And the driver’s door was unlocked, the key in the ignition, which was what had drawn the attention of the uniformed officers. The inside was a mess, but it was only the kind of a mess a person makes in his or her own car, to which Annie could well attest. Maps, petrol receipts, sweet wrappers and CD cases littered the passenger seat. The CDs were mostly opera, Annie noticed, something Banks would have appreciated. In the back, along with the props, were a broken windscreen wiper, an unopened bag of pork scratchings and a roll of cling film. There was also a black zip-up wind cheater.
Annie found the victim’s wallet in a side pocket of the wind cheater, along with a set of keys. He had forty-five pounds in notes, credit and debit cards in the name of Mark G. Hardcastle, a couple of business cards of local cabinetmakers and theatrical suppliers, a driving license complete with photograph and an address not far from the center of town, along with a date of birth that put his age at forty-six. As far as Annie could see, there was no suicide note. She riffled through the wallet again, then went through the pile of stuff on the passenger seat and on the floor, under the seats. Nothing. Next she checked the boot and found only a large cardboard box full of old magazines and newspapers for recycling, a flat spare tire and a few plastic containers full of antifreeze and window-washing fluid.
Annie took a deep breath of fresh air.
“Anything?” Winsome asked.
“Do you think he just happened to be carrying a length of clothesline with him?”
“Unlikely,” Winsome answered. She jerked her head toward the car. “But just look at some of the other stuff he had in there. Who knows? Maybe it was a theatrical prop.”
“True enough. Anyway, I was thinking there might be a receipt. Obviously if he was planning to hang himself, and he didn’t have any rope conveniently stashed in his car, he’d have had to buy some, wouldn’t he? We’ll get Harry Potter to check the local shops. It shouldn’t be too difficult to trace.” Annie showed Winsome a handful of receipts from Hardcastle’s wallet. “Three of these are from London—Waterstone’s, HMV and a Zizzi’s restaurant. All dated this past Wednesday. There’s also a petrol receipt from an Ml service station at Watford Gap dated Thursday morning.”
“Any signs of a mobile phone?” Winsome asked.
“None.”
“What next, then?”
Annie glanced back at the car, then over the river at the woods. “I think we’d better make a few inquiries around the theater, if there’s anyone there at this time of day,” she said. “But now that we’ve got his address, we should call at his home first. God forbid there’s someone there waiting for him.”
Branwell court branches off Market Street just a hundred yards or so south of the square. A broad, cobbled street lined with plane trees on both sides, its main features of interest are a pub called the Cock & Bull and the Roman Catholic church. The houses, among the oldest in Eastvale, are all weathered limestone with flagstone roofs, cheek by jowl but varying greatly in width and height, often with ginnels running between them. Many have been renovated and divided into flats.
Number 26 had a purple door with the name MARK G. HARDCASTLE engraved in a brass plate beside the doorbell to the upper floor. Just in case there was somebody home, Annie rang. She could hear the sound echo inside the building, but nothing else. Nobody came down the stairs.
Annie tried the keys she had taken from the pocket of Mark Hardcastle’s wind cheater. The third one fit and led them into a whitewashed hall and a flight of uneven wooden stairs. A raincoat hung on one of the hooks behind the door. A few letters lay scattered on the floor. Annie picked them up to examine later, then climbed the narrow creaking staircase, Winsome behind her.
The flat, once the upper floor of a small cottage, was tiny. There was hardly space in the living room for the television set and sofa, and the dining area was a narrow passage with a table and four chairs between the living room and the kitchen which was nothing more than a few feet of linoleum-covered floor surrounded by countertop, tall storage cupboard, oven and fridge. The toilet was beyond the kitchen, a sort of capsule attached to the side of the building at the back. A ladder led up from the dining area to the converted loft with the double bed at the center of the claustrophobic inverted V of timber beams. Annie climbed up. There was barely room for a bedside table and a chest of drawers. Very quaint, Annie thought, but almost uninhabitable. It made her little cottage in Harkside feel like Harewood House.
“Strange place to live, isn’t it?” said Winsome, catching up with her in the attic and standing with her head and shoulders bowed, not because of reverence, but because she was over six feet tall and there was no way she could stand upright there.
“Definitely bijou.”
“At least there’s no one waiting for him at home.”
“I doubt there’d be room,” said Annie.
The bed had been slept in, its flower-patterned duvet askew, pillows used, but it was impossible to tell whether one or two people had lain there. Winsome checked the dresser drawers and found only socks, underwear and a few folded T-shirts. A well-thumbed Penguin Plays volume of Tennessee Williams sat on the bedside table next to the reading lamp.
Downstairs again, they checked the kitchen cabinets, which held a few pots and pans and tins of mushroom soup, salmon and tuna, along with various condiments. The fridge was home to several wilting lettuce leaves, an almost empty tub of Flora, some wafer-sliced ham with a sell-by date of May 21 and a half-full carton of semi-skimmed milk. There were two butter-and-garlic Chickens Kiev and a stone-baked margherita pizza in the freezer. The tiny sideboard in the dining area held knives, forks and spoons and a set of plain white plates and bowls. Three bottles of bargain-price wine and a selection of cookbooks sat on top of it. Half a loaf of stale Hovis almost filled the bread box.
In the living room, there were no family photographs on the mantelpiece, and there certainly wasn’t a convenient suicide note propped up against the brass clock. In the bookcase next to the television were a few popular paperbacks, a French-English dictionary, several historical books on costumes and a cheap Complete Works of Shakespeare. The few DVDs Mark Hardcastle owned centered on TV comedy and drama—The Catherine Tate Show, That Mitchell & Webb Look, Doctor Who and Life on Mars. There were also a few “carry-on” movies and some old John Wayne Westerns. The CDs were mostly operas and show tunes: South Pacific, Chicago, Oklahoma. A search behind the cushions of the sofa yielded a twenty-pence piece and a white button. Hanging over the fireplace was an old poster for a Stoke-on-Trent repertory production of Look Back in Anger, with Mark Hardcastle’s name listed in the stage credits.
Annie scanned the letters she had left on the coffee table. The oldest was postmarked the previous week, and they were either utility bills or special offers. Still, Annie thought, that was hardly surprising. Since e-mail, letter writing had become a dying art. People just didn’t write to one another anymore. She remembered a pen pal she had once had in Australia when she was very young, how exciting it had been receiving airmail letters with the “Sydney” postmark and the exotic stamps and reading all about Bondi Beach and The Rock. She wondered if people had pen pals these days. She wondered what hers was doing now.
“What do you think?” Winsome asked.
“There’s nothing really personal here, have you noticed?” Annie said. “No address book, no diary. Not even a computer or a telephone. It’s as if he only lived here part-time, or he only lived part of his life here.”