The Quantrills’large 1950s bungalow stood in half an acre of garden in one of the best residential parts of Breckham Market. The mortgage repayments were horrendous, but even so Quantrill had no regrets about the move. For the first time in his married life he had enough space round him, and the leafy garden gave him an illusion of privacy, almost of country living. Now, though, the storm had changed his outlook.
Before, the view from the south-facing window of the living-room had featured the handsome spread of the thirty-foot tree. It hadn’t darkened the room because there was also a wide window in the west wall, but it had provided interesting patterns of light and shade, giving a particular form and substance to the furniture that the Quantrills had brought to Bramley Road from their previous house.
With the tree gone the room seemed cruelly bright, its worn furnishings exposed in all their shabbiness. And the view from the window didn’t bear looking at. The tall Edwardian house next door had previously been hidden and now there it was, dominating the outlook with its purplish bricks and ugly down-pipes. It seemed to have a great many upstairs windows, all of them eyeing the Quantrills’every movement.
‘Doesn’t it look terrible?’ Douglas croaked to his wife.
But Molly, standing in the doorway of the living-room, sounded more relieved than dismayed. ‘That’s what I’ve been telling you ever since we came here!’ she said. ‘I’ve been really ashamed of that old three-piece suite. Now we shall have to buy a new one, whether you want to or not.’
On Sunday morning, scarfed and tweed-hatted against the cold wind, Quantrill ventured outside to mourn the fallen tree at close quarters.
The walnut lay horizontal, its base still partly anchored at the edge of a great hole in the lawn, its splintered branches tangled among crushed shrubs. In falling, the tree had wrenched out of the ground a massive pad of earth and fine roots, about ten feet across and three or four feet thick. Quantrill peered down into the hole, intrigued despite his regrets by the fact that the walnut, for all its size, appeared to have no large tap roots to anchor it deep in the earth. It astonished him that trees could ever withstand the wind for long enough to reach maturity.
‘Good thing it fell where it did, eh Dad?’ called Peter as he walked slowly and uncomfortably across the lawn towards his father. ‘A bit more to the left and that’d have been the end of your workshop!’
Quantrill told himself that he probably suspected rather than heard a slightly malicious tone of regret in the boy’s voice. Feeling in part responsible for the motor-cycle accident that had nearly killed his son, he expected Peter to take every opportunity to have a go at him.
It was fifteen months since the accident, and the boy had only recently been able to walk without crutches or a stick. The old Peter, his father couldn’t help thinking, would have loved the fallen tree. He’d have jumped down into the hole, run the length of the trunk, clambered about in the branches. True, the new Peter was older: eighteen now, and beyond the stage of boyish running about. But Quantrill felt a constant guilt as he saw how cautiously his son walked, with trainers on his feet like any other teenager but on legs that had been reconstructed with metal bones and plastic joints. If Peter did take an occasional verbal poke at him, it was surely justified.
‘Damn shame about the tree,’ Quantrill suggested, by way of conversation.
‘That’s not what Mum thinks!’ said Peter, who had enjoyed overhearing his mother win the long-running argument about the new furniture. ‘Gran’ll be pleased, too, when she comes back from Aunt Mavis’s,’ he added provocatively. ‘Mum says she was always grumbling that the tree made her bedroom gloomy.’
Quantrill made an uncomplimentary remark about his mother-in-law, and vowed to plant a larger tree even nearer her window. Peter chuckled, and father and son walked more amicably along the length of the fallen tree.
‘Can I have some of the wood to season and take to college?’ said Peter. His accident, and the operations that followed, had enabled him to do what he wanted and leave school without any of the academic qualifications his father had previously tried to insist on. His best subject at school had been woodwork, and he had now embarked on a craft design course at Yarchester City College. It wasn’t what Quantrill had hoped for for his only son; but at least it kept the boy usefully occupied.
‘Have as much wood as you want,’ he agreed. ‘The rest’ll keep us in firewood for next winter. I’ll hire a chainsaw and cut the tree up as soon as I’m fit again.’
‘No, I can do that!’ said Peter eagerly. ‘Matthew Pike’s Dad’s got two or three chainsaws; I’m sure he’ll lend me one. I can cut the tree up in the Easter holidays.’
‘You can what? spluttered Quantrill, so irritated that his chest tightened again and brought on a fit of coughing.
‘Well …’ Peter’s confidence wavered. ‘I can have a go at it, can’t I? I can cut some of the wood, anyway? Just enough for what I need.’
‘Are you out of your mind, boy?’ demanded his father hoarsely. ‘Of course you can’t cut the tree up, not even part of it. Good grief, you’ve only just started walking without a stick!’
‘But I’ve got to be able to do something,’ protested Peter. ‘Cutting’s a standing-up job; I can do that just as well as anybody else.’
‘That just shows how little you know about chainsaws! Don’t you realize they’re dangerous? They’re powerful things; you’ve got to be fit and strong to control them.’
‘I am fit. I’ve been doing my exercises, and I’ll be perfectly firm on my feet by Easter.’
‘So I hope. But I am not letting you loose on this tree with a chainsaw – they’re lethal in inexperienced hands.’
‘You’re not experienced with them!’ said Peter hotly. ‘I don’t believe you’ve ever used one, any more than I have.’
‘Maybe not,’ conceded Quantrill. ‘But I’ve seen the damage they can do, and I know better than to run any risks. Just stop arguing, you young idiot, and leave the tree to me.’
What Peter said about his father, as he stumped back towards the bungalow, was a great deal louder and ruder than what his father had said about his grandmother. But Quantrill, who had once seen a principal witness in a murder case kill himself with a chainsaw, felt completely justified and pretended not to hear.
What he heard when he returned to the house some minutes later gave him an unhoped-for pleasure. The front doorbell rang, Molly answered it, and the light clear voice he heard was Hilary Lloyd’s.
‘Good morning, Mrs Quantrill. I thought it was time I enquired about your patient.’
He loved Hilary for the tactful way she always dealt with Molly, keeping herself at a friendly but deferential distance and never calling him Douglas in front of his wife.
‘Patient?’ he heard Molly reply scornfully. ‘That’s the last thing he is! I don’t know when he’s more difficult, when he’s convinced he’s dying or when he’s getting better … He’s just bawled out Peter, too. Come in, Hilary, and see if you can talk him into a more reasonable frame of mind.’
Quantrill stood up eagerly as his sergeant entered the living-room, tall and thin and elegant even in casual clothes, a complete contrast to his dumpy wife.
‘Morning, Hilary!’
‘Good morning, sir. How are you?’
Her coming had done wonders for him, but he remembered to put a croak in his voice. ‘Much better, thanks. Should be back at work in a day or two.’
Molly offered coffee, but Hilary refused because she was on her way to play squash. ‘I see you’ve lost your walnut tree,’ she said. ‘What a shame, it was such a handsome shape.’
‘Wasn’t it just?’ mourned Quantrill. ‘The place looks all wrong without it, inside and out. I’ll replant, of course, but it won’t be the same …’
‘I should hope not!’ said Molly. ‘That tree was much too big. What I’d like to have there, Douggie, is one of those nice double-flowering pink cherries –’
‘Anything interesting happening
at work, Hilary?’ interrupted Quantrill. He might have lost the argument about the new furniture, but he was damned if he was going to put up with Molly’s frilly little choice of tree. And he hated being called Douggie.
As he had hoped, his wife retreated to the kitchen. He and Hilary exchanged wordless grins, and relaxed into their working relationship. She gave him a quick update on their current cases, and then hesitated.
‘Something new has come up, and I hardly know whether to take it seriously or not. An old couple, late seventies, living in squalid isolation on the other side of Byland, seem to have disappeared. The husband didn’t collect their usual groceries on Thursday, and when one of our patrol men went to their house on Saturday he found it empty. They’ve not been taken to hospital, or moved out by the social services, and the shopkeeper is fairly certain they’ve never been outside the village during the past eighteen years.’
‘Any suspicious circumstances?’
‘Not really. The house had been left locked, and I found their pension books on the mantelpiece so it seems that they intend to return. But I feel uneasy about it.’
‘Any family?’
‘Eight children, apparently. All adult now, of course, and none living locally. I’ve made contact with two of them so far, but there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of family feeling or communication. Their surname’s Polish, by the way. Don’t ask me to pronounce it.’
Intrigued, Quantrill scratched his chin. ‘What do they say about their parents, the two you’ve seen?’
‘Not seen, telephoned. The eldest son, a single man, works offshore on a North Sea gas rig. He goes to see his parents occasionally, and says he’s been trying for long enough to persuade them to move into the village. He doesn’t seem too worried about their disappearance. They were reasonably well when he called last Monday, he says, and he thinks one or other of his family must have fetched them for a visit.’
‘Sounds a bit wishful to me,’ said Quantrill.
‘That’s my impression. He feels a responsibility, and he’s thankful to be relieved of it. But the only sister I’ve been able to contact, in Peterborough, knows nothing about them. She says she isn’t in touch with her parents except to send them a card at Christmas, and she’s doubtful if any of the others do more than that. I really think we need to be concerned for their welfare, Douglas. A Press appeal for information, do you think?’
Quantrill agreed. ‘No cause for alarm, but we’d certainly like to know they’re all right. What’s your next move, Hilary?’
‘If I haven’t discovered anything before tomorrow afternoon, I’m going to Byland again. The son’s coming off the rig to meet me.’
Quantrill sat up. ‘D’you mind if I come with you?’ he asked hopefully. ‘Not to interfere, just for the ride.’
‘You’re still off sick,’ Hilary reminded him. ‘And what would Molly think?’
‘You heard what she said, she’ll be glad to get me out of the house. Besides, I’m interested. If the old couple really are missing, I want to know what’s happened to them.’
Chapter Three
The obstruction in Longmire Lane had been cleared, and Sergeant Lloyd was able to drive her Renault up to the gateless gap in the broken-down garden wall that fronted the old couple’s home.
‘Good grief …’ said Chief Inspector Quantrill, easing himself reluctantly out of the passenger seat and turning up the collar of his coat. The wind was sharp, he still didn’t feel fully recovered from his bronchitis, and their destination was more uninviting than he’d imagined.
The landscape was not picturesque, but even so the dilapidated building made a blot on it. The site of the two adjoining houses – a double-dweller, in Suffolk parlance – was at an elbow of the lane, where the surface of churned mud was differentiated from the cultivated land by a remnant of hedge and one or two scrubby trees.
Immediately surrounding the houses was a piece of garden ground, long overgrown, with a few old fruit trees, one of which had been pushed at an angle by the gales. Surrounding the whole was an expanse of arable land, striped green by row upon row of emerging sugar beet. The only relief for the eye was a couple of hundred yards up the lane, where an old farmhouse stood on a rise, sheltered by stag-headed oaks.
‘Is the farm occupied?’ Quantrill asked.
‘No, it looks as though it’s been empty for some years. A great shame, because it’s a fine old timber-framed house. It needs a lot of work doing now, but I should think it’s had money spent on it in the past. Which is more than you can say of this pair.’
The mean little double-dweller had been thrown together at a period when the cheapest materials, instead of being fittingly local, were Midland bricks and thin Welsh slate. The front elevation had a door at either end, and four windows, one up and one down for each house. In the centre of the roof was a shared chimney.
After a hundred years of neglect, the building seemed to be on the point of disintegration. Slates were slipping off the roof, guttering hung loose, cracked brickwork was green with damp, windows and doors were rotting. There was, though, a difference between the two houses. The one on the right was unoccupied, its windows blackly empty behind broken panes. The one on the left was shabbily curtained, and a plaster Alsatian dog ornamented the window sill.
‘It’s unfit for human habitation,’ pronounced Quantrill.
‘Wait until you see inside,’ said Hilary.
They could hear the sound of an approaching car and presently a Jaguar XJ6, several years old but obviously cherished, nosed cautiously up the lane towards them. The driver, a man in his early forties, was smoking a cigarette but he civilly dropped it in the mud as soon as he stepped out of the car. He was long-legged, athletic-looking, husky in a thickly padded bright blue windcheater.
Hilary introduced herself and the Chief Inspector, and apologized for not having known how to pronounce the man’s name when she contacted him.
Krzecszczuk laughed. ‘We’re known hereabouts as the Crackjaws,’ he advised, ‘but I gener’ly answer to Andrew.’
His appearance was eye-catching. He had a shock of prematurely greying hair, thick black brows that met in a straight line over the top of his nose, and very wide cheekbones; a Slav with a Suffolk accent, very much aware of himself, and of Hilary, but pleasantly wry when she failed to respond.
‘Any news of the old folks?’ he asked.
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Hilary. ‘The only other member of your family I’ve been able to contact is Sonya, and she couldn’t tell me anything about them.’
‘Our Sonya?’ He shrugged: ‘I’m not surprised. She’s never bothered with them, hasn’t been here for years. Still – no news is good news, eh?’
The detectives made non-committal noises.
Andrew gestured defensively at his parents’home. ‘Look, I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have left them to spend their old age in a place like this, should I? But I’ve done my best to persuade’em to move to one of the council bungalows in the village, and they won’t budge.’
‘Old people get stuck in their ways, you can’t force them to do things for their own good,’ Quantrill reassured him. ‘D’you think it’s possible they went off under their own steam, though?’
‘Not a chance. Mum’s poorly on her feet, she’d never have got beyond the gate. Besides, if they wanted to go anywhere they’d have told me when I came over at the beginning of last week.’
‘Have they lived here long?’ asked Hilary.
‘All their married lives. It suits them, they like to keep to themselves. I don’t manage to get here as often as I should, but at least I know they’re contented. I’m certain they’d never have gone away, even for a few days, if somebody in the family hadn’t insisted. Did you find the door key, by the way?’
‘No, they must have taken it with them, so we forced an entry. We needed to be sure they weren’t lying ill.’
Andrew pulled a face. ‘Oh God, you’ve been upstairs t
hen … I haven’t done that for years. I s’pose it was in a terrible state?’
‘I’ve seen worse,’ Hilary said diplomatically, as she unpadlocked the temporary fastening on the front door.
They walked straight into a jumbled living-room that stank of wet rot, mice, mouldering wallpaper, old clothes and a lifetime of greasy dinners. The cheap furniture had long ago been battered into submission, and over everything was a fingermarked fuzz of ripening dust. The room was saved from complete squalor only by the fact that the table had been cleared and the worn vinyl floor-covering had recently been given a sketchy wash.
Andrew went on the defensive again. ‘It hasn’t been easy for Mum out here, with no water laid on or anything. She’s always done her best, she’s just too old to cope.’
‘She’s kept trying,’ said Quantrill generously, ‘we can see that.’
‘Have they anything to live on, apart from their State pensions?’ said Hilary.
‘A few pounds put by, I daresay, but nothing in the way of income. I don’t s’pose they left their pension books behind, did they?’
‘As a matter of fact they did.’ Hilary went to the mantelpiece and took the two books from where they were lodged behind a tarnished looking-glass. She flicked one of them open, and showed Andrew the post office date-stamp on the most recent counterfoil.
‘The 23rd – when was that?’ he asked.
‘Last Thursday. I’ve talked to the postmistress, and she says your father drew both their pensions in the morning just as usual. He didn’t say anything to her about going away.’
‘No reason why he should, I s’pose … P’raps he didn’t know himself, at the time.’
‘But if he didn’t know he was going away, why didn’t he collect his groceries as usual? That’s what’s puzzling us.’
Andrew Krzecszczuk’s eyebrows knotted over his nose. ‘That’s a rum’un, that is,’ he agreed slowly. ‘I dunno … unless whoever came to fetch them drove him to the post office first, to collect the pensions before they went.’
Cross My Heart and Hope to Die Page 2
