‘Was Smitty’s grandmother a posh wanker?’ asked the DI.
‘Well Smitty was a posh wanker, much more than he let on,’ the boy snapped back. ‘It was him I wanted to mess with. I didn’t think his nan would be that bothered.’
‘Did the fact that she died in May make no difference to you?’
Parker was visibly startled by that. His head jerked up. He didn’t reply.
‘The house has been empty for months. Those cards, DVDs, all that, have been going to a vacant address. We talked to Smitty. He had absolutely no idea about what had been going on.’
And now his mouth was flapping open and closed like a fish. A sense of sadness washed over Mill; the boy was about to pay very severely for his misplaced energies.
‘Did someone help you with the graffiti?’ That was the first edge to cross: criminal damage.
‘No. Just me,’ he said in a very quiet voice. ‘I only did it once. I thought the risk of being caught was too high. It’s the cans, the way they rattle when you shake them. It’s hard to do in an occupied area. Once was enough.’
‘The time in May,’ Mill said, while his DC kept writing.
‘Mm,’ said the boy. This would appear as a declarative statement by the time his words had been written up.
‘And the birds, that was you too?’
Now the kid did look embarrassed. He dropped his gaze and muttered something.
‘I missed that,’ said Mill.
‘The first one came from home. My parents’ place. In Norfolk. It had flown into the window, killed itself. I went there for the weekend, it happened that morning. My mum was upset. I said I’d dispose of it but then I was taking it to the compost when I thought, I don’t know what I thought, I thought about Joseph Beuys, you probably don’t know him, he’s an artist and a big hero, I wondered what he would have done, I thought it would be a strong statement. Then the other ones I got from a taxidermist. I don’t know where he got them from. There were only six or seven of them, anyway… It was stupid and I shouldn’t have done it, I saw that afterwards.’
Mill caught the DC’s eye while he kept writing. If the parents confirmed that account there would be no animal cruelty charge. There would be something to do with misuse of the post, maybe. As things stood the kid was guilty but probably wouldn’t go to jail. One big issue left, and Mill could tell that the DC was thinking along similar lines. Occasionally, very occasionally, Mill found himself wishing that suspects did what was right by their own interests rather than what was right by the law. That was what he felt now. This kid needed a lawyer and a few minutes to think what was the prudent thing to say, rather than just to go on relieving his soul. If Mill had been on his own, he might not have pressed the issue; he might have given the boy time to collect himself. The irony was that a real criminal in this position would never, under any circumstances, have said the wrong thing. The law is a brilliant mechanism for catching people who don’t know what to say and do when they are in trouble. With more seasoned criminals it works much less well. Mill said, as gently as he could,
‘And the cars? Was that you on your own too?’
There was no direct evidence linking the vandalism of the cars to the rest of the campaign. Nothing on the postcards or blog had mentioned the incident in which a set of keys had been scratched down the side of cars in the street – an act that had stood out as by far the biggest criminal incident of all in Pepys Road. One probably big enough to guarantee a custodial sentence for the person who had done it, in the very very unlikely event the police caught him. Mill wanted to catch this kid, but he didn’t particularly want him to go to jail, which is why his heart sank when he heard the whispered words,
‘Just me.’
107
The gigantic red removal lorry of the Younts’ possessions had left at about eleven o’clock, heading down the M4 to Minchinhampton. Arabella and the children had gone down to the country the day before, and now only Roger was left in the empty house, with nothing left to do but drop the keys off at his solicitor’s. Then he too would drive down to the country and their Pepys Road years would be over and their new life would begin.
Roger was looking forward to it. That was what he told himself. The new new thing. He was done with the city and with the City. He was done with the commute to work, with pinstriped suits, with City boy subordinates and Eurotrash bosses and clients like Eric the barbarian; done with earning twenty or thirty times the average family’s annual income for doing things with money rather than with people or things. He was done with London and money and all that. It was time to do or make something. Roger was completely sincere in this conviction, even though he wasn’t quite sure what he meant – wasn’t quite sure what he meant to make or do. But, something.
In his last fifteen minutes in Pepys Road, Roger went right to the top of what was still legally his house, to the loft which had been converted, after discussion, into a ‘spare room’. Arabella had wanted a study, but been forced eventually to admit that she never actually did any studying so didn’t need one, and while Roger had been tempted to claim it as his den in the end he’d settled on a smaller, snugger room on the second floor, one which by taking up less space was likely to be easier to defend as his territory (‘But the boys need another room’). Then down through the boys’ bedrooms, the only evidence of their former presence the bright wallpaper, cowboy (Josh) and spaceman (Conrad) – and also, for the observant, the scratched pencil marks indicating how the boys were growing. Their bathroom was bright orange. Then down, Roger’s den, the fitted bookshelves still there and the space where his Howard Hodgkin had sat (a present from Arabella when she was trying to make him seem more cultivated), Arabella’s dressing room with her little built-in writing table and the fitted cupboards, the small second spare room with marks on the carpet from the bed frame, the loo, then their master bedroom, where, Roger had estimated, he and Arabella had made love about sixty times, once a month for five years, not that high a figure really, but a nice room for all that, the brightest in the house, painted cream, and empty now except for yet more cupboards, and lighter than it had ever been because the blinds and curtains were gone.
Going to the window, he looked down into the front garden, where the Sold sign was nailed next to the front gate. Roger sat on the floor for a moment to drink in the feeling that all this was no longer his. Let it sink in. It was strange being in the house when it was completely empty. It made it obvious that a house was a stage set, a place where life went on, more than it was a thing in itself. The emptiness wasn’t creepy; there was no Mary Celeste vibe here that Roger could detect. More as if they had finished with the house, and the house had also finished with them. They had moved out and now the house was expecting the new people to move in. The house too was waiting for the new thing; waiting to stage a new production.
The change to their life had sunk in with him. It was sinking in with people everywhere, as it gradually dawned on them that hard times were moving in like a band of rain. He wished it had sunk in with Arabella. Roger had been waiting for a moment when she got it: when she looked around and realised what was happening. He had been hoping that a giant penny would drop, a light bulb would go on, Arabella would have a ‘moment of clarity’ and see that this just couldn’t go on. Not only for economic reasons – for them of course but not only for them – but because this just wasn’t enough to live by. You could not spend your entire span of life in thrall to the code of stuff. There was no code of stuff. Stuff was just stuff. You couldn’t live by it or for it. Roger’s new motto: stuff is not enough. For some months now his deepest wish had been for Arabella to look in the mirror and realise that she had to change. He wanted this more than he wanted his bosses at Pinker Lloyd to be publicly humiliated, more than he wanted his deputy Mark to go to prison, more than he wanted to win the lottery. She couldn’t go on like this.