Page 27 of The Tapes

TWENTY-ONE

The woman is resting on her car door but angles towards me. ‘Pardon?’

I step nearer, holding my palms out at my side, no threat to anyone.

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I thought I might know you…’

It’s not my mother – but there is a similarity – even down to the way the other woman dumped her bag on the bonnet to go through it. Mum used to do the same on the kitchen table all the time.

‘Are you the owner of number twenty-seven?’ she asks, managing to neatly sidestep the fact I called this stranger ‘Mum’.

I reply with an instinctive ‘no’, before I realise that I kind of am. ‘Jointly,’ I add quickly. ‘My brother and I are waiting for the probate to go through.’

The woman closes her car door and starts hunting through her bag again. She finds a business card that she passes across. ‘Lovely to meet you. I’m Mary,’ she says.

I have to squint to make out the card in the gloom – but ‘Mary Edgars, Estate Agent’ is printed in neat type across the centre.

‘You’re an estate agent?’ I say, somewhat needlessly.

‘Yes, and I’m sure I can help you out. I hope you don’t mind, but a friend on the street told me that number twenty-seven was going to be empty and might go to market.

I’ve got good news: there’s loads of demand around here at the moment.

The primary school at the end of the road got a good Ofsted report.

I’ve got at least four families who’d love to offer if number twenty-seven’s going to be available. ’ She smiles brightly.

I look to the woman, then the card, trying to put the pieces together. The familiarity with my mother ended the moment this other person started to speak. Mum could be rambling and hesitant but Mary is brusque and confident.

‘Were you at the college yesterday?’ I ask.

Crinkles appear in her forehead. ‘How’d you know that?’

‘I thought I saw this car…’

There’s a sort of truth there – and Mary follows my gaze to her vehicle, before looking back to me. ‘It might’ve been me. I was taking photographs for one of my clients. I’d come back here this evening to see if there was anyone home. I did put a card through the door.’

I had left off the lights in the main house, only using one in the garage – so this sounds possible. I’m not sure how I missed the card, though.

Mary waits a moment and then: ‘So you and your brother will be joint owners…?’

My first instinct is to tell her to get lost. My father hasn’t even had his funeral yet and this ambulance chaser is busy trying to sell his house from under him.

And yet… this would be a great family home, not least for the school at the end of the street.

There’s a park barely five minutes away, plus a decent garden at the back.

My brother wants rid so he can get his share of the money and I probably want that too.

It’s another moment in which it feels as if I should be angry and yet I just can’t bring myself to be so.

‘The funeral’s tomorrow,’ I say.

Mary touches her chest. ‘My God, I’m so sorry to hear that. I don’t want to impose, or push you into anything. I would never have said anything if I’d known.’

She motions to reopen her car door but I tell her it’s OK.

‘The house is a bit rundown on the inside,’ I say. ‘I’ve been trying to clear it but Dad kept a lot of things. There’s so much.’

‘I can help if you want…?’

Mary tells me this is common and she knows someone who specialises in house clearances.

They’ll come and collect all the bin bags, plus drag off anything else I don’t want, including the furniture.

No fee, apparently, although I’m sure Mary’s thinking further down the line.

I’m not na?ve – but that doesn’t mean we can’t both get what we want.

We chat for a few minutes more as the sky darkens around us.

It’s almost heartening to talk about the house and its problems in a way that doesn’t involve discussing the memories that come with it.

It’s bricks and paint; plaster and wallpaper.

Mary says she could have the whole place emptied and redecorated within a week of me giving her the say-so.

As we walk, it’s impossible not to see there is a hint of my mum about her.

It’s surface in that they look somewhat alike.

Or, more to the point, if Mum was still around, I can see how she might have morphed into this person.

I say none of that but listen and there’s a sense of satisfaction of having a grown-up in the room.

At least somebody knows what they’re doing.

We leave things with a promise that I’ll call as Mary gets into her car and drives off.

I head back to my own vehicle, where I sit and stare at Dad’s house.

One week.

I can give Mary the say-so, while we wait for the probate, and that will be the end. No more house, no more ignored texts to my brother about who’s responsible for what. Mary doesn’t seem the sort to over promise.

One week, and this part of my life could be over.

It feels as if a weight has lifted, even though I’m not there yet. It’s only now I realise how badly I want rid of the house. There is no particular fondness as I didn’t grow up here. A part of me resents the direct link my brother and I share.

One week.

I try to remember where I put my car keys, then realise they’re still in my bag – along with the ones I was going to return to the landscaping firm.

The suspicions I have around Mark had momentarily gone, though the cloud returns as I remove the fob with four keys from my bag.

It’s not only him, of course. I’m suspicious of everyone. Mum’s cassette has made me paranoid.

Except Owen is dead.

It’s not entirely in my head. He had that cassette and perhaps I got him killed.

The landscaping yard isn’t quite on the way home, though it’s not far off.

The streets are quiet as night slips across Sedingham.

As I arrive on the industrial estate, a single vehicle is parked further along the road, though nobody’s in sight around the yard itself.

It’s dark, aside from a spotlight high on a pole close to the fence.

It feels wrong to stop directly outside the yard, so I leave the car on the opposite side of the street and then cross back to the secure mailbox that sits next to the main gates of Mark’s landscaping firm. I’m holding the fob and keys, and reach them into the slot… except I don’t let go.

Owen is dead and, despite everything DS Cox said about him killing himself, I can’t get past the thought that it’s my fault.

It’s a bad idea, I know, yet I unlock the side gate, wincing as a rusty creak burns through the silence.

It’s a sign I should turn and walk away, yet the thought is with me now.

It’s only as I enter the yard and pull the gate closed that it occurs that this is what my mother was describing on the tape.

Do I have impulse control issues? I could have left the keys but the moment I had the idea to explore Mark’s office, I knew I was going to do it.

Such a bad idea.

I cross the yard, sticking to the shadows and trying to remember if the cameras actually work. There’s definitely a dummy one at the front, because Mark fell out with the security company over their prices. He said the imitation would do the trick. Hopefully he was too cheap to pay for any at all.

I unlock the door of the office block and head into the gloom. The only light is a glimmer from the large spotlight outside which leaves silhouettes stretching across the office.

My old desk is as I left it and there’s a momentary disappointment that, somehow, the world has continued without me. It’s the same as when I have a week off: a disbelief that, somehow, my workplace hasn’t crashed and burned because I’ve been away.

I shouldn’t be here.

Except Owen is dead. Carly Nicholson is dead. Mark was possibly the last person to see them both. There has to be something here because, if not, I’m back to being suspicious of my own parents.

The door to Mark’s office is slightly ajar and I push my way inside.

He has a large leather office lounger, facing the wide window that offers a view of the yard.

With my desk a few metres away, if the door is open, I’ll often hear him in here, mumbling and criticising the people he can see.

Someone’s not loading a van quickly enough; a different person has spent a couple of minutes talking, instead of working. His business, his rules.

Mark’s desk is a mass of receipts. There’s one for KFC on top and another directly underneath for Burger King.

Beneath those are pages of A4 for various personal expenses.

There are two massages from this week alone; two more for petrol.

I leave those, not sure what I’m looking for.

As I move my arm, I nudge the mouse, and the monitor immediately glares bluey-white, asking for a password.

The light illuminates Mark’s bikini babe of the day desk calendar – which has already been turned to tomorrow.

I consider trying to guess his password, though quickly realise I have no idea what it could be. There are Post-it notes pinned to the monitor, though nothing with what could be a password. An earthy, slightly sweet stench comes from the ashtray, in which an extinguished cigar has been mashed.

It’s all a bit 1980s blokey bloke. Almost a parody, except I’ve worked in the next room for years and know it’s all too real.

The monitor is now lighting up more of the room, as I spot the safe tucked into the corner.

There’s a push-pad on the front, though I have no idea of the code.

Mark’s wall calendar is labelled as ‘arctic foxes’, though that apparently means scantily clad women wearing not very much in snowy conditions.

It’s only as the monitor blinks off, leaving me in near darkness, that I realise the door of the safe isn’t closed.

A sliver of yellow light beams through the gap, creating a small triangle on the floor.

When I pull the door open, the lock bars are engaged, as if someone’s not quite pushed it fully closed before entering the code. Someone in a hurry.

I crouch, probably expecting cash, because Mark seems the type – but there’s no money in the safe. At first I think there’s nothing at all – but then I see a small black rectangle pushed to the side, almost hidden by the shadow.

The door creaks further open as I remove the battered canvas wallet. It’s not the sort of thing a fifty-year-old cigar-chomping company owner with a two thousand word biography on his website would own.

The Velcro pulls apart with a crinkle and then I see a driving licence slotted into the front compartment. Nobody takes a good official photo – and this isn’t an exception. A pair of unblinking wide eyes stare out at me, the skin white and pale.

The eyes of a dead man.

Owen’s.