The women’s client that day – David Goldrab – lived out past the racecourse and along the main route out of Bath on a side road off the area called Hanging Hill, where the great Lansdown battle between the royalists and the parliamentarians had been fought nearly four hundred years ago. It was a funny place, noticeable chiefly for the landmark known locally as the Caterpillar, a line of trees on the crest of the facing hill that could be seen for miles around. But Hanging Hill was also, to Sally’s mind, vaguely sinister. As if it had been infected by its history, an air of corruption seemed to hang over everything. Local rumour had it that the Brinks Mat gold had been melted down in foundry flasks somewhere around here by a Bristol gold dealer, and there was something Sally found uncomfortable about both David and his home, Lightpil House. The grounds, with their shrubberies, gravelled walks, tree plantations, ponds and outlier groves, had all been established in the last decade by landscapers with diggers and earth-movers, and looked totally out of place. The house, too, was modern and seemed to overwhelm its surroundings. Built with the buttery stone that all the buildings in Bath were made of, in a style meant to mimic a Palladian villa, it had a huge two-storey-high portico, an orangery with a row of glass arches, and was guarded at the entrance by electronic gates topped with gilt pineapples.
Marysieńka drove the Honda down the track that led around the perimeter to a small parking area at the bottom of the property. From here they carried their cleaning kit up the long path that meandered past the swimming-pool and through immaculately tended hedges of rhododendron and ceanothus. The door was open, the house silent, just the television on in the kitchen. This wasn’t unusual – they quite often didn’t see David. The agency had made clear that he didn’t want to be bothered or spoken to. From time to time he’d wander through the kitchen in a towelling robe and FitFlops, mobile tucked under his chin, a remote control in his hand, wincing and shaking his head disappointedly when the Sky box refused to co-operate, but often he’d be locked in his office in the west wing, or over at the livery stables where he kept his show horse, Bruiser. There’d be a list of jobs for the girls and an envelope of cash in the kitchen. He didn’t get many visitors, and although he wasn’t the tidiest or cleanest man, sometimes it was odd to be cleaning and scrubbing floors and sinks and toilets that hadn’t had any use in the week since they’d last been there. They could have closed the door of each room and sat filing their nails, squirted a dose of polish into the air and left. No one would have been any the wiser. But they were all secretly a little scared of David, with his security systems and electronic gates, his camera mounted over the front door. So they played it safe and cleaned the place whether it needed doing or not.
The women set to work. The carpets were thick, wall to wall, in shades of blue and pink. Highly polished brass candelabra fittings hung on every wall and each window was pelmeted and dressed with swagged, fringed curtains in lush blue or gold silk. Everything needed to be dusted. There were two wings, each joined by corridors to the heart of the house where the kitchen and living areas were. The Polish girls took a wing each, while Sally got started with the ironing in the utility room.
There was always a pile of the pinstriped poplin shirts David wore, in a range of pastel colours, pink and peppermint and primrose. They all had handstitched labels with ‘Ede & Ravenscroft’ written in curlicue script. Missing, she thought, as she filled the steam iron and laid out the first shirt. Missing was never good. Not if it was a teenage girl from a nice family. And then she wondered if the police would have to interview her. She wondered if a man in a uniform would be sent out to the cottage. If, perhaps, he’d notice the way Millie and Sally were living these days and report it back to Zoë. Who wouldn’t be remotely surprised that her dimwit sister with the hopeful smile and the dopey stars in her eyes had at last got her comeuppance from the world and been put where she belonged.
She’d been ironing for ten minutes when David appeared outside, walking briskly across the gravel drive from the garage. He wasn’t tall but he was powerful – the Polish girls called him ‘the fat man’ – stockily built with cropped grey hair and a year-round suntan. Today he wore a lemon-yellow Gersemi polo shirt, breeches and Italian high boots, and was tapping his short whip against his thigh as he came. He must have been up the road at the stables in Marshfield. He hadn’t removed his jewellery to ride – the sun flashed off the gold chain at his neck and the single gold stud in his ear. He came in through the orangery, stopped briefly in the kitchen and slammed the fridge door. Then he appeared in the utility room.
‘The only way to end a good dressage session.’ He was holding in one hand a lead-crystal flute of pink champagne and in the other a bag of peanuts. ‘Peanuts to replace the salts I’ve lost and the Heidsieck to keep the pulse rate up. The only way. Taught me by the best dressage boys in Piemonte.’
He had an English accent that veered between Australian, East London and Bristol – his ‘U’ sound always came out like an ‘A’, so that ‘hut’ sounded like ‘hat’. She had no idea where he was from but she was sure he hadn’t been born in a huge mansion like this. She didn’t break off from her ironing, but if he noticed her lack of response, it didn’t faze him. He slung himself into a swivel chair that sat in the corner, giving it a half-turn so he could throw his feet up on the worktop. He smelt of aftershave and horses – there were still marks on his forehead where the riding hat had been.
‘I’m a lucky man, you know that?’ He used his teeth to open the bag of peanuts, tipped some into his hand and began tossing them into his mouth. ‘I’m lucky because I’ve got a good nose for the people I can trust. Always have had. It’s got me out of a lot of problems. And you, Sally? I’ve already got you. Got you up here.’ He tapped his head. ‘Already locked away. I know what you are.’
Sally had got used to his occasional sermons: she’d heard him on the phone to his mother, talking about the latest thing he’d seen on the news, how it had upset him and how his already dim view of the human race was getting worse by the day. She’d learned, above all, that she wasn’t expected to respond to his monologues, that he just wanted to be able to talk. This, though, was more personal than usual. She went on with the ironing, but she was paying more attention now.
‘See, I know something you won’t admit to anyone.’ He smiled up at her. A slow smile that showed all his teeth and made Sally think of rats and reptiles. ‘I know this is killing you. A woman like you? Scraping shit off other people’s toilets? You weren’t raised to be doing something like this. Those Polish slappers? I look at them and I think, Cleaners – that’s what they’re doing now and that’s what they’ll be doing when they’re eighty. But you? You’re different, you’ve seen better and you hate cleaning. You hate it with a vengeance. Every floor you scrub, every stained pair of sheets you pull off a bed, it kills you.’
The colour crept across Sally’s face, the way it always did when she didn’t know what to say. She tried to keep her mind on the shirt – shaking it out, laying the collar flat, testing the button on the iron. It shot out a hissing jet of steam, making her jump a little.
David watched her in amusement. He used his feet on the worktop to jiggle the chair from side to side. ‘See, Sally, I think a quality girl like you deserves a proper job.’
‘What do you mean, “a proper job”?’
‘Let me explain. Let me give you a little bite-size lesson in David Goldrab. When I go out to work – not that I do have to much, these days, Gottze dank – but when I do, I have to deal with people. And hands-on deal with them, if you get my drift. So this is my retreat, the place I come for solitude, and the last thing I want is Shangri-La crowded with people – you can understand that, can’t you? I like my space. But I’ve got ten acres, and more than four thousand square feet of living space, and I don’t need to tell you a spread like that takes TLC. The outside’s sorted – the pool man comes every two weeks, and there’s some half-wit lives down at the cottage between this estate and the next. He deals with the pheasants, arranges a shoot for me if I’ve been stupid enough to invite people down from London. I leave them a list of jobs, like I do with you, pay their wages direct into their bank accounts, only have to speak to them by phone. Great. Except it’s not enough – because of the house. You only have to turn your back on it for a second and before you know it the place is falling in around you. Now call me a snob,’ he put a hand over his heart, a martyred look on his face, ‘but I can’t bear talking to the fucking yokels who come out here to do these jobs, dragging their disgusting knuckles along the floor and blinking their one fucking eye.’