“No need to be jealous. According to Tinkler he is occupied full-time in having a torrid affair with his employer.” We watched him out the window as he drove off, the black roof of the Mercedes gliding past the top of the garden wall, then we went back to the table to finish eating.
Albert had been in too much of a hurry to even join us for a coffee. He was racing to deliver the records to the guy with the studio in south London, who would then presumably sit around for a few more weeks twiddling his thumbs before he made a digital transfer of them.
After breakfast we left the house, first putting out some biscuits for the cats. The idea behind this was that it would distract them from trying to follow us and throwing themselves under a speeding car on the main road—like some kind of urban lemmings. Actually, it was only Turk who was likely to follow us, being the bolder of the two. Her sister would only come as far as the garden gate and then fall asleep peacefully in the flower beds, awaiting our return.
We caught the bus into Putney and walked to Tinkler’s house. He was at work but he’d left the car keys for us in the usual place, tucked behind a disused gas meter mounted on the wall by his front door. We collected them and found the Volvo, parked in the next street over, and drove down to Kent.
It was time for our interview with Charles Gresford-Jones. Tinkler had asked us to take a photo of Abner the cat while we were there, because Clean Head didn’t believe he existed. “Preferably a picture of him slurping down sardines in tomato sauce. The more gruesome the better.”
We reached Dover almost an hour early, the beneficiaries of remarkably light traffic leaving London, and decided to kill time with a walk along the seafront. We watched a huge white ferry drifting off towards France through the haze over the Channel, moving as silently as a dream. Then we checked the time and drove up to Gresford-Jones’s place.
We were standing outside number eighty-seven on the dot. I opened the front gate and Nevada followed me through. We were about to ring the bell when the front door of the neighbouring house popped open. A woman looked out. She was plump, pale and middle-aged.
“Are you family?” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“He’s in Buckland Hospital.”
* * *
Apparently Charles Gresford-Jones had suffered a serious fall. The woman told us she’d found him lying unconscious on the floor of his front room. She had let herself in with a set of keys he’d given her, because Abner had been outside the front door, scratching to get in. Gresford-Jones didn’t believe in cat flaps and had left the keys with his neighbour for just such an eventuality.
Luckily.
An ambulance had arrived promptly after her call and Gresford-Jones was now in hospital in a stable but critical condition and profoundly unconscious. “The big problem,” said the woman, “is the cat.”
“Abner?”
“Yes. You see, the thing is, my husband and son are allergic. I’ve been feeding him, but I can’t take him in and give him a proper home, because of my husband and son, you see. And he does need a proper home. Deserves one. Poor old Abner.”
“But what about his owner?”
She shook her head grimly. “He won’t be coming out again. When you reach that age and start falling, that’s it.”
I said, “But he might recover.”
She gave me a sceptical look. “Even if he does, we need someone to look after Abner in the meantime.”
I looked at Nevada. We hadn’t explained that we weren’t family. Maybe we should now. Maybe it was too late. Maybe we looked too damned respectable and reliable. The woman watched us, almost visibly willing us to say we’d take the cat off her hands.
“It would be different,” she said, “if there was anyone else to ask. If I could ask the people with that van.”
“Van?” I said.
“Yes, they’ve been visiting Mr Gresford-Jones. But they haven’t been around lately.”
“What kind of a van?”
“Well it’s got sort of a painting of the sun on one side.”
“And the moon on the other.”
“Yes, that’s right,” she said. “The hippie van. I’ve seen it parked outside his house often enough, but it hasn’t been around lately. Otherwise I’d ask them.”
“Them?”
“The people with the van.”
“You’ve seen them?” I said. “Could you describe them?”
“Oh no, I’ve never actually seen them. Just the van. Parked outside his house.” She looked at us. “It’s such a shame they’ve gone away. It seemed they were always around, but now he’s had his fall they’ve disappeared.”
I glanced at Nevada.
The woman said, “I was thinking they could have taken Abner with them. It’s a pity. The cat would have enjoyed that. Riding about the country in a van.”
Actually, I thought, it was probably a cat’s idea of hell. But I didn’t say so.
The woman seemed to feel that the matter was decided now, because she found the keys and let us into the house. I wanted to search the place, but I couldn’t very well do that with the woman watching. Gresford-Jones hadn’t said he had any other records, but he’d insisted he had something that would be of considerable interest to us.
I’d assumed at first that it was some titbit of recollection, but you never knew. It could be a letter, a document, a photo…
Or even another record.
But there was no chance for us to look for it. Instead, under the watchful eye of the woman, we located a tin of sardines and a cat carrier and we used the former to lure Abner into the latter. I closed the front of the cat carrier and lifted it. He scuttled around inside, weight shifting from front to back. I carried it out to the car, which Nevada had gone ahead and unlocked. The woman watched me go, beaming with satisfaction. I opened the back door of the Volvo and put the cat carrier inside. It was easy to manoeuvre. It didn’t seem to weigh much more than it did empty.
Abner’s white-furred face peered at me from the darkness within, profoundly astonished at this turn of events.
I positioned the cat carrier carefully on the back seat, shut the door and got in the front beside Nevada. There was a wary silence from the back of the car.
Nevada looked at me. We were now going to have the discussion we hadn’t been able to conduct in front of the woman. “What can we do with him?” said Nevada. She glanced over her shoulder. I followed her gaze. Abner had pressed his face to the bars at the front of the cat carrier and was staring out at us. His long white whiskers projected through the bars. Nevada looked away. “We can’t have him with our two. Fanny and Turk wouldn’t stand for it.”
I was relieved. I agreed they wouldn’t.
“And I rang Tinkler while you were in the house. He said, categorically, no. Or, said no categorically. I’m sure he’d be delighted to correct me.”
I said, “He’s not a cat person.”
“I’m not so sure. I think he might be. But he said the prospect of sardine farts was the deal-breaker.”
“He actually said ‘deal-breaker’?”
“I’m afraid so. So what are we going to do? Honestly, I can’t believe Tinkler. He keeps going on about those sardine farts and now he’s managed to put Clean Head off, too. I gave her a ring but he’d already been in touch with her. He must have rung her immediately. Couldn’t keep his big mouth shut. And I really think I had a chance to place him with her.” She glanced at the back of the car again.
“Really? Abner the Zombie Cat.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, I must admit that moniker didn’t help. Still, Tinkler has now closed off two possibilities.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I have a plan.”
I started the car.
As we headed back for London, Nevada rang the hospital to find out the latest on Charles Gresford-Jones. They told us that they could only give out information to family, so we said we were his family.
Then they told us he was dead.
The news of his death seemed to add a strange additional velocity to the car as we hurtled along the motorway. Suddenly there was a curious finality about the journey. It had become a one-way trip, at least for Abner.
Now we knew we’d never be taking the cat back. His familiar places were vanishing behind him forever. And he seemed to sense this because, as soon as Nevada switched off the phone, he gave a long querulous cry.
It was an intricate, agonised sound, as though Abner was trying to tell us something complicated and painful. Nevada and I looked at each other. I said, “The hair on the back of my neck just stood up.”
“Mine too. It’s as if he knows, as if he somehow picked it up from us.”
Or it could have just been the suspension on Tinkler’s Volvo. It wasn’t the most comfortable car in the world.
The sun was going down as we reached Enfield. We found a place to park in the street just outside the house. Nevada carried the cat while I rang the doorbell. There was a long wait and my stomach started to sink, then we heard sounds from within, approaching.
Leo Noel opened the door and blinked at us. “Sorry for the delay. I was out in the sheds. I’ve got a new consignment of 78s and I have to find room for them.” He gestured for us to come inside and we followed him into the house. We stood in the hallway by the open door of the dining room, where the dozens of old gramophones gleamed under the subdued glow of the ceiling lamp.
Leo looked at the carrier Nevada was holding. It was made of beige plastic with a hinged grid of white plastic on the front. Its contents were shrouded in shadow behind those bars.
“What’s that?” he said.
I said, “We’ve brought something for you.”
“For me?”
“Yes. Remember, you said you wished you had a cat.” Actually, I couldn’t remember if he’d said exactly that, but he’d certainly made a fuss over Fanny and Turk when he’d come to visit. And he’d reminisced about having a cat when he was young, and how he missed it.
Leo looked at me and blinked. “Did I?”
“His name is Abner,” said Nevada brightly. She held up the cat carrier to eye level. I heard Abner scurry around inside the swaying plastic box, claws clicking as he hastened to maintain his precarious balance. Leo looked at her, looked at me, and then went to the cat carrier, bending his head as he peered apprehensively in.
From the shadows inside, the cat seemed to return his gaze with equal apprehension. Leo straightened up and cleared his throat.
Nevada said, “Just take him for a few days.”
“A few days?”
“Yes, and see if you get along. If you aren’t happy with the arrangement, then we’ll think of something else.”
This seemed to decide it for him. “All right,” he said. “What do I feed him?”
“Sardines. Here, we’ve got some for you.” I gave him the tins I’d put in my pocket at Gresford-Jones’s house. At the time I thought I could always replace them. Now I knew he wasn’t going to be missing them.
Leo accepted the tins gratefully.
“I’ll give him some now. Do you think I should?”
“It won’t do any harm.”
“And a bowl of water. I’ll have to get a bowl for his water. What about litter and a tray?”
“He went outside at his old home. You can let him into the garden.”
“The garden?” Leo glanced worriedly out the window towards the darkness behind the house.
“It’s all right,” I said. “He won’t harm the sheds.”
“I suppose not. What did you say was his name?” He peered at the carrier again.
“Abner.”
We left Leo looking for a suitable bowl to use for Abner’s water. I wondered if he’d fill it with Perrier. As we walked back towards the car I looked at Nevada and said, “A few days?”
“Don’t worry. After they’ve been together for a few days Leo will have utterly fallen in love with him.”
“This is Abner the Zombie Cat we’re talking about here.”
We got in the car and started home. Nevada sat beside me in silence for a long while. Then she said, “He died of a fall.”
“Apparently.”
“He was certainly getting on. At his rather extreme age, it’s not unusual to take a fall.”
“That’s true.”
“And it’s not unusual for a fall to prove fatal.”
I said, “Absolutely.”
“On the other hand, there was that van. Which was apparently there all the time.”
“And disappeared when he had his fall.”
Fanny was lurking in the shadows of the flower beds, waiting for us when we got home. As we opened the gate, Turk came dashing from some dark corner of the estate to join us.
The phone was ringing as we all came through the front door together. I went to answer it. It was the voicemail, with a message from Joan Honeyland.
“Call me immediately. Something terrible has happened.”
18. CAMBERWELL GREEN
Camberwell Green is a region of south London that had distinguished itself for its extravagant levels of gang violence and gun crime. It was also the place where our sound engineer, Derek Roberts, had chosen to locate his studio.
Two days ago, first thing in the morning, Derek had followed his usual custom of going into the studio—where he worked alone—and opened up for his day’s work. Having switched his equipment on and checked his email, he had then gone out again, locking the door behind him but not activating any of the heavy-duty security measures necessitated by his colourful neighbourhood. He didn’t need to, because he was just going up the road to his favourite coffee shop to pick up his morning coffee, which he had waiting for him every day at this time, prepared to his exacting standard.
A man after my own heart.
He paid for this coffee and started back for his studio, carrying the paper cup in one hand and his phone in the other. He paused in front of a cut-price booze emporium, which even this early in the day was doing a brisk business among locals who wanted to forget they lived in Camberwell. Derek didn’t stop here because he was planning to buy any booze. Rather, it was his custom, because there was a litter bin outside the shop, to pause in this spot and take the lid off his coffee. He would then drop it in the bin, being a considerate and tidy sort of person, and take his first sip of the beloved brew. It was his habit to do this, and to make a phone call while he was standing there.
And as he was making such a call two days ago, he was apparently unaware of an approaching motorcycle coming up the street behind him at a considerable and illegal speed. The motorcycle slowed down as it approached him, coasting almost to a stop as the rider reached into his leather jacket, took out a handgun and shot Derek in the chest.
Everybody in the vicinity scattered or took shelter at the sound of the gunshots. There had been a shooting outside this very booze shop just three weeks earlier, and some of the residents recognised the noise all too well.
The motorcycle, which apparently didn’t have a licence plate, speeded up again and took off. The rider was wearing a helmet with a smoked visor, so there was no chance of anybody identifying him even if they had been trying.
Derek, meanwhile, was down, spilling his coffee on the pavement.
He managed to retain his grip on his phone, though, and began to crawl back towards his studio, still clutching it. No one came to his assistance, either because they were still too busy hiding or because they were unaware that he was wounded. The spilled coffee on the pavement concealed any bloodstains, and the sight of a man crawling along on his belly made perfect sense in the context of everyone keeping a very low profile in an attempt to avoid getting shot.
No one knew if that motorcyclist was going to come around again and elaborate on his earlier visit.
Derek managed to reach the front steps of his building, having crawled there with agonising slowness, like an animal going home to die. He lay on the steps and trie
d to make a phone call to the emergency services. But after dialling the number, he dropped the phone.
But that didn’t matter because one of his neighbours had realised what had happened and had already called for an ambulance, telling them that a man had been shot, and his location. The ambulance arrived in record time, but too late for Derek, who had already bled out and was declared dead on arrival at the accident and emergency unit at King’s College Hospital.
The prevailing theory was that Derek, who was of West Indian descent, had been mistaken for a member of a local gang and had been gunned down by a rival gang. The quality control in such drive-by shootings was notoriously poor, and it was entirely possible his killing was purely a matter of mistaken identity.
So far no one had claimed responsibility for the shooting. Perhaps they were embarrassed at their gaffe.
It sounds terribly callous, but my first thought on hearing all this was—what about our records?
“That’s the problem exactly,” said Miss Honeyland when I confessed this to her. “He had completed making the digital copies, poor Derek, and he was supposed to have returned the originals to us—just the day before that appalling incident. But unfortunately it seems he hasn’t. So presumably they are all still there at his studio.”
“Did he even send you the digital copies?”
“No, he was going to email them to us, but apparently he never had the chance. The poor soul.”
So we’d lost the originals and we hadn’t even got the copies. I tried not to think ill of the dead.
“I am very concerned about the records,” said Miss Honeyland.
“So am I.”
“Anyone could just walk in there and steal them.”
There was silence on the phone for a moment. Then she said, “I don’t suppose you’d consider undertaking a job for me?”
* * *
Victory Disc Page 17