A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [60]
Fifi’s mind wasn’t on prying, however, when she knocked on the woman’s door around ten o’clock, only on the disturbance over the road. Miss Diamond came to the door wearing a long, loose emerald-green garment that wasn’t quite a dressing-gown or a dress. She looked tense and angry at all the noise, but her hair was still as immaculate as always.
‘Mrs Helass usually rings the police,’ she said. ‘She’s the only one in the street with a phone. Much good it does though. Really, that family are just the end! They need locking up and the key thrown away.’
She ranted about what she’d seen and heard so far, and Fifi said she was afraid Alfie was going to kill Molly.
‘I wish he would,’ the older woman said with a weary sigh. ‘Then once he was locked up perhaps we’d all get some peace. I really can’t stand much more of this.’
Miss Diamond offered Fifi a cup of tea, but even as they chatted about the Muckles in her kitchen, they could still hear the row continuing across the street. By the time Fifi went back upstairs, however, it had grown quieter. While looking out the window to see if Dan was coming down the street, she saw the light come on in the Muckles’ bedroom, and momentarily saw Alfie silhouetted before it was switched off.
Molly was still downstairs. Fifi could see her on the settee and hear her crying. She wondered about the children, particularly Angela, for it had to be terrifying hearing such battles. But she supposed they happened so often they’d just got used to them and might even think them quite normal.
Later, as she continued to look out for Dan, she saw Dora come down the street with Mike, Alfie’s nephew. They were arm-in-arm, chatting quite happily. Fifi assumed they’d been out for the evening and felt a little sorry for them that it would be spoilt the moment they got indoors.
Everyone in the street talked about the relationship between Mike the nephew and Dora. Strangely, the ten-year age gap was rarely mentioned, only that Dora was simple. Yvette had said that she was damaged at birth through a forceps delivery. Apparently she looked upon Molly as a mother, for her own had died when she was around five or six and Molly had taken care of her ever since.
Fifi watched as they went indoors. For a short while they were standing in the front room, and she assumed they were talking to Molly, although she could no longer see her. The light went out in the room, and a few seconds later another came on right at the top of the house. Presumably they were all going to bed.
Fifi wanted to go to bed too, but she felt she had to stay up and wait for Dan. The street was quiet now, and one by one all the lights that had been on in the houses on the other side of the road went out. She thought that Dan must have gone home with one of his workmates, for he wouldn’t be able to go on to a club after the pub, not in his working clothes. Perhaps he’d gone to look at some job the man wanted help with. A few beers and he’d lost track of time. Maybe he’d even got too drunk to make his way home.
At midnight she was too tired to wait any longer, so turning off the lights she went to bed.
She woke at the sound of a bell. Fumbling for the alarm clock, she saw it was seven o’clock, but it wasn’t the alarm clock ringing, it was the front-door bell. Then she remembered Dan hadn’t come home.
Frank Ubley’s voice wafted up the stairs, and she could hear another male voice. All at once she was wide awake, sensing that the caller had come to see her.
She jumped out of bed and grabbed her dressing-gown, putting