George and Cynthia surveyed the house from the other side of the road over a line of parked cars. It had two storeys similar to the one where the roast lamb was being served but in a substantially worse state of repair. An overflowing waste bin stood by the front door and cardboard boxes had been piled up on the pavement outside, leaning against a small wall running along the front. The paintwork round the windows was peeling and the patch of garden between the wall and the house hadn’t been tended for a long time. But what really drew their attention was the garage, which ran away from the house at an angle of forty-five degrees.
“How did you know about this house?” George asked.
“I ran a general check for houses with garages in the area. This was the closest to the one we just visited.”
He nodded in appreciation. “Garage at an angle from the house—this has to be worth a look.”
Before Cynthia had the chance to object, he strode across the road and knocked on the front door. She followed in his wake. The door was opened by a large man wearing a flat cap, jeans and a T-shirt. Both the jeans and the shirt looked as though they hadn’t seen a washing machine for some time. “What do you want?” he enquired.
“We heard the house was for sale,” George replied.
“Oh yeah.” The man crossed his arms, showing off the muscles under the shirt. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“We were told by the owners.”
“Well, we’re the tenants and I haven’t been told. We’re moving out and the story I had was they had some new people moving in.”
“Any chance of taking a quick look around inside?”
One punch, Cynthia thought, and I’ll be scraping George up from the path. She held her breath. The man pushed his fist into the palm of his other hand. “I suppose so,” he replied finally. “As long as you don’t get in our way. We’re behind with the packing as it is. My partner will take you round. Just a moment.” He retreated back into the house. “Aggie,” he screamed. Cynthia’s nerves were already sufficiently shredded that the scream sent a chill right down into her gut. She heard footsteps coming down a staircase at the back of the hallway.
“Si tu me cris encore une fois comme c¸a, je vais sortir de mes gands, mais vraiment.” The voluble flow of French abruptly halted as a young woman appeared in front of them. Her dark hair was pushed untidily under a baseball cap and she had a smudge of dust down one side of her face, although her jeans and shirt looked marginally cleaner than her companion’s. “Who are you?” The voice was lightly accented.
“They’re thinking of buying the house,” the man explained.
“Buying this place—you must be fucking mad.”
“They want to look around.”
“Well, we’re only tenants and we’re leaving. Why should we stop them?” She waved at Cynthia and George to come in. “What do you want to see? I mean, there are the usual rooms down here, living, kitchen, dining and so on.”
“What about upstairs?” George enquired.
“Three bedrooms and a bathroom but there’s crap everywhere and our stuff. Moving around could be a problem.”
“Well, that’s OK; we’d probably tear everything out anyway.”
She nodded. “A wise decision.”
“However, one thing I would like to look at is the garage, to see if I can get my car in there.”
She shrugged. “Be my guest. We’ve never been in there. If it’s locked, I don’t know where the key is. There’s also a door to it off the kitchen which we never opened. That’s locked as well.”
“And you don’t know where that key is either?”
“Ha-ha, very funny—it’s on the ledge above the door. I will tell you the previous tenant told me it was a nightmare trying to get his car in. The turn is too tight and the garage is too small. Go take a look—I’ve wasted enough time.” With that she disappeared back up the stairs. Of the man there was no sign.
George walked gingerly forward past the staircase to the back part of the house where he supposed the kitchen might be and Cynthia followed him. She stopped with a hand over her mouth at the scene which confronted them. The whole place was filthy with dirty crockery piled in the sink and the tiled floor was covered in a layer of dirt. “Over there,” George indicated and did a wheel round to a door. He felt around over the top of it and grasped the key in his hand. After he’d brushed off the dust, he inserted it into the lock. It fitted but would only turn around halfway round until he applied as much force as he could muster. With a grinding noise the lock shunted back. He then pulled and pushed at the door but to no avail. As a last resort he applied his shoulder to it and suddenly it burst open.
As they peered inside Cynthia once again put her hand over her mouth, but this time the reaction was pure surprise. Whatever she might have expected, it wasn’t this. The garage was totally empty. Not only that but it looked as though it might have been steam-cleaned at one time to remove every single object which might ever have been there. George wandered round, occasionally putting the palm of his hand against the white-painted walls and inspecting spider’s webs which had spread in the corners. He jabbed at the up and over door which gave access from outside and it moved a little with the push. Then he gave the concrete floor a close inspection before he turned back to Cynthia, who had remained on the threshold.
“You can see nobody’s been in here for a very long time.” He pointed downwards. “And the floor’s been re-laid at some point. Over there in the corner you can see it doesn’t quite meet.” He walked back towards where Cynthia was standing. “This door hasn’t been opened for even longer. Whoever did the work in here came in from outside and presumably once the previous tenant she talked about realised he couldn’t get his car in here, he left it out on the street.” He examined the thick line of accumulated grease and dirt which ran round the inside of the door. Then with an exclamation he knelt down with his nose virtually touching one spot. He scratched away at it with his finger. Then he produced a penknife from his pocket and cut in more deeply until some blackened fragments came away. He was in the process of inserting the fragments into an envelope and stowing them away when he heard a movement behind them.
“What are you doing?” The Frenchwoman was standing there with hands on hips.
George straightened up. “Having a look to see how much work needs doing to bring this place back into shape. We’re very keen on it.”
She gave a sniff. “As I told you before, you must be fucking mad.” Her tongue rolled round the expletive to give it extra impact.
“If we can’t buy it,” George continued undaunted, “we’d like to have a go at renting it. Who’s the letting agency—can you tell me?”
“Leonia they’re called, in Streatham High Road. I should know—they don’t want to give us our deposit back! The place was a tip when we moved in but they don’t want to accept that.”
“I’m sure it was. I’ll put in a word if you like.”
The man appeared alongside the woman. “That would be good, mate, but right now we want you out of here.”
They took the hint and when they were back outside Cynthia hooked her arm into George’s. “We’re getting rather good at being thrown out of places,” she said.
He appeared preoccupied. “Yes, and I think we should make ourselves scarce from here quickly.”
“Why?”
“Oh, just a feeling.” He pointed to the end of the street where traffic was passing in both directions. “That must be the high road. Let’s make for that and find a taxi.”
They didn’t say anymore to each other until they were standing in front of the tube station. An empty taxi bowled along straightaway but George turned that one down in favour of another waiting in a rank opposite. Once they were inside he relaxed visibly. He gave the driver the address of a pub in Victoria. “I know they do a good Sunday lunch,” he said by way of explanation. “And that’s what I promised you today.”
“Better than the Village?”
“Without any doubt better than the Village. They have a carvery.”
“Excellent—a reward for our house hunting.”
“A reward for all your research more like. We wouldn’t have been successful otherwise.”
“Well, it wasn’t too hard. You gave me two jobs to do, one to drum up the material so that we would be taken by anyone for a couple looking for a house with a garage, and two, to hit the target. There weren’t many to choose from in that area once we’d decided to take Jack Metz on trust. I’d studied them all—125 Brayfield Road did meet all the criteria.”
George nodded. “Yes, the only thing which went wrong was that woman finding me examining the door.”
“Did she see you put the envelope in your pocket?”
“Not sure—it was a risk I had to take.”
Cynthia pulled a notepad and pen from her jacket pocket. After she’d finished writing she put the pad in front of him. He read the message she’d written and considered her carefully. “About ninety percent,” was his answer.
“What about DNA?”
“A lot more is possible in detecting it now than was the case thirty years ago. The sample may be too small or it may be adulterated by all the muck around it.”
They were interrupted by the cab driver on the speaker. “Will here do, guv’nor? I can’t get down that narrow street but the pub’s just there on the left.”
“That’s fine,” George replied. Cynthia pushed past him to pay the fare. As the cab drove off and she made for the pub he pulled her back so that she was facing him at the top of the alley. “How did you know that was blood I dug out of there?”
“It seemed like a reasonable assumption.” Her face bore a defiant smile.
“What did that woman say in French at the house?”
“She told that guy that if he shouted at her like that again she would really lose it. How did you know I spoke French?”
“You have two cookery books in French on that shelf in your kitchen.”
“Very observant—what I should expect, I suppose. I learned it in the service.”
“Which branch was that?”
“You know I can’t tell you that but I’ve had to deal with some unsavoury people as you have, so in that sense we’re equal. And here’s something on which I’m sure we’ll agree. We shouldn’t waste too much time now in contacting that letting agency.”
“Because we’re unlikely to have much luck on a Sunday and it’s lunchtime into the bargain? Agreed. One more thing—I’m old-fashioned enough to take the view that when I invite a charming lady out to a meal I expect to pay for it, and if I meet resistance in that I might not be inviting again.”
She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll remember that!”
**
“You asked me to let you know if anyone came snooping round the house.”
The man rather disparagingly referred to as the Grouper Junior by the police, but plain the Grouper by his associates, who regarded him as the same as any successor to a title when the incumbent dies, held the phone out so that the two associates who were with him could hear as he took the call from the house with the garage on the slant. “Who was it?” he enquired. The voice was flat and nasal with a pronounced Eastern European accent.
“A couple—they looked sixtyish maybe pushing seventy. They had a sheaf of house details with them. He said they’d heard the house might be for sale and wanted to have a look around.”
“So you let them do that?”
“I couldn’t see anything bad in it. I thought we might find out more about them.”
“And did you?”
“They need a place with a garage where he can put his car off the road so they were only looking at places with a garage. They spent quite a while in there and opened the door from the kitchen, which has been locked all the time we’ve been in here. Aggie caught him scraping at the doorframe.”
“Did he take anything away?”
“I’m not sure. He stopped as soon as he saw her.”
“What did they look like?”
“What do old people generally look like? Old!”
“Don’t get clever with me.” The voice became menacing. “What did they look like?”
“I took a picture of them on my phone after they left. I can send you that.”
“Good—do it now.”
“You said there would be a reward for information—in addition to the retainer you paid us, like.”
“There will be. We’ll find you and Aggie. Send the picture.”
Seconds later a shadowy image appeared on his screen of two people walking away, their faces turned towards each other. The Grouper Junior peered at it. “The woman could be one of the ones who was at the church. She wasn’t wearing the hat then. The man I’m not sure—there’s something familiar about him. Enhance that as much as you can.”
“Do you want us to find them?” asked one of the men with him. The skin on his face was taut like leather and his eyes shone like bright shiny stones.
The Grouper Junior shook his head. “No, we’re going further down the chain.” He threw another picture across the table at them. “That’s the one we need to deal with. She mustn’t be allowed to talk. And do it somewhere quiet. You’re sure nobody saw you when you dealt with Metz?”
The other man laughed. “They saw us but they didn’t see us. Who is going to look twice at a couple of gardeners in a van with a mower on the side of it?”
“I hope you’re right.” It was the signal for dismissal and the two men left the Grouper alone. They never questioned his instructions, nor did they discuss the wisdom of them—only the implementation. But each of them unbeknown to the other wondered why it was the Grouper was prepared to push on further when any risk to him had been removed with the elimination of Metz. Maybe it was to protect the honour of his father and of the dynasty, but surely there had to be more to it than that? At the point they stopped wondering and moved on to the implementation phase. Once the Grouper had given instructions it didn’t pay to hang about.