The Unexpected Find Page 5

  Half-walking, half-running, she left. Just outside the park entrance she saw a small car parked. Although she was in a serious hurry, she couldn’t help noticing the digits on the number plate – the fifteenth number in the Fibonacci series, and the product of two prime numbers: 377.

  Back at the houseboat the man frowned in annoyance. It seemed she wasn’t at home. He looked around, and saw a slight figure carrying a bag hurrying out of the park gates. He jumped awkwardly down from the houseboat, hindered by his leg, and started off towards his car.

  The bus station was near the town centre, one of those modern travel centres with big sliding entrance doors and a ticket office, and lots of bays for local buses and long-distance coaches. There was quite an evening crowd, although the worst of the rush hour was over, and there were a fair number of people who weren’t going anywhere – groups of young people, and homeless people pretending not to look for somewhere to sleep for the night or rooting for cans in the bins. There was a lot of litter and the occasional dirty pigeon. Judy wandered along the big curved concourse lugging her bag and reading the screens above each bay that displayed the destination of the bus. She had no particular place to go, but she had to make up her mind somehow. She decided on a town that was right on the other side of the country, by the sea. If worst came to worst she could always find somewhere to sleep on the beach, she thought. Perhaps she could live under an upturned boat, or in an old beach hut, and listen to the waves and look for cockles and winkles. The thought cheered her up a bit. She went into the ticket office, studied the timetables, and saw that she had a long wait ahead: over two hours. She bought a packet of crisps and a fizzy drink, a sandwich for later and a magazine, and looked around for the least uncomfortable bench, but most of the benches were already occupied by people who seemed to be preparing for a long stay. Judy looked towards the sliding entrance doors, thinking that it might be nicer to sit outside at least until it got too cold, and what she saw gave her a horrible shock: just inside the doors a man was standing staring intently about, a short man with a calf-length coat and scarf. The man who’d come to their boat. And now he had seen her. He started hurrying towards her, hampered by his leg. Judy picked up her bag and ran.

  She ran until she was sure she had given him the slip, then slowed to a walk on a well-lit street near the town centre. She bought a paper mug of tea from a street vendor, ate her sandwich, and wandered round the shopping mall until it closed. The pavements were still full of people heading home or making their way to a cinema or restaurant or pub. Judy looked at her watch. In ten minutes the bus would leave; surely that man had gone home by now, to write his report and have his supper? But once she’d made her way back to the bus station, she saw that he hadn’t. Moving carefully and making sure that she was masked as much as possible by passers-by, she spotted a small car parked on a double yellow line right in front of the main entrance, and made out the number plate: 377. She was going to miss the bus. And it looked as though she would be spending the night in a skip or a doorway, unless she could come up with a better option. She stood sipping her tea and thinking about it. There was only one person whom she could possibly turn to, and that was the strange person whom she had met at Halloween – the one who slept in a coffin. But he had been pretty clear about one thing. She had to make her own way. What was it he had said? This is a moment of sanctuary, not a solution. She gave up the idea of going to knock on his door.

  So where do you sleep when you’re out on the street? she thought. She had seen people in sleeping bags on the pavement lots of times; anybody who lived in a big city was used to that kind of thing. But now that she was one of them herself, she didn’t really know what to do. You had to be pretty sure of yourself or pretty desperate to just lie down on the pavement or in a doorway, even if you weren’t looking over your shoulder all the time and expecting to be followed.

  She went to the public library, an old stone building with a pillared portico, but there were already a least three bundles of old clothes with people in them, lying on cardboard. Beside one of them was a dog that lifted its head and growled when she came up the steps. An alleyway between a corner shop and a pub looked promising, but the waste bins were full to overflowing, and the ground was sticky with muck. The gates of a small park were locked, though she could easily have climbed over them if she hadn’t heard the sounds of angry voices coming from inside.

  Judy leaned against a shop window on a well-lit street, and put her bag down beside her. She was tired and it wasn’t easy to stay cheerful. She had to fight to stop herself from just going back to the houseboat, getting some sleep, and then turning herself in the next morning. She felt like a criminal who had given up running.

  “Great,” she said aloud. She leaned her head against the window frame and closed her eyes.

  “Don’t sit around, girl, you’ll fall asleep.”

  When Judy opened her eyes there was a woman standing in front of her. She looked immensely stout at first sight, but then Judy saw that she was wearing layers and layers of clothing under a grimy coat, and that her face and hands were thin. She had long uncombed hair.

  Judy stood up.

  “I’m just resting. If this is your place, I’ll move.”

  The woman snorted.

  “Run off, have you? And just a kid. No, it’s not my place, but I’m telling you to get moving, and keep moving. That’s the rule for kids like you. That’s the way to stay safe. Walk the night, sleep the day.”

  And she shuffled off round the corner. Judy heard her greet someone with a gritty laugh, then her voice faded into the night.

  So Judy walked. The hours passed unbearably slowly. Midnight, one, two. It seemed like daybreak simply wouldn’t come. Squatting with her back to the chain-link fence surrounding a building site, she stared eastward at the orange-grey night sky and begged it to lighten. All she wanted was a little streak of red to tell her that a day would come. But it didn’t happen. She got up and walked on.

  5

  In the bluish light of daybreak, Andrew Balderson was in the kitchen preparing Alcibiades’ breakfast. He was wearing a blouse and a skirt that reached to mid-calf, a wide one with a nice floral pattern. He had never been one for tight skirts. One of the marvellous things about women’s clothing was the freedom of leg movement, the circulation of the air. Such a shame, really, that history had for some reason come down on the side of trousers for menfolk. The Greeks and Romans thought it was mad and uncivilized – they used to laugh at the trousered Gauls. And as for colour, and the chance to express some artistic sensibility, who on earth had decided that that was against the rules? If a banker or a businessman turned up for work in a colourful dress made by some famous fashion designer then they would lose their job immediately, although that applied to women too, for goodness’ sake – they all had to wear grey suits nowadays. Why wasn’t it the other way around? Today he had made a nice turban from a piece of Indian silk that was very colourful and included sequins among other things, and for good measure he had stuck a marigold, one of the last still standing in the garden, behind his left ear. On his feet were a pair of sheepskin slippers, not pretty at all, but so very, very comfortable.

  “However,” said Mr Balderson, addressing Alcibiades who had jumped on to the kitchen table and was eyeing him balefully, “I must now slip into something less comfortable and be on my way. The time has come. And you, old friend, will march off to Mrs Hodges’ as usual and grow fat on whipped cream and titbits.”

  He was in a hurry, which was unusual. He had decided many years ago not to hurry any more, on the Alice in Wonderland principle that the faster you went the more you stayed in the same place, but now, as he left his house, he moved surprisingly quickly, with a long, loping, tireless gait that would have suited a hunter on the savannah or a herdsman on the steppe. He seemed incongruous in the narrow streets and run-down buildings of the old part of the city. Stopping in front of a pair of tall garage doors, with dirty green paint peeling off them
in thin slivers, he listened to the screech of a handheld grinder that could be heard from inside. There was a smaller door in the wall to the side of the garage entrance, with a grubby faded notice that said “G.Wayland Smith, Mechanic.” Mr Balderson tried the handle, and then started beating at the door with the flat of his hand and roaring, “Georgie? Georgie, my lad, let me in. It’s Andy.” After a while the grinder fell silent and Mr Balderson shouted once more. “Georgie, open up, will you?”

  After a moment there was the sound of someone fiddling with the catch, and the door opened a little to reveal a pair of very suspicious eyes in a pinched and extremely dirty face. The face had obviously been wearing goggles, because the skin was clean around the eyes, giving the impression of a wizened monkey. Then the door was opened properly and a small man in overalls that had once been blue said, “Oh, it’s you. Didn’t expect you. I’ve got a rush job on.” After looking carefully up and down the street he went on.

  “In with you then. Come for him, have you? He’s filled up and I gone over him, shouldn’t have any trouble. Transmission’s a bit dodgy, but you know that already. I’ll get the keys.” He disappeared into a cubby-hole that could have been an office if it wasn’t completely overflowing with bits of engines, batteries, chargers, washers and bolts and gaskets and sparking plugs, and rooted around like a hog in a turnip field muttering, “In here somewhere…” There were two vehicles in the large space. One of them was a very shiny luxury car that looked absolutely perfect, with dazzling bodywork and aluminium wheels. But the grinder was on the floor beside it, and the bonnet was open and the front end was jacked up. The other vehicle was a camper, or perhaps you could call it a motorized caravan. It wasn’t just a van anyway, it was built on the chassis of a small truck, with flat sides, and windows, and a door, and a flat roof with a low rail round it. There was a ladder fixed to the back. Georgie returned from his search, proudly dangling a set of car keys.

  Mr Balderson smiled and gave the side of the camper a friendly pat.

  “Right, Aristeas,” he said. “It is time for us be on the move again. I feel it strongly.”

  He opened the cab door and climbed in behind the wheel, then rolled down the window and leaning out he called,

  “Thanks, Georgie. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  “Not a chance,” came the reply, “I can’t think of anything.”

  Mr Balderson chuckled and gunned the engine, which made a satisfying dieselly roar in the confines of the garage. And he was off.

  It was starting to rain. Judy walked the wet pavements in the grey drizzling beginning of what would pass for daylight in an hour or so. There were already people about – mostly women, huddled and hurrying, on their way home from their unseen night work cleaning offices and shopping malls for the bright and shiny young women and the men with polished shoes who would arrive later to do … whatever it is they do.

  In the light of day – even a grey, damp day – things look different. Judy was able to start thinking again, in spite of her exhaustion. Living like a vagabond wasn’t as easy as it looked. Her daydream about living under a boat on the beach was very romantic, very sad and, she now realized, very stupid. There was only one thing she really wanted to do, and that was find her father, or at least find out what had happened to him. She had promised to wait. She had promised not to send emails and phone messages. But she hadn’t promised not to go after him. And there was only one possible place to start looking. She would have to get to Sweden, to the place that letter came from.

  It would be a quest, an adventure, and it would be her own choice, not something that just happened. It was a mad idea, but she didn’t care – she was free to do anything she wanted, and if she never got there, what did it matter? At least she would try. At least she could answer the question, “What are you doing?” with, “I am looking for my father,” instead of, “Nothing in particular.” She found herself standing on the corner of a big road that was starting to fill up with morning traffic. She headed left in the direction of the train station.

  Once there, Judy checked out train times, and ferry crossings to the continent. But, apart from the fact that it was all incredibly expensive, she wasn’t even sure that they would sell her a ticket because of her age. She needed a better plan. Lots of people her age managed to get into England in the backs of lorries, or hanging underneath them or something, so how hard could it be to get out? So she decided to walk out of town to the big service station on the bypass and try to sneak on to a lorry going to the docks. At least she had managed to brush her teeth in the train station toilets. Brushing your teeth always gives you a more positive feeling about life. She hoisted her bag on to her shoulder and started off, following the signs that would eventually take her on to the main road out of town. The rain had let up a bit, but the tires of passing cars still hissed along the rain-soaked streets and threw spray from the puddles. One of the cars slowed down as it drove past her, and the driver looked out at her with a rather creepy smile on his face. This wasn’t a very nice part of town – everybody knew that – and she was glad that it was now daytime. She walked on up a long street that at this time of morning was fairly deserted, although Judy knew that at night there were a lot of pubs and clubs open. It was one of those streets that would definitely have got her a lecture about freedom if her father ever heard she had been there. Now there were only the betting shops open, that and a couple of cafés.

  A large van drove past and she jumped aside to avoid getting her shoes splashed, watching as the van slowed down and stopped. It wasn’t a delivery van, but some kind of mobile home. Judy kept walking, keeping a wary eye on it. It wasn’t a posh shiny camper, the kind that comes out in the summer and goes to a nice resort on the French Riviera. It was more like the sort of thing that had been on the road for a long time. It looked very lived-in, and you couldn’t help wondering what sort of people had lived in it, and what they had got up to. The cab door on the driver’s side, which she couldn’t see, slammed shut. Someone had got out. And there was no mistaking the tall figure who came round the front of the camper and stepped on to the pavement. Mr Balderson was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a long overcoat that almost swept the ground.

  “Well, well, wonders will never cease. There I was, off on a little jaunt, and what do I see? A small familiar personage hiking out of town – clearly on her way somewhere. Am I wrong?”

  “No, actually.”

  “I thought not, I rarely am. And breakfast? What about breakfast?”

  “I’m not particularly hungry.” This was a complete lie. She had suddenly realized that she was absolutely starving.

  “Incredible. You must be made of stern stuff. Hardly human. I myself am peckish. I don’t suppose I could persuade you to join me in a cup of tea, before we go our different ways?”

  Judy shrugged her shoulders.

  “There’s a place open just up here,” said Mr Balderson, pointing up ahead.

  Judy followed him into a small grimy café, with formica tables and plastic chairs, and they took a seat by the window. A surly waitress slouched over and asked them what they wanted. Mr Balderson ordered two mugs of tea, no sugar no milk, and asked Judy, “Do you want anything else? They have a bacon butty, I see.”

  “No thank you.”

  “Never mind, I’m going to have lots of toast and marmalade.”

  The tea came, in large mugs, and the toast and marmalade.

  Mr Balderson started eating.

  “So, where are you off to?” he asked

  “I’m leaving the country. I’m going to look for my father.”

  “How exciting – an epic in the making. ‘The Lay of Azad’ or what about ‘Judy’s Saga’? Where are you going to look? No, don’t tell me, I love to guess… Let me see… He leaned back in his chair and gazed at her. “Azad… Farsi, I think, or Persian as we used to say… Ah Persia, once so noble, the land of the Magi, of glorious poets and brilliant thinkers, but now” – he shook his head sadly –
“a disturbed part of the world, no doubt about it. Yes, I’m definitely guessing Persia. The name, the looks, the hair, the eyes, the nose, the mathematics…”

  Judy was offended. Not about the hair and the eyes, which she was secretly quite pleased with, but the nose, which was already showing signs of the eagle-like beakiness of her father’s.

  “How do you know that I like maths?”

  “Well, goodness me, it stands to reason. Germany and music, Ireland and horses, France and food… Persia and algebra.”

  “That’s not where I’m going.”

  “I was wrong! How unusual. So tell me, please, Miss Azad. I am so helplessly inquisitive, and you have eaten all my toast and marmalade.”

  Judy looked down at the table in surprise. It was true, she had.

  “I’m going to Sweden,” she said.

  Mr Balderson’s single eye widened and he clapped his hands together.

  “Astounding! Extraordinary! Almost beyond belief!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I’m on my way there myself. Isn’t that amazing? How lucky that I don’t believe in coincidences, because if I did, this would be hard to swallow. But as it is, I have no doubt that the unseen pattern is being carefully woven by the fates – urd, verdandi, skuld – ha ha, we have caught a glimpse, a corner of the veil has briefly blown aside.”

  Mr Balderson had quite a lot more to say on the subject of patterns and fate, with quotations from poetry and ancient texts. He mentioned aetiology and serendipity and a number of other things that Judy was not at all clear about and wasn’t really listening to. She looked out through the dirty café window misted with condensation streaming down the glass, and on to the bleak littered street and the stained brick buildings opposite. Was he really going to Sweden? Could coincidences like this really happen, or was something else going on that she didn’t understand? Mr Balderson swivelled his eye, which had been pointing at the ceiling, back in her direction.