by Jane Casey
‘But you must get men offering to show you the error of your ways.’
‘Oh, obviously. Just for my own good, so I realise what I’m missing out on. Then there are the ones who seem nice enough, but they’re generally working up to asking if they can watch some time, or suggesting my girlfriend and I might like to spice things up by trying a threesome.’
‘How tempting.’
‘I haven’t found it too difficult to say no, but never say never.’
‘Oh, I think you can say never in some circumstances.’
She snorted with amusement. ‘Speaking of never saying never, did I see you and Rob having a quiet moment together earlier? Anything you want to tell me?’
‘Not really.’ I couldn’t hide the smile that spread across my face, though, and she clapped her hands.
‘Thought so.’
‘Jesus, you’re like a witch. How did you know?’
‘I watch body language. You both looked like you were trying too hard to be serious when you came out of the interview room.’
‘Did anyone else notice?’ I was mildly disturbed that we had been so obvious.
‘I really doubt it. They were all fired up about arresting the Bancrofts.’
I turned my wrist so I could see my watch. ‘They’ll have done it by now, probably. All over. They might have found Patricia.’
‘Or her body.’
Liv was right, but it still made my mood plummet. I couldn’t stand to think of her poor parents. My phone call would have given them hope for the first time in years, and it would be my responsibility to take it away again if the news wasn’t good. Not for the first time, I cursed DS Rai. If he’d only done a better job and paid more attention to his own case, I could have left the Farinellis alone until there was some real news either way. The car was silent for the next few minutes, until we reached the outskirts of Enfield and found the right road out of town.
‘We’re looking for a big house set back from the road. Bonamy Lodge is the name. It was falling to bits ten years ago, according to DI Stone, so it probably won’t be too grand.’
‘Got it.’
The road was lined with hedgerows and it was hard to see houses until you were more or less on top of them. I nudged the car along the road, slowing down and speeding up until Liv muttered something about needing a sick bag.
‘There’s not a lot I can do.’
‘You could maintain a steady speed that isn’t too fast so I can actually read the house names – ooh, there it is.’ She pointed across me.
I wrenched the steering wheel around and the car shot through the narrow gates painted with the house’s name. Gravel crunched under the wheels but it was a long time since the driveway had been looked after; green weeds had seeded across it and I stopped on a large bald patch right outside the front door which seemed to be where every visitor to the house parked.
‘This is cosy,’ Liv commented, peering up.
‘I’m not familiar with that definition of cosy.’ The house was a brooding Edwardian lump, grey and forbidding in a coating of pebbledash that did nothing to make it more homely. It was gabled left, right and centre, as if the architect had been stuck for inspiration and scattered them rashly where the design looked too plain. Time had not been kind to it. The woodwork was weathered and peeling, the roof gappy where slates had fallen off and had not been replaced. A length of guttering on the right was sagging under the weight of a young sycamore tree. The windows were dark and dusty. It was starting to look as if I wasn’t going to get to talk to Michael Bancroft after all.
We both got out of the car and I went up to the front door. The doorbell was dead, so I rapped with the knocker. It sounded too loud. Behind me, an occasional car swished past, and birds were singing in the tall evergreen trees that lined the borders of the property, but there were no other sounds. The trees were overgrown, seriously unkempt, and did a good job of screening the place from the road and its neighbours. I was on the edge and tried to work out if it was lack of sleep or delayed reaction to the news that I had been being watched that was causing my nerves to jangle.
There was no reply to my knock; I sort of hadn’t expected one. I stepped backwards, shading my eyes as I looked up at the windows on the first floor for any signs of life.
‘What do you think?’
Liv had crunched across the gravel and was standing on tiptoe, peering in through a window. ‘Not much in the way of furniture. It looks derelict.’ ‘Maybe he’s moved since the last time the register was updated.’
‘Maybe he’s dead.’
I frowned at her. ‘That’s your answer for everything, isn’t it?’
‘People do die, Maeve.’ She started towards the side of the house. ‘I’ll check around the back.’
‘Okay.’ I crossed the gravel to the window at the other side of the front door and shaded my eyes to see what I could of the interior. It was a dining room, a large and shadowy room with a dusty table in the middle surrounded by scroll-backed chairs. There was nothing to say the room was in use, but the fact that there was furniture at all was a hopeful sign. I returned to the front door and knelt down to peer through the letterbox. I was lucky; there was no draught excluder and I had a clear view of the parquet floor, the square-edged wooden staircase, the stained-glass window halfway up the stairs that cast a reddish glow over the interior. I sat back on my heels, frowning, and that was how Liv found me when she came back.
‘I’ve gone all the way around and I haven’t seen anything to make me think there’s someone living here.’
‘Rubbish bin?’
‘Outside the back door, empty.’
‘Note for the milkman?’
‘Now you’re reaching.’
I stood up. ‘Okay. Have a look through there and tell me what you think.’
She bent down and pushed open the flap of the letterbox so she could see in, much as I had. ‘A whole lot of nothing.’
‘Right. Look down.’
‘Two flyers for fast-food restaurants and a leaflet that looks to be advertising the services of a cleaning company. I think he should phone up. He looks to be in dire need of a good clear-out.’ She let the flap fall and turned to me. ‘Am I supposed to be interested in any of that? It’s just junk mail.’
‘Exactly. What’s the first thing you do every day when you get in from work?’
There was a glint in her eye as she opened her mouth to answer and I held up my hand. ‘Let me be completely clear, I’m not just curious about how you say hello to your girlfriend. I mean, what’s the first thing you do when you unlock the front door?’
She thought for a second. ‘If I’m home first, pick up the post.’
‘And?’
‘The junk mail.’
‘Every day. Handfuls of it. Even allowing for the fact that we’re in a reasonably rural area, you can’t tell me that the stuff in there is more than one or two days of deliveries.’
‘Huh. You’re right. So who’s been getting rid of it?’
Instead of answering, I knocked again, listening to the sound echo through the house as the reverberations died away. We waited for a full minute, but there was no noise from inside.
‘I’d really like to get in and have a look around.’ I leaned back to look up at the windows again.
‘Well, why don’t you? You’ve got your Asp in the car. A quick knock to the kitchen window and a leg-up for me, and Bob’s your uncle.’
‘I’m sure you’re not suggesting we should break in. We need a warrant. The only exception to the rule I can think of is section seventeen of PACE: “saving life or limb”. And I’m not aware of either being in jeopardy.’
Liv leaned in, her ear to the wood of the door. ‘Did you hear that?’
‘What?’
‘I thought I heard someone call for help.’
‘Yeah, right.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Do you want to go in or not?’
I did, as it happened. ‘You must have excelle
nt hearing. Where’s this window?’
‘Get your Asp and follow me.’
I got my Maglite as well as my extendable baton and walked around to the back of the house where a small window by the back door had a useful rain butt underneath it.
‘Are you sure you’ll fit through there?’
‘Positive.’
‘Stand back, then.’ I shielded my face with one arm and hit the window in the centre, a sharp tap with the end of the baton that sent cracks across the glass and knocked a few triangles of it to the floor inside. No one came running at the sound of the blow, or the tinkling chips of glass as they landed. I ran the Asp around the edge of the frame, knocking out the jagged edges as best I could. It wasn’t even close to safe.
‘You’ll tear yourself to ribbons on that, Liv.’
‘I’ll put this over the windowsill.’ She had found a sack, a rough-looking thing that had once held coal. ‘Good thing I decided to wear black today.’
‘Me too.’ I was craning to see in through the empty window. ‘I don’t think this kitchen has been cleaned in recent memory, and I’m fairly sure the rest of the house is in a similar state.’
‘Let’s have a look.’ She elbowed me to one side and laid the sack over the edge of the window.
‘Do you need a leg-up?’
‘I can manage.’ She clambered onto the rain butt and perched on the windowsill for a second, before slipping inside with a small thud and a crunch of broken glass. Her voice sounded hollow when she spoke, echoing in the sparsely furnished room. ‘I’ll open the back door.’
I went around and waited, listening to her fumbling to draw the bolts and turn the key in the door. The lock was stiff and uncooperative. From the cobwebs spun across the door, no one had used it for a long time, and when Liv finally got it open, she had to drag it back across the floor. The wood made a shrieking noise against the tiles that set my teeth on edge. I leaned my shoulder against it and pushed as she pulled, and between the two of us we got the door to open wide enough that I could slide through the gap. The air that greeted me was unexpectedly fresh and cold. I looked around, noticing the vent in the wall that was breathing a chilly draught on the side of my face, the gap at the edge of the tiles where the skirting board didn’t quite meet the floor. The house was far less solid than it pretended to be. The wind tossing the conifers outside moved through it with a whine that might almost have been a lament.
‘The bulb is dead.’ Liv flicked the wall switch up and down a couple of times, then moved to the worktop where a small jug kettle was standing. It sighed into action as soon as she turned it on. ‘Okay. So there is electricity. Just no light.’
‘Not bright in here, is it?’ I turned my torch on and spun around slowly, picking out the gas cooker complete with a frying pan on top of it, the base still filmy with grease. There was a cup on the side by the sink and I leaned over to look inside, seeing a brown tidemark. ‘Someone drinks tea. Or maybe coffee.’
‘Recently?’
‘It’s not mouldy.’ Nothing was, in fact. ‘This doesn’t make sense. Someone has been here, and recently, but the house is completely neglected.’
‘Well, we’re in now. Let’s have a look around.’
We were talking in low voices, even though we had made enough noise breaking into the place to get anyone’s attention. I found myself tiptoeing as I followed Liv into the hall and I made myself walk properly, confidently, as befitted a police officer on official business.
Liv went to one side of the hall and I took the other, opening doors and cupboards. Inside, the rooms looked even more pitiful, neglected and unused.
‘What do you think of this?’
I crossed the hall to see where Liv was looking and found a small, over-furnished sitting room. The walls looked like a jumble sale waiting to happen – random pictures and tapestries hung at odd heights. The shelves of a bamboo whatnot that lurked in one corner held a vast collection of ornaments and outright junk: old batteries, a hairbrush, a pair of glasses lying lens-down with the arms folded in like a dead beetle’s legs, a sheaf of envelopes, a few assorted keys, a metal bracket long-divorced from whatever it had held. An ancient television sat on a low table, a red light announcing that it was on stand-by. A blanket lay folded on the sofa in front of it, beside a half-eaten packet of crisps. The air smelled of cheese and onion. I picked up a crisp experimentally and found it was soft, giving a little as I pressed it between my finger and thumb. It suggested the packet had been open for a while. The sofa was cold, the cushions ridged in their positions.
‘It looks as if someone’s been using this room, but not for a few hours at least. Maybe yesterday or the day before.’
Liv nodded. ‘Upstairs?’
‘Yeah. I’ll go first.’ I really didn’t want to, which was all the more reason to force myself. Liv had taken the lead in getting into the house in the first place; I owed it to her to take my turn.
The stairs creaked, of course, and I went up them slowly, past the stained-glass window. The landing was square, shadowy and smelled of drains; I wrinkled my nose at Liv and saw her react as it hit her too.
‘Yuck.’
All of the doors were closed. I tried the one nearest me and discovered a bedroom, the walls decorated in bilious green paper, which was ripped. A splatter of something that might once have been soup decorated one wall. A wafer-thin pillow sagged at one end of the bed and a coverlet was thrown haphazardly over the foot. There was nothing on the nightstand beside it except for a dark-pink porcelain lamp with a tasselled shade.
‘Classy,’ Liv commented. I moved in far enough to open the wardrobe with a wary finger, seeing nothing but empty hangers. There was a smell of mothballs that I found oddly reassuring; better that than an infestation. The floorboards groaned under me as I turned to leave and I pulled a face as I made a long stride to reach the relative safety of the hall.
‘If I go through the floor, call an ambulance.’
‘I will if I have any reception.’ Liv took out her phone and thumbed it on to see. ‘Two bars. I’d probably get through. Where are we again?’
‘Bonamy Lodge, also known as Bancroft’s House of Horrors. Imagine what it must have been like ten years ago.’ I opened the next door to discover a dilapidated bathroom, the walls tiled in bleak white, the sink grey with dirt. ‘Not all that different, I’m guessing.’
Liv poked her head around the door beside the bathroom. ‘A loo. I’m not going near it.’
‘That must be where the smell is coming from.’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’ She sniffed. ‘It’s by no means fresh in there, that’s for sure.’
I was laughing at the expression on her face as I tried the next door. The door stuck a little and I shoved it with my shoulder, stumbling into the room as it gave way. The curtains were drawn and it was hard to see much at first; I had a vague impression of a double bed, a chest of drawers, a dressing table with a three-fold mirror where I saw myself in triplicate recovering my balance. The coverlet had fallen off the bed, the sheets slipping sideways as if someone had jumped out of it in a hurry and left it in disarray. I turned and ran the torch over the furniture, picking up a reflection from silver-backed brushes and the glass in photo frames on top of the chest of drawers.
‘That’s Drew. That’s Lee.’ I went over for a closer look, seeing skinny and awkward juvenile versions of the confident men I’d met. Both had features too large for their faces in the pictures; it had taken them time to grow into their appearance. Lee looked uninterested, Drew was smiling widely. ‘This must be Michael’s room.’
When Liv responded, her voice was shaky. ‘Down there. There’s something … down there.’
I shone the torch where she was pointing and realised with a spasm of horror that the tumbling bedclothes were draped over a shape that lay on the floor beside the bed, not three feet from where I was standing. It was a long, thin shape that was somehow unmistakably human, even before I saw the waxy yellow hand reaching out und
er the bed, pleading for mercy that hadn’t been shown. I moved forward, holding my breath, and shone the torch down on the side of the body’s head. Michael Bancroft, I presumed, and there was no doubt that he was dead. Not recently, either.
‘There’s no smell of decomp.’
‘It’s dry in here and pretty cold.’ I leaned closer. ‘I don’t want to step on Glen Hanshaw’s toes, but it looks as if he’s mummified.’
‘Not much insect activity inside the house. Especially if it happened in winter.’
‘Yeah, and I wouldn’t even be too sure that it was this winter.’ I stepped back delicately, watching where I put my feet. ‘We’d better call it in. Godley will definitely want to make sure this isn’t murder.’
Liv was holding her phone, looking troubled. ‘If he hasn’t been drinking coffee and watching TV, who has?’
‘Good question.’ I left her standing in the hall, dialling 999, and carried on to the next room, also a bedroom, this one as untouched and unlovable as the first we’d found. One for Lee, one for Drew, and Uncle Michael dead in the middle. Happy families. Maybe the brothers liked to come back and stay. Maybe it was a home from home for them.
I had got back to the top of the stairs. I looked around the landing, wondering what I was missing. I ran through what I had seen room by room: the kitchen, the dining room, the small sitting room, the hall, the bedroom – the small sitting room. What was it about that? The keys. Everyone had old keys hanging around their house. The glasses. Upside down. You wouldn’t leave your own glasses like that: the lenses might scratch. Dumped was the word that occurred to me. Black arms, folded in. Dust on them. There a long time. Forgotten.
Liv was giving the dispatcher directions to the house. I waited until she rang off. ‘Did you see any outbuildings when you did your tour? Sheds?’
‘No. There’s nothing but fields behind the house. There was a garage on the left, but it was empty.’
I looked around again, seeing the unhelpfully blank doors, a bad landscape on one wall, an ugly opalescent light hanging down from the middle of the ceiling like a deformed Christmas bauble. My eye tracked upwards along the line of its chain, to the ceiling rose that was splintered, to the square hatch beside it that led to a loft.