I walked on to the corner and looked down the narrow cul-de-sac, trying to remember which block Cherie’s flat was in. I knew it was on the top floor and on the left-hand side. I’d know it when I saw it, but if I could avoid climbing six sets of stairs, I’d be happier. There was nobody around to ask either. Half past nine on a Sunday morning isn’t a busy time on the streets where I live. I set off, chewing over what I knew of Daniel and Wayne’s mum.
Cherie was a pale thirty-year-old who looked forty except when she smiled and her bright blue eyes sparked. She didn’t smile that often. She was a single parent. She hadn’t ever been anything else in practice, even though she’d been married to Eddy Roberts for eight years. Eddy was a Para who’d fallen in love with violence long before Cherie ever got a look-in. They’d married in a moment of madness when he was waiting to be shipped to the Falklands to help win Mrs Thatcher’s second term. He’d come back with his head full of Goose Green and gone just crazy enough for them to invalid him out. He stuck around for the few days it took to impregnate Cherie, but before Daniel was much more than a tadpole, her soldier of fortune was off fighting somebody else’s war in Southern Africa. He dropped in a year later for long enough to give her a couple of black eyes and another baby before he vanished into Central America.
Davy is the reason I know all this. He’d been coming up to visit regularly for a few months when Cherie turned up on my doorstep one night. Davy had obviously been boasting about my brilliance as a private eye, for Cherie had a task for me. She explained, right up front, that she couldn’t afford to pay me in money but she was offering a skill swap. Her cleaning and ironing for my detecting. I was tempted, till she told me about the job. She wanted me to find Eddy. Not because she wanted him back, but because she wanted a divorce.
I’d explained gently that Mortensen and Brannigan don’t handle missing persons, which happens to be no less than the truth. I could tell she didn’t believe me, even though I spent an hour outlining a few suggestions on how and where she might track down her errant husband. Relations between us weren’t helped when the agency was all over the papers a couple of months later because of a very high-profile missing person case that I’d cracked…Since then, whenever we’d met in the Post Office or in the dentist’s waiting room she’d been frigidly polite, and I guess I’d stood on my dignity. Not the most promising history for a successful interview.
I struck lucky on the third attempt. I recognized Cherie’s door as soon as I hit the landing. Daniel’s Ninja Turtle stickers were unmistakable, and obviously difficult to remove. Nothing so embarrassing to a kid as the evidence of last year’s cult. Taking a deep breath, I knocked. No reply. I banged the letter box, and was rewarded with a scurrying behind the door. The handle turned and the door swung open a couple of inches on a chain and the sound of the TV blasted me, but I couldn’t see anybody. Then a small voice said, ‘Hiya,’ and I adjusted my eye level.
‘Hiya, Daniel,’ I said to the pyjama-clad figure. I had a fifty per cent chance of being right.
‘I’m Wayne,’ he said. I hoped that wasn’t a sign from the gods.
‘Sorry. Hiya, Wayne. Is your mum in?’
He shrugged. ‘She’s in bed.’
Before he could say more, I saw a pale blue shape in the background and heard Cherie’s voice say sharply, ‘Wayne. Come away from there. Who is it?’
I cocked my head round the crack in the door and said, ‘Hi, Cherie. It’s me, Kate Brannigan. Sorry to wake you, but I wondered if I could have a word.’
Cherie appeared at the door in a faded towelling dressing gown and shoved Wayne out of the way. ‘I wasn’t asleep.’
I was glad about that. She’d have had to be seriously hearing impaired to have slept through the volume her kids seemed to need from the TV. ‘Yeah, right,’ I said diplomatically.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘I just wanted a word. Em…Can I come in?’
Cherie looked defensive. ‘If you want,’ she said, grudging every word.
‘I don’t want the whole neighbourhood to hear me,’ I said, trying desperately not to sound like I was about to give her a bad time.
‘I’ve nothing to be ashamed of,’ she said defensively. She let the chain off and opened the door wide enough to let me in. After I’d entered, she stuck her head out and gave the landing the quick one-two to check who had spotted me.
I pressed against the wall to let her pass and lead me into the living room. ‘Out,’ she said curtly. Daniel reluctantly uncurled himself from the sofa and walked out of the room. Cherie switched off the TV and stared aggressively at me. ‘D’you want a brew, then?’ It was a challenge.
I accepted. While she was in the kitchen, I looked around. The room was scrupulously clean and as tidy as my place on a good day. Given she had two kids, it was impressive. It was a shame she didn’t have enough cash to upgrade from shabby. The leatherette upholstery of the sofa was mended with parcel tape in places, and in others it had completely worn away. The walls were covered in blown vinyl in a selection of patterns, clearly a job lot of odd rolls. But the paint was still white, if not quite brilliant, and she’d pitched some video shop manager into letting her have some film posters to brighten the place up.
‘Seen enough?’ Cherie demanded, returning from the kitchen on bare and silent feet. There was nothing I could say about her home that wouldn’t sound patronizing, so I said nothing, meekly accepting the mug of tea she held out to me. ‘There’s no sugar,’ she said. ‘I don’t keep it in.’
‘That’s OK, I don’t use it.’
The door opened a couple of inches and Daniel’s head and one shoulder appeared. ‘We’re going round to Jason’s to watch a video,’ he said.
‘OK. Behave yourselves, you hear me?’
Daniel grinned. ‘You wish, Mum,’ he giggled. ‘See ya.’
Cherie turned her attention back to me. She’d found a moment to drag a brush through her shoulder-length mouse-coloured hair, but it hadn’t improved the image a whole lot. She still looked more like a woman at the end of her day rather than the beginning. ‘So what’s this word you wanted to have with me?’
I swallowed a mouthful of strong tea and dived in at the deep end. ‘I’m really worried about something that happened yesterday, and I think you probably will be too. Davy’s up for the week. He was out playing yesterday morning for a couple of hours, and when he came in, he was in a hell of a state. He was really hyper, he was sick, and his temperature was all over the place. I got a friend of mine who’s a doctor to come around and have a look at him. The bottom line is, he was out of his head on drugs.’
The words were barely out of my mouth before Cherie jumped in. ‘And it has to be something to do with my kids, doesn’t it? It couldn’t be any of those nice middle-class kids from your street, could it? How do you think kids around here get the money for drugs?’
That wasn’t one I was prepared to answer. Reminding her of the muggings, burglaries and dole frauds that are the everyday currency of life at the bottom of the heap wasn’t going to earn me the answers I was looking for. ‘I’m not blaming your lads, Cherie. From what I can gather, they’re as likely to be victims as Davy was.’