“Shit the bed,” Keith said.
—
Later that morning, Peggy and Andrew arrived for a property inspection at 122 Unsworth Road feeling shell-shocked.
“I really can’t lose this job,” Peggy said.
Andrew decided to try to stay calm rather than add fuel to the fire.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he said.
“And you’re basing that on . . . ?”
“Um . . .” The calm quickly deserted him. “Blind optimism?” He laughed nervously.
“I’m glad you’re not a doctor giving life-expectancy odds to a patient,” Peggy said.
They got into their protective gear, and Andrew looked at the frosted glass window of number 122 and really rather wished he and Peggy were anywhere else but here.
“Nothing like sorting through a dead bloke’s stuff as a cheery distraction, eh?” Peggy said, putting the key in the lock. “Ready?”
She shunted the door open and gasped. Andrew braced himself for what lay beyond her. He must have carried out more than a hundred property inspections in his time, and all these homes, no matter what their condition, left an impression on him, some little detail standing out: a gaudy ornament, a troubling stain, a heartbreaking note. Smells, too, stayed with him. And not just the horrendous ones. There had been lavender and engine oil and pine needles too. As time passed he stopped being able to match the memory to the person or the house. But once Peggy stood to one side and he saw past her, he knew for sure that he would always remember Alan Carter and 122 Unsworth Road.
At first, it wasn’t clear what exactly he was looking at. The floors, radiators, tables, shelves—every available surface—were covered with little wooden objects. Andrew dropped down to the floor and picked one up.
“It’s a duck,” he said, suddenly feeling a bit stupid for saying that out loud.
“I think they all are,” Peggy said, crouching down next to him. If this was a dream, Andrew wasn’t quite sure what his subconscious was going for here.
“Are they little toys—was he a collector or something?” he said.
“I don’t . . . blimey, you know what, I reckon he’s carved all of these himself, you know. There’s got to be thousands of them.”
There was a path through the middle of the carvings, presumably made by those first on the scene.
“Remind me who this guy is?” Peggy said.
Andrew found the document in his bag.
“Alan Carter. No obvious next of kin, according to the coroner. God, I know it’s been busy but you’d have thought she’d have mentioned this.”
Peggy picked up one of the ducks from a dressing table and ran a finger across the top of its head, then down the curve of its neck.
“So the question currently running through my mind, other than ‘What the fuck?,’ of course, is . . . why ducks?”
“Maybe he just loved . . . ducks,” Andrew said.
Peggy laughed. “I love ducks. My daughter Suze actually painted me a mallard for a Mother’s Day present a few years ago. But I’m not so much of a fan that I’d want to go and whittle a million of them.”
Before Andrew had a chance to speculate further there was a knock at the door. He went to answer it, for some reason briefly imagining a human-sized duck on the other side, there to offer its condolences in a series of solemn quacks. Instead, it was a man with beady blue eyes and Friar Tuck hair.
“Knock knock,” the man said. “You from the council? They said you’d be around today. I’m Martin, from next door? It was me who called the police about Alan, the poor chap. I thought I might . . .” He trailed off as he saw the carvings.
“Didn’t you know?” Peggy said. The man shook his head, looking bewildered.
“No. I mean, the thing is, I’d knock on Alan’s door every now and then, say hello, but that was it. Come to think of it, he never opened the door more than to show his face. He kept himself to himself, as the saying goes.” He gestured to the carvings. “Is it okay if I have a closer look?”
“By all means,” Andrew said. He exchanged a glance with Peggy. He wondered if she’d been starting to think the same as him, that despite all the intricacy and craftsmanship, at some point they would likely have to work out if the ducks had any discernible value that could be used to cover Alan Carter’s funeral.
—
When Martin the neighbor left, Andrew and Peggy reluctantly got on with the job they were there to do. An hour later they were packing up and getting ready to leave, a thorough search of the place for documents revealing only a folder with neatly filed utility bills, and a Radio Times that looked like it had been rolled up for the purposes of killing flies, but nothing that gave any clues to a next of kin.
Peggy stopped by the front door so suddenly that Andrew nearly walked straight into her, just about managing to keep his balance, like a javelin thrower post-throw.
“What is it?” he said.
“I just don’t want to leave this one without trying absolutely everything to find out if he’s got family, you know?”
Andrew checked the time. “I suppose one more sweep couldn’t hurt.”
Peggy beamed, as if Andrew were sanctioning one more go on a bouncy castle rather than an additional search through a dead man’s belongings.
“Take a room each?” he said.
Peggy saluted. “Sir yes sir!”
Andrew thought he might have something when he found a piece of paper that had fallen behind the drawers in a kitchen cupboard, but it was just an old shopping list, yellowed with age. It looked like they were all out of options, but then Peggy had a breakthrough. Andrew found her kneeling on the floor, reaching around the side of the fridge.
“I can see a bit of paper or something trapped there,” she said.
“Hang on,” Andrew said. He took hold of the fridge and rocked it back and forth in little jerks to move it to one side.
Whatever it was, it was covered in a thin layer of grime.
“It’s a photo,” Peggy said, wiping it clean with her sleeve to reveal two people looking back at them. They wore slightly sheepish smiles, as if they’d been waiting a long time to be exposed by someone clearing the dirt away. The man was dressed in a wax jacket with a flat cap tucked under his arm. His silver hair was fighting a losing battle against the wind to stay in place. There were pronounced crow’s-feet around his eyes and wavy wrinkles on his forehead like ridges on a sand dune. The woman had frizzy brown hair tinged with gray, and was wearing a mauve cardigan and matching hoop earrings, an element of fortune-teller about her. She looked to be in her fifties, the man perhaps in his sixties. The photographer had cut them off at the waist, making enough space for a sign above their heads that read: “And a few lilies blow.” There were more signs behind that but the writing was out of focus.
“Is that Alan, do we think?” Andrew said.
“I guess so,” Peggy said. “What about the woman?”
“They’re obviously together in the photograph. His wife? Or ex-wife? Hang on, is that a name badge on her cardigan?”
“It just says ‘staff,’ I think,” Peggy said. She pointed to the sign. “‘And a few lilies blow.’ I feel like I should know that.”
Andrew decided that this was enough of a reason to break his usual rule and use his phone.
“It’s from a poem,” he said, scrolling down the screen. “Gerard Manley Hopkins:
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.”
Peggy ran her fingertips slowly over the photo, as if hoping to glean information simply by touch.
“Oh my god,” she said suddenly. “I think I know where this is. There’s this big secondhand bookshop near where my sister lives—oh, what the hell’s it called?” She flicked the photo back and forth impatiently as she tried to remember, and that’s when they both caught a glimpse of something written on the back, in slanting blue pen: