Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Name is Florence Veitch.’ Edward spoke as Kim drove the three of them.
‘Mature lady, let’s say, at least seventy, wants to be called Flo, glamorous like Mary Beard.
Bushy eyebrows are all I really remember.
She’s super-smart and she set something up called “Forensics Incorporated” or “Forensics Limited”, one or the other, which she basically runs out of her house.
And she came on my show because there was a bit of a hoo-ha at the time about whether you could have a private firm doing drink-drive evidence.
And also, by the way, she came over as a little … on the spectrum.’
Edward’s description was interrupted by Stevie in the back seat. ‘You can’t say that. That’s me you’re talking about.’
‘Okay, Stevie, sorry, eccentric. But she’s made a living because the official service is so backed up. And that got privatized too so it’s just a free market. She won’t get this case, most likely, but she might have some ideas I can put on my show.’
‘Her address?’
‘I know it’s around here …’
‘You don’t even have an address?’ asked Stevie. ‘Hey, I’m a bit jammed in here. If I don’t get out soon I’ll have to hang a leg out of the window.’
‘Kim can use it for signalling.’
‘I need an address,’ said Kim.
‘Turn down Dotton Lane, here.’ Edward heard a slight impatience in his voice.
He wanted to get to the radio station because there was so much to say.
‘I think we’ll see the house on Dotton. I went here about five years ago.
She’d been on my show and invited me for Christmas drinks. Her wife had recently passed, I think.’
Kim looked doubtful at the idea that you could find a place without an address, but in Devon following hedgerows often worked better than following satnav.
A jogger from out of town had died tragically ten years ago, holding a phone to find their way in the fog and failing to see that the narrow line between land and sea was a hundred-metre drop.
As if to prove Edward’s intuition, a house appeared exactly where he said it would. White chimney, thatched roof that looked in need of restoration, the rest hidden behind the high hedges that lined the narrow road.
They turned into the drive. The gravel welcomed them. ‘If she’s in, she’ll hear us,’ said Edward. ‘Having gravel is the same as having a burglar alarm fitted.’
The three of them went to the front door and rang the bell. There were two garden gnomes on the doorstep. One of them held a diploma and wore glasses. ‘That’s her,’ said Edward, pointing at it.
‘Oh! I thought she’d be taller,’ said Stevie.
‘Ssh,’ said Kim.
‘I’m thinking about that kid,’ said Edward, the wait stretching on. His eyes pricked and he blinked them rapidly. ‘What the actual fuck? What happened in that pizza house?’
‘We’re going to find out,’ said Stevie. ‘This place is isolated, isn’t it? Absolute burglary target. High hedges, lives alone. You could be in here for a day and no one would notice.’
‘Well,’ said a voice, ‘the dogs would.’
The three were silent on the doorstep.
Kim pointed at a small camera and microphone by the doorbell, not a known make like Ring or Blink, but more of a lash-up by the homeowner. The DIY doorbell-camera was as much a clue to the person inside the house as the academic gnome. She was already filling in all the blanks.
‘On a Sunday? Must be urgent,’ crackled the voice. ‘Do I know you? Stand in the light.’
That required the three of them to step back from the doorstep, onto the gravel, where the sun lit them up. Edward raised his voice to make up for their distance from the microphone. ‘This is Edward Temmis. You and I have spoken on the radio.’
‘My God! So we have! The Tennis chap!’
‘He’s just a guy in need of a bit of expertise,’ said Stevie. ‘We’re not invading, I promise.’ And now, almost as if they were approaching a wild animal without wanting to scare it, they drew closer to the microphone on the contraption by the front door.
‘Well,’ said the voice, ‘someone needs to know the truth of this damn matter. These bloody people. I don’t want to be alone in this.’
Silence. Kim, Stevie and Edward, back on the doorstep, looked at each other. After a minute Edward said, ‘Hello?’
This time the reply came from somewhere to their right. ‘Over here!’
They moved back onto the gravel, the stones underfoot whispering their every movement.
To the right was a small garage, the door painted white long ago, the paint flaking, dead grey aluminium underneath.
Around the edge of the roof of the garage was wooden latticing, sketching out a terrace.
They heard a hissing sound before they saw the professor.
‘I just need to check it’s you. Very good interview we did.’
‘It was a while ago,’ said Edward, looking up, as a barely human shape that was more sphere than rectangle appeared on the garage roof.
The professor was in some kind of protective suit, a light blue veneer of thin material that had a hose line attached where her right thigh would be.
The hissing sound was air. When she moved she pulled with her an object which must be generating the air, inflating the suit into a giant balloon shape.
Behind a pane of glass in the hood, Edward saw wild eyes in a face with a smudge of lipstick on the mouth.
‘You can’t come any further,’ said the professor, her words muffled behind the protective glass. ‘Quite to my disgust, astonishment and surprise, and whatever other words you want to attribute to me, I’m dealing with a radioactive substance.’