House of Bones (3 page)

“I don't know. I—”

“Listen, sonny, I've been using this estate agents since you were in nappies. David and I play golf together. The house is empty; there's nothing to steal. And I don't exactly look like a squatter, do I? Or do I?”

“No. Well, no.”

John went to the drawer and sorted through the keys. They were all in alphabetical order and all clearly tagged, but there was no sign of a key for 66 Mountjoy Avenue. “Sorry,” he said. “It isn't here. If you could come back later …”

“I can't come back later. I've got an important appointment at two. You must have a key. David said that it was one of your special properties and that Mr Vane was dealing with it.”

John shrugged. “I'm sorry. If the key's not in here—”

“Well, perhaps Mr Vane's got it in his office, if it's one of his properties.”

“All right” said John, unhappily. “I'll have a look.”

He cautiously opened the door to Mr Vane's office and stepped inside. The blinds were drawn so that the office was very gloomy. There were rows of old mahogany filing cabinets and a huge mahogany partner's desk heaped with papers and books. On the wall was a portrait of a good-looking woman in a crimson 1920s dress.

“Come on, lad, I haven't got all day,” the man urged him.

John opened the middle drawer of Mr Vane's desk. It was crammed with an untidy collection of spectacles, pens, elastic bands, envelopes and old photographs. In the left-hand drawer there were bundles of letters tied with pink tape. In the right-hand drawer he found the keys – nine of them in all, and each of them clearly tagged. Here it was – 66 Mountjoy Avenue.

“Have you found it yet?” the man demanded.

John hesitated. Surely it wouldn't do any harm to let somebody
look
at one of Mr Vane's properties? If he liked it, he might make an offer, and surely Mr Vane would be pleased about that, even if he hadn't been here at the time.

He closed the drawer and returned to the main office.

“Well done,” said the man, and held out his hand. He had a thick wedding ring, made of
intertwined bands of yellow and white gold, like a rope.

John closed his fist around the keys. “I think I'd better write down your name. You know, it's my first day and I don't want to get into trouble.”

“Rogers,” said the man, impatiently.

John wrote it on the Blight, Simpson & Vane notepad. “And address?” he asked.

“David knows where I live. He's been to dinner, for goodness' sake.”

John kept his pen poised over his pad.

“All right, then,” the man told him. “103 Welham Road.”

John slowly wrote down the address while the man tutted and fidgeted. When John handed him the key he marched out of the office, almost colliding with Courtney as he came back in.

“Who was
that
?” Courtney wanted to know.

John held up the pad. “Mr Rogers. He wanted to look at a house, so I lent him the key. I hope that's all right. I made sure I got his address.”

“That's great. If he buys it, you'll get some commission. At this rate, you'll have your BMW by Christmas.”

“Thanks,” said John, and felt extremely pleased with himself. “Do you want a cup of coffee? I was just going to make one.”

“Yes, great,” Courtney said. “What you can do this afternoon is sort out some of these files. Any
property that's been on the market for longer than three months put over here, so that we can discuss whether we're going to re-advertise it in the property papers, and whether we're going to advise the owner to cut his price.”

“All right. I see.”

At that moment, Lucy and Liam came back. Liam was telling Lucy a long shaggy-dog story about Tarzan applying for a job-seeker's allowance because there was no work in the jungle.

“How was your lunch hour, John?” said Liam. “Sell any property while we were out?”

“He may have done,” said Courtney. “Somebody came in asking to look at a house.”

“That's terrific. I hope it was The Cedars. We've been trying to get rid of that mouldering old heap for nearly three years now.”

“No. It was 66 Mountjoy Avenue.”

Liam stared at him with his mouth open. Courtney covered his face with his hands. Lucy said, “I don't
believe
it!”

“What?” said John. “I didn't do anything wrong, did I? The man said he knew Mr Cleat. He said he played golf with him and had him to dinner and everything.” He could feel his face reddening and his heart starting to thump.

Lucy said, “66 Mountjoy Avenue is one of Mr Vane's properties. It's on his special list. He doesn't allow anybody else to sell houses on his special list.”

“Where did you get the keys?” asked Liam.

“I looked in Mr Vane's desk.”

“He looked in Mr Vane's
desssk
!” said Courtney, through clenched teeth. “He's going to go
ballistic
!”

“I didn't know,” said John. He was close to tears. He kept swallowing and swallowing to clear the catch in his throat.

“Didn't you tell him?” Lucy asked Courtney. “Oh God, Courtney, you should have told him!”

Courtney looked at his Rolex. “How long ago did he leave? Maybe I could catch him before he gets there.”

“About ten minutes ago,” John told him.

What did it matter if he had given the key to Mr Rogers? He hadn't actually tried to sell him the house or anything like that. He wouldn't have known how.

Liam put an arm around his shoulder and said, “It's all right, John. It wasn't your fault. You weren't to know, were you? And you thought you were doing the right thing.” John nodded: he didn't trust himself to speak.

Lucy said, “All we can do is wait for Mr Rogers to bring back the key and hope that he isn't interested in making an offer.”

They were still talking about 66 Mountjoy Avenue when Mr Cleat came back, carrying his brown leather briefcase and a Tesco's shopping
bag containing a bottle of Lambrusco, a chocolate eclair and a frozen lasagne dinner-for-one. “What's going on?” he demanded. “This is supposed to be a working estate agency, not a mother's meeting.”

Liam kept his arm around John's shoulder. John appreciated his protectiveness but really wished that he wouldn't. It made him feel ridiculously young and stupid.

“John here's made a bit of a boo-boo,” said Liam. “A fellow came in and he gave him the keys to 66 Mountjoy Avenue.”

Mr Cleat put down his bags and blinked at John as if he didn't know who he was or where he had come from. “You did
what
?” he said.

“His name was Rogers,” said John. “He told me he knew you.”

“He does. He does know me. But you gave him the key to 66 Mountjoy Avenue?”

“It wasn't John's fault,” said Courtney. “I forgot to tell him about Mr Vane's special list.”

Mr Cleat opened and closed his mouth as if he were finding it difficult to breathe. He walked over to his desk and then he came back again. “What are we going to do now?” he asked. “What on earth are we going to do now?”

“I've got his name and address,” John told him. “And he did promise to bring the key straight back.”

Mr Cleat didn't seem to hear him. “Maybe the phone's still on. We could try calling him.”

“I could go round there if you like,” Courtney suggested.

“No, no,” Mr Cleat insisted. “I'll go round there myself. I don't know what Mr Vane's going to say. He's had another attack of asthma this week and he isn't in the best of sorts, believe me.”

John said, “I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I didn't know.”

Mr Cleat handed his Tesco bag to John and said, “Put this in the freezer compartment, will you? If anybody wants me, I'm out, and my mobile's out of order, too.”

With that, he hurried out of the office. John could see him running across to the car park on the other side of the High Road, dodging in between buses and lorries.

“I don't get this,” he said. “It's only a house. What difference does it make
who
sells it?”

“I don't get it, either,” said Lucy. “But if there's one thing you learn when you work for Blight, Simpson & Vane, it's ‘do what you're told and don't ask stupid questions.'”

“Oh,” said John. “I'm sorry. Do you want a cup of coffee?”

“Go on, then,” Lucy told him, and for the first time that day she smiled at him.

Mr Cleat came back over an hour later. He walked straight back into Mr Vane's office and dropped the keys to 66 Mountjoy Avenue back into the drawer. He looked pale and upset, as if he'd witnessed a road accident.

He came up to John and said, “We never,
ever
, release the keys to any of Mr Vane's properties. Do you understand me? Never! I'm willing to accept that this is your first day, and that Courtney failed to warn you about the special list. But if anybody makes an enquiry about any of our properties, you always check in the file first. If it's on Mr Vane's special list, then you take the interested party's name and particulars, and you leave a note on Mr Vane's desk for his attention. That's all you have to do.”

John nodded. “I've got it now. I'm sorry. I wouldn't have done it if I'd known.”

“Yes, well. Let's hope that Mr Vane is as forgiving as I am.”

John spent the rest of the afternoon pasting colour photographs of houses on to display cards, and answering the telephone. But every now and then he glanced over at Mr Cleat and wondered why he had got into such a blind panic about 66 Mountjoy Avenue. And why did Mr Vane insist on keeping a special selection of properties all for himself? John thought that he would be really pleased if one of his staff sold a house for him, not angry.

He was still thinking about it at the end of the day when Mr Cleat suddenly snapped his folder shut and said, “That's it. Five-thirty. I think we've all had enough for one day.”

He arrived home at six and his father was already grilling pork chops for supper. His mother was sitting at the kitchen table in her dressing-gown, with a cup of tea. Her hair had turned white since her stroke, and she looked much older than she really was. But at least she could talk and use her right hand, and she was able to shuffle around the house.

His father had aged, too, although maybe John was just growing up and seeing him clearly for the first time. John was now three or four inches taller than he was, and he had an aerial view of the bald spot on the top of his father's head, the size of a fifty-pence piece.

“Well, then, how's the property tycoon?” said his father.

John bent over and gave his mother a kiss. She reached up and touched his cheek and smiled her slanting little smile. “What time's Ruth coming back?” John asked.

“Oh, late. She's going out with that Peter Mills again. She can cook her own supper.”

His father turned the chops over with a fork and put the broccoli on to boil. “But how was your day? Did you like it?”

“Oh, it wasn't bad. I didn't do much. Bit of filing, that's all.”

“Didn't sell any million-pound houses, then?”

John thought about Mr Rogers, and the key that he shouldn't have given him, and shook his head.

“But you think you're going to like it?”

“I don't know. I suppose so.”

His father said, “That's the trouble with you. You drift through life not knowing what you want. No ambition, that's your problem. No targets. Your sister's the same. She's going to end up married to some stupid no-hoper like Peter Mills, with three kiddies hanging round her ankles before she's twenty-one, and a two-bedroomed council flat in East Croydon.”

“Come on, Reg,” chided his mother, out of the side of her mouth. “It's only his first day.”

They sat around the kitchen table and ate their supper. John's father had to cut his mother's supper up into small pieces, like a child's meal, so that she
could eat it all with a spoon. Afterwards, John washed up the dishes and put them away. His mother and father were sitting on the sofa watching
Coronation Street
. “I'm just going out for a bit,” he told them.

“Not too late,” his father warned him. “Don't forget you've got work tomorrow.”

How could I possibly forget
? he thought, as he stood in front of his bedroom mirror combing his hair.
I've had just about the worst day in my entire life and it's probably going to be even worse tomorrow
. He opened his wardrobe door. Inside were dozens of pinups of girls and rock stars and Crystal Palace football team. He picked out a black Yves St Laurent sweatshirt which his father had bought for £12 from another cabbie. It was probably a fake but it was his favourite. He splashed himself with aftershave and left the house by the back door.

Down by the parade of shops he met four or five of his friends. They were larking around outside the local corner shop, smoking and teasing some girls. He joined in, and for the next two hours he forgot all about Blight, Simpson & Vane, and Mr Rogers, and 66 Mountjoy Avenue.

The next day he made himself some sandwiches before he left home, and he made sure that he arrived at work at five minutes to nine. Mr Cleat was already there, sorting through a heap of
contracts. “Good morning,” he said, coldly, as if it were just as much of a sin to turn up five minutes early as it was to turn up five minutes late.

“Oh. Good morning, Mr Cleat. Another hot one, eh?”

“Another hot what?”

“Well, you know. Day?”

Mr Cleat sniffed. “Make me a cup of tea, would you. And I wouldn't mind a touch more sugar than yesterday. I'm not a diabetic.”

John went to put on the kettle. As he was waiting for it to boil, Liam arrived. John heard him say, “Good morning, Mr Cleat. Another hot one, eh?”