Adrian Magson: No Help For The Dying

Riley repeated her request. ‘I’ve been assured he works for you, Mr Murdoch,’ she said, ‘but your assistant doesn’t seem to know what I’m talking about.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Murdoch tiredly. ‘She’s a temp. Thinks fame is a birthright and probably wants to be an actress or model by the time she’s eighteen.’ He paused, then said: ‘I’m sorry, but you’re out of luck. Henry did work here, but not for two weeks now. He didn’t turn up for work one day. We’ve tried contacting him, but without luck. Nobody’s seen him. If you speak to him, ask him to get in touch, would you?’

Murdoch hung up without saying goodbye and Riley felt the air contracting around her. This was getting odder by the minute. Odd that Henry had specifically said he was on his way to a rush job, which was the kind of terminology someone would use to a colleague. Former colleague.

She checked with a couple of directory enquiry agencies to see if Henry had a separate home phone listed. With a bit of luck he had a private number. But both enquiries turned up a blank. No surprise there. Next she rang Donald and asked him to repeat Henry’s address, which she wrote down on the back of the missing person flyer.

Number 12, Eastcote Way proved to be a detached Georgian house in a quiet street just a stone’s throw from Pinner Station. The building seemed in danger of being consumed beneath a tangled mass of dying ivy, although the leaf-strewn gardens were mature and neat, enclosed by weathered fencing and a growth of spiky greenery. Riley tried to recall if Henry had mentioned a wife, but the information wouldn’t come. Perhaps he employed a gardener instead.

She left her car along the street and crunched up a gravelled drive, where twin ruts showed the regular passage of a vehicle leading from a garage set on one side of the house. The twin green doors needed painting, as did the front door of the house, but here, even age seemed to have its place, adding to the feel of solid comfort and prosperity. She found a doorbell and thumbed the button.

If it rang she didn’t hear it. She gave it another ten seconds before pressing again. Still nothing. She turned and surveyed the road outside the gate, and the houses either side with their tastefully netted windows. Suburbia at rest. Although not without eyes, she guessed. She looked at her watch in the manner of someone having an appointment and puzzled by the lack of response.

Riley wandered casually over to the garage and tugged at one of the doors. It opened a fraction and revealed an empty space, save for a metal tray in the centre of the floor and a workbench against the back wall. The air smelled musty and oily, and by the amount of black sludge sitting in the tray, whatever he drove leaked like an old sieve. If Henry had come and gone recently, it was without leaving any wet tyre tracks.

A gravel path ran from the garage to the side of the house. She pushed through a wrought-iron gate heavy with snakes of dried honeysuckle and found herself in a garden only marginally smaller than Hyde Park. Well, since Riley didn’t even possess a window box, it seemed that big to her, anyway. She studied the generous sweep of neat lawns and borders, now with little in the way of colour, and the selection of spindly cherry trees, and wondered how Henry Pearcy had managed to hang onto this house if his career was going so badly.

The gravel path continued across the rear of the house, skirting a patio tinged green with moss. Against the wall stood a wrought-iron table with a glass top and four matching chairs. The glass was puddled with rainwater, the surface stained with dirt and the remnants of dried blossom. A few mouldy leaves clustered forlornly around the feet of the furniture, trapped and waiting for a heavy broom to sweep them free. It resembled an abandoned stage set, and Riley guessed it had been a long time since Henry had last hosted any kind of gathering here.

A set of French windows stared blankly onto the garden, with a heavy set of lined curtains cutting off any view of the inside. Further along, a small extension jutted out from the main line of the building. This proved to be a kitchen, with a glass-panelled door set in one wall. Riley stepped over and peered through the glass, but all she could see was a standard kitchen: cooker, table, sink, fridge, pot and pans. But no sign of recent activity. She put her hand out to try the door when something made her freeze.

The glass pane close to the handle was missing.

She peered through the hole, and saw broken glass glinting back at her from the floor inside.

Then a voice said: ‘Can I help you?’

The white van with the darkened windows idled through traffic on the outskirts of Staines, to the south-west of London. The driver was killing time, waiting for instructions. He glanced at the man in the passenger seat, who was fiddling with a mobile phone and humming softly to himself. A bible rested on his knees, the leather covers worn and shiny, and the top of a silver flask protruded from one pocket of his long black coat.

‘He’s taking his sweet time,’ the driver muttered, easing around a battered Fiat Uno turning right into a one-way street against the traffic. His accent was American. He stopped right behind the Fiat as the woman driver realised her error and turned to see if she could back out. She was now blocking a surge of oncoming traffic led by an enormous petrol tanker, and with no way back. The driver of the van grinned as the woman became aware that she was completely vulnerable if the tanker driver chose to exercise his right of way. ‘Serves you right, bitch,’ he whispered nastily. ‘Should learn to keep your eyes open.’ He sniggered and looked at his companion who was shaking his head in disapproval. ‘What? Is it my fault she’s stupid?’ He gave a heavy shrug of his shoulders before easing the van forward a few feet.

The passenger’s phone rang. He answered with a curt: ‘Here.’

‘Is it done?’ The voice from the other end was smooth and softly-spoken.

‘Yes, it’s done. What next?’

‘You’re sure you weren’t seen? I don’t want any repercussions.’

‘There won’t be.’ The man looked at the driver and urged him with an impatient gesture to drive on.

‘Good. What about the package?’

‘We’ve got it.’ He turned and looked behind his seat, where a cloth-covered bundle was laid out on the floor. It had rolled once when the driver had negotiated a roundabout too quickly, but other than that it was stable.

‘Fine. If you’ve cleared up any other signs, you’d better get back here. We’ve got a function to prepare for.’

The passenger opened his mouth to acknowledge the instruction, but the man on the other end had already cut the connection.

It took Riley a massive effort of will not to run. The voice wasn’t Henry’s and the owner wasn’t standing inside the house. She turned and saw a face watching her from over the top of a larch fence adjoining the next property. It belonged to a woman in her late sixties, and from the look she threw Riley, interlopers were watched very carefully around here.

‘Mr or Mrs Pearcy,’ Riley called across to her, just to let the woman know she wasn’t spooked. ‘Are they in, do you know?’

The old woman looked panic-stricken for a moment, as if Riley had spoken in Swahili. Then she drew herself up so her chin was on a level with the fence. ‘There is no Mrs Pearcy,’ she said politely. ‘May I help?’

Riley stepped over to the fence, moving slowly so as not to alarm the woman. Up close, she saw she had been generous with the years; the woman must have been eighty if she was a day, thin and brittle as an old stick. She was dressed in a faded but once stylish cardigan pulled close around her thin shoulders, and pinned with the sort of silhouette cameo brooch you rarely saw outside antique shops. Behind her, as a complete contrast to Henry’s immaculate garden, lay a profusion of colour and disorder, with a jungle of browned, withered plants and very little grass, mown or otherwise.