Kensington Heights

by Leslie Thomas

  ‘I thought I might do it.’

  ‘Being a soldier I suppose you would,’ she reasoned. ‘And it will be quiet for whatever you have in mind. There are quite a few residents here in these flats who don’t go out much. They keep to themselves. Getting on most of them. Mrs Blenkinsop will tell you that she buried her husband in the basement.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘No. It was her dog. She just says it to sound interesting.’

  The porter’s wife went out and returned in half an hour with two bags of shopping which she took into the kitchen and began to unload. ‘Tomelty said you wanted your freezer stocked up,’ she observed. ‘Well, that’s another job. I could do it bit by bit if you like. Now I’ve got you some chicken portions and some bacon and eggs, and bread and milk, and sugar and things like that. I’ve got some tins of baked beans.’ She put them on the kitchen worktop. ‘I don’t know how you feel about baked beans.’

  When she had finished she made towards the door. ‘I like to see the Nine O’Clock News,’ she said. ‘The outside world.’

  ‘How much was the shopping?’ he asked.

  ‘Tomelty will give you a bill,’ she told him. ‘It’s the best way if we’re going to be doing a few things for you. And I expect we will. I might help you clean up in here. The Indian is expensive and not much good but he’s open up to midnight.’

  They wished each other goodnight and she closed the door firmly. He had not eaten since he had a cold pie and a cup of coffee on the train to Waterloo. Now he fried some bacon and eggs and had it with baked beans. He sat on the sofa and smiled around the apartment. Then he went to the window and drew back the drapes. The vision was remarkable. Drifting rain thinly curtained London but there were spaces between the clouds and he could see the coloured lights of an airliner dropping towards Heathrow, the cutting searchlight of its landing beam thrust before it.

  Immediately below his vantage point was a diagram of lights, liquefied by the rain. On that second night of January they spread in formations and colours, some flashing intermittently, some gaudy, some dutifully lining the wet streets of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. But all was dumb, no sounds came up to him at his window. There was a segment between the roofs where he could see part of what he would come to know was Kensington Church Street, rising towards Notting Hill. Cars and buses drifted up and down but sparsely. It was a quiet night.

  As he was about to draw the curtains, withdrawing into his new enclosed world, he heard again the low clatter of a helicopter. He peered up from the window, saw it clearly come over the roof and drop towards the glow of Kensington Palace.

  Nothing else seemed to be happening out there; the lights illuminated little but the misty rain, although another distant and hushed airliner had appeared below the clouds, its belly blushing with silvery reflection.

  Eventually he pulled the curtains together again, turned on the television and sat in the armchair facing it. It was five minutes to nine. He watched a politician, cornered as a rabbit, in a documentary programme and then sat through the news, observing it blank-eyed as though it came from a remote planet. There were reports from various wars and famines, men, three inches high, festooned with ammunition, playing at soldiers, children with their ribs showing. In Ireland the ceasefire was just about holding. They screened a film sequence with a reporter at the once notorious Crooked Cross. He leaned forward abruptly. That was where it was, that was where it happened. The reporter was in a car moving through the district. Savage caught his breath. There was the pub on the bit of green, that was the half-tree, all that had been left of it, and there was the telephone box, now replaced, where they had planted the explosive. He reached to turn it off but remained rooted. The images crossed the screen. The report finished. He put his hands across his eyes. The doorbell rang.

  He half-stood, his gaze on the door. He felt shaken; he was sweating across his forehead. His sub-machine gun was back at his house. ‘Who’s there?’ he called, not moving. He leaned forward and touched the button to turn the television off. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Police,’ returned a strong voice. ‘Mr Savage, we’d like to have a word.’

  Savage, astonished at first, then swore quietly, wiped his face with his sleeve, and after a faltering moment, moved towards the door. Before he could unlock it, there was a tentative knock and a woman’s sharp voice called: ‘It’s just routine. We won’t keep you long.’

  He stood inches from them on the other side. ‘What is it you want?’ he asked through the wood. ‘It’s Detective Sergeant Gander and Constable Deepe,’ itemised the male voice.

  Savage turned the key in the lock, opened the door narrowly and regarded them through the crack. He now noticed that there had been a security chain on the door at one time but that it had been forcibly broken and the damage to the woodwork shoddily repaired. A man’s nose appeared the other side of the aperture. ‘Mr Savage,’ the voice repeated with a sort of patience. ‘It’s us, the police.’

  ‘Have you got identification?’ he asked, ready to throw his weight behind the door.

  A warrant card was passed through the gap. It said: ‘Humphrey Gander, Detective Sergeant, Metropolitan Police.’ He handed it back then opened the door.

  Gander was huge enough to have forced his way in anywhere. He wore a check sports jacket with imitation leather patches on the sleeves, his tie was sportingly striped but his shirt looked as if it was coming to the end of a protracted day. He had a low-slung moustache and the front of his head shone baldly. His eyes, blue and flat, surveyed the room.

  The policewoman was in uniform. She was slight, almost skinny, with short dark hair and tired eyes. She studied him carefully as if filing him away for future use.

  ‘What is it?’ sighed Savage.

  ‘Do you mind if we sit down?’ asked Gander.

  ‘It’s been a long day,’ said the woman.

  Savage motioned them towards the settee. ‘You haven’t by any chance got the kettle on, have you?’ asked Gander. ‘Jean will make it.’

  Savage blinked. ‘No . . . I haven’t . . .’

  ‘Yes, I’ll make it,’ confirmed the policewoman. She stood and went towards the kitchen. ‘Leave her,’ suggested Gander. ‘She’s good at making tea.’

  Savage sat down heavily. ‘What is it you wanted?’

  ‘Well, first off, sorry we’re so late.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware you were coming at all.’

  Gander shifted uncomfortably, laughed and coughed. ‘No, well you wouldn’t I suppose, stands to reason. The computer took its time. Some of those things can tell your fortune, but they can’t give you the stuff you want.’

  ‘What stuff did you want exactly?’

  ‘Only routine, really, but we thought we’d better get it done tonight, out of the way. Then we can leave you alone.’ He nodded towards the kitchen. ‘We’d better wait until Jean comes back. She’ll get upset if I start without her.’ He breathed deeply. ‘Women.’

  As though to forestall any additional questions he rose weightily and rolled towards the main window. Savage watched him with growing astonishment as he opened the curtains and straightened his big back with a profound sigh. ‘Does you good to see London like this, don’t you reckon. All spread out right under your nose, no crime you can see, no villains, no kids on drugs, no lost dogs, all decent and quiet. There’s hardly a sound gets up here, is there.’ His head moved as he saw an aeroplane, fiercely lit, on its path towards Heathrow. ‘You can’t even hear him,’ he said. He lifted his arms and pretended he was aiming a rocket. ‘Bang! Whoosh!’ he said quietly. He turned with a wicked smile. ‘Got the bugger.’

  From the kitchen they heard the kettle begin to whistle. It served as a signal because Gander turned back and reseated himself. He looked at his watch, thick-banded about a massive wrist. ‘Nine thirty,’ he said. ‘We’re into overtime.’ In three distinct movements he looked around the walls. ‘You’ll be needing a clock here.’

  ‘I plan to ge
t one,’ agreed Savage steadily. ‘I only moved in today.’

  ‘Right,’ said Gander. He took out a notebook and wrote it down.

  Savage watched him and said: ‘What is all this?’

  ‘Here she comes. Tea,’ smiled Gander hugely. Jean Deepe appeared through the kitchen door, pushing it with her police shoe. She had a tray with a teapot, jug, sugar bowl and three cups. ‘No biscuits, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘Can’t find them.’

  ‘I haven’t got any,’ Savage told her keeping his voice level. ‘I didn’t even know I had a teapot. You should have come tomorrow.’

  ‘Couldn’t,’ answered Gander decidedly. ‘No way. My day off. Golf tomorrow.’ He swung his arms in unison.

  ‘And I’m on a course,’ said the woman. Brushing down her uniform jacket she smiled thinly at Savage and then transferred it to Gander. ‘Not a golf course either.’

  ‘So we had to get it done tonight or it would have been the weekend,’ said Gander. Jean began to pour the tea. Her colleague mentioned he would like two sugars. Savage said he would do without. ‘What, may I ask, is it you have come about?’ he insisted eventually. ‘I’d like to know. I’ve had a busy day.’

  ‘You certainly have,’ agreed Gander as if he had monitored every move. He sucked heavily at his tea. Jean Deepe drank hers almost primly, her black-stockinged knees tightly together. The detective sergeant produced a computer print-out from his jacket pocket. He flicked his eyes at Savage. ‘It was all done at once, wasn’t it? In a bit of a rush.’

  ‘What? You mean getting this place? Well, yes it was. I needed somewhere. But I still don’t understand what that’s got to do with the police.’

  ‘Mr Savage,’ said Gander with half a sigh. ‘You’re a military man . . .’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Right. Then you’ve got to realise that this flat, apartment, call it what you will, is in a strategic position. You only have to look out of that window.’

  ‘Strategic?’ said Savage astonished. ‘For what, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Embassies. Royal residences,’ sniffed Jean Deepe, her lips half an inch from the rim of her cup, her words ruffling the surface of the tea. ‘Helicopters going overhead.’

  Savage stared at them. ‘Christ,’ he breathed. ‘That’s all I need. I came here because it’s high up, because it’s quiet, or I thought it would be. I want to be by myself. Instead of that, half of bloody London has been though here today.’

  They laughed together as though in sympathy. The detective sergeant wagged his big head. ‘But we hope you’ll understand that anyone occupying this spot has to be cleared security-wise.’

  ‘I’m beginning to. What about Mr Kostelanetz?’

  ‘Mr Kostelanetz is confidential,’ said Gander a touch huffily. ‘But we know all about Mr Kostelanetz.’

  ‘You have to clear somebody with a name like that,’ said Jean Deepe.

  ‘He was clear,’ conceded Gander. ‘In fact he’s been quite handy to us one way and another. But this sudden moving-in of yours set the alarm bells ringing even in our nick, and they’re not the quickest off the mark.’

  ‘So we had to check you out,’ said the woman.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ asked Savage wearily.

  ‘We know most of it,’ grunted Gander. ‘We just wanted to confirm it, that’s all. And to give you the once-over, as it were.’

  ‘As a recent member of Her Majesty’s armed forces I’m hardly likely to go shooting down any royal helicopters,’ responded Savage moodily. ‘And I haven’t got anything to shoot with.’ He had not touched his tea.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ put in Gander with a sort of whine he might use arguing some point about golf. ‘You never can tell. We’ve had lots of nutters come out of the army and still having a yen for a rocket launcher.’

  ‘Well, this nutter doesn’t have a yen for one,’ said Savage sharply.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you’, returned Gander his expression apparently concerned. ‘Nothing personal.’ The woman tutted towards her colleague. Gander peered at his print-out as if he had trouble understanding it. His pale, almost blank, eyes came up and he half-rose. ‘Wounded in Ulster,’ he muttered. He appeared to be distantly confirming the grey streak in Savage’s hair. ‘In the head.’

  ‘Right lung and left testicle as well,’ Savage finished for him. He regarded the man acerbically. ‘Would you like to see?’

  ‘Won’t be necessary,’ said Gander unruffled. Jean Deepe shook her head. Her colleague returned to the print-out. ‘Oh, right. Yes, it says here. Lung, right and testicle, left.’

  ‘It must have been nasty,’ said Jean.

  ‘Painful too,’ added the detective. ‘Pity about that.’

  ‘Four of my squad were killed,’ Savage told them quietly. ‘It was, as you put it, nasty.’

  ‘Cor,’ said Gander. ‘I wouldn’t have been there for a bonus.’ He breathed deeply as if thinking about his narrow escape, then continued: ‘You ended up in hospital, military hospital?’

  ‘Aldershot,’ said Savage deliberately. ‘And then to Marshfield Manor. That’s the psychiatric hospital, to save you asking. I have losses of memory among other things.’

  ‘How long can’t you remember?’ asked Gander with genuine interest.

  ‘At first it was weeks,’ Savage said. ‘I could hardly remember anything that happened in Northern Ireland. Then it got down to days. And now it’s much better. It just gets me sometimes. I’m not likely to forget today in a hurry.’ He waited and then decided to tell them. ‘I also have a fear of crowds and enclosed places – I’m scared of being trapped, I suppose – and I’m subject to occasional bouts of depression. I’m well aware of all my ailments. It’s all down on that sheet, I imagine.’

  ‘Not in those words,’ conceded Gander. ‘Thanks anyway. So that’s why you’re up here then. You’re above everything, crowds, the lot.’

  ‘Isn’t this a bit enclosed?’ asked Jean Deepe looking around her. ‘Wouldn’t you have been better off in the country somewhere?’

  ‘I also have a fear of exposed places,’ Savage informed her seriously. ‘It’s not simple. Up here, in the clouds, as it were, seemed like a good idea. Until I got here anyway.’

  ‘We won’t bother you after this,’ Gander assured him as if making a sporting offer. ‘It’s only routine surveillance.’ He glanced at his colleague. ‘Unless somebody higher up wants to know more about you.’ He looked back towards the curtains and once again stood and went towards the window. Opening the drapes he bunched then expanded his shoulders as he looked out on the lights below. ‘They couldn’t build these flats any higher,’ he confided. ‘Even when they put them up, donkey’s years ago, they weren’t allowed to build any higher. And in those days there weren’t any planes. No helicopters.’

  ‘Do you have any family?’ Jean Deepe asked Savage carefully.

  Gander strolled to the side window and said: ‘You’ve got a little balcony. Well, you’ve got the best of all worlds. Not too closed in, not too out in the open. You were lucky to get this place.’

  ‘Yes, I thought I was,’ replied Savage. He returned to Jean Deepe. ‘Well, I do have a wife. We’ve been married ten years in fact. But traipsing around army bases is not the best foundation for any marriage. In the end we bought a house in Hampshire, near Basingstoke, when I was stationed nearby. I went to Ulster, Irene stayed at home. After I was discharged from hospital we tried to settle down but it wasn’t easy. I was in a difficult state, shall we say. And anyway our hearts weren’t in it. We decided to call it a day.’

  ‘It happens,’ nodded the woman.

  ‘It certainly does,’ confirmed Gander as if it happened to him all the time. He was anxious to get away from sentiment. ‘What are you going to do here?’ he asked.

  ‘Live, I hope,’ said Savage. ‘That was the intention.’

  ‘Will you get employment?’

  ‘Not for a while,’ said Savage. ‘I’ve been in the service all my working
life. I have a pension and some savings. And we’ll be selling the house.’

  ‘You paid your rent in cash,’ said Gander. ‘From a carrier bag.’

  ‘Yes. Do you want to see it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind.’

  Savage got up and went into the bathroom. Gander glanced at his colleague and said quietly: ‘Funny bloke.’ Savage returned and put the plastic shopping bag on the table. ‘There it is,’ he said. ‘Do you want to count it?’

  Gander peered into the carrier and whistled. ‘I’d put that in the bank if I was you,’ he advised. He leaned forward and fingered the notes as if to ensure they were real. ‘You never can tell in London.’ He appeared to be searching for one last question. ‘What will you do?’ he asked indicating personal interest. He leaned forward bulkily. ‘Just sit up here?’ He glanced at the television. ‘Watching the box?’

  Savage said: ‘I’m going to compile an encyclopaedia. When it’s finished I’ll send you a copy if you like.’

  Gander regarded him sideways. ‘An encyclopaedia?’

  ‘All by yourself?’ asked Deepe.

  ‘Initially. The publisher will want to get other people involved eventually. Editors and suchlike. But for the time being it’s just me.’

  ‘You’ve got a publisher then?’ said Deepe.

  ‘No. Not yet. But I’m in no hurry. It might take several years.’

  Gander asked carefully: ‘What sort is it?’

  ‘The subject? It’s about islands.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Gander.

  ‘Really,’ said his colleague.

  ‘Yes, it will be called An Encyclopaedia of World Islands.’ Gander looked puzzled, Jean Deepe attentive. Savage said: ‘It’s been an interest for me, a hobby, you could call it, reading about islands, research, recording material. It helped me when I was in hospital. Now I’ve got the opportunity I thought I would gather it all together.’ As though he thought they still needed convincing he added: ‘No one’s ever done it before.’

  ‘No,’ mumbled Gander. ‘I suppose they wouldn’t have.’ He surveyed the room. ‘How are you going to write it, in longhand?’