Local Gone Missing(69)

“Lovely.”



* * *



—

“It’s got pillars,” Caro said, standing in front of the black iron railings of 16 Addison Gardens and craning her neck to look right up to the roof.

It was four stories with a kitchen in the basement and two attic windows. It made Elise think of the Darlings’ house in Peter Pan. But no fairy tales here. There was no one home when they knocked but Caro noticed a face at the window next door. The door to number 18 opened and a woman came out with a watering can. Elise would have put money on there being no water in it.

“Hello,” she said. “Sorry to trouble you but I’m trying to find out about someone who used to live here.”

“Let me guess. . . . Charles Williams?”

“That’s right! How did you know?”

“Nobody has ever come looking for anyone else. It’s always Charles and I’ve been here since the year dot.”

“Who has come looking?”

She rolled her eyes. “People he owed money to, generally. There were quite a few in the beginning. It tailed right off but we still get the odd one. Some odder than others. He was a charming man at a drinks party but a bit of a rogue, our Charles. He moved years ago. So why are you after him?”

“We’re detectives,” Elise said, and produced her ID.

“Ah! What’s he been up to now?”

“I’m afraid he has died. In unexplained circumstances,” Elise said, and the neighbor put down the watering can.

“Goodness,” she said. “Do you want to come in out of the sun?”

The house was shuttered and wonderfully cool inside and Mrs. Simpson introduced herself as she poured them cold, fizzy water that beaded the glasses. Elise could hear herself gulping it down but couldn’t stop.

“This is a great house,” Caro said. “Is next door the same?”

“Hardly; they’ve ripped everything out—months of building work, and the dust! It’s nice if you like that kind of thing. No doors but very modern.”

“How did Mr. Williams have it?”

“Oh, it was lovely—filled with beautiful things: antiques, silver, paintings. He was a collector, you know.”

“Were you here when his daughter and her boyfriend were attacked?” Elise asked, pressing the glass to her cheek.

The neighbor sat forward in her chair. “I was. Those poor young people. He was beaten to death and she was smothered, you know? While we sat watching some silly Christmas film on the television. Afterward I kept thinking if we’d only turned the TV off, we’d have heard something. Could have prevented it, perhaps. The first we knew was when the police arrived. One of the neighbors saw the front door left wide open.”

Elise nodded sympathetically.

“It was a terrible time.” And Mrs. Simpson hesitated. The detective waited for the “but.” “But we’ve always wondered about it. Sofia had a key and the code to the main alarm, but what about the other alarms? On the rooms with the collections? Charles boasted they were top of the range and linked to a private-response company. But nothing went off.”

“Did you say anything at the time?”

“Well, we didn’t like to. The boy was dead and Sofia was in a coma. Charles had that to deal with. And then he sold up and moved.”

They sat quietly for a moment.

“You said there was still the odd visitor looking for Charles,” Elise said. “Has anyone come recently?”

“Well, there was a man round Christmastime. He wasn’t the usual—he wasn’t banging on the door demanding money. He just loitered around in the street and I didn’t like the look of him. You have to be careful round here—with the park just across the road. You get all sorts. Anyway, I sent my husband out to speak to him and he said he was just looking someone up. My husband said Charles didn’t live here anymore. We’d heard he’d moved out of London. And the man walked off.”





Fifty-two


FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 2019





Kevin


Kevin Scott-Pennington sat at his laptop while the household whirled around him. The twins were struggling into their wetsuits and squealing about the sand they’d failed to rinse off them the last time.

“There’s grit all over the floor,” Janine shouted. “Do it outside.”

He hunched his shoulders against the onslaught and pretended to study his screen.

He should have been back in the office, safely tucked away battling Frank Tenpenny in Los Santos on his Xbox—and batting away angry e-mails from his investors.

But Janine had refused to go back to London when she’d returned from the shop on Tuesday with her bottles of water and inside information. She’d begun with that passive-aggressive thing Kevin knew so well: “Well, we could go—I don’t mind. The sea air is better for my head, and the kids want to do that kite-surfing course, but I understand if you’ve got to get back. Don’t worry about us.”

But when he refused to pick up the underlying message and carried on packing up the car, she went full frontal.

“Look, you can work from here and we’d be on our way back in a couple of days. We’d be doing a U-turn in London. Why do you want to sit in stinking city fumes? We should stay.”