I Should Be So Lucky (15 page)

‘That dreary bare patch of earth by the library where the winos chuck their cans,’ he said, not even bothering with ‘hello’. ‘It was crying out for cheery sunflower faces. The library’s child clients will love them. I’m on my way home now, and I know it’s late and your mum might be lurking in her curlers to clout me with a frying pan, but I don’t suppose you’ve got the kettle on, have you?’

‘Er, well, it’s a bit difficult …’

‘Sorry, sorry! I’m intruding, aren’t I? It
is
too late and you’re not alone. Why would you be? Sorry! I’ll go …’

‘No! No, wait, it’s fine and I
am
alone. How far away are you?’

There was a small silence. ‘Well, actually, right outside. I’m not a stalker, I promise. It really is on the way home and it was just an off-chance thing.’

‘OK then, just drive in and park by the Polo. I’ll come and meet you.’

How threatening did it look? Viola wondered, as she approached the Land Rover wielding a big hammer and
a
long screwdriver. Greg opened the car door, but only a few inches.

‘Have you gone back to your original opinion, that I’m a crazed killer on the loose?’ he asked, pointing to her weapons. ‘Because I’ve done tonight’s body-burying already and just fancied a friendly post-slaughter cup of tea, that’s all.’

Viola laughed. ‘No, this isn’t self-defence. I’m locked out and I’ve got to try to break in.’

He clambered out of the car, bringing with him a loamy scent of fresh earth and greenery. ‘Don’t tell me you’re home alone with no babysitter? Is that allowed?’

She hesitated, realizing she’d completely transgressed the basic rules on personal safety that Kate and Miles had been drumming into her head ever since the first demented Rhys fan had posted an anonymous piece of vileness through the Bell Cottage letter box. Too late now, though – she could hardly claim the house was full of lightly dozing occupants, or he’d think
she
was crazy for not having banged on the door or phoned someone to come down and let her in.

‘Home alone is allowed, if I promise to behave. And so is going out, which I did earlier, but now I can’t get in. I thought I’d unscrew something, somehow.’

‘Have you done this before?’ Greg said, looking doubtfully at her tools of choice.

‘Not since I was a teenager. But that time it involved a ladder and it didn’t end well. The ladder is long gone
and
there’s a paramedic out there who probably still wakes in the night reliving my howls of pain.’

‘Ew – sounds grim. But hey, I’m sure between us we can get in somewhere. Then you can tell me why you haven’t got a key. Or Fort Knox-style security.’

This last comment hit a nerve with Viola and ‘irksome’, the word of the evening, came back to mind.

‘Look, if you’re going to tell me off, please go home right now,’ she snapped. ‘I
know
I shouldn’t be able to get in without alarm bells ringing everywhere, the police swarming in and a big dog ready to take my leg off. It’s all on the to-do list, OK?’

‘Fine, I get it!’ Greg backed away, laughing, which irritated her even more. ‘Just please don’t wave that huge hammer at me. Don’t you have a neighbour with a key?’

‘If there is one, I don’t know who it is. It’s my mother’s house, she’s away for a night and I’m only staying here on a temporary basis. We can hardly knock on all the doors – the keyholder could be anyone or no one. And don’t suggest I give my ma a call – I really don’t want her knowing what an idiot I’ve been. Key down the drain, a bloody classic. And not the first time I’ve done it either.’ She assumed he’d say it could happen to anyone, but he didn’t. She shouldn’t have minded about that but somehow she did, a bit.

The ground-floor doors and window frames proved just as resilient to the tools as they had to Viola’s early feeble tugging.

‘Proper hardwood doorframes, that’s the problem. You can’t jemmy these open without doing serious damage to them,’ Greg said after investigating all possible entry routes. ‘Are you sure there’s no ladder? I can see a little window open up there but I don’t think we can risk drainpipes. Even in films they tend to come unfixed and fall down.’

‘Definitely no ladder, sorry. I’ll have to break one of the small panes on the French doors. The key is in the lock on the other side so it’ll be easy after that. I just didn’t want broken glass all over the floor inside, but I guess it’s going to be the price of getting in and to bed tonight.’

‘There needn’t be glass. Hang on there for a sec, I’ve got something in the car.’

Viola waited, beginning to feel quite chilly now. If she’d had a credit card with her she’d have been tempted to see if she could get a room at the local Travelodge and deal with all this in friendlier daylight, but she’d taken only the bare minimum out with her that night. A big fox trotted across the garden, turning to give her a dismissive sneer before leaping easily on to Joe-next-door’s fence. She heard the animal jump down on to the dustbins and a bin bag being ripped by teeth. That would be a mess for old Joe to face in the morning. She crossed to the fence and banged the screwdriver hard and noisily against it, but wasn’t surprised that the animal hesitated for only a few
seconds
before going on with his search for a chicken carcass.

‘Gaffer tape!’ Greg returned, looking pleased with himself. He ripped several long pieces of it and attached them to the glass pane nearest the lock so it was completely covered, then hit it firmly with the handle end of the hammer. It fell to the floor on the far side.

‘There you go, there’ll be nothing to clear up. If it hasn’t even cracked, you can probably putty it straight back in the morning,’ he said as he reached in through the hole to find the key.

Later, Viola wondered how the two of them had managed to be so involved in what they were doing that they hadn’t clocked the flashing blue lights or the sound of tyres whirling fast on the gravel at the front of the house. Before their presence had even registered with the housebreakers, two uniformed police officers with blinding torches were beside them. Viola had a very fast flashback to the last time she was in such close police company – the night they sent the sorrowful-looking policewoman round to give her some muddled information that – because the poor woman didn’t seem able to use the word ‘dead’ – involved the fact that Rhys wouldn’t be coming home. Viola had replied, rather ridiculously it seemed afterwards, that she already knew he wouldn’t because he’d just walked out on her, taking a very big suitcase and quite likely another woman with him. It had taken her many slow
minutes
to understand that he wouldn’t be coming back to
anyone
’
s
home. Ever again.

‘You were saying something earlier about swarms of police?’ Greg reminded her as they found themselves being bundled fast towards a patrol car slewed in at a dramatic angle that had left deep, dark skid tracks in the gravel, and trapped between it and the smooth broad fronts of Kevlar vests.

‘What are you doing?’ Viola tried but failed to wriggle out of a very firm grip. ‘I live here. We were just trying to get in because I was locked out and no one else is home,’ she explained, quickly looking up at the neighbours’ houses for twitching curtains and bedroom lights. Which one had dobbed her in? Could it have been Joe? She might have woken him when she’d banged on the fence to scare the fox.

‘So you’ll have some ID to show us then?’ one of them asked. He was overweight and overheated and breathing cheese-and-onion-crisp fumes into her face. Greg fumbled in his pocket and handed over a driving licence with a photo on.

‘Er … hell, no, sorry, I haven’t. Not a thing. Not out here anyway,’ Viola said. She wished she could back out of range, but he’d got her up against his patrol car. ‘I’ve been out for the evening and just took cash with me.’

‘Bloody Neighbourhood Watch,’ Greg, beside her, grumbled.

‘Oy, enough of that. They do a good job,’ crisp-breath
said
. ‘Run a quick check, Sam. Name?’ he asked Viola.

‘Viola Hendricks.’

Sam muttered into his radio for a while, then looked across at his colleague and nodded his head. ‘Him,’ he said, indicating Greg and looking pleased. ‘Oh yes! Got something on this one. But the lady, not listed for this address.’

‘Nothing? Right. Looks like we’ll have to take you both in.’ Crisp-breath looked as if he’d won a major bet.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Viola told Greg, unable to say more as they were bundled into the car. She was so tired that, like a child who’s had too much excitement, tears threatened.

‘No,
I’m
sorry. They’d probably have believed you on your own and you’d be in by now.’

She felt him try to reach out to her, but he couldn’t get far. You can’t, she realized, in handcuffs.

Naomi finished the Ed McBain and switched the light off. She could hear Monica snoring evenly in the next room and she asked any available celestial beings to keep them both safe till morning. Strange evening, she thought as she settled down in Monica’s spare room (one that smelled slightly of old shoes, but that was all right. Everyone had old shoes. The scent of them was quite homey). Monica had got a bit serious after the third gin and asked her if she had regrets. Well, who hadn’t? As the song didn’t quite go: too many to
mention
but no point dwelling on them now. Monica had told her she regretted never visiting South America, never having tried being blonde and also having only one child.

‘It’ll be a terrible burden for him, when I’m really crocked. You’re all right with your three, they can share you out,’ Monica said, pouring just one small extra gin. ‘I don’t want to be that burden. When it comes to it, I’ll have to bow out early. You might have to give me a hand with that. I’d do it for you, you know, if the need arose.’

Naomi said nothing, but thought of the old sign that used to be on the wall under the clock in the corner shop when she was a young mother: ‘Please don’t ask for credit as a refusal often offends’. Like Viola outside the locked house, she’d been here before.

THIRTEEN

‘ASSAULTING A POLICE
officer. Affray. Among other things.’ The desk sergeant glared at Greg with clear disgust and Viola felt scared. So it seemed he had a record and that meant he was forever to be treated with hostility and suspicion. Great, and all this absolutely wasn’t his fault. Viola couldn’t offer any evidence at all that she lived where she claimed. Greg’s identity wasn’t in doubt but, on the downside, if the two of them had been going to a fancy-dress party, he, with his old black gardening hoodie, earth-smeared face and roll of gaffer tape, couldn’t have been more convincing as a putative burglar if he’d been wearing a striped top and a mask and was stuffing silverware into a bag marked Swag.

At the police station the handcuffs were removed, the custody sergeant booked them in and they were taken to separate interview rooms ‘just for a little chat’. Greg was led away by a pert, smiley red-headed woman in
pink
trainers, while Viola was taken to a bleak, overlit little room by a short, rotund detective whose tight shiny suit had been bought a good many pies ago.

‘So you didn’t want to make a phone call then?’ Viola’s detective asked, smirking at her from across his desk.

‘I didn’t think I’d need to bother anyone. It’s so late. This could all be sorted out so quickly.’ Or could it, she thought suddenly? Who would be best to confirm her story?

‘Paperwork. We like our paperwork. Makes life tidy,’ he said, indicating a clipboard on the table, a form that had already been filled in. ‘Name?’

‘Viola Hendricks. I already told the other officer.’

‘Address?’

‘Thirty-six, Langmead Avenue.’ She wondered if it were possible to feel more tired without actually falling off the chair. ‘I can see it there on the form. Also your blokes just picked me up from there.’

‘Do you have any documents on you to prove you live there?’

‘No, none,’ she said, wearily. ‘This is just a silly muddle. I was trying to get into the house, and I
do
live there – for the moment anyway – but I dropped my key and it went down the drain outside the house.’

The detective smirked again. ‘Course you did, love. And what about your mate there?’

‘Greg was only helping me, he was just … passing.’ It
sounded
thoroughly feeble and, even to her, unconvincing.

‘He’s your boyfriend?’ This time she was treated to a leer. The detective lazed right back in his chair, podgy legs too far apart for comfortable viewing, reminding her of a giant panda sprawled, exhausted and full, against a bamboo clump.

‘No. A friend.’ It crossed her mind that he was barely even that, but saying so would only complicate things. ‘As I said, he was just passing the house and stopped to help me.’

He leaned forward again and tapped the clipboard with a pen. ‘You see, my difficulty is that we’ve run a check on the address and there is no listing of a Viola Hendricks living there. We did find one a few miles away, though. That would be you, would it? Or is Hendricks not
actually
your name just as
this
isn’t
actually
your address? Because what with this and your
boyfriend
being what we call “known to us”, at the moment this is all looking very
un
tidy.’

‘Oh – um, yes, it does look a bit confusing. I
am
who I say I am. I’ve been staying there with my mother for a while, that’s all. She’s called Naomi Challen so she’ll be the one who’s on the records, voting register or whatever it is you have to look at.’

‘Hmm. Well, it’s still not looking
quite
as neat as I’d like. You said it’s your house but it isn’t. Then there’s the little matter of the hammer and the screwdriver.
Section
24 of the Theft Act: going equipped to …’

‘I was
not
“going equipped”!’ Viola interrupted.

‘No, but your “friend” might have been. And he was the one holding them.’ He chuckled at his own wit.

‘He was being helpful. Those things were in the shed,
our
shed, and I was just trying to find a way in! Are you really going to charge me with trying to get home to my own bed?’ She felt snappish and irritable, which in the circumstances was possibly not the best way to come across. ‘Look, I know you’re just doing your job and I’m
hugely
reassured that genuine burglars have to go through all this, but I’m
not
one.’