by Granger, Ann
Jess changed tack. ‘So tell me if there is anything at all that Matt’s been doing recently that’s a change to the usual pattern?’
Sarah hesitated. ‘He’s had a bit of time on his hands, as I said. He didn’t want to hang round the flat. We’re hoping to buy a place of our own. We’d like an old traditional house in the country somewhere round here, near enough for me to drive in to work and with pleasant quiet surroundings for Matt to do his work. The trouble with our flat is that it’s noisy. The road outside is busy; it’s on a bus route. The other people in the house, other residents, are always coming and going. The flat’s not very big and rather dark and we don’t have a garden. You can see why we’d like to move somewhere more secluded and roomy.’
‘The sort of country house you were describing would be expensive,’ Jess commented.
‘We realise that. We would like to find a place that needed renovating. It could be really run down. Then we could buy cheaper and take our time fixing the place up. Matt’s been driving round the countryside, looking out to see if he can spot anything within a reasonable journey time from Cheltenham.’
A prickle ran along Jess’s spine. ‘So Matthew has been exploring the back roads recently, looking out for rundown properties?’
‘Yes! I just told you so.’ Sarah sounded impatient again.
‘Had he found any possible property for your purposes?’ Jess tried to keep her voice casual.
Sarah’s gaze sharpened and she measured Jess with a look. ‘He did say there was one place, but he wasn’t sure about it. I don’t know where it was exactly. I think he was worried there might be a problem with ownership … or with the owner. He wanted to clear that up before he took me to see it.’
‘The problem wouldn’t be that the owner lived abroad, would it?’ asked Jess.
Sarah blinked. ‘How do you know?’
‘Did he tell you the name and address or the house in question?’ Jess avoided a direct answer.
‘No, he didn’t. It was out of the way, he said. He asked about it in a local pub and the landlord told him about the absentee owner and directed him to a solicitor who represents the guy. So Matt talked to the solicitor, who was the one who said he didn’t think the owner had any intention of selling.’
‘Name of this solicitor?’ asked Jess, picking up her pen.
‘Began with an F … Fawcott? No, something like that.’
‘Foscott?’
‘Yes, that’s it!’ Sarah’s green gaze held suspicion. ‘You sound as if you know the property I’m talking about. What’s happened?’
Jess again ignored the question. ‘It would help if you could let us have a photo of Mr Pietrangelo.’
Sarah dived into her capacious shoulder bag. ‘Here, I’ve brought you three.’
‘Thank you. We’ll be in touch,’ Jess said.
‘That’s it?’ Sarah blinked and looked taken aback.
‘We’ll be on to it straight away, don’t worry about that. There’s a procedure in these cases.’
Sarah got reluctantly to her feet. ‘I’ve tried the local hospitals,’ she said, ‘in case he’d had an accident. But he’s not in any of them. They’ve no record of him turning up at A and E. If he had smashed himself up, somewhere in the countryside, you’d know about it by now, wouldn’t you? Where’s his car, anyway?’
Where, indeed? ‘Do you have the make and registration of the vehicle?’
‘It’s a Renault Clio. I’ll write the registration down for you.’ Sarah rummaged in her bag and produced a notebook and pen. She scribbled in the notebook, tore out the page and handed it to Jess, who thanked her.
‘That’s fine. We’ll send out the car’s details and someone should spot it pretty soon.’
Sarah wasn’t moving towards the door. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me,’ she said accusingly. ‘And I’m not budging until I know what it is. You do recognise the property from what I told you, don’t you? Where is it? Has Matt been there?’
Jess drew a deep breath. ‘There is an outside possibility …’
‘So it seems the body may be that of Matthew Pietrangelo?’ Carter said. ‘She’s not going to be able to identify him for certain from the burned remains.’
‘I’ve explained that,’ Jess said. ‘It was difficult. She was all for rushing down to the morgue. When I finally managed to convince her that what was there was pretty gruesome and unrecognisable, she broke down. But she’s pulled herself together. She’s a tough nut, in my view. She worried, of course, and even more worried now. But she won’t go to pieces.’
‘Mm … It does seem a distinct possibility Pietrangelo could be our corpse. We need either to establish that or eliminate him from our enquiries as quickly as possible. But all the signs point in his direction! Mrs Trenton saw a man examining the house by torchlight. We know from the girlfriend that it was just the sort of place she and Pietrangelo were hunting for. It’s situated off the beaten track. It was clearly empty. Mrs Trenton says she didn’t speak to the man she saw, and so we don’t know for sure. But, according to his girlfriend, Pietrangelo spoke to someone in a pub about the house and was told the owner lives abroad and does business through a solicitor named Foscott. He took the next logical step to establish who owned it, hoping to get in touch. Pietrangelo looked up local solicitors and found Foscott. He spoke to him and realised immediately there was a problem. The owner didn’t want to sell. A really wealthy expat might well choose to hold on to a property in this country in case he needed to return. Pietrangelo had come up against an obstacle and was working out a way to get over it, not telling his girlfriend too much about the property until such time as purchasing it appeared more realistic.’
Carter’s voice hardened. ‘I’ll certainly be having another word with Reggie Foscott. He’s been holding out on us, on me in particular! If Key House features in a case, then anyone asking him questions recently about it and its owner is of interest to the police. Foscott’s been around long enough to know that. When we spoke, he should have told me.’ Carter’s voice was grim. ‘Add to that, Mrs Foscott is apparently related to Gervase Crown. I wonder if that’s the reason Foscott is being so discreet?’
‘In the meantime,’ said Jess, ‘we’ll get out to their flat and bring away some personal items like the DVDs she mentioned, and the electric shaver, to see if we can get Pietrangelo’s fingerprints, and hair samples. The damaged prints Pete Nichols lifted from the corpse are only good enough to rule out Crown. It’s another thing to identify Pietrangelo from them for certain. It’s probably going to come down to DNA, always supposing we can get some usable stuff from the remains. Tom thinks that will be possible. Pietrangelo also has a sister and mother we can ask for samples for comparison, so we’ll get on to that straight away.’
‘Do the sister and mother know Pietrangelo has gone missing? Someone will have to inform them before we turn up on the doorstep talking about DNA analysis of a corpse.’
‘Sarah Gresham has undertaken to inform them, now there’s a possibility her boyfriend is dead. She didn’t want to alarm them before. She said it would be better if they heard it from her before we contacted them. Luckily, Sarah comes across as a sensible and reliable person, now the first shock is over. She’s also given us the name of his dentist. He had some dental work done six months ago, so there should be a good and up-to-date record of his teeth.’
Carter stared down at the photographs Sarah Gresham had left with them. ‘He may be third-generation in this country but he’s still got a Mediterranean look about him. Handsome chap, would you agree, Jess?’
‘Yes, but full of himself. I mean, he looks a bit overconfident to me.’ Jess was cautious.
‘Overcurious, perhaps,’ said Carter with a sudden and totally unexpected grin. Seeing her blank look, he explained, ‘Curiosity killed the cat. Pietrangelo was curious about Key House. Did that kill him? Send Bennison and Stubbs around the local pubs with copies of these and find the pub Pietrangelo was in. It couldn’t have
been so long ago that he was there asking and the landlord should remember. It would be nice to have confirmation we are talking about the same enquirer or if there was someone else asking about the house.’
‘The superintendent made a joke?’ Morton asked Jess disbelievingly, a few minutes later.
‘I wouldn’t call it a joke, more a witticism.’
‘Not his style,’ opined Morton. ‘What’s he got to be so cheerful about?’
Chapter 6
Petra had returned to work after Kit left. She needed to. She had to have something to take her mind off the disturbing news. Gervase was coming back. She ordered herself not to be stupid and let herself get into a state about it. As she’d told Kit and repeated to herself now: the last place he’d turn up was here at The Barn.
It couldn’t be the first time Gervase had returned to the area, surely? If so, he’d sneaked in and out without attracting notice. Reggie Foscott would know but might have been discreet about it, probably under instruction.
‘And I,’ said Petra aloud, as Kit’s car roared out of the driveway in a shower of gravel, ‘am probably the last person he’d want to see.’
Still, as people occasionally pointed out and Key House began to crumble into decay, Gervase Crown did still own the family home even if he’d not attempted to live in it after his father’s death. He had a responsibility. But Gervase had never been strong on taking responsibility. He’d only hung around long enough after his father’s funeral to empty out the house like a giant waste bin of things no longer of any use to him. Out had gone the memories, good and bad. Out had gone the books to some second-hand bookshop in Cheltenham, and clothes to Oxfam. Gervase’s boyhood train set and box of Lego bricks had pitched up at a local church fête. The nearest saleroom had benefited from the antique furniture and china. A house sale had pretty well taken care of everything else and a house clearance company had come in to remove what little had remained. Everyone had fully expected that, following the clearance, the house would appear on the market and there had been much speculation as to who might buy it. It had not happened. If at long last Gervase was coming to the area now it was only because that neglected family property had burned down.
The news of the house’s destruction had shocked her more deeply than she hoped Kit had realised. Petra’s earliest memory of Key House dated back to the days when Sebastian had been alive – and still married – and Gervase a little boy living in a then family home. Yet even as a family home it has seemed wanting to young Petra. Her own home had been a noisy, untidy place but full of laughter and squabbles with Kit, various animals adopted as pets, her mother standing over an open recipe book in the kitchen, surrounded by boiling pots, her father bravely eating the exotic but botched result, when all he’d really wanted was straightforward meat and two veg.
The Crown household had been perfect to the eye, not a thing out of place, an image from a glossy magazine of upmarket interiors. But it had been so quiet that Amanda Crown’s high heels tapping across the polished parquet echoed noisily as she came to greet her visitors. Amanda had cut a glamorous figure, elegant and restless, usually clad in some floaty garment of rippling silk or other expensive material, and cleverly draped scarves that must have been kept in place by hidden pins, because they never moved. She’d overawed young Petra and Kit and their mother, too. Mrs Stapleton had always ‘made an effort’ when visiting Key House, digging from her wardrobe a little-worn outfit. Inevitably she had put on a pound or two since the outfit’s last appearance, or the skirt length was no longer in fashion. Mrs Stapleton would then sit on Amanda’s white leather sofa, tugging unhappily at her hemline, while Amanda poured tea or coffee, depending on the time of day, into bone china cups.
Petra, also forced into a ‘best skirt and top’, would squirm in sympathy with, and embarrassment at, her mother’s awkwardness. She had overheard her own father describe Amanda as a ‘clothes horse’. But Petra would have given her eye teeth to grow up looking like that. As a little girl, she’d just gazed at Amanda, fascinated. Kit hadn’t cared. She would drum her heels against the white leather of the armchair in which she slumped, despite the increasingly desperate telegraphed messages from her mother.
What Petra had always secretly hoped was that Gervase would be there, home from school. Then Amanda would say carelessly, ‘Why don’t you two girls go outside and see if Gervase is there? He’s around somewhere.’
If he was, and they found him, he and Kit would immediately begin to argue. She, Petra, would follow behind as they roamed over the fields, longing to join in, not to argue but just to talk to him, yet not knowing how.
Curiously, considering that the money paying for all the expensive luxury came from canine care products, the Crowns kept no dogs as pets. It wasn’t just the dogs that were missing. There was no love at Key House. Petra had sensed its absence without really understanding it.
She’d met Sebastian several times and not liked him much. He had seemed distant. No one had expressed any surprise that the Crowns had split up, although Petra had been surprised at the lack of reaction on Gervase’s part at the time. Her questions, put to him with a childish lack of subtlety, had been received with a brusque, ‘Don’t ask me about it. No one ever tells me anything!’ She’d sensed his hurt and wanted to console him but realised consolation wouldn’t be well received.
Later in her teens she’d taken to hanging round Gervase whenever he was home and the opportunity occurred, hoping to gain his attention in another way. I always had a crush on him, she thought now ruefully. When he offered to drive me back from the party that evening, I knew he was drunk, of course I did. I knew he’d already had one accident in which he’d smashed up a car. But I was just so happy that he offered me a lift home, I hopped into the car with nothing in my mind but that I’d have his company all to myself.
And then … Petra closed her eyes but couldn’t shut out the memory. It must have happened quickly but at the time seemed to happen in slow motion. The car slewing round, the dry stone wall of a field coming ever closer. Gervase swearing, panic in his voice, and twisting the wheel, powerless to avert disaster. She’d thrown up her arms to shield her face, but she couldn’t remember the moment of impact or the immediate aftermath. She regained consciousness in a hospital bed.
Petra thrust away the memory. She wheeled herself out to the barn and picked up her paintbrush. She’d nearly finished the commissioned artwork for Black Beauty. Another hour at it, perhaps not even that, and it would be ready. She was pleased with it. She’d attempted and dismissed various ideas, and in the end rejected all the assembled period props, too: the riding habit, the side-saddle. She’d settled for the single figure of the horse-hero himself, rearing up, mane tossing, nostrils flaring, glossy black coat gleaming, set against a pale landscape.
When she heard a car stop in the road outside she paid little attention. Tourists, driving round the lanes, did sometimes stop to take a second look at The Barn. Then she heard the creak of the gate and the footsteps. The visitor hesitated, probably wondering whether to go to the cottage or come here to the studio.
He opted for the studio. She knew it was a man from the weight of his tread and also because her senses had sprung into life with an awareness that was almost panic. Not the sort of panic associated with fear, but of facing a moment she had imagined so often over the last few years and which was now about to become reality. Black Beauty, rearing up on the canvas, seemed to express her feelings, his wild eye directed over her shoulder towards the entrance.
She herself didn’t turn round, couldn’t bear to, but found herself thinking, Thank God Kit has left. The newcomer cleared his throat to attract attention.
Petra swivelled the wheelchair at last to face the shadowy outline in the open barn door.
‘Gervase,’ she said.
Chapter 7
The backstreet garage and repair business had a battered sign outside that read: Used Motors. MOTs. All Types of Service. On its forecourt a variety of
cars, certainly far from the first flush of youth, awaited potential purchasers. Cards announcing the prices were propped in the windscreens. The cards had yellowed through long exposure to the sun. There was no sense of bustling activity. The business did not appear to be thriving.
The Renault Clio turned into the forecourt and a young man got out. He walked over to the open door of the workshop and peered into the gloom.
‘Gaz? You here? Gaz?’
Receiving no reply, he ventured inside and made his way cautiously to an office at the rear. Through its glass panels he could see someone sitting with feet propped up, mug in hand, reading a tabloid newspaper. The visitor tapped on the glass.
The man on the other side turned his head, but didn’t lower his feet, put down his mug or his paper.
‘What do you want?’ His voice was muffled through the glass. He could now be seen to have a long narrow face, made to appear more so by the lack of hair on the top of his head. To compensate for this, hair still growing at the back of his head had been allowed to curl down over his collar.
‘I got a bit of business for you, Gaz.’ The visitor sounded positive, even optimistic. He’d rehearsed the words before coming, lest a nervous tremor destroy the confidence of his approach. He brought them out now with an air of achievement.
‘What sort of business?’ The muffled voice was sceptical.
‘Clio. It’s in good nick.’
Now the man in the office put down coffee and newspaper and got to his feet. Like his head, the rest of him was long and thin. He came out of his retreat and looked the visitor up and down. ‘Where is it, then?’
‘Out front.’
The thin man peered past him at the Clio out in the forecourt. ‘Stupid sod,’ he said. ‘What did you leave it out there for? Trying to advertise it to the cops?’