A Species of Revenge Read online

  Abigail nodded and looked around at the allotment holdings. It was a roughly triangular site, pointing down towards the river and the Riverside Community Centre on Stockwell Street. Along one side was Colley Street, a busy road that ran up through the town towards Holden Hill; along the other was the shorter street called the Leasowes, a much sought-after council-improved street of small, artisan-type houses. A narrow path ran along the base of the triangle at the back of the allotments, connecting the two streets, while running up from Stockwell Street and roughly bisecting the site was the unnamed, unmade-up road Harry Nevitt was complaining about.

  ‘Hello, young Peter, thought you might be around somewhere,’ the old man greeted DC Deeley, who’d arrived with the announcement that the car to take the old man down to the police station was ready, if Mr Nevitt was. ‘Your mum were telling me you was a detective now.’

  ‘Her allus did say I were destined for better things than a uniform, Harry,’ Deeley answered, with a wink at Abigail, employing his broadest dialect.

  ‘Oh ar. Dow let it go to your head, then.’

  Built like a steamroller, cheerful, unflappable, Pete Deeley grinned and walked with the old man to the car and drove off with him.

  ‘Right, Inspector. You can have another look at him now if you want, before we get him bagged up and taken away,’ Dexter said.

  ‘Nothing to identify him?’

  ‘No wallet or credit cards, just his car keys and a handful of loose change in his trouser pocket – though the label on his pants says they were made in Germany, if that’s any use to you ... not that it counts for a lot nowadays, last pair I bought was made in Sweden ... and his shirt and underpants are St Michael. I’ll tell you where his shoes came from when we’ve dried them off in the lab and scraped the mud off.’

  ‘Probably Taiwan,’ Abigail said, ducking under the tape. Conscientiously, but without noticeable enthusiasm, she took a better view of the body. He was a youngish man – not yet forty, the pathologist had estimated, slightly built and of middle height, dark-haired and seen to be clean-shaven. Froth ballooned from his nose and mouth. The front of his clothing was still caked with mud, but appeared to have been otherwise respectable.

  ‘Not your usual yob that gets mixed up in a fight.’

  The comment came from Sergeant Kite, who’d just arrived. The scene was now crowded with police, the allotments having been taped off and a uniformed PC detailed to keep away the disgruntled tenants as they arrived.

  ‘T-L thinks he’d been in some sort of punch-up, Martin, for all that. If he was mugged, they’ve left him his ring and his watch.’ She indicated the plain band on the wedding finger and the flat gold watch with the leather strap.

  ‘In too much of a hurry, maybe. Just grabbed his wallet and scarpered.’

  ‘I’m wondering if he had one with him. It was a muggy night, after the rain, too warm for a jacket. You men are at a disadvantage, no handbag, nowhere to put your wallet except your back pocket, but that’s still buttoned up. And I can’t see anybody stopping to do it up again if they’d just pinched a wallet from it. He’d loose change and car keys in his other pocket.’

  Hitching her bag on to her shoulder, she thought about the keys, and the possibility that his car was somewhere near...

  ‘We shan’t get much from the immediate area around, I have to tell you,’ Dexter was grumbling. ‘Footprints or vehicle marks – forget it.’

  The loose sharp stones, the potholes all over the place, would make this impossible, Abigail could see that. She repeated what the pathologist had said about the wound on the back of the victim’s head possibly having been caused by a heavy stone.

  ‘Keep an eye out for anything likely, Dave. And Martin,’ she said to Kite. ‘Get them knocking on doors.’

  ‘We’re not going to be popular.’ Starting with Colley Street and the Leasowes, disturbing folks from their weekend lie-in this fine Sunday morning to find out whether anyone had heard a commotion last night. Would anyone have even remarked on it if they had, this end of Colley Street? Commotion was its normal condition, especially Friday and Saturday nights. ‘We shall need more manpower – more uniforms from Reader,’ he said.

  Abigail pulled down her mouth. The chief inspector in charge of the uniformed branch wasn’t exactly a pushover where his scarce resources were concerned. ‘If he’s awkward, shunt him over to me and I’ll twist his arm. Meantime, all the pubs, not forgetting the Punch Bowl.’

  ‘As if!’

  ‘As if you could.’ Saturday night without some sort of disturbance needing police intervention at the sleazy dive in

  Colley Street would indeed be a night to remember. ‘But if we can find anyone who came along here after Mr Nevitt left at half past eight, it’d help – maybe somebody took a short cut after closing time.’

  ‘We’ll be lucky! Anybody from the Punch, they wouldn’t remember if they fell over an elephant.’

  Abigail laughed. ‘All the same ... Right, I’ll get back to the station now and report to the Super before he leaves.’ Mayo would want a full briefing on what was happening before his departure for the Police Staff College, where he was leading a three-day seminar on the treatment of young offenders, and a start must be made on establishing the identity of the man, finding his car.

  It was too early yet for anyone to have come forward to report him missing, but doubtless someone would, sooner or later. A thought enough to sober anyone: that on this bright and beautiful morning, among the dahlias and gladioli and all the fruitful produce of the earth, a young man, with all the expectancy of his life in front of him, should now lie mysteriously dead. While somewhere a wife, maybe children, waited for him.

  3

  There were sixteen houses in the Close that dipped down from the brow of the hill, sixteen where previously one had stood, that one having been Heath Mount, a Victorian edifice much bigger than Simla, or even Edwina Lodge. Most of the houses in Albert Road had been of that ilk, built at the time when the Industrial Revolution which had made Britain prosperous had been at its height and made its masters rich. Here on the edge of Lavenstock, their foundries, brickworks, claypits and glass kilns, chainworks and nail shops, had grown and spread out towards the great sprawl of Birmingham, and here they had built their splendid houses high on the ridge of Holden Hill, from whence they could look down on their creations and see that they were good. Imposing once, monuments to Victorian self-help, the houses had enjoyed their moment of glory but by now they’d had their day; most had been either split up into flats, taken over for business enterprises or pulled down and the land sold for development.

  The houses that formed Ellington Close were mostly occupied by young families, childless couples and one or two retired people, though advertised as starter homes when they were built five years ago. It had begun to lose the raw look of a new housing development, to acquire some semblance of permanence, now that the flowering cherries were maturing and the rockeries flourishing ... almost every garden had a rockery, a practical solution to gardens built on a slope. The houses were stepped down the hill in a rough crescent, away from Albert Road, in a pleasantly irregular pattern. The builder, or the architect who designed the site, had, to do him credit, used his imagination and had staggered them so that most of them had a magnificent view across workaday Holden Hill, down to the flat band of the canal in the bottom and the silvery dance of the river running parallel with it, right across Lavenstock and then up to the blue, tree – crowned hills which rose on the far side and looked out over three counties.

  Everyone knew everyone else in the Close, although several of the houses had changed hands since they were built. They were three-bedroomed and detached – if only just – and in order to pack that number of houses on to a site of this size, they were dolls’ houses, their dimensions minute. For two young people, to whom proximity is more important than space, this had a certain advantage, but when children arrived, the picture changed. Number thirteen had been on the market for almos
t as long as Edwina Lodge. The number wasn’t regarded as a significant cause of their not being able to sell. It was generally thought that the occupants, Gail and Trevor Lawley, were asking too much, but what could they do when they owed more on their mortgage than the house was worth? Negative equity acquires a sharper edge when you find yourselves locked into it.

  Monday morning, and Stanley Loates was, as usual, stationed at the front bay window of number seven, where he lived with his horrible old mother, when Patti Ryman entered the Close and began delivering her newspapers. She loathed him, the way he never smiled or came to the door to take the paper from her, just watched in that creepy way, day after day. She didn’t give him the friendly wave she used to, not on your nelly! Not now she’d twigged he was only hoping for a look of her knickers as she bent down to push the delivery through number eight’s letter-box. She yanked the newspaper bag further on to her shoulder. It was heavy, and she was tiny, but that didn’t bother her. She was tough despite her size, as tough as any of the male oiks of her own age. She could cope. The money she got for this paper round was a joke, of course, but she hadn’t yet been able to find a proper weekend job, and meanwhile it all helped, though her mum wasn’t happy about it, you heard such stories. She’d have had a fit if she knew about Stanley Loates, but Patti hadn’t mentioned the dirty old perv to her.

  He was still standing there when she finished her round. It was all she could do not to knock on his door and tell him what she thought about him – but she didn’t want to lose her job through his complaints. She decided it might be a very good idea to ask Mr Patel to put her on another round. Better still, tell her Aunt Doreen, who also lived in the Close, what was going on, and let her deal with Stanley Loates.

  Patti grinned. That’d fix him, all right!

  Hope Kendrick heard the papers slide through the letter-box and land on the floor, but she was on her way to her brother’s study with a tray and left them where they were.

  She was careful to knock lightly before she entered the study. They’d always been meticulous about respecting each other’s privacy, and Francis didn’t like to be interrupted without warning when he was working.

  ‘Coffee,’ she announced, moving aside a pile of art magazines to find room for the tray on the table under the window. It was a dark, untidy room, where books took preference over human comfort, spilling off the shelves into hazardous piles on the floor, and where pictures of all kinds rubbed egalitarian shoulders in what space there was left.

  Francis grunted, hunched over the work spread out on the big desk, and didn’t immediately look up. It was barely half past eight but he liked his coffee early. He invariably rose at six, either to start work immediately, breakfastless, or to take one of his solitary walks, covering miles with his long strides before returning home to his desk.

  As Hope put down the tray, it struck her with a pang how pronounced the academic stoop of his shoulders was becoming. He needed glasses now for close work. His head was bowed over the coloured prints and his hair was ruffled where he’d run his hands through it. She could see the slight thinning of his pate but resisted the temptation to smooth the floppy hair back over it. The back of his neck looked so vulnerable. It was difficult to remember, sometimes, that he was forty-six, no longer a little boy, though God knew he still needed looking after. Salutary to think that he was the same age as she was, her twin.

  She poured two mugs of coffee. ‘Want me to bring it over to you?’ she asked, after a minute or two. The question was superfluous, more of a reminder to come and drink it before it grew cold, since he never drank or ate at his desk. Unnoticing and untidy about most other things, he was scrupulous where his work was concerned, and would never have risked spilling coffee over it.

  He pushed his chair back, knocking over a leaning tower of books stacked on the floor beside it, and lounged over to sit by her at the chenille-covered table in front of the stone-mullioned window, open to a warm morning that promised another hot day. The roses that he loved and so carefully tended were in their second flush, and sent waves of perfume into the room. He leaned back and stuck out his long legs, clad in baggy cotton. He was thin and very tall, six foot three, and gangly. She was five foot ten herself, with the same sort of frame, although more tidily held together, and all her movements were, unlike his, quick and decisive. She had the same disregard for appearances; her hair, streaked with grey, was chopped off in an uncompromising bob, pushed back behind her ears, her face was innocent of make-up. She wore a faded cotton skirt and a man’s shirt, though she’d omitted her usual big, enveloping sweater this morning in deference to the warm promise of the day. Her feet, in flat sandals, were almost as large as his. It was only her thick-lensed glasses that made any appreciable difference to their appearance.

  He nodded towards a pile of manuscript on the table, fresh from the typist. ‘Came this morning. That woman got a move on, for once.’

  ‘Pleased with it?’

  ‘As a first draft, it’s not bad.’

  In Francis-speak, this meant that he was. She picked the papers up, clipped together, neatly typed by Liz Fawcett, who was always quick and efficient, despite what Francis affected to believe, though they wouldn’t remain in that state of perfection for long. The first of many drafts, it would be scribbled over and rewritten six or seven times before Francis was satisfied with the result. He was such a clear thinker, it always astonished Hope that he needed to work over his material to such an extent – but Francis was a complex character, never as straightforward as he seemed, slow to anger but formidable when roused. Suppressing this unprofitable line of thought, she peered through her spectacles in order to read the title on the cover sheet: ‘The Cave and the Mountain: The importance of Symbolism in Mediaeval Iconography’. Francis was an authority on Byzantine art and had published several books on similar themes. Each one had made quiet ripples in the academic art world, but with this one she knew he was hoping to stir up more significant waves.

  ‘They’re moving into Edwina Lodge today,’ she said, as she sipped her coffee. ‘The new people.’

  ‘Oh?’

  He wasn’t really interested. He cradled the coffee mug in his huge hands as he drank, in between each large gulp reaching out for a couple of his favourite jammy dodgers, scrunching them in his strong teeth, impatient to get back to work. His gaze strayed to the prints spread out on his desk. They were all of icons – madonnas, saints, the Christ. The reds and golds of the Greek icons glowed against the soft, pure colours of the Russian ones. Our Lady of Vladimir shone out in blue. There were two copies of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa. He went back to the desk and picked one up, studying it intently, back in his own world.

  ‘A young couple,’ Hope said.

  And two little girls. She’d heard them calling out to each other as they played. Lucy and Allie (or some such) were their names, seemingly. She fervently wished there hadn’t been children. Weren’t they surrounded by too many of them already, in the Close? The summer holidays weren’t quite over and you couldn’t get away from them. We should have moved further away than just next door when the old house was sold, Hope thought, not for the first time – to the cottage, perhaps. But Francis hadn’t wanted to move permanently to Shropshire, it was too far from the reference library in Birmingham and the availability of trains to London for him; it would have meant her finding another job in another school...

  ‘I wonder at them – taking on all that responsibility,’ she mused, her mind turning again to the new people. ‘All right for the Burger, she was used to it, but young people like that, they don’t usually take to that sort of thing ... Imogen says we should ask them over for drinks.’

  ‘What?’ She had his attention now. An almost panic-stricken look crossed his face, to be replaced by the sort of stubbornness only Francis was capable of showing. ‘Count me out. If Imogen wants them over, let her do the entertaining.’

  ‘Francis, we can’t. They’re going to be our new neighbours, after
all. We have to be civil to them; it needn’t amount to anything more than that.’

  ‘They’ll ask us back. If they’re young, they’ll have parties, there’ll be no end to it.’

  ‘Francis –’

  ‘You and Imogen do the necessary. She enjoys that sort of thing. You don’t need me.’

  He swung his chair round, dismissively held up the two Black Madonna prints, holding them side by side. ‘Which do you prefer?’

  ‘Not that one,’ she said. She privately thought it rather vulgar, the way the beautiful simplicity of the original was obscured, ‘dressed’ as the Mother and Child were in their richly jewelled frames of robes and crowns. Adorned with hundreds of votive offerings in the form of rubies and other precious stones and hundreds of gold wedding rings, said to have been offered by pious couples.

  ‘Ah, the Robe of Faithfulness,’ Francis murmured. ‘Both, I think, should be included.’

  Hope let the subject of the new neighbours drop for the moment. She’d sowed the seeds, he’d have time to think about it before Imogen approached him, and though his agreement couldn’t be guaranteed, Imogen was unlikely to meet with the outright refusal she’d have encountered if she’d had to mention it to him cold.

  She would, of course, be expecting opposition. Hope knew very well that Imogen was always prepared for that when confronting either of them with suggestions, admittedly not without cause. They rarely thought the same way. Sometimes Hope wondered how the three of them could have sprung from the same stock, so unlike were they. But, although everything the older twins were not, Imogen was unquestionably their sibling. She was their mother incarnate, in looks and in spirit, from the tips of her pretty, impatient feet to the crown of her shining dark hair (nature helped along by art, but Imogen was the last to let Hope’s disapproval bother her). She not only had their mother’s surprisingly practical, common-sense approach to life, but also their father, Roland’s, undeniable charm, gambler and reprobate though he’d been, he who’d gone with the speed of light through the proceeds of the family business.