With a strangled scream, Holly staggered back, grabbing the flimsy banister for support. The dark figure snorted, shook itself and lurched up, revealing itself to be a small, weedy, balding man with a prim, stubborn little mouth and very large ears.
‘Oh, my arm’s gone to sleep!’ the man said, making an anguished face. He cradled his left arm with his right and eyed Holly resentfully. ‘I must have dropped off. I’ve been waiting a very long time.’
‘What do you want?’ Holly demanded, taking a cautious step down. The man looked harmless, but she’d seen enough movies to know that looking harmless was the serial killer’s secret weapon.
‘Purse,’ the man said incomprehensibly.
Holly gaped at him.
‘Trevor Purse.’ Wincing, the man felt in the inside pocket of his anorak, pulled out a black vinyl wallet and extracted a card. He held the card out to Holly. She took it and strained to read it in the gloom.
TREVOR PURSE. PEST EXTERMINATOR.
BEDBUG SPECIALIST.
Holly’s skin crawled. ‘I don’t need a pest exterminator,’ she said, hoping very much that this was true.
Trevor Purse clicked his tongue impatiently. He leaned towards Holly. ‘Keith Bone sent me,’ he muttered out of the side of his mouth.
‘Keith Bone?’ The name meant nothing to Holly. She wondered if she’d been having blackouts.
‘Keith said I should come straight away or else I’d miss you,’ the man mumbled. ‘So I did. I haven’t even been home. I’ve missed the news.’ He lowered his voice even further. ‘Keith said you could help me with . . . ah . . . with a small personal problem.’
And suddenly Holly saw the light.
‘You’re the butcher’s friend!’ she blurted out. ‘His friend from the club, with wife problems.’
She felt graceless as the man shrank back into his anorak like a tortoise retreating into its shell.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Purse,’ she said, making an effort to sound friendly, despite her instinctive dislike of the man. ‘But I’m afraid—’
‘We’ll talk about this behind closed doors, if you don’t mind,’ Purse mumbled, snatching up a bag that strongly resembled a doctor’s medical case. ‘I do understand that you modern, professional women have been forced to develop a hard carapace in order to survive, but it’s beyond me to be so cavalier about discussing deep personal feelings in public, I’m afraid.’
Oh really, thought Holly, very irritated. She folded her arms, remembered this was a classic defensive gesture, and unfolded them again.
‘It’s after business hours, Mr Purse,’ she said. ‘And I’ve had a very long day . . .’
Long day? It seemed like a week since she’d set out for Mealey Marshes.
‘I could inspect your rooms for bedbug infestation while we talk,’ Trevor Purse suggested cunningly. ‘I gather you’re only visiting, and you can’t be too careful about strange beds, believe me. Bedbugs are multiplying to plague proportions internationally, and it’s not a matter of simple hygiene. There have been cases of bedbugs in four-star hotels, you know.’
Holly thought of the sagging bed in O’Brien’s flat. Her skin crawled again. She made a lightning decision.
‘It’s a deal,’ she said, sounding hard, brittle and modern even to herself.
Trevor Purse drew back, clutching his bag to his chest, as she moved up to the landing and strode past him to the door with the red heart.
‘I couldn’t help noticing you’d left the radio on in there,’ he said, following her. ‘You think it will discourage burglars, I suppose, but I really should warn you that there is always the danger of an electrical fault. I insist on my wife unplugging every power point when she has to leave our home unattended.’
‘Really,’ said Holly, through gritted teeth. She pushed the door open and switched on the light.
‘Howdy!’ screeched the parrot. ‘Give us a biscuit!’
Holly scowled at it. It raised its crest and regarded her roguishly. ‘And the hairs on her dicky-di-do hung down to her knees,’ it crooned.
‘Oh, dear, dear, dear!’ exclaimed Trevor Purse. ‘A bird! I would never have a bird in my home. The seed attracts vermin.’
He placed his bag on the red desk and looked around, narrowing his eyes at the sight of the bulging garbage bags propped against the wall.
‘That’s not garbage, just clothes and things,’ Holly said instinctively, then gave herself a mental slap on the wrist.
Purse made no comment. He glanced through the open bedroom door and a fanatical gleam appeared in his eyes. He snapped his bag open and withdrew a pair of polythene gloves.
‘The light’s not very good in there, I’m afraid,’ said Holly.
Purse shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that,’ he said, pulling on the gloves. ‘People will insist on subdued lighting in the bedroom. They’ve got no idea! Darkness conceals, light reveals, that’s what I always tell them. It’s not just bedbugs, you know. I’ve seen it all— clothes moths, fleas, cockroaches, silverfish, crickets, carpet beetles, mice, rats, white-tailed spiders . . .’
He dipped into his bag again and pulled out an enormous torch cloaked in black rubber. It could have passed for part of a submarine.
Striding to the bedroom doorway, he felt inside for the light switch. The green bulb came to life, its sulky glow barely illuminating the jungle foliage writhing on the walls. Purse clicked his tongue. He flicked on his torch and trained a beam like a searchlight onto the bed.
‘Follow me,’ he said. ‘Stay back.’
Slightly crouched, holding the torch in front of him with both gloved hands and swinging the beam from side to side like an FBI agent entering an unsecured crime scene, he stole towards the bed.
Keeping a safe distance behind him, Holly watched as he bent, pinched the trailing hem of the chenille bedspread between gloved fingers and fastidiously folded the spread back, exposing part of the dingy mattress beneath to the merciless glare of the torch.
‘My wife Leanne and I have been married for eight years, Miss Love,’ he said, without turning around. ‘She was twenty-nine when we met and I was . . . a little older. Waiting for the right woman to come along, you see.’
Sighing, he straightened, felt in his shirt pocket and drew out a pair of glasses, which he settled on his beaky little nose before bending again to the bed.
‘For eight years we’ve lived happily together, never a cross word. We’re not rich, by any means, but we own our own home, and my wife has never had to go out to work. She has been free to pursue her various little hobbies, and keep our home as we both like to see it. I’ve always prided myself on that.’
‘Children?’ Holly hazarded, feeling as if this was the sort of question that O’Brien would have asked.
‘Not at present,’ Purse said, wincing as if she had said something indelicate. ‘We both feel we need to secure our position thoroughly before bringing a child into the world. Education expenses alone . . .’ He clicked his tongue.
He had begun edging round the bed, peering intently at the raised side seam of the mattress, pressing the seam out with his gloved fingers.
‘They also hide in the cavities of the frame, of course,’ he said. ‘But if the bed is infested, they can usually be found in the cleft of the mattress seam. They keep hidden, you see, until someone goes to bed, and to sleep. Then, attracted by exhaled carbon dioxide, they crawl out to feed.’
Holly shuddered. She realised she must have made a sound, too, because Trevor Purse looked over his shoulder at her. His face was so thin and his eyes were so hugely magnified by the thick glasses that for a moment he looked like an insect himself. A giant cricket, perhaps. Holly twitched, beating away the illusion.
‘Have you found anything?’ she asked.
‘Not so far,’ Purse told her. ‘But it’s early days yet. Early days.’
He turned back to his examination of the mattress seam.
‘My problems all started a month ago, when my wife began going out on Saturdays. She said she was going to her friend Petula’s place, to babysit while Petula went to work. Petula is one of those single mothers and—’
He froze like a pointer, glaring down at the mattress. Holly held her breath, but after a moment he shook his head and moved on.
‘—and I can’t say I’ve ever been too keen on her,’ he went on, as if there had been no interruption. ‘But though I’ve always been the head of our home, I wouldn’t interfere with my wife’s choice of friends.’
Big of you, Holly thought sourly.
‘And as for Saturdays—well, my model train club meets every Saturday, regular as clockwork, and it seemed quite reasonable to me that while I was away my wife should go out and enjoy herself,’ Purse continued. ‘But then, last Tuesday, I had to take the day off work. I suffer dreadfully from haemorrhoids.’
Holly wasn’t surprised.
Purse had reached the end of the bed. He skirted the corner carefully, folded the bedspread back, and continued searching the mattress seam.
‘By lunchtime I was feeling a little better, and my wife took the opportunity to pop out to the shops,’ he went on. ‘While she was out the post came, so I hobbled out to get it. I never like mail being left in the box for any length of time. Any passer-by could break the lock and take the letters, getting access to all your personal details. And as I’m sure you know, identity theft is a growing problem.’
Holly was starting to feel very uncomfortable. Purse’s thin, precise voice had slowed. Obviously he was reaching the climax of his story, and was unconsciously delaying getting to the point. But he’d get there sooner or later, and Holly found she didn’t want him to.
‘Mr Purse, I don’t think—’
‘There was a postcard,’ Purse said, in a rush. ‘From New Zealand. For my wife.’
He straightened abruptly and turned to look at Holly, his thick glasses flashing, his face nightmarish in the glaring white light of the torch he was clutching to his chest. ‘Normally I would never dream of reading my wife’s mail,’ he said, in a pathetic echo of his former pompous manner. ‘But this was a postcard, you see. I couldn’t help noticing the signature. It was—Petula!’
He waited, searching Holly’s face for a reaction.
‘The friend whose child your wife has been minding on Saturdays,’ Holly said, feeling as if the words were being dragged out of her one by one with hot tongs.
‘Yes, yes!’ said Trevor Purse impatiently. ‘But don’t you see? My wife can’t have been babysitting for Petula! Petula and her child have been in New Zealand for six weeks! Petula said so herself—well, I can’t be blamed for reading the message, it was there in the open for anyone to see. We’re so settled I can’t believe we’ve only been here six weeks, she said. Well, you can imagine how I felt!’
Distractedly he started checking the far side of the bed. In the other room the cockatoo chuckled like a deranged cartoon villain bent on world domination.
‘What did your wife say when you asked her about the postcard?’ Holly was sure she already knew the answer to that question. Her heart felt as if it had sunk to the soles of her shoes.
Purse looked up again and she saw with horrified pity that tears were leaking from beneath his glasses. ‘I didn’t ask her,’ he whispered, as she’d known he would. ‘I put the mail back in the box and let her collect it herself, when she came home. She brought in the other letters and put them on the kitchen table as usual, but the postcard wasn’t there. She must have hidden it in her handbag. I couldn’t tell her I’d seen it. I couldn’t ask her why she’d lied to me. I—I was scared of what she might say.’
This was awful. Holly stood tongue-tied, feeling totally irresponsible, filled with shame, bitterly regretting she’d ever let things get this far.
‘She’s seeing someone else.’ Purse pulled a perfectly ironed handkerchief from his anorak pocket, shook out the folds and blew his nose noisily. ‘When I thought about it, I realised I should have recognised the signs. Over the past few weeks she’s seemed—happier. Her eyes are brighter. Her hair is shinier. She . . . she sings while she’s vacuuming!’
He buried his face in his hands. ‘I keep imagining—terrible things. I can’t sleep. My work is suffering. I have to know! That’s why I’ve come to you. Tomorrow is Saturday. I want you to follow her . . . find out . . .’
Oh no!
‘Mr Purse, please, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to find someone else,’ Holly gabbled, panic-stricken. ‘I don’t have time . . . and anyway I—we—don’t handle divorce cases.’
Purse’s head jerked up. He looked horrified. ‘Divorce?’ he gasped. ‘There’s no question of divorce! My wife and I have been happily married for eight years! I won’t say a word to her about anything you tell me. I’ll try to win her back—I’m sure I can win her back! But I have to know what I’m dealing with, you see. I have to know!’
‘You could follow her yourself,’ Holly suggested desperately. ‘You could—’
Purse shook his head violently, wringing his gloved hands. ‘She’d recognise my van. It’s green. It’s got my name on it! Please! All you have to do is follow her, then ring me. I’m not asking for a written report. I’ve got everything ready—here, I’ll show you!’
He rushed from the bedroom, the torch beam flashing wildly over jungle-infested walls and ceiling. Holly followed, wondering how she could have been so insensitive, so stupid, as to encourage this poor, sad man, wondering if there were bedbugs in the mattress, wondering if this day would ever end.
‘Here!’ gasped Purse, pulling an envelope from his exterminator’s bag and thrusting it into Holly’s hands. ‘Here’s our address, and everything else you’ll need. I leave the house at ten-forty-five. My wife leaves very soon afterwards, or so she says.’
He shoved the torch into his bag, snapped the bag shut, put his head down, and made for the door.
‘What about the bedbugs?’ Holly bleated, as he pulled the door open.
‘This house is clean,’ Purse said, and bolted.
‘Ah-maze-i-i-ing grace,’ the parrot crooned mournfully, ‘how sweet the sound, tha-a-at saved a-a-ah wretch lie-ick meee!’
Holly felt drained. Obeying some impulse she preferred not to analyse, she went behind O’Brien’s desk and sat down in the squeaky office chair. She tore open the envelope. Inside there were four items. The first was another of Trevor Purse’s business cards, the mobile phone number circled in red biro. The second was a photograph of a pretty blonde woman wearing a bright sundress and smiling self-consciously in front of a burgeoning bougainvillea—a holiday snap, perhaps. The third was a piece of notepaper on which a precise map had been drawn. Below the map was written, in tiny, constipated script: Mrs Leanne Purse, 15 Wattle Crescent, Bullaburra. Saturday, 10:45 am (approx).
The fourth was a fifty-dollar note. Trevor Purse’s idea of ‘mates’ rates’, presumably. Holly’s heart leapt. She eased the fifty from the envelope, feeling its smooth, reassuring texture beneath her fingertips, pressing one of its sharp corners into the pad of her thumb. She remembered Abigail telling her that money was coming, and a pleasurable shiver ran down her spine.
In that instant, a plan unfolded, ready-made, in her mind. Bullaburra, she knew, wasn’t far away. It was the next village down from Wentworth Falls. She had passed through it on her way to Mealey Marshes—or at least seen a sign announcing its presence near a lone little shop that stood beside the crossing to the railway station.
In the morning she would pack the car and fill it with petrol. She would say goodbye to Abigail and Mrs Moss. Then she would drive down to Bullaburra and follow the pest exterminator’s wife. She wasn’t a detective, but how hard could it be to follow someone? She’d find a public phone, make her report, and drive on down to the city. What was left of the fifty dollars would feed her for the weekend if she was very careful and resisted buying takeaway coffee. She would have nowhere to stay, but if O’Brien could sleep in his car, she could sleep in hers.
The important thing was, by tomorrow night she would be far away from memories of Andrew McNish, and out of Una Maggott’s reach. Safe in Sydney, she would cut her losses and start again. She’d had enough of being Alice in Wonderland.
Feeling incredibly stable and efficient, Holly put the fifty dollars into her wallet, filled the parrot’s seed and water containers, made the bed, cleaned her teeth, and had a shower standing on a plastic bag in case Skye or Deirdre had been afflicted with plantar warts.
Back in the bedroom, pulling on the cosy old spotted flannelette pyjamas she had nearly discarded in Sydney but had fortunately been unable to part with at the last minute, she heard the parrot singing lustily in the other room. It had moved from hymns to sea shanties.
‘Sixteen men on a dead man’s chest,’ it sang. ‘Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.’
Warm, clean, the possessor of fifty dollars, and her stomach full for the first time in days, Holly smiled tolerantly. After a minute or two, however, it occurred to her that the parrot sounded closer than it should have. And at almost the same moment she found she couldn’t remember replacing the butterfly clip that secured the cage door. Holding tightly to her newfound feeling of wellbeing, she went to investigate.
The parrot had freed itself. It was perched where Holly had first seen it, on the back of the office chair. As she emerged from the bedroom it raised its yellow crest defiantly.
‘You can’t sleep there,’ Holly told it. ‘Go back to your cage.’ She took a threatening step forward. The parrot spread its wings and launched itself onto the red desk, skidding into Holly’s shoulder bag, which tipped over the edge of the desktop and fell to the floor, voiding its contents on the way down.
Highly stimulated, the parrot waddled to the desk edge and peered down at the jumbled objects on the floor. Swearing, Holly went to clean up.
O’Brien’s phone, jolted out of silence and buzzing distress calls, was lost in a sea of crumpled tissues, the incomprehensible paperwork from the Springwood service centre, forlorn lists of job possibilities and chocolate chip cookie crumbs. The photograph of Andrew McNish protruded impertinently from a clutter of keys, hairbrush, pen, nail file, lip-gloss, emergency tampons, coffee mug, wallet and diary. Trevor Purse’s envelope, bent double, embraced a grimy teaspoon. Directly below the lip of the desktop, Una Maggott’s yellow folder sprawled open, face down on the threadbare carpet, flattened beneath the shoulder bag itself.
Taken as a whole, it was a collage rich with symbolism— almost like an installation in an art gallery, Holly thought, staring down at it. It was as if it had been constructed for a purpose, to illustrate the helpless confusion of the past few days, to signal to her that from this moment, if she willed it, those days had ended.
‘Thank you, O’Brien,’ she said. The parrot bobbed jauntily, its eyes alert.
Holly bent and retrieved the shoulder bag. Then, choosing carefully, she picked through the mess on the floor, extracting only those items she needed for her flight to freedom, brushing them free of crumbs and packing them away. Wallet. Car key. Sunglasses. Hairbrush. Lip-gloss. Pen. Tampons. Nail file. After a moment’s thought, she salvaged the diary and three of the freshest tissues. Then, reluctantly, she added Trevor Purse’s envelope.
She put the bag aside and picked up O’Brien’s phone. It flashed at her importunately, declaring itself to be bursting with voicemail. Not my problem, Holly told herself firmly. Then she felt a little tremor. What if one of the messages was from Una Maggott? Telling Holly that Eric would be coming to pick her up in the morning after all, for example? That would put a spanner in the works.
She listened to the messages. The first two were from people wanting to buy the parrot. Guiltily Holly deleted them. The third was from a woman called Dolly Bliss. She was ringing to tell O’Brien that she didn’t want to proceed with the investigation they had discussed the previous week.
‘Turns out there’s no other woman,’ Dolly said brightly. ‘Turns out Ian actually bought that negligee for himself! I caught him wearing it this afternoon. So that’s all right. Well, thanks very much.’
Holly deleted that one as well.
‘Message four,’ the phone announced. ‘Received . . . today at . . . eight-fourteen pm.’
‘Ms Cage!’ Una Maggott’s voice hissed over the sound of banging and muffled shouts in the background. ‘You have to come first thing tomorrow. As early as you can, do you understand me? I need you. There have been . . . developments—’ The message cut off abruptly.
Holly stared at the phone. She realised she was gnawing her bottom lip, and made herself stop. Una Maggott’s hysterics aren’t your problem anymore, she reminded herself. You are taking back control of your own life. You are leaving here tomorrow, as planned.
Ruthlessly she deleted Una’s message. She took the phone into the bedroom, wiped it, and plugged it into its charger. Then she fetched the plastic bag from the shower.
When she returned to the office, the parrot was on the floor prospecting for cookie crumbs, clucking and crooning like the chooks that had been the companions, and occasionally the Sunday dinners, of her youth. Holly knelt companionably beside it and began collecting all the inedible things remaining on the carpet, the things that had now officially become rubbish. Andrew’s photograph, torn into four, went into the plastic bag first. The key to his house went next, and then the coffee mug and the teaspoon of despair. The used tissues, the lists and the paperwork from the service centre followed.
Soon the collage had been reduced to the sad, splayed sheet of yellow cardboard that was Una Maggott’s folder. Holly picked it up and hesitated, her conscience pricking her at the thought of putting it into the garbage instead of the recycling bin. Then she decided that ritual demanded sacrifices, ripped the folder in half and ruthlessly stuffed it, too, into the plastic bag.
Two neatly printed-out sheets remained on the carpet. They were stapled together. Unable to resist the temptation, Holly glanced at the top sheet.
Statement by Una Maggott, 9 Horsetrough Lane, Medlow Bath.
On Tuesday 23rd March, I held a dinner party to celebrate my reunion with my half-brother, Andrew McNish/ Maggott, and to announce that I intended to make a will naming him my sole heir.
Present were a distant cousin, Dulcie Maggott, her son, Sebastian Maggott (16), my housekeeper, Sheena Molloy, my chauffeur, Eric Maglioco, my hairdresser and household help, Lily Hoban, and my solicitor, Clifford Allnut.
My announcement was not well received. My guests apparently resented my half-brother, and were jealous of my natural affection for him. Clifford Allnut and Dulcie Maggott were particularly offensive, accusing me of premature senility and speaking to my brother in an abusive and threatening manner. Lily Hoban, who is a member of a so-called witch’s coven based in Katoomba, also uttered threats against him.
At the end of this acrimonious discussion it became clear that Clifford Allnut had overindulged in alcohol to the extent that he could hardly stand. I was forced to offer him a bed for the night. Sheena Molloy and Lily Hoban made up the bed in my late father’s room for him. This room, which is usually unoccupied, is directly opposite my brother’s room, and is separated only by a linen cupboard from Ms Molloy’s own bedroom. Dulcie Maggott, Sebastian Maggott, Lily Hoban and Eric Maglioco all occupy rooms on the other side of the staircase.
Holly frowned. So the solicitor, Allnut, had stayed on Tuesday night—and had slept in the room opposite Andrew’s, and next to Sheena’s. No one had mentioned that before.
It doesn’t make any difference, she told herself. None of this makes any difference, and none of it has anything to do with you anymore. Stop reading!
But she didn’t.
At about 11 pm, Ms Molloy, with the assistance of Lily Hoban, made tea and brought a tray of filled mugs into the casual sitting room at the back of the house. My brother’s tea was in the personalised red pottery mug that I had bought him as a gift, and from which he had drunk since his arrival in the house on Sunday afternoon.
The tray was left on a side table for people to help themselves. I took little notice of it. I do not drink tea at night.
Everyone else took their tea and went up to bed. My brother stayed to say goodnight to me, then followed the others upstairs, taking the remainder of his tea with him.He was yawning, and seemed very tired. By 11:30 I was the only person remaining downstairs. I personally locked the front and back doors and took the remote control for the gates into my room as usual.
I can testify that no one came down the stairs into the entrance hall after that. The stairs squeak badly, and I would have heard. I was wakeful in the night. I often am, being troubled by pain, and that night I was excited by events. If I dozed at all, it would have been only lightly. There is no fire escape, and all the windows in the house are barred.
My brother did not appear for breakfast the following morning. At 9:30, at my request, Eric Maglioco knocked at his door and, receiving no reply, looked in. The room was empty, and . . .
Holly snatched up the papers, folding them quickly to stop herself inadvertently reading another word. Then she saw the five fifty-dollar notes that had been lying underneath them.
‘Pieces of eight!’ the parrot squawked, waddling over to look more closely.
Holly stared at the notes as if by concentrating on them she could will them away. Abigail’s prediction that she was about to receive money from unexpected sources floated again into her reeling mind. It was quickly followed by the memory of her stiffly telling Eric she hadn’t taken a cent from Una Maggott, and an image of herself explaining to a clone of Constable Chloe Graff why she had given a false name, pretended to be a detective, and run away to Sydney with an old woman’s money. Her head began to throb.
‘Don’t panic!’ she said aloud.
‘Don’t panic! Don’t panic!’ the parrot screeched excitedly. It was clearly familiar with the phrase.
Holly collected the notes and stood up. She took a deep breath. Then another.
This is not a disaster, she told herself. It doesn’t mean you can’t leave here tomorrow. It doesn’t mean you have to see Una Maggott again. All it means is that there will have to be a slight change of plan. You put the money into an envelope, addressed to Una, with a note saying that unfortunately you’ve been called away and can’t take her case. In the morning, very early, as soon as you have the petrol—the sign on that little place near the war memorial says it opens at six—you drive to Medlow Bath and put the letter in Una’s letterbox. At that hour no one will be awake to see you. You then come back here and proceed with the plan as before. Simple.
‘Simple,’ she said aloud. ‘Cowardly, but simple.’
‘Don’t panic!’ croaked the parrot.
It sounded as if it was no longer behind her. She looked around and saw that while she had been thinking it had quietly retired to its cage. Presumably it had decided the fun was over for the night.
Before it could change its mind, Holly hurried to the cage and fastened the door with the butterfly clip. The parrot blinked at her through the bars and fluffed its feathers sleepily. On impulse Holly turned and went to the garbage bags. She returned with O’Brien’s blue shirt and draped it over the cage.
‘Goodnight,’ she said softly.
‘Don’t let the bedbugs bite,’ the parrot responded, and was silent.