‘Wait a bit longer,’ Wexford said, ‘and if he hasn’t come by a quarter past we’ll go after him.’
At fourteen minutes past Brian George came back with a very short very fat man he introduced as Kevin Oswin. Oswin was as taciturn as his employer was verbose. When Wexford asked him if he had gone to Orcadia Cottage to look over the place with a view to making an underground room, he returned a single ‘yes’.
‘And how did you set about doing that?’ Lucy asked.
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Did you walk round the place, take measurements, look in the cellar?’
‘There wasn’t a cellar.’
‘The coal hole then – did you look in the coal hole?’
Oswin was silent for a moment, then he said, ‘No.’
‘Mr Oswin,’ said Wexford, ‘could you be a little more explicit?’
Oswin stared, perhaps unaware of the meaning of the word.
‘Say a bit more about it, I mean.’
‘There’s nothing to say, but if that’s what you want, OK.’ Oswin suddenly became voluble, but speaking slowly as if to people who understood English only with difficulty. ‘I said to him, Mr Rokeby, that is, that the whole front garden would have to be dug up. Right? Excavated.’ He rolled his mouth round the word. ‘All the trees have to go, the hedge, the lot, them pillars with the birds on.’ The pause was longer this time, ending in a sigh. ‘He said, what about the back, and we went out the back and I said to my bruv I said that it wasn’t on.’ So much talk appeared to have exhausted Oswin and he closed his eyes.
‘Your bruv? You had your brother with you?’
‘Yeah, my bruv Trevor.’ He added importantly. ‘Trev’s like self-employed, got a car-hire company, but he’s about here somewhere. He come with me to look at the place, but he stayed outside to have a fag. Terrible heavy smoker is Trev. I went inside with Mr Rokeby and had a look round for what that was worth.’
‘Why wasn’t it a practical proposition?’
‘It’d have meant excavating under the roadway at the back and that wouldn’t be allowed. Westminster Council wouldn’t have that. Wouldn’t be allowed. Got that? Not allowed.’
‘But you didn’t look into the coal hole?’
‘Never knew there was a bloody coal hole till I saw it on the telly. Right?’
It must have been Trevor that Wexford caught a glimpse of as they were leaving Subearth’s premises, an equally fat if slightly taller man than his brother, standing by the concrete mixer smoking a cigarette. He wore a suit and tie and appeared to be paying no more than a social visit. ‘Who do we see next?’ he asked Lucy.
‘Groundhog and Co. have gone out of business, sir. The recession’s been too much for them. Perhaps we ought to talk to the boss sometime, but don’t you think we could see those that are still operating first?’
‘All right, then.’ Wexford was looking at Lucy’s list. ‘How about K, K and L ? They’re in Hendon and that’s not far away, is it?’
Not a builders’ yard this time but a shop in one of those parades that break the monotonous rows of semi- detached houses on arterial roads. In this one was the usual sequence, newsagent, hairdresser, building society, dry cleaner, but instead of the bathroom shop, K, K and L, Below Surface Home Extensions. A rather gloomy-looking young woman in a black trouser suit showed signs of being more helpful than Brian George and Kevin Oswin.
‘Our Mr Keyworth was down to do the survey,’ she said without looking anything up or having recourse to the desktop on the counter. ‘He was due to go over there in August twenty-o-six and he was just leaving in the taxi when Mr Rokeby phoned and said not to come because the planning people refused his application. There’d been a lot of opposition from the neighbours.’
‘And you are?’ Lucy asked.
‘I’m Ms Fortescue.’ Wexford thought her reply quaint for present day usage. Perhaps she read his mind for she added, ‘Louise Fortescue.’
‘Why a taxi? Doesn’t Mr Keyworth drive?’
‘He’d lost his licence.’ She added vindictively, ‘Driving massively over the limit.’ As if she still needed to assert Keyworth’s superior status: ‘It wasn’t a black cab. His next-door neighbour’s got a car-hire company. They only drive Mercedes.’
‘Well, Ms Fortescue, would you mind telling us how you happen to have such a precise memory of something that happened – what? Three years ago?’
‘Three years, yes. That’s easy. Me and Damian – Mr Keyworth that is – we were engaged. I remember everything about that week because we were planning our wedding. I’d even moved in with him to his new home in West Hampstead – he’d only been there a bit over a year – and the day after he was due to go to Orcadia Cottage I broke it off. The way he behaved I couldn’t do otherwise. I moved out that night. Luckily I’d kept my flat. She turned her face away. ‘It was me broke it off, but I’ve never got over it.’ Her voice broke a little. ‘I’m sorry.’
Meeting each other’s eyes as they walked to the car, Wexford and Lucy just overcame the desire to laugh. ‘I was engaged once,’ said Wexford.
‘So was I.’
‘I didn’t marry her. She married someone else and so did I.’
‘And I didn’t marry at all. Poor Miss Fortescue, she’s taken it very hard. What exactly are we looking for, sir?’
‘I wish you’d call me Reg.’
