‘Is your husband at home?’ Atherton asked.
‘He’s out the back, in his shed,’ she said. Her words were oddly jerky, as if she didn’t have much control over them. ‘What is it?’
‘Perhaps we ought to get him in,’ Atherton said.
‘No. Tell me,’ she said. ‘Tell me first. He won’t be able to . . . You don’t understand. Tell me first. What’s happened?’
Atherton took out the diamond pendant in its plastic bag. He had brought it in case extra identification were needed, but now it seemed a gentler way than words to tell her. He extended his hand and opened his palm.
She looked at it, then looked up, appalled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, it’s not possible.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said gently. She was probably still thinking it was a car accident, but maybe it was better to do this in stages. Dead was the first, but probably not the hardest step, with murder still to come.
He saw her remnant of beauty drain from her face as she read the end of everything in his. She shook her head again, and sat down abruptly, without even looking behind her to see where the chair was. But she must know this small house so well that all the distances were programmed into her body.
‘She’s seventeen next week,’ she said, as if that would get her let off. A plea of mitigation. ‘Daddy’s going to give her driving lessons. He said better he taught her himself than someone else and not do it right.’
‘Mrs Wilding, I really think we ought to get your husband in.’
‘I’ll go,’ she said blankly, and then looked bewildered as she found she couldn’t get up.
So Atherton went.
The question of how a devoted gardener coped with a contiguous wilderness of weeds was answered as he stepped out. The chain-link fencing between this garden and the wild strip had been taken down, and the wilderness tamed. Right at the far end, the blue-painted eight-foot builder’s hoarding that cut off the pavement and road beyond was disguised by the original hedge and trees of the demolished house, now grown high and thick. They overtopped the hoarding, and from the road must have given the impression that nothing had changed in here. But to either side, new-looking six-foot-six larch-lap shut off the neighbours, and inside these barriers the extra bit had been incorporated into number two’s original garden. It was, of course, slightly illegal, but Atherton thought Slider at least wouldn’t have blamed them. Who was hurt by it? The land had been left to rot through twenty years of political dither and budget shenanigans, and as a country boy Slider hated the waste of land. Better, he would think, that the Wildings – or Mr Wilding, probably, because Mrs Wilding with her manicured hands did not look like a gardener – made use of it in neat vegetable beds and grew cabbages and runners and carrots and – what was that? It looked like coriander. Coriander?
In the middle of the far end, up against the riotous hedge – it had been privet, but buddleia and elder had seeded themselves into it and waved gaily out of the top – there was a large, stout garden shed, with the door slightly ajar. Not wishing to frighten the occupant by suddenly appearing in the doorway, Atherton called out, ‘Mr Wilding,’ as he approached, and they reached the door simultaneously from opposite directions.
‘Who are you?’ the man demanded, with justifiable surprise and faint irritation.
He was a little taller than Atherton, and a lot bigger, bulky about the shoulders, thick in the middle in the manner of an athlete – a rugby player perhaps – gone to seed. He was evidently quite a bit older than his wife, though it was hard to tell by how much. He was well preserved and might have been anything from mid-fifties to mid-sixties. His face was large-featured and had been handsome – they must have been a golden couple, these Wildings – and his straight grey hair was bushily thick and strong, giving the impression of irrepressible growth that would have to be pruned back hard every few weeks. He was wearing grey slacks and a dark-blue check short-sleeved shirt, and he was holding a large screwdriver in one hand. The hands were grey with working dirt, thick-fingered and scarred with cuts and nicks of various ages, the hands of a hands-on workman. Atherton guessed carpenter: his bifocal glasses bore a surface sheen of fine dust; there was a delicate curl, like a feather, of a wood shaving clinging to his trousers, and the unmistakable tang of sawdust was in the air.
‘I’m sorry if I startled you,’ Atherton said, and introduced himself.
Over the man’s shoulder, he caught a glimpse of the shed’s interior, well fitted-out as a workshop. There was a good, high bench with cramps and a vice, a heavy plane lying on its surface, and a drill, plugged in to a long strip of sockets behind; shelves loaded with jars and boxes of screws, nails, Rawlplugs, hooks, hinges and so on; a pegboard on the wall with tools neatly hanging. The work in progress was on the bench – a wooden railway engine, about the size of a child’s pedal car, partly constructed and lacking wheels yet.
Wilding intercepted the glance. ‘I make toys for the Lions Club,’ he said shortly, as if to get that out of the way. ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m afraid I have some bad news. Would you come inside? It would be better to tell you and your wife together.’
He looked angry. ‘Is it Zellah? If there’s trouble, it will be Sophy and those other girls. Zellah would never do anything wrong. She’s a top student, all A grades; she plays the piano and flute, she’s going to university. She’s a good girl. If they’ve done something it’s those others who thought it up. I said she was too young to be staying over, but her mother insisted. Nobody brings their children up properly any more. They let them run wild. What have they got her into?’
He folded his arms and stood immovably in the doorway of his shed, and obviously was not going to stir until Atherton told him. Perhaps, after all, it was better to tell him first, away from his wife – let him take it to her.
‘I’m afraid I have to ask you to brace yourself for a shock,’ he said. ‘Something very bad indeed has happened.’
Wilding’s eyes widened and Atherton saw his nostrils flare. It was an animal’s reaction to threat; but no parent could ever be prepared for this.
He hated this bit. But there was no way to say it but to say it. ‘I’m so sorry to have to tell you this. Zellah is dead.’
The big, handsome face seemed to shrink together. The eyes were appalled. ‘No,’ he said faintly. ‘No she’s not. She’s not. She’s not.’
But he knew it. The truth was in those staring, naked eyes.
Connolly had made tea, and Mrs Wilding sipped it, more out of automatic social response, Atherton guessed, than because she wanted it. Mr Wilding didn’t seem to know his was there. He stared silently into an abyss before him. Mrs Wilding did the talking.
‘Sophy Cooper-Hutchinson.’ She supplied the name of the girl Zellah had been visiting, and even at such a moment there was a hint of pride in it. ‘They have a big house in Netheravon Lane – do you know it?’
Atherton nodded. It was not that far, in fact, from where Slider lived in Turnham Green. It was a small area of very large, mainly Georgian houses close to the river on the border of Hammersmith and Chiswick. It was where rich Londoners in the eighteenth century had gone to get out of town in the summer, the forerunner of the seaside holiday. If the Cooper-Hutchinsons had a big house there – as opposed to a flat in part of a big house – they must be well off.
‘Sophy and Zellah are friends at school. Sophy’s a few months older than her, and she’s got an older sister, Abigail, who’s eighteen – she’s going to Oxford next month, but she’s still at home now – so although the parents are away for the week, we thought it would be all right for them to be in the house on their own. Sophy’s quite a sensible girl really, and they weren’t going to have a party or anything – Daddy and I made it quite clear there wasn’t to be anything like that. They just wanted to be together the way girls do, and you can’t wrap them up in cotton wool, can you? I mean, Zellah’s nearly seventeen, you have to start treating them like grown-ups some time, and it would have made it very awkward for her with her friends if we’d said she couldn’t go when she’d been invited specially. I want her to have friends, the right sort of friends. It’s bad enough us living here—’