by Judy Astley
The ground-floor doors and window frames proved just as resilient to the tools as they had to Viola’s early feeble tugging.
‘Proper hardwood doorframes, that’s the problem. You can’t jemmy these open without doing serious damage to them,’ Greg said after investigating all possible entry routes. ‘Are you sure there’s no ladder? I can see a little window open up there but I don’t think we can risk drainpipes. Even in films they tend to come unfixed and fall down.’
‘Definitely no ladder, sorry. I’ll have to break one of the small panes on the French doors. The key is in the lock on the other side so it’ll be easy after that. I just didn’t want broken glass all over the floor inside, but I guess it’s going to be the price of getting in and to bed tonight.’
‘There needn’t be glass. Hang on there for a sec, I’ve got something in the car.’
Viola waited, beginning to feel quite chilly now. If she’d had a credit card with her she’d have been tempted to see if she could get a room at the local Travelodge and deal with all this in friendlier daylight, but she’d taken only the bare minimum out with her that night. A big fox trotted across the garden, turning to give her a dismissive sneer before leaping easily on to Joe-next-door’s fence. She heard the animal jump down on to the dustbins and a bin bag being ripped by teeth. That would be a mess for old Joe to face in the morning. She crossed to the fence and banged the screwdriver hard and noisily against it, but wasn’t surprised that the animal hesitated for only a few seconds before going on with his search for a chicken carcass.
‘Gaffer tape!’ Greg returned, looking pleased with himself. He ripped several long pieces of it and attached them to the glass pane nearest the lock so it was completely covered, then hit it firmly with the handle end of the hammer. It fell to the floor on the far side.
‘There you go, there’ll be nothing to clear up. If it hasn’t even cracked, you can probably putty it straight back in the morning,’ he said as he reached in through the hole to find the key.
Later, Viola wondered how the two of them had managed to be so involved in what they were doing that they hadn’t clocked the flashing blue lights or the sound of tyres whirling fast on the gravel at the front of the house. Before their presence had even registered with the housebreakers, two uniformed police officers with blinding torches were beside them. Viola had a very fast flashback to the last time she was in such close police company – the night they sent the sorrowful-looking policewoman round to give her some muddled information that – because the poor woman didn’t seem able to use the word ‘dead’ – involved the fact that Rhys wouldn’t be coming home. Viola had replied, rather ridiculously it seemed afterwards, that she already knew he wouldn’t because he’d just walked out on her, taking a very big suitcase and quite likely another woman with him. It had taken her many slow minutes to understand that he wouldn’t be coming back to anyone’s home. Ever again.
‘You were saying something earlier about swarms of police?’ Greg reminded her as they found themselves being bundled fast towards a patrol car slewed in at a dramatic angle that had left deep, dark skid tracks in the gravel, and trapped between it and the smooth broad fronts of Kevlar vests.
‘What are you doing?’ Viola tried but failed to wriggle out of a very firm grip. ‘I live here. We were just trying to get in because I was locked out and no one else is home,’ she explained, quickly looking up at the neighbours’ houses for twitching curtains and bedroom lights. Which one had dobbed her in? Could it have been Joe? She might have woken him when she’d banged on the fence to scare the fox.
‘So you’ll have some ID to show us then?’ one of them asked. He was overweight and overheated and breathing cheese-and-onion-crisp fumes into her face. Greg fumbled in his pocket and handed over a driving licence with a photo on.
‘Er … hell, no, sorry, I haven’t. Not a thing. Not out here anyway,’ Viola said. She wished she could back out of range, but he’d got her up against his patrol car. ‘I’ve been out for the evening and just took cash with me.’
‘Bloody Neighbourhood Watch,’ Greg, beside her, grumbled.
‘Oy, enough of that. They do a good job,’ crisp-breath said. ‘Run a quick check, Sam. Name?’ he asked Viola.
‘Viola Hendricks.’
Sam muttered into his radio for a while, then looked across at his colleague and nodded his head. ‘Him,’ he said, indicating Greg and looking pleased. ‘Oh yes! Got something on this one. But the lady, not listed for this address.’
‘Nothing? Right. Looks like we’ll have to take you both in.’ Crisp-breath looked as if he’d won a major bet.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Viola told Greg, unable to say more as they were bundled into the car. She was so tired that, like a child who’s had too much excitement, tears threatened.
‘No, I’m sorry. They’d probably have believed you on your own and you’d be in by now.’
She felt him try to reach out to her, but he couldn’t get far. You can’t, she realized, in handcuffs.
Naomi finished the Ed McBain and switched the light off. She could hear Monica snoring evenly in the next room and she asked any available celestial beings to keep them both safe till morning. Strange evening, she thought as she settled down in Monica’s spare room (one that smelled slightly of old shoes, but that was all right. Everyone had old shoes. The scent of them was quite homey). Monica had got a bit serious after the third gin and asked her if she had regrets. Well, who hadn’t? As the song didn’t quite go: too many to mention but no point dwelling on them now. Monica had told her she regretted never visiting South America, never having tried being blonde and also having only one child.
‘It’ll be a terrible burden for him, when I’m really crocked. You’re all right with your three, they can share you out,’ Monica said, pouring just one small extra gin. ‘I don’t want to be that burden. When it comes to it, I’ll have to bow out early. You might have to give me a hand with that. I’d do it for you, you know, if the need arose.’
Naomi said nothing, but thought of the old sign that used to be on the wall under the clock in the corner shop when she was a young mother: ‘Please don’t ask for credit as a refusal often offends’. Like Viola outside the locked house, she’d been here before.
THIRTEEN
‘ASSAULTING A POLICE officer. Affray. Among other things.’ The desk sergeant glared at Greg with clear disgust and Viola felt scared. So it seemed he had a record and that meant he was forever to be treated with hostility and suspicion. Great, and all this absolutely wasn’t his fault. Viola couldn’t offer any evidence at all that she lived where she claimed. Greg’s identity wasn’t in doubt but, on the downside, if the two of them had been going to a fancy-dress party, he, with his old black gardening hoodie, earth-smeared face and roll of gaffer tape, couldn’t have been more convincing as a putative burglar if he’d been wearing a striped top and a mask and was stuffing silverware into a bag marked Swag.
At the police station the handcuffs were removed, the custody sergeant booked them in and they were taken to separate interview rooms ‘just for a little chat’. Greg was led away by a pert, smiley red-headed woman in pink trainers, while Viola was taken to a bleak, overlit little room by a short, rotund detective whose tight shiny suit had been bought a good many pies ago.
‘So you didn’t want to make a phone call then?’ Viola’s detective asked, smirking at her from across his desk.
‘I didn’t think I’d need to bother anyone. It’s so late. This could all be sorted out so quickly.’ Or could it, she thought suddenly? Who would be best to confirm her story?
‘Paperwork. We like our paperwork. Makes life tidy,’ he said, indicating a clipboard on the table, a form that had already been filled in. ‘Name?’
‘Viola Hendricks. I already told the other officer.’
‘Address?’
‘Thirty-six, Langmead Avenue.’ She wondered if it were possible to feel more tired without actually falling off the chair. ‘I can see it there
on the form. Also your blokes just picked me up from there.’
‘Do you have any documents on you to prove you live there?’
‘No, none,’ she said, wearily. ‘This is just a silly muddle. I was trying to get into the house, and I do live there – for the moment anyway – but I dropped my key and it went down the drain outside the house.’
The detective smirked again. ‘Course you did, love. And what about your mate there?’
‘Greg was only helping me, he was just … passing.’ It sounded thoroughly feeble and, even to her, unconvincing.
‘He’s your boyfriend?’ This time she was treated to a leer. The detective lazed right back in his chair, podgy legs too far apart for comfortable viewing, reminding her of a giant panda sprawled, exhausted and full, against a bamboo clump.
‘No. A friend.’ It crossed her mind that he was barely even that, but saying so would only complicate things. ‘As I said, he was just passing the house and stopped to help me.’
He leaned forward again and tapped the clipboard with a pen. ‘You see, my difficulty is that we’ve run a check on the address and there is no listing of a Viola Hendricks living there. We did find one a few miles away, though. That would be you, would it? Or is Hendricks not actually your name just as this isn’t actually your address? Because what with this and your boyfriend being what we call “known to us”, at the moment this is all looking very untidy.’
‘Oh – um, yes, it does look a bit confusing. I am who I say I am. I’ve been staying there with my mother for a while, that’s all. She’s called Naomi Challen so she’ll be the one who’s on the records, voting register or whatever it is you have to look at.’
‘Hmm. Well, it’s still not looking quite as neat as I’d like. You said it’s your house but it isn’t. Then there’s the little matter of the hammer and the screwdriver. Section 24 of the Theft Act: going equipped to …’
‘I was not “going equipped”!’ Viola interrupted.
‘No, but your “friend” might have been. And he was the one holding them.’ He chuckled at his own wit.
‘He was being helpful. Those things were in the shed, our shed, and I was just trying to find a way in! Are you really going to charge me with trying to get home to my own bed?’ She felt snappish and irritable, which in the circumstances was possibly not the best way to come across. ‘Look, I know you’re just doing your job and I’m hugely reassured that genuine burglars have to go through all this, but I’m not one.’
‘No – because naice middle-class laydees never commit crimes, do they? Well, believe you me, darlin’, they do. I blame feminism. We get some right scum posh totty in here, up to all sorts then pleading big-eyed girly innocence, thinking they can have it both ways. Well, I’ve seen it all, and they can’t.’
‘Please may I call my sister?’ Viola felt thoroughly defeated and close to tears again. She could see herself on the wrong end of a five-year sentence, picked on in prison for being a know-nothing new bug and refusing to be some killer’s girlfriend. If she called Miles she’d never hear the end of it, so it would have to be Kate.
The next couple of hours spent sitting in a bleak little cell felt more like days, and Viola had nothing to do but try to rub the fingerprint ink off her fingers. Where was Greg? She really hoped he’d been allowed to go, because none of this was his fault. She tried to imagine him coming up with an explanation for scary Mickey. How, at two in the morning, could you run ‘I’m so sorry, darling, I got arrested while breaking into a house with that woman I was schmoozing over lunch the other day’ past your beloved?
It was noisy and cold down in the cell area, and not knowing what would happen next was terrifying. Viola sat uncomfortably on the hard bench-like bed, hugging the one thin cellular blanket round herself, hoping it wasn’t rife with nits, lice or anything catching. It smelled clean enough, at least. And could anyone but comatose drunks ever sleep in these places? There were people shouting from behind closed doors, a woman alternately crying and shrieking, someone banging rhythmically on a door and swearing. A Friday night for the police must be like a constant A & E department: drunks throwing up and throwing punches, volatile muggers, end-of-week domestic violence, idiot pissedup drivers. Absorbed in the cacophony, she was almost shocked to have her cell door suddenly opened and then to hear the detective with the pink trainers saying, ‘OK, love, the cavalry’s here for you.’
‘Kate’s here?’
‘Your sister’s here and your boyfriend’s waiting. You can go – all cleared up now, no charges.’ It was all Viola could do not to kiss her as she left the cell.
Kate was waiting by the front desk, sitting very gingerly on the furthest edge of a bench away from two messily weeping, mascara-smudged teenage girls with their arms round each other and their high-heeled shoes off. Viola could just make out a third one outside beyond the sliding doors, being sick over the stair rail. Poor police, was it like this every night?
‘Oh Vee! What have you done now?’ Kate said, hugging her tightly. ‘Let’s get you out of this horrible place and home. I’ve brought spare keys for you.’
‘Hang on, what about Greg? He’s still here somewhere, I think.’
‘Greg? I thought it was just you on your own. Who’s Greg?’
‘Me,’ he said, coming in through the doors. He smelled faintly of cigarettes. ‘I haven’t smoked for four years but tonight, well …’ He looked across at the weeping girls and smiled at them. ‘Thanks for the ciggy, girls, you are lifesavers. And good luck.’
‘Do hang on here and make friends if you want,’ Kate said crossly to Greg as she bustled away from the bench. ‘But I want to get Viola home.’ And she stalked off through the sliding doors, glaring at the ill teen who was now draped over the stair rail, groaning softly.
Viola whispered, ‘Sorry,’ to Greg as they followed Kate out. He gave her hand a quick squeeze and murmured back, ‘Do you think she’ll give me a lift back to yours so I can collect my car, or is she going to make me get a bus with all the sleepy teen drunks?’
‘A lift, of course – and if not, we both wait for the night bus. That’ll be OK, won’t it, Kate? Greg’s car is at Mum’s.’
‘I suppose,’ Kate said as she started the car.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Viola said. ‘I really thought they were going to charge me and keep me all night. I wouldn’t have called you if I could have thought of anything else.’
‘It’s all right. It’s what family is for.’ Kate pushed her overlong hair back out of her face. She looked exhausted, as well she might, having been dragged from sleep by Viola’s call.
‘I suppose it was your idea to break in,’ Kate accused Greg by way of the rear-view mirror.
‘Um … well, er … not exactly …’
‘It’s nothing to do with Greg,’ Viola told her. ‘He was just helping me out. He had a neat trick with the glass pane.’
‘I bet he did,’ Kate snarled. ‘So where had you two been this evening?’
Grumpiness began to cool the lovely warm gratitude Viola had been feeling. This was definitely more like a cross-examination of a naughty fourteen-year-old than a general social question. ‘Nowhere; well, not together. I’d been out to see a band in Fulham with Amanda and Leo. Greg had been … out somewhere else.’
‘Just doing a spot of gardening,’ Greg said. He and Viola exchanged a look and she wanted to giggle. Somehow she felt this wouldn’t have gone down well with Kate. They’d reached the house now and Kate stopped the car in the driveway, behind Greg’s grubby Land Rover.
‘This yours?’ she asked, looking unimpressed. Viola wondered if Kate would have perked up a bit if the car had been something a tad smarter. Probably. She’d been very impressed by Rhys’s Porsche the first time she’d seen it, giggling flirtily and making him take her for a run round the block in it.
‘It is. I’d better see if it starts. Sometimes it doesn’t like damp nights. Also, cross your fingers I don’t get arrested all over again for a dodgy tail li
ght or something. I don’t much want to go back to my cell, cosy and supremely luxurious as it was. Kate, thanks so much for the lift and, Viola, may I call you in the morning? Just to see if you’re OK? I can come and do the glass for you if you like.’
‘I’ll get my husband to sort the glass,’ Kate told him briskly. ‘No need for you to put yourself out.’
‘Kate, please don’t be like that!’ Viola protested. ‘Tonight wasn’t Greg’s fault! And yes, please do call, Greg. If only to reassure me that Mickey hasn’t thrown you out on the street for this. I don’t think I’d like to be a fly on the wall when you tell her.’
‘Mickey?’ He looked puzzled. ‘Oh, she doesn’t need to know any of this.’ He gave Viola a hug and surprised her with a brief kiss on the cheek, then said, ‘Goodnight, both of you. Kate – good to meet you. And thanks for the lift.’ Then the wolfish grin was flashed quickly at Viola. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said.
‘How did you persuade them to let me go?’ Viola had to ask as soon as they were inside the house and in the warmth of the flat’s little kitchen. She filled the kettle and took mugs and tea bags out of the cupboard. Kate slumped into a chair and rested her chin on her hands, still looking doomy and somehow old, as Viola had noticed the other day. It was a reasonable question, although Kate was taking her time about answering it. After all, she wouldn’t have had any more ID-proving documents than Viola herself. Eventually, she pulled her bag up on to the table and took out the framed wedding photo of Rhys, Viola and herself that Viola had seen beside Kate’s bed.
‘Easy. I took this along. They knew all about Rhys, from the night of … of the accident. So I showed the horrible detective this photo and they looked up something on the computer and found you, and some press stuff and other photographs too. Really, all they had to do was Google in the first place and I’d said so on the phone, but the sergeant said you seemed “upset”. Think it’s a euphemism for rabidly unbalanced. You could have told them you were his … widow.’
