Bricks and Mortality: Campbell & Carter 3 (18 page)

The street doorbell rang. Jess sighed and hauled herself off the sofa to put her ear to the intercom. ‘Yes?’

‘Tom,’ squeaked a voice in her ear.

Tom? What on earth? In the days before Madison’s arrival on the scene, Tom would do this, turn up unexpectedly from time to time wanting to go out for a drink or a meal. Since Madison had taken up a role in his life, these friendly outings had ceased. So what had brought him? ‘Come up!’ she called and pressed the button to release the door.

Tom had brought a fresh bottle of wine with him. Jess didn’t know whether to interpret this as apology for having interrupted any plans she might have, or just that he meant to stay the evening.

‘Busy?’ asked Tom, collapsing on to the other end of the sofa and gazing at her like, she thought crossly, a puppy ejected into a cold garden.

‘No,’ she told him. ‘But I am tired.’

‘I won’t stay late,’ he promised. ‘But you’re a friend and you know how it is, sometimes you need to talk to a friend. I need your advice.’

‘No, you don’t,’ said Jess firmly. ‘I am a friend. But ask Madison for her advice.’

‘It’s about Madison.’

‘Then you definitely shouldn’t be discussing it with me, whatever it is. It’s your business and hers. I don’t come into it.’

Why is it, she wondered, people want to tell me about their problems? Millie wants to tell me about her mother and Rodney and how lonely her dad is. Ian himself, I suspect, wants propping up in his relationship with his daughter. Now Tom has a relationship problem. What am I? An agony aunt? No, I’m a copper. If only the villains were so keen to tell me all!

‘Something unexpected has turned up,’ Tom protested, rubbing his hand through his mop of thick black hair. ‘Ten minutes, Jess, please. I haven’t got anyone else I can ask about it.’

‘Five minutes only – and I’ll time you,’ she promised.

‘Fine!’ He sat upright. ‘Madison has had an offer of a year working in Australia.’

‘Doing what? I don’t know what her line is. You’ve never said.’

‘Haven’t I? Oh, well, she’s microbiologist.’

‘You two must have a lot to talk about.’

‘It’s not a job exactly; it’s a year’s funding to do research. She specialises in parasitic—’

‘Tom!’ Jess interrupted. ‘I haven’t eaten yet and I shall want to, later. So spare me the details of what Madison sees through her microscope.’

‘She wants to go,’ Tom said mournfully. ‘It’s a great opportunity.’

‘I’m sure it is.’

‘Should I try and talk her out of it? I know how selfish that sounds but I’d rather hoped we … Well, that things might progress. We seemed to be getting along so well.’

‘And now some bug on a glass plate has come between you. Tom, if Madison wants to go, and it marks the end of your relationship, at least be graceful about it. You’re a grown man not a schoolboy.’

‘Ah!’ exclaimed Tom, leaning forward. ‘But does she want me to be graceful about it and just say, fine, off you go? Or does she want me to try and persuade her to stay?’

Jess groaned. ‘How do I know?’

‘If I don’t try and persuade her to stay,’ continued Tom, ‘will she be insulted? Or, if I try and persuade her to hang about here, will she think I’m selfish? I don’t want to be selfish. I wouldn’t want her to think that I was giving her an ultimatum. You know, “It’s me or the thing on the glass plate,” or words to that effect. On the other hand, I’d hate to think I was being manoeuvred. Or am I being vain? I don’t know what to think.’

Jess leaned forward so that their faces were inches apart. ‘Tom, I can’t tell you. Have this conversation or some version of it with Madison, will you? I absolutely refuse to continue. I cannot discuss this with you.’

‘It’s making me feel pretty fed up!’ said Tom with more spirit.

‘I sympathise but can’t help. Your time is up.’

‘I was relying on you,’ he said resentfully.

‘No, you were relying on Madison and you feel she’s let you down.’

This caused Tom to look startled and then thoughtful.

‘It’s not easy finding a girlfriend when you’ve got a job like mine, you know. They ask what I do and I tell them I cut up dead bodies and they lose interest. Madison is interested in what I do,’ he said finally.

‘Men lose interest when they find out I’m police officer – except for the ones who’ve got a thing about women in uniform,’ Jess retaliated.

‘I’m beginning to think that it’s what I do that interests Madison and not me.
I
don’t interest her.’ Tom had that puppy-out-in-the-cold look again.

‘Oh, merry hell, if that’s what you suspect, smile nicely and wish her well for her trip to Australia!’ burst out Jess, goaded beyond discretion. ‘If she wants to go, she’ll go. If she doesn’t really want to, I suppose she’ll stay. But let the poor woman make up her own mind. And make up your own mind.’

Tom gazed into his empty wine glass. ‘Am I allowed an extension of time to sit here and drink another?’

‘We have nothing on Katherine – otherwise called Kit – Stapleton on the police computer,’ Phil Morton informed Jess early next morning. ‘She has no criminal record, never been a witness to anything, never lodged a complaint. Dave Nugent’s been busy delving into civil records of births, deaths and marriages. There’s nothing much there of interest, either, just the usual stuff. She’s thirty-five and divorced. She was married to a man named Davis, Hugh Davis, and lived in Wales at that time. She now lives in Cheltenham and works as a receptionist at a doctors’ surgery. No children that Dave could trace.’

‘What about Mr Davis?’

‘No, nothing on him. On their marriage certificate his occupation is given as estate agent. A bit ironic that, I suppose, in the circumstances.’

‘Right!’ Jess drew a deep breath. ‘Start again from the beginning, that’s all we can do. I’ll go and talk to Muriel Pickering.’

‘I’ve done that,’ observed Morton. ‘You want to watch out for the dog. It’s not very big but it’s got a nasty look in its eye and a full set of teeth. Old Muriel’s much the same and not the chatty sort. You won’t get much out of her.’

‘I know enough to be wary of both Muriel and her pet. But my feeling is the roots of this business go back a long way. Muriel appears to be a sort of oldest resident. She must have known Crown all his life, with gaps while he was backpacking or in jail, until he eventually settled in Portugal. We need to keep digging around, Phil.’

Jess set out for Mullions. She had driven a short way along the narrow road in which Key House stood and had almost reached the scorched ruins when she overtook Roger Trenton, marching along in parade-ground fashion, bolt upright, arms swinging. Jess drew into the side of the road and stopped. She got out of the car and waited for him to reach her.

Roger raised a hand in acknowledgement and was soon alongside. ‘Recognised you as you went past,’ he puffed.

‘I thought you might have done.’ Jess smiled at him. His face was wind reddened and shiny; and his halo of hair wilder than ever.

‘You called at my house the other day and I was out,’ Roger went on. ‘Poppy told me. Sorry I missed you.’

‘It was just a casual call, Mr Trenton.’

‘Well, you’ve got me now. I was just walking up to Key House to check on it. I used to do that from time to time when it was still standing. Now the site will attract another set of undesirables, sightseers! It’s all been on the local television news and in the local press. No doubt they will want to help themselves to lumps of charred wood as ghoulish souvenirs. How can I help?’ He waited expectantly.

Already, thought Jess wryly, Roger had moved his sights from the dropouts who’d used the house to hypothetical sightseers to the ruins. Any question she asked would be answered with more of the predictable complaint. But Roger expected to be interviewed and Jess would oblige him, even if she didn’t hope for much from the exercise, other than what she’d heard already.

‘We’ve been wondering about the tramps and hippies you stated used Key House from time to time. You can’t tell us anything more definite about any of them, I suppose?’

‘They all looked pretty much the same,’ said Roger, glowering at the wreck of the house a little further down the road. ‘Although “pretty” is hardly the word for them! The younger men and women all wore grubby clothes and big boots. Nearly all had long hair, both sexes. Occasionally there would be some extraordinary apparition covered in tattoos and studded with metal rings and pins … and it wasn’t always male. That was the other group, the drug-users. Some of the girls wore black make-up. They looked perfect frights.’ Roger shook his head.

‘I expect that was their intention,’ said Jess.

‘Really? What on earth for? There was one older man used to turn up from time to time on his own. You could hardly see his features for beard. He wore a filthy raincoat tied round the middle with string and had a little dog. The dog was his only companion that I ever saw. Otherwise he travelled alone, whereas the younger ones turned up in little groups. But I hadn’t seen the old chap for a while before the house went up in flames. Perhaps he’d moved on or died or something. I couldn’t tell you any of their names.’

‘Did you ever approach them yourself? Not that we’d advise that,’ Jess warned him.

‘I told several lots of the younger ones that they were on private property. They laughed. One told me all property was theft, cheeky young blighter. He was a weedy individual with the usual metal in his ears and a shaven head. I never spoke to the old fellow in the raincoat except once, very briefly, when I met him limping along the road. He had a black eye. I wondered if any of the other louts had found him in the house and beaten him up. I – er – I gave him a fiver. He was touchingly grateful. I suppose it was spent on booze but I always felt …’ Roger, who had already reddened when speaking of his own unexpected generosity, broke off altogether and shuffled about in embarrassment at having confessed it.

‘Yes?’ Jess prompted. She was surprised at his confession. But people often did surprise you.

‘I always felt that he was the traditional type of vagabond, you see. What you might call a nomad by choice, not like the others. There have always been old chaps like that wandering around the countryside. I remember them from when I was a boy. Some were old soldiers. They were not quite right in the top storey, many of them, but harmless, quite harmless. They’d turn up at the back door and beg a crust of bread. My mother, who was a very charitable woman, once gave one of them an old coat of my father’s. My father was mortified because the tramp wore it round the district for weeks and everyone recognised it. He – my father – got his leg pulled about it at the golf club.

‘Of course, the old man with the dog was still trespassing on private property. But I felt he did no real harm, unlike the younger ones. I have wondered since the fire if the unfortunate young fellow who died there had encountered some of the other scruffs and they’d set about him. Things could have got out of hand and they took fright and decided to destroy evidence. That could have happened, couldn’t it?’ He waited for Jess’s reply.

‘It could have done, certainly. Had you seen anyone there earlier that day? Any of the drug addicts or hippies?’

Roger shook his head regretfully. ‘One didn’t always see them; one just saw the mess they left behind. They left needles lying about. I did persuade the council to send a special team out to collect the needles on a couple of occasions, although they were very reluctant to do it, again on the grounds it was private property and they weren’t responsible. I thought it might prompt the council into contacting Crown and making him do something about the place, at least have it made secure. But nothing happened. They did bill Crown for the manpower and time taken for the collection, though. They sent the bill to his solicitor, who paid it.

‘The young ones often had alcohol there, too, and left bottles. I collected those. Of course, in order to do that, I myself had to trespass. But I saw it as the lesser of evils. I took all the bottles I found to the bottle bank.’

‘Very commendable, Mr Trenton. You are aware that simple trespass is a civil offence, not a criminal one? It’s a tricky situation for the authorities, especially if, as in this case, the owner of the property has not himself requested the trespassers to leave, or instructed his representative to do so.’

‘Of course I am. I must say I would have expected that solicitor to have done something on behalf of his client but if he wasn’t specifically asked to, as you say … But he knew about it because I wrote to tell him often enough. If the trespassers do any damage, break in, that’s different, isn’t it? I realise it would be hard to prove they had broken in. They would always say they found a window forced and just climbed through.’ Roger scowled. ‘They have all the answers.’

‘That’s usually the defence they put forward,’ Jess agreed. ‘It’s also complicated by the fact that these people using Key House for drink or drugs or just to sleep overnight did not, apparently, have any intention of staying there for a long time, taking up residence. By the time the police arrived, they’d have moved on.’

‘No electricity,’ said Roger, ‘although that wouldn’t have stopped them. More likely the remoteness of the house encouraged them to leave. On the rare occasions they tried to stay, they lasted about a week and then gave up and went off looking for somewhere nearer to the bright lights. They’d be too far away from all their chums at Key House – and from any pubs or clubs they frequent and where they probably pick up their supplies of whatever drugs they favour. The police have spoken to Crown, I suppose, now he’s returned?’

‘Yes, we have.’

‘You don’t happen to know what plans he has for the place now?’ Roger looked at her hopefully. ‘Surely he won’t just bugger off back to Portugal – excuse my language – and just leave the ruins to fester? The whole business has been very upsetting. I don’t only mean the fire. I mean living so near to a place that attracted so many undesirables. We have a number of elderly people round here and some of them live alone. Now there’s been a murder there, too. The previous situation can’t be allowed to continue. We would all of us, local residents, be under intolerable stress.’