Never Die in January Page 3

  The sitting- room.

  The sheet of paper from the estate agent called it a drawing room, eighteen feet by fourteen, wood- block floors, fireplace, etc…etc…

  She stood in the centre of the bare room lit by the single hanging bulb. A telephone sat on the floor. Old newspapers were piled against the wall.

  She wasn’t interested in wood- block floors or fireplaces. She wasn’t interested in size or what the windows overlooked. She was interested in its aura, its smell. She was interested in what the walls told her, what the air told her.

  Could you smell death? Terror? Despair?

  The previous owner had died, the estate agent had said. They had instructions to let. Arrived in the post that very morning. Wasn’t that a coincidence?

  Wasn’t what a coincidence?

  That she should come in today, looking for a garden flat. This could be just the place.

  He said he’d go with her.

  But she said no. She’d go alone.

  She saw his eyes change. She couldn’t read them. He opened his mouth but the telephone rang. She took the keys and left.

  And here she was in the drawing- room with the original ceiling- mouldings…etc…etc…

  Houses were said to absorb the feelings of those who lived in them. It’s such a happy house, people said.

  Could the reverse he true?

  Could she smell the fear? Had it been absorbed by the wallpaper and the plaster, and was it being slowly released?

  She moved on through the rooms like a hand- held camera.

  Click.

  The bedroom. No wood-block floor here. Just the boards and a rectangle of dust on the floor where the bed had been.

  Now she smelled something different: a mixture of stale perfume, talcum powder, and dust. Was that the smell of death? Was this where she had planned her death?

  Or was it in the bathroom?

  Click.

  Slight smell of drains and damp. Slight smell of wet hair.

  She wanted to know about the person in whose bedroom she would sleep, in whose bath she would bathe.

  She wanted to know everything.

  The taps were dripping, limescale had built up in the bath and basin. She’d have to do something about that. Couldn’t live with dripping taps.

  Click.

  The kitchen.

  Fridge…stove…Fixtures and fittings…What had she cooked on the stove? What had she kept in the fridge?

  She opened it. All it contained was a bottle of water.

  A glass door leads on to the patio and the garden, said the piece of paper.

  No one had terraces any longer. Only patios.

  She looked out at the garden, but in the fading light could see little: some spindly rose bushes, a shrub or two, pots of dead flowers. There was a plastic table and four plastic chairs.

  Had she sat out here on summer evenings? Had there been the clink of ice in glasses? Talk? Suppers?

  When she turned he was standing in the doorway behind her. She was afraid but did not show it.

  He didn’t want her to be alone in an empty flat, he said. Things happened to women in empty flats.

  Linda Macrae let herself into her flat and locked the door behind her. Each evening when she came home from work this moment, when she switched on the lights, was one of intense pleasure. George had called her a nest-builder, and he was right. And even though her daughter Susan had flown the nest to live and travel with her boyfriend, and even though George had abandoned it many years before, it was still her nest.

  This was a relatively new nest. Once Susan had gone she needed less space and could come nearer the heart of London. It had taken her a long time to find the flat in the converted house in Clapham, and, having found it, she knew she had to have it. It was right for her. But it would strain her finances. She thought it out for a whole ten minutes and what finally convinced her was the knowledge that she would be living alone and a woman living alone needed a safe refuge. She also needed a place — as George had once put it — that she could fiddle with.

  She loved to fiddle, to move things around, to change one pot plant for another, to rearrange the sitting-room chairs, to put the stereo in the other comer. Often a whole weekend might pass in this way.

  She had named this time of day “the happy hour”. She would kick off her shoes, switch on the CD player — Chris de Burgh perhaps, or Eric Clapton, or maybe even one of the real oldies, Ella Fitzgerald or the Hot Club of France. Then she would pour herself a glass of wine and look through the TV listings for a movie or a soap.

  But recently the happy hour had given way to the “self-improvement hour”. Instead of Chris de Burgh, Fischer-Dieskau, instead of the Beatles, the London Symphony Orchestra. Tonight was opera night and she poured herself a glass of wine, put on Turandot, and opened the libretto.

  But after a few moments her mind began to wander. The problems of Calaf and the three riddles seemed somehow remote this evening. An old familiar and unwelcome feeling began to steal over her. In the past she had fought it long and hard and thought she had banished it for ever. But here it was, lying in wait for her. It was called loneliness.

  She began to pace restlessly round the flat. She moved a Ficus from one position to another. She was irritated with herself, for she knew the reasons for this return to the past. They were embodied in one personality called David Leitman who had come to live above her. He was an attractive man and it was a situation fraught with possibilities, pleasant or otherwise.

  She had played things carefully. A few hellos and good mornings as they passed on the steps, but that was all. She had tied all the loose ends of her life together and didn’t want them untied. She wasn’t — and never had been — one for casual affairs: ergo, keep everything on a formal basis.

  That, of course, had broken down. Leitman, recently divorced, was in need of company, as she had been when Macrae walked out on her. So it had begun with greetings, a friendly face, then a cup of coffee, a helping hand with a kitchen gadget. Coffee had become dinner; two Sunday lunches in a row had become an instant tradition.

  “Look,” he had said to her. “People of our age and situation don’t simply hold hands. We have needs. We need each other. OK, we use each other. But that’s what happens in life, people use people.”

  And he was right, only…Well, she didn’t want her life turned upside-down. That had happened once and she didn’t want it to happen again. She’d tried the sexual therapy that men assured divorced women was so good for them and found one-night stands squalid. Once, waking up in a hotel in Surrey on a wet Sunday morning, she could not remember the name of the man who snored at her side.

  It had never happened again.

  And so she had been pussyfooting round Leitman like some nervous virgin. It was going to happen. It had to happen. But not just at this moment.

  Carve it above her door: Abandon Lust All Ye Who Enter Here.

  God, she thought, what a mixed-up cow.

  She stopped moving plants about and looked at herself in a long wall-mirror. She was of medium height with brown hair and brown eyes. Her face had once been soft and pretty and was still attractive, but not soft any more. Her breasts were good, firm and high. Macrae, she remembered, had always been complimentary about her breasts, and he had a fixation about breasts.

  She turned slightly. Bottom…well, never mind her bottom. Her legs had always been good and still were. Not bad for fortysomething. And it was nice to think she could interest a man like Leitman, a writer whose life led him into areas and into contact with people she could only guess at. She had never known a writer before.

  David loved books and music and it was only when she talked to him she realized her own ignorance. After Macrae had vanished from the nest with his new mistress, part of her vacuum had been filled by self-improving books. She had continued reading until they were no longer chores but much-loved companions. Now it was all happening again with music.

  “You fancy him,” she sai
d to herself. “You want him. You’re doing all this just because of him.”

  And just because of him she was lonely. The previous day he had left for Scotland to research a book. There was an unspoken agreement that both would consider their position during this absence.

  All right, I’ve considered, she thought. If he came through the door now I’d lead him straight into the bedroom. Then she said aloud, “Why don’t I have a lovely chicken sandwich, instead?” As the sound of her voice died, she thought she heard knocking. Not at her door. But somewhere in the depths of the house.

  She stood quite still, listening intently. She was alone. David was somewhere in the Highlands and the garden flat had been empty for weeks.

  She opened her front door on the chain. The tapping was louder and was coming from beneath her in the garden flat. Her staircase, which she shared with David, was dark. Should she switch on the light and go and investigate? But what if there was someone there? An intruder? A burglar?

  But what burglar in his right mind would break into an empty flat and start to make a noise?

  Squatters? Her heart sank. She had lived near squatters once before and hoped never to do so again.

  She took off the chain, put on the hall light, and went down to the street door. On each side of the door were little coloured windows. She could see out into the basement area. Light was reflected there.

  She listened intently. If there was more than one person she would have expected to hear voices. But all was silent. Even the tapping had stopped.

  The lights suddenly went out, the area became dark. She heard the front door of the garden flat open and close then sharp footsteps on the outside stairs. A woman dressed in a long dark coat came up the steps and went down the path to the street. She opened the gate and disappeared. A moment later Linda heard a car engine start.

  She went back to her flat and was closing the door when the phone rang. The sudden noise froze her blood.

  “Hi,” the voice said. “It’s me, David.”

  She was confused for a moment and then suddenly embarrassed as though he might read her mind and discover her recent thoughts.

  “Where are you?” she said.

  “Just south of Inverness. I’m staying at a fishing hotel. It might be OK in summer but I’m the only guest and it’s like living inside a mausoleum.”

  She wanted to react, to be amused, but she was still anxious.

  “I’ve just had my dinner,” he said. “Some kind of thin soup with barley in it. Cod in parsley sauce. Jam roly-poly. In total silence. Each mouthful watched by the waitress. The moment I put down my cutlery she tried to take the plate away. Wanting to get off home, I suppose.”

  “It sounds gruesome.”

  “It is. I’m phoning from the bar. Not another soul. I miss you.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “You’re supposed to say I miss you too.”

  “Well, I do. The house is so…”

  “Empty? I tried to talk you into coming with me.”

  “I know.” Pause. “David — ”

  “What?”

  “Someone’s been in the garden flat.” She told him what she had heard and seen.

  “Well, she wouldn’t be a burglar. They don’t break into empty flats.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “See if the sign’s gone.”

  She went to the window. “David, it has! I never even noticed.”

  “That’s it, then. New tenant.”

  “I hope she’s luckier than the last one.”

  “I hope so too.”

  CHAPTER V

  Cannon Row police station stands on the north bank of the Thames in the centre of London. It is part Victorian Gothic, part functional modem. The old part is a warren of corridors, the new part is filled with high-tech equipment. It has a small car park which is guarded by high walls and steel security gates; its glass windows are bomb-proof.

  If you want to know the time don’t try to ask a policeman in Cannon Row; stand on the nearby Embankment lawns and look up at Big Ben. It is only a stone’s throw away.

  London is divided into eight police Areas. Cannon Row is the brains, the liver and the lights, the viscera, of Area One.

  Macrae parked his elderly Rover and went in to see his immediate chief, Detective Chief Superintendent Leslie Wilson. He found him cleaning his shoes. Macrae hardly registered. Wilson had been regularly cleaning his shoes since they had joined the Force together more years ago now than Macrae cared to think about.

  It had begun when they were both beat coppers and both had to keep their boots clean. But once he had become a detective, Macrae had lapsed into suede shoes. Wilson found the cleaning action therapeutic and had continued. He always wore black half-brogues, always wore a dark grey suit. No one had ever seen him in brown shoes or without a tie. He was a neat man.

  “Morning, George.”

  Macrae nodded and went to the window. Wilson’s office had a view of the Thames but on this misty morning only vague outlines could be discerned.

  “Bloody fog,” Macrae said. “These days it only takes one accident south of the river and every bridge is solid.”

  “Want some coffee?”

  “Anything stronger?”

  “Christ, no! And you shouldn’t even be thinking about it at this time of the morning.”

  “You don’t get cirrhosis thinking about it.”

  Wilson wondered if he was starting this early. He knew Macrae had always liked a drop — well, who didn’t? Once they’d all had a bottle in their bottom drawers. But then the brass at Scotland Yard had come down on drinking in the office — and out of it for that matter — and Deputy Commander Kenneth Scales had arrived at Cannon Row to carry out this bizarre edict. Scales was the perfect man for the job; tomato juice with Worcestershire sauce was his tipple.

  Wilson, like many other senior officers, had cleared the Famous Grouse from his desk and had placed a moratorium on long pub lunches until the good times returned.

  But not Macrae. You only had to tell him something, Wilson thought, for him to do the exact opposite. Well, he’d warned him often enough that his promotion depended on keeping a clean sheet. But telling him was one thing, getting him to act on it quite another. He knew — and he knew George knew he knew — that it should have been Macrae sitting behind Scales’ desk. But what the hell, life was like that. There were always people who were their own worst enemies no matter what the talent.

  “You weren’t at Eddie’s funeral.” Macrae’s tone was accusatory.

  “I hardly knew him. Anyway, I sent flowers to what’s her name? The wife.”

  “The widow. Gladys.”

  “How was it?”

  “They dig a hole. Put you in a coffin. Bury you.”

  Wilson put away his shoeshine kit. His nervous eyes, which had earned him the nickname “Shifty”, flickered around the room. “OK, George…I’ve got work to — ”

  “Never mind that, Les. I’m telling you it was bloody sad. Silver, me, Gladys — and the other three were paid to be there. I mean that’s bloody terrible. A whole life gone down the drain. And you know why?”

  Yes, he knew why, it was like the bloody Nuns’ Chorus. Kept coming back.

  “Scales!”

  Wilson hurriedly closed his door. These confrontations with Macrae always upset him, especially in the morning. Buggered his whole day. If it wasn’t that Macrae was so good at his job — which, he had to admit, rubbed off on him as well — he’d have sent him to some remote Siberia of the Force in the same way that Scales had exiled Eddie Twyford. But Macrae was different. He was known as a thief taker. And yet…Even that was going to rebound on him one day.

  If for nothing else, there were his methods. They were old style. To hell with the new rules of evidence, to hell with the recent court rulings on uncorroborated confessions, to hell with everything about modern policing…If someone was guilty Macrae knew it, could smell it, and if he needed to put the frightener
s on a suspect to get an admission, he did.

  The problem for everyone else was that Macrae was usually right. He had the best informants in town, the best network of information. And the other thing, the A-plus factor, was that he had never had his hand in the till. There had never been a whisper of him taking a backhander.

  But, and Wilson thought it was a big but, who wanted coppers like Macrae these days? The theory went that it was better for fifty villains to go free than for one innocent man to be imprisoned. So you did things by the book. And if you didn’t pick up the villains, what did it matter? You’d done it by the book. Sooner or later just doing things by the book would bring society to a standstill — that was Macrae’s attitude, and he had expressed it often enough in tones loud and clear — and in Scales’ hearing.

  There was open warfare now between Scales and Macrae. It had started with Eddie Twyford but if that hadn’t been the spark it would have been something else. The chemistry between them was flawed. At first Wilson thought Scales might put up with Macrae because the big man was the best detective in Area One and Scales basked in the radiance that drew. But then there had been the incident involving Scales’ mother and that had finally caused an irreparable breach.

  It had happened a couple of months before. Scales was to get the Queen’s Police Medal — an award made to about twenty senior officers a year — and Macrae had been loudly contemptuous.

  “They get it for turning up for work,” he had said to Wilson.

  “You don’t have to do anything, Les. Just turn up and keep your nose clean. He’s an almost-and-nearly man. Can’t make a decision by himself so he forms a committee. And he’s a bloody apron-lifter.”

  This was Macrae’s phrase for Freemasons, who held many of the plum positions in the Force. He pretended not to know that Wilson was himself a Mason. Indeed Wilson had once, in a moment of aberration, considered proposing Macrae, but had prudently reconsidered. Now the thought of Macrae being blindfolded and pricked and generally being “on the square” gave him nervous indigestion.

  Scales’ award party had been held in the canteen at Cannon Row. Thirty or forty officers with their wives or girlfriends had attended, and a congratulatory speech had been made by an assistant commissioner. Scales had been toasted in sparkling wine by everyone except his mother, who had toasted him in Perrier water.