Rear Garden: The Cat Who Knew Too Much ( A York Cat Crime Mystery Book 2)

by James Barrie

  Jonathan stared at the house behind. ‘I think Ellen might have had another accident…’

  Nigel stared at him at moment. ‘You’re kidding. You only get one dad. You can’t kill him twice.’

  ‘Not her dad this time,’ Jonathan said. ‘This time she’s killed her mum. But it wasn’t an accident.’

  ‘Well, she should be put away then. She’s not a young girl anymore. You can’t just go round killing your parents…’

  ‘I know. But I can’t prove anything… I think she killed her in her bedroom. Smothered her with her pillow. I didn’t see it, mind you. But the old woman was screaming; then she was quiet. And then I haven’t seen or heard anything from her since.’

  Nigel stared at Jonathan, his face vacant.

  ‘I think she did it for the money,’ Jonathan went on. ‘For the house… The last thing she cried was: “It’s going to the dogs!” So Ellen thought she wasn’t going to inherit anything.’

  Nigel continued to look expressionlessly at Jonathan. He didn’t say anything.

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ Jonathan said.

  Nigel turned and looked at the house behind. ‘The windows look like they could do with a clean.’

  Jonathan’s eyes widened. ‘That’s it,’ he cried, clapping his hands together. ‘You’ve got ladders. You could take them round and do the windows. While you’re there, you could look in the windows and see if you can see her mum. That’s her bedroom on the right.’

  ‘You can’t just go round and clean someone’s windows unless they ask you to.’

  ‘What if we wait till she goes out? Then you go round and wash the windows…’

  ‘But I won’t get paid…’

  ‘I’ll pay you,’ Jonathan said.

  ‘Well, as long as I’m not going to get into trouble.’

  ‘Come on. Let’s go upstairs. From the back bedroom we’ll be able to see when she goes out. Then you head round.’

  Ten minutes later they were in the back bedroom. They could see through the sliding doors Ellen working at the dining room table. After an hour of waiting, they saw her gather up a wad of brown envelopes, grab a hoodie and make her way out of the back door.

  From the bottom of the hedge, Theodore watched her leave. Ten minutes later he saw Nigel walk along the side of the house, carrying his ladders over his shoulder.

  He put them up so they reached the bottom of Tessa’s bedroom window. He disappeared and then returned a couple of minutes later with a bucket. He then began to climb the ladder, the bucket in his left hand.

  Theodore turned round and looked back at his own house. He could see Jonathan in the bedroom window, a pair of binoculars held to his face.

  He turned back to Ellen’s house. Nigel was near the top of the ladder. The curtains had been left half open. He peered into the darkened room.

  Suddenly Ellen appeared round the corner of the house. ‘What are you doing?’ she cried.

  Without waiting for a reply, she rushed at the ladder and pushed it over.

  The ladder landed on the paving stones with a clatter. Nigel landed with a thump. The empty bucket rolled across the patio and came to a rest against the sliding glass doors.

  Nigel cried out in pain. ‘My leg! My leg!’ he screamed, holding his leg. ‘I’ve broken my leg.’

  Theodore looked at Nigel’s leg and noticed it was bent at an impossible angle.

  ‘Call an ambulance,’ Nigel shouted. ‘Please!’

  Ellen took her mobile phone from her jeans pocket. ‘Hello! Hello! Yes… Police… I’ve just stopped someone trying to break into my house…’

  Jonathan was also on his phone, calling an ambulance.

  It was an hour before a police officer knocked on Jonathan’s door. By which time Nigel had been taken to hospital in an ambulance, accompanied by another police officer.

  ‘I’m Police Constable Pigeon,’ the police officer said. ‘You can call me Gary.’

  ‘You’d better come in,’ Jonathan said.

  He made his way through to the lounge and PC Gary Pigeon followed.

  When they were both sitting down, Gary said, ‘I believe you are a witness to the attempted break in at 64 Constantine Crescent. The house behind…’

  ‘Yes but no,’ Jonathan said. ‘I mean I saw what happened, but it was not an attempted break in.’

  ‘Not a break in? Well, what was he doing up there? The bucket he had with him didn’t have a trace of water in it.’

  ‘He was trying to see inside…’

  ‘A voyeur? Are you sure? It’s more likely he was scoping the house. Waited until she’d gone out, and then thought he’d have a quick look. See if there was anything worth nicking.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that. He was checking if her mother was alive…’

  ‘I’ll stop you there,’ Gary said. ‘I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with. The suspect gave us a false name when he was arrested. Said he was called Nigel. But when we checked his driving licence, it was Norman. And then we did a quick look on our system and it turns out that he’s not even registered.’

  ‘Registered?’

  ‘Yes, registered. Registered to be a window cleaner.’

  ‘Do you have to be registered to be a window cleaner?’

  ‘Of course, you do,’ Gary said. ‘We can’t have just anyone putting up ladders and peeping through people’s windows, can we?’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘If you didn’t need to be registered, anybody could set themselves up and go peering through people’s windows.’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ Jonathan said. ‘I suffer from vertigo.’

  ‘Well, maybe not you,’ Gary said. ‘But this Norman, he’s an unsavoury character. He’s a maverick. A wild card. A rogue window cleaner.’

  ‘I didn’t realise,’ Jonathan said. ‘I’d never heard of rogue window cleaners.’

  ‘They are anarchists,’ Gary said. ‘You probably don’t remember the Window Cleaning Wars of the 1980s.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

  ‘It was a turf war. Too many of them going for too few windows. Encroaching on each other’s territories. There was fighting in the streets. Blades drawn. A lot of broken windows. Very unpleasant business.’

  ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Thatcher tried to sort them out. But the NUWC, that’s the National Union of Window Cleaners, was too powerful even for her. The NUWC organised a national strike and they all put their blades down. People had to endure dirty windows for weeks. They refer to it as the Summer of the Window Cleaners’ Discontent.’

  ‘I think I might have heard of that.’

  Gary stood up and began to pace in front of the French windows. ‘You will have heard of the Great Uprising of the Window Cleaners.’

  Jonathan nodded.

  ‘It was following the introduction of the window tax in 1696,’ Gary said. ‘They taxed people on the number of windows they had. So people began to brick up their windows. Now, what do you think is going to happen?’

  ‘Less windows?’ Jonathan guessed.

  ‘Less windows to clean. Who’s that going to affect?’

  ‘The window cleaners?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Gary said. ‘The window cleaners. They weren’t happy at all. There were protests. It began in the north. They ended up marching on London. Others joining as they approached the capital. Parliament sent the army to meet them. There was a great battle.

  ‘That was all a long time ago,’ Gary said. ‘But you bear in mind: always be wary of window cleaners. Be very wary of window cleaners.’

  ‘I will,’ Jonathan said nodding. ‘What’s going to happen to Nigel? I mean Norman.’

  ‘He’ll be charged with unsolicited window cleaning, I imagine. Soon as he’s allowed out of hospital. We can’t do much till then, but as soon as he’s out, he’ll feel the full weight of the law.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I think your cat wants to come in,’ Gary said nodding at the Fr
ench windows. ‘And I’d better be off. I’ve got a lot of paperwork to do because of this.’

  Jonathan looked and saw Theodore sitting in front of the French windows. The cat miaowed to be let in.

  ‘I’ll see myself out,’ Gary said, and saw himself out.

  Jonathan realised it was probably for the best that he hadn’t said anything to Gary to implicate himself. He got to his feet and let Theodore back in.

  Voyer!

  When Emily got home that evening, Jonathan told her what he’d seen that afternoon. ‘She was having sex in front of her bedroom window,’ he said. ‘Doggy-style.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Emily said shaking her head.

  ‘Well, he was behind her, and she was moving backwards and forwards.’

  ‘No,’ Emily said, shaking her head. ‘I meant, are you sure you’re not just imagining it, like the murdered mum and the dead dog.’

  ‘I saw them at it, I tell you. They were at it like… Well, like dogs. Her and that Scottish man.’

  ‘Yes, you said.’

  ‘And then she knocked Nigel off his ladder and he’s been taken to hospital.’

  ‘Who’s Nigel?’ Emily said, staring out through the French windows.

  ‘He’s the window cleaner,’ Jonathan said. ‘A rogue window cleaner…’

  Emily stared outside. ‘There’s a card in the bedroom window,’ she said, squinting

  There was a rectangle of white paper stuck to Ellen’s bedroom window. It read:

  VOYER

  ‘It says voyeur,’ said Emily.

  Jonathan got to his feet and went over to the French windows. ‘I don’t think that’s how you spell voyeur.’

  ‘She knows that you’ve been watching her,’ Emily said.

  ‘She made sure I was watching her.’

  ‘You didn’t have to sit there and watch.’

  ‘I didn’t want to have to sit there and watch.’

  ‘You are obsessed with her.’

  ‘I am not obsessed by her.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘I am going to get changed now,’ Emily said. ‘When I come back down, I don’t want to hear any more about her. I’m sick of it.’

  Then Emily left the room, leaving Jonathan standing in front of the French windows, holding himself up by his sticks.

  He stared at the rectangle of white paper. Then he looked at the next window. A light was on in Tessa’s bedroom.

  A figure was silhouetted against the sunflower curtains. It looked like Tessa. It was her hair, or at least her wig. She was sitting up in bed, watching television. From time to time, she raised a bottle to her mouth and drank. So Tessa was alive after all.

  Jonathan shook his head. He reached for the package of tablets on the coffee table. He removed the folded sheet of paper they came with and began to read the long list of possible side effects.

  Theodore followed Emily upstairs.

  Emily took from her handbag, several more clear plastic bags of rolled-up money and emptied then across her duvet.

  ‘Oh, Theo,’ Emily said. ‘Look at all this money. There’s thousands here. And that’s just today’s takings.’

  She began to stroke Theodore with one hand and with her other she stroked the money.

  ‘Imagine what we could do with this,’ she murmured, closing her eyes.

  Emily is wearing a dress by Alice Temperly. She is carrying a Mulberry handbag. On her wrist she is wearing a watch by Larsson & Jennings.

  She is standing in front of a roulette table. In front of her are hundreds of brightly-coloured chips in several cylindrical towers. The wheel comes to a stop and more chips are pushed her way by the croupier.

  ‘It looks like you can’t help but win today,’ a handsome man in a suit standing next to her says and smiles a bleached white smile.

  ‘It certainly appears that way,’ Emily says. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with so much money…’

  ‘You could buy a boat with all that dough,’ the man says and laughs.

  A little later, Emily is dressed in an Eres Diagramme one-shoulder swimsuit and sunglasses from Oliver Peoples Sayer.

  She is standing on the deck of a speedboat. The man, who is called Carlos and bears a striking resemblance to Antonio Banderas, is at the controls, propelling the boat across a bay of choppy azure. Carlos is wearing just a pair of silky white shorts by Prada and sunglasses by Dolce & Gabbana. His body is burnt caramel. The sun shines down from a cloudless sky.

  ‘This is such fun!’ Emily says laughing and Carlos laughs too.

  They pass very close to a rowing boat. Jonathan is struggling with a pair of oars and not making much progress. His hair is damp with sweat and stuck to his forehead. He is wearing supermarket own brand t-shirt and shorts.

  As Emily and Carlos pass, a tidal wave created by the speedboat almost capsizes Jonathan.

  ‘I think I might have splashed that pasty-looking Englishman,’ Carlos says.

  ‘Don’t worry about him, Carlos,’ Emily laughs. ‘He’s just my ex-boyfriend…’

  She laughs so hard, her eyes are closed.

  She opened her eyes to be faced by Theodore’s wide green stare.

  ‘Oh, Theodore,’ Emily said, returning from her reveries. ‘There’s nothing wrong with dreaming. Life can be so tedious. What have we but our dreams?’

  That night Jonathan and Emily watched a film set in San Francisco, featuring a detective who follows and then becomes obsessed with an attractive woman. It was called Basic Instinct.

  This seems familiar, thought Theodore. He stretched and got down from the sofa.

  From the back bedroom window Theodore watched as Geoffrey let Lucy out, for her fifteen minutes of freedom, before he locked up for the night.

  The Labrador went straight over to the hedge they shared with Ellen. She began scratting at the ground in front of the hedge, concentrating her efforts at a spot where the vegetation was sparsest.

  She dug furiously, sending dirt into the air behind her. Then she put her head to the ground and Theodore saw it emerge on the other side of the hedge. She then squeezed the rest of her body through the gap she had made. She was in Ellen’s garden.

  She ran over to the flowerbed, where Sandy the Shih Zhu was buried, and began to dig.

  Theodore glanced over at the back of Ellen’s house. A dark human-shaped shadow appeared in the kitchen window.

  Easter Sunday

  Emily woke early on Easter Sunday. Within minutes she realised what day it was and her mind turned to chocolate.

  Theodore was sleeping by her side. On her other side, Jonathan lay. He had managed to make his way upstairs the night before. He was still sleeping, snoring. He still wore the boot on his injured foot. It lay on top of the duvet.

  After petting Theodore for some minutes, Emily poked Jonathan in the shoulder until he stirred. ‘I got you an egg,’ she said, placing the chocolate egg on his chest.

  ‘An egg?’ Jonathan said, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘I know you liked minty chocolate.’

  ‘That’s very kind,’ Jonathan said. ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t able to get you one… What with being housebound.’

  ‘You didn’t get me an egg?’

  ‘I couldn’t get to the shop to get you one.’

  ‘Well, you’d better be prepared to share that one.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter really,’ Emily said, but her tone of disappointment said it did.

  ‘I’ll get you one,’ Jonathan said. ‘Soon as I’m back on my feet.’

  ‘Well, at least I can have a lie in,’ Emily said. ‘It is Sunday after all.’

  Theodore miaowed from her side of the bed. It might be Sunday. He still needed feeding though, and chocolate eggs, especially minty ones, were not high on his list of favourite breakfast items.

  Emily rolled over and hugged him to her.

  ‘Yes, Theo,’ she said. ‘We can have a lie in together.’

/>   Not quite the response Theodore wanted. He miaowed at her again; then crawled out from her grasp.

  At that moment there came a deep rumbling from the back of the house.

  ‘What’s that?’ Emily said.

  ‘Sounds like a tractor,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘Or a tank,’ said Emily.

  ‘It must be right outside.’

  He got out of bed and grabbing his crutches, crossed the landing to the back bedroom. ‘It’s the old guy from next door. He’s cutting his lawn.’

  ‘But it’s not even eight o’clock…’

  An hour later, Emily opened the bedroom curtains. That was when she saw the dead Labrador on the verge in front of their house.

  ‘Jonathan,’ she screamed.

  A minute later, Jonathan approached their bedroom window. He looked out and swore; then said, ‘He’s only gone and parked his Audi on the flowers she planted. That’s not very neighbourly.’

  ‘No, not the car,’ Emily said. ‘Down there.’

  Jonathan peered down and saw the dead dog on the verge, and he knew straightaway that it was Geoffrey’s dog. ‘It must have got run over,’ he said, not so sure.

  ‘Yes, it must have. You can’t just leave it there. You’re going to have to do something about it.’

  ‘I’m not too sure what to do about it.’

  ‘Well, you need to find out whose dog it is and then tell them to shift it. My parents are coming over later… We can’t have a dead dog in front of the house. Whatever would they think?’

  ‘I think it belongs to the blind man in the bungalow behind,’ Jonathan said. ‘He’s not going to be happy.’

  ‘A guide dog,’ Emily said. ‘That makes it even worse.’

  Jonathan made his way downstairs.

  He opened the front door and walked over to the dead dog. It still wore its harness. The silver identity tag attached to its collar confirmed that it was Lucy.

  He looked up and down the street. There was no one around. He could hear Wally still cutting his lawn. He approached Wally’s front door and knocked.