Текст книги "Vows of Silence "
Автор книги: Susan Hill
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“They know I’m meeting you.”
She felt embarrassed. How could she say, Yes, and my son is sitting at home waiting for a call to tell him to come and rescue me? “Why do you ask?”
He laughed, looking embarrassed himself, and went off to order their tea.
The pub was emptying before they paused in talk about their families—how her Tom was one of those teenagers struggling to find a meaning and a spiritual dimension in his life, and how she worried that most of his friends seemed to be so odd; how his elder son Hugh was spending a year teaching in Africa and the younger, also Tom, was at drama school—against his father’s better judgement. “But I’ll support him all the same. I have to. You have to make up for a lot, don’t you find? Make up for that huge gap in their lives.” His wife had been killed in an appalling electrical accident in the house. He had stated the fact in a way that forbade further enquiry.
“It’s rather late,” Helen said.
“I know, but we’re grown-ups. Nobody’s going to tell us off.”
“Oh yes they are!”
He held open his car door. I am enjoying myself, she thought again. I haven’t enjoyed myself like this for too long.
At her car, in the now deserted yard of the Old Ship, he said, “Thank you, Helen. I’ll phone you if I may?”
Turning out into the street and on her route home, glancing in her rear-view mirror as she drove away, she saw that he waited and watched.
Five
Melanie Drew was so happy. It was very quiet, very peaceful, and the early autumn sun was coming in through the window onto the table at which she sat with a packet of thank-you notes. She had written two and had worked out that she still had forty-two to go.
The previous day, a delivery van had arrived from the company, everythingwedding.com, with which they had had their list and it had taken two men the best part of forty minutes to bring all the parcels and boxes out and up the two flights of stairs to the flat. They had been perfectly cheerful about it, though, and after it was all done Melanie had made tea and given them each a piece of wedding cake and they had toasted her in the new blue mugs with white stars.
Now, she took an envelope and wrote on it—but not the address of the aunt who had sent them a hundred pounds.
She wrote:
Melanie Drew.
Melanie Drew.
Melanie Drew.
Mr and Mrs Craig Drew.
Mrs Craig Drew.
Craig and Melanie Drew.
Craig and c
What a waste of an envelope! But she sat in the sun looking at her writing and she couldn’t stop smiling. She hadn’t been able to stop smiling since the wedding two weeks ago.
Now, though, the honeymoon was over, Craig had gone back to work at the estate agent’s yesterday, she had another couple of days off but then she would be heading for the reception desk at Price and Fairbrother. Tonight, they had more wedding presents to open. The flat suddenly seemed very small. The spare room was where Craig wanted to keep stuff like his Wellington boots and waterproof jackets and mittens. Now, it was so full of boxes they could barely open the door. And then there was a mountain of wrapping paper, tissue paper and cardboard to dispose of. Craig was keen on recycling and determined to find out the greenest way of binning it; Melanie had muttered about a bonfire.
“Do you know what you’re saying there, Mel? Bonfire? You can’t have a bonfire. It adds to the carbon levels in the atmosphere.”
“Oh. Right.”
“You should be more concerned.”
“I’m concerned about getting my spare room back, that’s all.”
It had not been a row though. They never rowed. They agreed to differ.
She smiled now and wrote Mrs Melanie Anita Drewthree times on the envelope.
The sun was warm as well as bright. The flat faced west so it would be like this when they got in from work and for a lot of the evening, right through the spring and summer. They had been lucky to get it, and for the price, though they had worked like slaves for the previous six months replacing the kitchen, taking up ancient lino and rotten floorboards, pulling down sixties wood-effect panelling, ripping out old gas fires, and redecorating. It had paid off. It looked fresh and bright and new and Melanie was delighted with it all. Married life, she thought now. Married life. She and Craig had known one another for three years but never actually lived together, so everything was new, everything was fun, as well as, occasionally, slightly scary.
She looked around the room. Then back to the envelopes. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Midnight-blue Le Creuset cookware, pale blue Nigella Lawson kitchenware, china with hearts and stars, soft white fluffy bathrobes and towels, desk lamps, cutlery, mirrors, clocks, and a massive chandelier made out of tooled wire and hanging crystal beads that she had put down on the wedding list because it looked fun but which was so expensive she had not really thought anyone would ever buy it. Her godmother, who was an actress and liked what she called “a bit of OTT’, had. The box it came in could have housed a new fridge. The moment it arrived Melanie had had misgivings. Craig hated it.
But it didn’t matter. It was a laugh. It was daft and she was happy. Happy, happy, happy.
She put aside the thank-you notes and opened her laptop. The wedding pictures had gone up on the photographer’s website and she had looked through them several times since they had got home, revelling in every detail. She was still surprised at how much she had missed on the day itself, and also, of course, how much happened that she had never got to see at all—Craig and his brother and ushers arriving at the church, the bridesmaids getting out of the car and her sister Gaynor almost measuring her length and her posy having to be reassembled. They had made a beautiful collage of the reception which by some clever trick moved and changed as you watched—so that every time Mel opened up the website she saw something she hadn’t previously noticed. This time, it was the expression on Adrian’s face, as he was waiting to make his best man speech: he looked as if he were headed for the gallows.
She also had two disks of pictures taken by friends, and she planned to post the best of these on the wedding-day-and-honey moon website she had set up. That way some of the family on her father’s side, who hadn’t been able to join them, could share the day.
She had taken a lot of persuading to have a September wedding. May or June had been her choice, but she’d been shocked at how booked up everywhere got so far ahead and September was the earliest they could organise. Which had turned out well because most of May and June had been cold and wet and September, including their wedding day, gloriously sunny.
She sat back and closed her eyes and let the sun warm her face, remembering. It was odd. Time did strange things. The day had passed so quickly, in a flash really, and yet ever since it seemed to have expanded and grown so that she could relive it in slow motion, going over every little detail again and again. She thought that Craig probably didn’t. Not that he hadn’t enjoyed it, because she knew he had. But his attitude was: Right, that’s that, it was great, so what’s next?
If she was honest, it not only puzzled her, she was mildly upset.
“Well, he’s a man, isn’t he?” Gaynor had said. “Get over it.”
If she didn’t have to go back to work, she could imagine spending a great many more afternoons like this, looking at the photographs, unpacking and sorting the wedding presents, writing thank-you cards and then starting to get supper ready with all the new kitchen things. She enjoyed her job. They were a nice firm to work for, she liked everyone there and she knew perfectly well that once the novelty of all this had faded she would have gone off her head with boredom alone in the flat all day. All the same, just another couple of weeks would have been nice.
Meanwhile, there was tonight. She was making a Thai chicken recipe with three fresh vegetables and a citrus and walnut salad. Bread. Cheese from the new Just Cheesein the Old Market Square—Lafferton’s latest mall of small shops which were very tempting and very expensive. She got up to check on the recipe to see how much longer the chicken had to marinate and discovered that she had forgotten to buy walnuts. That was the sort of thing you could do when you had the day at home to yourself—shop in a leisurely fashion and pop out again if you found you had forgotten something. The flat was less than ten minutes by car from the supermarket on the Bevham Road. She could get walnuts and a bottle of wine. Wandering round the supermarket at half past three in the afternoon was part of the fun of these last days off. Part of being happy.
Melanie laughed at herself as she picked up her handbag and keys. Being happy because you’re going to the supermarket in the middle of the day—” How sad is that?” as her teenage stepsister Chloë would say.
Chloë. Who would have thought that Chloë would have looked like that as a bridesmaid—her hair up, skin glowing and a smile like half a melon. Chloë, who had sworn she would die rather than wear sugar-almond pink and who had behaved like an angel and seemed to have grown up to become a stunning young woman—for the day, at least.
Melanie laughed again as she went out.
The street was quiet. The sun had made the inside of her car too hot and as she didn’t have anything so fancy as air conditioning, she opened the windows and door and waited for it to cool down. It was while she waited that she saw him, loitering along the opposite pavement, in the shade. He stopped to light a cigarette, his head turned away from her.
It struck her that she might have forgotten to doublelock their front door. There had been burglaries in the area, a spate of them, though mostly of the detached houses and ground-floor flats. Had she double-locked it?
God, was she going to turn into one of those women who had to go back nine times to make sure they’d turned the gas off and another three to double-check that the light wasn’t on in the bathroom?
No, she was not.
She started up the engine and when she looked again the man had gone.
In the supermarket she picked up a copy of the local paper to read over tea in the café. And there it was. She hadn’t even remembered they had sent in the details.
The photograph was quite large on the page because there were only two other weddings. It was the one of her looking adoringly at Craig, the one which Gaynor had pronounced “Yuck.” But Mel liked it. Her dress looked its best, the silver beading shining and the silver quills in her hair looking as original as she had hoped. She had never seen anyone else wearing them. Pity about the lilies which the florist had foisted on her. They looked huge and stiff, the stalks too long, and she hadn’t known how to hold them, up or down or what. They weren’t like flowers, they were like something man-made. In the newspaper photograph they jumped out at you. Otherwise, though, it was nice. It was very, very nice.
Melanie Calthorpe and Craig Drew
The marriage took place, conducted by Senior Registrar Carol Latter, between Melanie, elder daughter of Neil Calthorpe of Lafferton, and Mrs Bev Smith of Lancaster, and Craig, youngest son of Alan and Jennifer Drew of Foxbury. The bride wore a strapless dress in white jersey crêpe with a bodice encrusted with crystals and silver beading and silver quills in her hair, and carried a bouquet of calla lilies. She was attended by Gaynor Calthorpe, bride’s sister, Chloë Calthorpe, bride’s stepsister, and Andrea Stannard, bride’s friend, who wore burgundy off-the-shoulder dresses and carried posies of ivory roses with silver-ribbon accents. Lily Mars, bride’s god-daughter, was the flower girl in a silver satin and tulle dress and carrying a basket of burgundy rosebuds. Mr Adrian Drew, bridegroom’s brother, was best man, Carl Forbes and Peter Shoemaker, bridegroom’s old school friends, were ushers and the reception was held at the Maltdown Hotel. The couple honeymooned in Gran Canaria and have made their home in Lafferton, where the bridegroom works as an estate agent with Biddle Francis and the bride as a receptionist for Price and Fairbrother, Solicitors.
She read it twice, read it again, and on the way out bought six more copies of the paper. In the car, she sent a text message to Craig and then drove home feeling as she had felt when her father had pushed her on the park swings so high she had thought that if she let go of the chains on either side she would simply fly up and up to heaven.
She came out of the brightly sunlit street into the dark hall of the flats and could barely see. The light on the first-floor landing had gone again. Individual flat owners were responsible for keeping the lights working on their own floor, changing the bulbs when necessary. Mel was annoyed. The people on this floor always seemed to be leaving their landing in darkness and it was dangerous. She would have to ask Craig to tackle them about it again.
It was only as she reached her own floor that she realised she had left the newspapers on the back seat of the car. She paused. Go on in, put the shopping away and get them later? Go back now? No, go on in, dump the shopping and then run back down again.
She unlocked their own door. The hall was bright from the late-afternoon sun streaming in through the window of the kitchen opposite. She set the bags down. She would cut out two of the newspaper articles and post them straight off to Nan and to little Lily’s family. Cut one out for her wedding book. She’d have time to do that later while she was waiting for things to cook.
She went out of the flat and down the stairs at a run, almost tripping on the top step of the landing without a light. She had found a parking space a few yards up the street. Fished out keys. Newspapers. Yes, on the back seat. Waved to the elderly lady who sat in her chair at the window of the bungalow opposite for most of the day. Locked the car. She was out of breath. Unfit. The swimsuit had better come out again. There had been so much to do in the run-up to the wedding she had let her daily swim go—and she felt the difference.
Back to the house. She reached up to the keypad. But the front door was ajar. The people in the bottom flat often forgot to make sure it was properly shut and it made her mad. What was the point of having a front-door security lock to which everyone had the pass number if half the time it was not properly shut?
She trudged up the stairs. Along the unlit landing again. On up to their own floor.
She wished she hadn’t had those calla lilies, they just over powered the photographs, great stiff waxen things. It wasn’t like her to be bullied, but she had been at the end of her tether, trying to find the right shoes all day, and somehow the florist had found a chink. Maybe she got a special deal on calla lilies. There certainly seemed to be an awful lot of them about. She had hated them on sight, but it was too late then and of course they didn’t spoil the day. They did spoil the photographs though.
“Oh get over it,” she said aloud.
Had she left the door of their flat on the latch?
It was odd.
When she pushed it open.
In that split second, Melanie Drew registered that it was odd. Minutes ago, when she had dropped the bags there, the sunlight had been flooding from the kitchen directly into the hall. Now it was blocked by something. There was a darkness. A shadow. There was no sunlight. Odd.
As she went nearer to the kitchen she registered that it was a figure blotting out the light. Then everything was brilliant in an instant, brilliant, shattering light, with a noise that exploded in the centre of it.
Then nothing.
Nothing at all.
Six
“Cat! I thought it was you.”
Cat turned from locking her car. Helen Creedy was a few spaces away in the Cathedral Close.
“It’s good to have you back—the altos have sounded pretty thin without you.”
“I don’t think! But it’s good to beback.” Cat looked around the old buildings of the close lit by the lamps that lined the paths. At the top end, the house in which her brother had his flat; down here, the east front of the cathedral towered over them. “I haven’t sung anything for nearly a year.”
“How was it?”
“Exciting. Challenging. Strange.” They walked together towards the door that led to the New Song School where early rehearsals always took place. Tonight, the first of the new season, they were making a start on Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, a favourite of Cat’s.
“What have you been up to, Helen? How are Tom and Lizzie?”
“Oh, fine. Actually c” Helen hesitated in the half-open doorway. “There’s something c do you think c” She was confused, not knowing exactly what she wanted to say.
“Am I a doctor here?”
“God, no—if I wanted to see you like that I’d come to the surgery. No—look, forget it, let’s find our places.”
“Helen c”
But she had gone on into the rehearsal room, crossing to the far side, hurried, embarrassed.
The Song School filled up, and Cat was greeted with shouts of welcome from right and left. They queued to get their music.
St Michael’s Singers rehearsals always ended with a drink in the nearby Cross Keyspub, but as Cat made her way along the cobbled lane she noticed that Helen Creedy was slipping off down the snicket that led to the close.
“Helen, aren’t you coming for a drink?”
Helen turned. “I ought to get back.”
“Lizzie and Tom not old enough to put themselves to bed? Come on, live a little.”
Helen laughed.
“Live a little.” She squeezed into a space next to Cat on the bench. “Funny you should say that.”
“You were going to tell me something.”
“Yes.” Helen took a slow drink of lime and soda. “I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what I want to say.”
Cat looked at her closely. “Helen?”
Helen’s face remained composed but her neck flushed scarlet. A roar of laughter came up from the group of tenors at the bar.
“You guessed,” she said, “sort of. Only I’m confused, I don’t know what’s happening c I think it’s OK, but I need reassurance maybe.”
Cat sipped her ginger beer. She had known Helen Creedy for some years as a patient she rarely saw and as a pharmacist she occasionally had to consult by phone. She knew her best in the context of the choir. But she had also seen fourteen-year-old Elizabeth in the first stages of near-fatal meningitis. She remembered it now, walking into the house expecting to see a feverish cold—and summoning the ambulance within three minutes, praying for it to be quick. Lizzie had made a full recovery and Cat had seen little of Helen since, other than on these choir evenings. She was a nice woman, but unconfident and reserved. Not someone Cat felt she was ever likely to know well.
Now Helen said in a low voice, “I’ve met someone.”
“Helen, that’s great! How long’s this been going on?”
“Well, that’s the thing c no time. Just the other night. It isn’t what I expected, Cat. It was Lizzie really—she pushed me into it. She kept telling me I should c”
“Get out more?”
Helen smiled.
“She was right.”
“If I told you what I did, please don’t laugh.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. Does it matter how people meet? I met Chris over a corpse in an anatomy lab.”
“Can’t compete there. I went to a sort of agency. On the Internet c it’s called peoplemeetingpeople.com.”
“And you did.”
“I never expected anything c well, maybe a few new friends.”
“Was this the first one you followed up?”
“Yes. It just all clicked. But I feel as if it should have taken much longer, that I should have met half a dozen others first.”
“That’s like saying you want half a dozen people to look round your house and not make an offer before a buyer comes along.”
“I never thought of it like that.”
“Well, you should. I’m pleased, Helen. Friend or more than friend—it’s good.”
“You don’t think it’s a bit c I mean—doing it this way. I haven’t told anyone else.”
“Why should you? No one else’s business.”
“It isn’t, is it?”
“Are you going to tell me about him?”
“We’ve only met once. And he phoned just before I came out tonight to ask me out again. We’re going to the theatre tomorrow. It just seems to be rushing away with me.”
“Don’t you want it to?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s worrying you?”
“Nothing. I suppose I hadn’t even thought I’d meet someone local—he even lives in Lafferton. I don’t know.”
The choirmaster was pushing his way through the crowded bar to greet Cat. She said, “Well, if you want to talk about it again ring me or we can meet. Sounds to me as if you just need someone to tell you you’re doing the right thing.”
Driving home, Helen played a tape of the Dixie Chicks which Elizabeth had given her for her last birthday, “to keep you up to date, Mother,” and recalled the phone call from Phil. “I really enjoyed myself. Can we meet again soon? Can I take you to the theatre tomorrow?”
Yes, she had thought, but not said. Hesitated. Pleaded a possible meeting with an old friend. Would have to check. Would ring him back. Had put the phone down and immediately decided she had been too cool, put him off, pushed him away. She wanted to go but did not know if she should.
When Elizabeth had asked if she was all right she had snapped; when Tom had made a joke about her evening out, she had rounded on him.
She turned into Dulles Avenue, taking a shortcut. A house halfway down was floodlit. Police vehicles and white vans were parked up and the whole of the front was cordoned off behind tape. Helen slowed instinctively, glancing to see what was happening. A policewoman standing at the gate peered at her.
She sped away as the Dixie Chicks sang of a travelin’ soldier.
Seven
He remembered the day. He remembered everything about the day. But the bonfire that had flared inside himself he remembered most of all.
“When can I go out on a proper shoot?”
“When you’re twelve.”
And then he was twelve. He was twelve.
It was cold. His head ached with cold. His face felt as if he had lost a layer of skin because of the cold. His ears burned with cold. He was aware only of being cold and blissfully happy.
They had been walking since a little after nine, the spaniels running ahead, and they had an hour or so more before they would stop for lunch. They paused. There was a brief silence. A shot rang out. Another. The rooks rose in panic from the tops of the trees ahead.
You remember this, his father had said. This is the most dangerous form of shooting you’ll know, until you get to shoot driven grouse. You’re walking up and firing together. If you don’t know what’s behindwhat you’re shooting at, you leave it be. Keep to the line. Watch and wait.
He had heard it like a lesson in church. The most dangerous form of shooting. He repeated the words to himself as he walked.
He was looking ahead but then something to the left caught his eye, a paler shape in a rough clump of grass. He stopped.
“All right, steady as you go. Watch carefully,” his father whispered. “Is there anything behind it?”
“Hedge.”
“Keep walking. Keep watching.”
He did as he was told. Then the spaniel was there, flushing the rabbit out, sending it racing away and he was ready, aimed and fired and all in a second, his heart beating as fast, surely, as that of his quarry and it almost stopped beating too, almost stopped as dead as the animal he had just shot.
“Fetch.”
But the dog was there, retrieving, racing back across the field with the warm body soft in its mouth.
His hands were shaking. His father lifted the shotgun from him, safe in his own steady hands, but said nothing. Took the dead animal from the dog and slipped it into the bag. They strode on, catching up with the line.
He felt the cold again now. The wind had got up, whipping across the dry open field from the north-east, making nothing of thick jackets and caps. The rooks rose again above the trees, rose and fell, rose and fell. But he was kept warm by the hot fire of excitement and satisfaction burning up within him. He didn’t need a word from anyone else.
He had looked up, scouring the winter sky for pigeons, the stubble for flocks of partridges, listening for the cackle and whirr of a pheasant getting up, determined to go one better. Prove something more. But not to them. To himself.
Eight
“Morning, everybody.”
Simon Serrailler went straight to the whiteboards on the far wall of the incident room.
Photographs.
Melanie Drew, alive and well, on her honeymoon.
The exterior of the block of flats.
Interior of the kitchen.
Craig Drew.
Melanie Drew’s body. The whole body.
Melanie Drew’s body. Detail of gunshot wounds.
Area map.
“Right, listen up. Melanie Drew. She was twenty-seven, married for just over a fortnight to Craig Drew. He works as an estate agent with Biddle Francis in Ship Street. Melanie worked as a receptionist. She had three extra days’ holiday after they returned from their honeymoon. Craig had gone back to work. Now Melanie was seen in Tesco’s on the Bevham Road at around three thirty. We have CCTV. She did a bit of shopping, bought a local paper, went for a cup of tea in the supermarket café. She then bought half a dozen more copies of the local newspaper. The folded copies were dropped on the floor of the kitchen just inside the doorway. They were bloodstained. CCTV has her leaving the supermarket at three forty-two and driving out of the car park. That’s it. Her car was parked outside the flat as normal. Husband came home just after six—he cycles to and from Ship Street. On entering the flat, he found his wife’s body. She was lying—here—inside the kitchen. Near the door. She’d been shot twice at close range, one bullet to the heart, one to the head c here c and here. Time of death is somewhere between four and six. No one was in the flat below, they were at work, and the owners of the ground-floor flat are currently away. No one saw Melanie Drew in Dulles Avenue. House-to-house hasn’t turned up any reports of anything or anyone unusual, but most people were out—it’s one of those dead streets by day. Not much traffic as it doesn’t lead out directly onto the main road. This is, as they say, ‘one of those.’ Nothing was taken c husband can’t think of a person in the world who would have any reason to attack his wife.”
“What about the husband, sir?”
“He’s been interviewed. She sent him a text to tell him their wedding picture was in the paper.”
“Do we know what the gun was?”
“Yes. Ballistics have just come back with it.” He looked round. “It was a Glock 17 SLP.”
There was a stir in the room but Serrailler went straight on. “Right, I need background on Melanie Drew—work colleagues, family, everyone at the wedding. Close friends. Ditto on Craig Drew. As I said, we’ve done house-to-house in the avenue itself but we now have to spread that out into the adjacent streets—that’s Caledecott Avenue, Tyler Road, Binsey Road and the cul-de-sac at the end of there called Inkerton Close. People hanging round, unfamiliar cars, all the usual. We’ve got nothing at the moment and I mean nothing. I’m doing a press briefing in an hour, we need them onside. Tomorrow we’ll have posters, uniform will be at the supermarket handing out leaflets, we want to be sure anyone who was shopping there yesterday afternoon knows about it. Television news have it, Radio Bev has had it on several bulletins and they’re running an appeal for info. I also want to go further back on Melanie Drew—previous place of work? We know she went swimming most days—I want someone up at the pool, talk to anyone who might have known her there. School. She went to the Sir Eric Anderson until sixteen, then to Bevham College of FE, so inquiries up at both—friends she had, any she still kept in with. OK, that’s it for now, plenty to do. Thanks.”
“Needle in haystack, then?” DC Warren Beevor said on his way out.
“I know,” Serrailler said. He never minded brief groans and moans, as long as he heard them inside the building, not outside, and they represented a reflex reaction, not an attitude of mind. “Get yourself a decent magnet.”
“You in all morning, sir?” DC Vicky Hollywell, small, plump, face folded into a perpetual expression of worry.
“No. I’m going back to Dulles Avenue. Why?”
“Nothing,” Vicky said anxiously. “Just in case we need you.”
You would never believe, Simon thought, running quickly down the concrete stairs, that Vicky Hollywell was one of their best and brightest, who came up with original suggestions time after time. She only lacked the one quality which she would need to get her moving up the ladder—self-confidence.
He drove through Lafferton, thinking. He planned to talk to Craig Drew later, but first wanted to spend more time at the flat in Dulles Avenue. He had been there on the evening of the murder, before Melanie’s body had been moved, but, in his experience, he could learn more from a solitary, careful assess ment later when the crime scene had become less dramatic, less immediate and distressing. It would also be less busy. Too many people were around while a body was in situ, doing their very necessary jobs but lending the place a highly charged and unnatural atmosphere.
He thought about his recent dealings with appalling crime scenes, on his first case in command of SIFT. An area of rural Kent had been targeted by an arsonist. Four cottages on or near working farms, but in fairly remote locations, had been set fire to in the middle of the night. All had been occupied and a total of seven people had died including two children, all but one of the bodies burned beyond recognition. A fifth cottage had then gone up in flames, and another person had almost died.
After three weeks on that case, Serrailler had been glad to return to Lafferton and his new position as Detective Chief Superintendent, heading up CID. He had resisted a posting to Bevham, threatening—and half meaning—to look for another job outside the area if he was not offered Lafferton. Fortunately, the Chief Constable had either taken his threat seriously or pretended to, and the Bevham idea was dropped.
He slowed as he turned into Dulles Avenue. A lot of the large houses here had been converted into flats during the past twenty years or so. It was a pleasant part of the town but not the most expensive, not like the Sorrel Drive area where the large houses were all still intact as single dwellings. In the sixties Dulles Avenue had been like that. Then it had gradually become run-down as the occupiers of the large houses died and many properties fell empty. When the houses were converted, it began improving again. Serrailler could see the police tape sealing off the crime scene. He parked on the opposite side of the road, well down from it, and began to walk, looking closely to right and left. Here, a spruce drive with white-painted fencing and a well-kept front lawn, a closed gate. There a scruffy drive with a badly parked motorbike. No gate. Here a house name—Belmont—next door to it just a number; after that, a house with half a dozen name slots beside an entryphone. A white cat sat on the wall, watching him as he approached. He stopped and put out his hand but the cat leapt away into some laurel bushes.
