LESLIE THOMAS
Kensington
Heights
Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
About the Author
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
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A Mandarin Paperback
KENSINGTON HEIGHTS
First published in Great Britain 1996
by Methuen London
This edition published 1996
by Mandarin Paperbacks
an imprint of Reed International Books Ltd
Michelin House, 81 Fulham Road, London sw3 6RB
and Auckland, Melbourne, Singapore and Toronto
Copyright © 1996 by Leslie Thomas
The author has asserted his moral rights
The extract from Stephen Spender’s poem ‘The Room Above the Square’ on p. vii is reproduced by kind permission of Faber and Faber Ltd
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7493 2295 0
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
To the Clarke family,
Keith, Ros, Jody, Eric and May,
with my thanks for their generosity
Leslie Thomas was born in Newport, Monmouthshire in 1931, the son of a sailor who was lost at sea. His boyhood in a Barnardo’s orphanage is described in his hugely successful autobiography This Time Next Week, and he is the author of numerous other bestsellers including The Virgin Soldiers, Tropic of Ruislip and Revolving Jones. He lives in Salisbury with his wife Diana.
Kensington Heights
‘Her eyes closed. Her eyelids were almost transparent. She breathed regularly. He eased her skimpy body down on to the bed. With the cup he went to the door, looking back at her once before going out. He took the cup into the kitchen and washed it under the tap. Whatever was he going to do with her?’
The light in the window seemed perpetual
When you stayed in the high room for me;
It glowed above the trees through the leaves
Like my certainty.
STEPHEN SPENDER
One
January the second seemed as good a day as any for trying to find somewhere to hide. The first rain of the year, a sparse drizzle, thickened to spiteful sleet. Noon in London was dim, clouds low, with airliners, incoming and unseen, sounding heavily. Traffic was thin on the ground.
People looked as furtive as Savage felt; collars up, hats and hoods pulled low, noses raw and damp. Women who had been at the New Year sales clutched bags of bargains as though fearful they might be snatched back. It was like watching a shifting shadowgraph.
At Waterloo he had not been able to give the taxi driver an address because he had none to give. ‘Suggest somewhere,’ he said.
The driver, only a little surprised, treated Savage to a quick but professionally prudent examination in his mirror. He saw a lean man, forties, five-ten, he thought, although his passenger was now seated, hunched as if attempting to make himself less conspicuous, his raincoat collar like a rampart around his head and neck, a damp hat over his forehead, his only luggage a supermarket shopping bag that bulged.
‘Hounslow, Chiswick,’ the man suggested hopefully. Then less so: ‘Hammersmith, Fulham, Kensington.’ They were all on his way home.
‘Kensington,’ decided his passenger. ‘That will do.’ He was staring out at the streets, the wet pavements reflecting the dumb lights from the shops. ‘I’ll drop you at Kensington High Street then,’ the driver said.
‘All right, drop me there,’ said Savage. The tone was blunt, non-commissioned military.
Now he sat, upright and motionless, not even turning to look from the window. Outside Kensington High Street tube station the driver called: ‘This do you?’ His passenger seemed to wake and said it would, paid, and got out. As he was about to move off the driver threw a practised glance into the back of his cab and his eye caught the edge of the plastic bag. Hurriedly he pulled into the side. You never knew these days.
Getting out and opening the rear door he saw the bag on the floor in the far corner and was eyeing it apprehensively when Savage reappeared, hurried but decisive. ‘My shopping,’ he said.
Relieved, the driver leaned into the cab, brought out the plastic bag and handed it to Savage. ‘Thought it was a bomb,’ he laughed.
‘No, it’s just shopping,’ said Savage seriously and now more easily. The driver looked uncomfortable and said: ‘Right, I’ll be on my way then.’
‘Yes. Thanks . . .’ The man was climbing back into the driving seat. Savage followed him to the door and, plunging his hand into the shopping bag, brought out a ten-pound note. He gave it to the driver. ‘Thanks for stopping,’ he said.
‘Cheers,’ said the taxi man. ‘That’s very nice.’ He pocketed the note and drove off shaking his head. It took all sorts.
Savage bought an Evening Standard. Next to the newspaper seller was a young beggar playing a penny whistle badly, squatting cross-legged on the damp pavement. Savage put the change of a pound in his hat. ‘Happy New Year,’ said the young man.
‘I never want to see another like the last,’ muttered the news vendor. Rain dripped from the peak of his cap like the overflow from a gutter. He nodded at the front page of the Standard. ‘But it’s not going to get any better.’
‘It’ll get worse,’ forecast the piper like a financial analyst. He resumed his playing.
‘It will,’ agreed the newspaper seller. ‘For the likes of us.’
Savage began to cross the High Street. A descending plane sounded heavily, its belly just above the low grey clouds. The traffic lights altered, the only bright colours in the scene. He waited on the island in the middle of the road. A woman with a Barkers bag thought how ill he looked and smiled at him sympathetically. ‘Happy New Year,’ he said unsurely. She had not expected him to speak and she mumbled: ‘And you,’ and hurried over as soon as the lights changed.
As he crossed the street Kensington slowly rose in front of him, a gradually ascending hill with winter-bare beech trees clasped above it, sturdy Victorian bay windows on either side, som
e with left-over Christmas lights blinking behind the glass, and pricey cars parked front to back against the pavement. A white child walked by holding the hand of an Asian woman. A man buried below a dozen ragged coats slept on a bench. No one else was about.
There was a lonely light in the window of Wolfton’s Estate Agents and inside someone was moving about. Transferring his plastic bag to the other hand he pushed down the door handle and went in. A pasty, hollow-eyed young man wearing an untidy striped tie looked up from the drawer of a desk. The glance was furtive, as though he had been caught red-handed. ‘We’re closed today,’ he said.
‘The door was open,’ pointed out Savage.
The youth took in the spectral figure. Savage said: ‘I need a flat to rent.’
‘Well, as I say, we’re not really open,’ mumbled the young man. ‘Would you come back tomorrow?’
‘I need a flat today.’ The words were clear and the delivery short, like an order.
‘Today? I don’t think we can do anything for today. Not as fast as that.’
‘Why not?’
There was an aspect about the man that made the estate agent hesitate to answer firmly. He stood, medium height and square built; his hands were powerful but pale. But he was a little unkempt, his hair lank, his shoulders a touch rounded, as though he had spent a long time sitting in a chair.
‘Well,’ said the young man after a pause. ‘If you found somewhere . . . we found somewhere for you . . . even if that were the case, there are references and banks and contracts and all that sort of stuff. The usual.’
‘I have the money. Here,’ said Savage. He opened the carrier bag and displayed its contents to the agent who looked startled. Then Savage put his hand in and took out a dense wad of notes secured with an elastic band. He riffled along the edges like an expert card dealer. ‘Fifty-pound notes,’ he said. Reaching in the bag again he produced another thicker bundle of fifties with one hand and a wide bunch of twenties with the other. He could only just fix them between thumbs and fingers. He had thousands. ‘I can’t provide references,’ he said. ‘I don’t know anyone who would give me one.’ He put the bag on the floor.
The estate agent swallowed. ‘It just can’t be done in a couple of minutes.’
‘I’ve got all day. I’d like to see somewhere. I would like to be high up. But quiet.’
‘The one above sees all,’ laughed the youth uncertainly.
‘And remains unassailable,’ said Savage.
‘Like a cat on a roof.’
‘Like an eagle in a tree.’
As if making up his mind the young man held out his hand: ‘I’m Freddie Spencer-Hughes, by the way.’ Savage shook it. ‘Frank Inigo Savage,’ he said.
‘There is someone I could ring,’ decided Spencer-Hughes. ‘Mr Kostelanetz. He moved out before Christmas and he’s looking for someone to rent his flat.’
‘And it’s . . . high up . . . and quiet?’
‘High and quiet,’ confirmed the young man. He renewed his study of Savage. His hand went to the telephone. ‘It’s twelve hundred pounds a month,’ he confided with a blink.
Savage, with a decisive movement at odds with his clumsy appearance, picked his carrier bag from the floor and Spencer-Hughes swallowed thinking he was going to walk out. Instead he placed it on the desk and counted out two bundles of fifty-pound notes. To this he added another four. The estate agent watched with scarcely restrained astonishment. He pushed the money back to Savage and glanced towards the glass door. ‘Better put it away,’ he suggested.
He picked up the telephone and fingered out a number which was answered immediately. ‘Mr Kostelanetz,’ he said brightly. ‘Sorry to bother you over the New Year . . . Oh, no, I see. It’s not your New Year. How interesting. We must remember that.’
Savage heard Mr Kostelanetz ask what he wanted. Yes, he knew who it was. ‘I know the voice of Wolfton’s,’ he said. The young man coloured. ‘Yes, it’s Freddie Spencer-Hughes. I have a gentleman who is interested in renting your apartment at Kensington Heights . . . Yes, yes, he knows the rent. Yes . . . I’ve seen it . . . It’s cash. Six months. You will? Splendid, Mr Kostelanetz. Jolly good. We’ll meet you there in, say, fifteen minutes.’
Smiling boyishly, he replaced the phone. ‘First business this year,’ he said to Savage. ‘Sorry I wasn’t very welcoming when you first came in.’
‘You thought I was a tramp.’
‘Hah, hardly. But all sorts of people wander in here and I wanted to get away. I’ve left my girlfriend in my flat and I’m not at all sure that she’ll be there when I return. It hasn’t been a happy Christmas.’
‘Why don’t you telephone?’ suggested Savage.
‘No, no, perhaps this is the distraction I needed. If she’s there when I get back then she is, if she isn’t then she’s not.’ He hardly paused. ‘Normally we ask for references.’
‘From girlfriends?’
‘From prospective tenants.’ He laughed tentatively and glanced at the shopping bag. ‘But I suppose that will do. Mr Kostelanetz understands cash.’
‘Many people do,’ said Savage.
‘Right you are,’ said Spencer-Hughes. He smiled at Savage. ‘Let’s get started.’ He attempted the hearty tone of an amateur comedy actor. ‘Wait, wait,’ he added at once, although Savage had not moved. ‘We do have some details.’
After a moment’s fumbling through a pile of photocopied sheets he said: ‘Ah,’ handed them over and then read aloud from a duplicate. ‘Kensington Heights,’ he recited. ‘Built in the eighteen-nineties – a hundred years ago.’ He glanced up as though this might be a surprise. ‘Yes, part of one of the old Kensington estates. This area was almost countryside until then, you know. Fields, milkmaids, all that stuff.’
There was a poor photograph at the top of the sheet and another on the reverse. ‘It looks solid enough,’ mentioned Savage. He studied the baronial building, its wide, old windows, and turrets and finials on the roof. He counted the six floors. ‘And this apartment is at the top?’
‘Couldn’t be higher,’ confirmed the young man. ‘Up there with the pigeons.’ He pointed to a pair of windows below one of the turrets. ‘That’s the actual one, I think.’ He frowned at the murky picture. ‘And, as you say, solid. They knew how to build in those days. With real bricks. Thousands of bricks. Imagine how many bricks went into that pile. It was meant to last for a hundred years.’
‘Which is now up,’ pointed out Savage.
Spencer-Hughes soon recovered. ‘Longer, I should say. Much, much longer. These places, these mansion flats, will be there when half this modern stuff is falling down.’
He let Savage out of the door and locked it behind him, turning to take a precautionary peer back through the glass. ‘Right you are,’ he repeated. ‘Kensington Heights it is.’
Together they walked up the steady slope, the day dead around them. Savage’s steps were level, ordered, spaced; although he seemed to be moving quite slowly Spencer-Hughes had to hurry to keep up. ‘Personally I’d dearly like to be in Africa, the Indies, the East, anywhere at this time of the year,’ grumbled the estate agent pulling his collar high. A thought struck him. ‘Did you have a nice Christmas?’ he enquired.
Savage, who had spent the Christmas alone, said: ‘Quiet.’
‘I wish mine had been,’ sighed the young man. ‘Got pissed on Christmas Eve. Breathalysed. Positive. I’ll have to get myself a bike. It’s going to be difficult taking clients around on a bike.’
‘Hard work,’ agreed Savage.
Spencer-Hughes stopped on the pavement and surveyed the grey general scene, the substantial Victorian houses with their moribund Christmas door wreaths and morose illuminations. ‘Strange how Christmas lights look all dead now,’ he observed. Drippings from a bare branch plopped on his forehead. He glanced up as though someone might be perched there. Giving the tree a patronising pat he said: ‘When these were planted, put in, or whatever they do with trees, this was a pretty refined area. Butlers, nannies,
boot boys, all sorts of lackeys. It’s changed but it’s still reckoned to be the best area in London, well, one of the best, to live. There’s a lot of dosh around Kensington.’ He looked pointedly at Savage’s carrier bag. ‘Although I can’t say I’ve seen a Tesco’s bag loaded like that before.’
Savage said: ‘It was all I had to carry it in.’
They continued walking. ‘Good shopping, good restaurants,’ the young man said. ‘Museums, if you like fossils.’ He paused as if wondering whether to mention something. ‘There’s a few fossils at Kensington Heights, by the way. Been there years some of them. A bit dotty maybe, but harmless.’
‘Fossils are quiet,’ said Savage.
‘Yes, of course. That should suit you. Very genteel some of them too, a little faded, old-fashioned posh, you might say. I always think going in there is like entering a bit of a time warp. Like pushing through cobwebs.’ He appeared embarrassed. ‘Not that there are any cobwebs,’ he assured. ‘The place is kept shiny bright. There’s porters for different blocks and television security and all that. Keeps the baddies away.’
‘They can’t all be fossils,’ suggested Savage. They had passed the modern monolithic town hall and library.
‘By no means,’ said Spencer-Hughes hurriedly. ‘There’s business people as well, youngish a lot of them. You can see the lights going on when they get back in the evening. I went to a party in one of the flats last Hallowe’en and it was a rave.’ He glanced sideways as though again worried he had said the wrong thing. ‘But there’s not many parties, I wouldn’t think. It’s all very sedate, private, you know. Not many children because there’s nowhere for them to play, except the park. And the walls are thick as a prison.’
They crossed an intersecting street and Kensington Heights loomed before them, solid and silent, its upper ramparts, its corner towers, giving it an air of the Scottish baronial. There was a main entrance with glass doors and a uniformed porter lurking within. ‘You won’t have to use that door,’ said Spencer-Hughes. ‘Mr Kostelanetz liked to use the side entrance, around the courtyard. He came and went at odd hours I believe.’ He walked past the lobby entrance and around the side of the building. They went into a yard with a barren central flower bed and walls on three sides. The estate agent pointed skywards. ‘It’s the top flat, the window with the little balcony, although it’s not a fabulous view because you’ve got the other wing of the block in your way. The main window faces south and that looks for miles. There’s the entrance in the corner, you’ll have a key to that. And there’s a separate lift.’
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