Riley was annoyed with herself; she had been so fixated on finding out what Henry could have known about Katie, she had totally missed the procession behind her. She went back over her movements for the past two days, trying to work out how long the van might have been there. Nothing came to mind.
‘Thanks, I owe you,’ she said, and meant it. Such carelessness could have been serious. ‘What about the number… did your friend in the ministry of mystery registration numbers find out who it belongs to?’
Palmer shook his head. ‘It belongs to a Fiat Punto written off seven months ago.’
Riley frowned. ‘I thought you said you knew something about them.’
‘I do. I know that whoever these people are, they’re definitely not legal. Now all we’ve got to do is find out who they are and want they want.’
A hundred yards away, the white van idled at the kerb, shielded from Riley’s flat by a large removals lorry. The driver, Meaker, looked at his colleague for instructions. He wasn’t empowered to make decisions, and was quietly hoping he wasn’t about to get the blame for losing the woman outside the park.
‘She had help.’ Quine spoke dispassionately. He kicked some leaf mould from one boot, where he’d been running through the trees. ‘She had to, disappearing like that.’
‘Should we go and look? They could be up there,’ Meaker ventured, eager to encourage the deflection of responsibility.
Quine shook his head, his jaw muscles moving. ‘No. She’ll keep for later. Her and whoever helped her.’
Chapter 14
Henry’s house looked undisturbed and empty, with no obvious signs of activity. Riley eased the Golf into a space eighty yards from the entrance and waited. It was late afternoon and the suburban road was quiet and deserted, apart from Palmer, who was checking the area on foot. It could have been her imagination or the effects of the dull weather, but she thought the house now wore the unique air of desolation which seems to cloak deserted buildings when their human occupants are not coming back.
She joined Palmer on the pavement as he came abreast of the car.
‘This should do,’ he said. They were close enough to the house to pick the car up in a hurry, yet sufficiently far away for it to be missed by anyone keeping watch on the front door. ‘If anybody has got the place under surveillance, they’ll expect us to park up close.’
They had decided earlier to hit the two houses — the neighbour’s and Henry’s — simultaneously. They each carried clipboards and were trying to look like canvassers working the street. Privately, Riley didn’t think Palmer looked like any canvasser she had ever seen, but no doubt he would argue that he would get by on charm. Part of the plan was for him to work that charm on the Neighbourhood Watch supremo, while Riley got inside Henry’s place. She hadn’t been able to think of a logical reason for coming back so soon after her last visit, so it would be better if the elderly neighbour didn’t see her.
Riley turned down Henry’s drive, the gravel crunching loudly underfoot. If anyone was watching, it would look too suspicious if she kept to the grass, so she gritted her teeth and marched along as if she had every right to be there. Off to her right, Palmer was doing the same. She reached the front door and pressed the bell. Count to thirty. Press again. Count another twenty for luck. No sounds from inside and no sign of movement through the slit windows either side of the door. The corner of an envelope was protruding from the letterbox, which meant the post hadn’t been touched today. She heard Palmer pounding on the door on the other side of the fence and whistling cheerfully, already playing his part to distract attention from Riley.
The garage doors were still shut, so she walked over and looked through the crack. It showed the same empty space and the same oil tray with its glutinous black deposit, the surface now covered by a scum of dust and bits of leaf. She walked round to the back and peered through the honeysuckle-clad gate, one ear cocked for noises. It would be crass to go charging through the house only to find the old neighbour giving the cat an early tea.
She crossed the patio to the kitchen door. The same shards of glass were on the floor, except now a faint outline of a dried footprint showed alongside them. It had probably been there on her first visit but it had been too damp to see clearly. Judging by the size, which was at least a nine, it had not been made by the old lady.
Riley tried the door. It was unlocked. She wiped her feet carefully on a small brown mat, stepped over the slivers of glass and looked around. A fork was lying in the middle of the work surface, with remnants of what looked like cat food stuck to the prongs. An empty dish stood nearby, licked clean save for a smear of dried jelly.
She did a rapid scout of the ground floor. Out of the kitchen down a carpeted hallway, into a living room on one side and a dining room on the other. A downstairs cloakroom opened off the entrance lobby on one side, with stairs nearby, and across from it and looking out onto the front, a large study. A room to come back to.
Back out and across the lobby and up the stairs. There was a double twist in the staircase leading to a landing. She didn’t like the idea of that open space above her, but there was no choice other than to keep going. Four bedrooms, ranging from master to small-ish, with no signs of regular occupancy in the first three. A toilet, bathroom and airing cupboard. A faint trace of soap or air-freshener hovering in the atmosphere. And something else she couldn’t place. Musty, like the inside of an old wardrobe.
A sudden flash of movement made her start and a black and white cat streaked past her on the way downstairs. It had come skidding out of the last room facing the rear of the house. Riley felt the hairs on her neck move and stepped quickly up to the open doorway, holding her breath. She had momentary visions of the old lady coming out, having chased the cat to stop it soiling the carpet, and screaming the place down when she saw an intruder.
But the old lady wasn’t going anywhere, and any screaming had probably been done earlier.
She was lying on the room’s double bed, her face turned to the ceiling, arms by her side. She looked oddly elegant, but a shadow of her former self. Her skin was as pale as parchment, and any wrinkles she’d possessed seemed to have smoothed themselves, as if fate had decided that death was bad enough, without being old, too.
Riley couldn’t see any signs of a struggle, but the old lady plainly hadn’t got here by choice. Her clothes were neat, and her dark cardigan carried traces of white hairs where the cat had been nestling against her side. Riley thought about the fork on the kitchen work surface and guessed that was where she had been surprised. Carrying her up here afterwards would have been no problem; there was almost nothing of her.
As Riley made her way downstairs she rang Palmer. When he answered she told him to come round the back through the kitchen and to wipe his feet.
‘No answer next door,’ he said, when he joined her moments later. ‘Maybe she thinks I’m a Mormon.’ He sniffed the air and frowned, then noticed Riley’s face. ‘What’s up?’
She nodded at the ceiling. ‘She’s up there. Last door on the left. I’m going to do the study if you want to take a look.’
He nodded and disappeared upstairs. Riley entered the study, trying to dismiss the mental image of the old lady on the bed upstairs and concentrate on the task in hand. The room was a typical male preserve, dark and solid in furnishings and tone. A heavy antique desk and a club chair stood squarely in front of the window, the surface holding a clutter of papers and a coiled black power cable. Bookcases lined the walls, and other than a side-table holding a small combination television and VCR, the only other items of furniture were a sofa and a recliner chair with the footrest extended holding a week-old copy of the Radio Times.