career was at an interesting point. He had recently been appointed to head a small group of detectives based in South London and charged with the overall investigation of all serious crimes in the area. The Tactical Activity Squad it was called, known as TAS. It was a period when such bodies bearing impressive initials were appearing on all sides. He and TAS were a part of the times. He was assisted by a chief inspector, who was his deputy, and by a very young and sharp inspector, and by three even younger detective-sergeants. He found himself relying more and more on Inspector Paul Lane. The authority of TAS overrode the local CID structure, which had lately been the subject of an inquiry. He was well aware that he and his team were not popular and that to see him rubbed out by a man of known violence would cause very few tears.
‘Thanks, Bernard. What about a drink at the Painted Parrot at the weekend?’ An arrangement was made. It was Wednesday and he was home early for once.
He went to look out of his window. Not very likely that either Egan or his son-in-law, Terry Place, would be walking down Church Row, but you never knew. His luck might be in.
Round the corner from Queen Charlotte’s Alley came a girl, tall and slender, with bright auburn hair tied in a ponytail with a white bow; she was pushing a pram and was accompanied by a young boy who was holding her hand. He was hanging on to the skirt of a small girl. Behind them came a youth, also red of hair, clearly related, carrying a bundle.
There was something about that bundle that looked familiar to John Coffin.
The whole procession came to a stop outside No. 5. Then the lad approached the house, and he heard the bounding of feet up the stairs and the noise of something bouncing against his front door.
He counted up to ten, then went to look.
Yes, his washing. The girl pushing the pram was Sarah Fleming. She had a bright, clever face, with the promise of beauty, she looked about sixteen, but was no doubt older. Her clothes were simple, jeans and a shirt, but she wore them with style, yes, that was it, she had style.
And if the rest of the bunch, the little ones, were not her own offspring, then they were her brothers and sisters.
Queen Charlotte’s Alley was a short cul-de-sac bounded at the end by Deller’s soap factory. Deller’s no longer made soap on the premises; thus the air was not so noisome as previously, but it was still a working concern with heavy lorries rumbling in and out of the yard all day. Queen Charlotte’s Alley was not a quiet street, and never had been throughout its two hundred years of life, because the little workmen’s cottages had housed the large families of the times, many of whom had worked in the foundry which had stood on the site where Deller’s was built. In those days there had been access straight through from the alley.
Now there was only one large family in the street and that was the Flemings. The other houses, and there were but six, were nearly all occupied by young couples who liked to say they had bought an eighteenth-century house in Greenwich and were renovating it. Which usually meant putting in a new kitchen and a bathroom and brass fittings on the front door. There were a couple of elderly survivors from the old days, living on in their unreconstructed cottages. The Fleming family belonged in this party since the house had been rented by the family for at least three generations. To their despairing landlord they seemed like sitting tenants in perpetuity.
‘I don’t like you doing his washing.’
‘Oh fiddle. The money’s good.’ She was more or less working her way through the Polytechnic A-levels course, with a firm eye on Oxford. She was bright and knew it. ‘Old Brocklebank did us a good turn. Besides, I only take it down the laundrette, and then iron it. He could do it himself if he thought about it.’ From John Coffin she had earned enough money to buy two books she badly wanted: she created a kind of study for herself in a corner of the kitchen, with a table and bookshelves where she could work in peace. Like everything Sal did, it had a kind of imaginative elegance.
Now she was setting the table for a meal, moving briskly about. A kettle was humming on the old gas stove with a big brown teapot hung over the spout to get warm. In a little while there was toast on the table, a pot of jam, and a row of six cups to fill.
‘Call the kids.’
‘We’re here waiting, Sal,’ said a soft small voice.
‘Yes, you are, Weenie, but not the others.’
Weenie was the little girl whose skirt had been so firmly grasped. Food was Weenie’s delight, she was always hungry.
‘They’re under the table, Sal.’
Weenie lifted the cloth to reveal her three brothers crouched there. Their ages went up in steps. Then there was a big gap until Sal and her sibling, Peter. Mr Fleming had been away at sea for a good spell after their births, then he came back and the family progression started again. Mrs Fleming never seemed to get the hang of birth control, to Sal’s fury. Even in those days, she had known what would be best for the family. Less of them, far less. Preferably just her and Peter.
At the table, watching them eat, she felt this even more strongly. They were a responsibility.
‘You certainly eat well, Weenie, but you don’t grow on it.’
Something had gone wrong with the genes, she felt, when it came to Weenie and the others. She and Peter were all right. She knew herself to be clever and there were times when she felt beautiful, and Peter was certainly good to look at and he was very practical if not scholastically inclined. But the others, well, it was hard to be sure, she was watching them and trying to make up her mind. Not like me, she felt.
She knew she was doing what was right, but she didn’t have to like it. The little ones could go into care, the social worker had said when their parents died, but Sarah had turned this down. It wasn’t that she loved them so much, probably she didn’t, but she had the feeling that there was something strange and secret about them as a family that was better kept private. So a special arrangement had been made with the social services.
‘Give me some money,’ she had said, ‘we’ve got the house. We’ll manage, thank you.’
They were a burden she had hoisted on her own back and it was heavy there.
Weenie, Tom, Lester, and Eddy.
‘Where have you boys been putting your feet? Black marks all over the carpet,’ she said, then pressed on without waiting for an answer. ‘Your turn tomorrow,’ she said to Peter. ‘I’m at the Poly.’
She had had to leave school before her A-levels, but she was continuing her studies at the Local Polytechnic College. It was her intention to get a place at Oxford. Balliol, she believed, would suit her as it seemed a radical place. She was left-wing in her politics.
He grunted assent; he never argued with her.
‘The Pitts are back,’ he said. By which he meant he would rather be with them than her, wanted to be invited by them and hadn’t been.
‘I noticed.’
‘Nona’s home.’ But he hadn’t seen her. That was what he meant.
‘Three years is a long time, Pete.’ A long time for a girl like Nona; she had been twelve when the two had been inseparable and Peter only fifteen. Now she was fifteen, nearly sixteen. She would have changed. Sal knew how a girl could change. Especially a girl with Nona’s background. But Peter had not changed.
