The Cuckoo's Calling(99)

“What was I sayin’? ’Er mother, yeah. I says to Lula, ‘Why worry, love, sounds to me like you’re better off wivout ’er anyway. Let ’er be pissed off if she don’ want us to see each uvver.’ But she was a good girl, Lula, an’ she kep’ visitin’ ’er, outta duty.

“Anyway, she ’ad ’er own life, she was free to do what she wanted, weren’ she? She ’ad Evan, a man of ’er own. I told ’er I disapproved, mind,” said Marlene Higson, with a pantomime of strictness. “Oh yeah. Drugs, I’ve seen too many go that way. But I ’ave to admit, ’e’s a sweet boy underneath. I ’ave to admit that. He di’n’t have nothin’ to do wiv it. I can tell ya that.”

“Met him, did you?”

“No, but she called ’im once while she was with me and I ’eard them on the phone togevver, and they were a lovely couple. No, I got nuthin’ bad to say about Evan. ’E ’ad nuthin’ to do with it, that’s proved. No, I’ve got nuthin’ bad to say about ’im. As long as ’e’d of gone clean, ’e’d of ’ad my blessing. I said to ’er, ‘Bring ’im along, see wevver I approve,’ but she never. ’E was always busy. ’E’s a lovely-lookin’ boy, under all that ’air,” said Marlene. “You can see it in all ’is photos.”

“Did she talk to you about her neighbors?”

“Oh, that Fred Beastigwee? Yeah, she told me all about ’im, offerin’ ’er parts hin ’is films. I said to ’er, why not? It might be a larf. Even if she ’adn’t liked it, it woulda bin, what, another ’arf mill in the bank?”

Her bloodshot eyes squinted at nothing; she seemed momentarily mesmerized, lost in contemplation of sums so vast and dazzling that they were beyond her ken, like an image of infinity. Merely to speak of them was to taste the power of money, to roll dreams of wealth around her mouth.

“Did you ever hear her talk about Guy Somé?”

“Oh yeah, she liked Gee, ’e was good to ’er. Person’lly, I prefer more classic things. It’s not my kinda style.”

The shocking-pink Lycra, tight on the rolls of fat spilling over the waistband of her leggings, rippled as she leaned forward to tap her cigarette delicately into the ashtray.

“ ‘ ’E’s like a brother to me,’ she sez, an’ I sez, never mind pretend brothers, why don’t we try an’ find my boys togevver? But she weren’t int’rested.”

“Your boys?”

“Me sons, me ovver kids. Yeah, I ’ad two more after ’er: one wiv Dez, an’ then later there wuz another one. Social Services took ’em off me, but I sez to ’er, wiv your money we could find ’em, gimme a bit, not much, I dunno, coupla grand, an’ I’ll try an’ get someone to find ’em, keep it quiet from the press, I’ll ’andle it, I’ll keep you out of it. But she weren’ interested,” repeated Marlene.

“Do you know where your sons are?”

“They took ’em as babies, I dunno where they are now. I was havin’ problems. I ain’t gonna lie to ya, I’ve had a bloody hard life.”

And she told him, at length, about her hard life. It was a sordid story littered with violent men, with addiction and ignorance, neglect and poverty, and an animal instinct for survival that jettisoned babies in its wake, for they demanded skills that Marlene had never developed.

“So you don’t know where your two sons are now?” Strike repeated, twenty minutes later.

“No, how the f*ck could I?” said Marlene, who had talked herself into bitterness. “She weren’ int’rested anyway. She already had a white brother, di’n’t she? She wuz after black family. That’s what she reely wanted.”

“Did she ask you about her father?”

“Yeah, an’ I told ’er ev’rything I knew. ’E was an African student. Lived upstairs from me, jus’ along the road ’ere, Barking Road, wiv two others. There’s the bookie’s downstairs now. Very good-looking boy. ’Elped me with me shopping a couple of times.”

To hear Marlene Higson tell it, the courtship had proceeded with an almost Victorian respectability; she and the African student seemed barely to have progressed past handshakes during the first months of their acquaintance.

“And then, ’cos ’e’d ’elped me all them times, one day I asked ’im in, y’know, jus’ as a thank-you, really. I’m not a prejudiced person. Ev’ryone’s the same to me. Fancy a cuppa, I sez, that were all. And then,” said Marlene, harsh reality clanging down amidst the vague impressions of teacups and doilies, “I finds out I’m expecting.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Oh yeah, an’ ’e was full of ’ow ’e was gonna ’elp, an’ shoulder ’is respons’bilities, an’ make sure I wuz all right. An’ then it was the college ’olidays. ’E said ’e was coming back,” said Marlene, contemptuously. “Then ’e ran a mile. Don’t they all? And what was I gonna do, run off to Africa to find ’im?

“It was no skin off my nose, anyway. I wasn’t breaking me ’eart; I was seeing Dez by then. ’E didn’t mind the baby. I moved in with Dez not long after Joe left.”