Slade House

by David Mitchell

  “Your little watch is telling you porkies,” said Builder Two.

  The traffic warden was turning pink. “My watch is accurate.”

  “I hope you’re a good performer in court,” said Builder One, “ ’cause if there’s one thing juries hate more than traffic wardens, it’s short, little Napoleon, privatized traffic wardens.”

  “My height’s nothing to do with illegal flamin’ parking!”

  “Ooh, the F-word!” said Builder Two. “Verbal abuse, that is. And he didn’t call me ‘sir’ once. You’re a disgrace to your clip-on tie.”

  The traffic warden scribbled on his ticket book, tore off the page and clipped it under the wiper of a dirty white van they were standing next to. “You’ve got fourteen days to pay or face prosecution.”

  Builder One snatched the parking ticket off the windscreen, wiped it on his arse and scrumpled it up.

  “Very tough,” said Lech Wałęsa, “but you’ll still have to pay.”

  “Will we? ’Cause we both heard you ask for a bribe. Didn’t we?”

  Builder Two folded his arms. “He asked for fifty quid. I could hardly believe my ears. Could you believe your ears?”

  The traffic warden’s jaw worked up and down: “I did not!”

  “Two against one. Mud sticks, my faggoty friend. Think about your little pension. Do the clever thing, turn round, and go—”

  “What I just heard was conspiracy to bear false witness,” I said, and both builders swiveled round, “and to pervert the course of justice.” The older of the two had a broken nose and a shaved head. The younger one was a freckled carrottop with raisin eyes too close together. He spat out some chewing gum onto the pavement between us. “Plus litter offenses,” I added.

  The Broken Nose stepped up and peered down. “And you are?”

  Now I’m not one to boast, but I cut my teeth in the Brixton riots and earned a commendation for bravery at the Battle of Orgreave. It takes more than a hairy plasterer to put the shits up me. “Detective Inspector Gordon Edmonds, CID, Thames Valley Police.” I flashed my ID. “Here’s a suggestion. Pick up that ticket and that gum; climb into your pile-of-shit van; go; and pay that fine on Monday. That way I might not bring a tax audit down on you on Tuesday. What’s that face for? Don’t you like my fucking language? Sir?”

  · · ·

  Me and the traffic warden watched them drive off. I lit up a smoke and offered one to Lech Wałęsa, but he shook his head. “No, thanks all the same. My wife would murder me. I’ve given up. Apparently.”

  Pussy-whipped: no surprise. “Bit of a thankless job, huh?”

  He put away his pad. “Yours, mine or being married?”

  “Ours.” I’d meant his. “Serving the Great British Public.”

  He shrugged. “At least you get to put the boot in sometimes.”

  “Moi? Poster boy for community policing, me.”

  A Bob Marley look-alike walked straight at us. The traffic warden stood to one side, but I didn’t. The Dreadlocked Wonder missed me by a provocative centimeter. The traffic warden glanced at his watch. “Just happened to be passing, Detective Inspector?”

  “Yes and no,” I told him. “I’m looking for an alleyway called Slade Alley, but I’m not sure it even exists. Do you know it?”

  Lech Wałęsa gave me a look that started off puzzled; then he smiled, stepped aside and did a flourish like a crap magician to reveal a narrow alleyway cutting between two houses. It turned left at a corner twenty yards away, under a feeble lamp mounted high up.

  “This is it?” I asked.

  “Yep. Look, there’s the sign.” He pointed at the side of the right-hand house where, sure enough, a smeary old street sign read SLADE ALLEY.

  “Shag me,” I said. “Must’ve walked straight past it.”

  “Well, y’know. One good turn deserves another. Better be off now—no rest for the wicked, and all that. See you around, Officer.”

  · · ·

  Inside the alley, the air was colder than out on the street. I walked down to the first corner, where the alley turned left and ran for maybe fifty paces before turning right. From up above, Slade Alley’d look like half a swastika. High walls ran along the entire length, with no overlooking windows. Talk about a mugger’s paradise. I walked down the middle section, just so I’d be able to look Chief Super Doolan in his beady eye and tell him I inspected every foot of Slade Alley, sir, and found doodly bloody squat, sir. Which is why I came across the small black iron door, about halfway down the middle section on the right. It was invisible till you were on top of it. It only came up to my throat and was about two feet wide. Now, like most people, I’m many things—a West Ham supporter, a Swampy from the Isle of Sheppey, a freshly divorced single man, a credit-card debtor owing my Flexible Friend over £2,000 and counting—but I’m also a copper, and as a copper I can’t see a door opening onto a public thoroughfare without checking if it’s locked. Specially when it’s getting dark. The door had no handle but when my palm pressed the metal, lo and behold the bloody thing just swung open easy as you please. So I stooped down a bit to peer through…

  · · ·

  …and where I’d expected a shitty little yard, I found this long garden with terraces and steps and trees, all the way up to a big house. Sure, the garden’d gone to seed a bit, with weeds and brambles and stuff, and the pond and shrubbery’d seen better days, but it was pretty breathtaking even so. There were roses still blooming, and the big high wall around the garden must’ve sheltered the fruit trees because they still had most of their leaves. And Jesus Christ, the house…A real mansion, it was. Grander than all the other houses around, half covered with red ivy. Big tall windows, steps going up to the front door, the lot. The curtains were drawn, but the house sort of glowed like vanilla fudge in the last of the evening light. Just beautiful. Must be worth a bloody mint, specially with the housing market going through the roof right now. So why oh why oh why had the owners left the garden door open for any Tom Dick or Harry to amble in and do the place over? They must be bloody mental. No burglar alarm either, so far as I could see. That really got my goat—’cause guess who gets the job of picking up the pieces when the houses of the rich get broken into? The boys in blue. So I found myself walking up the stony path to give the owner a talking-to about domestic security.

  My hand was on the knocker when a soft quiet voice said, “Can I help you?” and I turned round to find this woman at the foot of the steps. She was about my age, blond, with bumps in all the right places under a man’s baggy granddad shirt and gardening trousers. Quite a looker, even in her Wellies.

  “Detective Inspector Edmonds, Thames Valley Police.” I walked down the steps. “Good evening. Are you the owner of this property, madam?”

  “Yes, I—I’m Chloe Chetwynd.” She held out her hand the way some women do, fingers together and knuckles upwards, so it’s hard to shake properly. I noticed her wedding ring. “How can I help you, Detective…uh, oh God, forgive me, your name—it came and went.”

  “Edmonds, Mrs. Chetwynd. Detective Inspector.”

  “Of course, I…” Chloe Chetwynd’s hand fluttered near her head. Then she asked the standard question: “Has anything happened?”

  “Not yet, Mrs. Chetwynd, no; but unless you get a lock on that garden gate, something will happen. I could have been anyone. Think about it.”

  “Oh gosh, the gate!” Chloe Chetwynd pushed a strand of waxy gold hair off her face. “It had a, a sort of…wire clasp thing, but it rusted away, and I meant to do something about it, but my husband died in June, and everything’s been a bit…messy.”

  That explains a lot. “Right, well, I’m sorry to hear about your loss, but a burglar’d leave your life one hell of a lot messier. Who else lives here with you, Mrs. Chetwynd?”

  “Just me, Detective. My sister stayed on for a fortnight after Stuart died, but she has family in King’s Lynn. And my cleaner comes in twice a week, but that’s all. Me, the mice and the things that go bump in the ni
ght.” She did a nervous little smile that wasn’t really a smile.

  Tall purple flowers swayed. “Do you have a dog?”

  “No. I find dogs rather…slavish?”

  “Slavish or not, they’re better security than a ‘wire clasp thing.’ I’d get a triple mortice lock fitted top, middle and bottom, with a steel frame. People forget a door’s only as tough as its frame. It’ll cost you a bit, but a burglary’ll cost you more.”

  “A ‘triple mortar lock’?” Chloe Chetwynd chewed her lip.

  Jesus Christ the rich are bloody hopeless. “Look, down at the station we use a contractor. He’s from Newcastle upon Tyne so you’ll only catch one word in five, but he owes me a favor. Chances are he’ll drop by in the morning if I give him a bell tonight. Would you like me to call him?”

  Chloe Chetwynd did a big dramatic sigh. “Gosh, would you? I’d be so grateful. DIY was never my forte, alas.”

  Before I could reply, footsteps came pounding down the side of the house. Two kids were about to appear, running at full pelt, and I even stepped onto the lowest step to give them a clear run…

  · · ·

  …but the footsteps just faded away. Must’ve been kids next door and some acoustic trick. Chloe Chetwynd was giving me an odd look, however. “Did you hear them?”

  “Sure I did. Neighbors’ children, right?”

  She looked unsure and nothing made sense for a moment. Her grief must have turned her into a bag of nerves. Inheriting a big old tomb of a house can’t have helped. I regretted not handling her a bit more gently earlier, and gave her my card. “Look, Mrs. Chetwynd, this is my direct line, in case of…anything.”

  She gave my card the once-over, then slipped it into her gardening trousers. Against her thigh. “That’s extremely kind. I—I feel safer already.”

  The red ivy shivered. “Grief’s a bastard, it really is—pardon my French. It makes everything else harder.” I couldn’t decide what color Chloe Chetwynd’s eyes were. Blue. Gray. Lonely as hell.

  The woman asked, “Whom did you lose, Detective?”

  “My mum. Leukemia. A long time ago.”

  “There’s no such thing as ‘a long time ago.’ ”

  I felt all examined. “Did your husband die in an accident?”

  “Pancreatic cancer. Stuart lived longer than the doctors predicted, but…in the end, you know…” The evening sun lit the softest fuzz on her upper lip. She swallowed, hard, and looked at her wrist as if there was a watch there, though there wasn’t. “Gosh, look at the time. I’ve detained you long enough, Detective. May I walk you back to the offending door?”

  · · ·

  We walked under a tree that’d shed lots of little leaves shaped like fans. I plucked a waist-high weed from the side of the lawn. “Golly gosh,” sighed Mrs. Chetwynd, “I’ve let this poor garden go to rack and ruin, haven’t I?”

  “Nothing a little elbow grease couldn’t put right.”

  “I’ll need industrial quantities of the stuff to tame this jungle, alas.”

  “I’m surprised you don’t employ a gardener,” I said.

  “We did, a Polish chap, but after Stuart died he left to pursue other career opportunities. With a brand-new Flymo.”

  I asked, “Did you report the theft?”

  She looked at her nails. “I just couldn’t face the kerfuffle. There was so much else to see to. Pathetic of me, really, but…”

  “I only wish I’d known. So I could’ve helped.”

  “That’s sweet of you.” We passed under a trellissy thing with purple and white flowers hanging down. “If it’s not nosy of me,” she asks, “were you in Slade Alley on police business when you found the door? Or were you just passing through, by chance?”

  Famous Fred Pink’d slipped my mind the moment I set foot in the garden. “Police business, as it happens.”

  “Gosh. Nothing majorly unpleasant, I hope.”

  “Majorly pointless, I suspect—unless the names Norah Grayer or Rita and Nathan Bishop mean anything to you, on the off chance?”

  She frowned: “Norah Grayer…no. Odd name. Are the Bishops that husband and wife team who present the breakfast show on ITV?”

  “No,” I replied. “Not to worry. It’s a bit of a saga.”

  We’d come to the end of the stony path but instead of showing me out, Chloe Chetwynd sat down on a low wall by a sundial. “My frantic social calendar just happens to be empty this evening,” she said, a bit foxily, “if you’re in the mood for telling me the saga, Detective.”

  Why hurry back to my poky flat? I got my smokes out of my leather jacket. “May I? And would you?”

  “Yes, you may; and yes, I would. Thank you.”

  So I joined her on the low wall, lit one for her, one for me. “Okay, Part One. Rita and Nathan Bishop were a mother and son who lived over near the station, and who disappeared in 1979. Inquiries were made at the time, but when the investigating officer found out that Rita Bishop was up to her eyeballs in debt and had relatives in Vancouver, it was assumed she’d skipped town, and the case died from lack of interest.” A light breeze blew the woman’s cigarette smoke into my face, but I didn’t mind. “On to Part Two. Six weeks ago, a man named Fred Pink woke up in the coma ward of the Royal Berkshire Hospital.”

  “Now him I do know,” said Chloe Chetwynd. “He was in The Mail on Sunday: ‘The Window Cleaner Who Came Back from the Dead.’ ”

  “One and the same.” I tapped ash onto the top of the wall where a few ants were crawling around. “When not enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame, Fred Pink was down the town library, catching up on the local papers. Which is where he came across an article about the Bishops’ disappearance—and lo and behold, he recognized them. Or thinks he did. Says he even spoke with Rita Bishop, the mum, out there”—I nod at the small black iron door—“in Slade Alley, around three o’clock, October twenty-seventh, 1979. A Saturday.”

  Chloe Chetwynd looked politely astonished. “That’s precise.”

  “It was an unforgettable day for him, you see. After Rita Bishop had asked him if he knew where ‘Norah Grayer’s residence’ was, Fred Pink lugged his ladders out of Slade Alley onto Westwood Road, where a speeding taxi knocked him into his nine-year coma.”

  “What a story!” Chloe Chetwynd sort of sloughs off her wellies to let her feet breathe. “But if this Norah Grayer character really is minor gentry, she shouldn’t be so very difficult to track down.”

  I made a gesture of agreement. “You’d think so, but our searches so far have only drawn blanks. Assuming she exists.”

  Chloe Chetwynd inhaled, held the smoke in her lungs, and breathed out. “Well, if she did exist, and did live around here, she’d probably live in Slade House—our house. Mine, that is. But Stuart and I bought the house from people called Pitt, not Grayer, and they’d lived here for years.”

  “Since before 1979?” I asked.

  “Since before the war, I believe. And as for me, in 1979 I was a history of art postgrad living in Luxembourg and finishing a thesis on Ruskin. Of course, Detective, you’re more than welcome to bring in the sniffer dogs, or dredge the pond, if you think there’s anything sinister on the property…”

  A squirrel darted across the clumpy lawn and vanished into a rhubarb patch. I wondered who the hell Ruskin was. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary, Mrs. Chetwynd. After everything Fred Pink’s been through, my chief super thought we should do him the courtesy of following up his lead, but to be honest, strictly between you and me, we’re not really expecting anything much to come of it.”

  Chloe Chetwynd nodded. “That’s decent of you, to show Mr. Pink you’re taking him seriously. And I do hope that the Bishops are alive and well somewhere.”

  “If I were a betting man, I’d put a sizable chunk on them being alive, well and solvent somewhere in British Columbia.” The moon was above the chimneys and TV aerials. My imagination opened one side of its dirty mac and showed me a picture of Chloe Chetwynd squirming on her back, under me.
“Well, I really ought to be off. I’ll tell the contractor to come round the main entrance, shall I?”

  “Whichever suits.” She stood and walked me the last few steps to the small black iron door. I drummed my fingers on it, wondering whether to go for her phone number, but Chloe Chetwynd then said this: “Mrs. Edmonds made a wise choice of husband, Detective.”

  Oho? “That area of my life’s a bloody train wreck, Mrs. Chetwynd. I’m dumped, single, with the bruises to prove it.”

  “All the best TV detectives have complex domestic lives. And really, address me as Chloe, if that’s allowed.”

  “Off duty, it’s allowed. Off duty, I’m Gordon.”

  Chloe toyed with a button on the cuff of her granddad shirt. “That’s settled, then, Gordon. Au revoir.”

  I stooped and sort of posted myself through the ridiculously small doorway to get back into Slade Alley. We shook hands over the threshold. Over Chloe’s shoulder I thought I saw movement and a blink of light in an upper window of Slade House, but I probably didn’t. I thought of my flat, of the washing-up in the sink, of the leaking radiator, of the copy of Playboy stashed behind my toilet brush, and wished I was inside Slade House now, looking over the twilit garden, knowing Chloe’d soon be coming back, cream-skinned under her clothes. “Get yourself a cat,” I heard myself say.

  She smiled and frowned at the same time: “A cat?”

  · · ·

  Back on Westwood Road, the cars all had their headlights and wipers on, and raindrops splashed my neck and my not-quite-yet-bald spot. My visit to Chloe Chetwynd hadn’t been conducted exactly as per standard police protocol, I had to admit. I’d lowered my guard, we’d sort of flirted at the end, and Trevor Doolan would be most unchuffed if he’d heard me discuss Fred Pink the way I did; but now and then you meet a woman who makes you do that. It’s okay, Chloe Chetwynd can keep a secret, I can tell. Julie was a blabbermouth—brash on the outside, emotional jelly on the inside—but Chloe’s the reverse. Chloe’s got this chipped outer shell but an indestructible core. That bit at the end when she smiled, or half smiled…Like when the lights come on at the end of a power cut and you think, Hallelujah! The way we sat down and smoked like it was the most natural thing in the world. Sure, Chloe Chetwynd has a few bob tucked away and her house is worth a fortune, and I don’t have a pot to piss in, but all she’s got in her life now are spiders, mice and memories of a sick husband. I may be an idiot in some respects but when it comes to women, I’m more experienced than most guys. I’ve slept with twenty-two women, from Angie Pike the Sheerness Bike to last month’s Surrey stockbroker’s bored housewife with a thing about handcuffs, and I could tell Chloe Chetwynd was thinking about me like I was thinking of her. As I walked back to my car, I felt fit and slim and strong and good and confident that something had just begun.