Faithful unto Death

Chapter Two

Police Constable Perrot’s beat, which he had now had for seven years, comprised three villages. Ferne Bassett, Martyr Longstaff and Fawcett Green. Of the three, he much preferred the last.

Ferne Bassett was overburdened with weekend cottages, holiday homes and London commuters. Most of the time it was as quiet as the grave. The quietude may have been skin-deep but, as long as what was festering underneath did not erupt and start acting illegally, Perrot regarded it as no concern of his. In Martyr Longstaff a long-running feud existed between a scrap metal merchant operating, contrary to all council regulations, a business from his home and a neighbour furiously determined to put a spanner in the works. Confrontations were loud, violent, monotonously regular and often took place in the middle of the night.

But Fawcett Green—ah, Fawcett Green! Constable Perrot sighed with pleasure as he gazed about him. Dozing in the sunshine the place looked remarkably unspoilt. A great deal of the surrounding land belonged to a stately home which had been bought by a Far Eastern conglomerate. They had planted rather a lot of beautiful and unusual trees, created a large lake and left the rest alone. And, with a couple of exceptions, local farmers had remained sturdily resistant to the brandished cheque books of Bovis and Wimpey. Over the last fifteen years the place had hardly changed at all.

PC Perrot had lifted his Honda on to its stand at the very edge of the village though his destination was a good ten minutes’ walk away. Residents, quite rightly, expected to see “their” bobby strolling about, stopping for a word, hearing complaints and generally making himself available. Consequently it took him nearly half an hour to reach Nightingales.

His brief was simple but open-ended. He could take the interview with Alan Hollingsworth as far or as deep as the occasion seemed to demand. The constable’s own feelings were that some nosy neighbour with too much time on their hands had got a bit carried away. He had not been informed who the concerned party was and did not wish to know unless it became absolutely necessary.

PC Perrot had deliberately chosen mid-morning on Sunday for his visit. It was nearly eleven. Time for the man to have finished breakfast but too early presumably to have gone out to lunch.

The constable’s approach to the front gates had been noted. Old Mrs. Molfrey, cutting branches of orange blossom in her front garden, smiled and waved her secateurs. In the adjacent house a white poodle with its front paws up on the sill barked at him through the glass and was promptly yanked from view.

The approach to the front step and garage could do with a weed. Thistles were starting to show in a border of leggy pansies and tangled aubretia. The tobacco plants on the front doorstep looked a touch on the dry side.

Finding no bell, Constable Perrot tapped smartly with the brass mermaid’s tail. Noticing the curtains were still drawn, he waited a few minutes in case Hollingsworth was still asleep then rapped again.

In the lane a woman went by dragging a bawling infant. She pointed out the constable, assuring the toddler that if he didn’t shut his bleeding gob the big policeman would cart him off, lock him up and chuck the key down the lavvy. PC Perrot sighed. What was the point of all his primary school visits when there were parents like that to contend with? No wonder some kids ran a mile when they saw him coming.

Hot, even in his blue cotton summer issue, Perrot rolled up his shirt sleeves and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. Then he crouched down to bring himself to the level of the letter box, lifted the flap and peered in.

He could see the stairs and the hall floor on which were lying some letters and a freebie newspaper. At the far end of the hall was a closed door which Perrot assumed belonged to the kitchen. A second door stood ajar. By screwing his head sideways and pressing his cheek hard against the cold metal, the policeman could see a section of carpeted floor, part of a table, the arm of a chair and a pair of fully occupied leather slippers.

Putting his mouth close to the slit he called, “Mr. Hollingsworth?” Then, feeling more than a little foolish, “I can actually, um, see you, sir. If you could come to the door, please? Constable Perrot, Thames Valley Police.” PC Perrot straightened up and waited. A high-pitched whine nearby made him turn round. Next to the gate was a lad who looked to be about eight. He was leaning on a chopper bike and holding a dog on a piece of string. The policeman smiled and raised his hand. The dog yawned again, the boy stared back, unblinking.

PC Perrot once more agitated the mermaid then, feeling even more self-conscious, wondered if he should take upon himself the responsibility of a forced entry. Nervously he recapped on the circumstances in which such a procedure could be justifiably carried out. Immediate pursuit of criminal. To prevent a breach of the peace or a person being harmed. Someone inside unconscious or in need of medical assistance. It seemed to him that the last might very well apply.

He made one final attempt at addressing the feet, which he presumed belonged to the owner of the property. This time, sharply aware of being awarded marks out of ten for entertainment value, he remained upright and spoke very loudly at the opaque glass panel.

“I am about to forcibly enter sir, by breaking the door down. If you are able to—”

There was a thud inside the house then a dark shape loomed behind the glass. The safety chain was struggled with in a frantic manner accompanied by swearing and cursing. Two bolts; a mortise. The door was flung open. Someone on the threshold shouted, “For Christ’s sake!” into the startled policeman’s face then he was dragged forward and the front door slammed.

Inside, the air was chokingly oppressive; sour and heavy. Perrot felt immediately stifled and slightly nauseous. He tucked his helmet more firmly under his arm and tried not to breathe too deeply. The man was shouting at him again.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Mr. Hollingsworth?”

The man said “Christ” again then turned and stumbled away. For a moment Constable Perrot thought he was going to crash into the sitting-room architrave. He lurched a few steps towards an armchair. From its position Perrot supposed it to be the one in which Hollingsworth had been sitting when his slippers were visible through the letter box. The cushion was widely and deeply indented as if a large animal had been curled up there for some considerable time. Hollingsworth reached the chair, turned round vaguely once or twice as if unsure which was the right way to face and fell into it.

PC Perrot hesitated, looking around him. Very little light came through the drawn velvet curtains but a lamp, shaped like a golden pineapple, with an unlined cream linen shade, had been switched on. An unpleasant odour came from a vase of half dead roses, their leaves crisp and brown. It mingled with the smell of alcohol, cigarettes, garlic and something the policeman recognised but could not have named but which was monosodium glutamate. Dirty cutlery and several used foil containers were spread all over a handsome inlaid table on which there was no cloth. Some of the containers still had bones and bits of food in. There were a lot of flies about.

Realising he would probably wait a long time to be invited, PC Perrot pulled one of the narrow backed dining chairs out and sat down, a healthy distance from the table. He placed his helmet on the floor and adjusted his radio which was digging into his slightly plump middle. Then, indicating with a polite nod the foil dishes, said, “Catering for yourself, I see, sir.”

Alan Hollingsworth did not reply. He was glancing at the clock, a giant sunburst of crystal rays and gilded face and figures. He looked dreadful. Hair matted, hanging in greasy hanks around his face. He hadn’t shaved for days and from the look—and smell—of him hadn’t washed either. Dark full moons of sweat saturated the underarms of his shirt. The rims of his eyelids and the corners of his mouth were encrusted with whitish yellow flakes.

Perrot, deciding he would give six months of his pension to have the windows open, made so bold as to suggest it. At this Hollingsworth started shouting again, the gist this time being that Perrot should say what he’d come to say and get out.

“Very well, sir,” said Constable Perrot, waving away an especially bloated bluebottle. “We’ve had one or two concerned ... um ...” About to say “rumours,” he decided the word sounded a bit gossipy. “Inquiries regarding the whereabouts of your wife. As I’m sure you appreciate, this visit in no way implies any accusation or suspicions on our part as to the lady’s wellbeing. But it is normal police procedure ...”

At this point Hollingsworth buried his head in his hands. His shoulders started to twitch, then jerk about violently. Strange, hysterical sounds came from his throat. Coarse sobs. Or they could have been guffaws. Then he threw his head back so savagely one would have thought his neck might snap. Perrot saw the face, crisscrossed with tears, but was still not sure whether the man had been laughing or crying.

“Can I get you anything, Mr. Hollingsworth? A cup of tea perhaps?”

“No.” The filthy, double cuffs of his shirt hung down loosely, covering the backs of his hands. He wiped his face and then his nose with one of them.

“You’re plainly not very well, sir.”

“I’m pissed, you stupid idiot.”

Perversely, this insult, far from annoying Constable Perrot, produced in him a quiet confidence. To his mind the resident of this splendid property, by behaving no better than some rowdy council house layabout, had rejigged both the social and psychological balance of the encounter to his own benefit. The policeman unbuttoned the flap on the chest pocket of his shirt and produced a notebook and Biro.

Hollingsworth picked up the nearest bottle, which was uncapped, poured a stream of liquid into a smeary tumbler and sloshed it down. The smell of his sweat became more pronounced and the degree of acridity increased. It occurred to Constable Perrot for the first time that Hollingsworth was not only despairing but possibly afraid.

“Am I correct in understanding that Mrs. Hollingsworth is visiting her mother?” No reply. Constable Perrot repeated the question with much the same result. He waited a few moments than said, “If you refuse to help me here, sir, I’m afraid I must ask you to present yourself—”

“I’m not going out!” Hollingsworth jumped up. He braced himself against the chair as if in readiness against a forcible removal. “I can’t leave the house!”

“Please, calm yourself, Mr. Hollingsworth. This really is just routine procedure. Nothing to get upset about.” Even Perrot, unimaginative almost to the point of stolidity, knew that this was unlikely. The procedure may well be routine but the situation, he felt certain, would prove to be most irregular. He flipped open his notebook, clicked his pen and smiled encouragingly. “Am I right in thinking that your wife is visiting her mother?”

“Yes.”

“Could I have the address, please?”

“What for?”

“Just to satisfy ourselves as to her whereabouts, Mr. Hollingsworth.”

“There’s no need, I assure you.”

Constable Perrot waited, pen poised, patience on a monument. When it became plain that the proceedings would not continue until he gave a satisfactory reply, Hollingsworth suddenly leaned closer towards the policeman who had to force himself not to lean back.

“Look, is this all confidential?”

“Certainly, sir. Even if I decide to file a report,” he hoped Hollingsworth did not realise this was inevitable, “it would remain purely a police matter. Unless of course further circumstances dictated a different policy.”

“My wife doesn’t have a mother. Actually, the vicar came round asking questions. He was quite persistent—you know what do-gooders are.”

PC Perrot, who inevitably had had rather more experience with the way do-badders were, nodded agreeably.

“I said the first thing that came into my head to get rid of him. But the truth is,” his voice cracked at this point and Perrot got the impression that he was struggling not to weep, “she’s left me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Hollingsworth.” And he genuinely was. Colin Perrot, extremely contented with his own marital bargain—amiable, pretty wife, smashing teenage daughter and a pair of lively sons—briefly felt, by proxy, a touch of the anguish consuming the pathetic figure facing him. No wonder he was cursing and drinking and flailing around like one demented. Without realising they were doing so, the policeman’s fingers strayed to the frame of his chair seat and pressed the wood.

“And before you ask, I don’t have an address.”

“How long has Mrs. Hollingsworth been gone?”

“I’m not sure.” Noticing Perrot’s look of disbelief he added, “Days and nights just seem to have run into each other. Three days, four maybe.”

“Couldn’t you be a little more accurate, Mr. Hollingsworth?”

“God, it’s something I’m trying to forget, man! Not dwell on.”

“She hasn’t been in touch?”

“No.”

“So you have no idea of her whereabouts?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have, would I?”

“Did she leave a message?”

“On my answerphone. Wiped, before you ask.”

Very convenient, thought PC Perrot. He felt surprise at this sudden shift into cynicism and wondered what had provoked it. Perhaps the notion that, if Hollingsworth was all that desperately in love with his wife, he would have surely wished to retain the sound of her voice.

“What was her state of mind when you last saw her?”

“Just as usual.”

“Do you have any idea why she chose to leave?”

Hollingsworth shook his head. Or rather rocked it from side to side in his hands.

“Is there another man involved? An affair?”

“I find that hard to believe, and not just for reasons of vanity. Where would they have met? She never went anywhere except with me and the chances of secretly carrying on in a place this size are practically nil.”

“You’re right there, sir.” It didn’t seem kind to add, as he truthfully could, that he would have been one of the first to know about it. “What did the message on your machine actually say?”

“Simply that she was going away and not coming back.”

“Did she go by car?”

“No. She doesn’t drive.”

“Would she be staying with a friend, do you think?”

“I doubt it. She dropped them all when we got married.”

“Mutual friends?”

“We didn’t socialise. I worked long hours—money was terribly important to Simone. I don’t mean she was selfish or greedy, she wasn’t. But she’d had a hard time before she met me. A very hard time. Both as a child and a young woman. I sometimes felt that, however much I put in the bank, she would never feel really secure.”

During this speech, the longest he had uttered, Hollingsworth seemed to have started to sober up. He was focusing now with a reasonable degree of accuracy on his interrogator and plainly gathering his wits. Perrot was unsure whether this would mean more intelligible information or a careful rein on the tongue. And, suspicious again, he asked himself why Hollingsworth might have any need to monitor his speech.

“You mentioned your bank, Mr. Hollingsworth. Did your wife use the same one?”

“No.”

“Where was her account, please?”

There had been a brief pause before Hollingsworth answered and when he did it was with an air of improvisation. “Lloyds.”

Perrot was convinced that Hollingsworth had seized on the first name that came into his head. Yet it seemed foolish to lie about something so unsinister, not to mention easily checkable. Why not just tell the truth?

“You’re sure about that, sir?”

Hollingsworth was looking at the clock again, his eyes slipping and sliding over PC Perrot’s shoulder. Then, belatedly aware that he had been spoken to, “What?”

The constable let it go. But he made a note of his impression that Hollingsworth was being deliberately evasive. PC Perrot’s reports were models of scrupulous recording, if a trifle long-winded. The comment had been made more than once at headquarters that here was another Perrot mini series, telling them more about whatever issue was in the air than any rational person would ever wish to know.

“So, Mr. Hollingsworth, I suppose—”

“Look, I’m not interested in your suppositions. I’ve answered your questions to the best of my ability and I have nothing else to say.” He got out of his chair in one fairly smooth movement, standing upright with comparative ease.

Constable Perrot wondered if the man had been as drunk as he first appeared or if his apparent lack of sobriety was merely a ploy, a cover behind which he could reasonably be excused from understanding the questions put to him. But he had answered them all but the last, albeit in a somewhat dazed manner.

Perrot started to feel a little out of his depth. Naturally, being a policeman, he had a suspicious mind but it was not usually engaged on matters of much psychological complexity. He concluded that he would get no further with Hollingsworth in his present mood and decided to call it a day. Putting away his notebook and retrieving his helmet from beneath the chair, he too rose to his feet and moved towards the door.

“Thank you for being so cooperative, sir.”

“Yes, yes.”

Plainly the man couldn’t wait to get rid of him. In the hall PC Perrot, about to don his helmet, halted and, with what even the most ungifted amateur would have recognised as stagily risible urgency said, “Oh dear. Um, I wonder if I might use your toilet, sir?”

“Oh, well. I’d rather you ... It’s a bit of a mess.”

“No problem, Mr. Hollingsworth.” Perrot had already set his foot on the stairs. “This way, is it?”

“There’s one in the hall.”

“Many thanks.” And up he went.

The bathroom opened off the master bedroom. PC Perrot lifted the lavatory seat making quite a clatter then checked the vanity unit, medicine cabinet and the jars and bottles standing on the rim of the bath, all the while congratulating himself on this spur-of-the-moment inspiration. He coughed loudly to show he was still in there and started to run the hot tap. Then, downstairs, the phone rang and was immediately answered.

Perrot seized his chance. Swift and silent, he stepped into the bedroom. He opened and closed drawers then checked out a large, white, fitted wardrobe decorated with gold. Then he returned to the bathroom, flushed the cistern and turned off the tap.

Halfway down the stairs he stopped and tried to listen to Hollingsworth’s side of the telephone conversation. Unfortunately the noise from the pipes and reflooding cistern made this difficult. But, though Hollingsworth was speaking quietly, at one point the tone of his voice became quite ferocious, rising almost to a hiss.

“What problem? For God’s sake, Blakeley. No, that won’t do! I need all of it, I told you ...” More vocal sounds of quiet desperation followed before the receiver was laid down with unexpectedly gentle precision.

Perrot reckoned this final gesture might have been in belated recollection that there was someone else in the house, perhaps presaging a foolish pretence that the call had never happened. He made a great deal of unnecessary noise running down the last half-dozen steps.

“Very good of you, sir.” He spoke in a bright, newly relieved manner. “I’ll be off now then.”

Hollingsworth was staring into space. The expression on his face was dreadful, the skin stretched drum-tight across the cheekbones, the eyeballs bulging. His lips, were drawn back in that savage grimace of anguish that, in the newspaper photographs of the victims of tragedy, seemed so cruelly to mimic radiant joy.

PC Perrot hesitated in the hallway. He said, “Is there anything I can do?” and was relieved when there was no reply. Knowing that he should persist and that Hollingsworth was actually in quite a bad way, Perrot made an excuse to himself (the bloke really needed a doctor, not a copper) and left.

His Open Text report, as always, left nothing out. Facts aplenty; descriptive notes in almost Proustian detail. His opinions as to the truthfulness, or not, of the interviewee. Times of arrival and departure correct to the minute. The result, Perrot felt sure, would lead to further and much more stringent questioning of Alan Hollingsworth.

Unfortunately it was another forty-eight hours before the attention of anyone with enough authority to order such an investigation was drawn to the report, by which time the owner of Nightingales was in no condition to help anyone with their inquiries.

The following morning at eleven o’clock Sarah Lawson came to collect her eggs. Avis Jennings, the doctor’s wife, had a cousin with a smallholding at Badger’s Drift where he kept free-range chickens and several ducks.

Sarah had accepted an invitation to stay and have coffee which was rare, though Avis constantly asked, for she thought Sarah the most interesting person in the village by far and longed to know her better. But nearly always Sarah just paid for the eggs and with the exact money. It was as though being drawn even into the briefest of conversations over change was either a nuisance or a waste of time.

But today, intrigued, Avis assumed, by her opening gambit, “You’ll never guess what I just saw!” Sarah was sitting, gently rocking back and forth by the stone-cold Aga, in the Jennings’ kitchen. She was wearing blue, as she nearly always did, a jerkin embroidered with peacock-coloured silks, a long, full skirt of washed-out indigo. And a necklace of cornflowers fitted together in the manner of a child’s daisy chain.

“Easy to see what your favourite colour is,” said Avis. She wondered about quoting one of the few lines of poetry that still stuck in her mind from school. It was certainly appropriate. She cleared her throat. “ ‘I never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye—’ ”

“Don’t!” Sarah stopped rocking, her feet coming down hard against the stone-flagged floor. “I hate that poem.”

“I’m ... sorry.” Instead of being satisfied that she had finally scratched Sarah’s emotional surface, Avis felt awkward and uncouth. She was about to change the subject when Sarah spoke again.

“There’s a painting by Van Gogh. A prison yard, mile-high walls. Almost circular, like a tower. The men trudge round and round, their heads down. Everything’s grey and wretched. But then, right at the top of the picture and so small you could almost miss it, there’s a butterfly.”

“I think I know the one you mean,” lied Avis. “Isn’t it in the National Gallery?”

“I’d go slowly mad if I couldn’t see the sky.”

“Well, I shouldn’t think you’ve much to worry about.” A jolly laugh which didn’t really come off. “It’s not going to suddenly vanish. Not that there’s anything to vanish, of course,” she stumbled on. “Just emptiness, really. But ... very, um, beautiful.”

“Yes. One understands why people who believe in heaven think it must be up there.”

Avis, glad to be occupied, bustled about getting the coffee. In honour of the occasion she took some beans out of the freezer. These were normally kept for Sunday morning when there was time for Dr. Jim, as everyone in the village including his wife called him, actually to savour the breakfast tipple rather than just slosh it down and run. Without quite knowing why, Avis pushed the jar of Maxwell House behind her food mixer as she got the grinder out.

“This makes rather a noise, I’m afraid,” she screamed over the whizzing screech. She realised she should have spoken before switching on but the whole situation, no more than a storm in a teacup really, had got her really flustered. Not that Sarah had appeared critical. Indeed she had never been known to voice, even obliquely, an unkind word about anybody. This was not because she was not interested—quite the contrary. Sarah seemed more completely interested in whoever she was with and in their mutual surroundings than anyone Avis had ever come across. The degree and quality of her attention, once she had deigned to bestow it, was remarkable. Yet though not entirely without warmth, there was something deeply impersonal about it.

Avis’s husband, miles from being a fanciful man, once said that spending time with Sarah was like standing in front of a mirror, one was observed with such precision and clarity. Avis thought it was more like being looked at through a camera lens.

Pressing down the plunger of the cafetiére she now said, “Do you like milk or cream, Sarah?”

“Milk’s fine.”

“And sugar?”

“No thanks.”

Avis got down her best cups. Sarah had moved to the old wooden table underneath the window and was transferring the eggs from their grey, cardboard stacking sheets to a blue and white mottled bowl. She paused a moment, holding a speckly, pale tan one in the palm of her hand. There was a small feather still sticking to it and the darker brown freckles were rough against her skin.

“Aren’t they the most beautiful things?” She balanced the final egg carefully on top of the rest. “I love looking at them. Why anyone ever puts them in a fridge is beyond me.”

“Absolutely,” agreed Avis, vowing silently that from that moment on she never would.

“Apart from anything else, they get so cold the shells crack when you boil them.”

“Is that right?” Avis poured the coffee. It was only Sainsbury’s basic but it had a lovely oily sheen and smelt divine. “Would you like anything with it? A biscuit or some cake?”

Sarah said “No thanks” again and half smiled. She didn’t rush to elaborate on or explain her brief refusal as most people of Avis’s acquaintance would have done. Nor, which was much more surprising, did she ask what the unguessable exciting thing was that Avis had seen just before her own arrival. Avis found this most impressive. She admired Sarah’s control enormously while at the same time, to a more modest degree, admiring her own, for she was dying for a slice of tipsy cake. Momentarily she wondered if Sarah might not be restraining her curiosity but was genuinely uninterested. Surely this could not be true. She probably wanted to appear a cut above ordinary human nosiness. Understandable.

Then, as if to confound such reasoning, Sarah said in a tone of humorous indulgence, “Well, go on then. Tell me all about it.”

“A car came to Nightingales about half an hour ago. A black Mercedes.”

“Simone’s back?”

“No. It was a man with a briefcase. Alan let him in. He only stayed a few minutes but when he left he wasn’t carrying the case.”

Sarah burst out laughing. “I wouldn’t like to try concealing anything in this place.”

“It was pure coincidence I happened to be passing.” Avis blushed defiantly. “I was taking old Mrs. Perkins’ repeat arthritis prescription. Saves her walking to the surgery.”

“Did you get the car’s number?”

“All right, all right.” Annoyed at being made to feel foolish, Avis stopped worrying about appearing undisciplined, got the tin down and cut herself a large chunk of cake. “But you can’t deny it’s all very mysterious. For instance, Alan hasn’t left the house since Simone disappeared. You’d think he’d be out looking for her.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t know where to start.”

“What about his work?”

“What about his work?” repeated Sarah, her tranquil voice emphasising the second word.

“Everyone says he’s going to pieces.”

“How do they know if he hasn’t left the house?”

“Ohhh!” Avis’s voice flared with irritation. She swallowed her cake and dropped the fork which clattered on to her plate. “Why are you always so ...” Thinking pedantic might offend, she chose rational.

“Because irrationality alarms me.”

The two women looked at each other. Avis swallowed again, this time from nervous excitement. Sarah had never before today offered even the smallest, most innocuous personal revelation. And now, two in succession. Avis seized on what she determined to regard as an invitation to friendship and her mind leaped into the future. They would tell each other the complete story of their lives and discuss everything both trivial and profound. Sarah would talk about her work and Avis would learn about art and music and literature. She saw her horizons stretching wider and wider, her plain old world transformed into something both complex and extraordinary. Her mind would open like a flower.

Sarah, having finished her coffee, was getting up to go in the same composed, unhurried way that she had arrived. Picking up her beautiful mottled bowl of eggs she moved towards the door.

“Shall I see you next week?” cried Avis, already looking forward to it.

“Doubt it. These will probably last me quite a while.”

“That batty old woman next door’s been to the police.”

“How do you know?”

“Teddy Grimshaw saw her. He was talking about it in the pensions queue.” Reg had not himself been in the line-up. The Brockleys’ joint pensions went straight into his bank account. But the post office also doubled as a newsagents and he was in there paying the monthly paper bill. The Daily and Sunday Express, Radio Times and, for Iris, the Lady. Green Fingers, the gardening journal taken for many years, had recently been cancelled after some female jobbing columnist had taken it upon herself to suggest that excessive neatness in a plot was not only bad for the plants but denoted a seriously neurotic personality in the plantsman.

“What on earth was Mr. Grimshaw doing in the police station?”

“Making a formal complaint about that abandoned traffic cone.”

“The one leaning against the wall behind the phone box?”

“I hope you’re not suggesting another has sprung up, Iris.”

“No wonder house prices are plummeting.”

The Brockleys were taking tea on the patio. Now Reg got up from his green plastic chair and walked down the steps. As he contemplated his lawn, close-shaven in lines straight as prison bars, his prim lips tuckered into a smirk of satisfaction.

He walked down the path, his eyes swivelling, alert for alien seedlings or overconfident species that had ceased to know their place. Spotting a lacewing clinging to a violent orange floribunda, he broke off the leaf, squeezed it round the offending insect and dropped the shrouded corpse into the dustbin.

The Brockleys had no compost heap and could not understand those who did. To them the whole point of having a garden was to keep it contained, not encourage it to go burgeoning about all over the place.

Iris called out, “Another finger dainty, dear?”

Receiving no reply, she picked up a sunray of bloater paste fingers and made her way towards her husband, her stout little feet carefully avoiding the cracks in the crazy paving. No point in deliberately courting bad luck.

Reg had eased his way behind a ceanothus and was now peering into the Hollingsworths’ unruly herbaceous border. In the early evening silence frogs plopped in and out of a tiny pond. What he saw disturbed him greatly. As he wriggled back into his original position, Iris clicked her tongue.

“You’ve snagged your cardie.”

“Iris—”

“Your best Fair Isle.”

This garment was Reg’s only concession to retirement. Beneath it he wore a crisp collared and cuffed shirt, a plain closely-knotted tie and a park of dark trousers with creases so sharp they could have opened an oyster.

“He’s digging, Iris.”

“Digging?”

“A hole.”

“But he never touches the garden. He hates gardening.”

“Nevertheless ...”

“And the ground’s like a rock.”

“He’s turned the hose on it.”

After Iris had also craned round the ceanothus for a sight of the excavation they returned soberly to the house only just in time for the six o’clock news to which Reg, for the first time that either of them could remember, could hardly give his full attention.

Iris was distracted to such a degree that Shona was allowed to emerge from her basket and stand quietly in the centre of the room without being reprimanded. In gratitude she started to wag her tail.

“He must be burying something,” suggested Reg.

His wife, rinsing the crockery for the second time in clear running water, drew in her breath. One long, excited sibilation. “You don’t think ... ?”

“What?”

“Nelson?” The cat had still not reappeared and Alan was no longer to be heard calling him. Iris added, with a trembly wince in her voice, “How big’s the hole?”

“Impossible to guess from that angle. I’d need to look out of Brenda’s bedroom window.”

“Chance’d be a fine thing.” Iris laid the cloth and sat down to face her husband over the kitchen table. The discovery of the hole could well presage imminent upheaval and the Brockleys were torn between pleasure at the prospect of an exciting scandal and alarm at the thought that chaos could possibly ensue, chaos that might tip the precisely weighted balance of their world and introduce more than a touch of Iris’s “hurly burly.”

“I can’t help thinking of that terrible business in Gloucester last year.”

“Ohhh!” cried Iris. Her hands, two little pink lumps of dough, flew together and became one large pink lump. Her features shimmered under a racing flood of emotion. Alarm, pleasure, titillation, dread. “But it’s been four days since she disappeared. Surely he would have ...” Iris hesitated, unable to bring herself to utter the word “buried.” Disposed of seemed demeaning, as if Simone was something less than human. Concealed suggested inefficiency on Alan’s part. Hidden was rather lightweight and might be said to reduce the whole terrible business to no more than a macabre parlour game. Iris decided to pass, concluding tamely, “by now.”

That was when Brenda arrived from work. After she had completed her ablutions and was sitting down letting a nice cup of tea get cold and picking the onion out of the pasty, Reg slipped away.

His daughter’s door was ajar. He pushed it just as wide as he needed to get inside—fortunately it did not squeak. He tiptoed to the larger of the two windows which looked over the back garden. From here he could see the hole quite clearly. As far as he could judge it seemed to be about four feet round and two feet deep. Nowhere near big enough to accommodate a body even if tightly curled. On the other hand Hollingsworth had plainly not finished digging, for the spade was left jammed into the ground.

Reg, who always cleaned his tools with newspaper before hanging them on their clearly labelled hooks, gave a “tsk” of censure. Though he would have been outraged if such a suggestion had been put to him, in truth Reg disapproved more of this example of slovenliness than if he had come across Alan actually interring his spouse.

And then the man himself appeared. Suddenly he was there, on the terrace. Reg jumped back out of sight. After a moment he heard the sound of the spade scraping and chopping at something and then repeated hard bangs as if the earth was being beaten level. He risked a peep round the curtain and saw that the hole was being filled in.

Reg hurried away, adjusting the door, as precisely as he could remember, to show exactly the same gap.

As he sat down again, Iris raised her finely pencilled brows, indicating the food still lying on the table.

“She’s hardly eaten a thing.” She scraped the remains of Brenda’s supper into a bowl marked DOG.

“Now, Iris. I’ve surveyed the—”

“I mentioned he’d been digging and how he never had before. She said, in that cold sort of way she’s taken on lately, ‘A person can change, I hope, Mother.’ I thought, he’s not the only one.”

“Are you listening to me?”

“Of course I am. Just because I’m talking doesn’t mean I’m not listening.”

“I would say that hole was of a size to comfortably accommodate a medium-sized box file.”

“That’s nice.”

“However, the situation has now changed somewhat ...”

Brenda was sitting on the sofa in the lounge. Ostensibly transfixed by Watchdog, she was in fact preoccupied entirely with her own private misery. She could hear her parents droning on but only remotely, like waves on a distant beach. Queasily swamped by thoughts of Alan Hollingsworth, she stared at the screen, not registering the everyday saga of crooked folk and their imaginative swindles.

Since that dreadful moment when their eyes had met through the glass of her bedroom window, he had not been out of her thoughts for an instant. Her work had suffered. Asked that morning to take one of the tills, a rare and unwished for honour, she had been so locked within a remorseful maze of argument and counter-argument that she had not even registered the sympathetic—or repelled—glances her appearance always provoked.

“If only” had been the gist of her anguished reasoning. If only she hadn’t looked out precisely at that moment. If only he hadn’t glanced up exactly when he did. But by now, a bare two days after the event, these feverish reflections had inflated the incident into a tragedy of Sophoclean weight and proportion.

Bearing the unbearable had brought her almost to the point of exhaustion. She had not slept and now, though so tired she could barely focus, knew she would sleep fitfully if at all the coming night.

Aware at one level that she was being ridiculous, Brenda had striven to see the incident as if from an outsider’s point of view, to establish in her mind its essential triviality. But her exertions had seemed to make matters worse. Like a swimmer struggling against a powerful current, she had become more and more enmeshed. She realised now that, until matters had been put right between them, the black torment would continue. She saw herself becoming really ill.

Brenda got up quickly before fear could atrophy her limbs, hurried into the hall, grabbed her keys and put on her coat. Her mother’s “Where are you going?” was cut off by the door slam.

Brenda ran down the path, round to Nightingales’ tall black and gold gates and wrenched them open. She could do it as long as she didn’t stop to think. Opening gambits—I can’t say how sorry. What you must think. I couldn’t bear it if—floated to the surface of her mind, broke like bubbles and were straightaway replaced by more.

These remedial flourishes brought Brenda to the front door. On the point of dissolving into desperate tears, she knocked very loudly.

Immediately the door was opened. Alan Hollingsworth came out and moved forcefully forward. For one terrible moment Brenda thought he was going to push her off the step. Or even knock her down. He slammed the door behind him and started walking towards the garage.

Impossible as it might appear, Brenda was instantly convinced he hadn’t seen her. His eyes appeared to be fixed on some distant point or object. He could almost have been in a trance. His face was ghastly; grey-white with little cuts on his cheeks and chin. One or two had tufts of cotton wool with traces of blood sticking to them. His movements were mechanistic and strangely concentrated.

Brenda, horrified, watched as the car was backed out. Surely he wasn’t going to drive in that zombie-like state. He would have an accident and kill someone. Or, a million times worse, himself!

She ran across the gravel crying, “Wait!” but the car was already reversing down the drive. Brenda waved her arms, crossing and recrossing them at the wrists as if signalling on a flight path.

Now he was turning. She saw his shoulder dip as he bent to change gear. She raced back to The Larches—blessing the key ring in her pocket—and flung herself into the Metro. The engine caught first time. Brenda, briefly aware of her parents’ startled faces at the kitchen window, scraped a wing on the gatepost. Then she was out in the lane and away.

At the T-junction where St. Chad’s Lane ran into the main street Brenda stopped and looked anxiously both ways. On the outskirts of the right-hand exit from Fawcett Green the tarmac was being repaired and a set of traffic lights had been installed. They showed red. Two cars were waiting, neither of which belonged to Alan.

Guessing that he would not have had time to precede them and praying she was right, Brenda turned left and put her foot down. Usually a timid and decorous driver, she touched fifty while still in the village and sixty the second she was on the open road. Within minutes she had spotted the Audi.

It was moving along quite slowly. Brenda settled down to follow, keeping just one vehicle, an electrical van, between them. When this turned off, she remained unconcerned, reasoning that if Alan had not noticed her standing under his nose on Nightingales’ doorstep he was hardly likely to spot her in the present circumstances.

He drove through Causton and Uxbridge before taking the road towards West Drayton. They passed the stately building of the Montessori School, half hidden behind tall trees, and the much less stately Crowne Plaza Holiday Inn. At one point a massive blue and white container lorry, Transports Frigorifigues European, roared by. When the driver pulled over to the inside lane, Brenda lost sight of Alan and had to grip the wheel very tightly to stop the sudden trembling in her hands. Unable to overtake the lorry, she could do nothing but follow it and pray that the Audi would not suddenly enter the middle lane and speed off, for she was sure she would not have the skill or courage to follow.

Then came a nightmare four-lane intersection with signs to Heathrow, Central London and Slough. She saw Alan in the second stream. Gritting her teeth and screwing up her face with anxiety and effort, Brenda overtook the great pantechnicon, fleetingly aware of two great blue interlocking circles on its mile-long chassis. Several horns hooted so she knew she had done something wrong.

Alan was following the sign for Heathrow. Once more safely on his tail, Brenda relaxed slightly. She was starting to feel happy, or at least pleasurably excited, and realised that, for the first time in her life, she was having an adventure. She sat up straighter in the car, lifted her chin in a daredevil sort of way and briefly drove with one hand on the wheel. A huge white model of Concorde flashed by to her right and they were in the airport tunnel.

There was a great deal of noise, screaming whoops and wails as two police cars tore by closely followed by an ambulance. A Sheraton Heathrow bus blocked her view and, emerging into the light again, Brenda discovered that Alan was now in the nearside lane and aiming for the Short Stay Car Park. Confused, uncertain and desperate not to lose him, she signalled and simultaneously swung over directly in front of a black cab. The driver signalled viciously in return and further demonstrated his fury by a stream of rabidly picturesque sound bites as he passed.

Alan was reaching through his window for a ticket from the machine at the entrance. Brenda did the same then wondered how, having no purse, she would be able to pay for it. At least she had filled up with petrol on her way home from work. Alan drove to the higher level and Brenda followed. He got out carrying a small case and made his way towards the lifts.

Brenda crept out of her car using the door furthest away. Having parked with about a dozen vehicles between them, she sidled, half crouching, past several rear number plates ready to duck should her quarry decide to retrace his steps. As Alan pressed the lift button he glanced about him and Brenda remained very still, unaware that she was an object of humorous derision to a couple in a nearby Saab.

As soon as the lift doors closed, she ran forward and rested her finger on the descending arrow, burning with impatience. She had never been to an airport but her feverish imagination had already supplied a teeming concourse in which Alan would be swallowed up without trace the moment he set foot on it.

The second lift arrived and when she emerged at ground level Brenda’s worst fears were realised. Tears of frustration welled as she dodged cars and mini buses and crossed two roads to gain the automatic swing door that was the entrance to the terminus.

Once inside, at once she knew herself defeated. Standing between the desks for Aer Lingus and British Midland she observed the vast hall where seemingly thousands of people queued, manipulated trolleys, grumbled, sweated, lugged cases, railed at children or just sat slumped, stuffing food into their mouths.

Now that secrecy was not an issue, Brenda moved boldly if miserably about, staring at the multicoloured computer screens above her head and the brightly lit shopping section. Austin Reed, Tie Rack, the Body Shop—it was like Uxbridge High Street.

If only she knew why Alan had come to Heathrow she’d have some idea where to look for him. He had carried a bag but it was such a small one, more of an attaché case really, that you couldn’t count it as luggage. Which was why she had assumed he wasn’t flying anywhere. But she could be wrong. If this was so then the situation was indeed hopeless for, without knowing his destination, there was no possible way to discover in which area he would be waiting.

Of course he could be meeting some—Brenda stood stock still then, her hand on her pounding heart, her cheeks icing over, understanding at last what an absolute fool she had been. No wonder he had raced out of the house, flung himself into the car, driven like the wind. Simone was coming back!

Oh God, she might bump into them. Hand in hand, laughing and kissing, arms round each other. Making up for lost time. True, they wouldn’t guess why she was here but Brenda knew she would not be able to bear it. She hurried away from the drift towards the main entrance. She passed a burger bar and more shops, not even looking where she was going, anxious only to find a hiding place.

Which is how she almost came to miss him.

Alan was standing in line with several other people on some steps going down to a lower level. Brenda, stepping quickly back, glanced at the brightly illuminated amber and black sign over her head. Left Luggage.

The steps doubled back on themselves so, once Alan had disappeared on to the underneath shelf, as it were, she was able to join the queue without risk of discovery. There were seven people between them.

When she entered the baggage area, she stood to one side near the back wall, as if waiting for someone. From this position she was able to observe Alan queueing for the X-ray machine. The first thing she observed was that, if such a thing were possible, he looked even more ill than he had when she had first seen him.

He was staring at a woman who was wearing a bright sombrero. She had been asked to open her luggage which was then thoroughly examined. Unaware that a one in ten search was normal procedure, Brenda marvelled at the shrewdness of the staff, for the woman looked just like an ordinary holidaymaker. She had even thought to bring along two small children.

Alan put his case on the moving track; a dark outline enclosing a mass of grey scrawl slid by on the screen. Brenda, noticing an Evening Standard sticking out of a waste bin, picked it up. When Alan handed in the case, received a yellow ticket and turned to leave, she hid behind the paper until the scruffy, unpolished shoes had climbed above her head and disappeared.

Brenda hurried after, determined not to lose him again. He didn’t go far. Just a few yards away, high above the crowd, was a pub and several eateries. She watched Alan climb the stairs then, knowing him to be safely contained at least for the next few minutes, relaxed for the first time since she had left the house.

Immediately she thought about her parents and how worried they would be at her sudden, wild departure. There were a few loose coins in her coat pocket and a bank of telephones close by. Brenda put in ten pence, rang home and just had time to gabble some sort of made-up story before she was cut off.

Then, cautiously, she made her way to the foot of the steps. She was standing next to some computer war games, one of which was being ferociously manipulated by a dark-skinned young man in a baggy T-shirt. He kept shouting “Yes!! Yes!!” and banging on the machine with his fist. Every few seconds he drank from a water bottle and pulled his T-shirt away from his skinny body, agitating it to let the air circulate, sweating in the heat of his vicarious battle.

Brenda crept slowly upwards. She wasn’t too afraid of meeting Alan coming down, reckoning that, as he was presumably visiting one of the watering holes, he would by now be safely sitting with a plate of something or, at the very least, a drink. Hesitantly she peered over the parapet.

The set-up was open plan. The frontage of a pub, Garfunkel’s café, a Häagen-Dazs, and Harry Ramsden’s fish and chip restaurant simply ran into each other, without dividing walls.

Brenda looked around the spread of tables in the icecream parlour. Some were black with matching chairs, others, speckled malachite, stood on one leg surrounded by camel-coloured plastic stools. There were lots of potted palms. Alan was at the counter buying a cup of coffee.

Concealed behind a large sign suggesting that customers requiring the Häagen-Dazs Table Service Queue Here, she watched him go into the dining area. He sat close to a huge black and white photograph of a lascivious couple radiant with gluttony. Even from where she stood Brenda could see they were licking each other’s lips, if not actually devouring each other’s tongues. She crossed over to the entrance of Harry Ramsden’s and pretended to read all about the good things they had to offer. When she looked over her shoulder, mere seconds later, Alan had gone.

Wildly now, not caring at all whether she was discovered or not, Brenda flew down the stairs in pursuit. At the bottom of the steps someone barred her way.

“Excuse me.” It was the boy from the war machines. “You got any change, love?”

“What?” Disorientated, she stared at him in bewilderment. “No. No, I haven’t.” She pushed him out of the way and stood staring crazily about her. Then ran back up the steps to get a better view. But it was hopeless. Just a massive, heaving swarm of unidentifiable people.

“What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?”

Brenda did not realise she had spoken aloud. The boy from the war games machine started to laugh but she did not hear.

Was Alan going home? Should she run back to the car park and try to catch him there?

But surely, if he had checked in his luggage he would later need to reclaim it. In which case he must still be somewhere on the concourse. Unless ... unless ...

Brenda screwed up her tense, white face trying to come to a decision.

Behind her back someone else now stood beneath the gobbling, slobbering black and white lovers. Someone whose eyes were suddenly sharp with recognition. And not a little alarm.