Ralph, for one, looked pretty pleased with the damage as it stood. “This is unbelievable,” he said. “Is Jodie in there as well?”
“She’s out of town,” Tess said. “The police have contacted her and she’s on her way back to London.”
Ant began questioning Em: “You didn’t take Sam back to the house this morning, did you?”
“Of course not,” Em said.
“Thank God we weren’t at home last night.” His voice was that of a hundred-year-old man, one who’d spent most of his century dodging disaster. Tess knew how he felt. She was aware of Tuppy pushing at her shins. All three Morgan dogs were out here with them, winding their leads around legs, unsettled by the evacuation. Tess wondered if they could smell the residual gas. She wondered if they could smell the corpse.
“What do you mean, not at home?” Ralph said, his interest aroused by the Kendalls’ exchange. “Where were you?”
“We stayed at Sissy’s last night. As nonpaying guests,” Em clarified, almost playfully. Tess had not seen her in this great a mood in months.
“Why?”
It was Sissy who answered, sending a cool glance Em’s way. “I thought I heard someone downstairs, so I asked them to stay. It was probably just my imagination.”
Naomi was more interested in Tess’s role in affairs. “What were you doing at number 1 this morning? I don’t understand.”
“I’d rather not say.” Tess paused. She felt a provocative energy coursing through her, a strange disinhibition. “Maybe you’re not the only one with something to hide, Naomi,” she added boldly.
“Tess,” Finn warned, but she ignored him. A man might have died, but she had not forgotten her husband’s betrayal. This morning, she was closer to Sissy and the Kendalls than she was to any of the Morgans.
“What does that mean?” Naomi demanded. “What have I got to hide?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Naomi, I’m not a fool.”
“Come on, girls,” Ralph said, and they could almost read his thoughts: Stop bitching. We’ve won. Nothing else matters.
“‘Girls’?” Naomi echoed, displeased.
Of all things, that bothered her?
The ambulance doors crunched shut and, by Tess’s side, Sissy began, very quietly, to cry. Then came the abrupt diesel throb of the engine, and the vehicle rolled away.
“We might not be allowed back in for hours,” Em said. “Shall we go and get a coffee somewhere?”
“Let’s take the dogs for a long walk,” Ralph suggested to his brother. He found Em irritating, Tess knew, and would not want to sit in a café with her.
“I’ll come with you,” Naomi said to Ralph. As the trio removed themselves and checked leads and harnesses, it seemed to Tess that they subtly discouraged others from joining them.
“Maybe you ought to stay,” Finn told her, in case she had any such thoughts. “The police might have more information soon.”
Tess gave him an unimpressed look. Only Tuppy, not liking the separation, pulled back toward her. “Good boy,” she said, then, turning to Sissy and the Kendalls: “I think it’s fine for me to leave. I’ve got my phone if they need me. Let’s go.”
* * *
—
From the brasserie on the high street, she posted on the residents’ Facebook page:
Be aware that there has been a gas leak at number 1 and the Portsmouth Avenue end of the street has been evacuated. I’ve been told it will just be for a short while and I’ll post when I have more information.
“How long before the police do the rounds again?” Sissy said, her eyes on Em. Though she’d stopped crying, her hand was shaking as she stirred her coffee, metal clunking on china.
“They said they’ve got all they need for now,” Tess assured her. “I got the impression they’re linking it with his DIY, which makes sense.”
“I didn’t know you could die from household gas like that,” Sissy said.
“Well, obviously you can,” Em said.
There was a curious sense of cross-purposes between the two of them, Tess thought, an edge of wariness to Sissy’s shock that rubbed against the undisguised relish of Em’s response.
Ant had gone to the library, pleading work e-mail, but Tess sensed he’d lacked the stomach for a lengthy debrief.
“I seem to remember my central-heating man saying gas isn’t toxic anymore,” Sissy went on. “Not like in the old days.”
“The fire people told me what happens is it displaces the oxygen in the room and you suffocate,” Tess said. In spite of her horror at the silent, creeping death she now imagined, she acknowledged to herself that she was enjoying being the emergency service’s contact, the one who knew the extra details.
“It must have been a very big leak for that to have happened,” Sissy said.
“Maybe he’d disconnected the boiler or cooker and not shut off the supply properly, so it pumped out in large quantities? Anyway, there’ll be a postmortem, so they’ll soon know. Poor Jodie. I mean, I’m no fan, but to lose your partner like that . . . It’s terrible.”
“Terrible,” Em said, and though it was Tess’s word she repeated, it was Sissy she spoke to.
There was definitely something not quite right between them.
Tess checked the time and fished in her bag for her purse. Forty-five minutes before the school day finished. “I need to think how to brief the kids on this latest disaster. Does anyone want to walk up to the school with me, get some air?”
“I’m all right here,” Em said, gesturing to Sam, content on her lap with breadsticks and juice. “We’ll wait for Ant.”
“I’ll come,” Sissy said. “That might be what I need.”
But she seemed reluctant to part from Em, addressing her in a low, urgent voice while Tess went to the counter to pay. Distracted while choosing cookies for the kids—Your neighbor has died of asphyxiation by gas, but I chose you triple choc chip!—Tess returned to find that they appeared to have settled their little difference. “Nothing to worry about,” Em was telling Sissy. “It’s all good.”
Tess’s eyes widened. If she meant Booth’s death, then, well. Even by their standards, it was a little heartless.
CHAPTER
32
RALPH
MAN FOUND DEAD AFTER GAS LEAK IN SOUTH LONDON HOME
A fifty-seven-year-old man has died following a suspected gas leak in a house in the South London suburb of Lowland Gardens. A neighbor called the emergency services after smelling gas at approximately 10 a.m. yesterday and firefighters entered the house after evacuating residents from neighboring properties. The road was closed for several hours while the body was recovered.
The event is the second tragedy at the property in the last month, following the death of twenty-nine-year-old Amy Pope on 11 August. A murder investigation is ongoing.
The man’s death is being treated as unexplained, said a Met Police spokesman, adding that an official postmortem investigation will provide more information.
“I became concerned for his welfare when I went to the front door and smelled gas,” said Mrs. Tessa Morgan, who raised the alarm. “After that, the street was cleared very quickly. Luckily, the children were all at school and most of the neighbors at work.” Mrs. Morgan added that the deceased was known to be a home-improvements fanatic who’d been working on his kitchen, though she was not aware of his holding any professional qualifications.
It is thought that millions are at risk of death or injury from gas leaks in the UK, according to the Gas Safe Register, which launched its “Don’t Cut Corners” campaign earlier this year in a bid to raise awareness. One in six homes inspected in the last five years was found to have dangerous gas appliances installed, it claims.
LONDON EVENING STANDARD
“Well, at least she can’t come sniffing around about this one,” Ralph said to Naomi th
e Friday evening after Booth’s death, when they’d both read the piece, and he caught the flicker of revulsion on her face.
He knew what she was thinking. This one. As if life were cheap. Amy’s life.
“You know what I mean,” he added. September sun blazed through the glass roof of their kitchen as if it were still high summer, but it was an illusion: outside, the air temperature had dropped, a sudden, brutal plunge.
“By ‘she,’ I assume you’re talking about DC Forrester?” she said, her caustic tone more familiar these days than he would have liked.
“The very same. She’s my number one bugbear. My bête noire.”
“She’s a detective, Ralph. She’s hardly likely to be your bestie.”
“Fair point. But you’ve got to admit it’s a relief, knowing it’s all over. And she is a bit of a bitch.”
With a glance to the door and the TV den beyond, presumably to check that Libby and Charlie were still as absorbed in their double-screening as they had been ten minutes ago, Naomi appeared to be deciding whether to have this out now or to leave it till later, when the kids were in bed. As she pinched her upper lip between index finger and thumb, Ralph thought he might be the only person in the world who knew this signaled nerves.
She dropped her hand and began: “Don’t take this the wrong way. . . .”
Ralph hated it when people said that. It always meant they were about to say something insulting—and by showing you were insulted, you’d already taken it the wrong way. A classic catch-22. “What?”
“I don’t know if it’s new or maybe I just haven’t noticed it before, but you are very, very critical of women.” She hastened to modify this, correctly understanding that by “women,” Ralph thought chiefly of her: “Not me—I’m not saying that. Maybe that’s been the red herring.”
Ralph laid his palms flat on the marble work top. It was pleasurably cool. “What are you talking about? What red herring?”
She studied him as if with corrected vision, eyes wide and horrified, a thoroughly unnerving experience for him. “I mean women like Tess and Em and this detective. You haven’t had a half-nice thing to say about any of them. I find it very . . . dismaying.”
He’d thought she was going to say “disrespectful,” which was bad enough, but “dismaying”? That was the word teachers and other trained community figures used when they meant “fucking annoying.”
“I’m not saying I don’t have my ups and downs with people, but this . . .” Her arms outspread, Naomi turned her palms upward, as if to indicate the immeasurable scale of Ralph’s problem.
He sighed. He was not an idiot. He was aware of the political movement sweeping media and society. Women speaking out against men, seizing power. But this was not to do with that. This was a moment of revelation deeply personal to Naomi. It related to domestic life, to their household’s standing on the street, in the family.
“Look, babe, if you’re saying I’m some sort of misogynist, trawling Lowland Way for female neighbors to hate, then I have to object. There’s only one person I hate around here and that’s Darren Booth. Hated.”
Naomi tilted her head as if watching another penny drop. “You’ve never bothered with Jodie, have you? It’s like she hasn’t been worth your attention. Even when you were told you’d been texting with her, not him, you just dismissed her.”
No time like the present to rectify that, Ralph thought. When the postmortem was done and the funeral over with, Jodie would be the one to decide what to do about the house and the business and the cars. He looked at his wife, careful to strike a balance between defense and attack. “Let me get this straight. You’re allowed to criticize other women, but I’m not. Does it work the other way around with men?”
“We’re both allowed to criticize whoever we like, just not to dismiss or disdain someone on the basis of their gender.”
Dismiss, disdain, dismay. All the “dis” words. He recognized a no-win marital argument when he was in one, and he was on his knees here, his hands and feet roped together behind him. He’d been wrong to speak about women and he’d been wrong not to speak about them. He was just wrong. “I’m sorry if it’s looked that way, but it’s not true. I do have respect for the women you mention, as it goes. Maybe not Jodie so much, but Eithne F, for sure.”
“Why do you say her name like that?” Naomi pounced on this new crime. “I don’t even know DC Shah’s first name.”
“Jason. Third-generation Indian, I’m guessing. What? I’m good with names. You know that. It’s my thing.”
But Naomi was making no concessions. “I think it would be better if you were good with women. You have a daughter. More importantly, you have a son.”
Ralph stared at her. There was no doubting her severity, that formidable ink black gaze, but was this really what she was worried about? As far as he was concerned, they no longer had a care in the world.
“Stop now,” he said at last. “You’ve made your point, but stop now.”
Naomi just nodded and Ralph wondered if there was actually something else troubling her, this little rant an outlet for emotions so unwieldy she did not know how to express them. Men, of course, would know not to try.
* * *
—
This must be what hell was like. Not fire and brimstone, but the glimpse of clear seas before the armada came over the horizon. Light at the end of the tunnel before it collapsed and buried you alive.
OK, not the best analogy.
The point was, Eithne—DC—Forrester was back. She had come sniffing around. First thing on Monday morning. She had a sharp new haircut and the air of someone whose workload had just doubled. She wanted to know what Ralph had been doing on the night of the gas leak.
“Why?” he demanded. “The papers said it was to do with his putting in a new kitchen. He disconnected an appliance, didn’t know what he was doing. Is that not right?”
“We have new evidence to suggest there might be an alternative reason for the leak.”
“Anything you feel like sharing?”
Of course not. “We’ll have more information soon.” She twisted in her seat, as if her clothing were bothering her. “Someone close to you seems to think you’ve been plotting something very recently involving Darren Booth.”
“Someone thinks something,” Ralph repeated. “Right.” It could only be Tess. Dear, darling Tess, as he was expected to speak of her. “You’re quoting my sister-in-law, I assume? The hero of the hour. Well, take it from me—she’s just annoyed she wasn’t in on it.”
“How about you tell me what ‘it’ is?” DC Forrester suggested.
Ironically, given Naomi’s criticism, he’d never felt less dismissive of this woman, the female register of her voice, the tiny light of compassion in her eyes that he’d not noticed before, as if every question were a chance, not a challenge.
“Fine,” he said. “It’s nothing illegal and she would have been the first to hear the news if she’d just held her horses. A few days before Booth died, I took out a loan to buy number 1. The plan was to sell it on to a buyer I choose, someone a bit more suitable. I asked a local estate agent to approach him with an offer—a pretty decent offer, considering the state the place is in. Through a subsidiary of my company, so he wouldn’t know it was me. I’d just had an answer from the agent the evening before the gas leak. I couldn’t tell Tess because it needed to be anonymous. She’s at home all day, talking to the neighbors in the street, over the wall, and he might have overheard her and turned me down on principle. By the way, I wasn’t avoiding your original question; I’m happy to answer it: I was out with Finn on Thursday night. We went to our local, the Fox, on the high street. Like I say, we had something to discuss.”
The detective nodded as she made notes, adjusting her glasses on her nose when they slipped. “What time did you get back home?”
“Late, maybe twelve thir
ty. I was pretty wasted. I honestly can’t remember.”
“Did either of you call in at number 1?”
She made it sound so plausible, like they dropped in all the time for a nightcap and a quick listen to Anthrax’s greatest hits. “Call in? Why would we go anywhere near there? We were finished with Booth. Totally done. We just wanted to buy him out and forget he ever darkened our door.”
There was no comeback to that and he knew then that she had nothing to incriminate him. Perhaps this was no more than a new point of entry into the Amy investigation. The same old questions from a different angle. How tedious police work must be, how much stone had to be worked to get the tiniest drop of blood.
“Any idea when they’ll get rid of all his vehicles?” he asked. “Is that down to Jodie?”
“It will depend if they’re registered to the deceased or to other people,” DC Forrester said, “but it’s reasonable to start with her, yes.” She almost floored him then by smiling. “Can I ask what the estate agent said? You said he called with an answer.”
He realized she was embarrassed because the information could have no bearing on her inquiries—she was simply curious—and he smirked back at her. “He said yes. Booth accepted the offer. After everything we’ve been through, he said yes.”
Ralph had made it clear to the agent that his offer for the house still stood should Jodie want to continue with the sale, but the agent had said the death of one half of a couple usually meant delays, if not reversals of previous decisions. And yet, without Booth, why would Jodie stay? Without him, without the car business, the size and location of the premises were irrelevant. It had never been a home, not in the way the other residents knew a home to be.
At a rare advantage, Ralph held the detective’s eye. “So, you see, there’s really no reason for me to have snuck into his house on the way home from the pub and tampered with his gas pipes.”
Those People Page 25