‘You don’t hang around,’ he said, clutching her to him and kissing her.
‘A week from now and we’ll be sitting pretty,’ she said.
‘You’re already pretty,’ he said.
‘Cut the smarm, Felix; it doesn’t work on me. I’m no Laura Leach.’
No one likes to see a police car. It makes people feel really uncomfortable, thought Vince as he answered the rear door and saw the two police officers standing there, and the car parked like some kind of striped beast of prey behind them in the yard. Their silver buttons gleamed against the dark of their uniforms.
‘Is Mr Caldwell in?’ said one of them, hardly bothering to look at Vince.
‘Yes, he’s in his office,’ he said. He led them down dark corridors.
‘Always amazes me, these places,’ said one officer to the other. ‘How they’re all so dolled-up on the outside and yet as ugly as sin on the inside.’
‘Like a tart,’ observed the other.
Vince knocked at Caldwell’s door, was told to come in. ‘Police to see you, Mr Caldwell.’
Martin Caldwell jumped out of his seat as if he’d had a few hundred volts pumped through it. ‘Police?’ The two officers swamped the room with their presence. Caldwell looked at Vince. ‘That will be all, Vince. Close the door behind you.’
‘Martin Caldwell?’ said the bulkiest of the officers. A man bred for the police force, thought Caldwell, like there was a farm somewhere that churned them out.
‘That’s right. What’s wrong, officer?’ His voice was thin and insubstantial. He blinked nervously.
‘You’re manager here, right?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘We understand Monica Andrews works here. Is that correct?’
He nodded quickly. ‘That’s right. What’s the matter?’
‘She’s been reported missing, sir.’
‘What, as in missing missing?’ Caldwell lowered himself into his seat. ‘She’s not been into work for some days now.’
‘When did you last see her, sir?’
Caldwell thought about it. ‘About a fortnight ago now, I think. She never came into work. Thought she had a cold or something at first.’
‘Did you contact her to find out why?’
‘She doesn’t have a phone in the house. Who reported her missing?’
‘Her sister.’
‘Maybe she’s visiting someone.’
‘Did you notice anything unusual about her behaviour when you last saw her?’
He shook his head. ‘Not that I can say.’
‘Anything that might be upsetting her?’
He shrugged. ‘Like I say, nothing that I noticed. She was a cleaner – we didn’t talk about personal things.’
‘Was?’
Caldwell cleared his throat. ‘Slip of the tongue. She was a cleaner, then she got promoted to the office. I sort of thought she’d decided to pack her job in.’
The officer nodded slowly. The other was disconcertingly quiet, surveying the small room. ‘Maybe you’re right. Perhaps she is visiting someone,’ he said, smiling that pasted-on smile police officers always carry with them. ‘If you hear from her, or hear anything about her whereabouts, please contact us straight away. It might be nothing to worry about but we have to check. If you don’t mind we’ll question other members of staff.’
‘Please, do what you must,’ encouraged Caldwell. ‘I hope you find her soon. She was a valued member of the team.’ He rose from his seat as they made to leave the office.
Then the police officer stopped and turned at the door. ‘Were you aware that she was pregnant, Mr Caldwell? She’d been to the clinic the day before she went missing.’
‘What? Pregnant? No, she didn’t tell me that. I mean, she’s hardly likely to, is she?’
‘She’s not married,’ said the other officer, his first words of the meeting.
‘I know,’ said Caldwell.
‘I know it’s highly unlikely, but would you happen to know who the father is?’
Caldwell felt his insides being scrunched up. ‘Is that important?’
‘Maybe she’s with him. Or he might know where she is, that’s all.’
He shook his head vigorously. ‘I don’t know who the father is, or if she’s been seeing anyone. Like I say, we didn’t talk about her private life.’
‘But she was a valuable member of the team,’ observed the officer.
‘Manager-speak,’ said Caldwell. ‘Can’t help it. You know how it is.’
The police officer nodded sagely. ‘Yes, of course we understand. We’re all getting to be like Londoners these days. Anyhow, any news please let us know, sir.’
Vince Moody crept down from the roof-space of the Empire, stealthily so as not to be heard through the ceiling. He’d managed to overhear the last few dregs of the conversation though the thin ceiling of Caldwell’s office. He allowed a smile of self-satisfaction to spread sweetly over his lips.
The letter lay open in her lap like a wounded dove. She had read it and re-read it, at first thinking it was some kind of perverse joke, cruel and sick in its intentions. She was reminded sharply of all those evil little pranks thought up by the girls in boarding school, terrible memories being dragged up from the stinking silt of her past. But whoever wrote this anonymous letter knew far too much for it to be a simple, spiteful prank. But still she could not believe it entirely. How could she doubt him, her dear Casper? It simply could not be true, that he was a cheap fraud, doing all this, lying through his teeth to her so that he could get his hands on her money. That his love was a complete sham.
Laura Leach sat for a full two hours with only her crashing emotions for bitter company. In the end she put her coat on and grabbed the keys to her car. She drove in a half-daze into Langbridge, parked in the very same spot she’d been pulling out of on that fateful day she met Casper, not wanting to think that it hadn’t been chance at all, that he’d planned everything down to the last little detail.
She went into the local jewellers. The elderly man behind the counter knew who she was, knew she had money and greeted her accordingly. She twisted the engagement ring off her finger and handed it over to him.
‘Can you tell me how much this is worth?’ she said, her voice on the verge of breaking up.
His eyes widened when he saw the large, flashing stones. He twirled it between his fingers, stared at it, frowned, took out his eyeglass and spent all of five seconds studying the ring under it.
‘If you’re looking to sell it, Miss Leach, you’re going to be very disappointed. It’s gold-plated and the stones are made of glass.’
Laura uttered a tiny squeal, her face falling alarmingly pale.
‘Are you alright, Miss leach?’ he asked concernedly.
She grabbed the ring and threw it onto the floor. She stormed from the shop, the bell above the door tinkling frantically.
* * * *
17
Dead Space
Vince watched idly as a breeze toyed with a small cloud of dead leaves and stirred them into a disconsolate-looking pile in a corner of the Empire’s yard. Vince could appreciate how miserable they must feel. If leaves could feel, that is. Normally he’d view them as just another tiresome chore on his list, to be swept up, bagged and thrown away. How many times he wished they’d cut the trees down. They didn’t need them – there were trees everywhere in Somerset – and they just added to his labours. But today he saw them in a different light. He felt like them, like a leaf; tiny, crumpled-up, dried to a shrivelled husk and waiting till someone came along and tossed him in the trash without sparing a single thought for him.
Eating cheese and pickle sandwiches today wasn’t easy. His mouth still hurt. One of his teeth might have to be pulled but he was reluctant to go to see the dentist. Vince was sitting on the old stone steps at the back door, looking out to the world beyond the open gates. Cars passing, people filing by. Tiny snippets, there and gone in an instant, and all he could do was look at life from a distan
ce, trapped here in the yard by some cold wind of fate and hoping another such breeze might waft him back out again.
He heard the door open behind him. The sound of leather soles on stone.
‘Hello, Vince,’ said Edith, smoothing her skirt under her legs and sitting down beside him. ‘Having your lunch?’
He scowled at the pointless question, put the sandwich back in the box and snapped the lid on. ‘You going home?’ he said shortly.
‘Yes, I’ve finished my cleaning shift for this morning. I’ll be back again tonight to stand the kiosk and do the intervals.’
They sat in silence for a minute or two. ‘Don’t you ever get bored, doing what you do?’ he asked.
She gave a chiming laugh. ‘Oh, no! I love it here. It’s so exciting!’
‘No it isn’t exciting, Edith,’ he countered dully. ‘It’s the Empire.’
She nudged him with her shoulder. ‘You misery, you! I thought you liked being here.’
‘What do you know what I like and what I don’t? You’re just a silly young girl with fancy notions in your head. Life’s not like that at all; it’s not exciting.’
Edith looked momentarily stung by the words. ‘I’m not a young girl, Vince. I’m a young woman. I’m seventeen, going on eighteen.’ She held up her chin. ‘And you, Vince, are a bad-mood-bear!’
Vince looked at her from the corner of his eye. He shook his head. ‘What do you want, Edith?’
‘Nothing. Just sitting here with you, is all.’ She turned to look at him. ‘How is your nose?’
His hand went up to the bruising automatically. ‘It’s OK,’ he said, the memory more painful to bear than the actual bruises.
‘At least it’s not broken,’ she said. ‘It could have been broken very easily and then you might have looked like one of those rugby players, or boxers or something, and I don’t think that would have suited you, because you don’t have the build for it. It would have spoilt your nice face.’
‘Yeah? Well who cares?’ he said, turning away. The pile of leaves shivered.
‘You were very brave to stand up to that nasty bully,’ she said.
‘Or very stupid,’ he returned. ‘I think it’s downright awful, that man seeing another woman at the same time he’s seeing Laura.’
Edith breathed heavily down her nose. It was almost a snort. ‘You ought to forget that woman, Vince. I told you she’d bring trouble and I was right.’
‘That’s none of your business, Edith,’ he snapped brusquely. ‘Haven’t you somewhere to go, like the toyshop?’
Her face became overcast, her lips quivering ever so slightly. ‘There is no need for that attitude towards someone who likes you, Vince Moody,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘And I am most certainly not a little girl who needs to go to a toyshop, you tiresome, bad-mood-bear!’
He watched her stomp out of the yard, instantly regretting what he’d said, feeling the cold water of guilt douse him till he was soaked through with it. ‘Shit,’ he said, all appetite gone.
Two suited men entered the yard, looking very stiff and official. They greeted him without warmth.
‘We’re here to see Mr Caldwell,’ said the slimmer and younger of the two. He wore glasses and held a clipboard in his hand.
‘Who are you?’ Vince asked.
‘He’s expecting us. Just take us to him,’ said the other abruptly, as if he were batting away a troublesome fly.
Vince said OK. They didn’t look like policemen this time, he thought; more like stuffy little council officers. He led them through to Caldwell’s office, feeling the more he had to do this the more he felt like a bloody butler. Upstairs fucking Downstairs, that’s what the Empire had become.
‘Make us a cup of tea, Vince,’ said Caldwell flatly without looking up.
‘Yes, milord,’ said Vince.
Caldwell frowned, but shook the two men’s hands as Vince clattered down the corridor.
‘This is Mr Cross, the architect’ said the man with glasses and clipboard. ‘I’m Mr Forster, your surveyor for the day.’ His smile revealed an uneven set of teeth.
‘Right,’ said Caldwell, ‘tell me what you’d like to see.’
‘Shall we start with the basement, like I mentioned on the phone, and work our way up?’
Caldwell unhooked a set of keys from a board on his office wall. ‘Follow me.’
They filed down the corridors, down flights of stairs, every now and again the two men pausing to look over something or exchange professional judgements that didn’t make any sense to Caldwell, nodding in unison before urging Caldwell to move on. Eventually they reached the door to the basement. Forster had come prepared. He produced a small torch and lit their way down the stone steps, his face serious as he looked around the damp walls, shining his torch beam over the stone flags of the floor and illuminating the metal grating that covered the old well. He went immediately over to it, and shone the torch into the black hole, but it didn’t penetrate all the way down.
‘My, that is a deep one,’ he said. ‘You can’t see the bottom. Is there water in there?’ he asked Caldwell.
‘Yes, as far as I know.’
Forster bent to his haunches, his finger touching one of the nuts that fastened one corner of the grating to the floor. It came away smeared with oil. He smelled it. ‘WD-40,’ he said. ‘Has this been taken off recently?’
Caldwell shook his head. ‘No, not at all. Why should it have?’
Forster got to his feet. ‘What are those?’ He pointed to a corner of the room.
Damn Vince, thought Caldwell; he was supposed to have gotten rid of those film cans. ‘Nothing. Just some old junk. They should have been removed.’
Forster nodded. ‘Not sure yet whether we can use this room to create another smaller auditorium,’ he mused. He looked speculatively at a far wall. ‘Might be able to knock that through. Whatever, you’d have to cap off that well and re-concrete this floor, putting some kind of damp-proofing in. I reckon the water table is quite high and there might be the risk of flooding if we don’t do something soon anyhow.’ He made a few scribbles on his clipboard and exchanged words with the architect. He glanced at Caldwell, who was sweating and looking decidedly pale. ‘Are you feeling alright, Mr Caldwell? You don’t look at all well.’
‘I’ve got a cold coming on,’ he admitted. He had to shove his hands into his pockets to stop them shaking. He needed a stiff drink, he thought.
‘Shall we move on up?’ urged Forster. ‘This one’s a maybe. Would take a bit of work and thought to incorporate it into the overall design, though.’
‘How many screens are they after creating?’ said Caldwell.
‘Five at least,’ he said. ‘To make it viable.’
‘And if it’s less?’
Forster smiled an ambiguous smile. ‘Shall we?’ he said, indicating the steps. ‘Let’s take a good look around first before we come to any definite conclusions. We’ve only just started. This is not going to be an easy job. The trouble with all these old places is that there’s only so much you can actually do with them. They were designed for what they were, not for what they might become.’ He looked back from the top of the steps into the dark basement below. ‘In my opinion – and it is only my opinion – this area is dead space,’ he said.
‘Meaning?’ asked Caldwell.
‘There’s no life in it,’ he explained.
* * * *
18
It’s only money
Friday evening. It looked like it might rain, she thought, staring out onto the bleak fields. Her misty reflection stared back at her, like some kind of lonely ghost wanting to be let inside. She returned to dicing the carrot, the silvery blade flashing in the harsh glow from the kitchen light bulb.
She had a recipe book lying open before her on the worktop. To Laura, cooking wasn’t instinctive. In fact it was all but alien to her. But she could follow instructions to the letter. She could follow rules. She had spent so long doing that she never thought to questio
n them, never deviate from what was expected of her, even in a recipe book. Everything measured to the exact ounce, timed to the exact minute. Cooking – or trying to cook – was a good way to channel the myriad streams of thought that gushed unchecked through her troubled mind. It demanded attention to detail. She could become absorbed in it, even though it was all fearfully new to her.
She sniffed, paused in her chopping, blamed the onion for her stinging tears. She scooped up the diced carrot and dropped in into the casserole dish. Next she removed the stewing steak from the fridge, took a sharp carving knife and cut the red and bloody meat into neat little chunks and tossed them into the water after the carrot. She looked thoughtfully at the slimy pink stain the blood left on her fingertips.
Casper’s white Ford Cortina pulled up outside, blurred by the condensation spreading over the window pane. His familiar form emerged from the car. He glanced up at the window, saw her and waved energetically. He had something in his hand but she couldn’t make out what exactly. The doorbell rang and she wiped the blood off her hands, walking almost mechanically to the door.
‘Hello there, Laura!’ Casper piped up. He held out a bunch of flowers for her. ‘Flowers for my flower,’ he said.
She took them. When he leant forward to kiss her she stepped aside to let him in. ‘Please, go straight through,’ she said.
‘Can I smell onions?’ he asked.
‘Casserole,’ she said blandly.
‘Is everything alright, Laura? You look – well, you look awfully tired.’
‘I haven’t been sleeping well,’ she replied. ‘Please, go on in,’ she said again.
He studied her for a second or two, smiled broadly and went through into the living room, taking off his jacket and flinging it over the back of a chair. Laura lifted the flowers to her nose, breathed in their scent, and then threw them outside onto the wet gravel. She closed the door and turned the key in the lock. She slid the key into her apron pocket.
MOUSE (a psychological thriller and murder-mystery) Page 11