“Is there only one key?”
“This is the original,” Glenn answered. “Mrs. A has a copy.”
Gemma frowned. “Mrs. A?”
“Mrs. Armitage. She’s the chair of the garden committee. It was Mrs. A who found your body, and let your people in and out.”
“Right,” said Kerry, as if she knew this, but the corners of her mouth were pinched and Gemma suspected she had not. “Let’s have a look, then.”
“Do you know Mrs. Armitage well?” Gemma asked as Glenn led them to the gate.
He shrugged. “I guess you could say she’s my boss. She’s all right. A bit fussy, but then most of the committee chairs are the same.”
“You take care of more than one property?”
Glenn threw her that amused look over his shoulder as he fitted the key in the lock. “I’d hardly have a business if I didn’t.”
“But surely you can’t do all that work yourself?”
“I’m a landscape designer, Sergeant. I hire contract labor for the big jobs. But I like doing the routine maintenance myself.”
Gemma didn’t bother correcting him on her rank, because they’d stepped through the gate onto an interior path. The pea gravel was inches thick and shifted like wet sand beneath their feet. If anyone had come in this way, they wouldn’t have left usable prints.
Shrubs and the trunks of large trees blocked their view of the garden proper but golden sunlight filtered in from either side. The space felt secret and a little claustrophobic. Following Glenn and Kerry down the right-hand path, Gemma stepped out into the open and said, “Oh.”
The view down a long expanse spread before them. The path on which they stood ran all the way round the perimeter, as well as into the garden’s center where it outlined more formal beds. Thick-trunked, mature trees were scattered throughout the green turf at the nearer end, punctuated with banks of glowing rhododendrons.
There was no sign of crime scene tape.
“Where was she found, exactly?” Kerry asked, and Gemma realized for the first time that Kerry had not actually seen the body in situ. “This just landed on my desk this morning,” she said to Gemma, sounding defensive. “And I’m going to kill Enright,” she added under her breath.
Clive Glenn led them to a particularly large plane tree at the edge of a sweep of lawn. A shed just large enough to hold gardening tools stood nearby. In the stronger light, Gemma could see the fine lines around his gray eyes and she revised her estimate of his age up by a few years. “She was under this tree,” he said. “Just there.” He pointed to a spot on the lawn side of the tree. “It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.” For the first time he sounded less than sure of himself.
“But you didn’t find the body,” said Boatman, glancing at her phone as if to check a note.
“No. It was Mrs. A. But I got here just after—before the police. The residents use the space quite a bit on Saturdays, and I like to make sure it’s at its best. Sometimes rubbish blows in, or kids have a bit of a party and leave things lying about.”
“Any particular kids?” asked Gemma, thinking instantly of Jess. But Jess was far too young to be hanging about late at night in the garden. Then she remembered, uncomfortably, that Jess’s mother had said she’d taken a sleeping pill and gone to bed early. Who knew what Jess had been up to?
Glenn shrugged. “No. I don’t know any of them. But I do find things. Beer cans. Used condoms. Cigarette ends. You assume it’s kids, but . . .”
“Was there anything like that around Reagan Keating’s body?” Kerry asked sharply.
“No. I’m just saying it happens.”
“That must have been really upsetting, finding her like that. For you and Mrs. Armitage,” Gemma said, trying to keep him talking.
“She was in a right state, Mrs. A. No phone—she doesn’t hold with them—so I suppose she was going to wait until someone came out. She came running towards me when I came in the gate, white as a sheet. I was afraid she’d have a heart attack.”
“Do you remember what she said?”
His eyes half closed, Glenn turned the key in his fingers as if it was an aid to memory. “‘There’s a girl. The nanny. She’s dead.’ I thought she was off her head, but I followed her. And then when I saw her—the girl—I knew she was dead. But I checked for vital signs anyway”—he looked at Gemma, as if she’d doubted him. “You don’t run landscape crews without some first-aid training. I know how to find a pulse. But”— he gave an almost imperceptible shudder. “She was cold.”
“Then what did you do?” Gemma asked.
“I rang 999. Then I sent Mrs. A to wait at the gate. One of us had to let them in, and I didn’t want to leave her with the . . . girl.”
So Clive Glenn had been alone with the body. As had Mrs. Armitage, Gemma reminded herself. “Did you know her? Reagan Keating?”
For a moment, Gemma thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he lifted one shoulder in a little shrug and slipped the key into his jeans pocket. “I’d seen her a few times. With the kid she looked after.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“No. I didn’t even know her name.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Do you mind if I get to work now? I’ve a schedule to keep.” He added that they could make arrangements with Mrs. Armitage to use her key, and described her house to them so that they could find it from the inside.
After asking him to leave the gate open until they could get a key sorted, and not to work near the area where the body had been found, Kerry thanked him. Then, as he turned away, she said suddenly, “This rubbish you find, Mr. Glenn. Are you sure you don’t know any more about that?”
“Look.” He swung back towards them, both hands jammed in his pockets. “I don’t live here. There are probably close to thirty houses on this garden, and a good few of those are broken up into flats. I’ve spoken to maybe half a dozen residents in the five years I’ve looked after the place.”
He hadn’t met Kerry’s eyes, and when he’d glanced at Gemma he’d looked away. There was something he wasn’t telling them. “But?” prompted Gemma.
Glenn withdrew a hand from his pocket to scratch his beard. After another moment’s hesitation he seemed to come to a decision. “I don’t want to tell tales. But it’s light very early in the summer and I like working that time of day, before the heat. I’ve seen—I think there’s a bit of musical houses that goes on.”
“Musical houses?” Kerry looked blank.
But Gemma understood. Although she’d never caught anyone at it in their garden, she’d heard rumors about the goings-on in communal gardens since she’d first come to work in Notting Hill. “Hanky-panky between neighbors. Sneaking into each other’s houses. Or,” she added, thinking of the used condoms, “maybe meeting in the garden for a quickie.”
Glenn nodded, looking pleased with her. “Yeah. Exactly.”