'This is his house.'
'I've been trying to locate him. I'm the brother of an old friend of his. A friend he had years ago, I mean. Could I see him, do you think?'
'He isn't here at the moment.' She looked at me doubtfully. 'What's your brother's name?'
'Jonathan Derry.'
After the very slightest pause her face changed from watchfulness to welcome; a smile in remembrance of time past.
'Jonathan! We haven't heard from him for years.'
'Are you-… Mrs Pitts?'
She nodded. 'Jane. She opened the door wide and stepped back. 'Come in.'
'I'm William,' I said.
'Weren't you…' she frowned, 'away at school?'
'One does tend to grow.'
She looked up at me, 'I'd forgotten how long it was.' She led me across a cool dark hall. 'This way.'
We came to a wide stairway of shallow green-carpeted steps leading downwards, and I saw before me what had been totally invisible from the higher roadway, that the house was large, ultramodern, built into the side of the hill and absolutely stunning.
The stairs led directly down to a huge room whose ceiling was half-open to the sky and whose floor was partly green carpet and partly swimming pool. There were sofas and coffee tables nearest the stairs and lounging chairs, bamboo with pink, white and green cushions, dotting the far poolside, out in the sun; and on either side wings of house spread out protectively, promising bedrooms and comfort and a life of delight. I looked at the spectacular and pretty room and thought no schoolmaster on earth could afford it.
'I was sitting over there,' Jane Pitts said, pointing to the sunny side. 'I nearly didn't answer the doorbell. I don't always bother.'
We walked around there, passing white trellised alcoves filled with plants and cushioned bamboo sofas with bathing towels casually thrown down. The pool water looked sea-green and peaceful, gleaming and inviting after my trudging search.
'Two of the girls are around somewhere,' Jane said. 'Melanie, our eldest, is married, of course. Ted and I will be grandparents quite soon.'
'Incredible.'
She smiled. 'We married at college.' She gestured to the chairs and I sat on the edge of one of the loungers while she spread out voluptuously on another. Beyond the house the lawn sloped grassily away to a wide sweeping view over north-west London, the horizon lost in misty purples and blues.
'This place is fantastic,' I said.
She nodded. 'We were so lucky to get it. We've only been here three months, but I think we'll stay for ever.' She pointed to the open roof. This all closes over, you know. There are solar panels that slide across. They say the house is warm all winter.'
I admired everything sincerely and asked if Ted were still teaching. She said without strain that he sometimes taught University courses in computer programming and that unfortunately he wouldn't be home until quite late the following evening. He would be so sorry to have missed me, she said.
'I would quite urgently like to talk to him.'
She gently shook her head. 'I don't honestly know where he is, except somewhere up near Manchester. He went this morning, but he didn't know where he'd be staying. In a motel somewhere, he said.'
'What time would he be back tomorrow?'
'Late. I don't know.'
She looked at the concern which must have shown plainly on my face and said apologetically, 'You could come early on Sunday, if you like, if it's that important.'
CHAPTER 15
Saturday crawled.
Cassie wandered around with her plastered arm in a sling and Bananas jogged down to the cottage three or four times, both of them worried by the delay and not saying so. It had seemed reasonable on Thursday night to incarcerate Angelo with his handiwork still appalling us in the sitting-room and Cassie in pain, but by Saturday evening she and Bananas had clearly progressed through reservations and uneasiness to downright anxiety.
'Let him go,' Bananas said when he came late after closing time. 'You'll be in real trouble if anyone finds out. He knows now that you're no pushover. He'd be too scared to come back.'
I shook my head. 'He's too arrogant to be scared. He'd want his revenge, and he'd come back to take it.'
They str-ed miserably at each other. 'Cheer up,' I said. 'I was ready to keep him for a week- two weeks- as long as it took.'
'I just don't know,' Bananas said, 'how you could calmly go to the races.'
I'd gone uncalmly to the races. Also to the gallops in the morning and to Mort's for breakfast, but no one I had seen could have guessed what was going on at home. Behind a public front I found it was fairly easy to hide an ongoing crime: hundreds of people did it, after all.
'I suppose he's still alive,' Cassie said.
'He was up by the door swearing at four o'clock.' Bananas looked at his watch. 'Nine and a half hours ago. I shouted at him to shut up.'
'And did he?'
'Just swore back.'
I smiled. 'He's not dead.'
As if to prove it Angelo started kicking the door and letting go with the increasingly familiar obscenities. I went into the kitchen and stood close to the barricade, and when he drew breath for the next verbal onslaught I said loudly, 'Angelo.'
There was a brief silence, then a fierce furious growling shout: 'Bastard.'
'The light's going out in five minutes,' I said.
'I'll kill you.'
Maybe the heavily savage threat should have raised my goose bumps, but it didn't. He had been murderous too long, was murderous by nature, and I already knew it. I listened to his continuing rage and felt nothing.
'Five minutes,' I said again, and left him.
In the sitting-room Bananas was looking mildly piratical in his open-necked shirt and his sneakers and his four days' growth of harsh black beard, but he himself would never have made anyone walk the plank. The gloom and doom in his mind deplored what I was doing even while he condoned it, and I could almost sense him struggling anew with the old anomaly that to defeat aggression one might have to use it.
He sat on the sofa and in short order drank two stiff brandies with his arm round Cassie, who never minded. He was tired, he'd said, of us being out of his favourite tipple: he'd brought the bottle himself. 'Have some ice- cream with it?' Cassie had suggested, and he'd said seriously, 'What flavour?'
I gave Angelo his five minutes and switched off the light, and there was a baleful silence from the cellar.
Bananas gave Cassie a bristly kiss, said she looked tired, said every plate in the pub needed washing, said ' Barbados!' as a toast, and tossed back his drink. 'God rest all prisoners. Good night.'
Cassie and I watched his disappearing back. 'He's half sorry for Angelo,' she said.
'Mm. A fallacy always to think that because you feel sorry for the tiger in the zoo he won't eat you, given the chance. Angelo doesn't understand compassion. Not other people's for him. He feels none himself. In others he sees it as a weakness. So never, my darling, be kind to Angelo expecting kindness in return.'
She looked at me. 'You mean that as a warning, don't you?'
'You've a soft heart.'
She considered for a moment, then found a pencil and wrote a message to herself in large letters on the white plaster.
