‘But you’re there.’
‘It’s not the same.’
‘Isn’t it? He adores you, you know that.’
Derwent put a hand up to his eyes, rubbing at them with his forefinger and thumb. ‘Fuck’s sake. I’m not crying. My eyes are watering because I’m tired.’
‘Yeah, of course. I think we drove past someone chopping onions, actually. That’s probably it.’
‘Don’t take the piss,’ he mumbled.
‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’
‘I want to look after him. That’s all. And I don’t know how to make it better for him.’
‘It’s a phase.’
Derwent squinted at me. ‘What do you know about it?’
‘That’s what my brother says about every annoying thing his kids do. Everything’s a phase. In a month’s time he’ll be sleeping beautifully and you’ll have something else to worry about.’
He thought about it. ‘Thanks, mate.’
‘Any time.’ I got out of the car and looked up and down Constantine Avenue. The houses were detached, set back from the road and there were no pedestrians. It was quiet, and private. ‘This is going to be rubbish for witnesses.’
‘Come on.’ Derwent led the way through the gate and paused to scan the gravel in front of the house. ‘What do you think? Tyre marks?’
‘None to speak of.’ I crouched down, trying to see. ‘Nope. There isn’t enough gravel for that.’
‘Typical.’ He looked up at the house. It was a 1930s house with ugly aluminium-framed windows that had probably been put in four decades after the house was built. It had a general air of being unoccupied. The curtains were drawn in every window and weeds had sprouted through cracks in the steps. Some rubbish had blown in from the street and tangled in the undergrowth. ‘You’d know it was empty, wouldn’t you.’
‘Empty or that it belonged to someone elderly.’ I followed him through the front door, working my hands into my gloves as a precaution but also because I really didn’t want to touch anything. I stepped over the slithery pile of post and junk mail on the doormat, wrinkling my nose. ‘It stinks in here.’
‘Not as much as the nursing home did.’ Derwent looked back at me. ‘When I get old, I’m going to Switzerland to end it all. No way do I want to drag out my days staring at the walls surrounded by a load of drooling vegetables.’
‘It can’t have been that bad.’
‘Whatever you’re imagining, it was worse.’ He strode into the kitchen, snapping with energy now that we were working again, the hunter’s instinct overriding fatigue. I tried and failed to visualise him as an old man. Impossible to think of him being calm, sitting quietly, staring at the walls. He’d burn the place down first.
The living room curtains were faded and worn, the material grubby on the edges where Harold Lowe had pulled them closed night after night. I pushed one back to let some more light in, revealing a room full of the kind of furniture my grandparents liked: dark mahogany tables that were cloudy with dust, over-stuffed armchairs with heavily textured upholstery, a wood-framed sofa that was so far out of fashion it had come back in. Dust and fibres floated in the light that slanted in, as thick as mist, and I thought of William Turner’s antiseptic home. I believed he had asthma – no one could have faked the attack he had experienced in front of me – but clean homes made me suspicious, on the whole. A lot of people became surprisingly house-proud when they had something to hide.
Derwent poked his head in. ‘Anything strange?’
‘Nope.’
‘Upstairs, then.’
‘Does Harold have any family?’
‘No. He’s on his own.’ Derwent’s mouth thinned. ‘Poor old bugger. He was so pleased someone had come to see him. The house is going to be sold to pay for his nursing home. God knows what they’re charging for it.’
‘So what happens to all of this stuff?’
‘No idea. Charity? He doesn’t want to come home, he says. I think he was lonely here.’
‘Well, that’s something, isn’t it? Maybe if you’re ninety-odd and you don’t want to live on your own any more you don’t mind being in a home.’
‘Maybe.’ Derwent didn’t sound convinced.
I went up the stairs first and glanced into the first bedroom: Harold’s own, the bed stripped, the mattress covered in overlapping stains. The room next door was a study, followed by a bathroom and a separate lavatory. The air was stale, the rooms dusty and worn out, the smell of pine still surprisingly strong in the bathroom. There was something tragic about the things he’d left behind – a brush with yellowing bristles, a cracked bar of soap, a face cloth hanging stiffly at an angle over the edge of the sink where he’d left it to dry. Kate Emery’s house had been the same. Life, stopped.
‘Whoever buys this place is going to have to gut it,’ Derwent said. ‘Keep the walls and start again with the rest.’
I was about to answer him as I pushed open the door to the last room at the back of the house, but the words evaporated. I stood for a second, my brain trying to work out what was bothering me. It smelled wrong, that was it. The room smelled, but not of stale air and old clothes like the rest of the house. And I knew better than to override the feeling that something wasn’t right.
‘What is it?’ Derwent was right behind me, jostling me, trying to see.
‘Wait.’ I put a hand up. ‘Someone’s been in here.’
The curtains were drawn at the window but there was a gap that let some light into the room. It was a bedroom, the bed covered in a pink candlewick bedspread, the cream carpet worn and thin underfoot. I edged forward and crouched to look under the bed. There was a knotted condom on the carpet, curled up, forgotten. That was the smell I’d caught.
‘This should be good for DNA.’ I straightened up. ‘I’m not touching it. I’ll let the SOCOs recover it.’
Derwent drew back the bedspread carefully. There was a pale green sheet on the bed with a ghostly white mark in the exact centre.
‘I don’t think Harold has been banging his brains out in here,’ he said. ‘So the question is, who has?’
‘More than one couple.’
‘What do you mean?’
I pointed. ‘Semen stain. On the floor, we have a condom. When the semen is inside the condom, it’s not generally all over the bed.’
Derwent grinned. ‘In your experience.’
‘Yes. I know what I’m talking about.’
The grin widened. ‘Is that so?’
‘I don’t want to shock you, but I have had sex. A few times, actually.’
Derwent was inspecting the rest of the room. ‘Not for a while.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘I know.’
‘You are so creepy. Of course you don’t know.’
‘You haven’t.’ He glanced at me. ‘But when you do, I’ll know.’
‘No, you won’t.’
A slow, emphatic nod.
‘You’re disgusting.’
‘It’s like a sixth sense.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘I see things.’