Adrian Magson - No Peace For The Wicked

The kitchen was a shade smaller than vast, with quarry tiles covering the floor and elegant, hand-made Italian tiles running from floor to ceiling. State-of-the-art gadgets were everywhere, and she got the impression that the house might have been designed around this one room. Evidently Mrs Grossman liked entertaining or cooking.

She walked across the kitchen into a large hallway. A circular table big enough to seat eight people in comfort stood against one wall with a large vase of dried flowers in the centre. A smaller one holding a telephone and a directory stood against another. To her right was a staircase with polished mahogany banisters; to the left were two doors. One led to the sitting room at the rear of the house. She tried the other and found a walk-in clothes cupboard fitted with shelves, drawers and hanging space for coats. On the hooks hung a variety of coats, waterproofs and jackets. Recalling what the cleaner had said about the keep-fit fanatic, Riley checked all the pockets. Nothing.

She spotted a large laundry-type bag in one corner and flipped it open. Inside was a crumpled tracksuit, still sweat-stained. She pulled it out and checked the pockets. In the jacket was a scribbled note, limp with dampness. The writing was barely legible, but she could just make out the words ‘ Bentley’s. Tickets’ .

The other pockets yielded nothing of interest, so she prowled the rest of the ground floor looking for clues. Photos on the cabinets caught her eye. They were mostly family snaps at various celebrations. The same man and woman appeared in several of the shots, smiling at the camera. They were both expensively dressed, the man in suits with a flash of a large ring on his left hand and an opulent wristwatch clearly visible at his cuff, while the woman varied from an exotic sweep of hair and large drop earrings to a more severe bob cut and a display of gold chains at her neck.

To Riley, for all their cosy, middle-aged smiles, neither looked the sort she would like to share living space with. She guessed the man must be the late Mr Grossman.

Interestingly, none of the photos included children.

She drifted quickly up the carpeted stairs and into the bedrooms. She could hear Marion opening and shutting drawers at the other end of the landing. Two small rooms were full of toiletries and clothes, clearly belonging to younger men. Neither gave any clues to their occupants’ names, and she realised they had been expertly cleaned of all means of identification.

The largest bedroom overlooked the sweep of stepped lawns, and was bigger than most living rooms. There were no signs of a man’s effects in evidence, nor any jewellery. Odd, she thought. Every woman in creation has something of value lying around.

She discovered why when she moved aside some dresses in the wardrobe; a small, steel door with a central dial gleamed in the dark recess. She was tempted to try the dial but decided against it; the house alarm would be off but the safe might not be.

Back downstairs she looked through the kitchen drawers. Kitchens were where people spent most of their time, and all the bits of paper that concerned daily life found their way tucked into drawers or clips, pending being moved to a better place.

Her search yielded two items of interest. One was an instruction booklet for a motorised wheelchair. On the back page was a guarantee and the manufacturer’s address. The second was a small brochure for a private airfield near Rickmansworth. Inside were details about hangar facilities and membership fees. She pocketed both and went back into the hallway, where she found a telephone directory on the smaller of the two tables. Bentley’s turned out to be a local travel agent. That made sense, since the note in the tracksuit jacket had mentioned tickets. She noted the address and phone number and went in search of Marion, to say they had all the information they needed.

Two minutes later, Riley was taking them at speed back along the road.

“I thought you said you’d buy me a cream tea, you cheapskate.”

Riley stared at the battered decor in the cafe off the North Circular, and at the heavy tan liquid that passed for tea. Outside, evening rush hour traffic crawled past in a welter of exhaust fumes.

Apart from the owner, the place was deserted. Palmer set two plates down on the table, each bearing a solid looking currant bun of indeterminate vintage.

“Sorry,” he said. “No cream, no jam, strawberries are off. Champagne isn’t quite chilled enough for the wine waiter’s liking.”

Riley stabbed her bun with a battered knife. It was solid and unyielding. She sighed, pushing the plate away. “Okay, so what have we got?”

Palmer picked up his bun and bit into the crust. He chewed thoughtfully for a moment, then put it down and drank some tea.

“We have a house of some size, owned by an elderly woman, possibly the widow of an old, bad man who never got caught. Whatever — there’s money in there somewhere. We have at least one very fit man — possibly ex-army — who lives in, who may or may not be strange.”

“A toy boy?” Riley ventured. But even as she said it, she couldn’t summon up much enthusiasm for the notion. Something about the austere atmosphere of the house ruled out any idea of physical passion.

Palmer also looked sceptical. “If there was any hanky-panky going on I think Marion would have known. She seemed the observant sort. There are no obvious signs of children, so that does away with the heirs inheriting the club empire bit. But other than that, we have nothing else that makes any sense.” He sighed and prodded the bun as though it might stir into life. “All in all, I’ve never seen a house with fewer clues in it. Almost as if it’s been swept clean by experts.”

“You think?”

“Definitely. I know the signs.”

“If it’s the right place,” Riley observed. “The only link we have is your friend knowing the address of Ray Grossman — who’s probably dead, anyway. This Mrs Grossman could be a sweet old cousin with the same name.”

“I bet she isn’t,” Palmer muttered cynically. He chewed another piece of bun.

After leaving the Grossman house, they had driven to the nearby town centre and found the travel agents. It was a small family firm and the young girl behind the desk looked bored with the lack of business.

Riley had plunged straight in. “I don’t suppose you handled the Grossman party tickets, did you?” she’d asked. She wanted to present the picture of someone in a jam, but not about to forget other wage slaves with too much to do.

“We handle all Mrs Grossman’s travel arrangements,” the girl replied formally, as though she’d been reading from a prepared script. “How can I help you?”

Riley explained about the house being about to go on the market with her agency, and that an urgent buyer had popped up. “Problem is,” Riley continued, “Mrs G didn’t leave us her number in Spain. We didn’t expect to have anything until she got back, you see.”

The girl continued to look bored and Riley had seized on a sudden flash of inspiration. “Gary was supposed to give it to us before he left, but I think he had other things on his mind.” She raised an eyebrow and gave the girl a knowing look. “I wonder what that could have been.”

The girl blushed. Evidently tickets were not the only things Gary got at this travel agency. “I’m not sure,” she said, glancing towards the back office. She pulled a note-pad towards her and copied a number from a file, then passed the piece of paper to Riley. “I don’t have the address,” she said softly. “Only Gary said he was driving from Malaga up the coast towards Almeria. If you see him, will you get him to call me?”