The Distant Dead by Lesley Thomson (books for students to read TXT) 📕

‘I don’t talk to journalists.’ Andrea threw her fork into a nearby wheelbarrow and trundled it away.

‘She’s not a gardener,’ Lucie said when Andrea was out of earshot.

‘Why do you say that?’ Stella felt obscurely irritable at Lucie dissing Andrea’s skills.

‘The blisters on her hands. She’s not used to wielding a fork. And she doesn’t know her crocuses from her cyclamen.’ Lucie was leading them to a shed at the border of the grounds. ‘We shall beard her in her grotto later. Geronimo.’

‘We don’t know where Andrea— What are you doing?’ Stella watched Lucie drag a heavy man’s bike out from behind the shed.

‘As you know, my Stellagmite, life is cause and effect.’ Lucie propped the bicycle against one of the stone coffins. She dived into her capacious leather bag, pulled out her plastic make-up bag with leopard markings and, gripping a pair of nail scissors, jabbed the front tyre.

‘Lucie.’ Stella felt sick as Lucie twisted the blade into the rubber. In the muffled silence, she heard a hiss as the inner tube deflated.

‘It’s frog-freezing, let us take a pot of lapsang in the tearooms.’ Putting away the scissors, Lucie smacked her hands on her cargo pants.

‘We could go to the flat.’ Hugging Stanley to keep him dry and her warm, Stella had had enough of the tearooms.

‘We shall grab a window table and wait for Lady Manure to clock off. We shall tail her home then pay her a leetle visit.’

‘She’s on a bike, we’ll never…’ Stella tailed off as she got it.

‘Cause and effect, mon cheri.’ Lucie’s soprano tones sang out. ‘Cause equals puncture. Effect equals Andrea the pretend gardener has to walk home.’

Chapter Thirty-Five

2019

Jack

Maple’s Motors (Est. 1944) was squeezed between the arched entrance to flats above and what in Jack’s boyhood had been a sweetshop but was now a flooring company.

‘Rare to find a showroom on a high street, the lease costs must be huge,’ Jack said to Beverly as they pushed on a glass door and went inside.

‘We’ve owned the building for nearly a century. Low overheads mean we can offer genuine bargains.’

Maple Greenhill. Although Jack believed in ghosts, he didn’t expect to see one under strip lighting amongst polished Minis and BMWs.

‘Cleo Greenhill, can I help you guys?’ The likeness was so strong the woman could only be Maple’s descendent.

‘We’ve come to buy a car.’ Beverly was keeping to Jackie’s instructions.

‘I like customers who know what they want, it saves everyone time.’ Cleo shook Bev’s hand. ‘Do you fancy a wander or would you like me to point you in the right direction?’

‘Yes.’ Face to face with Cleo, brimming with life, Jack felt the measure of Maple’s loss more profoundly than from reading newspaper articles.

‘Which?’ Cleo raised one eyebrow.

‘That one.’ Bev pointed at a racing green Mini.

As Bev got behind the wheel and purred over the leather seats, Jack quelled impatience – they were meant to cut to the chase and head for Tewkesbury. Bev was taking the role-playing too seriously.

At the rear of the showroom he found a drinks machine and the toilet. As Jack usually did, he took the ‘Private’ sign on a door as invitation and stepped inside.

At the top of a staircase, he entered the door with ‘Office’ on the opaque glass in gold letters.

Boxes towered on top of filing cabinets. On top of the cabinet nearest to him was a huge Remington typewriter that was once the latest in office equipment. As had been the cumbersome computers, one with a floating Windows 98 logo on the screen. Jack tracked fumes to an opened bottle of whisky on the furthest of two desks.

A whiteboard on the wall behind it suggested that, despite the bargain prices, sales were little better than at Clean Slate. Cliff had had no sales for the whole of November and nothing in December so far. Cleo had sold two BMWs in the first week of November, but the rest of the month was blank.

Jack guessed that, as he saw at Clean Slate, the pile of stamped envelopes on the nearest desk contained last notice invoices. His eye travelled to pictures on the dirty white pebbledash walls. Car adverts dating back to the seventies – You don’t need a big one to be happy – for a tiny Mini, unlike the sleek model over which he’d left Bev pretending to salivate. One Triumph leads to another showed four bikini-clad women draped on a TR6. Jack switched his gaze to five photographs, portraits of stiff-looking men, the last in colour. John Hamblin, Billy Turton Hamblin, Vernon Greenhill. The last one showed Cliff Greenhill’s ruddy cheeks. In one picture, Jack recognized Cleo, but it was oddly in sepia, like the early pictures. Jack’s heart crashed against his chest: the photograph wasn’t of Cleo. It was Maple.

‘Who the devil are you?’ An elderly man, grizzled grey hair darkened with grease, his chin unshaven, staggered through a door which, hung with coats, Jack hadn’t noticed.

‘I was waiting for Cleo.’ Often caught somewhere uninvited, Jack was smooth.

‘Cars… downstairs.’ The man grabbed the whisky, took a swig and wiped his mouth.

‘You must be Cliff.’ Jack nodded at the picture beside Maple’s.

‘Must I?’ Cliff’s cheeks were ruddier still in real life.

‘You took over from Vernon.’ To gain trust Jack often pretended acquaintance with absent people. Vernon having died before Jack was born, he was skating on thin ice.

‘What’s that to you?’

‘It’s lovely when a business is passed down through the family.’

‘Is it.’ Cliff Greenhill opened a drawer in his desk meant for hanging files and took out another bottle of whisky. Seeming not to notice it was empty he raised it to Maple’s photograph. ‘Thanks to her.’

‘How is that?’ Jack was briefed, he knew exactly why it was thanks to Maple.

‘She gets murdered. We’re still paying for it.’ He swallowed a belch. ‘RIP and all that.’

‘You shouldn’t be up here.’ Cleo Greenhill stood in the doorway.

‘No, sorry, I was looking for…’ Jack saw from Cleo’s face no