A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [166]
All through the summer she had been reading the juicy story of Christine Keeler, Mandy Rice-Davies and John Profumo, actually enjoying and being titillated by the scandal. But this far more terrible stuff had been going on right under everyone’s nose.
‘You are afraid,’ Yvette said sorrowfully.
‘Not of you,’ Fifi sighed. ‘I just wish you’d come over to me that night, or even the next morning, and told me what was going on. Then none of this would have happened.’
‘But no one could understand what something like that could do to a leetle girl,’ Yvette said sorrowfully. ‘Once eet is done she have it in her head for life. They might give her a new home, buy her a bicycle and dollies. But it never go away.’
Fifi could neither agree nor disagree. All she wished was that day when Angela had been with her, she’d acted on her instinct and got outside help for the child. But she was too drained now to discuss it further. Angela was dead, let down by everyone – her parents, neighbours, doctor and teachers. Everyone who touched her young life had some responsibility, but it was too late to apportion blame now.
She tried to go to sleep, but her head was still whirling with what she’d been told.
‘Why didn’t the police find your fingerprints?’ she asked suddenly. The police had taken hers, Dan’s, Frank and Stan’s and probably everyone else’s they’d spoken to, to compare with ones they found in number 11. One of the biggest problems the police had had during this investigation was the number of fingerprints in the house, and many of them couldn’t be matched to ones they had on record.
‘I ’ad my rubber gloves on because I not like to touch anything in that house, eet is so dirty.’
Fifi remembered how she had scrubbed her hands after coming out of there, but she wouldn’t have thought of putting on gloves before she entered. She thought a prosecuting lawyer would claim that made it a premeditated crime. ‘I see. Were you in your flat all that day?’
‘No,’ Yvette said. ‘I see you up in your window, and so I go out along the back wall like Alfie do. I get a taxi to my fitting. I know I will arrive at the time I was expected. I tell the police I left just after eight and went by bus.’
Yvette fell asleep then but Fifi was unable to. Just as it was difficult to credit anyone with taking the rest of their family for a day out after selling a seven-year-old to some pervert, so it was just as hard to imagine a woman doing what Yvette had done. Not so much the actual killing of Angela, that made a kind of sense, but for her to escape along a wall minutes later and spend the day doing a dress fitting seemed very calculated.
A cold chill crept over Fifi. Yvette had told her all this because she didn’t believe they were going to be rescued. What if she woke in the morning, felt optimistic someone would find them and then regretted telling her? What might she do then?
‘She wouldn’t do that,’ she told herself very firmly. ‘And anyway Dan will find me. I know he will.’
On Tuesday morning Dan found it hard to get out of bed. The lack of sleep in the past week had finally got to him and he hadn’t woken up at all during the night. As he lay there listening to still more rain against the window, and knowing the day ahead would hold nothing but more misery, he wanted to fall asleep again and have some respite from the nagging anxiety.
But he’d promised Harry and Clara he’d go down to the police station and see if there was any progress and then join them at the hotel afterwards. The story of Fifi and Yvette’s disappearance was in all the newspapers the previous day, and they needed to stay where they could be contacted in case anyone phoned with some information.
Clara and Harry had come here yesterday and Clara sent Dan off to the launderette with his washing while she cleaned the flat. Harry said she always cleaned when she was upset, but Dan had found it upsetting to see her doing all the jobs Fifi had once done.
The woman in the launderette wanted to know everything. While Dan knew this was because she had often talked to Fifi and was just worried