Slade House (5 page)

“Sure I did. Neighbors' children, right?”

She looked unsure and nothing made sense for a moment. Her grief must have turned her into a bag of nerves. Inheriting a big old tomb of a house can't have helped. I regretted not handling her a bit more gently earlier, and gave her my card. “Look, Mrs. Chetwynd, this is my direct line, in case of…anything.”

She gave my card the once-over, then slipped it into her gardening trousers. Against her thigh. “That's extremely kind. I—I feel safer already.”

The red ivy shivered. “Grief's a bastard, it really is—pardon my French. It makes everything else harder.” I couldn't decide what color Chloe Chetwynd's eyes were. Blue. Gray. Lonely as hell.

The woman asked, “Whom did you lose, Detective?”

“My mum. Leukemia. A long time ago.”

“There's no such thing as ‘a long time ago.' ”

I felt all examined. “Did your husband die in an accident?”

“Pancreatic cancer. Stuart lived longer than the doctors predicted, but…in the end, you know…” The evening sun lit the softest fuzz on her upper lip. She swallowed, hard, and looked at her wrist as if there was a watch there, though there wasn't. “Gosh, look at the time. I've detained you long enough, Detective. May I walk you back to the offending door?”

We walked under a tree that'd shed lots of little leaves shaped like fans. I plucked a waist-high weed from the side of the lawn. “Golly gosh,” sighed Mrs. Chetwynd, “I've let this poor garden go to rack and ruin, haven't I?”

“Nothing a little elbow grease couldn't put right.”

“I'll need industrial quantities of the stuff to tame this jungle, alas.”

“I'm surprised you don't employ a gardener,” I said.

“We did, a Polish chap, but after Stuart died he left to pursue other career opportunities. With a brand-new Flymo.”

I asked, “Did you report the theft?”

She looked at her nails. “I just couldn't face the kerfuffle. There was so much else to see to. Pathetic of me, really, but…”

“I only wish I'd known. So I could've helped.”

“That's sweet of you.” We passed under a trellissy thing with purple and white flowers hanging down. “If it's not nosy of me,” she asks, “were you in Slade Alley on police business when you found the door? Or were you just passing through, by chance?”

Famous Fred Pink'd slipped my mind the moment I set foot in the garden. “Police business, as it happens.”

“Gosh. Nothing majorly unpleasant, I hope.”

“Majorly pointless, I suspect—unless the names Norah Grayer or Rita and Nathan Bishop mean anything to you, on the off chance?”

She frowned: “Norah Grayer…no. Odd name. Are the Bishops that husband and wife team who present the breakfast show on ITV?”

“No,” I replied. “Not to worry. It's a bit of a saga.”

We'd come to the end of the stony path but instead of showing me out, Chloe Chetwynd sat down on a low wall by a sundial. “My frantic social calendar just happens to be empty this evening,” she said, a bit foxily, “if you're in the mood for telling me the saga, Detective.”

Why hurry back to my poky flat? I got my smokes out of my leather jacket. “May I? And would you?”

“Yes, you may; and yes, I would. Thank you.”

So I joined her on the low wall, lit one for her, one for me. “Okay, Part One. Rita and Nathan Bishop were a mother and son who lived over near the station, and who disappeared in 1979. Inquiries were made at the time, but when the investigating officer found out that Rita Bishop was up to her eyeballs in debt and had relatives in Vancouver, it was assumed she'd skipped town, and the case died from lack of interest.” A light breeze blew the woman's cigarette smoke into my face, but I didn't mind. “On to Part Two. Six weeks ago, a man named Fred Pink woke up in the coma ward of the Royal Berkshire Hospital.”

“Now
him
I do know,” said Chloe Chetwynd. “He was in
The Mail on Sunday:
‘The Window Cleaner Who Came Back from the Dead.' ”

“One and the same.” I tapped ash onto the top of the wall where a few ants were crawling around. “When not enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame, Fred Pink was down the town library, catching up on the local papers. Which is where he came across an article about the Bishops' disappearance—and lo and behold, he recognized them. Or thinks he did. Says he even spoke with Rita Bishop, the mum, out there”—I nod at the small black iron door—“in Slade Alley, around three o'clock, October twenty-seventh, 1979. A Saturday.”

Chloe Chetwynd looked politely astonished. “That's precise.”

“It was an unforgettable day for him, you see. After Rita Bishop had asked him if he knew where ‘Norah Grayer's residence' was, Fred Pink lugged his ladders out of Slade Alley onto Westwood Road, where a speeding taxi knocked him into his nine-year coma.”

“What a story!” Chloe Chetwynd sort of sloughs off her wellies to let her feet breathe. “But if this Norah Grayer character really is minor gentry, she shouldn't be so very difficult to track down.”

I made a gesture of agreement. “You'd think so, but our searches so far have only drawn blanks. Assuming she exists.”

Chloe Chetwynd inhaled, held the smoke in her lungs, and breathed out. “Well, if she
did
exist, and
did
live around here, she'd probably live in Slade House—our house. Mine, that is. But Stuart and I bought the house from people called Pitt, not Grayer, and they'd lived here for years.”

“Since before 1979?” I asked.

“Since before the war, I believe. And as for me, in 1979 I was a history of art postgrad living in Luxembourg and finishing a thesis on Ruskin. Of course, Detective, you're more than welcome to bring in the sniffer dogs, or dredge the pond, if you think there's anything sinister on the property…”

A squirrel darted across the clumpy lawn and vanished into a rhubarb patch. I wondered who the hell Ruskin was. “I don't think that'll be necessary, Mrs. Chetwynd. After everything Fred Pink's been through, my chief super thought we should do him the courtesy of following up his lead, but to be honest, strictly between you and me, we're not really expecting anything much to come of it.”

Chloe Chetwynd nodded. “That's decent of you, to show Mr. Pink you're taking him seriously. And I
do
hope that the Bishops are alive and well somewhere.”

“If I were a betting man, I'd put a sizable chunk on them being alive, well and solvent somewhere in British Columbia.” The moon was above the chimneys and TV aerials. My imagination opened one side of its dirty mac and showed me a picture of Chloe Chetwynd squirming on her back, under me. “Well, I really ought to be off. I'll tell the contractor to come round the main entrance, shall I?”

“Whichever suits.” She stood and walked me the last few steps to the small black iron door. I drummed my fingers on it, wondering whether to go for her phone number, but Chloe Chetwynd then said this: “
Mrs.
Edmonds made a wise choice of husband, Detective.”

Oho? “That area of my life's a bloody train wreck, Mrs. Chetwynd. I'm dumped, single, with the bruises to prove it.”

“All the best TV detectives have complex domestic lives. And really, address me as Chloe, if that's allowed.”

“Off duty, it's allowed. Off duty, I'm Gordon.”

Chloe toyed with a button on the cuff of her granddad shirt. “That's settled, then, Gordon.
Au revoir
.”

I stooped and sort of posted myself through the ridiculously small doorway to get back into Slade Alley. We shook hands over the threshold. Over Chloe's shoulder I thought I saw movement and a blink of light in an upper window of Slade House, but I probably didn't. I thought of my flat, of the washing-up in the sink, of the leaking radiator, of the copy of
Playboy
stashed behind my toilet brush, and wished I was inside Slade House now, looking over the twilit garden, knowing Chloe'd soon be coming back, cream-skinned under her clothes. “Get yourself a cat,” I heard myself say.

She smiled and frowned at the same time: “A cat?”

Back on Westwood Road, the cars all had their headlights and wipers on, and raindrops splashed my neck and my not-quite-yet-bald spot. My visit to Chloe Chetwynd hadn't been conducted exactly as per standard police protocol, I had to admit. I'd lowered my guard, we'd sort of flirted at the end, and Trevor Doolan would be most unchuffed if he'd heard me discuss Fred Pink the way I did; but now and then you meet a woman who makes you do that. It's okay, Chloe Chetwynd can keep a secret, I can tell. Julie was a blabbermouth—brash on the outside, emotional jelly on the inside—but Chloe's the reverse. Chloe's got this chipped outer shell but an indestructible core. That bit at the end when she smiled, or half smiled…Like when the lights come on at the end of a power cut and you think,
Hallelujah!
The way we sat down and smoked like it was the most natural thing in the world. Sure, Chloe Chetwynd has a few bob tucked away and her house is worth a fortune, and I don't have a pot to piss in, but all she's got in her life now are spiders, mice and memories of a sick husband. I may be an idiot in some respects but when it comes to women, I'm more experienced than most guys. I've slept with twenty-two women, from Angie Pike the Sheerness Bike to last month's Surrey stockbroker's bored housewife with a thing about handcuffs, and I could tell Chloe Chetwynd was thinking about me like I was thinking of her. As I walked back to my car, I felt fit and slim and strong and good and confident that something had just begun.

“Good evening, here are today's headlines at six o'clock on Saturday, October the twenty-ninth. Earlier today, U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz announced at a press conference in the White House that the American embassy in Moscow is to be entirely rebuilt, following the discovery of listening devices in the walls of the building. President Reagan expressed his—”
Who gives a shit, honestly? I turn off the radio, get out and lock my car. Same space as seven days ago, smack bang outside The Fox and Hounds. What a god-awful day. This morning a pisshead on speed attacked the desk sergeant just as I was passing and it took four of us to drag him to the cell—where the stupid bastard died an hour later. The toxicology report'll clear us, eventually, but we're already under the Spotlight of Shame courtesy of the Malik Inquiry—whose initial findings, we found out at lunchtime, have been leaked to the bloody
Guardian
. Force Ten Fucking Shit Storm Ahoy. Doolan said he'd “do his best” to shield me from the flak. “Do his best”? How half-assed does
that
sound? To add yet more grit to the Vaseline, a final demand for payment from Dad's care home arrived before I left for work, along with a final
final
demand from the credit card company. I'll have to extend my overdraft, come Monday. Or try to. The one ray of sunshine to brighten up this nightmare of a day was Chloe Chetwynd calling this afternoon. She sounded nervous at first, but I told her I'd been thinking about her since last Saturday. She said she'd been thinking about me, too—and at least two of my organs went
Yes!
So after leaving the office I got myself a twenty-quid haircut at a poofter parlor and drove here via Texaco, where they sell carnations and condoms. Be prepared and all that, right? I hurry along the pavement, whistling “When You Wish Upon a Star,” swerving to avoid first a jogger in black and dayglo orange running togs, then a guy my age trundling a pushchair along. The brat's screaming blue bloody murder and the guy's face is saying,
Why oh why oh why did I shoot my wad into an ovulating female?
Too late now, pal.

There's no sign of the traffic warden at the mouth of Slade Alley tonight. Into the cold alley I go, down to the corner, turn left, onward twenty paces, and here we are again: one small black iron door. I give it a hefty shove but tonight it stays shut. No rattle, no give, no nothing. A new frame, concreted in, with freshly laid brickwork along the bottom edge. Nice work. You couldn't even jimmy in a crowbar. I set off down towards the Cranbury Avenue end of the alley to find the main entrance to Slade House, but I'm stopped by a click and a thunk from the door behind me. Here she is, stepping out through the munchkin-size doorway: “Good evening, Detective Inspector.” She's wearing an Aztecky poncho thing over thigh-hugging black jeans, and holding something against her breasts. I come back, peer closer and see a small ginger cat. “ 'Ello 'ello 'ello,” I say. “What's all this, then?”

“Gordon, Bergerac. Bergerac, Gordon.”

“ ‘Bergerac'? As in Jim Bergerac, the TV detective?”

“Don't say it so incredulously. Getting a cat was your idea, so it seemed appropriate. He's too cute to be a Columbo, too hairy for a Kojak, too male for Cagney or Lacey, so I settled on Bergerac. Isn't he a
dor
able?”

I look at the furry bundle. I look at Chloe's eyes. “Totally.”

“And how about my new improved door, Gordon: Will it deter unwelcome visitors, do you think?”

“Unless they're packing knee-high antitank missiles, yes. You can sleep safe in your bed from now on.”

A little silver shell dangles on a black cord around Chloe Chetwynd's neck. “Look, it's so kind of you to drop by. After I put the phone down I got in a tizzy about wasting police time.”

“This isn't police time. It's my time. I'll spend it how I like.”

Chloe Chetwynd holds Bergerac against her soft throat. I smell lavender and smoke and I get that off-road feeling you get when anything's possible. She's had her hair done, too. “In
that
case, Gordon, if I'm not pushing my luck, would you mind inspecting the door from the garden side, too? Just to ensure that my state-of-the-art triple mortice lock meets industry standards…”