Pleasure and a Calling (27 page)

The alternative scenario is when the client genuinely can’t be at home on the day the buyer – say, a busy out-of-towner with cash in the bank but not much time for house-hunting – has set aside to blitz the area looking for properties. This was the most recent position with Abigail’s house. It had been featured in the
Sentinel
the week of our dinner, and there had followed a small flurry of enquiries, two of which had resulted in viewings on Sunday, when Abigail was home. I had attended neither. But this latest involved my picking up the key from Abigail at the library. It wasn’t my idea. Zoe had arranged it in my absence, and seeing my name on the client file asked if I wanted her to handle it. It was a moment to retreat entirely. But I took a breath and dived in. Perhaps I thought something might still be retrieved, that somehow I might wipe the error from my head and get back to where we’d been before. I might at least suspend the inevitability of her eventual move out of town and out of my life.

Abigail was businesslike. She’d tied a loop of brown string to the key and a label scribbled with my surname. Her colleagues hovered at the desk, allowing us to exchange no more than a tight-lipped smile.

‘I’ll have it back to you straight afterwards,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry. Just drop it in the letterbox when you’re done.’

I walked across the Common and along the river. The buyer – Mr Peretti, late forties, balding, stocky and tanned – was waiting
with a younger man, also tanned but slimmer, along with a tiny older woman, wearing a distinct wig and carrying a dog. I showed them inside. They were chatty and enthusiastic, the younger man rapidly casting an eye over each room in turn and nodding. He folded his arms to parade a small tattoo of an anchor.

‘Jason’s the creative genius,’ Mr Peretti said.

‘I can imagine.’

‘Oh, look, Paul,’ said the woman, who I gathered was Mr Peretti’s mother. ‘They have a sun lounge, like Maria and Tom!’ She was surprisingly light on her feet. She had Mrs Damato’s accent.

‘That’s actually stone-built,’ I said.

I emphasized the flexible layout of the rooms. The place was comfortable enough, though some might feel it would benefit from modernization. ‘The price takes that into account,’ I pointed out.

The men muttered together, with Jason gesturing in a horizontal line with a pinch of his thumb and index finger, as if converting in the mind of his partner the dim downstairs area into a bright open living space that perhaps left the option of a small reading or sewing room. I wondered who of the three would do the cooking, and despite my sombre mood found myself conjuring a sweep of brushed steel and a walk-in larder hanging with strong-smelling sausages and shelves of imported canned fish, pasta, cheese and colourful liqueurs.

We went upstairs, where we found large bedrooms to the front and back, a guest room and the possibility (a necessity) of a second ensuite. ‘And then, of course, there’s a dusty attic up there. The stairs are boxed in, I’m afraid.’

‘So we’ll unbox them,’ cried Jason. He was already yanking open the door and scampering up like a child. I followed with
Mr Peretti just behind. The heap of furniture remained, but gone were the toys, board games and the standup radio, sold and picked up by a collector a few days before.

‘Studio?’ said Jason, one eyebrow lifted.

In fact I couldn’t help but like them. Weren’t they just the sort of unusual household I would normally look forward to visiting in their new home?

I took them outside to the small attractive courtyard garden with its stone terrace and variety of pot plants and trellises. ‘It’s not much of a garden, I’m afraid,’ I said.

‘Perfect,’ Mr Peretti said. ‘We hate gardening but love to sit outside. My mother could do the watering while we drink beer.’

‘Oh my son, always joking,’ she squealed, holding on to her wig in the breeze. She let the dog loose to sniff among the stones and leaves.

‘The owner’s moving back to London,’ I said. ‘It’s more than likely she’ll leave the plants.’ Had Abigail even mentioned them on her list?

I took Mr Peretti out to see the garage but it was locked.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘A garage is a garage, right?’

Standing on the front step, I pointed out the line of trees where the path would take you down to the river, Common and town. ‘It’s very convenient. And if you have a dog to walk …’

‘This is Pippo,’ Mrs Peretti said.

Hearing its name, the dog looked up at her and then at me.

‘Nice to meet you, Pippo.’

Mr Peretti drove them away in a sporty green car. They had other properties to see. I would call him this afternoon or tomorrow unless he called me first. I watched until they were out of sight then I locked up, posted the key, and crossed the road.

Now I stopped and stared again in the direction they had
gone. Something had happened. It was a peculiar sensation. Misery still tugged at me and yet somehow these unknown people – this odd ménage à trois who would, in all likelihood, find something more suitable, perhaps a home with fewer stairs for Mrs Peretti and more natural light for the creative Jason – had usurped Abigail in my thoughts about this house. I had rebuilt it in my head with no room for her, or her mother, or Sharp.

Here was transition as I had always known it. Because didn’t everyone come and go? I was the constant. That counted for all the thousand and one places I had put under siege, laid my head, and loved. Beyond the beautiful rumble of approaching and departing removal vans I was there always, behind the walls, beneath the roof, silent and listening, crouching and wondering, leaving my mark.

I walked. The sun broke through the cloud, sharpening the tree shade along the path and putting a sparkle on the water eddying round the reeds in the river where ducks dipped their heads and shook their feathers. Then almost as suddenly the sun went in again, as if it might rain. I was resolved, of course, that I would not speak to Abigail again. She would form her own conclusions, perhaps see the ethical dilemma of a man in my position forming a romantic attachment with a client, not to mention a vulnerable young woman still mourning the death of a parent.

She was an error in the same class as Zoe – or, for that matter, Marrineau: the flaw in face-to-face relations that demeans the mystery, reveals beauty as a sham. It is like a work of art. You walk towards it until all you can see is the paint. And when you back off again, what you had is gone for ever. Nothing is the same. You know too much. And now I knew Abigail too much. I felt the pain of loss, but what would happen when the pain subsided?
Did knowing all this change anything? Or would I forget in time, lower my guard, and repeat the mistake again and again?

Lasting love was not here in one place, but everywhere. The intimacy of serial love –
that
was the key, not this shallow simulation, this spastic avatar of feeling. Just look at this, I thought, picturing the town spread out before me, every house a box of treasure. The town was a whole family of love. To focus, as I had foolishly done with Abigail, was to lose focus. One moved on, up the stony path, round the bend, along a fresh, thrilling precipice.

I increased my step, fuelled by the notion. I thought of the Finches, the first household I had visited with my notebook and camera all those years ago. I wondered how they were doing. They had moved from Holland Road to The Maples. Perhaps I would look them up. Their son, who had been at the grammar school, would be grown up now, perhaps with his own young family. Where was he? I could find out. I could find out now if I wanted to. I could find out about anyone, old or new.

I crossed the little bridge, walking quickly. A funfair had begun to set up on the Common, charging the air with diesel fumes and the hum of generators. The tennis courts, glimpsed between the trees and bushes, were empty. A man was sitting on a bench near the cenotaph, legs crossed, eating a sandwich. A seagull – presumably lost on some migration – stood watching him from a fence pole, folding and unfolding wings, as if uncertain whether to take off. Stay, I thought, you’ll love it here. If seagulls had brains, I would say what I want to say every time I sell a house: you’ve come to the right place. I still believed that.

I reached the edge of the Common and walked up the hill to my flat. My car sat in the courtyard. Approaching the door, I put my hand in my pocket and took out a key. But the key in my hand, with its fibrous twist of brown string and crumpled manila
tag, was Abigail’s. Had I, could I have – distracted by my thoughts – stupidly posted my own key through her letterbox? But wait, no … I had
locked
her door. I searched my pockets quickly, and here it was, my key. And now I froze on the spot. I had locked her door with the key she had given Sharp. It was
his
key – the key I had found in his wallet, the key I had now used myself on numerous occasions – that was now lying on her doormat. The key, with its little red heart-shaped charm, that Abigail had given to her dead lover.

My blood was suddenly thumping so loudly, my mind so noisy with confusion, I didn’t hear the car pull into the courtyard as I stood facing the door, puzzling at the two keys, one in each hand, and trying to work it out. It was fine, I realized. I still had her key. It was early closing at the library, but she wouldn’t be home until ten past five. And it was now … I looked at my watch: 1.28. All I had to do was get back over there, unlock the door, and exchange this key for the other. I was an idiot but all was well. The heat and chaos of thought subsided. I exhaled audibly.

‘Mr Heming?’

I turned round. Here were my two police officers, their faces impassive, the younger one squinting slightly in the sunlight. The front door was behind me now. But all I could think, in that moment, as they stood there, unreadably calm, was that they were looking right through me, through the door and through the walls, through to where my keys – my hundreds of keys – hung like links of armour, investing the room with their dim golden light.

‘Would you mind if we came in?’

‘I
N
?’ I
ANSWERED, MOVING
towards them, away from the door, away from the flat. ‘In where?’ My heart was hammering.

‘This is your flat?’

‘Of course not. It’s one of the properties we manage.’

‘But you were just going in?’

‘No, Inspector. I was just coming out. The tenant is away. I have to arrange to get a plumber in for him. I was assessing the cistern.’

‘Is it urgent?’ the younger man asked.

‘I have tied the ballcock up with a piece of string,’ I said. ‘For now.’

‘You’re a handyman too?’

‘Perhaps you’d like to pop in and check,’ I said. I held Abigail’s key out to him on its loop of string, the label visible with my name on it. He didn’t move.

The senior officer looked impatient. ‘I don’t think that will be necessary. And it’s Sergeant, sir. Detective Sergeant Monks. This is DC Roberts.’

‘Of course. Forgive me.’

‘It’s rather odd that no one at your office seemed to know where you live, Mr Heming,’ he said. ‘Don’t you keep staff records?’

‘Of course we do. An oversight, I imagine.’

‘And the electoral roll?’ DC Roberts chipped in. ‘You’re a regular man of mystery, Mr Heming.’

‘Not at all. They probably spelled my name with two Ms. Or perhaps you did and they didn’t. That often happens. Despite all the signs around town for everyone to see.’

Monks blinked at Roberts, who gazed down at his notebook and pursed his lips.

‘But in that case,’ I said, ‘what led you here? Intuition?’

‘It seems we were misinformed.’

‘So what can I help you with?’

‘A few questions. Perhaps at the station?’

‘Now?’

‘If you wouldn’t mind, sir,’ said Monks.

I looked at my watch. ‘Well, I am rather busy.’

‘If you wouldn’t mind, sir. This
is
a murder inquiry.’

‘Is it? Shall I follow in my car?’

‘Probably best if you just accompany us in ours, sir.’

I had never had occasion to go to the police station, though I knew where it was, hidden away behind the shops in a sooty, squat redbrick building. Steps led up to small heavy doors and a small strip-lit anteroom with more beyond. It had the oppressive air of a basement. An officer on the desk logged my arrival without a great deal of interest and pushed a button that allowed further entry. The senior detective held the door while the younger man followed me closely (did they think I was going to make a run for it?) down a corridor with numbered rooms off to the sides, thick windows in the doors.