The Last Detective

Chapter Four

ON FRIDAY, MATTHEW CAME INTO the kitchen and opened the fridge. I asked him what he was hoping to find.

'Some of that custard,' was his answer.

'You're an optimist,' I told him. 'You had the last of it yesterday. There's ice cream in the freezer if you're really desperate. What have they given you for homework this weekend?' Time always seems to be so short that my conversations with my son are reduced to this sort of exchange. I don't like playing the over-anxious mum, but that was how it must have seemed to him, and it certainly seemed so to me. At this age, he doesn't often want to share his thoughts, so we keep to the practicalities, and homework is inescapable.

He told me he'd been given a Latin translation to complete, a scripture reading for a test on Monday and -I quote – 'that sodding history project'.

'Matthew.' I'd heard much worse language when I was driving taxis, but from my own child it was wounding. 'What exactly are you objecting to?'

'We're supposed to find out the famous people who lived in the street and write something about their lives. It's easy for Piers. He was given the Circus, and there are plaques with the names up. I'm stuck with Gay Street, worse luck.'

'Well you must do some research. That's the point of the exercise, I expect.'

'Research?'

'Don't be so dumb, Mat. There must be books you can look up.'

'Where?'

'The library, for a start.'

'You've got to be joking.'

'Not the school library. The public library. We'll go tomorrow. I'll show you where to look.'

'What time tomorrow? You work Saturdays.'

'I can't say just now, love. I'll try and make time.'

He gave me a look that said he didn't have much faith. Then he turned his back on me and slouched into the back room. I heard him switch on the TV. I felt the tension in my neck and shoulders. If I couldn't spare the child enough time to help him with his homework, what was the point of it all? And my sense of despair wasn't helped, by Mat's ungraciousness. I have to remind myself repeatedly that his behaviour is normal in an adolescent. He hasn't acquired the maturity to cope with his hormones – if they ever do. His father's example is no encouragement.

There was a sudden shout from the back room of, 'Ma, come here.'

It riled me. 'You don't speak to me like that, Matthew.'

'Quick.'

The urgency in his voice galvanized me. I found Matthew on his knees in front of the television set with his finger against the screen.

'That's him!'

'Who?'

'Him – the man who saved my life.'

On the screen I glimpsed a dark-haired man with a moustache, and then the camera moved on to other things, the interior of some lofty room with pillars and chandeliers. Then a young woman in a blue shirt was shown asking a question.

Matthew said, 'They'll show him again.'

'Who is it?'

'I don't know. I just switched over.'

The woman on the screen was asking some question that involved Jane Austen.

The man's face appeared again, responding confidently, spacing his words in a way that suggested he was used to being interviewed. There was an amused glint in his eyes as if he found the whole subject faintly ridiculous.

'That's him – with the moustache,' my son insisted.

'Thousands of men have moustaches like that.'

'I know.'

'It can't be the same man, dear.'

'Why not? It is.'

'Out of all the faces you see on television? This pro-gramme could be coming from Scotland, for all I know. Anywhere.'

'Ma, this is Channel 1. Points West. If you shut up and listen we might find out his name.'

The man on the screen was saying,'… in Persuasion, she wrote of the public rooms having to take second place to what she described as "the elegant stupidity of private parties". A touch of sour grapes there, I suspect. She didn't get the invitations she would have liked. These parties, or "routs", as they were called, were pretty wild affairs for their time, free from the rules and conventions that operated in the Assembly Rooms. So the numbers attending the balls were thin. In one of her letters, Jane writes of being cheered up when scores more people arrived at the Rooms after the private parties broke up. Can you picture her sitting here drumming her fingers on the chair-arms while she waits for the action?'

I said, 'He's talking about Bath.'

'So the pattern of social life was changing?' said the interviewer. 'Poor Jane missed the best years here.'

'Yes, by the time her family got here, Bath was socially on the skids. Brighton had taken over as the fashionable place. The Prince of Wales preferred the seaside air, so everyone of note started going down to Brighton instead.'

The interviewer turned towards the camera. 'And the Assembly Rooms began to be put to different uses. Professor Jackman, thank you. An exhibition about Jane Austen in Bath is being organized by Professor Jackman here in September. To take up the story of the Rooms in more recent years -'

Matthew turned down the volume. 'See? That's who it was,' he said elatedly. 'His name is Jackman.'

'But that man was a professor.'

'So what? He still got me out of the water. Ma, we've got to thank him properly.'

'We'd look awfully silly if you were wrong.'

'I'm not.'

'Mat, it's easy to make a mistake. People look different on television.'

'He didn't.' He pressed his lips defiantly together. 'Don't you want to find him?'

I hesitated. This threatened to become an issue between us. It could easily be settled. 'Of course I'd like to find him, if this is the right man, but I'd like you to see him properly before we approach him, not just on television. I wonder if he's in the phone book.'

Matthew went to fetch it.

Any lingering suspicions in my mind about the consignment of teddy bears had to be shed on Saturday morning. Mr Buckle asked me to deliver them to the Women's Institute tent in the grounds of Longleat House in time for the Teddy Bears' Picnic. The wild theories I had concocted in the small hours that some of the bears were stuffed with heroin or diamonds looked pretty silly now. And my boss was looking smug.

He hadn't finished with me, either.

'Little lady, I keep reading about you in the papers. Did you see the Telegraph last night?' He handed me a copy. 'Page Four.'

I turned to the page and saw a picture of myself with my arm around Matthew below a headline, 'HELP US FIND OUR HERO'. I just said, 'God!' and didn't read on.

'I hope this fellow will turn up soon,' Mr Buckle remarked.

'Thanks.'

'If by the start of next week, say, he's still not found, I propose to offer a reward of?100 for anyone who can name him.'

I swallowed hard, not liking the idea one bit. Probably it was my boss's way of compensating me for the hassle I'd had from the police over the teddy bears. 'That's generous,' I said in a way that was meant to show appreciation without much enthusiasm.

He missed the subtlety entirely. 'Not at all,' he said. 'A gesture like this will do no harm to the firm's reputation.'

'What I was going to say is that I'm not sure if a reward is appropriate. Rewards get offered for information about bank raids and burglaries.'

'And lost pets,' he said. 'I see no difficulty.'

I didn't question his logic. Instead, I said, 'Don't think I'm ungrateful, Mr Buckle. I just don't want this man to feel hounded. He may prefer to remain unknown. He's entitled to his privacy, if that's what he wishes.'

'Fair point,' he conceded. 'Who knows, he might have a reason not to have been in Bath that day.'

'True.'

'We all like to slip the leash occasionally, wouldn't you agree, Dana?'

I answered evenly, 'In my case, it doesn't apply. But I'm not ungrateful for your offer – I mean the offer of a reward.' I left on my errand.

I made sure when I collected the four cartons from the lock-up that no one had disturbed them since I had deposited them there. To be completely certain, I checked that all eight hundred bears were present. Then I drove down to Longleat and handed them over to the WI for distribution to the children. It was all done by 10.30 a.m.

Having made such good time, I felt justified in slipping the leash – although not quite as Stanley Buckle had meant – to keep my promise to Matthew. I picked him up at home and we drove up Bathwick Hill in search of an address called John Brydon House. The owner, according to the phone book, was the only G. Jackman resident in Bath. I faintly remembered having driven past a house of that name on some occasion, but I wasn't going to make demands on my memory now.

I told Matthew, 'I'm making no promises. We'll just find the house and park the car somewhere near and see if he's about.'

'Suppose he doesn't come out?'

'Then we'll have to think of something else.'

'You mean knock at the door?'

'Don't keep on so, Mat. I told you I'm making no promises.

Really, he was right. The proper course of action was to call at the house. Trying to sneak a sight of the man without his knowledge was underhand, but I know how unreliable my son can be. He fantasizes. From the days when he first strung words together he peopled the streets of Bath with goblins, aliens from outer space, pop stars and characters from soaps. Although he has lately been more restrained with his sightings, I still thought it would save blushes all round to let him get a look at Professor Jackman from a safe distance before we attempted to introduce ourselves. I was pretty sure in my own mind that Mat would be forced to admit to a mistake.

We turned left and drove slowly for some minutes looking at the names of houses. Presently the street took on a more countrified look as the spaces between the plots increased. John Brydon House came, up on the right. Matthew spotted the name on a gatepost a moment before I did.

I drove the Mercedes fifty yards or so further and stopped out of sight of the house, which was set back from the road in its own grounds. More grey than the local limestone, and extensively covered in ivy, it was neither Georgian nor modern; Victorian or Edwardian was my guess. A maroon Volvo stood on a wide, semicircular drive.

'AOK, chief,' said Matthew, slipping into one of his cops-and-robbers roles. 'Shall we stake out the joint?'

I wasn't equal to that kind of wit. 'Someone is at home, apparently. We'll walk slowly past.'

We got out and followed the line of the drystone wall that fronted the drive, trying not to stare at the house too obviously. Where the wall came to an end we paused beside an overhanging pyracantha bush that formed a useful screen, with a narrow view of the house and drive.

Matthew asked, 'Want to walk past again?'

'I think we'll stand here a while.'

'There's a path down there. If we cut through to the field we could see the back of the house. He might be gardening.'

'Don't agitate,' I told him.

Matthew gave a shrug and hoisted himself on to the wall and sat bouncing his heels off the stones. Somewhere above us a blackbird warbled. It was good to hear. Bird-song is rare in my life.

Matthew said casually, as if to fill in the time, 'Mighty Molly gave us a bell last night.'

This time I didn't pull him up for insulting one of my own sex. 'You didn't tell me. What time was this?'

'Quite late. When you were running your bath. I told her you couldn't come to the phone.'

'What did she want this time?'

'Same as before. Did we have any news? She said quite a lot of people phoned the paper after she printed some stuff about wanting to find the hero. Some of them were watching when I was rescued. She said they described the man for her, but not one of them recognized him. I told her I could. I told her he was on the television.'

'Oh, Mat!'

He folded his arms and stared at the sky. 'What's bugging you now?'

I felt like wringing his neck. 'You told her that? Did you give her Professor Jackman's name?'

'Course I did.'

'You great ninny! Suppose you made a mistake.'

'I didn't. I keep telling you.'

'Mat, would you look at me when I'm talking to you? You don't say things like that to the papers unless you're one hundred per cent sure, and even then it isn't always wise to talk to them.'

'Why? We're not ashamed of anything. She was bound to ask me if I had anything else to tell her. Did you want me to tell a lie?'

'You could have told her… oh, what does it matter now? What are we doing skulking behind this bush if the whole thing is public knowledge?'

'It was your idea to come here,' Matthew pointed out ungratefully. He jumped down from the wall. 'Shall we call at the house, then?'

'I think we must. She will have phoned him by now, I'm sure of that. And Matthew…"

'Yes?'

'Leave the talking to me.'

'Be my guest.'

Mat's condescension stung me. I sensed an assumption of male superiority in the remark. It had got through to me in almost everything Mat had said this morning. It came from the school, I was convinced. I couldn't allow it to take hold. I was mother and father to him and I needed his respect. So I grasped him by the sleeve of his blazer and told him firmly, 'If you give me that kind of lip, young man, you'd better find someone else to dig you out of messes like this, because you're going to lose my sympathy here and now.'

His eyes widened and suddenly he looked very childish. 'Sorry, Ma.'

Saying, 'Come on. Let's get it over with,' I stepped out towards the house.

We had not even reached the entrance when Matthew said, 'Someone's coming out.'

I glanced over the wall and saw a man on the porch.

'That's not him!' Matthew said in a stage whisper. 'Ma, that's not him.'

I saw for myself that the man now moving briskly and with a bit of a swagger towards the Volvo in the drive was nothing like the professor we'd both seen on TV. This was a hunk of muscle and sinew not much over twenty, with swept-back straw-coloured hair and no moustache. He was in a cornflower-blue short-sleeved shirt, white jeans and white trainers. Some flicker of memory led me to think I'd seen him before in different surroundings. Generally when I recognize people they turn out to have been fares in my taxi, but you know how it is when your brain can't place someone. Mine was telling me this handsome young buck had never been in my taxi. I'd seen him in some other setting. I placed my hand over Matthew's wrist. 'We'd better leave it a few minutes. We'll walk past.'

We had not taken a couple of steps when a scene of pure melodrama unfolded. From the still-open door of the house came a voice in shrill protest: 'You can't walk out on me, for Christ's sake! Come back!' Then a woman with long, loose red hair appeared in the porch and dashed after the man, catching up with him as he opened the car door. She must have been some years older than he, with a face that was still pretty, yet with a strained, stretched look to the skin.

All this happened as Matthew and I passed the front of John Brydon House. I didn't like to take too obvious an interest, particularly as the woman was barefoot and wearing a pink silk dressing gown open to the thighs. I need not have troubled. The actors were too caught up in the drama to care about who was watching. The woman reached out and got a grip on the gold chain at the man's throat. She was trying to stop him from getting into the car. She cried out, 'Don't go, Andy, you can't do this to me! Come back in, please, please! What do you want me to do, get on my knees and beg?'

The man called Andy didn't answer. He was prising her fingers one by one from the chain as if he didn't want to risk snapping it. by thrusting her away from him. Meanwhile she clutched a mass of his blond hair with the other hand, but that didn't appear to trouble him. Having succeeded in saving the necklace, he gripped her wrists, forced her to her knees and then toppled her off balance with a light, contemptuous push. She cried, 'Bastard!' as her shoulder made contact with the gravel, but a stronger shove could have made it a lot more painful.

By the time the woman was on her feet again, Andy had got into the car and slammed the door. He started up the engine. She drummed her fists on the window and cried, 'Andy, I didn't mean that!' The Volvo crunched on the gravel, swung into the road and headed towards Bath. The woman ran as far as the entrance and watched it go. She was sobbing.

Matthew and I had raised our walking pace from a stupefied shuffle to a quick march towards our own car, which fortunately was parked in the opposite direction from the route the Volvo had taken. We got in and closed the doors.

'Who do you think they are?' Matthew asked.

I told him I hadn't the faintest idea.

'It's the right house.'

'I know. Phone books aren't always up to date. Maybe your professor sold it to these people and moved somewhere else. Anyway, I don't propose to knock on that door.'

'What was she shouting about?'

'It's none of our business. Something private.'

'Like sex, do you mean?'

'Matthew, that's enough.'

'She wasn't wearing anything under that dressing gown. Was she a prostitute, Ma?'

'Don't be ridiculous.' I started the car.

'I was only asking. You hardly ever talk to me about sex.'

Liberated youth! At his age, I almost died of shame when my mother told me what to expect – without once mentioning the reproductive organs by name.

I reversed the car and drove past the house. The woman had gone and the front door was shut. We drove down into Bath and parked in one of the spaces opposite the Orange Grove. I was glad to have the distraction of the other promise I'd given to Mat – the visit to the local history section in the central library. I took him downstairs and we passed a quiet half-hour taking books off the shelves and looking for references to Gay Street. We discovered it was named after someone called Robert Gay, who had owned the land on which it was built. 'Big deal!' said Mat. But we managed to compile a list of former residents and visitors that included John Wood, Tobias Smollett, Josiah Wedgwood, Jane Austen and William Friese-Green. Matthew wrote down the names and said he hadn't heard of any of them.

'You've got to find out. That's the purpose of the exercise,' I told him, trying to generate some enthusiasm. 'We'll walk to the reference library now and I'll show you where to look.'

I left him making notes from the Dictionary of National Biography and went to buy a fresh parking card. When I got back to the car a large, familiar and not too welcome figure was waiting beside it.

Molly Abershaw greeted me by saying that the fellows on the taxi rank had spotted my car and suggested that I wouldn't be long in returning to it. Today she was in a multi-coloured poncho that she had probably bought from the Latin-American craft shop, i thought you'd like an early copy.' She handed me an Evening Telegraph.

The main story was headed PROFESSOR'S RESCUE PLUNGE. I read it rapidly. Clearly Mat and I could have saved ourselves some trouble if we'd picked up a telephone instead of peering over the wall of John Brydon House. Professor Jackman was confirmed as the hero of Pulteney Weir.

Molly Abershaw beamed and said, 'I must admit I'm quite chuffed with it. This has been my story from the beginning. It's really satisfying when you can follow it up like this.'

'So you spoke to the professor yourself?'

'After Mat put me on to him, yes. He's a bright lad.'

'Do you mean Mat?'

Molly Abershaw quivered with amusement. 'Both, I assume, but I did mean Mat, yes.' It was clear from the way she continued to smile that she had something else to raise. 'You didn't mind me speaking to Mat?'

'How could I object?' I said reasonably. I refused to be lured into saying anything controversial. 'He answers the phone if I'm out.'

'Very capably, too. Most kids his age speak in monosyllables. I'm sure the school makes a difference.'

'Possibly.' I was wary. I didn't want the school mentioned in the paper again and nor did Mat.

'May I ask, will you be going to see Professor Jackman to thank him personally?'

This was where Mat would have blurted out a graphic account of the incident at John Brydon House. Thanks to Mr Fortescue and his history assignment, however, the press was denied a salacious story. I answered with well-chosen words, 'We'll find some way of expressing our thanks, certainly.'

'I knew you would, and I can arrange it for you.'

'Oh, that won't be necessary,' I said quickly.

'You do want to meet him?'

'Yes, but -' My poise was gone.

'Shake his hand and all that?'

'Well, I expect so.'

'He's going to be at Waterstone's bookshop tomorrow. There's a signing by Ted Hughes and all the local literati are invited.'

'I couldn't possibly go.'

'Why not? It's open to the public. That's the point of these parties. It's all about selling books. You and Matthew-can sidle up to the professor and have a quiet word with him over a drink. Much easier than calling at his house or going up to the university.'

I wavered. It did sound painless.

Molly Abershaw added, 'And Mat won't have to take any time off school.'

'He's quite busy with services on Sunday.'

'In the afternoon?'

I conceded that on balance no better opportunity was likely to present itself for expressing thanks to Professor Jackman. Fickle creature that I am, I found myself wondering what to wear.

'I'll probably see you there, then,' said Molly Abershaw.