That separation spoke volumes about their marriage.
The hulk of polished mahogany was the only furniture in the dining room, their wedding day crockery still wrapped in newspaper, chairs stacked against the wall, the cut-glass crystal tumblers she had bought him for their fifteenth anniversary buried under bubble wrap. But none of that mattered to Garrick. Once he was driving the train, there was no derailing him. He left the everyday practicalities to Olivia.
The neighbours on both sides had already lodged a list of objections, but the architect in him knew that getting them on board was the key to a happy ship. Not that Olivia was ever happy. Even a beautiful home, two children and a loyal husband hadn’t been enough for her.
Garrick studied his drawings. He’d done an excellent job, even if he said so himself. Shame it might turn out to be a waste of time. When they had bought this house, he’d been desperate to make a go of their marriage, and still wanted to, if he was honest, but Olivia was so distant, so painfully dissatisfied with her life, that he was considering cutting his losses.
When he had met her – in a pub in Didsbury on a summer night not much different from this one – she had been giddy on vodka and ambition. He had walked her home and they had sat on her front step, chatting for hours about the shape their lives would take.
She had captivated him with her easy laugh, her dreams about starting her own advertising agency, and with talk of the deposit she had saved for her first flat. He had revealed shyly his own plans to run an architect’s practice in New York, and later, when the night sky was lightening, his hopes of becoming a father one day.
They were married two years later. She never did buy that flat or start her own business and he never went to New York. Instead, Aster came along, and then Evan, and somewhere along the way, their youthful plans were discarded for middle-aged responsibilities.
And now they found themselves here. In a marriage he wasn’t sure could withstand the earthquake of her infidelity. In a house that neither of them loved and could barely afford. Aster and Evan were growing up. In another couple of years, his daughter would be gone. But what about him? Should he stay or go?
If he left Olivia – and who could blame him? – he would still see the children. Perhaps not as much as he was used to, but he’d make damn sure they always had a good time. No shouting or arguments. Trips to the cinema and bowling and miniature golf. Quality over quantity and all that bollocks. He’d have to sort the house out first, though. Didn’t want to risk losing another truckload of money.
The doorbell rang, a discordant buzz that made him jump, but he didn’t move, his hands smoothing out the tracing paper and the neat lines of his technical drawings, working out how long the building work would take and how soon they could feasibly sell.
The bell rang again. Why didn’t Olivia answer it, for Christ’s sake? He waited a beat, then huffed to the door.
A woman waited on the doorstep. No part of her was beautiful on its own, and she looked tired, weighted down, but there was something about the way she held herself, and the pure lines of her cheekbones and the sweep of her hair across her face.
He vaguely registered a man standing behind her, but if he’d been pushed, he could not have described him.
She did not wait for him to speak.
‘Detective Sergeant Wildeve Stanton – and this is Detective Constable Bernie French.’
‘Come in, come in,’ he said, cringing at himself, sounding like an overenthusiastic uncle. He held open the door. ‘What can I do for you?’
The police officers stepped into the hallway.
‘You’ll be aware there’s been another murder, Mr . . .?’
Taggart.
‘Lockwood.’ He’d wanted to make a joke, adopt a faux-Scottish accent, but was worried he’d sound disrespectful. And lame. For some reason, although he didn’t know her, he found he cared what she thought of him. ‘Yes. We saw the police cars. We only moved in yesterday.’
‘The victim was a police officer working on an ongoing case,’ said DC French. DS Stanton gazed forward, back straight, mouth set in a line. ‘One of your neighbours saw him yesterday morning. Did he knock on your door? Did you see him? Speak to him?’
He shook his head. ‘We didn’t arrive until the afternoon.’
‘If you remember anything, you’ll let us know?’ DS Stanton pressed a card into his hand. Their fingers brushed and her skin was cool against his too-hot hand. ‘You can reach me on this number if you need to.’
Before she had finished walking down the footpath, Garrick already knew that he would.
32
Monday, 30 July 2018
27 The Avenue – 8.45 p.m.
Audrina Clifton was whipping up a welcome for the new neighbours. Resting her hands on her comfortable hips, she surveyed the bags of flour and cocoa powder, the jars of sugar and candied peel, nuts and desiccated coconut. Sticky glacé cherries and plump raisins.
Her baking was legendary. She was the undisputed queen of her local Women’s Institute cake-making competitions. First prize for her Dundee cake at the produce show in a nearby village for six years in a row. She had a knack for it. A gift, some said.
And success tasted sweet.
Audrina settled upon brownies. Everyone loved brownies. And she was known for them. Royal weddings and street parties. Charity bake sales. The birth of a baby. All kinds of celebrations. Although there had been too few of those lately, the murders driving their small community into their homes instead of together.
A rich, chocolatey smell rose up from the bowl. Brownies had been Joby’s favourite too. Her son. Even now, she thought about him every day.
Audrina sprinkled in some walnuts and opened the oven. A full-body heat drenched her. As if it wasn’t hot enough already. At least the damn mentalpause has long gone. A smile quirked her mouth. Mavis had always called it the mentalpause. She breathed out her sorrow. She would miss her old neighbour and her unique turn of phrase.
Audrina moved her wooden spoon in a figure of eight and wondered how friendly the new arrivals would be.
Mavis and Derek Atwell had been the perfect neighbours, quiet and reserved, and they had rarely used their garden. Even in the beginning, their children had been too old to play in the treehouse and over the twenty years the family lived there, they had grown up and moved out, one by one. Mavis and Derek had always been willing to indulge in a round of canasta and a glass of sherry on a Saturday night, though. Mavis hadn’t quite met her eye when she said they were moving on. To be nearer the grandchildren.
Audrina had patted her on the shoulder, despite the flare of envy. Over the years she had learned how to dampen it down, but sometimes it burned.
Cooper opened the back door. His eyes, blue and watery, snagged hers.
‘Any chance of a drink? I’m as parched as this blasted grass. Damn greenhouse is so hot.’
She set down her spoon.
‘Tea? Or something cool?’
His face, as familiar to her as the liver spots on the back of her hand, broke into a smile.
‘Tea. And a custard cream.’
He was forking the earth by one of his bushes when she carried out the tray. She watched him through the fading light. A sprig of baby’s breath poked from his pocket. He was bent over, and one of his socks had half fallen down his leg. Audrina was swallowed up by a rush of love.
He worked so damn hard. In the garden. Volunteering for charity. Neighbourhood Watch. She supposed he was consumed by the same need to forget as she was. To fill his empty spaces with dirt.
Mavis hadn’t known what to say when she’d told her about Joby a week after the Atwells moved in. At seven years younger than Audrina, she had come from a family where arguments were rare, and if they did happen, they were patched up over tea or telephone calls, a race to apologize first.
‘So do you have any children?’ Mavis had asked, taking a sip from one of Audrina’s best china cups. She had pointed to a photograph. ‘Is that
your son? What a good-looking boy.’
Audrina had drunk her tea too quickly and the liquid had burned on its way down. She had pressed her knuckles to the centre of her chest, trying to ease the pain of the scalding. To an observer, it looked like she was clutching her heart.
‘He – we – don’t see him anymore.’
It was as simple as that.
Mavis’s eyes had widened and Audrina could think of only one word for her expression: aghast. All these years later, she still could not puzzle out whether Mavis had been mortified at accidentally stumbling across such a sensitive subject, or by the idea of the – she fumbled for the right word – estrangement itself.
At least she and Mavis could talk about it. Not properly, of course. Not in depth, like those young girls today, discussing their most intimate secrets over a bottle of wine. But she had shared with her old friend a little about her feelings of loss. Not the circumstances, though. That was too personal.
A bat whirled in front of her, and she envied its freedom to follow its basest desires. Evening was rubbing out the colour of the day, but the heat was unrelenting. It made her sleepy and slow. The smell of baking, warm and inviting, drifted through the open back door, competing with the arum lilies, protected by pristine white hoods.
Cooper dunked his biscuit into his tea and sucked it.
‘There’ll be a hosepipe ban, mark my words.’
She forced herself into alertness. ‘What will you do?’
He finished his biscuit and tapped the side of his nose. ‘Same as before.’
She didn’t like to ask what he meant. Cooper enjoyed being mysterious, even though he was the type of man who never let his MOT lapse and expected ironed pyjamas and pants.
The doorbell rang.
She looked at Cooper and he looked back. They weren’t used to visitors this late, not even when the summer evenings clung on to light for as long as possible.
‘Police,’ they said together.
Audrina put down her teacup and went to answer the door. Cooper disappeared into the greenhouse.
Two officers were standing on the doorstep. She hadn’t seen this pair before. And she’d met a lot of them over the last few months. She gripped one of the handles of her wheelchair, and sunk into it, the strength suddenly gone from her legs.
‘Terrible, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Another one, God rest his soul. We didn’t see anything, I’m afraid. I’m so sorry we can’t be more help. Would you like tea or coffee? I’ve made some cakes. They’ll be done soon.’
She ran out of breath. She always talked too much. The police had this habit of making her feel guilty, of wanting to confess her sins. When she was growing up, officers of the law were treated with courtesy and respect. Times had changed, but that didn’t mean she had to.
‘Is your husband in?’ said the lady officer. ‘We’d like a quick word with him too, if that’s possible.’
‘He’s in the garden,’ said Audrina, lifting herself unsteadily out of the wheelchair. ‘Come on through.’
Cooper was putting his tools away in the shed. Night was falling fast. Five minutes ago, she could pick out every detail of his weathered face, but now he was a smudge in the textured air.
Audrina half listened as they asked Cooper the same set of questions they always asked when a body turned up. Her husband was leaning on his fork, frowning and nodding, talking in serious tones. A jolt of pride surprised her.
In his capacity as Neighbourhood Watch coordinator, Cooper’s view was frequently sought. He’d acquired a sort of god-like status after tracking down the culprit behind a recent spate of burglaries. During the window of time that spanned the afternoon school run, he’d noticed a stranger lurking on the street and carried out a citizen’s arrest. Which made the police’s lack of competence all the more shocking when one thought about it. Five lives taken and still no trace of the killer.
‘The name Stanton does sound familiar,’ he was saying. ‘Dark hair, shortish?’
‘Yes,’ said the policewoman, a trembling excitement making her voice rise. ‘That sounds like him.’
He took a pipe from his breast pocket, packed tobacco into its bowl. ‘He came by early yesterday. Had a cup of tea and a slice of Audrina’s famous Dundee cake.’ He put the pouch away. ‘He wanted to talk to everyone on the street again, to see if anyone had seen any odd behaviour near the entrance to Blatches Woods.’
‘What time was this? Did he say where he was going? Who he was going to see next?’ The words tumbled from her.
Cooper struck a match and lit his pipe. The smell of his smoke comforted Audrina. It spoke of a lifetime of marriage.
‘About ten. He said he was on his way to talk to Trefor Lovell. Number thirty-two.’
They left Cooper puffing on his pipe and tidying his tools while Audrina escorted them back to the front door.
The policewoman studied the photographs lining the hall: Sissinghurst; Alnwick; Kew. In one of them, a man was wearing a cap and leaning against a spade. In another, a young boy was holding up a giant pumpkin. In the next picture on the wall, an older woman wore sunglasses, arms folded across her chest, sunlight catching the face of her watch. Horse brasses gleamed. A vase of flowers sat on a telephone table. The grumble of television from the living room.
‘Are you any closer to finding whoever is doing this?’
The male officer shook his head and leaned towards her in a conspiratorial way. ‘It’s a nightmare, to be honest. It’s one of the most complex and puzzling cases I’ve ever worked on.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Between you and me, I think our boss is a bit out of his depth.’
The woman turned around sharply, skewering her colleague with a look.
‘But we will find him, don’t you worry about that,’ she said.
Standing on the doorstep, saying their goodbyes, the young lady officer – hardly older than thirty, but so tired-looking – pressed a business card into Audrina’s hand.
‘Please contact me if you see or remember anything at all.’
‘Of course. We’ll have a think.’
As soon as they had left, their voices drifting back to her in the summer night, Audrina examined the card. Her gaze was drawn not to the telephone number, but the name printed in black ink.
Detective Sergeant Wildeve Stanton.
Stanton.
Stanton.
Her back against the inside of the now-closed front door, Audrina folded neatly onto the doormat, its bristles scratching the back of her thighs where her skirt had risen up.
She hadn’t heard that name for more than thirty years until yesterday.
And now twice in two days.
The sound of boyish laughter filled her ears, and she began to weep.
33
Now
The snapping teeth of the crocodile made the boy jump and he laughed until he held his stomach. The ballerina tumbled over her feet, making them gasp and point. It was exactly as I had hoped it would be, given I was not a professional puppeteer. But I had practised at home until my fingers were sore and the puppets did my bidding.
Do you remember the faces of those children? Shining lights. The shop was filled with laughter, with chatter and joy. My mood had begun to lift again. Perhaps the parents would reward our efforts by buying an expensive toy for each child when they came to collect them. Two or three of them, I thought optimistically. There were always birthday presents to lavish on other people’s children. And word of mouth was a powerful engine.
But, for now, it was time for the grand finale.
Children like to be scared, don’t they? I was counting on it. They enjoy the frisson, pressed up against fear, knowing that the safety net of an adult is never far away. At least, that’s what I had thought. I had not been able to find what I was looking for and so I had made it by hand. Sewing and glueing. And it had seemed like such a clever idea.
The crow had been lying on the lawn. Perhaps a fox had claimed it, tail feathers between its incisors, claws pr
essing on its breast, but when I stumbled across it, the body was intact. Its head, though, had been detached, and its collar was bloodied and torn. Its beak and eyes were open. By my calculations, it would take three or four months to decompose. Enough time for my purposes.
A puppet with a bird’s head and human hair stuck to its feathers and black scraps of lace fabric from an old Victorian dress I’d found amongst the costumes in Birdie’s old shop.
A version of a mourning doll, my own private joke.
34
Monday, 30 July 2018
The Avenue – 9.04 p.m.
The postman unwrapped his sandwiches. Ham and mustard. He balled up the aluminium foil and flicked it into the footwell where it joined an empty lemonade can and a crisp packet. He took a bite. A poppy seed caught between his teeth and he worried it free with his tongue.
His Royal Mail van was parked at the top of The Avenue. He hadn’t wanted to draw attention to himself, but tucked away near the shops gave him a decent vantage point without attracting suspicion. As soon as it got dark, he’d drive further down the road, but for now, he was content to wait.
An opera was beginning on BBC Radio 3 and he switched it off. He used to love its extravagance, the opulence of the language and vocal tone, but he couldn’t bear to listen to that kind of music anymore. Così fan tutte had been playing when she died, and in every note, he heard the wet sound of her skin yielding to the blade. He put down his sandwich, appetite gone.
The door to number twenty-seven opened, a tunnel of light on the path. Two police officers were talking to Mrs Clifton, and when she went in, they stood on the pavement, their heads bent together. He slid further into his seat.
His gaze flicked to the entrance of Blatches Woods, to the length of police tape strung between the bushes, and his heart was a hammer against his ribs.
The woman was standing there, duct tape binding her wrists and her ankles, a thin trail of blood snaking down her chin.
The Neighbour Page 10
