‘Do you know how I could get in touch with Michael Bancroft? Do you remember his address?’
‘You’d have to check the voters’ register. It was somewhere north of Enfield, that I do remember, but it was in the sticks. A big house, falling to bits. Funny place for two teenage boys to end up. It was an old man’s house. But they said they liked it.’ He thought for a second. ‘Bonamy Lodge. That’s what it was called.’
I thanked the DI for his time and he wished me luck. ‘Let me know what happens, if you get the chance. Alex Bancroft is one of those people – you sleep better for knowing they’re a long way away from you.’
I promised I would and hung up. The voters’ register was a quick and easy way to confirm that Michael Bancroft still lived at Bonamy Lodge, and once I had the postcode I was able to get directions to it in a couple of seconds. Directory enquiries broke the bad news that the landline was out of service. The drive up to Enfield cut straight through North London, and if I hadn’t been so completely in the doghouse I might not have bothered with it, given that I would be going on spec. But I needed to do anything and everything to make myself look better in the eyes of the bosses. If that meant dashing around on a wild goose chase, so be it. I turned to see Liv tidying her desk with the air of one who has finished a task. ‘Done?’
‘All ready for the boys when they get back.’
‘In that case, do you feel like taking a trip with me?’ I explained quickly where I wanted to go, and why.
‘Sounds like fun. What are we waiting for?’
I piled my things together and stood up. ‘Absolutely nothing. Let’s go.’
There was something liberating about fleeing the office. I should have taken a bit more time, though, because I might have noticed that my phone was perilously low on battery. Ten minutes into our journey it began to beep despairingly.
‘Shit.’ I picked up my bag and shoved it at Liv without taking my eyes off the road. ‘Make it stop whining, for God’s sake. Can you have a look in the glove box and see if my charger is in there?’
‘I have and it’s not,’ she announced a couple of seconds later. ‘Bad luck.’
‘I lent it to Derwent a couple of days ago. I usually charge my phone overnight, but …’
‘Yeah, I know. You were distracted. I’ve got mine.’
‘Good for you. Did you bring a radio?’
‘Yes.’ She waggled it on the edge of my vision.
‘Okay. So at least one of us is behaving professionally.’
Liv was poking at the radio handset. ‘The only thing is, this one isn’t working.’
‘You’re kidding.’
She turned up the volume so I could hear the static. ‘That’s the main set.’
It should have been constant transmission to and from the control room, not featureless fuzz. She went through the channels.
Click … click … click
… Every one was white noise. ‘Sorry. I knew it was playing up, but I thought it would be okay.’
‘Well, I didn’t bring one at all.’ I sighed. ‘Never tell anyone about this. We’ll get a reputation for being dim birds who don’t remember to check their equipment.’
‘Er, and you’re saying we’re not? We’ve got one phone between us and no radio. I don’t think we should be patting ourselves on the back.’
‘All right, I wasn’t going to go that far. I’m just warning you not to give anyone a reason to think we’re bimbos. They don’t need much excuse. No unforced errors.’
‘I’ll try to remember.’
‘I bet Special Branch wasn’t like this.’
‘Are you kidding? It was twenty times worse. At least Godley treats you like a human being. My last boss was a total pig.’
We spent the remainder of the journey swapping horror stories. It was hard for anyone who wasn’t in the job to understand the pervasive culture of chauvinism, the lip service that was paid to equality. By its very nature policing was a profession that attracted conservative-with-a-small-c types, those who appreciated traditional values that included women knowing their place. It didn’t do to be too sensitive about that sort of thing. It was too easy to get a reputation for being humourless, for being touchy, for being a pain. So you learned, even if it didn’t come naturally, to laugh when you were mocked, to give as good as you got, and to be on your guard against giving anything away. I took it in my stride. Liv had found it tougher to get used to.
‘For the first few years, I never wanted anyone to find out I was gay. Then I decided there was no point in hiding any more.’
‘Yeah, but why should you tell people? I don’t tell everyone what I do and who I sleep with. Why should you?’
‘Because it has to do with who I am. And it keeps the creeps at bay.’
‘But you must get men offering to show you the error of your ways.’
‘Oh, obviously. Just for my own good, so I realise what I’m missing out on. Then there are the ones who seem nice enough, but they’re generally working up to asking if they can watch some time, or suggesting my girlfriend and I might like to spice things up by trying a threesome.’
‘How tempting.’
‘I haven’t found it too difficult to say no, but never say never.’
‘Oh, I think you can say never in some circumstances.’
She snorted with amusement. ‘Speaking of never saying never, did I see you and Rob having a quiet moment together earlier? Anything you want to tell me?’
‘Not really.’ I couldn’t hide the smile that spread across my face, though, and she clapped her hands.
‘Thought so.’
‘Jesus, you’re like a witch. How did you know?’
‘I watch body language. You both looked like you were trying too hard to be serious when you came out of the interview room.’
‘Did anyone else notice?’ I was mildly disturbed that we had been so obvious.
‘I really doubt it. They were all fired up about arresting the Bancrofts.’
I turned my wrist so I could see my watch. ‘They’ll have done it by now, probably. All over. They might have found Patricia.’
‘Or her body.’
Liv was right, but it still made my mood plummet. I couldn’t stand to think of her poor parents. My phone call would have given them hope for the first time in years, and it would be my responsibility to take it away again if the news wasn’t good. Not for the first time, I cursed DS Rai. If he’d only done a better job and paid more attention to his own case, I could have left the Farinellis alone until there was some real news either way. The car was silent for the next few minutes, until we reached the outskirts of Enfield and found the right road out of town.
‘We’re looking for a big house set back from the road. Bonamy Lodge is the name. It was falling to bits ten years ago, according to DI Stone, so it probably won’t be too grand.’
‘Got it.’
The road was lined with hedgerows and it was hard to see houses until you were more or less on top of them. I nudged the car along the road, slowing down and speeding up until Liv muttered something about needing a sick bag.
‘There’s not a lot I can do.’
‘You could maintain a steady speed that isn’t too fast so I can actually read the house names – ooh, there it is.’ She pointed across me.
I wrenched the steering wheel around and the car shot through the narrow gates painted with the house’s name. Gravel crunched under the wheels but it was a long time since the driveway had been looked after; green weeds had seeded across it and I stopped on a large bald patch right outside the front door which seemed to be where every visitor to the house parked.
‘This is cosy,’ Liv commented, peering up.
‘I’m not familiar with that definition of cosy.’ The house was a brooding Edwardian lump, grey and forbidding in a coating of pebbledash that did nothing to make it more homely. It was gabled left, right and centre, as if the architect had been stuck for inspiration and scattered them rashly where the design looked too plain. Time had not been kind to it. The woodwork was weathered and peeling, the roof gappy where slates had fallen off and had not been replaced. A length of guttering on the right was sagging under the weight of a young sycamore tree. The windows were dark and dusty. It was starting to look as if I wasn’t going to get to talk to Michael Bancroft after all.
We both got out of the car and I went up to the front door. The doorbell was dead, so I rapped with the knocker. It sounded too loud. Behind me, an occasional car swished past, and birds were singing in the tall evergreen trees that lined the borders of the property, but there were no other sounds. The trees were overgrown, seriously unkempt, and did a good job of screening the place from the road and its neighbours. I was on the edge and tried to work out if it was lack of sleep or delayed reaction to the news that I had been being watched that was causing my nerves to jangle.
There was no reply to my knock; I sort of hadn’t expected one. I stepped backwards, shading my eyes as I looked up at the windows on the first floor for any signs of life.
‘What do you think?’
Liv had crunched across the gravel and was standing on tiptoe, peering in through a window. ‘Not much in the way of furniture. It looks derelict.’ ‘Maybe he’s moved since the last time the register was updated.’
‘Maybe he’s dead.’
I frowned at her. ‘That’s your answer for everything, isn’t it?’
‘People do die, Maeve.’ She started towards the side of the house. ‘I’ll check around the back.’
‘Okay.’ I crossed the gravel to the window at the other side of the front door and shaded my eyes to see what I could of the interior. It was a dining room, a large and shadowy room with a dusty table in the middle surrounded by scroll-backed chairs. There was nothing to say the room was in use, but the fact that there was furniture at all was a hopeful sign. I returned to the front door and knelt down to peer through the letterbox. I was lucky; there was no draught excluder and I had a clear view of the parquet floor, the square-edged wooden staircase, the stained-glass window halfway up the stairs that cast a reddish glow over the interior. I sat back on my heels, frowning, and that was how Liv found me when she came back.
‘I’ve gone all the way around and I haven’t seen anything to make me think there’s someone living here.’
‘Rubbish bin?’
‘Outside the back door, empty.’
‘Note for the milkman?’
‘Now you’re reaching.’
I stood up. ‘Okay. Have a look through there and tell me what you think.’
She bent down and pushed open the flap of the letterbox so she could see in, much as I had. ‘A whole lot of nothing.’
‘Right. Look down.’
‘Two flyers for fast-food restaurants and a leaflet that looks to be advertising the services of a cleaning company. I think he should phone up. He looks to be in dire need of a good clear-out.’ She let the flap fall and turned to me. ‘Am I supposed to be interested in any of that? It’s just junk mail.’
‘Exactly. What’s the first thing you do every day when you get in from work?’
There was a glint in her eye as she opened her mouth to answer and I held up my hand. ‘Let me be completely clear, I’m not just curious about how you say hello to your girlfriend. I mean, what’s the first thing you do when you unlock the front door?’
She thought for a second. ‘If I’m home first, pick up the post.’
‘And?’
‘The junk mail.’
‘Every day. Handfuls of it. Even allowing for the fact that we’re in a reasonably rural area, you can’t tell me that the stuff in there is more than one or two days of deliveries.’
‘Huh. You’re right. So who’s been getting rid of it?’
Instead of answering, I knocked again, listening to the sound echo through the house as the reverberations died away. We waited for a full minute, but there was no noise from inside.
‘I’d really like to get in and have a look around.’ I leaned back to look up at the windows again.
‘Well, why don’t you? You’ve got your Asp in the car. A quick knock to the kitchen window and a leg-up for me, and Bob’s your uncle.’
‘I’m sure you’re not suggesting we should break in. We need a warrant. The only exception to the rule I can think of is section seventeen of PACE: “saving life or limb”. And I’m not aware of either being in jeopardy.’
Liv leaned in, her ear to the wood of the door. ‘Did you hear that?’
‘What?’
‘I thought I heard someone call for help.’
‘Yeah, right.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Do you want to go in or not?’
I did, as it happened. ‘You must have excellent hearing. Where’s this window?’
‘Get your Asp and follow me.’
I got my Maglite as well as my extendable baton and walked around to the back of the house where a small window by the back door had a useful rain butt underneath it.
‘Are you sure you’ll fit through there?’
‘Positive.’
‘Stand back, then.’ I shielded my face with one arm and hit the window in the centre, a sharp tap with the end of the baton that sent cracks across the glass and knocked a few triangles of it to the floor inside. No one came running at the sound of the blow, or the tinkling chips of glass as they landed. I ran the Asp around the edge of the frame, knocking out the jagged edges as best I could. It wasn’t even close to safe.
‘You’ll tear yourself to ribbons on that, Liv.’
‘I’ll put this over the windowsill.’ She had found a sack, a rough-looking thing that had once held coal. ‘Good thing I decided to wear black today.’
‘Me too.’ I was craning to see in through the empty window. ‘I don’t think this kitchen has been cleaned in recent memory, and I’m fairly sure the rest of the house is in a similar state.’
‘Let’s have a look.’ She elbowed me to one side and laid the sack over the edge of the window.
‘Do you need a leg-up?’
‘I can manage.’ She clambered onto the rain butt and perched on the windowsill for a second, before slipping inside with a small thud and a crunch of broken glass. Her voice sounded hollow when she spoke, echoing in the sparsely furnished room. ‘I’ll open the back door.’
I went around and waited, listening to her fumbling to draw the bolts and turn the key in the door. The lock was stiff and uncooperative. From the cobwebs spun across the door, no one had used it for a long time, and when Liv finally got it open, she had to drag it back across the floor. The wood made a shrieking noise against the tiles that set my teeth on edge. I leaned my shoulder against it and pushed as she pulled, and between the two of us we got the door to open wide enough that I could slide through the gap. The air that greeted me was unexpectedly fresh and cold. I looked around, noticing the vent in the wall that was breathing a chilly draught on the side of my face, the gap at the edge of the tiles where the skirting board didn’t quite meet the floor. The house was far less solid than it pretended to be. The wind tossing the conifers outside moved through it with a whine that might almost have been a lament.