Philip Kerr - January Window

‘You’d better come in,’ said the man and shuffled to one side, which was when I noticed he had a crutch to help him walk.

The hall was dominated by a film poster for a creaky old movie called Passport to Pimlico , an Ealing comedy from a few years after the war. The old couple looked as if they’d been in it. On a table was a blue glass figurine, possibly Lalique, of a semi-naked woman; some opened mail for a Mr John Cruikshank MA lay next to it. There was a strong smell of furniture polish in the air and a large pile of newly washed yellow dusters on the stairs.

They ushered me into a large sitting room full of furniture that had seen better days but possibly a couple of world wars, too. There were books and paintings and everything looked like it had been there for a very long time; a thin layer of more recently acquired dust covered the back of long leather sofa they invited me to sit on. A younger woman, quite good-looking, wearing jeans and a fleece, was seated at the opposite end. She noticed me wiping my fingers on my hand and, immediately producing another yellow duster, angrily set about wiping the sofa.

‘This is my daughter, Mariella,’ said Mr Van de Merwe. ‘Mariella, this is Mr Manson. He wants to ask us some questions about poor Mr Zarco.’

Mariella grunted, irritably.

‘Not exactly questions,’ I said. ‘Is it just the three of you here?’

‘That sounds exactly like a question,’ said Mariella.

‘It was just small talk,’ I said. ‘Maybe a bit too small for some.’

‘My son-in-law John lives here too,’ said Mr Van de Merwe. ‘He’s away at the moment.’

‘Would you like a drink, Mr Manson?’ asked his wife. ‘A sherry, perhaps?’

‘Yes, please.’

All three of them went out of the room, leaving me to stare at the ceiling for several minutes. Through the wall I could hear the sound of one of Lambton’s Romanian workmen hammering nails, and then someone started with a drill. It was easy to see why the Van de Merwes had felt moved to complain about the noise; listening to that for twelve hours a day would have driven me mad. All the same it was hard to imagine them harassing a tardy postman, let alone a gang of Romanian builders, as Lambton had alleged.

They arrived back as a little trio — Mr Van de Merwe bearing a single glass on a silver tray, his wife carrying a bottle of sherry, and their daughter holding a plate of sliced ham.

‘Is that a Stanley Spencer?’ I asked, pointing at a painting on the wall.

‘Yes,’ said the old man.

‘It’s nice,’ I said, with considerable understatement; Spencer was one of my favourites.

‘Mr Zarco liked a drop of sherry,’ explained the old man. ‘Particularly this Oloroso. Which goes well with Iberian ham.’

I tasted the sherry; it was delicious. ‘When was Zarco last here?’ I asked.

‘Several weeks ago. And on more than one occasion. He came to apologise for all of the building work next door, which has been going on for the best part of six months now. Quite intolerably. Well, you can judge for yourself if anyone could live with that noise from first thing in the morning until eight at night. At our time of life you look forward to peace and quiet. For reading and listening to music. It wouldn’t be so bad if we were deaf, but we’re not.’

‘Yes, I can quite understand how irritating it must be,’ I said. ‘And you have my sympathy.’

Mariella spotted another cloud of dust falling from the ceiling onto the sideboard and went after it fiercely with the duster.

‘We tried to reach some accommodation with him about it,’ continued Mr Van de Merwe. ‘But I’m afraid we failed.’

‘What sort of accommodation?’

‘A financial settlement,’ said Mr Van de Merwe. ‘We had hoped we might all go back to South Africa for a while. That’s where we come from, originally.’

‘From Pretoria,’ his wife said, helpfully. ‘It’s really lovely there at this time of year. Around twenty-five degrees. Every day.’

‘But the air fares are very expensive,’ continued her husband. ‘And so is accommodation. Even a cheap hotel costs a lot of money.’

‘Do you know South Africa, Mr Manson?’ asked Mrs Van de Merwe.

‘A little. I was there for the World Cup in 2010. My ears are still recovering from all the vuvuzelas.’

When the old couple looked at me blankly, Mariella said, ‘The lepatata mambus.’ She looked at me and shrugged. ‘That’s the proper Tswana name.’

‘I see.’

‘Pretoria is very beautiful at this time of year,’ repeated Mrs Van de Merwe.

‘Couldn’t you have gone somewhere else?’ I said. ‘Somewhere nearer, perhaps, like Spain? It’s warmer there than it is here at this time of year. And cheaper to get to.’

I started to stuff my mouth with the ham; that was delicious, too, and would maybe save me from having to make dinner. Now that Sonja was gone my enthusiasm for doing anything but make coffee in the kitchen was much reduced.

‘We’ve never really liked Spain,’ said the old man. ‘Have we, dear?’

‘We don’t speak the language,’ said his wife. ‘South Africa was the only real alternative for us.’

‘Mr Zarco did make us an offer,’ said the old man, ‘to cover the expenses of our temporary relocation, but it simply wasn’t enough, so we turned it down. I think he thought we were trying it on. But we really weren’t, you know. It was all most disappointing.’

‘Look,’ I said. ‘Do you mind me asking how much money he did offer? To compensate you for all you’ve suffered while the work has been going on?’

‘Ten thousand pounds, wasn’t it?’ said the old man.

His wife nodded. ‘Yes. I know that sounds like a lot of money, and it is. But the flights alone were about three or four thousand.’

I made a quick mental calculation, picked up my backpack and took out four bundles of cash. It’s always nice being generous with someone else’s money. Not that this was entirely my own idea; it was Tristram Lambton who had put the germ of the idea in my head and it seemed as good a way of getting rid of Zarco’s bung as anything else I could think of.

‘There’s twenty thousand pounds,’ I said, feeling a sense of relief to have got rid of yet more of Zarco’s bung. ‘To cover all your expenses, and to compensate you for what you’ve had to endure these past few months.’

‘What?’ Mr Van de Merwe’s jaw had started to sag in a rather alarming way, as if he’d had a stroke. ‘I don’t understand. Mr Zarco is dead, isn’t he?’

‘Look, please don’t ask me to explain, but I’m quite sure he’d have liked you to have this money.’

The Van de Merwes looked at each other, bewildered.

‘Twenty thousand pounds?’ said Mrs Van de Merwe.

‘It’s very generous of you,’ said the old man. ‘Of Mrs Zarco. But really—’

‘Are you serious?’ asked her daughter.

‘Very.’

‘No, really, we couldn’t,’ said the old man. ‘Not now he’s dead. It wouldn’t seem fair, somehow. I mean on the television it said the man had been murdered. We couldn’t accept it, could we, dear? Mariella? What do you think?’

‘Oh, Dad,’ his daughter said irritably. ‘Of course we can accept it. It only seems unfair. But it isn’t unfair at all. After all you’ve gone through, it’s exactly what you and Mum should do.’

‘But Mrs Zarco is a widow now,’ said his wife. ‘She can ill afford this kind of expense, surely. That poor man. What his wife must be feeling now. We should speak to John. Ask him what he thinks.’

‘We’ll take it, Mr Manson,’ Mariella told me firmly.

Her parents looked at each other uncertainly, and then Mrs Van de Merwe began to cry.