Mrs Garner was an attractive forty-something with two teenage sons, as evidenced by the gallery of professional-looking framed family photos lining the hallway walls. There was also a man in all of the pictures, who Anik quietly pointed out was definitely punching above his weight. Mrs Garner explained that she’d bought the property eighteen years ago from a lady called Hester Mancroft who’d rented the top two floors out as student flats. On moving in, they’d immediately converted the property back into one big family home. Mrs Garner remembered that Hester had joked about being able to buy the house after fleecing her husband in their divorce. She’d lived with her son, Julian, who had attended Harrow, but he’d turned out to be rather useless and certainly not the businessman Hester had hoped he would be. The name of Adam Border meant nothing to Mrs Garner at all.
Back at the station, Laura set about trying to trace Hester Mancroft, whilst Jack was at his desk contacting antique dealers to see if he could trace any of the alleged stolen items from Avril Jenkins’ house. This rather arduous job had been attempted a couple of times before with no success because Avril hadn’t noticed some of the thefts straightaway, didn’t immediately report the ones she had noticed and had no photos of some items as they weren’t insured.
Ridley was just about to step from his office and comment on how much time was being put into this probable non-case, when Jack got a phone call from Avril. Her voice was whispered and panicked. ‘He’s following me. Right now! I’m in Borough Market, the Green Market section. I have to keep moving or he’ll catch me.’ She sounded more and more out of breath with every word. ‘Please come quickly, DS Warr. I’m not making it up!’
Ridley quickly drove with Jack to Borough Market, where they split up and entered through opposite entrances. They did a loop of the market, before meeting back by the drinking fountain just inside the Borough High Street entrance. Avril was nowhere to be found. After a second, more urgent loop of Green Market, they quickly moved into Borough Market Kitchen to see if Avril had been forced further afield. Jack was constantly calling Avril’s mobile but there was no answer. They were getting worried. If this turned out to be the decisive moment when Avril’s stalker upped the ante and actually made physical contact, the result could be life-threatening for her and the fallout would be disastrous for Ridley’s team.
As they raced around Borough Market Kitchen down parallel aisles, it was Ridley who spotted Avril Jenkins first from Jack’s description. She was perched on a stool outside Mei Mei’s Singaporean Street Food stall. Within seconds, Jack was by his side.
‘Take her home.’ Ridley pushed the words out through gritted teeth. ‘Sign the case back to Kingston. I don’t want to hear the name Avril Jenkins in my station again.’ Then he walked away. In their desperation to save her from potential harm, they’d both jumped into Ridley’s car, meaning that Jack would have to take Avril home in a taxi, but that was a problem he thought it wise not to share with Ridley right now.
Jack walked slowly to Avril’s side, hoping to have calmed his temper by the time he reached her. Avril gave him no more than a fleeting glance as she tucked into an ox cheek rendang curry. ‘Too slow.’ She spat rice as she spoke. ‘You missed him.’
From the street, Jack watched Avril walk up her driveway, her huge home looming ahead of her. He couldn’t tell whether she was deluded, ill, actually being stalked or, possibly, and worst of all, whether she was just a lonely old woman who wanted his attention.
In the garden next door, a man was up a tall ladder trimming his boundary hedge into a wave pattern. Jack introduced himself and the man returned the favour — Bernard Warton was a retired banker in his mid-seventies and was only too happy to tell Jack what a pain in the arse Avril Jenkins was. Noisy, rude and cantankerous were the words he kept coming back to. He said she complained about everything: his hedge was too high, so he trimmed it down only to be told that his trimmers were too noisy. His fountain was too noisy. His cherry blossom blew onto her gravel. His driveway wasn’t weeded to her liking. His bird feeders attracted squirrels.
When asked, Mr Warton said that he did recall seeing a young man in Avril’s garden, on and off, over the years. He knew the man was called Adam because they’d spoken on a couple of occasions. He was mid-thirties, pleasant, well-spoken and drove a silver Porsche. Once, he’d even given Mr Warton some petrol from Avril’s shed, to refill his lawn mower — this had been their secret as both men feared Avril’s wrath if she ever found out.
‘I sometimes didn’t see him for weeks, even months at a time. He could have come and gone, I suppose, or he could simply have been working in the rear garden or the west section over the other side. Her property’s huge, as I’m sure you know. Often, I don’t even see Avril for months! She can be quite the hermit. As time went by and the silver Porsche was a more regular sight driving up and down our private street, speculation then became rife about him becoming her toy boy! Her husband had passed a couple of years after I saw Adam for the first time, so no one was judging her: it had just been amusing gossip for a while.’
Mr Warton couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen Adam, but several months ago the small section of Avril’s front garden that he could see from his property had started to look neglected, so perhaps Adam had gone by then. ‘I can only see ten or fifteen yards into the east side of her front garden, from mine. Her driveway is too far away for me to see who comes and goes, and her house is set too far back to be visible from my comparatively modest bungalow. There’s a public footpath running between her and the golf course, round the back somewhere. I can’t see that from my garden at all, so I couldn’t tell you about any comings and goings there.’
Jack ended by enquiring whether Mr Warton had any CCTV.
‘I’ve got a Ring doorbell. That any good to you?’
The two most interesting things Jack learnt from his chat with Mr Warton were that when her husband was alive Avril used to be charming. Her eccentricities came on slowly over the subsequent years. She turned into a woman who no longer cared how she behaved or cared what people thought of her. And the second was that no one had seen Adam Border, or his distinctive silver Porsche, for months. There was no physical evidence that Avril was being stalked at all — but there was evidence that she had declined, physically and mentally, since her husband died. Jack was coming to the same conclusions as Kingston station — that Avril was perhaps lonely, perhaps a fantasist, perhaps unwell. But probably not in danger. He thanked Mr Warton for his time and retraced his footsteps back towards Avril’s house. Taking another look at the proximity of Warton’s bungalow, Jack was certain that very little of Avril’s property could be seen from his home. Neighbours in this street were so far apart, that they made for very bad witnesses.
As Jack headed back down the winding driveway towards the waiting taxi that had brought them from Borough Market, his mobile rang. He turned to see Avril standing on her doorstep, mobile in one hand and a red notebook in the other. ‘Have you spoken to Adam’s girlfriend?’ Jack’s weary sigh could be heard at the other end of the phone. ‘Rude bitch. She used to call and, if I answered, she’d hang up. I dialled 1471 and got her number. Do you want it? I don’t know her name, but she stole from me as well, so that’s another crime for you to look into.’
Jack was considering how to reply when she added, ‘Jewellery. She stole jewellery.’ When Jack pointed out that there was no jewellery on the list of stolen items given to the police, Avril insisted that she wasn’t sure exactly what had been taken, but something definitely had because her jewellery box wasn’t as full as it used to be. Then she said, ‘I’ll make a pot.’