Стивен Бут - Drowned Lives

It was a feeling that wasn’t to last long, though. The good things never do.

I saw the lights of the police car from Gaia Lane before I even turned the corner. It was parked in my driveway, and there were lights blazing, not only at number four but at my house as well, though I’d left it locked when I set off that morning.

A policeman intercepted me as soon as I pulled the Escort in behind his car.

‘Would it be Mr Buckley, sir?’

‘What the hell’s going on?’

‘Nothing to worry about, sir. You’ve had a bit of a break-in.’

‘You’re joking. What have they taken?’

‘Not very much, it seems. Your next-door neighbour disturbed them.’

‘Rachel? Where is she?’

‘Having a cup of tea. She’s a bit shaken up,’ he said complacently.

‘Was she attacked?’

‘Nothing serious.’

‘It may not be serious to you, mate.’

‘I quite understand, sir,’ said the policeman, unruffled.

He watched me as I walked through the garden and stepped over the fence to number four. ‘CID will be here shortly, sir,’ he called. ‘They’ll want you to go through your house with them to see if anything’s missing.’

‘Sure.’

Rachel was sitting at her kitchen table clutching a mug of tea, with a female police officer sitting across from her. The first thing that struck me was that the policewoman had taken her hat off, and it lay on the table between them like a chequered tea cosy. The second thing I noticed was that Rachel had been crying, and she had a bruise developing on the side of her face.

‘Rachel — are you all right?’

‘Chris, I’m sorry,’ she blurted.

‘What are you sorry for? They tell me you chased off some burglars.’

‘Hardly. If I’d thought a bit quicker, I could have phoned the police straightaway, and they might have caught them.’

‘It would be better to do that next time,’ said the policewoman. ‘We don’t usually encourage people to have a go.’

Rachel touched the red patch on her cheekbone and smiled nervously. ‘I suppose I was a bit silly.’

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘I’ll make another pot of tea, shall I?’ asked the policewoman cheerfully, edging aside to let me sit down. She wore a thick, ribbed sweater and her waist was hung with an awkward assortment of equipment that clattered as she moved.

‘Well, it was a few minutes after twelve,’ said Rachel. ‘I was looking out of the front window, watching... well, I was just looking out of the window, when I thought I saw something moving near your car port. I couldn’t make out what it was, because the street lights don’t reach that far. You really ought to get an outside light, you know.’

I noticed the hesitation when she’d almost admitted why she was at the window at midnight. It didn’t take much imagination to guess that she’d been watching for me to come home, wondering why I was so late and trying to guess what I’d been doing.

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ I said.

‘Anyway, I went to the back window, in the kitchen here. I thought perhaps you’d come back without your car, that you’d broken down somewhere and had to walk. I waited a few minutes, but I didn’t hear your door, and no lights came on. I started to think I was imagining things, or that it was only a cat I’d seen. But then I heard a noise.’

She took a swallow of her tea, and her eyes grew worried as she remembered the next few minutes.

‘What sort of noise was this?’

‘A sort of cracking noise. Not metal or wood. I couldn’t place it at all, but I knew it just didn’t sound right.’

‘It turned out to be your kitchen window,’ put in the policewoman, pouring me a mug of tea. ‘Neat, professional job it was.’

She sounded almost admiring of the burglars. But I suppose the police see all sorts of break-ins that aren’t neat and professional. You hear horrendous stories about the kind of gratuitous damage that hooligans and drug addicts do when they get into a house looking for money or small items to sell.

‘But surely you didn’t go out to see what was happening?’

‘Well, yes, that’s exactly what I did,’ said Rachel. ‘Stupid, wasn’t it?’

‘You could have got badly hurt.’

She touched the bruise again. ‘I realised that too late, of course.’

‘It’s a pity you didn’t get a good look at him,’ said the policewoman.

‘He was halfway through the window,’ Rachel told me. ‘Just his legs and his back half showing. I shouted out when I saw him, I think. He panicked a bit and started kicking out.’

‘You surely didn’t grab hold of him?’ I said, looking at her bruise.

‘No, he lashed out with his feet and caught me in the face. Then he kicked me again and I fell down. The next thing I knew, he was out of the window and running off. He was much too fast for me, and he’d vanished before I even knew what was happening. I suppose I was a bit dazed.’

‘You ought to get medical attention,’ I said. ‘She ought to get medical attention,’ I repeated to the policewoman.

‘We did want to call a doctor,’ she said.

‘I refused,’ said Rachel. ‘It’s only a little bruise.’

The policeman from outside stuck his head through the door. ‘Mr Buckley? CID would like a word, if you don’t mind.’

I went out and walked round to my side of Maybank. A woman was standing looking at the broken window. She turned to look at me as I arrived, and I recognised her.

‘It’s DC Hanlon, isn’t it? I didn’t expect to see you again.’

She gave me a curt nod. ‘I had the bad luck to be the duty CID officer tonight, that’s all.’

‘And what have you detected so far?’

She carefully ignored the sarcasm. ‘It sounds from what PC Fenwick tells me that the burglar didn’t have long in your house. He was already coming out when your neighbour saw him. But he might have had an accomplice inside. You never know.’

‘I, er...’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘PC Fenwick and his colleague have made sure there’s no one still in there. They’ve even put the lights on for us. In any case, you’ve got me here to protect you.’

It didn’t take long to see that the contents of the house were undisturbed. At least, the TV, stereo and computer were still there, which were the only things I had worth stealing, and there were no drawers pulled out or cupboards emptied. The only damage was the hole in the window.

‘We’ll get someone along later this morning to see if they can get any prints off the window frame,’ said Hanlon. ‘But frankly, it’s unlikely.’

‘I’m glad you’re taking it seriously, anyway. I’ve always thought there were so many burglaries these days that the police hardly bothered with them.’

She gave me a thin smile. ‘To be honest, it’s the assault on Mrs Morgan we’re concerned about. We always take violent crime seriously. A broken window is trivial in itself, but any evidence we could find to help us identify the perpetrator would be useful.’

‘I see. So what do you do now?’

‘I’m going to take a statement from Mrs Morgan.’

I waited in the front room, nursing a bottle of whisky, until I saw the police car leave, shortly followed by Hanlon’s Renault. Then I nipped back round to number four and knocked on the back door.

‘Are you all right, Rachel?’

She looked a lot better. Her eyes were brighter, with no sign of tears now and a bit of colour back in her face so the red mark didn’t stand out as much. I sniffed the air, suspecting that she might have been at the whisky bottle herself.

‘Come in a minute,’ she said conspiratorially. ‘They’ve all gone.’

‘I know. I wanted to thank you properly.’