be your minder.”
That word was a nasty reminder of the day when Derek had nearly been taken away from them for good, and she took his hand. “You won’t be daft, will you,” she said. “Just take it slowly, and then you’ll be back at work in no time.”
Half an hour later, coffee drunk and the sports pages thoroughly gone over, Derek stood up. “I think I’ll walk up to the allotment and see if there’s anybody about,” he said. Gran, the traitor, said, “That’s a good idea, boy, the fresh air will do you good.”
Lois sighed. “Oh well, then, I might as well go over to Waltonby and have a quick look at the major’s house. Might even make a start, depending on what state it’s in.”
She had told Derek and Gran about this new job, and they’d been interested. Derek had also been a bit concerned. “They’ve never found the bloke who did it, have they?” he said. “Better be a bit careful, Lois. You never know who might be lurking. You’ll be taking someone with you?” She had not mentioned that she intended to go on her own, and did not answer.
¦
Lois drove down the main street in Waltonby, and passed the school. The children were out to play, and she could see the suited figure of Mr Betts talking to a woman, both holding mugs. Playground duty. She used to do it herself as a volunteer, when the kids were small. But their school in Tresham had been a chilly place, overshadowed by big industrial buildings and with large numbers of children milling about. Certainly no time to stand in the sun and drink coffee and chat to another adult. She’d needed her wits about her then. And eyes in the back of her head.
She pulled up in front of Bridie’s semi, and parked the car in the lay-by that served the two houses. She was so used to walking up Bridie’s garden path that she nearly opened the wrong gate. No good calling on Bridie, anyway. She was off on jobs in Ringford and wouldn’t be back until that afternoon.
The major’s gate stood ajar, and Lois pushed her way up to the front door, through long grass and weeds rapidly talcing over the path. She hesitated. Would it be a good idea to look around outside first? She started off again, round the corner of the house and through a narrow passage. It was difficult to open the rickety gate across the passage, the latch being rusty and crooked. A shed opposite the back door was locked, and the dirty window had been blacked out by something dark hanging inside. Behind the house, the garden was a wilderness. It must have been like this in the major’s time, Lois thought, and remembered looking over from Bridie’s and seeing a neglected patch. Dick had often complained that the nettles and ground elder came through the fence and invaded his own immaculate garden.
She looked at the keys on the ring the estate agents had given her. Three keys. Front and back doors, and what else? The shed? She tried it, but it was no good. Oh well, might as well go into the house. The key to the back door turned easily, and she stepped inside the kitchen.
The smell was the first thing that struck her. It was overwhelming, and disgusting, and seemed to be coming from a cupboard next to the sink. Holding her nose, she opened the door and was nearly sick. A rat lay on its side, swollen, covered in maggots, and very dead indeed. Poisoned, she supposed. Last time she had seen a rat, it had been in Long Farnden vicarage when she was cleaning for that poor Peter White, and it had been a powdery skeleton, ancient and just about tolerable. This one was horrific.
Even so, Lois, she told herself, you have to deal with it. “We can tackle anything,” she would say cheerfully to potential clients. Now’s the test, my girl. She looked around and found a bundle of old newspapers by the bin. Pulling on rubber gloves, she knelt down with brush and dustpan and eased the rotting object forward. She gagged, recovered, and continued the dreadful task. Finally she had it wrapped in several layers of newspaper and took it out into the garden. It would be no good putting it in the wheelie-bin, since that would not be emptied until a new owner moved in. Bury it. That was the only solution, but she needed a spade. She tried the shed door once more, shoving hard with her shoulder. This time it moved. It was not locked, after all, and she looked apprehensively inside. Nothing sinister here, and on the wall hung the usual garden implements, including a spade.
“We tackle anything,” she said aloud, and dug down deep into the hard, unyielding soil in the back garden. As she shovelled earth back over the corpse, it did occur to her that the police might be very interested in newly disturbed ground, should they return to have another look. Well, good luck to them! Let them come across the body in question, and see if they had stronger stomachs!
At last she returned to the house and opened all the downstairs windows wide. An absolute giveaway that she was here, she thought, but never mind. Better to be healthy and visible, than safely hidden and infected with whatever it was that people caught from rats.
She walked upstairs, opened doors and looked around. All the furniture was as he’d left it. The agents had said it was easier to sell a furnished house than one with bare boards and patches on the walls where the pictures had been. Even his toothbrushes were still in the tooth mug on the bathroom windowsill. Have to get rid of those, and the rows of bottles and jars. She picked one up. Hair restorer. Another was skin lotion, another a guaranteed mixture for improving eyesight. She looked along the row. Every possible remedy for the ageing male! How pathetic, thought Lois. She turned away and opened the medicine cabinet. Of course, the police would have been through all this, but she was curious. Nothing there except innocent painkillers and lozenges for coughs and colds. Mouthwash and plasters, nail scissors and ear drops. The average contents of the average householder’s medicine cabinet.
But he had not been the average householder, that was certain. Lois left the bathroom and walked down the landing to a door at the back of the house. She tried the handle, but it would not move. Locked? She took the third key on the bunch and fitted it into the lock. It turned smoothly, and she entered another world.
Dozens of Lois Meades greeted her. She stepped back in alarm, until she realized the room was lined with mirrors. Nothing but her own reflection on walls and ceiling. And the room was empty except for various pieces of gym equipment. An exercise bike, a walking-on-the-spot thing. Weights for lifting, stretchers for pulling on, a punchball in one corner. And hundreds of punchballs disappearing into infinity through the mirrors.
Lois shuddered. What kind of man had he been? All she remembered was a smartly-dressed old bloke standing at the bar in the pub chatting up Prue Betts. Chatting up Prue Betts…and Hazel Reading…and, no doubt, Joanne Murphy in Tresham…
She closed the door with relief, locking it carefully. It was strange that the police had locked it up again. Still, maybe they prided themselves on leaving everything as they found it, unless anything had to be taken away. Had they taken anything? Perhaps it was a forlorn hope that she would find any helpful clues of any sort. She opened all the windows upstairs, and went back to get her cleaning things. In her experience, it was easier to work from the top down, and she intended to start on the bathroom. A door into a cupboard under the stairs caught her eye, and she opened it. An ancient Hoover, box of dusters and a broom were neatly stacked away. Any more rats? It was dark in the far corner, where the underside of the stairs met the floor. She took the broom and stretched it along. It seemed to hit something before it reached the end. She jiggled the broom around, and finally got it around the back of what seemed like a heavy box. But the box disintegrated as she pulled it forward, and became a pile of dog- eared, stained magazines.
Oh yes. So this is it, thought Lois, as she leafed through one pornographic picture after another. She felt sick again, and quickly put back the pile. She noticed that several were the same issue. He had customers, then, and who knows how many helpers doing his particularly nasty paper round. One fell from the bottom on to the floor, and she picked it up, glancing at the picture on the cover. Her nausea turned to alarm. A blonde child, simpering, with her thumb in her lipsticked mouth, postured suggestively at the camera. A brief bikini barely covered the immature little body, but the expression in her eyes was frightening. Lois shoved it back into the pile, and put the whole lot where she had found them.
Something new to tell Cowgill, and maybe something important. It was possible there was more stuff hidden that the police had missed. Well, the best thing would be to clean as thoroughly as she knew how, in every nook and cranny, and then she’d come across it, if it was there. She shut the cupboard door, and began to climb the stairs. A sudden slamming door stopped her in her tracks and set her heart thudding. It seemed to come from the kitchen. The back door? There was very little wind, but it could have been the draught made by all those open windows. She froze, and listened. A footstep on the tiled kitchen floor, and then another. Hesitant footsteps, but coming towards the hall.
“Who’s that?” shouted Lois loudly, but there was no reply.
