Gerry experienced a sense of calm and peace she rarely felt in the town. Even though she could hear distant voices and the traffic on Cardigan Drive, she felt enveloped by nature, enchanted by birdsong and immersed in a green world of willow, ash and holly. She watched tits and finches flitting from branch to branch, saw magpies perched high in the trees and heard the loud cries of the crows as they flung themselves into the sky like harbingers of fast-falling night. The flower beds were a riot of colour. The May blossom had been and gone — coming earlier each year — though a few of the shrivelled blooms still littered the path and grass along with pussy willow and dried catkins.
Gerry had read an article in one of the papers recently about something called ‘forest bathing’, how it could relax you and remove the stress from your life. You just immerse yourself in a forest. The Japanese called it shinrin-yoku, and its beneficial effects apparently had something to do with the chemicals trees release into the air. Maybe she would try it. She was all for using her senses to soak up the atmosphere of the woods and leave her cares behind. Maybe the entire Homicide and Major Crimes Unit should come out and try it. She could just imagine Detective Superintendent Banks getting in touch with his inner forest.
She left the bench and tottered across the stepping stones, arms spread like a tightrope walker, and managed to make it to the other side without getting wet. There, she followed the path for another few yards through some dense shrubbery, after which she emerged, rather disappointingly, at Cardigan Drive, which she crossed by the traffic lights to get to Hollyfield Lane. The old estate looked more like a bomb site than a residential area, and pretty soon there would be no trace of it left whatsoever. It had been built on a simple grid pattern, with one main road, Hollyfield Lane, leading west, off which radiated the side streets. The Lane eventually petered out into weeds and wasteland, and beyond that, Gerry could see a lone yellow mechanical digger standing in a field, as if waiting impatiently to get to work.
She passed number twenty-six, the house where Howard Stokes’s body had been found. The CSIs clearly hadn’t finished there yet, as the place was still cordoned off by police tape and a uniformed constable stood on guard. He recognised Gerry and said hello as she passed.
Gerry started at the far end of Hollyfield Lane, by the waste ground, on the opposite side of the street, and made her way back slowly. Most of the houses were empty, but occasionally she spotted a pair of curtains, and she would knock at the door. No one she talked to admitted to recognising Samir or knowing anything about the man who lived at number twenty-six, except that he was old and scruffy and went about on a mobility scooter. But when she got a bit closer, to number forty-seven, a large woman in her late sixties with frizzy grey hair and a brightly-patterned muumuu dress, who clearly kept her eye on the street, invited her in. The walls of the living room were covered in paintings, most of them original works, as far as Gerry could tell. Watercolours, oils, montages of found objects. It was like a miniature art gallery.
‘I was out when one of your lot called the other day,’ she said, wedging herself into a well-worn armchair. ‘Staying with a friend in Carlisle. They left a note, like, and a contact number, but I haven’t got around to ringing it yet. I’ll be moving out after the weekend — got some nice sheltered accommodation near the river on the other side of town — so as you can see, I’ve got quite a bit of sorting out to do. I tell you, that Marie Kondo’s got nothing on me. I’ve already thanked three sacks full of stuff for the joy they’ve given me and dropped them off at Age Concern. It can be quite heartbreaking sorting through a lifetime’s old photo albums and love letters, you know. Quite heartbreaking.’
‘I’m sure it can be,’ said Gerry, who didn’t have any love letters to sort through.
The woman, who introduced herself as Margery Cunningham, leaned forward to pat the chair opposite her. Gerry sat there.
‘When you’re old, people can’t imagine you ever being young,’ the woman went on. ‘But I had a life. Oh, my, did I have a life. I was quite a beauty in my day, you know.’ She pointed to one of the paintings, a watercolour of a nude reclining on a sofa. ‘I was a muse. That’s me when I was twenty-three,’ she said. ‘Hardly believe it now, would you?’
‘You were certainly very lovely,’ said Gerry.
‘You’re too kind. I was just like you. Only my hair wasn’t ginger, of course. But you’re a very pretty girl. You’d make a fine artist’s model.’
Gerry blushed. ‘Thank you.’
‘You have the look of those Pre-Raphaelite girls about you. A little sad, a little lost, maybe, but very strong and very beautiful. Sensual. Full of character. I should know. I used to live with an artist.’
Gerry groaned inwardly. She had often thought that if one more person compared her to a Pre-Raphaelite model she would hit them, but she wasn’t going to hit Margery Cunningham, of course. Ray Cabbot, Annie’s father, was always telling her the same thing, especially when he’d had a few drinks and wanted to paint her in the nude. In all fairness, though, he had produced a wonderful sketch of her, fully clothed, which she had framed and hung on the wall of her tiny flat. Annie usually brought him back to earth, while his girlfriend Zelda would sit there with an enigmatic smile on her face. Gerry didn’t get Zelda at all. Naturally, all the men were falling over themselves to be of service to her, even Banks, and Gerry knew something of her troubled history, but she had never been able to communicate with her on the few occasions they had met, finding her distant and unresponsive much of the time.
‘I was just wondering if you knew Mr Stokes at number twenty-six,’ Gerry said.
‘I thought that’s who it would be about. I wouldn’t say I knew him, but we’d certainly say good morning if we met in the street. He was a gentleman, was Mr Stokes, no matter what they say about him in the papers.’
‘What have they said about him?’
‘You know. The drugs and all. I never saw him take any drugs, and he never did anyone any harm. And where’s the harm, I say, if you choose to spend your days in cloud cuckoo land? Makes a damn sight more sense than spending them in the real world, the way it’s going these days, I can tell you. Or spending your life being a nuisance to others, stabbing people and beating people up. He wasn’t always on the scooter, you know.’
‘How long?’
‘A year. Less. It was mostly the diabetes, see. He told me about it once. Gets into your feet, it does. I think he lost a couple of toes. But before, like, when he used to walk around on his own, I never once saw him stumble or stagger. And he always said hello. Like I said, a gentleman.’
It didn’t take much to be a gentleman in Margery Cunningham’s world, Gerry thought. ‘Was he ever suspected of any crimes in the neighbourhood?’
‘Believe it or not, we didn’t really have much crime, love. Nobody had anything, you see. Not anything worth stealing, at any rate. If thieves wanted good pickings, they’d head off through the park and up the hill.’ She laughed, coughed and patted her chest. ‘But if you’re asking did Mr Stokes cause any trouble around here, then my answer is no. Not that I know of. He didn’t have any visitors except when that grandson of his was staying.’
‘His grandson?’
‘Well, I assume that’s who he was. Young lad, anyway. Looked about the right age.’
‘Did this grandson visit often?’
‘Every week or so. Usually stayed a night or two.’
Gerry brought out her photo of Samir and asked, ‘Was this him?’
Margery Cunningham shook her head. ‘No, dearie. The boy I saw wasn’t dark-skinned. I know who this one is, like, and what happened. Saw his picture in the papers. Terrible. But I’ve never seen him around here.’