I opened the gate-lodge front door onto a burst of warmth.
‘Finnie, thank God!’ Paddy’s voice came from the kitchen. ‘Where the hell have you been? I came home to tell you—’
‘I’ve got a friend with me, Pad-Thai,’ I shouted back, in warning. The kitchen went quiet and Shannon and I gave each other a quick look.
‘We can do it another time,’ she began.
I shushed her. ‘No, this is fine. Actually, this is perfect. Paddy’s adopted too. Closed adoption out of the care system, which might not be anything like your situation, but he’s bound to be more use to you than, well, me.’
He had come round the corner to the front door and was staring at me, listening to me tell a complete stranger intimate details about his life.
‘Paddy, this is Shannon. She’s one of the neighbours from just down the way there. We’ve been for a walk.’
‘Maybe I should just—’ Shannon tried again.
‘I must have sounded like a right old Neanderthal there,’ said Paddy, swinging into action in charmer mode. ‘I don’t usually demand to know why my wife left her kitchen, Shannon. Please stay and have some lunch. Give me your coat.’
‘Paddy’s worried about his city girl getting eaten by wolves in the woods,’ I said, trying as hard as him to turn it harmless. Shannon was looking from one of us to the other with narrowed eyes, as she slipped out of her coat and handed it to me. ‘Or hares, eh? Revenge of the ten-foot rabbit.’ She kept her cap on and swapped her sunglasses for a lighter pair.
‘Go through and sit,’ Paddy said. ‘I’ve got soup heating up. I’ll make toast.’
I led Shannon to the living room. Paddy had laid a fire and lit a match and the flames were beginning to lick around the kindling sticks.
‘Cosy,’ Shannon said. ‘And a kind man who cooks. You’ve hit the jackpot there, Finnie.’
I wrinkled my nose at her. I still didn’t know how old she was, with her strange colouring and her face unmarked after a lifetime shaded from the sun. But she didn’t seem cut out to be single – although, even as I thought it, I wondered what I meant by that. Maybe she’d had disappointments, if she really was forty, or maybe she’d scarcely started thinking about it yet, if she was closer to the twenty end. Or maybe – and this seemed a strong possibility – the search for her birth mother had got in the way of other searches.
‘Otherwise we’d starve,’ I said. ‘I’m no cook. And my kebab-stand-finding skills are not much use to me down here. Thank God for Paddy.’
‘Has he found his biological family?’ she said, as I gestured her to sit.
But I couldn’t think of a reply. On the coffee-table – unmistakable, still with the upside-down mob cap of shiny paper it had come in – was a potted Christmas cactus. The same one. There was a wilted section where Paddy had crushed it, carrying it in the dark.
‘Are you a vegetarian or anything?’ I said. ‘I’ll check what he’s making, this paragon of mine.’
‘I eat chicken,’ she said. ‘You know, once I’ve wrung their necks.’
‘Oh, yeah.’ I went through to the kitchen, pulling the door closed at my back.
Paddy was stirring a bowl of soup, halfway through its microwave time. When he had re-covered it and put it back in, I took him in my arms and pulled his head down onto my shoulder.
‘Jesus, that was close,’ he said. ‘I nearly shouted the news through the house.’
‘The news that you went back?’ I said. ‘I saw the plant. Oh, my God, Paddy. How bad was it?’
He burrowed his head deep into me as if he was trying to scrub the memory off onto my skin. ‘Don’t ask,’ he said. I could feel his words warming my neck. ‘I want to forget before it gets its claws into me. If I blank it out all day and manage not to dream about it tonight, I might be lucky.’
The tomato soup was beginning to bubble in the microwave, seething and splatting as it turned. As if it was alive.
‘Are there flies?’ I whispered.
Paddy shuddered. ‘Someone needs to get in there and officially “find” them,’ he said. His close breath felt wet as well as hot now, making my neck prickle.
‘Sorry, lovebirds!’ said Shannon, suddenly in the doorway.
Paddy and I broke apart. ‘I thought I should tell you I’m allergic to mushrooms.’ She sniffed and smiled.
‘All mushrooms?’ Paddy said. ‘Even just ordinary ones?’
‘Even Campbell’s ones.’
‘I wouldn’t eat wild mushrooms either,’ I said. ‘Death wish.’ I pressed my lips closed.
‘You eat wild mushrooms all the time,’ Paddy said. ‘I use three different kinds in that risotto you like.’
‘He’s a keeper,’ said Shannon. ‘It’s a shame, too, because there’s lovely trumpets and puffballs up in the woods and I can’t eat any of them.’
‘Up in the woods,’ said Paddy. ‘Right, right, up in the woods. Lovatt told me about everyone roaming in the grounds. Never mentioned the mushrooms.’
‘Did he?’ I said. ‘That’s a relief because that’s where Shannon and me have just been. We came up over the shortcut from the back of the high street – I’ll show you – and then took a tramp up the drive and back. It’s a nice house. I’m looking forward to getting a neb inside it when they get back from their holidays.’
‘That’s what I wanted to tell you,’ Paddy said. ‘No, it’s okay, Shannon.’ She had started murmuring and edging towards the door. ‘This is Simmerton gossip, not private business. Or it soon will be. And it’s warmer through here till the fire gets properly away.’ He paused. ‘Julie reckons they’re not on holiday.’
‘What?’ said Shannon. ‘Who’s Julie?’
I was cutting slices of bread and I kept going, concentrating on not slicing into my fingers. There was a jagged place in the loaf where my hand had jerked at his words.
‘She’s the office manager at DDL,’ Paddy said. ‘She filed the partnership paperwork I signed and something about it caught her attention. She’d typed up the originals, you see.’
‘Typed up?’ I said. ‘On an Olivetti?’
‘Lovatt’s pretty old-fashioned,’ Paddy said. At least he was using the present tense, not hesitating and swallowing. ‘Anyway, Julie noticed a couple of changes in the survivorship wording.’
That word stilled the breadknife in my hand. I laid it down and wiped my palm on my jeans.
‘And she talked to Abby about it,’ Paddy went on.
‘Who’s Abby?’ Shannon said.
‘Trainee solicitor,’ said Paddy. ‘So Abby had a quick shufti and she agrees.’
‘About what?’ I said, trying to make my strain into a joke, because there was no way on earth I could hide it. ‘Spit it out, for God’s sake, Paddy.’
‘Abby and Julie reckon they’ve gone for good.’
For a moment no one spoke.
Shannon broke the silence. ‘It did seem strange timing,’ she said. ‘Sonsie and Adam at the church said it seemed strange, Finnie, didn’t they?’
But I still couldn’t answer. I opened the fridge door, as the toast popped up, buying myself a moment. Then I didn’t do anything. Just stood there.
‘Telling you, Finnie, he’s a keeper,’ Shannon said, over my shoulder. ‘Mushroom risottos and hot puddings.’
‘Sorry?’ I said.
‘Rhubarb crumble,’ she said. ‘In the fridge. It’s not every man would be making crumbles within days of moving house. You should hold on hard to this one.’
By the time I got the power of speech back, Paddy was ferrying plates of soup through to the table in the living room. ‘So what does Julie reckon they’re up to?’ I called after him. ‘If it’s not a straightforward holiday.’
‘Reckons they’ve hooked it,’ Paddy said, coming back, banging the tray against his legs, like a tambourine. ‘Reckons they’ve done a runner. Abby too. Come through while it’s still hot.’
I took the breadboard and butter dish and slid into my seat.
‘Done a runner as in…?’ I said.
‘Where does that leave you two?’ said Shannon.
‘That’s what made Julie suspicious,’ Paddy said. ‘They usually go to Norfolk, France at a push, so Brazil was weird to start with, you know. And then the partnership papers I signed have been amended to provide for me being left as sole partner if the other two partner positions are rendered derelict. Even the gate-lodge rent isn’t a straightforward short-assured tenancy. It’s got provision for five years with real rent, pegged to the rate of inflation, and an option to buy.’
I was stirring my soup slowly across and back. Paddy had whirled cream onto it and I was making trails in the spiral, turning the sharp lines into a pink blur across the surface of the bowl. I didn’t understand why he was saying all this in front of a stranger.
‘What does “rendered derelict” mean?’ Shannon said.
‘Oh, just vacated by death or disbarment,’ said Paddy. ‘It’s pretty standard language. It’s the fact of it being added that’s so strange. I was supposed to serve a probationary period and then we’d revisit all that. And this house was definitely just a standard short-assured when we took it on. Right, Finnie?’
‘Search me,’ I said. ‘But you told me you’d read the papers before you signed them. How could he change them?’
‘I read PDFs,’ Paddy said. ‘It never occurred to me he’d change the draft. I just signed the lot.’ I tried hard to keep my face neutral. I was sure Paddy had said he’d read the papers Lovatt showed him up at the house.
‘Death or disbarment,’ Shannon said. ‘Not just taking off. Or do you get disbarred for leaving your practice?’
‘Well, no,’ Paddy said. ‘But that’s the other thing. Brazil, see? South America?’
‘No,’ Shannon said.
‘The great train robbery,’ I said.
‘Right,’ said Paddy. ‘No extradition.’
‘You reckon Lovatt and Tuft have run away to somewhere safe because they’ve done something?’ I said. ‘Something that makes it problematic to stay here? Something that’ll get him disbarred?’
‘But that’s crazy,’ Shannon said. ‘They’re paragons of virtue. They raise money and do thankless work that badly needs done. Why on earth would they need to go on the lam? It’s ridiculous.’
I nodded. It was hard to see Lovatt Dudgeon as a desperado, but then it was just as hard to see him as a player in a murdersuicide. I knew it had happened because I’d seen it with my own eyes, but it still made no sense whatsoever. ‘About the probation,’ I said. ‘Maybe you made a really good first impression. Maybe Lovatt decided to cut to the chase and miss out all the…’ Even to my ears it sounded unlikely. ‘But that doesn’t explain the tenancy changing,’ I added. I glanced at Shannon. She was sipping soup carefully from the edge of her spoon as if it was too hot to eat properly. Did people with albinism have sensitive mouths as well as sensitive skin and eyes? I didn’t know.
I was facing the window, and as I watched Shannon, wondering if she was all right, I saw movement out there. Mr Sloan was passing on his way up the drive. I couldn’t see his feet, but I could tell by the way one arm was stretched out in front of him and the way he was walking in big steps leaning backwards, that he was being pulled along by a small dog. The first thought that crossed my mind was that I’d keep an eye on our wheelie-bin to see if he dropped his full bags in there, like those kids had dropped in their cheese rinds and sweetie wrappers.
‘’Scuse me,’ I said, jumping up and heading out. I grabbed a cardie on my way past the coat pegs. I knew he walked up the drive all the time and there was no reason he’d suddenly go into the house but I had to make sure, or at least find out if he was the kind of man who could cope with a sight like that.
‘Mr Sloan?’ I said, as I pulled the door to. He had made good progress. There were two small dogs, as it happened, tugging at him from the end of a branching red lead.
He twisted round to see me. ‘Oh, hello!’ he said. ‘Another day off, is it?’
I jogged to catch up with him, my hands driven down deep in my cardigan pockets.
‘How’s your wife?’ I said. ‘Still under the weather?’ The two little dogs had stopped tugging him onwards and started tugging him back to see if I was interesting. They were some kind of terrier, I thought, with long silky coats and brown marks in the corners of their eyes. One of them bared its teeth at me.
‘Tummy’s better,’ said Mr Sloan. ‘Thanks for asking. But she’s gone over on her ankle. It’s up like a melon, so she’s resting it.’
‘Best thing,’ I said. ‘I’ll pop in if you think she’d appreciate it. Doesn’t have to be filed under a church visit,’ I added, seeing his face fall. ‘We could call it being neighbourly. I’ve already met Shannon.’
‘Oh, have you?’ he said sourly. ‘Stop it, Sadie!’ One of the little dogs had her lead in her teeth and was shaking her head and growling. The poo bags tied onto it near the handle rustled and she growled harder. ‘Well, I would have spared you that.’
‘Spared me what? Meeting Shannon?’
‘She’s no better than she should be. I can see into that back room from the top of my garden, unless she’s got the curtains tight shut and pegged together.’
I would have dismissed it as gossip if it hadn’t been for the way she’d shouted, ‘No,’ when I put my hand on the door and the way she hadn’t answered when I asked what her second business was.
‘So why don’t the Dudgeons just sling her out?’
Mr Sloan staggered to the side as the two dogs started pulling up the drive again. ‘I’ll walk with you,’ I said, falling into step. ‘Why don’t they evict her?’
‘It’s not their way. They’ve shifted us onto a lifetime lease. We didn’t even have to ask. It just came through the post to be signed. I like to think it’s our reward for keeping the place up as nicely as we do. We’ve retiled all round the kitchen. Painted and papered upstairs.’
‘When?’ I asked.
‘When what?’ said Mr Sloan.
When did the Dudgeons hand over a new tenancy agreement, was the answer but since he’d challenged me as boldly as all that there was no way I could keep digging. It was none of my business.
‘Oh, I’m just thinking they were certainly busy before they went off on their holidays. Paddy was saying Lovatt had done a lot of overdue paperwork in one big go. I just wondered if yours was some of it.’
‘Holiday?’ Mr Sloan said. ‘What holiday?’
‘Haven’t you heard?’ I said. ‘They’ve gone off on a trip to South America.’
‘When was this?’ he demanded.
I thought for a while before answering, unsure of how much I should know about their movements. I watched the rippling backs of the two little dogs. Their silk coats gleamed in the low light of the drive and their breath plumed out in front of them in quick puffs as they panted with the effort of dragging Mr Sloan at their pace.
‘Monday or Tuesday, I think,’ I said at last.
‘Lovatt and Tuft Dudgeon have never gone off to South America,’ he said. ‘Someone’s been having you on. Mrs Dudgeon stopped at my gate on Monday lunchtime while I was chipping my prunings and never said a word about any holiday.’
‘Would it have come up?’ I said. ‘What were you talking about?’
‘It did come up!’ he said. ‘She was saying for me to come and take some sacks of leaf mould for my beds. Her gardener makes more and more every year and they have no use for it now they’ve got their place so low-maintenance. But she said to mind and chap the door and she’d show me which ones were well-rotted and ready to go.’
‘Maybe it was a surprise,’ I said. My head was skirling with trying to keep the story afloat and the knowledge submerged. Still, I tucked away the titbit that there was a Widdershins gardener. Someone who might have a key to the kitchen door and might go in for a pee or a glass of water and end this waiting.
‘No chance,’ said Mr Sloan. ‘Lovatt knew how busy she was with her committees. He’d never whisk her off like that and cause her a lot of bother when she got back again.’
‘That’s a good point,’ I said. ‘You never think of it when you see grand gestures on the films, do you? It’s a lot of hassle for whoever’s getting the surprise.’
‘I’ll knock when I get up there,’ Mr Sloan said, setting my pulse bumping. ‘Let Mrs Dudgeon know there’s a silly tale going round. It’s the least I can do. They’ve been good to Myna and me.’
‘Right,’ I said. I stole a glance at him from the side of my eye. He looked hale enough, although he had to be well into his seventies. But would the sight on the kitchen floor stop his heart? Would he get as far as the kitchen, though? If he saw the front door open and got no answer to his knocking, would he even go in?
‘Hoo,’ I said. ‘I’m going to head back, Mr Sloan. I can’t keep up with you. You’re as fit as a flea!’
‘Nothing wrong with me,’ he said. ‘I’ve done the same exercises every morning since my national service. My wife doesn’t keep well, but there’s nothing amiss at my end.’
That was as close to a guarantee as I was going to get so I left him to it and turned back, shivering and pulling my cardigan up around my ears.
Paddy was outside the lodge, hands on hips. Shannon stood beside him, her coat back on but still wearing her indoor glasses.
‘Where did you go rushing off to?’ Paddy said. ‘Aren’t you freezing?’
‘I saw Mr Sloan,’ I said. ‘I wanted to ask after his wife. And ask if anything funny had happened with his cottage.’
‘And has it?’ said Shannon.
‘Yep,’ I told them. I shuddered. Paddy took off the fleece he was wearing and draped it round my shoulders. ‘They’ve been switched to a lifetime lease. I think Julie and Abby are right. I think the Dudgeons got you down here and signed up, got me installed to take over Tuft’s committee work, sorted all their tenants out and made a plan to leave.’
‘It’s just so strange,’ Paddy said. ‘I agree it looks that way, Finnie, but it’s a really strange way to go about whatever it is they were trying to do.’
‘I’m going to check with their gardener too,’ I said. ‘See if they paid him off. I don’t suppose you know who it is, do you, Shannon?’
‘It’s a van with a green lawn on the side. Striped green, you know?’
‘It just makes no sense,’ Paddy said. ‘What’s the point of installing a new partner in a firm he’s leaving behind? If he’s going to Brazil because he can’t be forced out again, what’s the point of hanging on to the firm at all? We can’t pay him over there.’
I wished I could send him a signal to dial it down a bit. He was only running with what I had started, but he didn’t know the Dudgeons and he should have been able to cope with them doing something surprising. In fact, he should be annoyed with his new boss for leaving him in the lurch rather than mystified and disbelieving, like Shannon and Mr Sloan were ‒ after all, they had known Lovatt for months and years.
‘Maybe the choice of Brazil’s got nothing to do with extradition,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s just a good place to hide.’
‘Hide from what?’ Paddy said. ‘He’s a good man who does good work, like Shannon said. And Tuft’s a fairy godmother who helps him.’
‘Everyone’s got dark places,’ I said. ‘Paddy, I don’t know how much you know about why Lovatt specialised in adoption law, but Sonsie on the church committee didn’t hang back.’
Paddy was nodding. ‘I heard,’ he said softly. ‘Julie told me. But that makes it even harder to believe. After all he’d suffered, he’d be the last…’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ said Shannon. She waited until both of us were looking at her – gazing at our reflections in her mirror shades – before she went on. ‘Finnie, you asked me if I was looking for my birth family. Well, the truth is I looked for my mother first but she had died. So now I’m looking for my brother. Or, at least, I’m trying to find out what happened to him. And I’m here in Simmerton because I think what happened to him was Lovatt Dudgeon.’