Chapter Thirty-Nine
The estate where Lev Malnyk had lived was typical of the housing policy in the county. Six brand-new houses on a field, accessible down a narrow track – would it ever be turned into a proper road? Would the families here have a doctor, a school, or even a streetlight?
As Edward turned his moped up the narrow lane, he thought of the horror stories of people moving into new-builds and finding the plumbing was not connected or the electricity went out every time number six turned on their tumble dryer.
And, of course, there were the new-build vigilantes – people like Richard Cammell-Curzon, who had people spotting new houses for them, outbidding locals and immediately turning them into rentals or, worse still, holiday lets.
No council, no government had yet found a way to rewire the housing market in places like Devon, where London money always came in bigger briefcases.
He stood at the gate, where the track became a smoother, more solid strip of tarmac. He bet these houses had looked wonderful in an estate agent’s brochure. Had Kim sold them? He rang her.
‘No, not me. I would have said! Where are you?’ she asked.
‘Standing staring at them, trying to work out which one Lev was in.’
‘Ask anyone, they’ll know.’
‘There’s no one here. It’s ghostly.’
‘I don’t sell new-builds, honey,’ she said. ‘The developer does it direct these days. There’s so much snagging they usually need a couple of years sorting out. The buyers go mad when they find out the locks don’t work and the laundry room floods. I spoke to Nettles.’
‘Did you?’
‘We can rule him out of anything. He’s Cammell-Curzon’s accountant. If he’s involved, then the landlord must be too. You heard about Stevie?’
‘No.’ He felt sudden dread. The fear of bad news.
‘She only went hunting with the landlord.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘She tried to reach you. She was very excited. Quite a lot of swearing. I think she’s decided she likes posh people now. Apparently he fell off his horse and she didn’t.’
‘What did she find out?’
‘She says she texted you.’
‘This bloody phone, I’ll look. What a star. By the way, Kim – the agency who handled Lev’s rental – their name was on the form, but I didn’t take it in.’
‘I love it when you use my name. It means “Listen”. Okay, yes, that was Southleighs in Exeter. Do you want me to call them?’
‘Could you?’ Were they making progress? Not yet. He hung up, sought out the messages app on his phone to find Stevie’s text, but before he could open it an old man appeared directly in front of him.
‘Not seen you around here before,’ said the man. ‘I recognize you from Devon Life.’ There had been an article: HOW SIDMOUTH’S FAVOURITE TALK-SHOW HOST BOUNCED BACK FROM TRAGEDY. ‘Enjoy the show,’ said the man. ‘I’m Terry.’
The man was fair, thin, slightly stooped, with liver spots on his face that marked him out as someone who had spent a lifetime working outdoors. He wore beige cords and a grey checked shirt – ‘care home camouflage’, Kim once called it – although he looked to have his wits about him.
‘I’m reporting on the tragedy in Sidmouth,’ said Edward, using only the feeblest cover story. Stevie had put him to shame with her undercover jockey act. But outright lying to one of his own listeners felt wrong. ‘I know the Ukrainian lived here.’
‘The Russian, surely? Russian pretending to be Ukrainian. That’s what we all think.
He did indeed live here,’ said the old man, staring glassily, eyes watering in the afternoon sun.
‘Lev Malnyk at number four. Made no sense, did it? The Met came half a dozen times, once in riot gear. Then the local force came, much more friendly, mainly just checking our window locks.’
‘I guess they got the CCTV, did they?’ asked Edward, pointing at one of the houses. The properties were arranged in a line, curved like an archer’s bow. The first one had a camera on the front of it.
‘That’s mine, as it happens!’ said the man, looking pleased with himself.
‘Son-in-law put it in because he’s good with that stuff.
But there was a spider on the lens that stopped the movement sensor working.
So it got this and that, but nothing to help them.
Met were swearing like troopers. But you can’t train a spider. ’
Edward almost laughed. ‘Did you see him leaving that day?’
‘Who, Lev? Nope.’
‘Did you know him at all?’
‘He was in the fourth house, like I say, or the second if you don’t count the ones opposite – back there, on the shoulder.
I think a speculator bought it and divided it into flats almost straightaway.
So there were comings and goings, but comings and goings I don’t mind.
I have tinnitus. What I mind is silence. ’
Edward reflected on this. ‘No one saw or heard anyone leave the flat after Lev died?’
‘Well …’ the old man started, and stopped. His left eye was tearing up and he used his little finger to sluice the water away. ‘Tinnitus and watery eyes and a few other things.’
‘Someone saw something?’
‘She’s not the lady she was,’ said the man. ‘She and I were friends years back, and blow me down, she ends up at number three. Two back from mine. The downstairs only. Dementia. Just sits, looking out of the window.’
‘Did the police speak to her?’
‘Several times, but it was just mumbo-jumbo. “A man walked in twice then came out four times”, sort of thing. “A man walked in then walked in again”. I accompanied them because her sons are useless, frankly. Broke my heart. I don’t think they even took a statement in the end.
“Someone went in twice and came out with a microwave.” I think she mentioned a boat as well. ’
At this, Edward was suddenly alert. ‘Someone came out with a boat and a microwave?’
‘One minute it was a microwave, then a box, then it was a boat, then it was a man in a mirror. What does that mean? Do you want to speak to her?’
‘I do,’ said Edward. ‘I want to know about the box and the boat. I wasn’t expecting a boat.’
‘Bear in mind, the Russian guy’s house was divided into four, so you might have had comings and goings from other tenants, and some might even have been Airbnb, so that’s a lot of different names and faces.
I reckon the Met gave up trying to get her to remember anything that didn’t sound like a bad dream. ’
She did not look like a woman with dementia. She came to the front door alone. She walked heavily, and Edward saw her feet bulged in worn slippers and her ankles were swollen with fluid. She had her glasses on her head, resting in a crown of tightly curled grey hair. She peered at her neighbour.
‘It’s Terry.’
‘I know you,’ she said, her voice rich with Caribbean intonation.
Terry said, ‘She has good days and bad days.’
‘Billy!’ she said to Edward.
‘No, this isn’t Billy,’ said Terry.
‘Who’s Billy?’
‘Her son.’ Terry turned to her. ‘Billy’s not here today,’ he said loudly. ‘I’m your neighbour. We know each other. Can we come in, Gloria?’ He whispered to Edward, ‘Cancer finished him. Went back to Jamaica on holiday, family home, never returned, broke her heart, so sudden, best not to mention.’
‘I can hear you,’ said Gloria. ‘Watch yourselves on the motorway.’
‘She thinks it’s a motorway out here. Two cars an hour,’ murmured Terry.
But Edward was stuck on the awfulness of Gloria’s loss.
His mind flapped like loose celluloid, running back over the last few minutes.
His brain felt full, the thoughts heavy in his head.
Gloria must be far gone, he thought, if she misrecognized this pale stranger as her lost son.
But he wanted to reach out and hug her. He had lost Matty, and he imagined himself at her age, eighty and burnt out with grief, misrecognizing everyone as his son, his son come back to him.
They were sitting in the living room now. ‘She’ll go out to make tea, come back without it, just watch.’ Terry’s smile was not cruel, just accepting of a reality he had somehow avoided. ‘They say you avoid the Demondee by playing Sudoku, but who has the time for that many numbers? Thatcher had it.’
‘Demondee?’
‘The demon dementia. Demon D. Catch up, sonny.’
Sonny. That word always did it. Oh God, was it going to be one of those days, where everything led back to Matty?
Edward remembered, years ago, on the weekends he had his child, when his ex-wife was busy with her new marriage and new kids, his constant warnings not to kick the football off the edge of the cliff.
How many had they lost? At least four. You always saw the white dot bob on the waves hundreds of feet below, a full stop on a huge sheet of blue paper.
‘The sailors will find it and play with it on the decks,’ Edward said, never cross; buying an unstable ruin had been his choice.
He always played with his back to the edge, just to stop any crazy moment where his son might run forwards, forget himself, go off the cliff.
His ex, Tara, was furious when she turned up early one Sunday, came down the side passage and saw the arrangement.
‘I didn’t think you even came out the back, and now you’re playing football here? Come on, Edward!’
But a smile had played around her lips, he was sure of it. Sudden death, when it took Matty, was never going to be the exotic – off a cliff – but the obvious. Under the wheels of a car.
‘We should turn our chairs to face the window: that might jog her,’ said Terry. The two men took three wooden chairs and parted the curtains completely. The house was in a perfect position for observing number 4, Prince Andrew’s Close. ‘What number are we?’
‘Don’t expect logic,’ said Terry. ‘I’m nine, this is six. They didn’t do a simple parallel count. I think they drew up the plans and then forced a couple more in. Or the person who did the numbering was having a bad day.’
On another occasion Edward might have laughed, but he felt his head bang with a migraine, as if a single word was rattling around inside it. Matty. Matty Matty Ma—
‘You okay, sonny?’
‘Sure.’