This was going to be harder than he thought. He knew he was being impatient, but what if Peggy decided she’d suddenly had enough for some reason and quit the job and moved away? What made things worse was that as each day passed he was increasingly aware of how much she was starting to mean to him, and the more he realized this the more ridiculous his behavior became. How the hell was he supposed to seem like someone Peggy wanted to spend time with when he sat there worrying himself into a state of panic that he was looking at her left eye more than her right and, for reasons that were hopelessly unclear, talking to her for a very long time about soup?
What he really should just do was casually inquire if Peggy wanted to meet outside of work. If she didn’t want to, then that was fine. He’d get the message that it was just a work friendship situation and that would be that. So the only thing for it was to be very calm and confident and ask her very directly if, perhaps, and fine if not, of course, she wanted to do something one evening, or at the weekend. On balance, he realized the Beckenham & West Wickham Vintage Toy Train Show was probably an ambitious opening gambit, but a drink, say, or dinner, that was what he should go for. And, just so there could be no backing out, he decided to set himself a deadline—Thursday that week seemed as good as any—where he had to ask her by the time they left work. He just hoped she could deal with him being weird until he’d worked up the courage.
There was, he admitted, a very, very slight chance that he was overthinking things.
—
Inevitably, by the time Thursday afternoon arrived he still hadn’t asked her. In retrospect he might have decided that delaying things by a day or so was preferable to making his move as they sorted through rubbish in a dead man’s home, but at the time it really felt like it was now or never.
Derek Albrighton had lived to the age of eighty-four before his heart stopped beating. His flat was right on the borough’s boundary edge—one street across and he would’ve been dealt with by another team. The coroner had sounded unusually grumpy when she’d called Andrew and asked him to investigate.
“No obvious next of kin. Neighbors called the police after they’d not seen him for a couple of days. The attending officers were about as useful as a mudguard on a tortoise, as per. Would be great to get this one sorted as soon as poss, Andrew. I’m on holiday soon and I’ve got paperwork up to my ears.”
Derek’s flat was one of those places you felt could never get warm no matter how much you heated it. It was tidy, on the whole, apart from the dull white powder that was spread out on the kitchen linoleum, with footprints in it, as if it were pavement covered in a thin layer of snow.
“It’s flour,” Peggy said. “Either that or rat poison. Did I mention I’m a crap cook? Ah, but what have we here?” She reached for a large biscuit tin that was sitting on top of the microwave. She cooed as she removed the lid, beckoning Andrew over to show him the still-pristine Victoria sponge that was inside.
“Shame he didn’t get to eat it after all the effort he clearly went to,” Andrew said.
“A tragedy,” Peggy said, reverently replacing the lid, as if it were a time capsule they were about to bury. Andrew decided to try out a lean against the kitchen counter, one leg crossed behind the other, an eyebrow raised in what he hoped suggested an irreverent take on early-years Roger Moore Bond.
“So, you a big fan of . . . cake, then?” he said. Unfortunately, or, perhaps not, Peggy was busying herself with some paperwork she’d found and was only half paying attention.
“Yeah, course, who isn’t?” she said. “I wouldn’t trust anyone who says they aren’t a fan of cake, to be honest. It’s like those people who say they don’t like Christmas. Get over yourself, of course you do. What else don’t you like? Wine and sex and bloody . . . ten-pin bowling.”
Andrew winced. This wasn’t going well. For one thing, he hated ten-pin bowling.
“Nothing here, no phonebook or anything either,” Peggy said, shuffling the bits of paper newsreader-style. “Bedroom?”
“Bedroom. Sure thing . . . you,” Andrew said. He tapped out a little rhythm on the countertop to show how devil-may-care he was—how music ran through his soul—pausing only very briefly to deal with the massive coughing fit he was suffering as a result of his jaunty drumming’s disturbing yet more flour. Peggy was looking at him with a mixture of suspicion and confusion, like a cat that’s seen itself in the mirror.
The bedroom was dominated by a surprisingly plush double bed, with purple satin sheets and brass headboard—incongruous next to the tattered blinds, worn carpet and cheap chest of drawers at the foot of the bed. On top sat an ancient-looking TV and VHS machine. Andrew and Peggy knelt at either side of the bed and began checking under the mattress.
“I was thinking,” Andrew said, emboldened slightly by the fact Peggy couldn’t see him, “you know that pub we went to after your first property inspection?”
“Uh-huh,” Peggy said.
“That was nice, wasn’t it?”
“Not sure I’d say nice, but there was beer there and that always feels like a plus in a pub.”
“Ha . . . yeahhh.”
Not there then.
“I didn’t see what the food was like,” he said. “Do you . . . have a favorite sort of cuisine, for, you know, when you’re out?”
Cuisine?
“Hang on,” Peggy said. “I’ve got something.”
Andrew edged around to the foot of the bed.
“Oh,” Peggy said. “It’s just a receipt. For some socks.”
Andrew was starting to feel desperate. He was really going to have to say something now before he bottled it. “So I was just, you know . . . wondering-if-you-fancied-going-for-dinner-or-something-after-work-sometime-soon.” As he went for another casual lean his elbow pushed a button on the television, which began to turn itself on with a series of clunks and whines, sounds that seemed to entirely encapsulate the 1980s. Moments later, the room was filled with the unmistakable sounds of sex. Andrew spun around to see a middle-aged woman on the screen in nothing but a pair of high heels being taken from behind by a man naked apart from a white baseball cap.
“Oh my god,” Peggy said.
“Oh my god,” the man in the baseball cap answered.
“You like that, don’t ya, ya dirty sod?” the woman grunted, rhetorically, it would seem. As Andrew backed away to fully take in the horror, he trod on something. It was a video case—the cover of which featured a shot of the couple on-screen in midflow. Red block capitals announced the film’s title: IT’S QUIM UP NORTH!
Andrew slowly rotated the case so that Peggy could see. She had already been crying silently with laughter, but this, apparently, was the final straw, and she let out a loud, gleeful cackle. After a moment Andrew began edging toward the TV as if he were going back to a lit firework, weight on his back foot, one hand covering his face, jabbing randomly at the buttons until he hit “pause” and a grotesque tableau shuddered on the screen.
In the end they managed to compose themselves enough to finish the rest of their search with the requisite solemnity. It was Andrew who found a tattered documents folder in a drawer that had a phone number for a “Cousin Jean” written on the flap.
“Well I for one am not calling Cousin Jean,” Peggy said.
“It does seem a bit strange after . . . that,” Andrew said.
Peggy shook her head, bewildered. “I was going to suggest we should get a coin and toss for it, but that seems a horribly inappropriate thing to say now.”
Andrew snorted. “I can’t quite work out what to think about Derek Albrighton.”
“Well it’s clear to me that the bloke had life absolutely figured out,” Peggy said.