71
Marija Djapic pressed the entry code and let herself in through the wrought-iron gates. It was just gone nine a.m. and she was a little later than usual, thanks to her daughter. She noticed the man immediately, standing outside the front door of number 5, looking as if he had been waiting for a while.
She strode across the cobbled courtyard, puffing from the exertion of her long walk here, made harder by the weight of the bag which she lugged everywhere, containing her work clothes, shoes, lunch and a drink. And she was perspiring heavily from the heat. She was also in a foul mood after yet another row with Danica. Who was this man? What did he want from her? Was he from another of the collection agencies she owed money to on a credit card?
The thirty-five-year-old Serbian woman walked everywhere, to save money on bus fares. She could reach all of her employers on foot in less than an hour from the council flat in Whitehawk she shared with her bolshy, fourteen-year-old prima donna. Almost every hard, sweated penny that she earned went on buying Danica the best she could afford in their new life here in England. She tried to buy decent food, made sure Danica had the clothes she wanted – well, some of them, at any rate. As well as all the stuff she needed to keep up with her friends: a computer, a mobile phone and, for her birthday two weeks ago, an iPod.
And her reward was for the girl to arrive home at ten past four this morning! Make-up all smeared, pupils dilated.
And now this smarmy-looking man was standing by the doorstep, doubtless waiting to snatch the cash that would have been left for her on the kitchen table out of her hand. She looked at him warily as she rummaged in her bag for the keys to Cleo Morey’s house. He was tall, with slicked-back brown hair, handsome in a way that reminded her of a movie actor whose name she couldn’t place and dressed respectably enough in a white shirt and plain tie, blue trousers, black shoes and a dark blue cotton jacket that looked as if it was a uniform of some sort, with a badge sewn on the breast pocket.
Marija glanced warily around for signs of life elsewhere in the courtyard and, to her relief, saw a young woman in Lycra shorts and top pulling a mountain bike out of a front door a couple of houses down. Emboldened, she put the key in the lock and turned it.
The man stepped forward, holding out an identity card bearing his photograph. It was laminated and hung from his neck on two thin white cords. ‘Excuse me,’ he said very politely. ‘Gas Board – would it be convenient to read the meter?’ Then she noticed the small metal machine with a keypad on it which he was holding.
‘You made appointment with Miss Morey?’ she said sharply and a tad aggressively.
‘No. I’m doing this area today. It won’t take me more than a couple of minutes, if you could show me where the meters are.’
She hesitated. He looked normal enough to her and he had the identification. Several times in her work in different houses people had turned up to read meters. It was normal. So long as they had the identification. But she was on strict instructions to let no one into the house. Maybe she should phone Miss Morey and ask. But to bother her at her important work because a man had come to read the meter? ‘I see identification again, please.’
He showed her the card again. Her English wasn’t that good, but she could see his face and the word Seeboard. It looked important. Official. ‘OK,’ she said.
Even so, she was wary of him, stepping in ahead of him, leaving the front door open. Then she marched straight through the open downstairs living area, up a couple of steps into the kitchen, not letting him out of her sight for a moment.
Her money was sitting on the square pine table, weighted down by a ceramic bowl of fruit. Next to it was a handwritten note from Cleo, with her instructions on what housework to do this morning. Marija beadily picked up the two twenty-pound notes and pushed them into her purse. Then she pointed up at a wall panel to the left of the huge silver fridge. ‘I think meter’s there,’ she said, noticing for the first time the bandage on his hand.
‘Sharp edges!’ the man said, seeing her eyes widen a fraction. ‘You wouldn’t believe the places some people have their meters! Makes my life quite hazardous.’ He smiled. ‘Do you have something I can stand on, to reach?’
She pulled a wooden kitchen chair over for him and he thanked her, kneeling down to remove his shoes, his eyes not on the meter at all, but on the cleaning lady’s set of keys lying on the table. He was thinking hard about how to distract her and get her out of the room, when her mobile phone suddenly rang.
He watched as the woman pulled a little green Nokia out of her handbag, glanced at the display, then, visibly
