Pleasure and a Calling

by Phil Hogan

  ‘So this other woman …’ I said.

  ‘You get tired of turning a blind eye,’ she said. ‘But when other people know too … well, let’s say I got to hear about it. There was a note. Anonymous of course. And a picture.’

  I paused. ‘Do you know who she is?’

  ‘I don’t care who she is. Not now. I just want to get out of this life and this house, and make a fresh start.’

  Of course I wanted to get out of the house too. I just needed to keep her upstairs long enough for me to free the car from the garage.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘if we’re moving on from valuation to sales, we’ll need a few more details – and of course to arrange a time to come back and take photographs of the property. But first I’ll have to get a set of contracts from the office. Do you think I could pop back later today? Give you a chance to sort yourself out?’

  ‘I’ll try to clean the place up,’ she said.

  She didn’t move, but lit a cigarette, and gazed out towards Barney’s grave. I wouldn’t get a better chance. I took the stairs as quickly as I dared. The repossession men had left a card in the letterbox. I took it and let myself out. I only needed a few seconds. I raised the garage doors, darted inside and got into the car. All that mattered was to get out. I started the engine and rolled the car slowly on to the drive, closing the door behind me. I edged into the street and began to turn right. I saw a yellow recovery truck heaving into view from the main road. Instinctively I pulled on the wheel and turned left. The driver had to have seen me but made no attempt to follow. I gained a little speed, took a right, and then another.

  And now what? My plan – and I’m afraid I had no other – was to dump Sharp at the Cooksons’ empty property, perhaps make it look like an accident. Why the Cooksons? Because I had the keys to their house in my pocket. And not their keys (which they had so steadfastly refused to part with) but mine, which I’d had on my wall since I sold the house for the previous owners sixteen years ago. I’d intended to drop in at some point during the week just for the hell of defying their attempts to keep us out. But now I had been presented with an opportunity that could hardly have been better served up by the Divine Provider himself.

  THE COOKSONS’ WAS LITERALLY the last house in town, a detached property at the furthest end of a picturesque access lane bounded by brambles, woods and fields. There was no through traffic. The two other houses on this stretch were themselves obscured by sturdy evergreens and set back from the road. I hadn’t forgotten that Katya had it in mind to erect a For Sale sign at the bottom of the lane, and I approached with caution. But the sign was already in place, fixed with a plywood arrow, as if to direct me to the house. Although it was Saturday, there wasn’t a soul in sight. I turned off the hill at the cricket club, and into the narrowing lane, the trees dappling the surface with shadow. It was a wonderful day, darkened only by the mischief I had in mind.

  The property stood bright and empty. Out on the woodchip verge, two wheelie bins had been put out for the Wednesday pick-up. To the practised eye there is a stillness – an innocence – to a deserted house that shows itself to the world, as a happy duckling to a waiting fox. Even so, I paused for a minute or two, peering through the slim trunks of the silver birches and pines marking the property’s front border. The soft crunch of shingle sounded beneath the tyres as I moved up the curved drive. At the top was a hammerhead turning space of finer gravel and a double garage with red doors came into sight. I had already decided not to enter the actual house. But to the side was a gate, accessible with the small iron key on the ring. I backed up, waited a moment, then got out. The key turned in the oiled lock. Inside, a crazy-paved path led to the Cooksons’ familiar broad patio, limestone edged with blunt slate monoliths. Beyond was a covered swimming pool, and beyond that a split lawn, shrubbery, and fruit trees stirred by the breeze. The plot was squared off by thickets of trimmed blackthorn the height of two men.

  Sharp’s body had shifted on the journey, though his face was still covered. I was afraid, for a chilling moment, that he might still be alive – that he might suddenly leap out at me and grip me by the throat. I lifted the corner of the blanket. Some residue had leaked from his mouth on to the grey fibrous material that lined the car where his cheek was pressed.

  I gripped two corners of the blue tarpaulin, judged his weight, then tugged. The torso fell heavily on to the gravel. I didn’t want to leave a trail of gravel up the path, so I took Sharp under the armpits this time and dragged him. I got him as far as the patio and laid him face up with his head towards the pool – as if he’d been walking backwards and tripped over the decorative monoliths and smacked his head on the paving stone. There was still no blood. It could be an accident. Sharp was unshaven; he was wearing a tracksuit. He could be a thief. Or not. I could have supplied him with a tyre iron – some tool for breaking and entering – but decided against it. He could be anyone, his purpose here baffling, nothing on him but a set of house keys. Even when the police identified him, it would be a mystery. Confusion, I had decided – or rather realized – was the best strategy. I wiped the gate key on my shirt (Mrs Sharp still had my handkerchief, I remembered), pressed it against Sharp’s fingers and slid it into his pocket. Here was the start to a dozen detective stories. But where would it lead? It was as bad to have too many clues as no clues. The police would find dots to join but it would never make a picture.

  I pulled the gate shut behind me without touching the handle.

  Now I folded the tarp and the blanket, and dumped them in one of the wheelie bins on the verge. But what, you may ask, about the car? Should I leave it and risk forensic experts finding microscopic bits of Sharp in the rear luggage compartment? Of course not. First I took the car back down to the lane and parked it under the silver birches while I smoothed out the tyre ruts in the shingle. Then I got back in, with the idea of leaving it a little further down beyond the lane, near the cricket club where the road was wider. Now I rang the repossession people, gave my name as Sharp, and told them where to find the car. I placed their reminder card on the seat. I knew a little about the persistence and cunning of car repossession operatives. I had heard how they would patrol all day, lurking in adjoining streets, waiting for their moment to pounce. There was no doubt they would come and claim their bounty. It wasn’t beyond hope that the yellow truck loitering around Boselle could get here in ten minutes. By the time the Cooksons returned, the car could be platinum-valeted, resold at auction and be back on the road hundreds of miles from here.

  But I’d no sooner pulled away than I had to hit the brakes. A car was slung at right angles across the lane, just after the bend at its narrowest part. The car was red and had a box-sign on top – a learner practising a three-point turn. I kept my distance. The driver, anxious at my presence, stalled the car. The instructor would be telling him to relax and take things slowly. He would be telling him that we all have to learn and that other road users generally show forbearance with new drivers. There was no rush. I nosed forward a little. The learner started up the car again. The back of his vehicle lifted slightly as he released the handbrake. I could sense his nervousness. I knew he would misjudge the camber of the road. The car stalled again and rolled backwards before the brake lights flashed on in panic. A little more gas, the instructor would doubtless be advising. The driver started up the engine again, revved loudly and began his procedure anew. Under renewed pressure, the driver was now neglecting to release the handbrake at all, leaving the car straining like a chained dog.

  A minute had passed. Perhaps two. From his side window, facing me, the instructor acknowledged my patience with a raised hand and a smile on this sunny Saturday. I lowered my head. The driver was reversing in juddering increments, but there was no room to pass in Sharp’s huge car. He stalled once more, restarted, and then at last began to edge forward. The lane seemed twice as long as I followed slowly at a distance. I had to get the car at least within sight of the cricket club.

  At last we reached th
e end of the lane. The learner car indicated right, stalled once more at the junction and then chugged up the hill and out of sight. I pulled in at a spot just ahead of the junction, left the keys in the ignition and jumped out. I started to walk down the hill but then remembered Sharp’s phone. It was in the compartment between the seats. I went back, pocketed it and slammed the door again. But now I could see the yellow truck, turning up the hill. The trees here offered no feasible cover. Back along the lane was a dry-stone wall, a barred gate and open land. I clambered over the gate and waited, ready to run. But there was no sound from the truck. I ventured a look. They had stopped ahead of the corner. Obviously they were wary. A skinny man appeared wearing overalls and a baseball cap pulled over his eyes. He saw the car and gestured to his unseen companion. He crept forward and peered in through the tinted window, tried the door, then leaned in to take the keys. The man in the baseball cap held the car keys aloft, signalling his colleague to turn round. I assumed he would then simply follow the driver in Sharp’s car, but instead they laboured to manoeuvre, first, the truck into position, and then the 4×4, all the time with an eye on the house, still perhaps expecting the owner to come out from somewhere, perhaps brandishing a shotgun or waving a fist. No doubt they had the law on their side and paperwork ready to be exchanged, but they were met with nothing except the indifference of the quiet lane and its slender trees, their leaves moving in the breeze. The man in the baseball cap slid beneath the car and within a few minutes they had winched the gleaming white giant car half aboard and rumbled away in a rising cloud of dust.

  I set off for town along the public footpath across fields bright with the green of an emerging crop. I walked quickly, Sharp’s phone in one pocket, his wallet in another. His house keys were still on the ring. After half a mile I took the phone out. There were two voicemails. The first was from Mrs Sharp, the night before, in a state of barely suppressed emotion, telling him to be out of the house by the time she got back; the second was Abigail, made at just after one o’clock – fifteen minutes ago: ‘Hi, it’s me. I’m here, but where are you? I see you ate that second Danish! I knew you would. Do hurry. Lots of love.’

  Her voice cut straight through me.

  He had spent the night with her, of course. That’s where his bags were. Perhaps still packed. The two of them had gone for a run in the morning. Then she had gone to the library, while he read the paper, waited till he thought his wife wouldn’t be in. Then he had folded down his back seats and gone back to Boselle to clear out the rest of his belongings – his books, his papers, his computer, his golf clubs.

  But she was in my mind now, supplanting him. I knew I was close. I felt his wallet, heavy in my inside pocket, swinging against my heart as I walked. I increased my step on the descent via St Theobald’s. There was mud on my shoes – no doubt the distinctive sort that would add up in a detective’s mind alongside the footprints made by a particular sturdy English brogue in this field. My suit trousers were muddy and somehow ripped at the knee too, I noticed. These were details to be dealt with at leisure. For now I wanted to get home. I skirted the town centre, the alley behind Warninck’s bookshop, past Tiepolo’s bread and cakes. I strode past the library windows without a glance, then up the hill, past the Common to the little courtyard where my car sat. I unlocked the door to my flat. I was almost dazzled by the sunlight pouring through the net curtains, the familiar, comforting room gleaming with my keys, arranged like a map of the town across the walls.

  I took out his wallet, expensive calfskin, doubtless bought by his poor wife. Banknotes, receipts, credit cards, college ID, a few coins transferred to the zipped purse for safekeeping while he was out jogging with Abigail. I further probed the compartment with my thumb and forefinger. I knew it was in there. I shouldn’t say I would have killed for it, but I had, and now here it was. I held it up, her key, an almost weightless chip of gold with a shiny red heart-shaped charm attached.

  She was mine.

  OF COURSE THERE WAS nothing conclusive about the unexplained box of coloured matches found in the cemetery man’s hut. They could have been anyone’s. And of course the police were happy enough to suspect the cemetery man himself, who after all was found in the cemetery carrying the boy’s blue cardigan when the constable and others arrived to comb the park. It was the cemetery man himself who had seized upon the matches – found on the floor of his hut along with Anthony’s shoes and one of Angela’s socks – as evidence of an unknown third party. And what use would he have for novelty matches, he protested – a pipe smoker with a silver-plated pocket lighter he’d had since he was in the navy! You could ask anyone. But even to me this seemed a flimsy defence for a man found in a cemetery with the cardigan of an abducted toddler and unexplained shoes in his hut. He was a loner with no wife or family. And you only had to look at those teeth. These were the details that filtered out over the weeks. I can’t even say for certain that it came to court. The evidence of ‘interference’ was circumstantial. And you could hardly expose a pre-school child to the ordeal of a police line-up. Still, the cemetery man was never seen again. It might seem unjust, but what if he had done something? We had all been warned about strange men in parks. It was a regret that the Damatos had had to move, though. They were indignant at the suggestion that their Anthony was the true owner of the matches and that he had escaped his playpen with the little girl in tow. But could anyone in the neighbourhood trust their children again with an Italian? That’s what people were saying. In fact, as everyone knows apart from some snobbish and ignorant people in Norfolk, Italians are devoted to their children. I for one loved Mrs Damato.

  Within my own domestic circle, I remained the only suspect. Aunt Lillian, ashen-faced, demanded to know that afternoon what I had bought at the sweet shop. She turned out my pockets and found biscuit crumbs. I denied having been to the park. I shrugged when, perhaps a week later, the issue of the matches arose, prompting my father, anger in his face, to take the cupboard in the utility room apart in search of our coloured matches, which Aunt Lillian distinctly remembered seeing in there alongside a box of ordinary matches, torches, batteries, an ornamental lantern and other paraphernalia that seemed to be the random remedial ingredients for some minor future emergency.

  It must be said that my father and Aunt Lillian were often at loggerheads about me. How vexing to have such a boy maniac in their midst, curdling their love and happiness and future.

  And yet in the end my aunt must have felt that things had not turned out too badly. Certainly she seemed pleased enough with my progress when I visited her just before she died. She knew that Mr Mower liked and trusted me, and it was hardly in her interests to scupper my blossoming career at Mower’s (which was so reassuringly distant from her life in Norfolk) by casting doubt on my character, whatever she might privately have thought. But Isobel? I remembered seeing her conversing with Mr Mower at Aunt Lillian’s funeral. If they had subsequently kept in touch, and it seemed reasonable to assume so, Isobel would surely have heard about Guy – especially when his funeral followed Aunt Lillian’s so closely (and I’m sorry not to have mentioned this previously; perhaps I was waiting for it to become a footnote). Might Isobel now share her concerns?

  My precise recollection of events is confused. But one thing I do remember – in fact it was on the day of Guy’s funeral – was being asked by Mr Mower to fetch something from his house. He was expecting an important client, and because of the rush getting to the funeral that morning he had left a file he needed at home. It was upstairs on a lamp table on the landing, he said. His wife was away. I was wary. I found the file soon enough. I didn’t intend to poke around in his house – and of course Mr Mower was back at the office waiting for his urgent file – but a half-open bedroom door ahead beckoned. I pushed it open. It was just a small spare room with nothing in it but a small bed and a chest of drawers. On the chest of drawers was a framed black-and-white photograph and a candlestick, hardened wax pooled in its cup. The photo was of a boy, probably
in his late teens, though it was hard to tell his age. He was smiling, but you could see in his eyes and lopsided look that his awareness of the world was skewed. His face resembled those I used to see peering from the bus that took mentally subnormal children to school when I was a boy.

  I knew little about Mr Mower, other than that there was a Mrs Mower and a married daughter who lived in Spain.

  When I handed Mr Mower his file, he touched me on the shoulder. No doubt he was affected by Guy dying unexpectedly (which I admit even took me by surprise), no doubt feeling bad too for having paid off Guy’s contract when he was sick. But was he also thinking about his own boy?

  Stella knew nothing about the boy, but Rita, who had been with the firm for years, said his name was Malcolm and he’d died in his twenties. ‘Handicapped,’ she said. ‘Died of pneumonia. Mr Mower thought the world of him, let him come to the office sometimes with his mother.’ Rita took out one of our cards. ‘Mower & Mower? That was Malcolm. He was the other Mower. Not many people know that.’

  It occurred to me that one person who probably knew about Malcolm was Aunt Lillian – that she might have guessed Mr Mower would do his best with me, back at the start, when she’d sent me here for the summer. Perhaps she told Mr Mower I’d had difficulties at home, that this would be a big favour. What better way for him to seek a little purpose after losing his boy than to help another? And it could hardly have worked out better for everyone. How delighted they both were when I said I wanted to stay on and learn the business, to make a home of this town. And now with Guy out of the picture, what could go wrong?

  Mr Mower did not speak openly about his plans for me, not even in the period of freshness following those two funerals. And yet I sensed a change of air, as if possibility itself was breathable and energy-giving. A year went by and then a second. Stella became accustomed to my growing seniority as Mr Mower handed me large projects he would normally handle himself. Meanwhile, I had been secretly working to put finance in place for deals of my own in the riverside development.