“What was their interest in the first place?” I asked.
“Malloy was associated with some East End hoods,” Tony answered, “part of a crack gang-you know the scene-New York comes to London. The word was that the police picked the Mouse up in an attempt to get him to finger the big men. He didn’t, and someone started to kick up a stink about habeas corpus. The cops eventually got themselves out of trouble by persuading the inland revenue to charge him with tax evasion.”
“Tax evasion?”
Tony grinned. “Modern, innit? The case against him was weak, but all the jury saw was a giant, and a black giant to boot, who refused to talk. They threw the book at him. Sad, really, although by the sounds of his physique, he’d have no trouble in jail.”
I thought about the scar and wondered. “Any woman involved?” I asked.
Tony hit another key. “Not that I can see.” He rolled the screen on again and then, finding nothing, wiped it clear. “Want me to check this out further?”
“If you have the time.”
Tony yawned again. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll be in touch if…” He didn’t finish the sentence: he started up on his computer again. That was it, no good-bye, he had done with me. It wasn’t personal-Tony never was one for social niceties, and I knew he’d contact me if he found anything of interest. And besides, who was I to stand between a man and his collective’s accounts? I left him to them.
Or tried to. I’d forgotten how much Tony liked to hold his conversations in transit. “Kate,” he called when I was almost at the door.
I turned.
“Maybe you should let the business die,” he said.
I shrugged and left.
I spent the evening on my own-alone, that is, so long as you don’t count my alto. I counted it, I’d just had the whole thing resprung, and I spent a few hours rediscovering both its range and my limitations.
I usually played to get away from work, but this time I failed. An image of a man they called the Mouse kept weaving its way through the blues I played. I saw him as he stood there in my office, his bright clothes, contrasting with those sad eyes, a man with no home trapped for tax evasion. I was beginning to feel sorry for him-sorry that I had treated his visit as a hoax, sorry that I hadn’t asked him more. That, I thought, was why I liked the job-and why I would miss it so much when I was forced to close. It wasn’t often that you get the opportunity to meet giants who want to thank their social worker for introducing them to literature. Thelma must be quite a woman, I thought-certainly more trusting than I. I should have been more friendly; I should have tried harder.
I shook my head, moved the beat up tempo to fit with my version of South African township jazz, and put a brake on my regrets. Thelma, if she existed, was the social worker, not me. I would try and find her, that’s all I could do. I had enough troubles of my own, I had the business to worry about.
Without noticing I slipped back into the blues.
It was hot when I got up, the kind of heat that visits London once every thirteen years. I opened the wardrobe in the hall, the one where I stored the clothes I never got a chance to wear, and stared at the uninspiring choices. In the end I decided to go for broke, fitted myself out in a tight black cotton skirt and flimsy pink T-shirt, threw a pair of thonged sandals on my feet, and took a jacket for protection from the vagaries of the English climate.
The flimsy pink number was already showing signs of wilting when I arrived at the address Martin Malloy had given me. What’s more, it clashed with my destination.
The building was plum in the middle of the Arsenal, a cheerful item if ever I saw one. It was round and squat, and red and yellow-a low thing in the middle of a long row of detached gray brick. A kind of eighties version of a sixties domed tent, it was part of the council’s attempt to decentralize its services in order to benefit the community.
The community, consisting mainly of women and children, who were crowded into a big room with narrow slanted windows, did not look impressed. I can’t say I blamed than: the place was hot and, although cheerful, downright uncomfortable. When I asked for the duty social worker, I was told to take a seat. I gingerly lowered myself into a red plastic item that, bolted to the floor, resembled a bucket with large holes.
“Gets to your bum after an hour or two,” said the woman to my left.
“Our Johnny got stuck in one once,” said the woman to my right. “Had to get the fire brigade to cut him out. They blamed me, of course.” She reached over and slapped her Johnny, who seemed to be making a second bid for fire brigade fame.
“Miss Baeier,” a voice called.
I was shown into a small cubicle of a room, airless and lit by fluorescent, in which stood two chairs, a table, and a woman in her early thirties. She smiled at me from her seat and gestured to the second one. When I sat, I could hardly see her for the mound of papers piled in front of her.
She shifted to the right, pulled a manila file from the pile, and opened it. It was, I saw, lined with blank paper. She frowned, turned to her side, dug into a bag that could have doubled as a haversack and that hung on the back of her chair, and pulled out a biro. I saw that it was doing extra work as an advert for sausages. She used the pen to transfer my name from the slip I had filled in onto the first sheet of paper.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“I’m trying to find someone,” I said.
The woman glanced up sharply, saw that I wasn’t joking, and shut the file with a bang. “Ms. Baeier,” she said clearly, “we are not all-powerful. We have strict guidelines to which we always adhere. I can tell you, without needing to check, that we draw the line at tracing missing persons. You might care to try the police-we never have much luck with them, but don’t let that stop you.” The lines in her face belied the aggression in her voice: she looked too tired to have only just started work.
I smiled at her. “Bad morning?”
She half returned my smile. “The worst,” she said. “Except for yesterday and tomorrow.”
“I won’t waste your time then,” I said, “I’m looking for a Thelma Parsons.”
A look of alarm crossed the woman’s face, a flash of response quickly concealed as she ducked behind the pile of papers. When she reemerged, she had gone bland again: I wondered whether I’d been imagining the sheer panic that had cut through her fatigue. She raised an eyebrow.
“Thelma was a social worker,” I continued, “based here once. Hated the job as much as you all do and managed to escape. She’s an old friend of mine. I was hoping you could help me find her.”
It was weak and I knew it. Marlowe would have done better. But then I wasn’t Marlowe, was I? I was just a private detective in a land that didn’t like detectives, and a woman, not a man.
But then, I thought brightly, as her face seemed to soften at the mention of my friendship with Thelma, neither was this woman a reluctant witness with something to hide-just an overworked social worker fighting the disillusionment that seemed to come with the job these days. Maybe it would work.
It didn’t. “We never release addresses of former employees,” she said. “Nor, for that matter, of current employees.” She was good at her job, but not good enough. Her eyes were narrowed, beaming hostility, contradicting her seeming unconcern.
I opened my mouth to try again, but she shook her head in the general direction of the door, dismissing me with a determined finality. She discarded the manila file and began her way through the one underneath, I got the message: I left,
My way out was blocked by a woman who thrust a small child toward me,
“Here, do me a favor and watch him for a second,” she said. “Got to change the baby, and those chairs are useless.” She was a pro: she sped down the corridor with yelling infant in arms. I looked down at the abandoned child.
He was a cute enough item if you managed to ignore the effluent issuing from his nose. I couldn’t ignore it, so I took a tissue from my bag and moved it downward. He was out of range before the tissue had even a chance of reaching his face.