house at the right, where the Shuttle’s had lived was screened by a Leylandii hedge which grew above the dividing fencing. There was precious little chance of Jennifer seeing any thing from there.