‘Well, here we are.’
Rob pulled in beside the gateway of the Chigwell house. It looked quiet in there today, the house sitting serenely in its lush two acres, the gates shut, no builders, nothing. He got out and pressed the intercom. Waited.
He glanced back at Daisy in the car. Shrugged.
He pressed again. He could hear a dog barking in the distance, and wondered if it was Prince. Maybe Betsy was out, maybe she’d left Joe in the conservatory dozing, and the dog on guard. But peering up there, he could see her car was on the drive. You didn’t just ‘pop to the neighbours’ round here. This was a classy enclave, people kept themselves to themselves.
Rob moved away from the intercom and started walking along beside the five-foot wall that skirted the property. He heard Daisy get out of the car behind him, and slam the door.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘You think Joe’s told Betsy he rubbed Michael out? Poor git’s on his way to the pearly gates, confession’s good for the soul. Maybe she’s realized we’ve finally made the connection with the pair of them, or suspects we have, and is keeping a low profile?’ he wondered aloud.
‘We need to be careful here,’ said Daisy.
‘Meaning?’
‘This could be either one of them. Joe or Betsy. If she was pursuing Michael, giving him gifts like the LP-’
‘And the ring.’
‘And that, yes. Maybe Michael was on his way to meet her when he died. Maybe that call from Joe was some sort of confrontation. Or a trap.’
‘Well, we’ll soon find out.’
Rob was approaching an accessible section of the wall. He glanced left and right, saw all was quiet, and heaved himself up and over.
116
‘This is crazy,’ said Daisy as they walked across the closely cut lawn to the house.
She’d scrambled over the wall after Rob, despite his moaning that she ought to keep the fuck out of this, wait in the car.
So here they were, approaching the house, and the barking was getting louder.
‘What if the police are watching the place? What if the alarm’s on?’ she asked him, panting as she tried to keep up with the length of his stride.
‘Easy. These people are your relatives. You were concerned when they didn’t answer the intercom, you decided to come in. And the alarm? I checked it all out last time I was here. You only got to say what a nice place this is to Betsy and she gives you all the details. They don’t bother setting the alarm, and it’s a piss-poor single system anyway.’
‘What?’ asked Daisy.
‘Christ, Daise, there are some big gaps in your education. It means you only have to cut the phone lines to the house and it’s out of action. Plus, there are no movement sensors, either inside the house or out here.’
‘You’re so clever,’ mocked Daisy.
‘You get clever in this game, Daise, or you get dead.’
‘That’s a very big dog barking in there,’ said Daisy.
‘I know, I’ve seen it.’
They were at the front door now. Rob rang the doorbell. He leaned on the button for about a minute. Stood back. There was no answer. No movement. Only Prince, barking frantically.
‘Let’s go round the back,’ he said, and Daisy trailed after him. They stood on the patio and looked in the kitchen window. Prince lunged up at the window, barking, snarling, smearing the glass with hot breath and saliva.
‘Kitchen door’s shut,’ said Rob, peering in past the maddened animal. ‘He’s trapped in the kitchen, can’t get out. That’s good. Looks like all the refitting’s been done, so the builders won’t be in today.’
‘Please tell me you’re not going to break in,’ said Daisy.
Rob looked over his shoulder at the big wooden bulk of the outside pool house. If he ever made a fortune like Joe so clearly had, he promised himself he would have the pool inside the house, not outside, save all that shivering your bare-naked arse off running between the house and the pool.
‘Let’s look in there first,’ he said, and set off.
Daisy followed Rob through the double doors at the end of the pool house. It was humid in here, super-heated, all the windows that looked out onto the gardens were densely misted. Instantly she felt sweat break out on her skin. There were a couple of blue-padded sun beds at the far end of the pool, and they could hear the pump working next door. The water shimmered pale blue, lit by underwater lamps, throwing hypnotic dancing shapes up onto the wooden beams over their heads.
‘What the f…’ Rob said, his voice echoing as he moved ahead of her.
Daisy looked at what had caught Rob’s attention. There was a wizened old man sitting on the edge of the pool. He was wearing a navy-blue dressing gown and she could see striped pyjamas underneath, buttoned up to the neck. His scrawny legs were dangling in the water, so that the bottoms of his pyjamas and the trailing hem of the dressing gown were floating, sodden. His bony feet were bare.
He looked up as the two of them entered the pool house.
‘Mr Darke? Joe…?’ said Rob.
Joe gave a ghastly death’s-head smile. His skin was paperwhite, pulled tight over the skull beneath. Only his brown eyes had any life left in them.
‘You. I know you,’ he said weakly, wheezing the words out, then giving a long, gurgling cough.
Rob moved closer. ‘Yeah, I came out here before to see you. I was with Kit. Your nephew.’
‘That’s right.’ Joe nodded, his head waggling around on his thin neck.
‘Rob…’ Daisy was looking at the pool.
Rob hunkered down beside Joe. He indicated Daisy. ‘This is Daisy. Kit’s sister. Your niece.’
Joe’s eyes went to Daisy. She didn’t even glance at him. Her eyes were wide open with shock.
‘Rob…’ she said, more urgently. She kicked off her shoes.
Rob turned his head, looked at what Daisy was staring at, down in the depths. Jesus, wasn’t that…?
‘Fuck,’ he muttered.
‘Don’t!’ said Joe as Daisy threw off her cardigan. She froze there, arrested by the sharpness of his tone.
‘But that’s… she’s…’ Daisy blurted out in panic, staring fixedly down at the woman lying at the bottom of the pool.
‘That’s Betsy.’ Joe gave a breathy, rasping laugh that was almost a sob. ‘And the cow’s dead.’
117
Daisy stood transfixed. Down there in the blue-shimmering pool, Betsy’s streaked blonde hair was billowing softly around her head. Her eyes were half-open, glaring as she lay in a death lock with the red oxygen cylinder, its tubing coiled tight around her throat. Her skin was suffused with angry purple blotches where the tube had cut into her windpipe. Betsy was wearing a spangled pink bikini and a matching coverall. Even in death, she was flashily attired, with her pearly-pink-painted toes and fingernails, and masses of silver jewellery.
Starting to shake, Daisy turned shocked eyes upon her uncle.
He gazed right back at her. ‘She was a fuckin’ tart,’ he said weakly, struggling to draw in breath and get the words out. ‘No bloody good. I wanted to do that for years, put an end to her fuckin’ rubbish. So when she came out here yesterday for her swim I…’ he paused, coughed, then hitched in a struggling breath, ‘… I followed. Carried the fuckin’ bottle with me, sodding thing weighs a ton. She laughed when she saw me come in with it. Asked me what the hell I thought I was… was doing. She soon found out though.’
Neither Daisy nor Rob said a word.
‘I been sitting here ever since. Didn’t have the bloody strength left to move.’ Joe coughed again; it was a horrible, guttural sound.
Rob looked at Daisy. She had one hand clamped over her mouth and she was trembling. She wasn’t used to this sort of shit. He thought of the writing on the card – Betsy’s writing – matching the writing on the LP sleeve. Or did it? Was Ruby certain about that?