‘Come on, Davy, we’ll know soon enough,’ said Pippa, tucking her hand through my arm and tugging me away. ‘You’re living in London now, not a small town. This is the kind of thing that happens. You’ll get used to it.’
‘But it’s hard to believe, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Right under our noses.’
The three police officers who came to the house made me feel safe, especially the one who was in charge, PC Prebble. Jim, he said his name was, smiling at all of us as if he wanted to be our friend. He was plump with a round face and a big, squashed nose. I could tell at once he liked me. I was personable and trying to be helpful, while the others – well, it was obvious he found them an odd lot, and not surprising, really. Dario was shrill and twitchy. Mick was silent to the point of being rude. Miles seemed bored. Pippa overdid her flirtatious act so that at one point I saw Prebble exchange a glance with one of his colleagues. Leah, Miles’s girlfriend, arrived just after them and acted as if they were invisible, which was quite hard when the downstairs room was so crowded. I offered them tea and then they sat at the table with their notebooks and asked us if we had heard anything unusual last night.
‘Nothing,’ said Dario. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘It’s always pretty noisy round here,’ added Pippa.
‘I heard people shouting in the night,’ I said.
‘When would this be?’
‘I don’t know. I’m sorry. I just know I woke and there were noises, but it didn’t seem that remarkable. As Pippa says, it’s not a quiet street. All I can say is that it was dark.’
‘Dark,’ said Prebble, gloomily, and doodled in his book. ‘And it was just the seven of of you?’
‘Not me,’ said Leah. ‘I don’t live here.’
‘Yet,’ said Dario, under his breath, then gave a nervous giggle.
‘Astrid was here too,’ I said. ‘She’s out at the moment. And also…’ I stopped and looked at Pippa.
‘That’s all,’ she said defiantly. ‘We were having a house meeting until quite late.’ She smiled at me, daring me to contradict her, and I smiled reassuringly back. Her secret was safe with nice, reliable Davy.
‘And nobody noticed anything unusual?’
‘No,’ said Mick. I think that was the only word he uttered the entire time the police were with us.
‘Who’s dead?’ asked Owen.
‘A Mrs Margaret Farrell. Did any of you know her?’
We all exchanged enquiring looks then shook our heads. No, we didn’t know a Mrs Margaret Farrell.
‘It’s depressing, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘That someone can live just a few doors down and we don’t even know her name? Until she dies, that is.’ I shook my head sorrowfully.
‘Is it true what they’re saying?’ said Pippa. ‘That she was killed and put behind her rubbish bins?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘How horrible.’
‘But you’ll catch them,’ I said.
‘We’ll do our best.’ He closed his notebook and stood up. ‘The other officers will take your names and phone numbers. If anything occurs to you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.’ He pulled out a card and put it on the table.
‘Good luck,’ I said. ‘I hope you find them very soon.’
∗ ∗ ∗
The best bit of the evening came later. Astrid was back and Owen had disappeared somewhere. We were all sitting downstairs, aimless but unwilling to go to bed yet. I sat on the sofa next to Astrid and every so often shifted position so that my arm brushed against her bare, golden one. I pretended to study my Portuguese, Astrid flicked through a magazine, Miles turned on the telly and we watched the end of some programme about decorating your house, and then the beginning of another of those cookery programmes where this smiling woman was making a fancy dish and letting her long hair fall over the ingredients. Miles changed channels and some film was just starting, which none of us wanted to watch but no one could be bothered to turn off. Dario ran into the room, excited, like a child.
‘Turn the TV on!’
‘It is on,’ said Miles.
‘… the body of fifty-seven-year-old Margaret Farrell was found yesterday evening. Police have begun a murder inquiry…’
I needed to time this right. I waited, and Pippa said: ‘Margaret Farrell – she’s Peggy!’
‘Peggy!’ echoed Astrid.
So then I spoke, lowering my voice in awe. ‘We saw her last night. Me and Dario and Astrid. We saw her.’
I have to say I did it perfectly. People who play tennis talk about the sweet spot on the racquet, the thrill of the perfect shot. It felt so natural, as if I could do no wrong. I moved a bit and felt Astrid’s warm, living flesh pressed against mine and her sweet-smelling hair brush my cheek. I closed my eyes and savoured the moment.
Chapter Thirty-three
‘Fancy a drink?’ said Ross.
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘I’ll catch you later, then,’ he said.
Ross had arrived on the job a few days before. He was good-looking, with just the right confident carelessness about his hair and clothes. I couldn’t work out what he was doing with work like this. Probably just earning some cash before taking off. The day he arrived I tried to make conversation with him. He looked at me curiously and I babbled some nonsense. I felt myself go red and hated myself for it – hated him as well. For the days after that we worked in separate parts of the house and ignored each other. I was on the wiring, the plumbing, the plastering. He was painting and doing the finishing touches. He had lost interest in me.
The most important rule, said Petra Davies, author of Success in Friendship: A User’s Manual, is to care about other people. Petra Davies was wrong. She was as wrong as it is possible to be. The secret, as I was discovering, is not to care. I’d found this in the days at work after the murder. Everything seemed unimportant now, a charade, with nobody in on the joke except me. My head was buzzing with thoughts about Peggy dead and Peggy alive, about the police, about the guys in the house, and I worked without thought or interest. But I noticed from little murmurs and nods of approval that I was working faster and more effectively than before. I plastered one of the walls in what was going to be the master bedroom. I was so preoccupied with my thoughts that I hardly knew where I was or what I was doing. But when I finished, I stepped back and was startled by what I had done. It was a beautiful piece of work, smooth and level across the whole wall.
I wasn’t interested in Ross now. It seemed a thousand years ago that I’d cared what he thought of me. One time I helped him with a cornice that needed fixing, but apart from that we hardly exchanged a word. So when he asked me out for a drink, it seemed like a joke. He’d actually sought me out.
We weren’t able to do anything more than rinse our hands but that was all right, and it was even better when we arrived in the garden of the pub where Ross was meeting his girlfriend, Laura. She and her little friend, Melanie, worked in a gallery and the contrast between us, the neatly pressed and coiffured young women and the dusty, dirty men, seemed hugely comic. Laura, in particular, who sounded as if she had just arrived from a horse show, was loudly amused at the idea of having a boyfriend who was a grimy builder and stroked his hair in mock dismay. ‘I’m really surprised they let you two in here,’ she said. ‘Isn’t there some sign up forbidding builders and gypsies?’
‘I’ll get the drinks,’ I said.
I went inside and returned with a cool, damp bottle of wine and a clump of glasses. They talked about people and places I didn’t know. There was a pause and Laura looked me up and down appraisingly, like something in her stable. ‘So how did you meet this one?’ she said.
‘He’s the expert,’ said Ross. ‘He’s the man.’
I didn’t simper. I didn’t blush and say, oh, well, not really. I was looking closely at Laura, so closely that I could see the fur on her cheek, the strands of hair that had escaped and blown across her forehead.