A Stranger's House

by Clare Chase

  The woman whose portrait hung opposite the bed, between the windows, exuded happiness. The look in her eyes spoke of love, unsullied and simple, and a kind of joy radiated from her. If Damien Newbold inspired such pure, uncomplicated emotion in any woman he was lucky, I thought, looking round at the indications of his complex sex life.

  But it was the woman whose portrait hung over the bed that stood out. Her hair was tousled, and there was a look of fiery challenge in her wild eyes. If Damien Newbold was playing her for a fool, you got the impression he might get his fingers burnt.

  Chapter Three

  Nate spent a couple of hours delving into Damien Newbold’s Internet presence. He was playing catch-up; it was normally the first thing he did before signing up a new client. Admittedly, the lengths he went to varied, depending on who he was dealing with. When he’d first started the business, he’d researched everyone’s background equally. And, of course, the elderly, well-to-do of East Anglia didn’t make much of a mark on the web, so he’d enquire elsewhere. As the months went on, he gained a bit of perspective, and became more selective about the research he did. He didn’t spend much time on people like the vicar of Little Haxstead. The chances of him having any link to the crooks whose paths Nate had crossed were on the slim side.

  As for Newbold, he came across as a standard rich businessman, working for one of the hi-tech Silicon Fen companies that abounded near Cambridge. The way he’d tailored the house-sitting contract marked him out as a tosser, but you could hardly hang a man for that. There were no untoward connections in his past that rang alarm bells.

  Nate got up to switch on the light. It was after nine and the shadows of the trees on the paving outside had lost their sharp edges. Probably time for some food. He walked across the quarry tiles to the aging fridge freezer. Inevitably, Speck sauntered in at that moment and rubbed herself against his legs.

  ‘Cupboard love, you treacherous cat.’ He bent down to stroke her all the same. No wonder she’d adopted him. He was a soft touch where she was concerned.

  He hadn’t remembered to go shopping, but there was still half of the crusty loaf he’d bought the day before. Nate hacked off chunks and ate it with cheese and pickle, washed down with a couple of cans of Adnams. He was half-conscious of the trees and pathways that made up the gardens at Two Wells Farm, as the greys turned to indigoes and purples. Most of his mind was taken up with the day. He ought to have asked Steph more about Ruby Fawcett. She’d got as far as telling him about her work, and the fact that she’d trust her with anything from the care of her pot plants to her life, if the need should arise. That had been sufficient, but, having met her, Nate found he wanted to know more. She and Steph were an odd match, chalk and cheese on the face of it, yet they’d remained close friends since childhood. Dim and distant snippets of information came back to him now. Hadn’t Steph mentioned something about Ruby on one of the family holidays they’d shared, way back when they were kids? Something about her best friend’s mother having taken her off travelling? He vaguely remembered Steph sounding fed up about it. But maybe it had been some other friend. It was all too long ago to remember clearly.

  After he’d finished eating, he did his usual walk, once round the perimeter of the house, looking out along the lane that led towards the village. Better safe than sorry.

  Something woke Nate with a start around two in the morning, but he could see through the curtains that the security lights hadn’t come on. For a moment he focused on listening, but he was distracted by memories of the dream he’d been having. Ruby Fawcett still filled his mind’s eye. He lay flat on his back and let the image and its effects fade. Then he turned over, and closed his eyes. Hell. Was that why he hadn’t wanted to turn her away?

  It went without saying that it wouldn’t do, for a myriad of reasons. Nate pressed his face into the pillow. Her recent break-up was probably the least of them.

  Whether it was because of Damien Newbold’s paintings, my long early evening nap, or my pizza binge I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t sleep well that night. When my mind wasn’t on the pictures it strayed back to Luke, floating between an image of him laughing, after we’d come back from our last bike ride together, to the look in his eyes when he’d had to explain to me what he’d done. I wasn’t sure which made me more miserable.

  It was hard to banish the thoughts, and they almost made me forget physical discomfort, but not quite. It was incredibly hot. Eventually I caved in and slid the sash window open at the top, issuing an invitation to every no-good roaming the Common to come on in and see what was on offer at my place. Once again I rued the fact that Damien Newbold had told me to sleep downstairs.

  Before I returned to bed I pulled the curtain back for a moment to look out into the night. Dim lights lit the Common’s footpaths, both right next to the house, as well as over on the other side of the grass, by the river, but between these little pools of comfort there were vast shadowy areas – peppered with caravans, half-erected tents and stalls – where anyone might be lurking.

  Disconcerted, I went back to bed and lay there, my ears straining for the possible sound of someone outside, easing up the bottom sash.

  Thanks to only achieving sleep by three or so, I woke late and lay there in my so-called bed, stretching so that the springs creaked and moaned. It was only a knock at the door that ensured I got up at all. Hell, who could it be? I was still in my night things and this now seemed a bit embarrassing, given that it was ten past ten on a weekday.

  I had contorted myself around the furniture, and was making for the hall at top speed, when I felt a sudden pain in the sole of my right foot. The knocking came again, firmer this time, so I didn’t stop to investigate, but limped along to open up.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ Damien’s postman said, a smirk spreading across his face. ‘Package for Mr Newbold that wouldn’t go through the letterbox.’ He handed me a jiffy bag, together with a couple of junk mail envelopes, and sloped off up the path to the house on the other side of Midsummer Passage, turning once to look back at me over his shoulder.

  I put the post down on the hall table. What had happened to my foot? Each time I put my weight on it, pain shot through my heel. I sat down in an ungainly position to find out what was wrong. It didn’t take long. A piece of glass, broken into a sharp shard, and quite a decent size too. My mind strayed back to the blood on the rug as I picked it out and deposited it in the drawing room bin.

  I must have been near the fireplace when I’d stepped on it. I went over to check for any other stray bits that might be lurking there. Before long I found a second, jammed in between two of the floorboards. My DMs were clearly essential on health and safety grounds.

  The shower Damien Newbold had instructed me to use was downstairs, next to the cloakroom where I’d changed the day before and a boot room, off which came a back door to the garden.

  The boot room was full of mud and spiders, so I was braced for the horrors that the shower might present. In fact, all was well. The new day was already beginning to heat up, like the one before it, and the one before that. The sun penetrated the shower room’s obscured glass, making the clean, white wall tiles gleam. I adjusted the water temperature so it was warm, rather than hot, and let the jets run over my head, closing my eyes.

  In the kitchen, I decided to eat before I did any clearing up. Although I hadn’t been food shopping, I’d got a banana and a reasonably inoffensive cereal bar in my rucksack, so I fetched those, and made myself a coffee using a spoonful of Damien Newbold’s instant. He had some little canisters and a machine for making proper stuff, but the complexities of this seemed too great at the moment.

  It occurred to me that Damien Newbold might have left some milk in the fridge, given how hard it always is to make sure everything’s finished off before one goes away.

  Well, opening the fridge door was interesting. Damien had certainly found this aspect of waste-free housekeeping particularly challenging. Not only was there milk in the door – a two l
itre bottle, three-quarters full – there were also two packets of smoked salmon, an unused pint of double cream and two punnets of strawberries. Inside the dairy drawer there were packets of Brie, Stilton and Roquefort. Not to mention champagne on the fridge’s bottle shelf and some posh pâté.

  I shoved all his stuff on to the top shelf; then at least I could isolate some space for my food, when I got it. As I moved the smoked salmon I glanced at the use-by date. Monday 8th June, three days’ time. Given he hadn’t just gone for the weekend, it, plus most of this other stuff, would be off by the time Damien Newbold got back. Crazy. I was tempted to go freegan and pinch it for my own use, but it seemed too dishonest. And anyway, I didn’t much fancy eating his food.

  Back at the kitchen table, nibbling at my cereal bar, it occurred to me that if Damien Newbold’s fridge contents was anything to go by, he must have walked out of his life in very much the same way as I had: right in the middle of things.

  In the end, I didn’t fancy the banana after the cereal bar. In the heat of the room it came to me that the kitchen bin smelt bad. I went to investigate. Hmm, mackerel skins. On top of a lot of other rubbish. That would explain it. To be fair, I hadn’t even thrown away my takeaway pizza box yet. I went to grab it, then wrenched the overstuffed bag out of Damien’s Brabantia bin, and made my way through the boot room to the back door.

  Outside, sunlight saturated the view, bouncing off the pale Cambridge bricks of the garden wall and the flagstone paving. Large pots were dotted around. One contained a cistus, its hot pink flowers in full show, another a clematis which sprawled over a trellis. A long trough was crowded with lavender, its scent filling the air as I brushed past.

  Damien had three wheelie bins, each labelled with instructions from the council. After scanning them, I dumped the pizza box in the green one, then lifted the lid of the black bin, hoisting the rubbish bag up. I was just about to let it drop when something caught my eye. I paused for a moment.

  More glass. And not just glass, but a broken mirror. The shard I had stepped on had been ordinary glass, and there in the bin, on top of the mirror frame, was a broken whisky tumbler. My mind flicked to the mantelpiece, with the seascape above it that looked so out of place.

  I put my bag of rubbish in at last and walked slowly back into the cool of the house.

  Chapter Four

  Nate spent the morning with a prospective house-sitting client, Pippa Craven. She had an Elizabethan place just outside Bury St Edmunds: a real Aladdin’s cave, full of paintings, statues and wall hangings. He put her at around forty. She was very smart, with a perfectly executed pixie crop and a well-cut purple dress. It turned out she was considering relocating to Paris, to be with her boyfriend of six months, but wanted to try out living together before burning her boats. As an art collector, she couldn’t risk letting to tenants. Touching that she had such faith in his outfit. Nate imagined someone like Barry, one of his regular sitters, plonking around amongst the canvases. Perhaps not. But Jamie was lighter on his feet. He’d do.

  Nate got back into the Volvo on the shingled drive, thinking of Pippa’s determination to check things out before selling up. Had some kind of past trouble made her cautious? Funny to think how cavalier he’d been on the subject of risk just a few short years ago. When Jack had taken Nate on to help with his PI business he’d told him to take more care. Nate had laughed it off, thinking it was only his personal safety that was at stake.

  Once he got back to Two Wells Farm he called Steph. He wanted to know if Ruby was the childhood friend she’d talked about, all those years before.

  ‘Wow – you’ve got a good memory,’ she said. ‘But you always were one for details. Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘And I remember you were cross because her mother had taken her off travelling.’

  ‘So I was. Blimey, I’d almost forgotten that myself, it was so long ago. I think we’d made plans to do things over the summer, but then Eve – that’s Ruby’s mum – dragged her away and ruined everything.’

  ‘So does she come from a rich family? Were they off somewhere exotic?’

  Steph sounded surprised. ‘Oh no. It wasn’t like that. They were sort of middle class, I suppose, like us. Ruby’s grandparents were both teachers. Eve had Ruby very young, before she was ready to settle down, so Ruby spent a lot of time living with them. But every so often, Eve would reappear and take Ruby off, claiming she was ready to start afresh. Then after a bit she’d run out of money, and they’d end up sleeping on one of her friends’ sofas. And then Ruby would arrive back at her grandparents’ place again.’

  ‘Shit. That must have played havoc with her schooling.’ And perhaps that was why he’d sensed Ruby was tough, too. She’d have to have been.

  ‘Yes, she did well academically, considering. That was thanks to her grandparents being able to coach her.’

  ‘They sound great.’

  There was a pause. ‘They were,’ Steph said. ‘They were killed in a car crash whilst Ruby was at university. You can imagine the effect that had.’

  He could. Ruby had spent an awful lot of time fending for herself.

  I don’t know what sent me back upstairs to Damien Newbold’s bedroom. I suppose the two discoveries I’d made since I’d arrived – the broken glass in the bin, and the nude paintings – were linked in my mind because they triggered the same reaction: that feeling that there was more to come. And that it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  The day before, I’d been glad to leave the bedroom behind. Now I wanted to look at the pictures more closely. Who had the artist been? It must have been someone commissioned by Damien Newbold, of course. What on earth must they have thought of him, each time he presented them with yet another female to commit to oils? Though perhaps it might depend on just how often he put in a request.

  But there were no dates on the paintings, and no signatures either, except on the one between the two windows. Someone called ‘Nico’ had signed the picture of the happy woman, and now I looked more closely, the style of that painting was quite different from the rest. I peered at his signature. He’d made a strange little mark, like a hat, next to his name. Not that that told me anything and, in any case, I didn’t know what I was expecting to find out. Suddenly, standing there on the north side of the house, I felt chilly and was glad it was time to go outside and do something mundane, like food shopping.

  There was a good deal of everyday reality to help me feel better out on Midsummer Common. Two women were trying to put up a large, red tent, each struggling to push an end of the same bendy pole into separate holes. Finally, one lost her grip and fell forwards onto the grass, which left them both roaring with laughter. A little further on, one man was cleaning Portaloos whilst another checked some cables that ran through a channel under the path that criss-crossed the grass.

  Then I reached Riverside. A lady with ash-grey, corrugated hair, tied back in a loose ponytail, flew past me on her bike, followed closely by a man in a cream coloured sunhat riding a tricycle and staring intently at a handlebar-mounted GPS. You wouldn’t get that in Saxwell St Andrew.

  It was on my way back from the supermarket that I got Steph’s text: Coming over to see you. Presume you’re in?

  I sent a message back: No need. Really. Everything fine.

  Quick as a flash another one popped up: I shall presume for the sake of our friendship that you want to see me really. Be there at half-two. Steph.

  It felt as though I’d only just beaten the shopping into submission when Steph turned up. As I steered her through to the kitchen I noticed she was holding something in her left hand and wearing the same expression as a traffic warden about to issue a parking fine.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, keen to get any unpleasantness out of the way before we started on the tea and chat.

  She grimaced. ‘Sorry. It’s from Luke.’ She put the envelope on the kitchen table between us as she sat down, and then pushed it a little further towards me when I failed to pick it up.

 
‘When did you see him?’

  ‘He came over and knocked at our door yesterday evening.’ She looked across at me. ‘It has to be said, that shows how keen he was to get a message through to you. I don’t imagine he thought he’d get a friendly reception from me. I was tempted to chuck a bucket of water over him.’

  ‘A bucket of water?’

  ‘Well, obviously, I’d have considered sick, if I’d thought I could get it. But water would be to hand, in a way that sick wouldn’t. Anyway, the point is, I didn’t go inviting him in, or suggesting he get in touch, or anything like that.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Everyone’s being foul to him, I expect you can imagine. Judy’s even banned him from the village shop, and you know how keen she always is to maximise sales. I should think she’ll miss his beer money. He’s had a couple of people abusing him in the street too.’

  ‘Did you see all this happening?’

  ‘Well, no … He told me most of it.’

  ‘Hmm. You must have been out chatting on the doorstep for quite some time.’

  Steph made a face. ‘He did try to keep me talking, but I don’t honestly think he was looking for sympathy; trying to glean information more like.’

  I raised an eyebrow.

  ‘About you, of course. He wanted to know where you were staying. And don’t look at me like that. If you even have to ask whether I told him or not then our friendship is at an end.’

  ‘Okay. So why are you looking so shifty then?’