Requiem (76 page)

He climbed out of his overalls and dusted his hands thoughtfully. ‘Blimey … now you’re askin’. Brown ’air … Well-built. Nah …’ He shook his head. ‘Nah … didn’t really get a good a look at ’im. Too busy tryin’ to get me ’ead through yer windar without gettin’ meself topped. You know you got a sashcord broke?’

‘I have?’

He manoeuvred his ladder out through the door and came back for the dustsheets which he pulled off the furniture with great flourishes that sent billows of dust mushrooming lazily into the air.

‘Only three messages?’ she called after him.

‘Yup. The other callers – four there were – they rang off when they ’eard the machine.’

‘Thanks,’ she said.

When he’d gone she played back the messages. A tense Peasedale pleaded for information, Inspector Brent requested in formal tones that she contact him as soon as convenient, and Jenny, in a no-nonsense message strong on emotional support, insisted that Daisy come over that evening for a meal with her and her boyfriend.

She was tempted by Jenny’s offer. There wasn’t much she could do in Chelmsford until Monday morning, although Inspector Brent probably thought differently, and there was even less to be done for Adrian until she could get up to Scotland, hopefully on Monday afternoon.

She called Jenny and said she’d be over as soon as she could. She thought of calling Peasedale, maybe even Brent, but couldn’t face either. She felt like the pilot of an aircraft that had crash-landed in the jungle, miles from civilization, with a plane-load of demanding passengers.

There was a shout of laughter from the street, answered by a raucous exuberant yell. She felt a pang of loneliness, the sort you get when the rest of the world is having a good time and someone forgot to invite you. She scooped up some wine as an offering to Jenny and made for the door. Pausing, she went back to the answering machine and hovered over it uncertainly. No, she’d had quite enough messages for tonight. Leaving the machine off, she hurried out.

Remembering that Jenny was allergic to wine, she drove down the hill to Mr Patel’s and picked up some cider. She added some bread and milk for her breakfast next morning.

She’d parked on a corner of the junction, pointing the wrong way. To save herself a trip round the block she backed cautiously out into the wider of the streets, peering through the tiny rear window of the Beetle, and was rewarded by the blasting horn and flashing headlights of a suicidal speed maniac screaming blindly out from behind the row of densely parked cars. Her adrenalin surged, her hands trembled on the wheel, she felt an abrupt exhaustion. Jenny’s place suddenly seemed a long way away, the prospect of talking through the last couple of days altogether too much. Better to call it a day, better to get some sleep.

Wearily, she pointed the car up the hill again. Anticipating that the prime parking spot would be gone by now, she took the first space she came to, some way short of the flat on the near side. Getting into it involved a ten-point manoeuvre with a killing amount of wheel winding, but at the end of it the car was more or less parked.

Someone walked briskly past the car, going uphill. As she prepared to open the door, she glanced up and took in a jaunty gait, stocky build, and dark casual clothing. The lighting wasn’t brilliant, he was largely in shadow, but something about the back of his head, or possibly his stride, made her pause, something that sparked the glimmer of a memory, and she canted her head to one side to observe him through the windows of the parked cars ahead. After a time the car windows offered more frame than glass, and she lost sight of him.

She opened the door and clambered heavily out. She noticed that the striding pedestrian had disappeared. For some reason, she wasn’t sure what, this bothered her, and she took another look, balancing on tiptoe to get a view over the car roofs. Then she spotted him. He was climbing the steps to a house not far from hers. A neighbour, then, which accounted for the familiarity. A close neighbour at that, though from the oblique angle and in the darkness, it was hard to tell precisely how close.

Gathering the groceries, balancing them precariously on one arm, she closed and locked the car door, and made her way slowly up the hill.

She looked over to the prime parking place and saw that, far from being taken, it was still there. Automatically she glanced up at the flat windows.

Light.

She stopped, baffled. What lights had she left on?

But if she wasn’t sure about the lights, she was absolutely certain about the curtains. She hadn’t drawn them, either when she arrived or when she went out.

She stared at the familiar pattern of the Indian cotton, its peacock design thrown into colour-bleached reverse by the backlighting, the two curtains pulled around the bow of the windows and drawn together so tightly that there was no thread of light between them.

She had the feeling that this was happening at a remove, that she only had to pause for the scene to shift towards something more acceptable. But there was no escape from the curtains and the fact they were drawn.

Walking swiftly back to the car, she unlocked it and quickly restarted the engine. A car came ponderously over the brow of the hill. She knew the look; hunting for a space. ‘Oh no you don’t,’ she breathed, winding viciously on the wheel to extricate the Beetle in fewer than ten moves.

She misjudged the final manoeuvre, clipped the bumper of the car in front with a loud scraping sound, and shot forward just in time to see the approaching car pause by the vacant parking space. She was accelerating, rehearsing reasons why the interloper should give up the space to her, when the car started towards her again, the driver’s head bent forward over the wheel, peering at the house numbers. He was just lost.

She slowed down, made a conscious effort to unwind the tension in her hands, and parked quietly, without attracting attention. From here she had a good view of the front door and, when she shifted across to the passenger seat, the flat above. The lights were still on, the curtains drawn.

She settled down to wait, to catch him when he came out. She wanted to see his face.

Was it the man in the dark clothes, the pedestrian who’d passed her when she parked? There had been something about him, some echo of the past. She groped for the memory, but it wouldn’t come.

Whoever he was, he was taking his time. How long had he been in there? Ten minutes? No, more like fifteen. She angled her head so she could keep the whole width of the bay window in view. What could he be doing in there? she wondered. What could be taking so long? Perhaps it wasn’t the dark-clad man after all, perhaps it was a sneak thief who’d left even before she returned from Mr Patel’s. Perhaps there was nobody in there any more.

Suddenly the light went out, the curtains absorbed the dull amber of the streetlights.

Her adrenalin rocketed. Fixing her eyes unwaveringly on the front of the house, she slid back into the driving seat. Her foot caught the edge of the milk carton, it fell. She swore and leant down to right it.

She glanced rapidly up at the window and her throat dried.

The curtains had been reopened.

She looked down at the front door.

It began to open. Whoever was opening it had not activated the time-lapse stair lights so that behind him the hall was in darkness, and she could make out only the barest shadow as he paused ghostlike in the open door, as if to watch and listen, before casually stepping out and pulling the door behind him.

Dark clothes, thick build: yes, the man from before. He ran quickly down the steps, head down.

Look up. I need you to look up.

He reached the bottom of the steps and, moving into an aureole of light, took a quick glance over his shoulder before setting off briskly in the direction he had come.

Got you.

Maynard.

The neck, the tight jaunty walk.
Maynard
. Plastered-down hair, thick lips, stocky build: crawling obsequious Maynard.

He was walking fast, his head and shoulders bobbing rapidly over the line of car roofs. She screwed around in her seat, watching the buoyant head retreating rapidly down the hill, and was fixed with a momentary indecision.

Should she leave it there? Be satisfied with the fact that she’d rumbled him? Or was she going to take it further? Make a complaint. All she had, she remembered, was an address in Hertfordshire, a phone number in Battersea. But suppose Maynard wasn’t his real name, suppose the Battersea number wasn’t there any more?

Undecided yet loath to lose him, she started the car and, straddling the street in a tight three-point turn, began to follow. Too fast, too fast. She slowed until she could see his head bouncing along at a comfortable distance ahead of her.

Turn off the headlights? No, too obvious. Best to crawl close by the parked cars, like the motorist she had seen earlier, so that if he looked back he would think she was lost.

Reaching a corner he turned suddenly, swivelling his body round abruptly until it was almost facing the way he had come. She resisted the urge to jam her foot on the brake and kept creeping forward, craning her head from side to side, so that, if his eyesight was that good, he would be able to see the dim outline of a face peering up at the house numbers.

When she glanced back he had vanished. She drove cautiously on towards the junction and stopped just beyond the last parked car, so that she could see along the pavement of the adjacent street.

No sign.

Now how had he managed that, for God’s sake?

She looked down the hill towards Mr Patel’s, then back the way she had come, then across to the other side of the side street again. Nothing.

Hell
.

An engine started not far away. She wound down the window to get a direction on it, only for the sound to be drowned by a car lumbering up the hill towards her. The approaching car, a rumbling diesel, made ponderously slow progress and it was a long time before she could tune into the altogether quieter hum of the other car.

She had the sound now: it came from the side street where Maynard had disappeared.

It had to be him. Could it be him? But why, having started his engine, wasn’t he moving?

A second later, the red glow of a rear light sprang on, then a second later the white reflection of a reversing light. The car moved back once, then curved out and accelerated away.

Daisy turned the corner and followed. It was a dark saloon, possibly a Rover. But was it Maynard?

Part of her accepted that this was crazy – even if it was Maynard he was probably the sort who’d know instantly if he was being followed – but the other part of her was damned if she was going to give up without a try.

The street led into another that ran parallel to Augustus Road. With hardly a hesitation to see if anything was coming, the dark car turned left, heading downhill through the web of dark residential streets. Reaching the arterial road at the bottom, it stopped in the face of a steady stream of traffic. Daisy saw an immediate problem: to close up or stay back? To invite attention or risk him seeing her in his mirror?

In the end she closed up, lowering the sun visor to hide her face. As she halted behind the Rover she saw with relief that the driver was not looking in his mirror: he was too intent on pushing the car impatiently forward, sticking its nose further and further out into the traffic, his head peering sideways as he waited for a suitable gap. Peering sideways and showing his profile to her.

Maynard.
Maynard
.

He spurted forward, then jammed on the brakes as someone hooted at him. As the brake lights flashed on and off, Daisy realized she was looking at his registration number. For God’s sake. How many half-brained witnesses forgot to remember something as basic as a car number?

She got the number into her head just as the Rover finally sprang forward into the main road, accelerating fast. She rolled forward, knowing she must get out soon or lose him. The traffic was thick but tailing off, regulated by some unseen traffic lights. A small gap was coming up, followed, four cars later, by a larger one. She went for the earlier gap, pushing her foot hard down which, in the Beetle, provided little extra speed but some illusion of achievement. The approaching car braked uncomplainingly to let her in.

She was four, no five, cars back. Too far if there were traffic lights. One car peeled off to the left, then, in a straightish section, she risked overtaking another with nerve-racking slowness, hanging out in the centre of the road until she was almost squeezed against a traffic island.

Still two cars between them. The road curved to the right and she got a clear view of the Rover ahead. In the fluorescence of the shop lights it glinted dark red.

The road straightened then, enacting her worst fears, some traffic lights ahead of the Rover turned amber. As the line of cars slowed, she pulled out slightly to get a better view of the junction and waited with a sinking heart for the sight of the Rover speeding away. The lights were a solid red now, yet, though she waited, the car didn’t appear. Maynard wouldn’t be one to stop at anything short of red. Had he turned off then? She darted a glance to the left, but no car was turning off.

The cross-traffic had started, and she realized that he must have stopped at the amber after all.

Lucky, very lucky. More than she deserved.

Quickly, before the lights changed, before she forgot the registration number, she reached for her bag and scribbled it on a scrap of paper.

When the line started off again, she saw that the leading car was not after all the Rover, that Maynard had been caught behind another more cautious motorist. Now the Rover was jammed up against his bumper, as if this would encourage him to accelerate faster. She waited impatiently for an opportunity to overtake the car immediately in front of her and narrow the gap but they were into the twists of Turnpike Lane, heading north-east towards Tottenham, and it was impossible to pass.

The problem was eased by the car two ahead, which slowed and swooped into the kerb by a parade of shops, leaving just one car between her and Maynard. She couldn’t decide whether she should leave it at this, whether the still considerable risk of getting separated at lights was preferable to being spotted. A few seconds later the problem became academic as the Rover suddenly indicated right and rocked to a halt in the centre of the next junction, waiting to turn.