by Ann Granger
The businessman had produced a photo folder of his own. ‘That’s my two boys taken five years ago, on a family holiday in Majorca. When I think of what I spent on those family holidays . . . if I’d known then what I know now, I’d have kept the money and bought a sports car!’
Their heads touched, bent over the jumble of photographs representing their past lives, their dashed hopes, their spurned love, united, for a quarter of an hour at least, by their sense of loss and grievance.
Simon had gone back to Jubilee Road. The house was in darkness. He opened the front door and its stale air struck his nostrils. The place was a dump. He put out a hand to switch on the hall light and nothing happened. Bulb had gone again. The way the wiring was in this place, light bulbs lasted two minutes. He made his way up the groaning staircase in the darkness, steadying himself by grasping the rickety banister which moved beneath his grip, and pushed open the door of his room, the one at the top facing the stairs. As he did, he heard a faint creak from the next room, Micky’s. He called, ‘Mick?’ Despite himself, a faint note of hope sounded in his voice.
There was no reply. No one there. The brief flicker of anticipation at the possibility of some companionship was cruelly extinguished, added to the pile of other burnt-out hopes. Simon threw open his door and switched on his light. The room was as he had left it, that is to say a shambles, the bed unmade, sheets unwashed. Soiled linen was piled in a corner and across the table was scattered his work. Simon stood looking down at it and smiled. Yes, he’d get a good few done tonight. Some coffee would help him along. He’d go downstairs first and make a cup.
He stepped out on to the gloomy landing and hesitated at the top of the stairs, trying in the faint glow coming through the open door of his room behind him to make out the steps descending away from him into black nothingness. And then quite abruptly the light from his room was extinguished, leaving him in utter darkness.
‘Bloody hell!’ he muttered. ‘That bulb’s gone too . . .’
And that was the last clear, conscious thought he had.
Eleven
When the call came in, its contents were passed to Markby straight away. He left orders for Pearce to be contacted and told to meet him at the scene – and left for Jubilee Road prey to an emotion he had not felt for a number of years.
No policeman ever gets used to sudden violent death. If his career leads him to deal with it fairly often over a period of years he grows a protective carapace which shields him against the trauma. He may sometimes appear to outsiders to be hard-bitten but few are really so on the inside. Most hate it, every time.
Markby particularly hated violent death when it struck down the very old and the young. He hadn’t liked Pardy, but it was a young life, snuffed out. A young life misused perhaps, but one day the boy might have found his way, given time. But time had run out for Simon Pardy. Markby felt a dull anger burning inside him.
There was a patrol car before the house in Jubilee Road and a light in a bay window downstairs. The front door stood ajar with a uniformed man guarding it but no light shone in the hallway behind him. In nearby houses curtains twitched at bedroom windows. The neighbours were watching, curious, apprehensive, appalled, jubilant. Plenty of people enjoyed a good disaster provided it didn’t affect them personally and they could walk away from it, or close up the newspaper, when they’d had enough.
‘Good evening, sir,’ said the uniformed man. ‘You’ll need a torch in there. There’s no light bulb in the hall. We’ve switched on the light in the living room and opened the door but it doesn’t throw much light on the body.’
Markby paused. ‘No light bulb at all?’
‘No, sir. Looks like someone took it out. Perhaps it was broken and they meant to replace it. They’re all in the kitchen, sir, with Wpc Jones. She’s very good with shock.’
‘They?’
‘The other youngsters. Three of them. They all live in this house. You know how it is . . . they club together to pay the rent. Mind you, looking at this place, I’m surprised the landlord found anyone who wanted to live in it!’
‘Who found him?’ Markby asked, cutting off the constable’s observations on the state of the property. He could see that for himself. ‘Who reported it?’
‘One of the youngsters, one of the girls. They all came home and found him together, they reckon.’
Markby nodded, took the torch the constable offered him, and went into the frowsty-smelling hall. There was another smell in it, too. Faint, but he recognised it. Blood. And death!
Simon was sprawled on the hall floor at the foot and to one side of the staircase. He had landed face down. Blood had poured from a smashed nose and leaked horridly from his ear. His head was crookedly set on his shoulders. His eyes and mouth were open. He looked surprised. Halfway up the staircase, the banister was broken. ‘Fell from the top,’ muttered Markby, judging it with his eye. ‘Grabbed the banister or fell against it but it gave way and he crashed through to the bottom. Rotten wood.’
He put out a hand and cautiously touched the unbroken banister nearest to him. It rocked. The whole edifice was as rickety as a matchstick construction. The stairs themselves were carpeted after a fashion, but the carpeting was so old and threadbare it was little more than a hessian backing full of dust and holes, and more dangerous than it was useful. The state of decoration of the place, or lack of it, was disgusting and the occupants hardly gave the impression of being houseproud. Living in such a place they might be excused. Although they were way better off here than some of their contemporaries, sleeping in doorways. Markby flashed the torch around the hall area. Light from the living-room door, of which the constable had spoken, did little but throw a gloomy shadow. The kitchen door at the end of the hall was shut but a stronger light gleamed in a strip beneath it and the murmur of voices could be heard behind it.
A car drew up outside and was followed quickly by another. He heard the constable’s voice, then Pearce’s, then others. Pearce appeared as a dark silhouette in the front doorway, the light from the street lamp outside glowing around him. He peered into the gloom and enquired breathlessly, ‘Mr Markby?’
‘Good evening, Pearce,’ said Markby politely. ‘If that’s the photographer, he’ll need to set up his own lighting.’
Pearce edged past the body, staring down at it. ‘Turn up for the books,’ he said. He glanced up the staircase. ‘What a heap of old scrap! Think it was an accident, sir?’
‘I don’t think anything as yet. It was a singularly unfortunately timed one if it was – he was prize witness at tomorrow’s inquest.’
‘Today’s,’ said Pearce.
‘What?’ Markby glanced at his wristwatch. Five past midnight. ‘So it is. Well, at least I’ve got grounds to ask the coroner for an adjournment now. Go upstairs and take a look around, mind how you go. Keep an eye open for any sign of a struggle or that he was pushed. I’ll have a word with his friends in the kitchen.’
When he opened the kitchen door a bright yellow light suddenly bathed him and made him blink. Wpc Jones appeared in front of him, barring the way. Then she saw who it was and said, ‘Oh, good evening, sir.’
‘All quiet?’ he asked.
‘Bit upset, sir.’ Wpc Jones lowered her voice even more. ‘The lad most of all, actually. One of the girls seems a bit slow on the uptake and the other is a tough little number.’
‘The female of the species,’ said Markby. ‘Okay, Jones. Spare me that feminist glare and nip out there and see what you can do. Call on the immediate neighbours to either side and across the road. They might be a bit slow answering the door but they’re all out of bed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed . . . The net curtains are twitching in unison. Gossip, Jones. I want gossip as well as witnesses who saw him come home and anyone else – you know the drill.’
‘Gossip,’ murmured Wpc Jones, setting out on her task. ‘If I get the neighbours talking about that lot, I’ll be here all night.’
‘That lot’ faced Markby across the kitche
n table. He recognised them as the youngsters involved in the fracas in The Bunch of Grapes on New Year’s Eve. That was the youth who had tried to pull Simon out of the general scrum but hadn’t sounded very sympathetic towards him. He was a young man of about twenty-one or two, slim, pallid, nervous. On his knees he was nursing a baleful-eyed, streetwise tabby cat. The boy’s hands smoothed the cat’s short stiff fur rapidly and repeatedly.
‘Okay, son,’ said Markby mildly. ‘Take it easy.’
He pulled out a chair and joined them at the table. The kitchen was evidently the main living area of the house. It was fairly clean, reasonably warm, not uncomfortable. The heat, he ascertained, came from a portable electric fire. It looked new. They had probably bought it themselves.
The two girls sat side by side and watched him warily. One had her mouth open. The other glowered at him with eyes encircled with black rings. That was the one who hit Tom with the tray. A real little scrapper. They were both wearing their best going-out-on-the-town garb: black leather jackets, black tee-shirts with gaudy legends emblazoned on them, lots of chains and studs and peculiar ironmongery fastened to their earlobes. He opened his mouth but before he could speak, the scrapper leaned forward. Her chains chinked and her rusty-black cockscomb of hair seemed to quiver in indignation. She looked like a small but belligerent rooster.
‘We none of us had anything to do with it! We found him, that’s all. We’re all sorry and that – but it’s nothing to do with us!’
‘I see,’ said Markby politely. ‘Perhaps I could have your names?’
She was called Tracy, the other girl Cheryl and the boy Micky.
‘Your cat?’ enquired Markby of Micky.
‘No – well, in a way. There are two of them. I don’t know where the other one is. They sort of hang around. Live here in a way.’ He had a faint Belfast accent.
‘Like we do!’ said Tracy drily. ‘They’ve not got anywhere better to go!’ Markby had unwarily stretched out a hand towards the cat and she warned, ‘He bites!’
‘Oh, in that case I won’t stroke him.’
‘He doesn’t bite us!’ said Mick, defending his pet.
‘He bit Simon,’ said Cheryl, speaking at last.
‘Did he now?’ Markby murmured. ‘Simon not like cats?’
‘Didn’t like anything, him. Didn’t like people, didn’t like animals. Funny sort of bloke.’
‘But he campaigned for a stop to fox-hunting, didn’t he? Perhaps he liked foxes.’
‘Don’t know nothing about that,’ said Cheryl vaguely. ‘He was always spouting about something. I never used to pay much attention. He got you down, always on about things being wrong.’
‘It wasn’t his idea, that fox-hunting business!’ said Tracy scornfully. ‘He never had no ideas of his own, Simon. It was all what other people had said. He’d hear someone say something and he’d take it up. He was always repeating what that Deanes said.’
Markby raised his eyebrows. ‘Colin Deanes, the writer?’
‘Yeah – well, I suppose it’s writing. He don’t write stories or stuff for TV. It’s all dry stuff. Dunno who reads it. No one I shouldn’t think. Simon thought Deanes was Batman.’
‘Look,’ the young Irishman broke into the conversation. ‘We honestly don’t know a thing. We were all out all evening.’
‘Pardy didn’t go with you?’
‘No, well, he was banned, you see – from The Bunch of Grapes. After that punch-up on New Year’s Eve. You must remember it. You were there. But we still went there. They didn’t ban us.’
‘Where did Simon drink, then?’
They looked at one another vaguely. ‘Dunno,’ they chorused.
‘So who found him?’
‘We all did,’ said Tracy, the spokeswoman. ‘We all come back together.’
‘At what time?’
‘Oh – ’ she glanced at the other two for confirmation. ‘It wasn’t late, about twenty past eleven.’ The others nodded.
‘You came here directly from The Bunch of Grapes?’
‘Yes – well, more or less. They call time at ten-thirty, but we all stopped on the way home and had a hamburger from the van that parks by the library in the evening.’
‘Okay, go on. You came back here and . . .?’
‘Opened the door and fell over him,’ said Tracy succinctly.
‘Did you touch him?’
They paused and looked shiftily at one another. ‘I knelt down and put my hand on his shoulder,’ Micky said at last reluctantly. ‘I didn’t move him. I sort of touched his face . . .’ He began to look agitated and pearls of sweat broke out around his mouth. ‘My fingers felt all sticky, I knew it was blood . . . I was scared. I sort of jumped back. Then I tried again – to find a pulse. I got hold of his wrist. I nearly threw up.’
‘That was courageous of you,’ said Markby, meaning it. ‘To try again. But you are quite sure you didn’t move him, are you?’
‘Move him? No! It was all I could bring myself to do to touch him at all!’ Micky paused. ‘I wanted to be sure because – ’ he broke off and looked down at the animal on his knees. His fingers gripped at the loose fold of skin on the back of the cat’s neck.
‘Because? It’s all right, just say what’s in your mind,’ Markby encouraged.
‘I thought – if he was alive but dying – I thought perhaps one of us ought to go for a priest.’ The words came out barely audibly. He did not look up. The two girls stared at him.
‘What for?’ asked Tracy.
‘I just thought it,’ Micky said unhappily.
‘All right,’ Markby interrupted gently. ‘But then you decided it was too late for that?’
‘Yes. I told the girls not to touch him. I guessed he was dead, after all. Trace went out and phoned the police.’
‘Where from? Here?’
‘No, we haven’t got a phone. But there’s a public one just round the corner.’
The time of the police call would be logged, the hamburger-seller might remember them, they were probably regular customers, the landlord of The Bunch of Grapes likewise. It would not be difficult to make out a timetable for their movements. That made a nice change. Usually it was more complicated. From outside in the hall came the rattle of metal. The photographer was setting up his lighting. A new voice murmured, the police surgeon had arrived.
‘You didn’t like him much?’
‘That doesn’t mean we pushed him down the stairs nor nothing!’ snapped Tracy.
‘I didn’t say you did. I just gained the impression you didn’t like him.’
‘He was nutty,’ said Cheryl suddenly. ‘Round the bend, he was. And that posh talk got up my nose. He was a fake, that’s what he was.’
Markby stared at her in some surprise, as did her two friends. Not only was it a long speech by her standards but it was surprisingly perceptive.
‘Why a fake, Cheryl?’ Markby asked her.
‘I told you, that posh voice. And he’d been to one of them posh schools. But living here with us and dressing like he did – like he was one of us, but he wasn’t. It was just all pretending with him. That’s why that Deanes fussed over him. Because he was one of them, not one of us.’
Oh dear, thought Markby ruefully, poor Colin Deanes. So the people he’d most like to help see him as an interfering middle-class do-gooder whose first loyalty is to his own class. Poor Deanes.
‘There’s no light bulb in the hall,’ he said. ‘Has it been missing long?’
They stared at one another again. ‘It was all right yesterday,’ Micky said. ‘I put a new one in last week sometime. The light bulbs are always going in this place. It’s the wiring.’
‘But they usually last longer than a week?’
‘Oh, yes, longer than that. And there was one there, definitely.’
At last . . . thought Markby and the dull anger inside him was replaced by a sense of satisfaction. At long last . . . he’s made a mistake. He should have replaced that bulb before he left. He hoped we’d f
ancy Simon tripped on that ripped stair carpet, just a forseeable accident. Accident, be blowed. Someone had pushed Pardy. And now that someone was starting to make careless mistakes. Just give him time . . . and he’d have him, thought Markby grimly.
‘Now think,’ he said to them. ‘When you came home, who went up to the front door first to open it?’
‘I did,’ said Cheryl after a pause.
‘You’re sure?’
‘No, it wasn’t you,’ said Tracy briskly. ‘It was Mick.’
‘No, it was me. Mick stopped to call Boots.’
‘Boots?’ asked Markby.
‘Him!’ said Cheryl, pointing at the cat. ‘Micky stopped to call him and I opened the door, honest, Trace, I did!’
‘Now, don’t quarrel over it!’ said Markby hastily. ‘What do you think, Mick?’
‘I think one of the girls must have opened it,’ said Micky cautiously. ‘I picked up Boots, I had him in my arms, and I was looking round for the other cat, but I couldn’t see him.’
‘He couldn’t have been shut up in the empty house, the other cat?’ Markby asked quickly. It was possible that, after all, Simon had fallen over the animal . . . although that didn’t explain the missing light bulb.
‘No, he isn’t – wasn’t. He wanders off for days. We think he travels miles because, when he comes home, he’s all dusty and looks as though he’s been in fights.’
King of the local tomcats, thought Markby with a moment’s amusement. Defending his perimeters! ‘So you were carrying Boots when you walked into the hall?’
‘Yes – just at first. Then Tracy or Cheryl, one of them, sort of screeched and stumbled. One of them shouted out it was Simon, on the floor. So I dropped Boots and came in to look.’
‘All right, so then, Cheryl . . . was the front door locked? Did you need to use your key?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes, course I am.’
Markby looked slowly round the kitchen. There was a back door, that didn’t look very secure, and a window – He got up, walked over to the window and bent down to peer at it. ‘Any of you touch this window since coming home?’