The wizards didn’t say how they came by this information, which was just as well as it was probably illegal.
‘Adequate’ was a credit rating that indicated that the Robertsons had no significant debt problems and mostly paid their bills on time. I wondered how that was for someone who Oliver described as a drug addict and the worst estate agent in the world.
There was also a note from the wizards about that, too. They had asked round some estate-agent connections in west London and had learned that Peter Robertson was seemingly not connected to a mainstream agency but acted alone. They had been unable to find any details of properties that he had sold. Remarkably, it appears that no professional qualifications are needed to call oneself an estate agent.
I also used the dongle to log on to a West End ticket agency.
‘They’ve got two returned house seats for Phantom of the Opera,’ I said. ‘Row F in the middle of the stalls. Any good?’
‘I’ve seen it before,’ Kate said.
‘So have I. But not for a while. What do you say?’
‘Yes,’ she said decisively. ‘I love a good love story. Especially at the moment.’
I booked the seats and decided not to bring up the fact that the Phantom’s love for Christine was unrequited.
The train pulled into King’s Cross Station at half past eleven and we took the Tube to Neasden, walking the last couple of hundred yards to my flat in a nondescript four-storey block on Bermans Way.
‘I ought to warn you,’ I said as I put the key in the lock. ‘It’s not very tidy.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Kate said. ‘I’m sure it’s fine.’
But nevertheless, she tut-tutted slightly over the stack of dirty plates in the kitchen sink, some of which were developing a fine coating of green mould.
‘Take-away vindaloo from last Sunday night,’ I explained. ‘I hadn’t expected to be away for the rest of the week.’
‘Always expect the unexpected,’ she said, sounding far too like ASW for my liking.
I washed the dishes while Kate went on a tour of inspection of the flat, something that took her precisely thirty seconds. Then she came back to the kitchen, which was really nothing more than an alcove off the sitting room.
‘Nice,’ she said. ‘Do you own it?’
‘No. Rent. But I’m thinking of finding somewhere of my own. Getting on the property ladder at last. Should have done it years ago. When I first moved in here seven years ago, I thought it would be temporary, but I’ve just stayed. Lazy, I suppose.’
‘But it’s fine for a single man.’
‘That’s why I should move. I don’t want to remain a single man.’
She looked at me. ‘Good.’
23
It wasn’t Peter Robertson who opened his front door when I rang the bell at three-thirty on Saturday afternoon. Instead, it was a grey-haired woman I took to be in her late fifties or early sixties.
Kate and I had some difficulty finding 43 Queen Anne Court, South Ealing, but a friendly taxi driver finally pointed us in the right direction.
Queen Anne Court was a 1950s six-storey concrete tenement block with outside walkways, like many that were built after the Second World War to provide emergency social housing after the Blitz. Most have now been demolished in favour of low-rise tidy estates with lots of greenery, but a few of these monstrosities remained, and this was one of them.
Number 43 was on the fourth floor, accessed by graffiti-daubed concrete open stairways at each end of the building.
‘Is Peter Robertson in?’ I asked the woman.
‘He’s gone to the local shop,’ she said. ‘He shouldn’t be long.’ She looked both ways down the walkway but there was no sign of anyone. ‘Are you from the local authority?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m a lawyer.’
It was clearly the wrong thing to say.
‘We don’t want any more lawyers,’ the woman said aggressively. ‘We’ve had nothing but the likes of you around here, pestering us ever since it was first in the papers.’
‘What was in the papers?’ I asked.
‘Zoe’s death, of course,’ she said. ‘All offering to get us compensation, as if money for the children could somehow make up for the loss of their mother.’
‘I’m not offering compensation,’ I said. ‘I represent Declan Chadwick.’
That got her attention, sure enough.
‘Come here to buy us off again, have you?’ she said with even more venom than she’d had for the compensation lawyers.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve come here to find out the truth.’
‘The Chadwick family wouldn’t recognise the truth if it slapped them in the face.’
‘How would you know that?’ I asked.
‘Because I’m one of them,’ she said. ‘I’m Yvonne Chadwick, Zoe’s mother.’
Yvonne didn’t ask us in, but she agreed we could wait outside for Peter to return from the shop, not that she could have really stopped us.
‘What a depressing place,’ Kate said as we waited. ‘All that graffiti everywhere, and did you notice in the stairwells? Ugh!’
I presumed she meant the piles of rubbish and the overpoweringly sweet smell of rat urine.
‘But better than under a railway arch in Croydon,’ I replied. ‘Which is where they lived before.’
Peter Robertson arrived wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap and carrying a plastic supermarket shopping bag. For a second, I thought he was going to drop the bag and run, but he held his nerve and came slowly along the walkway towards us.
‘What do you want?’ he asked gruffly as a greeting.
‘Hello, Pete,’ I said in a jovial tone. ‘My name is Harry Foster. I’m a lawyer and I represent Declan Chadwick.’
‘And I’m Catherine Logan,’ Kate said, using her maiden name. ‘I was at school with Zoe. We’ve come to help.’
‘Help?’ he said. ‘How?’
‘Shall we go in?’ I asked. ‘It’s easier to talk inside.’
He fetched a key from his pocket and put it in the lock.
We went inside, the front door leading straight into the living room, and Peter was immediately mobbed by his daughters.
‘Daddy, Daddy, what did you buy us?’ they screamed in unison.
Peter delved into the shopping bag, triumphantly producing two iced lollies wrapped up in newspaper to keep them frozen.
‘And don’t drip them down your dresses,’ he said, handing them over. ‘Now, girls, stay in here with Grannie while I talk to this man.’
He nodded his head for me to follow him into the kitchen. Kate stayed with Yvonne and the girls.
‘Lovely daughters,’ I said. ‘What are their names?’
I already knew but I didn’t want it to look like I had been researching his family.
‘Poppy and Joanne,’ he said, unloading the rest of the bag’s contents onto the kitchen table and then putting it away in the fridge and cupboards. ‘Poppy’s nine and Joanne seven. My little angels.’
‘It must be nice having their grandmother here to help you look after them.’
Peter gave me a look that every husband has made about his mother-in-law at one time or another. I almost laughed.
‘She came yesterday,’ he said. ‘But I’ve told her I don’t want her here and she must go home tomorrow. I can look after the girls perfectly well on my own. I’ve done it most of their lives anyway. Zoe was hopeless. When she wasn’t actually in hospital, she’d often go off on her own. Sometimes for just one night, occasionally for two. But, even when she was here, she couldn’t really cope.’
He removed the baseball cap and hung it on a peg by the door. I’d forgotten that Janie had said he was bald, and he was too, with just a ring of dark hair running round the back of his head from temple to temple.