Free The Bones in the Attic by Robert Barnard Page A

were you born?”
    â€œNineteen fifty-six.”
    â€œSo you’d be about thirteen when I knew you?”
    â€œIf you did. That’s right.”
    â€œWhich house was it you lived in?”
    â€œSundown. Just next to the one where you turn as you come round the lane.”
    â€œI see. Were you an only child?”
    â€œYeah. And my parents were killed in a pileup on the M1 when I was eighteen. I suppose that’s why I married that no-hoper Mickey Fitch. Can’t think of any other reason. I thought I needed someone to protect me.”
    â€œThe marriage didn’t last?”
    â€œLast?” She laughed harshly. “It lasted a bloody sight longer than it should have done. There’s a kid, somewhere. It was ten years before I got up the courage to chuck him out—Mickey, I mean, not the boy. Christ, life’s a bitch. A fully fledged, paid-up bitch. Here, have another lager.”
    But Matt stood up. He wasn’t going to get anything more out of her now.
    â€œMy lot will be back from the cinema soon. Their mother’s away. I’d better get home and get them something to eat. Look, here’s my card. I’m sure there are things lurking around in the back of your memory. I’d like to have another chat if anything, however small, does surface. Just give me a call, at home or at Radio Leeds, and I’ll be round.”
    But, driving home, he felt pretty sure that, however much she might want to, she would not be calling him. Her behavior was all of a piece, and it had nothing to do with her memory. For the police’s benefit she had come up with one name, knowing the man was dead. Faced with his incredulity that her memory could be as poor as it seemed to be, she had produced another name, knowing the woman was in Australia, and had gone there long before the events of sixty-nine.
    On the other hand, if she knew nothing about the events, this lady who had married an Italian, she must have known a lot about the families who lived around her as she was growing up. And she would have no reason to conceal her knowledge.
    Because that was what Lily Fitch had been doing, Matt was quite sure. The near-total loss of memory about the children who lived around her told him that. Whether she rang or not, he felt sure he would be speaking to her again, or hearing about her and her activities.

CHAPTER SIX

One Who Got Away

The next morning, on the way to Radio Leeds, Matt stopped by at Millgarth, the West Yorkshire police headquarters, and spoke to Charlie Peace in the open area near the door, watching fascinated as a duty constable fended off the verbal assaults of a general public that seemed to think the police were responsible for potholed roads, lost cats, and dim street lighting. When he had told Charlie of the incidents from his childhood he had remembered, and the dim pickings from the Goldblatts and Lily Fitch, Matt said, “I think I might try and get in touch with Mrs. Beeston’s daughter.”
    Charlie nodded.
    â€œRosamund Scimone. Yes. Difficult for us to justify spending time on her, since she was in Australia at the time, but she might spill the beans on background stuff if you approached her in the right way.”
    â€œCould you spell the surname?”
    â€œS-C-I-M-O-N-E.”
    â€œHow did you get it?”
    â€œWe looked up Mrs. Beeston’s funeral notice in the West Yorkshire Chronicle. ”
    Matt pondered, ignoring signs of impatience in Charlie, who was on the way to a job.
    â€œI’ve been thinking about this daughter. Lily Fitch said she was a few years older than her, but it must have been quite a few. Her mother was born in 1900, so at the least she was born by the early forties—during the war, in fact.”
    â€œBabies did get born in the war,” Charlie pointed out. “All I know about it I got from the television, but if the husband was older than her, which husbands usually were then, he’d most