The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 10

INHERITANCE by Jane Casey

FROM THE ROAD, you couldn’t see there was a house there at all. The granite gateposts still stood but the gates themselves were long gone, and the lodge beside them was dark and shuttered, derelict.

But there was a house, and Anthony Gallagher knew it. He knew a lot about it, in fact. He had done his research. And he had chosen a moonless night, a night when the rain was relentless – a night when you wouldn’t turn a dog away from the door, no matter who you were – to make his move. He stood just inside the gate, tapping his fingers against his thighs like a footballer preparing to take a penalty. This was the worst bit. It was always the same. Once he got started, he’d be all right. But before, the nerves got to him. Every time.

The rain fell steadily, collecting in the potholes that pitted the gravel drive. He flipped up the collar on his jacket and started walking. A good half-mile in the dark, on a surface that promised a broken ankle or worse with one false step. He was swearing blue murder before he’d gone halfway, wishing he had his torch handy, but it was somewhere at the bottom of his bag. Besides, it would look suspicious to turn up with a torch. It wasn’t the sort of thing a casual traveller would carry, probably, and he wanted to look like nothing more than a casual traveller.

The bag kept knocking against his legs no matter which hand he carried it in. It was light enough. Just a change of shirt, a toothbrush, a razor and shaving foam, the torch and some odds and ends for later on. He needed to be presentable. Part of the game was looking smart. It was all about setting them at their ease. Making them trust him. Gaining their confidence.

Taking advantage.

There was a light on, he was glad to see as he rounded the last corner of the drive. It wasn’t late, he knew. Half-past eight. Too late to send him away, not so late that the occupant would refuse to answer the door on principle. But there was always the danger they would have gone to bed early. Old people did. Especially in houses where central heating was an unfamiliar concept.

Framed between two straggling yew trees, the house looked grander than he had expected. It was a foursquare Georgian box, grey stone like the gateposts. Five windows ran across the upper storey. On the ground floor, soft golden lamplight shone through the two windows to the left of the porch. He moved towards the rectangle of brightness nearest him, careful to stay in the shadows, treading softly on the loose gravel that gave under him with every step. A lovely room: small, but elegant, with grey silk-covered walls, a marble fireplace carved with sleek, well-fed figures and Doric columns, and a ceiling ornate with swags and garlands of plasterwork. On the walls, landscapes and portraits and miniatures and hunting scenes hung three and four deep, as if there weren’t enough wall for all of them, and pairs of gold-framed mirrors with dim old glass in them softened the room’s reflection to a dream. And the furniture. He didn’t know a lot about it – small items were his bag – but he’d spent enough time looking in windows on Francis Street to recognize the living glow of top-quality mahogany and the arrogant, springing sweep of an Irish Georgian table-leg. A fine breakfront bookcase filled most of one wall, and a pair of brassbound peat buckets flanked the fire. He was looking at wealth, generations of it, there for the taking by anyone who chose to walk up the dark drive.

She was alone anyway. There was a decent fire alight and she had a chair pulled up to it, a sagging armchair that looked comfortable. Her back was to the window, but he could see her head was bent over something. A book maybe or some sewing, he thought, stretching his imagination to the utmost. He had very little idea what an elderly woman might do on a winter’s evening to entertain herself. No TV that he could see. No music playing. She wasn’t asleep; he could see her head turning as she concentrated on whatever it was. A movement by the door set his heart thumping but it was nothing, it was just a dog walking over to her, a black yoke that looked like four bits of different dogs stuck together. The great lantern jaw belonged on a mastiff; the body was fat and barrel-shaped, like a Labrador succumbing to middle-age spread. Short little legs and a flailing tail that threatened to knock over the table beside her completed the picture. At a word from her it collapsed to the ground as if shot, the two stumpy legs that were uppermost paddling the air beseechingly until she leaned over and rubbed its stomach.

It wasn’t much of a dog, he thought, but a dog nonetheless. It might hear him, or smell him. Better to knock on the door before he was discovered lurking outside. Peering in through the window would be hard to explain. He moved away. Trust was the key, he’d often thought. Establish that and they’re yours. And they want to like you. He pressed the bell by the front door, hearing it jangle deep in the house. They want you to be nice and honest and decent. They want you to be like they are themselves. He took a couple of paces back so as not to crowd her when she opened the door. It had the effect of taking him out of the shelter of the portico, exposing him to the rain, flattening his hair to his head. The light went on in the hall. He assumed a doubtful expression, a wistful look that had worked like a charm many times before. The door opened – not wide, but enough.

“You’ll have to forgive me for knocking on your door at this late hour,” he began. Word perfect. Practised. All the consonants where they should be. A little too mannered to be credible, did he but know it, but a fair attempt at sounding well spoken. “My car broke down, I’m afraid. Just down the road. There isn’t anywhere else around here – I was hoping I might get some shelter for the night.”

“How unfortunate.” Her voice was unexpectedly deep for such an elderly lady, such a slight frame. She had her back to the light and he couldn’t see the expression on her face. “Have you no mobile telephone?”

“Out of battery,” he improvised. “I would have asked to use your phone, but I don’t know who to call at this time of night.”

“A garage would seem to be the obvious choice.”

He tried a laugh, spluttering a little on the rain running down his face. Jesus, he was getting drenched. “You’re right there. But there’s none of them at work at this hour.”

‘There is always the Automobile Association.”

It took him a second. “Oh – the AA. I’m not a member. I should be, but I’m not.” He sniffed. Time to turn it up a notch. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble. If there is a barn, or an outbuilding of some kind…”

“This isn’t Bethlehem, young man.” A gravelly note of amusement in the throaty voice. “You may come in. But you must take the place as you find it. I can’t promise you comfort.”

“A roof over my head is all I ask.”

“Well, I have one of those. Of a sort.”

She stepped back, holding the door open, and he ducked his head as he passed her in an awkward kind of bow. He took up a position a few paces away from her on the stone-flagged floor, trying to appear unthreatening, but his mind was working at top speed. The air in the hall was freezing and damp, a damp that had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with a couple of centuries of decline. Overhead, a brass hall lantern was blazing, shining brightly enough that he could see the wavering cracks in the floor, the worn treads of the carpet on the stairs, his breath misting in front of his face. Indoors. Jesus.

He was able to see his hostess properly too, and she him. She was old – of course, he had known that, but so old now that he looked at her skin, folded in hundreds of tiny wrinkles that looked powdery soft and delicate. She had high, slender eyebrows that she had drawn herself in an unlikely brown-pencil arc, and the remains of bright pink lipstick feathered the edges of her mouth. So she still cared about her appearance. You wouldn’t have known it from the dress she wore – a shocking thing it was, black but you could still see the stains of food and God knows what down the front. A few inches of hem hung down at the side. She had a shawl around her shoulders pinned carelessly with a crescent brooch that had the yellowish, muted dazzle of filthy diamonds. No rings on the hands that still looked strong despite the veins that wormed across their backs, the loose skin dappled with age spots. That made sense. She hadn’t ever married. He could smell cigarettes off her from where he stood. The front of her hair was yellow-grey with nicotine staining, and her teeth were as brown as if they’d been carved out of wood.

Unconsciously he ran his tongue over his own set: capped as soon as he could afford it, Persil-white and even. He was twenty-seven – almost thirty, which he couldn’t believe personally, but at least he looked younger. Baby-faced was what they’d always said. He played up to it, with the big blue eyes and a smile he practised every time he was alone with a mirror. The smile said, trust me. The smile said, I’m only a young fella. The smile said, I’m harmless. He kept his hair short and his clothes neutral, dark, unmemorable.

He had a story prepared about being a pharmaceutical salesman but there was no need for it; she went past him to the door of the room where he’d seen her sitting.

“You’ll be warmer in here.” The handle was loose and rattled as she turned it – a bad noise, distinctive and hard to muffle. The dog had its nose up against the door, desperate to get out. He hadn’t heard it bark but it was on to him all right. It pushed out past her, lunging towards him, wheezing aggressively. Without meaning to, he stepped back, away.

“Don’t be frightened. He won’t harm you.”

“Good boy,” Anthony said feebly.

“He’s deaf. Getting old.” She stood holding the door, too polite to tap her foot but impatience in every angle of her body. “You’re letting the heat out.”

“Sorry, I-” He gestured helplessly. The dog was standing between him and the door. He itched to kick it. A good punt in the ribcage. If she wasn’t looking, maybe.

“Oscar.” There was a whipcrack of command in her voice and the dog squinted back at her, reluctant to obey. She tapped her thigh and it moved at last, stomping past her on its short little legs, heading for the rug in front of the fire. He slunk after it, looking around with frank admiration once he had gone through the door.

“Beautiful room.”

“It was once.” She sat down in her chair and picked up the book that she had left on the floor. She was going to start reading again, he realized, wondering with a flare of panic what she expected him to do with himself.

“I suppose I should introduce myself. Graham Field.” A nice Proddy name.

She looked up briefly. “My name is Hardington. Clementine Hardington.”

Clementine Lavinia Hardington, daughter of Colonel Greville Hardington (d. 1963) and Audrey De Courcy Hardington (d. 1960). Last of her line.

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Hardington.” Shit. “Or is it Mrs Hardington?”

“Miss.”

No “call me Clemmie” he noted, sitting down opposite her and stretching his hands out to the fire. Know your place, young man.

She had gone back to her book. He scanned the room, seeing signs of neglect everywhere now that he was inside. The plaster ceiling was missing chunks of its frieze and had a huge water stain over most of it. The upholstery was frayed on every chair, the stuffing spilling out. The silk on the walls was in tatters. Long curtains at the window were two-tone from years of exposure to sunlight. They were threadbare along their folds, torn in places, probably riddled with moths. The rug was worn to its backing in places and the pattern was hard to distinguish, coated as it was in a thick layer of dog hair. And why was it that all dogs, no matter what colour their coat, seemed to shed grey hair?

“Have you lived here long?” He’d got the tone exactly right. Innocent curiosity.

“I was born in this house.”

“Very good,” he said, as if she had done something impressive. Pure chance was all it was. Pure chance had left her sitting in her big house with the grand paintings and the high ceilings. You couldn’t respect that.

But you could respect the collection of eighteenth-century miniatures on both sides of the fireplace. And you could respect the collection of Japanese figurines on the table beside him: topsy-turvy animals, twisted people, weird things like a plum being eaten by a wasp, a mouse fighting with a lizard. He itched to pick them up for a closer look but didn’t dare. He looked around stealthily. What else? A pair of silver-mounted horns caught his eye but he could see the inscription engraved on the base: too identifiable. Blue-and-white china in various shapes and sizes, fragile and faded. Matching vases that were probably Meissen, but one was chipped. Forget it. The paintings now: they were worth a second look. Not on this trip, though. Too big, too awkward.

He turned his attention to the other side of the fireplace and choked despite himself. A pair of shotguns, the real deal, fine engraving on the silver side plates and polished walnut stocks.

She looked up at the noise and saw where he was staring.

“The guns? They were my father’s. Purdeys. Quite the best game gun there is. They were made for him in 1936.”

And nowadays they were worth about a hundred grand, easy. “Do they still work?”

“Of course.”

“Can you shoot?”

“Of course,’ she said again, turning the page. “My father taught me.” My faw-ther. And that would be him in the silver photograph frame on the table beneath the guns, he presumed. Big moustache. Heavy jaw. Small eyes.

He looked at the guns again, longingly. No point in trying to take them. Twenty-eight inches long; he’d never get them out without being spotted. Another time.

She had lit a cigarette and now, without looking, she tilted her hand to tap the ash into a vast cut-glass ashtray at her elbow. She missed and a shower of grey flecks drifted down on to the floor. Easy to see why the carpet was in a jocker. It would be a long time before anyone pushed a Hoover around it either.

She must have noticed him watching her. “I didn’t offer you a cigarette.”

“I’m grand.” He was gasping for one, but Graham Field was a clean-living non-smoker. He wouldn’t have taken a drink if she’d asked him to. Not an issue so far, it had to be said. But he was obviously making progress, because she put down the book.

“Are you hungry?”

A polite answer was no. He hesitated for long enough that he was sure she got the message he was lying. “No. Not at all.”

“Did you have your dinner?”

“No,” he said again. “No. I don’t need anything, though.”

“You can’t go to bed hungry.” She stood up. “I can make you something. An omelette.”

He couldn’t stand egg in any shape or form. “Lovely. But I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

She didn’t bother to say it wasn’t any trouble, but she didn’t sit down again either. Bending with a sigh, she tweaked the fireguard across the hearth, then switched off the lamp beside her, leaving only the dying fire to light the room. Anthony got the message and stood too, letting the dog have a head start in the race to join her.

There was a pile of fur on a chair by the door. When she picked it up and shook it out, it resolved itself into a full-length coat that must once have been beautiful. It stank of mothballs, but by the looks of things they hadn’t worked. Slinging it around her shoulders, she turned and gave him a sidelong smile. “Brace yourself.”

It was good advice. After the heat of the drawing room, the cold in the hall struck into his very bones. His clothes had dried on him, more or less, but the chill found out the patches of damp behind his knees, along his shoulders, down his back. He would catch his death, he thought, not quite closing the drawing-room door before following Miss Hardington to the back of the hall, Oscar shambling between them with an occasional wary look in his direction. There was an archway leading to a short flight of stairs that twisted into a passageway dimly lit with a weak bulb. He thought at first that the walls were decorated with more pictures, frame upon frame jostling for space, but when he looked he saw beetles and butterflies and moths lovingly mounted on rubbed green velvet.

“Who likes the bugs?”

“My grandfather was a keen naturalist.” Disapproval in her voice. A warning to him to watch himself and a timely one at that. It had been an Anthony question, not a Graham one. He, Anthony, wouldn’t fancy looking at a load of insects on his way to the kitchen, but Graham might see the point.

“Very interesting.”

She didn’t respond. She was grappling with the door handle, another brute that screeched with a nerve-shredding sound of metal on metal when it finally gave way. The door opened and he peered into the kitchen, which proved to be smaller than he had imagined and disappointingly prosaic – sterile white cupboards and a too-bright fluorescent light. No big Aga keeping the place warm, either. It was arctic. Nothing to interest him here. The gas cooker looked to date from the 1960s at the latest, but that didn’t make it an antique – just a health hazard.

“Sit down there.”

“There” was a plain wooden table with rotting feet from years of standing on a much-washed tile floor. He sat gingerly on a chair that threatened to give way under him, wondering if woodworm ever turned on humans. The table and chairs were riddled.

“Water?”

If that was all that was on offer. “Yes, please.”

A glass landed on the table in front of him, a cheap tumbler. “There’s a tap in the scullery.”

And you can get it yourself, he filled in silently, taking it and going through to the next room where he found a sink and shelves weighed down with old Waterford glass: bowls, decanters, glasses, vases. They were dusty, untouched for years at a guess, and as he washed out his own glass fastidiously and waited for the water to run cold again, he found himself eyeballing a dead fly in the wineglass directly in front of his face. One that my grand-faw-ther missed, he thought, allowing himself a small chuckle.

She had been busy; the omelette was almost done when he got back, and there was a fork and a folded napkin on the table. The napkin was starched linen, at least two foot by two foot when he unfolded it, and the folds were so stiff that it stood up in his lap as if he had an erection, which was far from being the case. The omelette was heavy on bits of eggshell and light on filling. He had an awful suspicion that the flecks in it were not black pepper but cigarette ash.

She sat opposite him, sideways to the table, smoking, and didn’t seem to notice when he slipped the guts of the omelette into the napkin and flicked it under the table to the dog.

“That was very nice. Thank you very much. Were the eggs from your own hens?”

A blue glare. “I bought them in Supervalu.”

Right. Enough of trying to make friends. Fuck it. He was only going to rob her anyway. “It’s getting late. I don’t want to keep you up. I can tidy up here if you just point me to where I’m to sleep.”

“There’s no need to tidy up. It can wait.” The dog had dealt with his leftovers and was now investigating the frying pan. She had left it on the floor for him. Anthony felt his stomach heave. No cooked breakfast for him in the morning, thank you. She stood and it still came as a surprise to him that her posture was better than his, perfectly straight, not hunched over like the doddering old lady he’d expected. She should have looked ridiculous in the fur coat but she wore it as if it were the obvious thing, and so it was for the conditions. He’d have dressed like a fucking Eskimo if he’d lived in that house.

He’d expected to go back to the main hall so he could get his bearings, but there was another staircase, a wooden one that climbed up the back of the house. The creaks from it were chronic.

“I’ll put you in the guest room. The bed isn’t made up but the sheets and blankets are on the end of it.”

“No problem.”

“It may be a little cold.”

“I’ll be grand.” I’ll be keeping busy…

“The bathroom is here.” She indicated a room off the half-landing where they had paused. It reeked of Dettol, which was better than he might have hoped even if not exactly inviting. Anyway, he wouldn’t be committing himself there. Face and hands only. Stripping for a bath was out of the question.

The bedrooms opened off a narrow central hall. His, she indicated, was at the very end of the house, and he went down the hallway counting doors, noting creaking floorboards, marking out his route. Opening the door, he recoiled as if someone had punched him. He would not have thought it was possible for the air temperature to be so low in what was technically a sound structure. The bed was a few inches shy of being a double and looked as if its last occupant had died in it. The curtains on the window didn’t meet in the middle when he pulled them. The bow-fronted chest of drawers listed to one side. The pictures were dismal flower studies, definitely the work of an amateur. This was not a house that welcomed visitors.

He made some attempt to make the bed, laying the sheets and blankets over it. One blanket to protect him from the mattress which was probably jumping with vermin. Two to go over him. And his damp coat over that. He would still freeze. He huddled under them, smoking, reckless of being caught as she would never be able to tell it wasn’t the smell of her own smokes. Usually he would have been worried about falling asleep, but there was no chance of that. He was shaking too much. At least it was no longer raining. He hoped it would stay that way. He had to drive back to Dublin the following day and it would be quicker if the roads were dry. He would boot it the whole way, with the car’s heater knocked up to the max, he promised himself.

When he finally uncoiled himself and slid out from under the blankets, he was stiff. He stretched, rolling his head from one shoulder to the other, shaking out his arms, breathing deeply the way he’d seen runners prepare before fitting themselves into the starting blocks.

“Off we go.” He slipped through the bedroom door into the hallway. It was pitch dark. No streetlights. No moonlight. Just him and his trusty torch, hooded so it only cast a speck of light. He drifted down the hall, silent in his socks, holding his breath as he went past the door of the woman’s room. The stairs were an unknown quantity which he didn’t like, he didn’t like at all, and he took his time going down them, testing each tread before he put his weight on it. Then the hallway, the stone floor cold under his feet but solid, reliable, and he could pick up the pace.

He started in the dining room, playing his torch over the paintings on the walls, the long table, the fine chandelier and the twenty-four matching chairs, before he got down to business. Most conveniently, there was plenty on display that he liked the look of: silver, mainly. Serving spoons engraved with what had to be the family crest, a sauce boat standing proudly on tiny clawed feet, a pair of oval salt cellars with blue glass liners, a silver dish ring decorated with leaves and bunches of grapes. It was hard to stop himself from taking too much. He couldn’t go mad. He had to take enough to make it worth his while but not so much that she’d notice straightaway. He wrapped everything that he took in strips of dusters, brand-new and soft, to cushion them from damage and keep them from banging together when he carried them upstairs. It was a matter of pride to make neat bundles, folding the material intricately. He should have been hurrying but he took his time over it.

In the drawing room he hesitated, suddenly struck by what he was doing, unsettled by the looks he was getting from the family portraits on the walls. Her ashtray was still there, her book over the arm of her chair. She sat in there day in, day out, surrounded by the things that had been passed down to her by her family. Who was he to take them?

Except that why shouldn’t he? She and her family had had the best of everything through at least two Irelands: the one where they were top of the heap and the ordinary peasants were just there to admire them and pay them rent, and the one where the proles suddenly had the power, riding the crest of a wave of prosperity, buying up the old houses and furniture and art as if there would always be money, as if there were nothing but. She had held on to what was hers, even then. And in the third Ireland, the new one, the one where no one had a euro to their name, it was time to share out what there was. Specifically, with him. Why should she keep it anyway? She wasn’t really Irish, Anthony thought, conveniently forgetting the generations of Hardingtons who had lived and died in the house. This was practically his duty as a proud Irishman.

He bagged a handful of snuffboxes, silver and gold, a pair of blue-and-white plates, a Dresden shepherdess of exquisite frailty accompanied by her would-be suitor plucking a lyre, and three of the little Japanese curios. God knows if anyone else would like them but he did, he thought, deliberating over which ones to take. He settled on a dormouse dozing inside one half of a walnut shell, a snake coiled into an evil-looking pyramid and an ivory samurai in full armour, his hands by his sides, his chest puffed out nobly. Six of the miniatures came with him as well: pretty girls in low-cut dresses, the sort of thing that appealed to collectors. They were easy to package up.

On his way out, he stopped by the shotguns. Putting his bag down, he lifted one of them off its hooks, feeling the heft of it, the lethal snugness of it against his shoulder, the willingness of the trigger. A thing of beauty. He put it back on the wall slowly, longingly, and winked at the black-and-white photo.

“Fair play, Greville.”

There had been nothing in the kitchen for him – he didn’t touch glass, too fragile – and although he looked into the library, he didn’t fancy it. Dustsheets covered the furniture and the books were locked behind elaborate grating. He didn’t know what he was supposed to be looking for, anyway. And he had a fair bit, he thought, hefting the shoulder bag that contained his night’s work. Time to quit. He ghosted back into the hall and up the stairs, counting them under his breath and skipping the fourth, the ninth, the seventeenth…

Where he came a cropper was halfway down the landing. Seduced by the dim light from the window at the end that guided him towards his room, he had decided he knew his way well enough to dispense with the torch. He had no warning when he collided with something solid, something heavy, something that uttered a long-drawn-out howl as he nosedived into the ancient carpet, tasting the dust of ages and his own very modern blood.

It was as if she had been waiting behind her door. It slammed back against the wall, light spilling out into the hall so he had to shield his eyes for a second. She was still wearing the coat, he noticed, blinking up at her.

“Mr Field. What happened?”

“It was the fu- it was the dog. It was Oscar. I just – I needed the toilet. I was just looking for it. I got confused.” Stop talking. Start thinking. He couldn’t hit her. Not an old woman. But if he ran downstairs… an image flashed into his mind. The shotguns. He curved his hand around an imaginary stock, practically feeling it against his palm. If he was quick, he could deal with her before she had a chance to phone the guards. That assumed she didn’t have a phone upstairs, it assumed the shotguns were loaded, and it also assumed he had the nerve to do it. Murder. Kill her, in cold blood. Blow her away. Then spend a million years trying to wipe his prints and DNA off every bit of the house. It was a bit different from pocketing a few knick-knacks, when you thought about it.

He was still lying on the ground, grovelling in front of her. He got up slowly, picking up his bag as if it were nothing of note.

“It’s the middle of the night. Where were you going?” She didn’t sound panicked, which was something.

“I was looking for the toilet. I got confused about which stairs it was off.”

“The back stairs.” She pointed. “Down there.”

“That explains why I couldn’t find it.” He tried a smile. “Sorry for disturbing you. And for stepping on the dog. Sorry about that, Oscar.”

The mutt gave him a wall-eyed glare.

“I’ll head down there, so. Sorry again.” The toilet wasn’t a bad plan, actually. The tension was squeezing his guts. He needed a crap. He walked away in the direction she had indicated, waiting for her to call him back to ask for a better explanation, or to tell him to empty his pockets, and what’s in that bag?

She said nothing. He risked a look back at her as he turned the corner to go down the narrow back stairs, and she was standing in the light, leaning over, talking to the dog. He allowed himself a small grin of triumph as he headed into the dark. They were like children. They couldn’t imagine you would do them wrong, so they believed every word you said to them. Fools. He was glad he had taken advantage of her now. He’d have kicked himself twelve ways to Sunday if he’d left empty-handed because of what? An attack of conscience? She wasn’t even nice to him.

In the morning, he came downstairs carrying his bag to find his hostess in the hall. “Ah, you’re up at last. Did you sleep well?”

What time she got up at, he couldn’t imagine. It was only seven o’clock.

“I didn’t, no. I think the roof is leaking, to be honest with you.”

It had started raining heavily while he was taking his celebratory shit, the water gurgling in cast-iron drainpipes and spilling from unreliable guttering. He had got back to his room to discover the bed was saturated, the ceiling still dripping. The remainder of the night he spent curled up on the floor, trying to find a position where his bones didn’t ache and the draught from under the door didn’t cut through the one blanket he’d been able to salvage.

“Oh, dear.” She didn’t sound surprised. “I’ve had breakfast already. But there’s some porridge if you’d like.”

“No. Thank you.” He’d yak if he tried. “I’ll get something later.”

She was looking thoughtful. “I don’t suppose – I shouldn’t ask, but maybe if you would – if you have a head for heights, which I must admit I don’t-”

Payment for the night’s board. He put the bag down, resigned. Always leave them grateful. “What can I do? Is it the roof?”

“Could you see if there are many slates gone? The man who looks after it is away.”

“How do I get up there?”

“Through the attic. But you’ll need to get the ladder. Cormac always uses his own.”

“No problem. Where is it?”

“It’s in the shed.” She gestured vaguely to the back of the house. “Out there. The door is jammed, though. You’ll have to go out the front door and walk around. And I think it might be quite near the back.”

He was true to his promise, getting back to Dublin in record time with the radio blasting dance music and the heater blowing out a fug of hot air. He’d earned his money, that was for sure. First getting the fucking ladder out from what turned out to be a barn the size of a bus garage, full to the roof with junk. “Shed” my arse. Then getting it into the house while Clemmie waved her hands and shrieked warnings to him every time he came near a light fitting. Then propping it up on the rotting floor of the attic, discovering that the rungs were shaky in the extreme, and making it out on to the leads of the roof in time for the rain to start again. He had taken shelter by a chimneystack and enjoyed an illicit cigarette, thinking of her waiting patiently for him to return. She would think he was doing a thorough job if he didn’t hurry back. Another cigarette put manners on the hunger that was beginning to twist at his stomach. He didn’t waste any time looking for missing slates. It was something of a surprise to find there were any up there at all. A deep breath, then back down the stairs with the ladder. He took it back to the shed, jamming it in as best he could between a knackered old Riley with deflated tyres and a load of rusty milk churns.

The relief of getting on to the M50, within reach of civilization. The joy of seeing Dublin spread out before him as he came over the mountains, the Pigeon House towers striped red and white in the distance, Howth Head glowing green behind them. The fucking sun came out and everything. Welcome to the Promised Land, my child.

In his case, welcome to the Sundrive Road. There was a house there, a small one, not the kind you’d notice, and it was the home of the finest fence he’d ever met, a fat man named Ken who had every book you could imagine on antiques and never needed to consult one of them. Anthony didn’t ask what happened to the things he brought him. The fat man paid cash and that was all that mattered to Anthony. That and getting rid of the stuff before the guards came calling.

Ken’s wife was a comically small woman, a little elf of a thing. Would he have a cup of tea? And a sandwich? He practically took the hand off her; he was desperate for something.

Ken was scratching himself in the front room, layered in cardigans and jumpers as if he were capable of feeling the cold. The room was hot anyway. He drew the blinds without getting up from his chair.

“Stick the light on there and let’s have a look at what you’ve got.”

Anthony sat on the other side of the coffee table and dug in his bag, setting out his bundled-up dusters where Ken could reach them. The fence tapped his fingers against his belly, waiting for his wife to come back with the tea.

“Tell me about the house.”

Anthony described it in as much detail as he could. Ken listened, asking questions, thinking. The Purdeys had him shifting in his chair with what could only be excitement.

“Shame you didn’t find out anything about the paintings. Never mind. I’ll make a note.”

Mrs Ken rattled in with a tray and handed Anthony a mug and a ham sandwich. Ken got the same, and a plate of biscuits. He needed to keep his strength up, Anthony reflected. Poor man couldn’t be expected to wait until lunch.

As soon as the door closed behind her Ken’s pudgy fingers went to work, unexpectedly delicate as he began unwrapping what Anthony had brought him. The first thing was the silver sauce boat. Even though he knew what was inside each parcel, Anthony still felt a thrill as the last fold of yellow cloth fell away – to reveal something that was definitely not an eighteenth-century sauce boat.

“… the fuck?”

Reverently, Ken set a wooden teapot-stand down on the table. It had been crowned with a plastic measuring jug. “Well. Very interesting.”

“I don’t understand it. I don’t know what happened.”

The fat man was at work on the next parcel. He looked down at the contents without showing them to Anthony. “What’s this supposed to be?”

“Two Dresden figurines.”

‘Two wooden dolls.” He held them up. They were hideous things, homemade, with crudely painted faces.

The next parcel was the silver dish ring, or rather a stainless-steel dog bowl.

“I don’t fucking believe this…” Anthony picked up one of the smaller packages and started ripping, pulling it apart recklessly, careless of the contents, which was a mistake. It was not a fine little carving of a mouse asleep inside a walnut shell. It was a hen’s egg, and it broke. He could feel the blood beating in his head, the rage pushing against the bones of his skull. “She sent me on a wild goose chase. She had me up on the roof cooling my heels while she was downstairs going through my bag. The fucking bitch.”

“You wouldn’t be up to them,” the fat man observed in much the same tone as if he’d said the sky was blue.

Together, they unwrapped every parcel on the table, revealing every piece of junk that Anthony had carried away from Clementine Hardington’s house. Chipped brown side-plates dating from the 1970s. A lump of coal. Two wooden spoons. Orange plastic egg-cups that were supposed to be salt cellars. Six green tiles masquerading as framed miniatures. Old matchboxes filled to the brim with rice to make them as heavy as the snuffboxes he’d assumed they were.

“This is a nightmare.” Anthony couldn’t stop staring at the junk on the table, as if he could make it change back into riches if he only looked hard enough. “I’m embarrassed, Ken.”

“So you should be.” He settled back in his chair, lacing his fingers over his paunch. “Ah, well.”

“Is that it?”

“Doesn’t make any difference to me. You’re the one who’s out of pocket.” He yawned. “You shouldn’t be surprised. There’s a reason they’ve held on for so long. They don’t give it up easily.” He nodded at the last parcel, the smallest, which Anthony was clutching. It should have been the ivory samurai, upright and noble. “Open it.”

It was tightly wrapped, folded in on itself, and he struggled to undo it, pulling the material apart eventually so what was inside bounced out and landed on the table where it spun around and around. Ken picked it up.

“What’s this? A shotgun shell?”

Anthony shook his head, his mouth suddenly dry. “It’s a message.”

He knew in his heart that even if he had realized what she was planning – even if he had been as angry with her then as he was now – he would never have been able to pull the trigger. He knew it just as well as he knew that if she held the gun, she wouldn’t hesitate. That was as much her legacy from her ancestors as the crumbling stones of the house, the acres of boggy parkland, the fine art and furniture and woodworm and all.

And as far as Anthony was concerned, she was welcome to the lot of it.