a back corner doing the books. Having gotten to know her a little now, and suspecting her as one of those for whom a streak of irony might be riven through their very soul, Grey recognised how even at a time like this she was working with black humour even as it brought her to within an inch of the anger she must have been feeling toward her old friend.
Following her gaze as she spoke, Grey saw Derek Waldron sat alone by a window and looking out forlornly. He had taken a battering, still not looking much better yet than he had two days ago slumped in Patrick Mars’ hallway. Barely a part of him that was visible — head, neck, hands — didn’t feature somewhere a bandage, bruise or reddening.
Grey had made a mental pact with himself on the way there that if Derek was honest enough in the conversation he intended they have, helped him fill in enough of the blanks, then he the Inspector would allow that sincerity to relieve the doubts he had about the decision he already knew he was going to take regards the letter. Yet now, seeing him his state, his boy-told-off demeanour as saddening as his physical injuries (which also mitigated in his favour, it clear his wild adventure of two night before had brought its own swift punishment) Grey was gripped with an urge to do no more than cheer the old fellow up; and from that hazy night he’d taken the sleeping draught he remembered when he had seen Waldron at his most enthusiastic, his most animated, his troubles least to the forefront of his mind.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the man as Grey approached.
‘Apology accepted. And for the record, I’m only here to talk.’
Waldron leaned in, whispering, ‘But I drugged you.’
‘Which I think you know was a disgraceful liberty.’
‘It was stupid, yes, but…’ (Grey watched as the man battled with the memory of actions he could scarcely credit had been his own.) ‘I took the screwdriver, I…’
‘…Lunged at someone?’ Grey whispered back. ‘Yes, and an hour later that someone fired a shotgun at a policewoman. You good to walk?’ he resumed full volume. ‘You were telling me before about our town, our buildings. I wonder if you’d take me on a tour?’
He lit up in recognition, ‘Of the houses?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Rachel from across the room, ‘Get him out in the fresh air a bit, save his moping around indoors.’
Derek went to find his coat.
‘And how are you?’ asked Grey, moving to Rachel’s desk.
‘Fine, a bit groggy yesterday. You?’
‘The same,’ he answered, though the excitement of the day had quickly burnt it off. ‘And in general?’
‘Oh, I could throttle him. And with everything else I’ve got to deal with…’ she gestured with her arms to the table full of papers and accounts. She took a deep breath, ‘Of course I know he meant well, in some hare-brained way. And I’m glad it’s over now.’
‘Yes.’
‘How is the girl?’ she asked.
‘Esther? She’s with her mother.’
‘And they really didn’t know?’
‘No, but I think the moment Esther did that Stella did too; could work out what Esther had from the letter she’d snatched.’
‘Perhaps they’d always known, just needed the facts to tell them?’
Grey liked the sound of that.
But Rachel was still thinking of Derek,
‘You really can’t take him away. He’s our last original resident now. We’ve lost too many people — you know the Carstairs aren’t coming back either, he needs specialist care.’
Grey was sad to hear that, Rachel going on,
‘We need weight on the Committee, people who can help me run it. I’ve already had Raine on the phone asking what we’re going to do. I’ve called a meeting for next month, but I haven’t even thought about it yet.’
Grey could see the mantel of Stella’s leadership had fallen on Rachel’s shoulders, whether she wished it or not.
‘Of course we’ll give up Charlie’s flat, properly this time. And if the state takes it then the state takes it, their choice of who they sell it to. And then there’s Stella’s flat to sell, and Mrs Cuthbert’s next door; and the Carstairs’ eventually — so much change, it will be good to have the lot of it put to bed.’
Chapter 29 — The Hills Again
During that late afternoon Grey thought he had learnt more about architecture then he would from a late night up with the Open University; though given his teacher’s idiosyncrasies, current state of mind and years out of the game, he wasn’t sure how much of it would have held as current thinking. Thus far on their jaunt Derek Waldron had waxed lyrical on the merits or otherwise of an infants school, a row of large detached houses, and most memorably on a just-put-up fast food restaurant whose front and sides were made entirely of glass:
‘Imagine it at night lit like a beacon: you’d be drawn to it like a moth to a lightbulb, wanting to be inside the glow.’
Derek’s injuries seemed wholly superficial, he walking and talking with boundless energy. They approached the Hills estate, which was always going to be their destination, not along a main road but rather a side street of older, terraced homes, so as to contrast with the newer development ahead.
‘Note how straight the road is we’ve just walked along, and those around it, how simple to know where you are and where you want to get to, how easy to offer directions to a stranger that would keep them going for miles. Yet compare that with this.’
Before them across the main road and in sharp contrast with the terraces’ clean lines was an apparently randomised mess of grass and path and untended hedge, surrounding houses squat like cinder-blocks. The men were stood on slightly higher ground this side of the main road, and so it gave the slight impression of being on a viewing platform, able to take a large chunk of the Hills estates in en masse.
‘When I come this way, Inspector, it reminds me of my nephew with his LEGO blocks, as if the architect had thrown a bunch of them up in the air and set the position of the buildings on where each block fell. You see the architects wanted to break up the Victorian streetplan, as Modernists in painting had broken up the sweeping brushstroke and in music had made melody atonal. These were the Cubists of their field, and they saw themselves that seriously.
‘And so you can take in a view like this and see no house in line with any other, no street squarely joining with another.’ Waldron paused at this favourite spot a moment longer, before leading the Inspector toward the main road to cross it.
‘Indeed a lot aren’t even Streets — note all the Walks and Groves and Avenues.’ They were entering the estate proper now. ‘You see, it was another aspect of the planners’ idealism that large parts of the estate were built without spaces for parking — see where the Council have had to lower the kerbstones, where lawns have been slabbed over, where fences on strips of public land are pulled up and cars are parked in the mud. All this because the designers believed in the dream of clean and fast and safe state-subsidised public transport, servicing the public to the degree that people wouldn’t want cars.’
Grey’s guide pointed to a concrete space lined with graffiti’d garages, obscured by a fence and some odd- shaped maisonettes,
‘And where there was parking, like here, it was in collective plots and banks of garages tucked away behind trees or houses — the naivete of these designers that they so believed in the social spirit they wished to foster in their estates that they didn’t think crime would fester in such hidden spaces, or that people wouldn’t want the simple reassurance of being able to keep an eye on their own car from out of their own window.
‘Come on, we need to get somewhere in this direction — if we can figure out our way!’
Grey felt a strong inclination not to follow, and not only because of the recent death and dramas he had been involved in along the route they were taking. The fact was that for all the bright hazy atmosphere of the afternoon
