Pleasure and a Calling

by Phil Hogan

  Minutes on end pass, but now she is at last calling the children. I hear her outside. There is shouting now and a scream. The voice of a neighbour joins in the hullabaloo, then a second. It fills me with excitement. I squeeze my eyes closed. Now a lady is in the hall, using the telephone. There is more shouting and crying. I crouch and hide and listen. I stay as long as I dare, and then at last slip out at the back, down the sloping garden with its roses growing to the wall and the unpaved cul-de-sac below, dark beneath the heavy trees. I glance once towards the park and pause. And now I run. I am blind to everything. I will stop for nothing, retracing this part of my earlier journey from the park, slowing at the end when I reach the main road. I can hear the ice-cream van somewhere. I look back down the cul-de-sac once more but I will not wait, and soon I am back on our avenue where I am safe.

  Opposite our house is a police car, sky blue and white, and I can hear Mrs Damato’s shrill voice. She is standing with the policeman, a neighbour at her side. The gate is open. Their heads turn at my approach. Asked if I have passed two children, I say I have not. Mrs Damato is urged to be calm. I am quizzed further. Where have I been? To buy sweets at the shop, I say. No one asks me to produce the sweets or indeed turn out my pockets, where they would find one of Mrs Damato’s biscuits. Mrs Damato doesn’t even seem to know who I am.

  The policeman asks if Anthony has ever gone off on his own before.

  ‘Never, never!’ wails Mrs Damato. She throws up her arms and breaks into a flood of high-pitched gibberish.

  Another neighbour arrives and is told what has happened. The ice-cream van turns on to our avenue with its sudden jolly peal of bells and the policeman steps into the road with his hand raised.

  I take the opportunity to escape to our house, where I pour a glass of milk and watch from my window, eating the evidence of my involvement. I am waiting. Almost immediately there is a scream below and Mrs Damato dashes along the street, out of sight of my window. When she reappears, she is carrying Anthony, holding him tight and stroking his hair, his poor face streaked with tears. But relief on the faces of the other grownups has already turned to panic as they realize he is alone, and Anthony is now set down on the pavement to answer questions. Where is the little girl? Where is Angela? Where is she? He cannot answer. A woman is running towards the group outside the Damatos’ and everyone turns towards her. Is this Angela’s mother? I fear so. Certainly there are recriminations and more howling. Perhaps she has noticed that little Anthony is wearing Angela’s white sandals. Perhaps Mrs Damato is demanding of Anthony why he is no longer wearing his blue cardigan.

  At this point Aunt Lillian’s Austin pulls up. She sees the commotion and crosses the street, followed by cousin Isobel, with shorter hair, cut into a neat bowl shape. The policeman speaks to Aunt Lillian and she looks serious and shakes her head. Isobel listens with her arms folded. Then, as if she knows something, Isobel turns and looks straight up at me. As if she knows that worse is to come.

  FROM ABOVE, SUNLIGHT STREAMED through the study window, casting a green shadow on the wall of the stair from the paperweight balanced on the top step. From outside came the distant repeating beep of a reversing refuse truck. It seemed an age before I moved. I felt as though I were refuelling, and that the longer I stood there the more the power would surge into my body. At last I felt I might explode with energy. On the downside I had only the vaguest sense of what needed to be done. Clearly, somehow, I had to get Sharp out of here. How could I be certain that a neighbour or a passing motorist had not seen me arrive or even just seen me walking up this street? The house was filthy with my fingerprints and footprints and Lord knows what else from my recent visits. It had been bad enough to have the wife’s body on the premises; now, with two bodies, even the least intelligent police detective would be looking for a third party. I imagined that to make Sharp’s death look like an accident or suicide would exceed the skills of a man who buys and sells houses, even one practised to an intermediary level in electrical and plumbing work.

  How much simpler, I thought, if they’d just killed each other.

  I switched Sharp’s music off by the control on the wire. He was wide-eyed, and pale as marble, but had no blood on him – just a great bald swelling where the golf club had hit.

  I took the club into the kitchen, scrubbed it, wiped it and took it through the utility room to the garage. Here was Sharp’s brutish white 4×4, squatting in the light from the kitchen. This was the way he had entered the house – driven into the garage, and then come straight through to the kitchen. Had he been planning to move his wife’s body after all? Why else would he bring the car in and close the garage door behind him? I lifted the tailgate and, sure enough, the back seats had been folded down to create the necessary space.

  But now, of course, Sharp had kindly given me the wherewithal to move his own body. The key was in the ignition. I rummaged in the rear and found a travel rug and a blue tarpaulin in a side compartment. Ideal. Back in the hall I spread the tarpaulin on the floor, and manoeuvred Sharp’s body on to it. Then I unclipped his music player and emptied his pockets – a wallet, a little loose change – and eased off his wedding ring and unlatched his chunky bracelet wristwatch. I put the ring with Judith’s next to the phone. It wasn’t too difficult to drag the tarpaulin with Sharp on it down the hall and into the kitchen; more so to get him past the ironing board in the utility room. Now, carefully, I rolled the body off the tarpaulin and down the step on to the ridged concrete of the garage floor. As I’d envisaged, the tarpaulin had swept along with it a tide of crockery and bits of glass from the hall and kitchen. This I redistributed randomly, shaking the tarpaulin to free any remaining fragments. Then I returned to the car and spread the tarpaulin in the back. I tried to haul Sharp to his feet. It was all but impossible. In the end I propped his legs up against the bumper, then – mustering all my strength – took the weight of his torso, gave it a quarter turn and heaved him in sideways. I stood panting, my hands on my knees, then covered him with it as well as I could. The tarpaulin wasn’t big enough, but the travel rug obscured everything above his knees. I brought down the tailgate and looked through the dark windows. I couldn’t see a thing. I went round the front. The windscreen and side windows were less strongly tinted, but ought to do the job.

  In the front of the car I found Sharp’s phone, which I switched off. Then I went upstairs and restored his study to a natural state of untidiness, wiping door handles and surfaces with my handkerchief and repositioning the glass paperweight on the desk. Then I gathered my own scattered papers and put them back in my case. There was one crucial thing. I clattered back downstairs, picked up the phone in the hall, and found my message from the previous night. I listened, waiting for the option to erase it.

  Sudden movements, by definition, come at a time you least expect them, but none has made my blood race faster than the shadow, that very moment, at the front door’s frosted window, followed by the rattle of keys. I had two seconds to do something. I do not remember replacing the phone receiver or even moving. And yet by the time the front door opened I was already in the utility room, pulling the kitchen door shut after me. In the last instant I saw the intruder pause at the entrance, and put down two carrier bags. I was close enough to hear her sigh. ‘Just look at this bloody place …’ came the murmur. It was, of course, Judith Sharp.

  My heart was pounding. I couldn’t think, just kept perfectly still.

  I waited till I heard water hitting the bottom of a kettle, then I slipped out into the garage, locking the door behind me. But now I was in the dark and the switch was in the utility room. Fearful of kicking something over, I groped my way along the side of the car until I felt the door handle, then slowly squeezed it. The interior light clicked on. I climbed into the front seat and turned on the side lights, illuminating the main garage door. All I needed to do was open it – and then drive like hell. If she heard the car, she would think it was her husband who had returned and then left quickly to avoid meetin
g her (obviously this would have to be a different husband from the one I had envisaged escaping to the Continent after burying her body in the garden; here I was again trying to turn the picture the right way up in an emergency).

  The door was a metal roller, which probably meant it was automatic – and quiet. Hence Sharp’s unheralded arrival. I found a thumb-size remote on the car’s key fob and tested it with a double click. The door gave a preliminary, soundless jolt. Perfect. I steadied myself to go. But just as I was about to turn the key, I was hit by a terrible sensation. For the second time I had left my briefcase upstairs.

  I cursed my idiot self. As before, but for greater reason now, I could not just leave it there. I got out of the car and listened at the door of the utility room. Nothing. Where was she? She had probably begun the task of cleaning up – maybe she was in the hall. But I couldn’t just walk in while she was in the house. Or could I? The more I thought about it, the more it seemed obvious. But first I needed to distract her. I thought of my trick with the phone call at the library. I found the house number in my phone from the night before and hit ‘Call’. I waited a moment, then got the engaged tone. I realized that that was almost as good. I darted back to the car, pulled the keys out of the ignition, locked the doors, then pressed the remote for the roller door. Sunlight poured in as it began its noiseless ascent. At shoulder height I ducked beneath it and set it closing again. No one was in sight. I went round to the front and rang the bell. I had just assumed the smile of my professional calling when the door opened and Judith Sharp looked out at me, holding the phone with a bandaged hand.

  ‘Are you Mr Heming?’

  ‘Indeed I am.’

  ‘He’s here now,’ she said into the phone. ‘Thank you so much.’ She put the phone down. ‘I just got your message, and called your office. I was hoping to catch you before you got here. You’d better come in.’

  I followed her in.

  ‘As you can see, things are a little …’ She gave a wave of her hand. ‘But we need to press on.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Was there an accident?’

  ‘Accident?’ She seemed confused.

  ‘Your hand?’

  ‘Oh.’ Mrs Sharp ran her good hand through her mess of red hair. She looked terrible. I wondered if she was on medication.

  She took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. ‘I had to stay at my sister’s,’ she said, inhaling smoke. ‘She picked me up from A&E, but I called a taxi this morning. I didn’t want her coming back here. Would you like coffee? I’m just making some.’

  ‘Thank you, lovely. And do you think I might use your bathroom?’

  I didn’t wait for an answer but dashed upstairs. The case was where I’d left it and I crept back down, concealing it behind my back. She was still in the kitchen. ‘I’ll just need to pop out to my car,’ I called to her. I stepped outside for a minute, then strode back in with the case under my arm. She was sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by mess, one hand on her forehead.

  ‘Please,’ she said.

  I smiled. I glanced at the utility-room door, which was still closed, and sat down to join her, taking out my valuation pad and unclipping a pen. She answered distractedly as we went through the formalities … the three bedrooms and study, the wet room, the new guttering recently fitted, the maintenance contract for the boiler. ‘I bought the house through your agency. I don’t know if you remember.’

  ‘It does ring a bell,’ I heard myself say, sipping coffee, but thinking of the body of her husband barely ten feet away. ‘We’ve sold several down here. It’s a very nice property. I’ll need to take some measurements.’

  She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Let me show you around.’

  She was on her feet surprisingly quickly and pushing open the door to the utility room. She hesitated when she saw the mess and frowned, as if only at this moment recalling what had happened. ‘This is our laundry room,’ she said, sidestepping the ironing board, ‘and the garage is …’

  My stomach flipped and I felt the sweat spring up along my hairline. I prayed to God that I wouldn’t have to kill her too.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘He must have taken the key. We’ll have to get in through the front.’

  ‘Please don’t trouble yourself, Mrs Sharp.’ I beamed. ‘At this stage, a garage is a garage, is it not?’ I pointed my laser tape measure in the opposite direction. ‘Perhaps the other rooms?’

  We went upstairs first. Mrs Sharp, her features etched with resolution, threw the curtains wide in the marital bedroom and closed the drawers in the chest, muttering beneath her breath. Then we went into the study.

  ‘Will you be leaving the bookshelves?’ I asked.

  She stared out of the window, and I saw her blink back a tear.

  ‘Mrs Sharp?’

  She was sobbing uncontrollably. She perched on Sharp’s swivel chair with her head tilted forward in her hands and wept. I gave her the handkerchief I’d used to wipe my fingerprints from the paperweight that had helped send her husband head over heels down the stairs, and made the soothing noises expected of any man in this situation.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she blubbed. She dabbed her eyes and blew into my handkerchief. She sat shaking her head, her lips pressed together, for some time. I felt time ticking by.

  ‘Was this something to do with Mr Sharp?’ I asked gently.

  She said nothing.

  ‘To be honest with you, I saw the agent from Worde & Hulme as he was leaving last night. He seemed quite shaken. I gather there was unpleasantness.’

  She remained tight-lipped. At last she said, ‘I’ll be happy if I never see him again. He’s gone anyway now, I hope, and good riddance.’

  ‘The agent from Worde—’

  ‘My husband.’ She raised her bandaged hand, as if to show me it. It had already come unravelled.

  ‘Here,’ I said, ‘let me sort that out for you.’

  I took out my scalpel, stretched and slit the fraying material and tied it back up smartly.

  ‘Thank you. That’s very kind.’

  ‘Is it a bad injury?’ I asked, in my kind voice.

  ‘It’s just a cut. And my fault. That’s not to say he doesn’t have a temper. He does.’

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather do all this later, Mrs Sharp?’

  She looked alarmed. ‘No, no.’ She gave a sigh and looked at me. ‘It’s just that I hadn’t told him I was having the house valued, and he walked in on it. There was a fight. Hence the mess. Cups were thrown. Saucers and plates were thrown. My wedding ring was thrown.’

  ‘But the house is yours to sell?’

  ‘Of course. I bought it before Mr Sharp came along. Your agency handled it. As I said.’

  ‘Indeed. Well, these things happen. Though admittedly usually after a discussion.’

  ‘He didn’t deserve a discussion,’ she snapped. ‘He told me he was working late. I knew what he was up to.’ She sniffed loudly. ‘I know you don’t want to know all this.’

  ‘You have my sympathies. I have some experience of it myself.’

  ‘You’re married?’

  ‘My ex-wife is married to my brother.’

  She stopped sniffing. ‘That’s hard.’

  ‘Life picks up again,’ I said. ‘That’s what I have found.’

  ‘But you’ll understand why I did what I did. I had his bags packed by the time he got home. He drove me to the hospital but I refused to speak to him – except to say I wanted him out. By morning.’ She looked at me with anxious eyes. ‘I’m going to stay with my sister. Do you think you can sell it quickly?’

  ‘If you’re sure you want us to go ahead.’

  ‘He put my rings near the front door. He left his own ring too.’ She paused then nodded. ‘Go ahead. Sell it.’

  Mrs Sharp had calmed down now, but showed no sign of moving from the chair.

  ‘Do you see the patch of digging at the top of the garden behind the trees?’

  I took out my opera glasses and focus
ed on the patch of bare soil again. ‘Ah yes. And that’s …’

  ‘The woman was the last straw.’

  You’ll understand why I did what I did.

  I went cold. Abigail?

  ‘She’s not the first. From his bloody reading group, no doubt. The younger woman, I suppose. Impressionable.’ She bit on her lower lip, still staring out into the garden. I could barely listen, but on she babbled. ‘I got home from work a few weeks ago. Barney’s escaped, he tells me – that’s my dog. Ran off when his back was turned, he said. Which is rubbish. Barney would never have run off. But he carried on with it. He even went out and put up some of those posters with Barney’s picture on. Then a week or so ago I was in the garden and found him under a pile of old rubbish and stones behind the garage. He wasn’t even well hidden.’

  Of course … the dog.

  ‘He said it was an accident. What? One of his eyes was missing. I screamed at him so much he couldn’t even think of a lie quickly enough, and admitted it. Barney had done his business on the rug, he said, and he’d lashed out at him with his boot.’

  ‘And that killed him?’

  ‘He was having a fit, the dog. So in a panic he put him down with one of his golf clubs.’

  She was silent again. Dogless. Dougless.

  ‘So that’s Barney at the top of the garden.’

  She gave a hard smile. ‘I made him go out and buy a spade. He refuses to do any gardening. The grass grows back, he says. Can you believe anyone would say that? I’m well rid of him.’

  There was a long, loud ring on the doorbell. My heart jumped, but Mrs Sharp barely flinched. ‘I know who that is,’ she said.

  ‘You do?’

  She got up from the chair and went to look out of one of the front windows, then came back. ‘I stopped paying for his car two months ago. In fact I stopped paying all his bills. They’ve been three times this week to repossess it – huge yellow removal vehicle crawling round the area. He’s started locking it in the garage.’ She gave a laugh. ‘Serves him right.’