Cursed Inheritance (7 page)

London was just as Wesley remembered it. Big, crowded, dirty and fast. The traffic on the M25 crawled along at the pace of an elderly snail and on the ordinary roads drivers cut in, drove too close and sounded their horns impatiently. Aggression and frustration hung in the air like mist. Wesley felt he ‘was in alien territory, even though he had been brought up there and had worked there with the Met’s elite Arts and Antiques Squad. He had become accustomed to the pace of life in Tradmouth and now he was here in the capital sitting at a busy junction waiting for traffic lights to change with a taxi cab half an inch from his bumper and a lycra-clad cyclist leaning on his wing mirror, he found himself counting his blessings. Things could be worse.

Kirsty Evans lived south of the river. Deptford wasn’t far

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in geographical terms from Dulwich, where he had lived and attended school, but it was a social world away. Or rather it had been while he was growing up. It was a bad area but the tentacles of gentrification reached everywhere these days. The main thing Wesley remembered about Deptford was that the playwright Christopher Marlowe had met a violent end there in a low tavern, probably at the hands of Queen Elizabeth I’s equivalent of MI5, and he wondered to himself how much things had really changed in four hundred years of human existence. As he came to a halt at another set of red traffic lights, he took the opportunity to consult the A to Z that lay open on the passenger seat and discovered that he didn’t have far to go.

His first port of call was Evans’ s local police station where he was told Pete Jarrod was out investigating yet another local shooting. He spoke briefly to the policewoman who had broken the bad news to Kirsty Evans the previous evening. She was a thin DC with spiky peroxide hair and a personality to match - a no-nonsense sort who was probably more at home questioning the local prostitutes than dispensing tea and sympathy to grieving widows - and he was rather relieved when she told him bluntly that, as they were fully stretched with muggings, shootings, murders and robberies, the likes of Mrs Evans weren’t high on their list of priorities. Wesley would chave to deal with her alone.

He ˇleft the station with the feeling that he hadˇ been brushed aside as an annoying distraction frQm the real business of policing, and after driving round for a while he found a free parking space outside an office building just one street away from Kirsty Evans’s flat, if his ACto Z was to be believed. He climbed out of the car and breathed in deeply. Diesel fumes and dust. The pavements were piled with plastic bin bags awaiting collection and some of their contents had spilled out. His foot came into contact with a plastic tray that had once been the temporary hQme of some takeaway cheeseburger. He could smell a rancid odour

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rising from the litter and he felt dirt permeating his pores, his hair, his very soul.

As he walked towards Kirsty Evans’s apartment he noticed that at least half the people he passed were black. In Tradmouth he was generally in a minority of one but here he was just one of a crowd. A shaven-headed white man was approaching him, staring boldly. He wore a Millwall football shirt over a stocky torso bulging with gym-honed muscles and his hairy arms bore some fine examples of the tattooist’s art. As this human pit bull terrier passed, he brushed against Wesley’s arm and shot him a hostile glance before spitting on the ground. Wesley averted his eyes and hurried on. Trouble was something he didn’t need right now.

Kirsty Evans lived in what appeared to be a converted industrial building. Wesley could see the walls of the foyer through the plain glass front door: they were rough bare brick, featureless and functional. Like some kind of prison. Or a monastery where the brothers lived particularly austere lives. He pressed the button marked Evans and a weak voice wafted from a stainless steel speaker. Kirsty Evans sounded like a frail old woman, but grief can drain the life force from even the liveliest personality.

When the door lock was released, Wesley made his way slowly up the cold concrete stairs and found Kirsty Evans waiting at the open door to her apartment - a tall steel door, double her height. Wesley’s first thought was that she looked like a lost little girl. She wore no make-up on her pale face and her fine blond hair was scraped back into a makeshift ponytail. Her eyes were large, blue-grey and bloodshot. She had been crying, which was hardly surprising in the circumstances. Wesley hovered on the threshold for a moment, lost for words and wishing Rachel Tracey was there with him to shoulder the burden.

Once he had introcuced himself, Ki(sty led him inside and invited him to sit down on a long low, black leath~r sofa. It wasn’t comfortable but Wesley hardly noticed: his mind was on other things.

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The interior of the apparment was as bare as the rest of the building. This was minimalism. And although the chaos in Wesley’s house constantly irritated him, he preferred it to this place with its white walls, floor to ceiling windows and stainless steel. It would be like living in an operating theatre - or Colin Bowman’s mortuary. But he knew that such clinical surroundings didn’t come cheap.

‘I’m very sorry about your husband,’ he began.

‘You’re sure it’s him?’

He glanced at a photograph in a stainless steel frame that stood on a sleek beech sideboard. A wedding photograph, taken outside a picturesque country church that looked somehow incongruous in these starkly urban surroundings. Kirsty smiled out at the camera, elegant in her simple ivory gown, while the dead man beamed by her side in his morning suit.

‘We’re pretty certain, yes. But we’d like you to come to Devon to identify him, if you’re feeling up to it. Unless there’s someone else you’d like … ‘

She sank down into a deep leather armchair, hugging a suede cushion as though it were a baby. ‘No. I want to see him.’ She suddenly looked up, her eyes red and moist with unshed tears. ‘When the policewoman came last night to tell me, I thought it couldn’t be Paddy. He’s been all over the place. He can take care of himself. He’s lived round here for five years and he’s never even been mugged. And he’s been in bloody Bosnia, for God’s sake. He knew the score. Nothing could happen to him in a place like Devon. The policewoman’ said he’d been found in a river. Is. that right?’ .

‘Yes but…’

‘Do you know what happened? Did he fall in or … ‘

‘We don’t know what happened yet, I’m afraid. But we are treating his death as suspicious. I’m sorry.’ .,She shook her head. ‘That’s impossible. It must have been an accident.’

Wesley opened his mouth to say something but the right

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words evaded him. ‘What was he doing in Devon?’ he said after a long silence.

‘Research, he said. He’s been writing a series of books on notorious murder cases. Hack work really. People love true crime. There’s nothing like a good conspiracy theory.’

‘What did he plan to do in Devon? Did he go there to see a particular person?’ His murderer perhaps.

‘He didn’t discuss it with me. He does … did … his job and 1 do mine. 1 work in finance.’

That explained where the money for the apartment had come from: freelance writers were generally an impecu-nious breed.

‘Do you know what case he was writing about?’

‘I haven’t a clue.’ She frowned. ‘Sorry I’m not being much help.’

‘His notes and papers, where would they be?’

‘He kept all his stuff at the office. He didn’t bring it home.’

‘The office?’

‘He rented a place not far away - in an office block that’s due to be redeveloped.’

‘So he didn’t work here?’

She shook her head. ‘He likes - liked - to spread out when he was working. There just isn’t the space here.’

Or Kirsty Evans was pathologically tidy and didn’t want her partner making a mess all over her white, minimalist surfaces and mucking up her pristine lifestyle, Wesley thought.

‘Had he any enemies? Anyone you can think of who might want to harm him?’

She looked up sharply, as if he’d just said something offen-sive. ‘Nobody would want to harm Paddy. Everybody liked him. He was a wonderful bloke - very popular. Life and soul of the party - not that we’ve been to many parties recently. ‘

Wesley sensed there was something behind this last remark, some hint that all wasn’t quite as perfect as Kirsty wished it to seem.

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‘Would you mind if I had a look at his office?’

Kirsty stood up. ‘I’ll find the key.’ She disappeared into what he assumed was the bedroom and he waited, twisting his wedding ring round and round, wondering whether to offer to make a token cup of tea as Rachel would have done. But then Kirsty Evans didn’t really look like the tea type.

Kirsty returned after a few minutes with a Yale key on a key ring in the shape of a bullet. ‘Do you want me to come with you or … ?’

‘Yes please,’ he replied quickly. For some reason, he didn’t fancy looking round the dead man’s office on his own. Perhaps he was afraid of what he might find.

Emma Oldchester stood beside her stall at the Ingleham Village Hall craft fair feeling rather pleased with herself. She had sold the Georgian house with the pale striped wallpaper and the tiny marble fireplaces to a lady from Millicombe who had just become the grandmother of a baby girl. It was to be a christening gift - an heirloom the child could enjoy as she grew. Emma had put a lot of work into that particular house and was relieved that the custOmer hadn’t baulked at the three-figure asking price. The money would go towards her stay at Potwoolstan Hall.

She bought the undecorated doll’s houses from a retired joiner who made them as a hobby and a means of earning a liUletax-free cash. The miniature furniture came from a whole~r in Morbay. But it was Emma who put these raw materials together and created something magical with her paint, fabrics, her carefully chosen wallpapers and her delicate touch. -

Doll’s houses had fascinated her since she was small. She remembered her first quite clearly. It wasn’t as big or elab-orate as the one in the old nursery, that dusty room with barred windows at the top of the main house,. Emma had sneaked upstairs to see it often, hardly daring to touch the ,forbidden treasure - ,the magnificent Georgian mansion in

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miniature, made for some wealthy Victorian daughter of the house - that drew her like a magnet. But although her first small dwelling was considerably humbler than the one in the old nursery, at least it had been her own. It had been a birthday present and her mother had left it for her to find on her birthday morning: an intriguing shape at the bottom of her bed in the moonlight, swathed in thin wrapping paper covered with flowers. The paper had torn and a small chimney poked out. She remembered the rustle of that brittle paper, loud as gunfire in the silence, as she touched the big square package. She had asked for a doll’s house but never, in her most optimistic dreams, had she expected one to appear. Her mother had always made it clear that they couldn’t afford luxuries. But that birthday, her seventh, she had received her heart’s desire. It had been the last birthday she had spent with her mother and a few weeks later she had left that doll’s house behind, along with her past and her name.

She began to pack away. A few late stragglers hung around the stalls as if they were killing time. But Emma didn’t want to be late home. If Patrick Evans had left a message on the answerphone, she wanted to be able to ring him back that day. She would tell him once and for all that she knew nothing; that she couldn’t remember. She would-n’t mentionˇ her plans to visit Potwoolstan Hall. That was none of his business.

Perhaps she wouldn’t hear from him again, she thought hopefully as she placed the houses gently in their cardboard cartons. With careful fingers, she put the delicate miniature furniture in separate boxes, padding them with bubblewrap to prevent her handiwork from being damaged. The houses were her lifeline to the outside world and she treated them like precious things. Like the children she didn’t have.

She carried the boxes out to the old blue van. As she opened the doors she could smell paint and white spirit and her eyes began to water a little as she stacked her wares in the back. She had bought the van secondhand from a

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painter and decorator and it was the .best she could afford. But now that orders were coming in over the Internet and she was making a healthy profit at last, she had dared to dream of buying herself something smarter sometime in the distant future.

She’d expected Barry to be pleased about her modest business success but all he did was complain that she was wasting the money she earned on Potwoolstan Hall. He didn’t understand: it wasn’t a question of money. It was something she had to do. She needed to remember.

Once her precious load was secure, she slammed the van doors shut. It was time to face Barry again and she hoped she wouldn’t have to spend the evening listening to his list of reasons why a stay at Potwoolstan Hall was wasteful, stupid and liable to lead to disaster.

As Emma opened the driver’s door she looked up. He was there again. The same man, leaning against the rusty railings that flanked the entrance to the village hall. He was a lean man with a shaved head and a sallow complexion. He looked as if he’d been sleeping rough. And he looked ill. Or perhaps under the influence of drink .or drugs. His face looked somehow familiar and Emina had the feeling that last time she had seen him heˇ had been much younger - and healthier. And she knew that all those years ago she bad been afraid of him for some reason.

A name popped into her head. The name of a singer - Bob Dylan. Dylan. Then the brief flash of memory disappeared.

Her heart began to beat faster. As she stared at him, he looked up. She wanted to call out to him, ‘Who are you?’ But fear kept her silent.

As soon as their eyes met he took off like a frightened animal, a hunted creature fleeing its pursuers. Emma felt sick as she sank into the driver’s seat and gulped in deep breaths to regain her composure .