‘I’ll try,’ said Lucy, ‘but it will be difficult. What are we looking for?’
Wexford got into the passenger seat. ‘Well, someone like Ms Fortescue. Someone who knew about the set-up at Orcadia Cottage because she or he had been told about it.’
Lucy turned into the Finchley Road. ‘You mean that the theory is that one of these people who made a survey knew about the coal hole and possibly the cellar, but isn’t going to say so? They discovered it at the time and either went back when they knew no one would be at home or else told someone else about it.’
‘Something like that. We still have J. Peterson and Son to see, and Underland Constructions.’
‘They know we’re coming.’
J. Peterson had a small office over a hardware shop in North Finchley. The room was tiny, no bigger than the average suburban bathroom. It contained nothing but a desk, two chairs and the ubiquitous laptop. No pictures were on the walls, no maps, no posters, no curtain or even a blind was at the narrow sash window. The atomosphere wasn’t far off that of a prison cell.
‘We do most of our business online,’ said a harassed-looking man who gave no sign that he had expected them. ‘The client gets on to our website and books an appointment and we contract out to a building firm.’
‘You keep a record of that?’
‘The builders have an architect who would do a sort of design and if the client likes it and accepts the estimate it’ll go ahead. We’ll have a record on the computer if this client – what’s he called? Rokeby? – if he accepted the estimate.’
‘He didn’t,’ said Lucy.
‘Then I can’t help you.’ The man sounded pleased.
Underland Constructions might have answered Lucy’s call and agreed to see her and Wexford, but only one man appeared to be in charge of the big sprawling builders’ yard in Willesden. The place looked as if it were being dismantled. Two of the sheds were empty. The office with ‘Reception’ over the door had no one behind the counter.
‘We’re shutting up shop,’ the man said. ‘Been struggling for the past year but in the end it’s been too much for us. I don’t suppose I can help you. What was it you were wanting?’
Lucy told him.
‘You don’t want us. You want our architects. They did all our designs for us. Not any more, of course, but they’re still in business. Doing all right, as far as I know.’
He went into the office and came out again with a much-thumbed card. Lucy read what was on it aloud to Wexford when they were back in the car. ‘Chilvers Clary, Architects, and then there’s a string of degrees or whatever after Robyn Chilvers and Owen Clary. They have an office in the Finchley Road. Shall we go straight there?’
‘Pity it’s such a long time ago,’ Wexford said. ‘I doubt if Robyn Chilvers will have had her engagement broken on the relevant day. Still, even if they’d forgotten about it and haven’t kept records, reading all this Orcadia Cottage stuff in the papers will perhaps have jogged their memories.’
‘Yes, perhaps.’
‘All the time, though, we come up against this stumbling block. In order to do a survey or make a design, whoever he is would have had to examine the coal hole, probably go down into it. And if he or she did and was honest they would have seen what was in there and gone to the police. And if they’re not honest and did see what was in there they didn’t go to the police and they’re not going to tell us now.’
Some years before Wexford had got out of a tube train at Finchley Road Station and walked up the hill towards West End Lane. Investigation of a Kingsmarkham murder with London connections had brought him there and he had thought the Finchley Road rather a pleasant place to shop and perhaps to live in. It had gone downhill very badly since then. A huge shopping mall, already dilapidated, had spoiled the western side of the street, while opposite shops and restaurants had closed, their windows boarded up. Chilvers Clary was still there and so were a massage parlour and a betting shop. The massage parlour was called Elfland and in its window were photographs of very pretty young women dressed as fairies with feathery wings and holding bows and arrows. It looked respectable and rather dull.
Those adjectives might also have been applied to Chilvers Clary, Architects. It also appeared less than promising. But for Wexford and Lucy a small breakthrough was coming. It was very small, but it let in a chink of light. Lucy said afterwards that she could have hugged Owen Clary, not a very unlikely impulse, Wexford thought, for Clary was a very handsome man, about thirty-eight with olive skin, black hair and classical features, dressed in an immaculate dark grey suit.
‘My partner is out on a job,’ he said. ‘Incidentally, Robyn is also my wife. But I don’t think she could help you, whereas I can. Well, up to a point. All this newspaper coverage has brought it back to me. I well remember going to Orcadia Cottage in summer 2005 it would have been. I went on my own the first time and the second time with the chap from Underland. Mr Rokeby let us in, but then he and his wife had to go out. I didn’t know but I guessed there was some sort of cellar under the house and it seemed to me that this would be halfway to the underground room Mr Rokeby wanted. Of course I didn’t know then that the planning authority would turn down his application.
‘The Underland chap and I shifted this great tub of plants off the manhole cover in the patio. That was the first we knew of it that there was a manhole cover. Now that was all I wanted to know, that there was a cavity underneath the patio, I wasn’t bothered about going down there or even looking down there at that juncture. In fact, to be honest with you, I was rather dressed up and I didn’t fancy going down into what I knew would be a filthy hole.
‘I asked the Underland chap if he had a pair of steps or a ladder with him in his van and he said he had. “Go down there and take a look if you fancy it,” I said to him and I went back into the house to see if there was a way down from inside into that cavity.’
‘You remember all this very clearly, Mr Clary,’ said Lucy.
‘I’ve a good memory. Anyway, as I say, a lot came back to me when I saw the pictures of Orcadia Cottage on television. Do you want to hear the rest?’
‘If you please,’ said Wexford.
