Authors: Graham Hurley
Kingdom locked the car door and strolled up Pitwell Avenue.
Most of the properties, at street level, had been converted into shops. Number five was an Indian restaurant, the New Bengal. Kingdom paused outside, studying the menu. In a recessed entrance beside the restaurant door there was a speakerphone. The phone had three buttons; 5b was labelled ‘E. Feasey’. Kingdom stepped back into the street and gazed briefly up at the face of the building. Above the restaurant, there were three stories. The curtains in all the windows were open. If Ethne Feasey was still asleep, then the bedroom was probably at the back.
Kingdom walked on down the street and found the alley at the back. Access to the rear of the restaurant was barred by a high brick wall and a locked door but there were knotholes in the woodwork and Kingdom bent to peer through. A tiny paved yard lay inside. At the end of the yard was a newish extension which obviously housed the kitchen. On top of the flat roof, zigzagging up the brickwork, was an iron fire escape. Kingdom smiled. He’d had some easy B & Es in his time, but nothing quite as simple as this. He studied the windows at the back of the building. If the flats went sequentially upwards then Ethne Feasey lived on the second floor. In one of the two windows, the curtains were pulled. The bedroom, Kingdom thought, wondering whether she might be the kind of person to take extravagant security precautions. Somehow, remembering the photo in the paper, he doubted it.
Shanklin was full of signs for bed and breakfast. Kingdom booked into a quiet boarding-house behind the sea-front and spent the early part of the evening at the cinema. At nine o’clock, bored and hungry, he slipped out and returned to Pitwell Avenue. At the New Bengal, the table in the window was empty. Kingdom ordered a chicken Madras curry and an assortment of side dishes. He’d bought the
Daily Telegraph
earlier, and when he’d finished the meal he asked for a second coffee and settled down to wait. At half-past ten, he heard footsteps on the staircase beside the restaurant. Then there was a squeal of unoiled hinges and a shadow lingered briefly in the street, pulling the door shut. Right height, Kingdom thought, watching the white trench coat hurrying past.
He waited in the restaurant for another hour. The hot towel in the wicker basket slowly cooled. When the waiter asked him for
the third time whether he wanted anything else to eat, he glanced up.
‘What time do you close?’ he asked, ‘as a matter of interest?’
‘One o’clock, sir.’
‘People upstairs not mind? All the noise? From the kitchen?’
The waiter looked confused. Then he understood. ‘No, sir, not at all. Very old people, most of them.’ He put his fingers in his ears, smiling sheepishly, miming deafness.
Kingdom walked the beach until two in the morning. Then he retraced his steps to the alley behind Pitwell Avenue. Someone had left the lid off the dustbin outside the back of the restaurant and there were two cats fighting over the carcass of a chicken. Kingdom shooed them away, replacing the lid and using the dustbin to lever himself over the wall. The tiny square of backyard was thick with spilled grease and he stood in the shadows for a full minute, watching the darkened windows at the rear of the property.
When nothing happened, he skirted the bicycles propped against the wall and crouched beside the kitchen extension. One of the louvre windows was open and he could hear the slow drip-drip of a leaking tap. There was an iron ladder inset into the brickwork, part of the fire escape, and he climbed up. The fire escape proper started on the roof. The rungs felt cold and scabby to the touch and outside the window on the first floor he narrowly missed stepping in a saucer full of milk.
Seconds later, he was another flight up, squatting beside the window he’d earlier seen curtained. Now the curtains were drawn back and in the faint glow from the street lamps at the end of the alley he could see a glimmer of light in a mirror and the outlines of what looked like a dressing table. The window was sash design, open at the top. He reached up, pulling it down. It moved a little, then stuck. Kingdom cursed, exerting more leverage, beginning to sweat, but the harder he pulled, the more firmly the window bedded itself in. He bent down, trying the bottom frame, but nothing he could do would move it. Finally he gave up, squatting on his haunches, his back to the brickwork, feeling horribly
exposed. The least he could do for Mrs Feasey, he thought, was warn her about the state of her sashes. If the place caught fire, she wouldn’t have a prayer.
He crept to the end of the fire escape. The other window on the second floor was narrower, sash design again, with a couple of feet of sill. This time the bottom sash was open and from where he stood Kingdom could smell the resinous scent of shower gel. He leaned out as far as he dared, one hand against the cold brickwork, trying to measure the distance in the half-darkness. His legs, he knew, were long enough to reach the window but at some point he’d have to transfer his whole weight onto the sill, his hands reaching for the bottom of the open window frame, and if anything went wrong then nothing would prevent him falling backwards. He peered down, over the edge of the fire escape. The kitchen extension didn’t stretch the full width of the property and he could just make out more dustbins in the well of the courtyard below. More half-eaten curries, he thought grimly, wiping the sweat from his face.
He shut his eyes a moment, taking a series of shallow breaths. Then he inched to the edge of the fire escape. He bent forward and his left foot found the window-sill. Then, for a split second, he was in mid-air, unsupported, his hands reaching for the underside of the open window. He grabbed it, hanging on, his other shoe finding a foothold on the pitted stonework. Then, too late, he remembered the grease from the yard below, the stuff all over the soles of his shoes, and his feet began to slip, his whole body falling backwards. He fought the urge to scream, prickly tides of adrenalin swamping his system. The window-frame was beginning to shake and he twisted sideways, one foot slipping off the window-sill entirely, his body dangling over the drop. Then he made a final lunge, all caution gone, his head smashing against the thick glass, one shoulder at last inside the room, the rest of him following in a tangle of arms and legs.
He lay on the floor, gasping. He could feel wetness beneath his cheek and a pain in his chest and he thought for a moment that he was having a heart attack. After a while, he got to his feet, feeling his way across the room, finding the toilet beside the bath. He bent over it, vomiting, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand
when the last of the chicken Madras had gone. Some fucking entrance, he thought, fumbling with the door handle, wondering vaguely about the smells he’d made.
The first room he searched was at the front of the flat. He pulled the curtains tight, keeping the door open, using the light from the hall outside. The living room was shabby. The nylon carpet was worn bare round the door and the fireplace, and the paper on the walls was beginning to peel. The furniture looked as if it had come from some house clearance or other and the scent of fresh flowers from the vase on the mantelpiece failed to hide the smell of damp. The smell hung like a physical presence in the flat, something you could almost taste, and when Kingdom rearranged the curtains, tucking them in around the bottom of the bay window, he found wads of sodden newsprint stuffed in cracks in the woodwork. He stepped back, wiping his hands on his trousers, remembering a similar smell in the bungalow where Patrick Feasey had taken his life. Maybe damp was something you got used to. Maybe it was something that stuck with you for life.
Except for a clipframe over the mantelpiece, the room was bare of ornament. The clipframe held a montage of photos, jigsawed together, some cropped, others full-sized, and Kingdom recognised bits of the nursery over at Merstone. The contrast to what he’d seen earlier was absolute. Here was a thriving business, the car park full, the glasshouse newly painted, trays of bedding plants, rows of shrubs, every photo busy with customers. Another shot had been taken from the room at the back of the bungalow, a view dominated by the long polythene growing tunnels, and looking at it Kingdom remembered Chris Wells telling him about the size of the investment these people had made, what you needed, how much it cost. Kingdom stepped back a moment, standing in the middle of the room, trying to imagine what it took to live with a statement like this, a reminder of the days when the gamble had worked, when the risks and the hard graft were paying off, when every morning saw a fresh queue at the cash till, when nothing could ever go wrong. It was a gesture, he thought, at once brave and defiant. That was us once. Bugger what came next.
In one corner of the room was a cheap plastic table, the kind you buy for patio barbeques. On the table were two cardboard
boxes, full of business files. Kingdom began to unpack them, piling the files on the table, opening each one, quickly aware of their importance. This was the small print of the story he’d pieced together during the day, the invoices, and tax returns, and VAT statements, and endless other bits of paper that charted the path from the busy idyll over the fireplace to the chilly adieu at Patrick Feasey’s graveside. Kingdom hesitated a moment, knowing at once that he couldn’t possibly go through all the paperwork. Only an accountant or a lawyer could do justice to the whole story. All he could manage was a sample, a hasty dip into the wreckage of two lives.
He skimmed quickly through one file, then another, trying to keep the chronology in his head. The key to the early days was a bank loan. For £140,000, the Feaseys had evidently pledged everything: their little house in Ventnor, their two cars, even a sailing dinghy. In return, they’d bought a twenty-five-year lease on the Merstone nursery, plus the hundred and one other items they’d need to start a proper business.
Kingdom picked up another file, then a fourth. The eighties ended with a half-decent balance sheet and the prospect, quite soon, of pushing the business into the black. Then Kingdom found a press cutting. It came from the paper he’d visited in Newport. The date was February 1990. A storm had swept across the Isle of Wight and amongst the many casualties were the Feaseys’ precious polythene growing tunnels. A photograph showed them shredded, the surrounding meadow littered with scraps of flailing plastic. Beside the photo, in black biro, was a line or two of rueful arithmetic. ‘£9000 each for new ones!’ someone had written. ‘Plus stock!’
The new decade got worse. The miracle economy faltered. Interest rates soared. Thatcher’s England shuddered to a halt. ‘Dear Mr Feasey,’ wrote the Newport branch bank manager, ‘once again I must draw your attention to the state of your business account. Any further failure to meet due payments will, I’m afraid, meet with …’ The letters got briefer, more terse. A soaring overdraft multiplied the unpaid interest. By August 1992, Patrick Feasey owed the bank £197,768. In the words of his solicitor, himself owed thousands, the game was up.
Kingdom leaned back at the table. He’d found a small Angle-poise and the light pooled on the pile of correspondence. He knew there was nothing unusual about this story. Something similar had happened to thousands of other small businessmen, naive enough to believe that eighteen-hour days and a good product would somehow earn success, trusting enough to let the bankers bind them hand and foot. Quite where fireblight belonged in all this, the killer disease mentioned by the young gardener, Kingdom didn’t know but he could imagine how devastating yet more bad news would be. Was that what had driven Patrick Feasey to the comforts of his 12-bore shotgun? Was that what had made him pull the trigger?
Kingdom opened the last of the files. On top was a handwritten letter on Garland’s headed notepaper. It was addressed to the chairman of the bank where the Feaseys had kept their business account. Kingdom was on the second paragraph before his eyes returned to the name of the addressee. ‘Sir Peter Blanche,’ it read, ‘7 Leadenhall Street, London EC3.’ Kingdom stopped a moment, his finger on the name. Blanche was the first of the Sabbathman victims. Blanche was the man who’d been sitting on his Jersey patio in the warm September sunshine when someone put a bullet through his throat. Blanche was where the trail began.
Kingdom read the rest of the letter. It came from Ethne Feasey. Unlike everything else he’d read, it wasn’t measured out in carefully balanced paragraphs. It didn’t talk of negative cash flow and factoring contracts. It didn’t make pleas about debt moratoriums or rolled-up interest payments. Instead, it simply stated the obvious. She and her husband had worked hard. They’d done their best. Nature had been less than kind and the recession wasn’t their fault but they were still enthusiastic, still willing, still strong. All they needed was time. Time, and a little faith. The letter ended, ‘I know there’s a way, and I know you’ll help us find it. Yours truly, Ethne Feasey.’ Kingdom read the letter again and then checked the date: 22 October. Almost exactly a month before Patrick Feasey had taken his life.
He put the letter to one side. Facing him, on top of the file, was the reply. It came not from Blanche himself but from one of his ‘personal assistants’. It occupied half a page. It said that Sir
Peter was distressed to learn of the Feaseys’ situation but regretted that he was powerless to help. Inquiries to the bank’s loan department had revealed a very substantial debt. In view of the bank’s duty to its shareholders, it had no choice but to press for full and prompt settlement. Should that not be forthcoming, it would press for liquidation. ‘Please accept,’ the letter ended, ‘our good wishes for the future.’
What future? Kingdom got up, chilled to the bone. The letter was devastating, a bullet between the eyes. If Patrick Feasey had ever read it, suicide must have seemed an almost welcome release. A proud man, bankruptcy would have finished him. And what about his wife? How must she have felt? Getting a letter like this?
Kingdom began to repack the files, replacing them in the cardboard boxes, numbed by the way the tragedy had unfolded in front of his eyes; remorselessly, out of control, two lives skewered by some remote capitalist’s duty to his shareholders. Marx had a point, he thought, reaching for the second box. It’s all about greed, and fear, and exploitation. It’s all about hard-faced men who haven’t got the time, or the imagination, or the simple humanity to think beyond their precious balance sheets. Hand society to these guys, put them in charge, and that’s what you end up with. A pile of fucking mouse droppings where Patrick Feasey took his life.