Bricks and Mortality: Campbell & Carter 3 (9 page)

Carter’s voice hardened. ‘I’ll certainly be having another word with Reggie Foscott. He’s been holding out on us, on me in particular! If Key House features in a case, then anyone asking him questions recently about it and its owner is of interest to the police. Foscott’s been around long enough to know that. When we spoke, he should have told me.’ Carter’s voice was grim. ‘Add to that, Mrs Foscott is apparently related to Gervase Crown. I wonder if that’s the reason Foscott is being so discreet?’

‘In the meantime,’ said Jess, ‘we’ll get out to their flat and bring away some personal items like the DVDs she mentioned, and the electric shaver, to see if we can get Pietrangelo’s fingerprints, and hair samples. The damaged prints Pete Nichols lifted from the corpse are only good enough to rule out Crown. It’s another thing to identify Pietrangelo from them for certain. It’s probably going to come down to DNA, always supposing we can get some usable stuff from the remains. Tom thinks that will be possible. Pietrangelo also has a sister and mother we can ask for samples for comparison, so we’ll get on to that straight away.’

‘Do the sister and mother know Pietrangelo has gone missing? Someone will have to inform them before we turn up on the doorstep talking about DNA analysis of a corpse.’

‘Sarah Gresham has undertaken to inform them, now there’s a possibility her boyfriend is dead. She didn’t want to alarm them before. She said it would be better if they heard it from her before we contacted them. Luckily, Sarah comes across as a sensible and reliable person, now the first shock is over. She’s also given us the name of his dentist. He had some dental work done six months ago, so there should be a good and up-to-date record of his teeth.’

Carter stared down at the photographs Sarah Gresham had left with them. ‘He may be third-generation in this country but he’s still got a Mediterranean look about him. Handsome chap, would you agree, Jess?’

‘Yes, but full of himself. I mean, he looks a bit overconfident to me.’ Jess was cautious.

‘Overcurious, perhaps,’ said Carter with a sudden and totally unexpected grin. Seeing her blank look, he explained, ‘Curiosity killed the cat. Pietrangelo was curious about Key House. Did that kill him? Send Bennison and Stubbs around the local pubs with copies of these and find the pub Pietrangelo was in. It couldn’t have been so long ago that he was there asking and the landlord should remember. It would be nice to have confirmation we are talking about the same enquirer or if there was someone else asking about the house.’

‘The superintendent made
a joke
?’ Morton asked Jess disbelievingly, a few minutes later.

‘I wouldn’t call it a joke, more a witticism.’

‘Not his style,’ opined Morton. ‘What’s he got to be so cheerful about?’

Petra had returned to work after Kit left. She needed to. She had to have something to take her mind off the disturbing news. Gervase was coming back. She ordered herself not to be stupid and let herself get into a state about it. As she’d told Kit and repeated to herself now: the last place he’d turn up was here at The Barn.

It couldn’t be the first time Gervase had returned to the area, surely? If so, he’d sneaked in and out without attracting notice. Reggie Foscott would know but might have been discreet about it, probably under instruction.

‘And I,’ said Petra aloud, as Kit’s car roared out of the driveway in a shower of gravel, ‘am probably the last person he’d want to see.’

Still, as people occasionally pointed out and Key House began to crumble into decay, Gervase Crown did still own the family home even if he’d not attempted to live in it after his father’s death. He had a responsibility. But Gervase had never been strong on taking responsibility. He’d only hung around long enough after his father’s funeral to empty out the house like a giant waste bin of things no longer of any use to him. Out had gone the memories, good and bad. Out had gone the books to some second-hand bookshop in Cheltenham, and clothes to Oxfam. Gervase’s boyhood train set and box of Lego bricks had pitched up at a local church fête. The nearest saleroom had benefited from the antique furniture and china. A house sale had pretty well taken care of everything else and a house clearance company had come in to remove what little had remained. Everyone had fully expected that, following the clearance, the house would appear on the market and there had been much speculation as to who might buy it. It had not happened. If at long last Gervase was coming to the area now it was only because that neglected family property had burned down.

The news of the house’s destruction had shocked her more deeply than she hoped Kit had realised. Petra’s earliest memory of Key House dated back to the days when Sebastian had been alive – and still married – and Gervase a little boy living in a then family home. Yet even as a family home it has seemed wanting to young Petra. Her own home had been a noisy, untidy place but full of laughter and squabbles with Kit, various animals adopted as pets, her mother standing over an open recipe book in the kitchen, surrounded by boiling pots, her father bravely eating the exotic but botched result, when all he’d really wanted was straightforward meat and two veg.

The Crown household had been perfect to the eye, not a thing out of place, an image from a glossy magazine of upmarket interiors. But it had been so quiet that Amanda Crown’s high heels tapping across the polished parquet echoed noisily as she came to greet her visitors. Amanda had cut a glamorous figure, elegant and restless, usually clad in some floaty garment of rippling silk or other expensive material, and cleverly draped scarves that must have been kept in place by hidden pins, because they never moved. She’d overawed young Petra and Kit and their mother, too. Mrs Stapleton had always ‘made an effort’ when visiting Key House, digging from her wardrobe a little-worn outfit. Inevitably she had put on a pound or two since the outfit’s last appearance, or the skirt length was no longer in fashion. Mrs Stapleton would then sit on Amanda’s white leather sofa, tugging unhappily at her hemline, while Amanda poured tea or coffee, depending on the time of day, into bone china cups.

Petra, also forced into a ‘best skirt and top’, would squirm in sympathy with, and embarrassment at, her mother’s awkwardness. She had overheard her own father describe Amanda as a ‘clothes horse’. But Petra would have given her eye teeth to grow up looking like that. As a little girl, she’d just gazed at Amanda, fascinated. Kit hadn’t cared. She would drum her heels against the white leather of the armchair in which she slumped, despite the increasingly desperate telegraphed messages from her mother.

What Petra had always secretly hoped was that Gervase would be there, home from school. Then Amanda would say carelessly, ‘Why don’t you two girls go outside and see if Gervase is there? He’s around somewhere.’

If he was, and they found him, he and Kit would immediately begin to argue. She, Petra, would follow behind as they roamed over the fields, longing to join in, not to argue but just to talk to him, yet not knowing how.

Curiously, considering that the money paying for all the expensive luxury came from canine care products, the Crowns kept no dogs as pets. It wasn’t just the dogs that were missing. There was no love at Key House. Petra had sensed its absence without really understanding it.

She’d met Sebastian several times and not liked him much. He had seemed distant. No one had expressed any surprise that the Crowns had split up, although Petra had been surprised at the lack of reaction on Gervase’s part at the time. Her questions, put to him with a childish lack of subtlety, had been received with a brusque, ‘Don’t ask me about it. No one ever tells me anything!’ She’d sensed his hurt and wanted to console him but realised consolation wouldn’t be well received.

Later in her teens she’d taken to hanging round Gervase whenever he was home and the opportunity occurred, hoping to gain his attention in another way. I always had a crush on him, she thought now ruefully. When he offered to drive me back from the party that evening, I knew he was drunk, of course I did. I knew he’d already had one accident in which he’d smashed up a car. But I was just so happy that he offered me a lift home, I hopped into the car with nothing in my mind but that I’d have his company all to myself.

And then … Petra closed her eyes but couldn’t shut out the memory. It must have happened quickly but at the time seemed to happen in slow motion. The car slewing round, the dry stone wall of a field coming ever closer. Gervase swearing, panic in his voice, and twisting the wheel, powerless to avert disaster. She’d thrown up her arms to shield her face, but she couldn’t remember the moment of impact or the immediate aftermath. She regained consciousness in a hospital bed.

Petra thrust away the memory. She wheeled herself out to the barn and picked up her paintbrush. She’d nearly finished the commissioned artwork for
Black Beauty
. Another hour at it, perhaps not even that, and it would be ready. She was pleased with it. She’d attempted and dismissed various ideas, and in the end rejected all the assembled period props, too: the riding habit, the side-saddle. She’d settled for the single figure of the horse-hero himself, rearing up, mane tossing, nostrils flaring, glossy black coat gleaming, set against a pale landscape.

When she heard a car stop in the road outside she paid little attention. Tourists, driving round the lanes, did sometimes stop to take a second look at The Barn. Then she heard the creak of the gate and the footsteps. The visitor hesitated, probably wondering whether to go to the cottage or come here to the studio.

He opted for the studio. She knew it was a man from the weight of his tread and also because her senses had sprung into life with an awareness that was almost panic. Not the sort of panic associated with fear, but of facing a moment she had imagined so often over the last few years and which was now about to become reality. Black Beauty, rearing up on the canvas, seemed to express her feelings, his wild eye directed over her shoulder towards the entrance.

She herself didn’t turn round, couldn’t bear to, but found herself thinking,
Thank God Kit has left
. The newcomer cleared his throat to attract attention.

Petra swivelled the wheelchair at last to face the shadowy outline in the open barn door.

‘Gervase,’ she said.

The backstreet garage and repair business had a battered sign outside that read: Used Motors. MOTs. All Types of Service. On its forecourt a variety of cars, certainly far from the first flush of youth, awaited potential purchasers. Cards announcing the prices were propped in the windscreens. The cards had yellowed through long exposure to the sun. There was no sense of bustling activity. The business did not appear to be thriving.

The Renault Clio turned into the forecourt and a young man got out. He walked over to the open door of the workshop and peered into the gloom.

‘Gaz? You here? Gaz?’

Receiving no reply, he ventured inside and made his way cautiously to an office at the rear. Through its glass panels he could see someone sitting with feet propped up, mug in hand, reading a tabloid newspaper. The visitor tapped on the glass.

The man on the other side turned his head, but didn’t lower his feet, put down his mug or his paper.

‘What do you want?’ His voice was muffled through the glass. He could now be seen to have a long narrow face, made to appear more so by the lack of hair on the top of his head. To compensate for this, hair still growing at the back of his head had been allowed to curl down over his collar.

‘I got a bit of business for you, Gaz.’ The visitor sounded positive, even optimistic. He’d rehearsed the words before coming, lest a nervous tremor destroy the confidence of his approach. He brought them out now with an air of achievement.

‘What sort of business?’ The muffled voice was sceptical.

‘Clio. It’s in good nick.’

Now the man in the office put down coffee and newspaper and got to his feet. Like his head, the rest of him was long and thin. He came out of his retreat and looked the visitor up and down. ‘Where is it, then?’

‘Out front.’

The thin man peered past him at the Clio out in the forecourt. ‘Stupid sod,’ he said. ‘What did you leave it out there for? Trying to advertise it to the cops?’

‘I didn’t steal it, Gaz, honest. I found it.’

Gaz drew in a deep breath. ‘Do me a favour and cut out the jokes. The car’s hot. It has to be. How would you come by a decent motor? You couldn’t afford a pair of roller-skates.’

‘I
found
it, Gaz. It was abandoned. In the street, back of the bus station. I saw it there in the morning, real early, about six. That’s funny, I said to meself …’

‘Spare me the long story as well.’ Gaz’s voice was curt.

‘Well, I watched out all day and that evening, it was still there. So I went back early this morning, and it hadn’t been moved. So then I went and had a good look and I couldn’t believe my eyes – the keys were hanging in the ignition.’

Gaz had been studying the view of the car framed in the open door of the workshop. Now his head snapped round. ‘Keys?’ he said sharply.

‘That’s right!’ the visitor sounded triumphant. ‘I told you I didn’t steal it. I didn’t hotwire it. No one had. It was abandoned. Like I said, I found it.’

‘You really ain’t very bright, Alfie,’ Gaz told him in a conversational tone. But for all its casualness there was a hint of something dangerous behind it.

The visitor’s self-assurance, which had been slipping as they spoke, now slid off his whole person like a discarded garment. He looked frightened.

‘You ain’t very bright,’ repeated Gaz, ‘because …’ He lifted his hand and the visitor flinched and stepped back hastily. However, the hand had not been raised to strike a blow but so that Gaz could number off the points of his argument, working along the fingers with the forefinger of the other hand.

‘One, I don’t believe that yarn you spun me about it being left in a street back of the bus station. Any motor left there like you told it would’ve been either clamped or removed or someone else would’ve nicked it before you said you did. Two, in any case, no one abandons a decent motor with the keys in the ignition. Three, if you didn’t steal it in the first place, you’ve stolen it now, ain’tcha? Four, you drive it here, to me, in broad daylight and you leave it out there, like I said, advertising it.’ He paused. In the silence something at floor level, a small dark body with clawed feet, ran past them and scuttled into the darkness. ‘Bring it inside.’