‘She went for her car in Guild Square, saying she had to “hot-tail” it from there, meaning, I suppose, that she had to get back to her children.
‘And the other woman?’ Harpur said. ‘Do we know who she was?
‘She stayed for a while longer,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘No, I don’t know who she was, but you might be able to find out, Col. You have the means not available to me.’
‘You got a car registration?’ Harpur asked.
‘God, Col, you’re quick,’ Hill-Brandon said.
‘No, not quick,’ Harpur said. ‘Just well used to finding identities through cars.’
‘So like the police,’ Jeanette said. ‘They understand cars better than people. But, a car on Elms? How can that be?’
‘The other woman - the older one - she’s doing a little pace about, although her shoes are all wrong - all wrong but very pricey, I reckon, like the rest of her gear,’ Hill-Brandon replied. ‘Her shoes, heels, yes, all wrong for the muck. Well, she said so herself - said the other was wise to come in wellies. This seemed to show Iris Mallen knew she was making for Elms and prepared for it - familiar with the scene and conditions. But maybe the other is there from a kind of accident. Or maybe she had to fit this trip in before or after some different visit where she’d need the sharper clothes. And anyone could see she was used to these sharper clothes from the way she moved, and the way she held herself. They were natural to her. Being at Elms in the dark and the mud wasn’t. I suppose it wouldn’t be natural for almost everyone. Anyway, this was a woman who had a place in the world, and the place was not a half-finished house on a building site. I wouldn’t say she had class, but she obviously lived where loot also lived and had its generous being, slump or not. I’m an expert on slumps and I can tell you she has no part in them.’
‘You ought to be a detective, Ivan,’ Harpur said.
‘I’ve got the car reg,’ Hill-Brandon replied. ‘You can ask the police computer about it, can’t you, Col?
‘I still don’t see how a car could be on Elms,’ Jeanette said.
‘I’m watching her and think I can work out what’s going on in her head,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘Presumptuous? Maybe. But in my kind of present career - that is, no career at all - you get accustomed to reading signs in people. Have to, because they can’t be bothered talking and explaining to a nobody like me.’
‘Oh, Ivan, don’t say that!’ Veronica cried.
‘Wide, vivid, exceptionally ugly, coarse braces, like those you have on, Ivan, are often worn by men of exceptionally strong personality - for instance, bookies or boxing promoters, certainly not by nobodies,’ Harpur said. ‘Those braces state, “This is me. Take it or leave it. I am totally, autonomously, comfortable in my skin and braces.”’
‘Her pacing and general nerviness - I could interpret them,’ Hill-Brandon replied.
‘Don’t tell us she was looking for the Biro, too,’ Jeanette said.
‘She’s glancing at the house all the time during her parades, really giving it scrutiny, like it was a challenge which, so far, she hadn’t dealt with. I had the idea she wanted to come inside,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘It’s as if she’s thinking to herself, “I’ve made the decision to attend here” - which might have been a tricky one - “and now I’m present in this unfamiliar environment, I ought to do the job properly, which requires entry, something beyond this outside gawping.” I’d never claim these were the actual words of her musing, but with this general drift.’
‘I don’t follow,’ Jeanette said. ‘What does it mean, “do the job properly”? Which job? Why should it be part of her job to get into an unfinished house? Why is entry required? Who requires it? What is her job? Does her job demand the expensive shoes and clothes? How expensive? It’s a comparative term. What’s expensive for some would be ordinary, even cheapjack for others.’
‘Then, a development,’ Hill-Brandon replied. Puzzlement touched his voice.
‘Yes?’ Harpur said. He would have liked to yell, ‘Get on with it, you wordy prat,’ but that would be brutal. And Jeanette could provide all the brutality needed today.
‘She stops pacing in the area around the house and comes nearer to the property itself,’ Hill-Brandon explained. ‘When Veronica says “bizarre” she’s spot-on, Col.’ He paused and gave Veronica a smile of congratulation plus a thumbs-up, to mark her cleverness.
‘Bizarre?’ Harpur said. He trowelled the bafflement on, to encourage Hill-Brandon and prove he had a rapt listener, gasping for more. And he did.
Hill-Brandon put down his cup and, leaning forward in the chair, stretched out both arms in front of him and began to work his fingers in a kind of gentle but intense kneading action. ‘The woman is handling the brickwork, feeling it, like testing a bike’s tyre pressure, as though she wanted to make sure it was really there, and actual, solid, real. A kind of reverent ritual, worshipful, slow, loving.’
‘Is this dame barmy?’ Jeanette said. ‘Of course it’s real. It’s not a true house yet, but what there is of it is real. What else could it be?’
‘She seemed to want reassurance on that. To crave it,’ Hill-Brandon said, ‘as though coming out of a nightmare and taking comfort from the ordinary, safe things around.’
‘You mean like Dr Johnson kicking a big stone to destroy Bishop Berkeley’s theory about the non-existence of matter?’ Jeanette said.
‘Is that Johnson with an h?’ Harpur asked. Denise had a room in a student block called Jonson Court, without an h, though she spent most of her nights in Arthur Street with him, Arthur Street and him both having an h. Harpur knew there were two separate people in literature with similar sounding surnames but different spellings. Denise had explained the difference to him. Ben Jonson did plays and poetry, and Sam Johnson said deep things like he wouldn’t want to talk to someone who’d written more than he’d read. Harpur felt that kicking large stones would be more like Sam Johnson with the h.
Hill-Brandon said: ‘And then I think she put a hand on some of the boarding, to check on that for solidness, too. She’s tactile. That the word? She’s literally hands-on. But - big but - but it might be the shiftable boarding, the gateway boarding she fondles. And when she touched it there’d be some give. It yielded. Not solid like the bricks. So, if she was thinking of getting in, and was blaming herself for staying outside so far, this would persuade her to have a go. I heard one of the boards move. When I say “move” I don’t just mean move marginally because she’d put a little pressure on it, seeking solidity. No, this was the sound of a boarding plank pushed aside on its solitary wall-screw and grating against one of the other planks as it swung over it and made slight contact. She had a torch with her, which could, perhaps, show she knew she was coming to Elms, even if she hadn’t put the right shoes on. Or she might always keep a torch in the car for eventualities.
‘She switched on and the light shone into the hallway downstairs and moved around, sort of casing the place. Preparatory. Reconnaissance. Then came a faint clinking and I thought she must have bent over the sill and put the torch on the floor of the room, so she’d have a hand free to help her climb in while holding a board back with the other. The light stayed on, its beam now fixed and still because the torch lay flat. I picked up the noise of some hard breathing, a minor grunt and the rustle of clothes, and I guessed she’d clambered in. This seemed some determined lady. She was a lot more than just chic clothes and shoes - that is, chic in suitable surroundings. She’d gone out of my sight now. I remained near the front bedroom boarding and tried to stay totally quiet. The board swung with a bump back into place. After a couple of seconds the torch light moved about again, so I knew I’d been right. She must be inside, standing, examining some of the downstairs.
‘Most likely, Col, you’ll say what was I bothered about, she’s only a woman in the wrong shoes and with a torch. She had some objective, though, didn’t she? What was it? I wanted to know. And did someone send her? Who, then? This was all a mystery, a conundrum I must solve, a
nd I thought the best way to solve it was not to call out a greeting to her, like a gentlemanly host, but to wait and see what she did next, without her knowing there was somebody else present in the building as well as herself.’
‘“Masterly inactivity”, to borrow some words from history,’ Veronica said.
‘Mackintosh, about the House of Commons during the French Revolution,’ Jeanette said. ‘In Vendiciae Gallicae.’
‘Quite a read, that one,’ Harpur said.
‘I could be more or less certain this wasn’t another homeless looking for a sheltered kip. The clothes and shoes weren’t right for that, nor the conversation with Iris Mallen,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘I had to think of something to say in case after her tour at ground level she came upstairs. The point was, wasn’t it, that in this house the upstairs had always been the interesting part. Where the bullets came from. The exact location for the trap. So, if she was connected somehow to the case - and I considered she had to be - I mean, what else would make her behave like this? - the estate at night, an unfinished house, and inviting herself in - yes, if she was connected with the case she’d come up to the front bedroom soon. For her, this would be getting to the core of things. I’d need to have a pleasant chat line ready, owing to the unusual circumstances of the meeting, however you looked at it.
‘Something like, “Well, hello there. Sad about these potential homes, isn’t it, particularly when there’s such a demand for new housing? The construction industry has suffered disproportionately badly during the recession. Recessions. Four per cent reduction while the rest of the economy flatlines. That flatlining is bad enough, in all conscience, but a four per cent drop much worse, I think you’ll agree. Myself, I come here fairly often. I wouldn’t argue there’s any special charm or beauty about these surroundings, but they can offer a service of, admittedly, an emergency nature. Although it’s difficult to see you properly through the torch dazzle on my face, I believe you must be new to this area. I quite understand why you would need the torch in what might be strange, not to say, alien, surroundings for you. Even someone such as myself, truly familiar with the layout and strewn rubbish, can occasionally come quite a cropper. I would respectfully speculate that incursing yourself into blighted housing is not consistent with your usual lifestyle, neither as career, nor hobby. But perhaps your interest in this property has to do with the death of the undercover police officer whose widow you spoke to outside? It’s an extremely complex, multi-aspect situation, isn’t it?”’
‘This sounds to me a very reassuring start,’ Harpur replied.
‘Gabble, hot, strong, cliché-rich, and pitiful, I would respectfully speculate,’ Jeanette said, ‘in all conscience.’
Harpur thought that in its snarling, wallflower way this was correct. What else could the words be but a verbose, creaking fantasy spiel? Now and then, though, gabble could soothe and then move on to something meatier. Harpur wondered whether Jeanette had spent too much time among the spruce-up-your-personality books, with special emphasis on the importance of self-assertion. Harpur didn’t mind self-assertion as long as the self being asserted was tolerable. This could exclude Jeannette.
The idea upset Harpur. He’d hate to see anyone, and particularly any woman, isolated by their own inner clumsiness. For this reason he approved of Denise’s smoking. When she inhaled - at every drag, naturally - she did it in fine, powerful, ferociously thorough style, sometimes chaining. The fumes seemed to get hurtled urgently, comfortingly, to all her interior recesses, providing a balm that helped Denise bring vivacity, vitality, lovely good nature and sexual energy to her life, and Harpur’s. He loved her mouth when it was acrid with charred Marlboros. This seemed such a worldly, unfancy, dependent taste. They knew about the health dangers, and occasionally Harpur would feel guilt for not lighting up and sharing the risk. Although invasive closeness to her entailed some passive smoking, this couldn’t qualify him as an equal addict. But she often said she’d be stopping the ciggies any day soon, and Harpur accepted that she might. Or might not. Denise told him some writer in the past had composed A Farewell to Tobacco, and this showed it could be done. She was an undergraduate and believed in literature. Harpur had a very good verbal memory and recalled some of the lines she quoted about the weed. There was the basic contradiction:
For I hate, yet love, thee so;
and thoughts on the sweetness of the smell:
Sidelong odours that give life,
Like glances from a neighbour’s wife.
Denise said she expected him to recall the second example, particularly.
Hill-Brandon said: ‘Of course, talking to this woman about the Elms house wouldn’t reveal why the death of Mallen interested her, if it did. What connection? Was she just one of those people who got a sick kick out of crime scenes? Or could she be part of that complex, multi-aspect nature of things I mentioned?’ He paused and smiled encouragingly, like someone running a discussion group, and considerately giving members time to mull these questions.
He went on, though, before anyone else spoke: ‘Why had she rejected a names swap with Iris Mallen? Wasn’t that unfair, offensive, rude? Did she want to keep this Elms visit a secret? Why? I thought that if, perhaps, I could find the right kind of approach when she came upstairs there might be additional progress in making matters clearer. Plainly, this was an odd place for a meeting and some subtlety would be needed at the start.’
‘Sensible,’ Harpur said.
‘Ivan has a very understanding way of dealing with people,’ Veronica said, ‘dating, obviously, from his time as a business owner.’ She could reach him from where she sat and leaned over and patted his bare arm a couple of times in praise.
‘Well, he’s certainly put some of the fluence on you, Veronica,’ Jeanette replied. But she grinned as she said it, seemed almost amiable, after all. Maybe she had come to recognize a bit late that something authentic and good existed between Veronica and Hill-Brandon and that nothing Jeanette said or spat would alter it. An intelligent woman. She knew when she was beaten. Strategic withdrawal.
‘My only regret is I was rather slow responding,’ Veronica said.
‘That’s natural,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘I was just a tramp, though with two sets of clothes, including a Barbour.’
‘W.H. Davies wrote a well-received book called Autobiography of a Super-Tramp,’ Jeanette said.
‘I’ve never thought of you as a tramp, Ivan, ordinary or super,’ Veronica said.
‘Thanks, Vron, but, really, that’s what I was,’ Hill-Brandon said.
‘If so, no more,’ she replied. ‘You have come home.’ Harpur thought she got a kind of solemnity and grandeur into the last two words. He knew his daughters would have giggled and given Bronx cheers to the phrase, just as they did when a dog film they found disgustingly mawkish, called Lassie Come Home, invaded the movie channel.
‘Thanks, Vron,’ he said.
‘So, were you able to make your introduction to the woman, Ivan?’ Harpur said.
‘Ill-met by torchlight,’ Jeanette said.
Harpur guessed this had a witty reference to something.
‘Col, I think I might have moved very slightly, just to vary the way I was standing, to ease some muscle strain,’ Hill-Brandon said. ‘Or possibly I breathed too loudly once or twice.’
‘She heard?’ Harpur asked.
‘The house is very quiet - far from the traffic,’ Hill-Brandon replied.
‘Did she speak - ask who was there?’ Harpur said. ‘That’s what I’d expect.’
‘The torch beam seemed to get pulled away,’ Hill-Brandon replied. ‘I could still make out a small glow of light up the stairwell, but it seemed to me she’d turned it and herself back towards the entrance/exit boards.’
‘She wanted out,’ Veronica said.
‘That’s how it looked,’ Hill-Brandon said.
‘She’d taken fright?’ Harpur said.
‘She’s in a scary situation,’ Veronica said.
‘I reckon she’d worked herself up to the quite brave act of coming into the property alone during darkness, but that was as far as this bravery would go,’ he said. ‘She’s a woman with limits.’
‘Credible enough,’ Harpur said. ‘She hears something, yet nobody speaks - it’s a very chilling moment. She doesn’t know who’s up there, nor how many.’
‘This is a house with overtones, extremely unpleasant overtones,’ Veronica said.
‘What the devil is she doing there, in any case?’ Jeanette said, but mildly, genuinely puzzled. ‘She’s plainly not a vagrant, even less so than you, Ivan. As a scene, this is totally wrong for her. Yet it obviously has some sort of compelling fascination.’
‘I think she might have been nervy about finding her way out,’ Hill-Brandon replied. ‘I’d guessed from the way the board thumped back when she let it go after entering that she hadn’t propped the gateway open a little, making it simpler to find, an elementary ploy. The torch beam had been redirected to locate the movable boards, and hardly any of the light would reach other parts of the house now.’
‘And she was successful?’ Harpur asked.
‘Successful in retreating, if that’s success,’ Hill-Brandon said.
Strategic withdrawal.
‘I heard one of the boards get yanked aside. I lost the light altogether then. I assumed she must have done more or less the same with the torch as when coming in, but reversed - leaned out now, and put it on the ground in front of the house. It was probably switched off. I’d have been able to see the light through the spy hole up there if it was still burning. Then, the same sounds of effort as she got clear of the house while holding back a board with one hand. Soon, that bumped shut. In a couple of seconds I could see her outside. She had the torch unlit in one hand and with the other brushed herself down and straightened her clothes, a dark tailored suit, a business suit, I’d say.
‘She began to walk quite swiftly in the opposite direction to Iris Mallen’s route. It seemed like she had to keep up with a timetable. As I said, she’d probably given the Elms house visit a set duration in her programme. She appeared to be making for Ritson Mall. I expect you can imagine, Col, that all this intrigued me. It was like seeing half a mystery solved, but not the other half. I felt I had to get things complete, or as complete as I could.’