A Cast of Vultures Read online

‘You’ve spoken to the police.’ This time I was careful not to make it a question, but when Viv looked as though she were sucking lemons, I continued for her. ‘You did, and they told you there’s nothing they can do, a grown man can take off without—’ I waved my hand dismissively.

  Her lips thinned. ‘I’m an old woman fussing over nothing.’

  ‘The local nick said that? To you?’ It wasn’t tactful, but I couldn’t imagine either that they thought that, or, more especially, that they’d been stupid enough to say it to her face.

  She gave a small, tight smile, satisfied that her worth was realised, even as she was annoyed. ‘No, the locals don’t think that, but Missing Persons is centralised. I spoke to someone in a call centre. They’ve logged it, since it was more than seventy-two hours since he was last seen, but they aren’t going to do anything apart from checking the hospitals, which I’ve done anyway. Which is why –’ she gathered herself ‘– which is why I wanted to speak to you.’

  ‘Me?’ What could I do? Surreptitiously I looked down at my shirt. Nope. Not my day to wear the Superman ‘S’.

  ‘We need to go and look around his flat. See if he packed a bag, or if there are any messages on his landline.’

  I wasn’t too sure I wanted to be part of snooping on someone I’d never even met. ‘I don’t know about listening to his messages, but when you go up to water his plants while he’s away, you can at least see if anything looks odd.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t have his keys. I’ve never been into his flat. He may not—’ She broke off, unsure if she should say something as unpleasant as the thought she’d just had. I leant forward. ‘He may not even have any plants.’

  I hoped my wide eyes would be understood as shock at such an enormity, not an attempt to stifle a hysterical giggle. I concentrated on the main point. ‘If you don’t have his keys, then who does?’

  ‘No one. That’s why I need your help. You can easily climb onto his balcony from the neighbours’. His bedroom window is slightly open. If we push a stepladder across from one balcony to the next, you’ll be able to climb in with no problem.’

  She said it in the tone she used to tell me on other weekends that the seedlings she was sending to Mr Rudiger needed to be watered every day.

  It is not often, my friends will agree, that I’m rendered completely speechless, but I was then. I tried again, but no, I still had no idea how to respond. Finally, I said, ‘A stepladder.’ Don’t ask me. I don’t know why that was the detail I latched onto. It just was.

  Viv looked embarrassed. ‘I don’t think I’m tall enough, even with the ladder.’ Not, I’m too old to be climbing over a balcony railing, you note. Or even, Maybe, just maybe, I shouldn’t be contemplating breaking into someone’s flat. Nope. Her concern was her height.

  I nodded as though that made perfect sense. I thought that shrieking, ‘Holy shit, woman, you want me to break into someone’s flat?’ might tip her off that I disapproved.

  She got over her embarrassment at her lack of inches, and continued: ‘It’s the only way to find out where he might have gone, and if he’s all right.’

  I didn’t respond, because I still couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘Someone needs to,’ she added, as if it were a given. As though it had been handed down to Moses on a tablet of stone. Right after the Ten Commandments, Commandment Eleven said: Thou shalt illegally enter thy neighbour’s flat whenever he’s been gone longer than you think appropriate.

  I began to shake my head, no, and found I couldn’t stop. No, no, no. I pushed myself away from the table. ‘I can’t. It’s wrong. I’m sorry. Really sorry. But I can’t.’

  I knew that if I stayed she’d persuade me. So I ran.

  I went to the market on automatic pilot. I know I went, and I know I bought things, because when I got home, I had food in my cycle panniers, and it is rare in north London that the food fairy descends, waves a stalk of purple-sprouting broccoli and poof, your cupboards are full. But I don’t remember any of it, which became evident when I unpacked the bags back at the flat. No milk, no eggs, no bread, but a fine collection of disparate items that looked as if they’d been chosen to illustrate a children’s alphabet chart rather than provide a week’s supply of suppers: one apple, two bags of beans, three carrots.

  I was standing staring accusingly at the food, as though it were its fault, when my phone rang. I looked at the display: Helena.

  ‘Morning, Mother.’

  ‘Good morning, darling. I forgot to mention when we last spoke that I’m having a party next Saturday. Drinks and lunch, in the garden if the weather holds.’

  I made an indeterminate noise. Helena’s friends are lovely people – Helena is a lovely person. It’s just that she’s exhausting to be with, or even sometimes to think about. She’s a partner in a commercial law firm and works long hours – she’s at her desk every morning by seven, and she rarely puts in less than a twelve-hour day. Yet she still finds time to socialise. She sees friends, she goes to theatre and museums, goes to dinner parties, has dinner parties and, as this call showed, also lunch parties.

  By contrast, I’m not much for parties of any sort. Had I not seen photographs of what was indubitably a small, cross, unsocialised baby-me in hospital after Helena had given birth, I would assume I was adopted. While making bright chat to the movers and shakers of the professional world – because those are the people Helena knows, doctors, and lawyers, and Indian chiefs – is pleasant in theory, it’s hard work for me in practice. I don’t really do groups. Or even two or three people. Sometimes one is a burden. But there was no point in refusing this invitation. Unless I could come up with a good reason – a lunch I’d already agreed to, or theatre tickets I’d already bought, or the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse scheduled in for an enjoyable afternoon of war, famine, pestilence and death – I wasn’t going to get out of it. ‘I’ll check my diary. It’s in the other room,’ I offered feebly, knowing full well that Helena knew full well that I was on my mobile, and could walk the fourteen steps to that faraway ‘other room’ while we were speaking.

  She didn’t lower herself to point out the obvious. ‘Splendid. I’ll expect you and Jake unless you have a conflict.’

  Fabulous.

  Given my morning, I decided I might as well round it off by letting Mr Rudiger know I didn’t have whatever it was Viv had been going to send over, because I’d freaked out when she suggested the odd spot of breaking and entering. As I walked up the stairs, I thought what I’d do if one of my neighbours vanished without warning. Kay and Anthony were in their thirties, and if they disappeared there was no doubt the police would respond the same way they had with Dennis Whoever. Because they lived directly above me, the way Viv’s friend did above her, I could tell when they were home too, and which room they were in by their footsteps. If the three of them suddenly weren’t there, if they hadn’t mentioned they were going away and we’d made plans for dinner? I had never met their families, didn’t know what part of the country they came from. Searching for people named Lewis, no location, no first names, wasn’t feasible. But I had their keys. Going up to check would be no different from Kay bringing Bim through my flat so he could play in my garden when I was out, or me going up to borrow eggs or milk if I ran out when she wasn’t in, both routine occurrences.

  If Mr Rudiger went missing, on the other hand, I’d be deeply concerned after three minutes, never mind three days. If he didn’t answer his door, I’d worry he’d fallen, or had a stroke, and I’d try and get in touch with his daughter. Petra Rudiger wasn’t a common name in London, so I had a fair chance of finding her if the police refused to take it seriously, although I suspected they’d be more concerned about the disappearance of a seventy-something agoraphobe than a forty-something-year-old in full employment. If they did nothing, though? I paused on the stairs. If they did nothing and a window was open at the front, yes, I’d ask our next-door neighbour to give me access to their roof terrace and I’d climb over to Mr Rudiger’s.
I wouldn’t think twice.

  I turned around and went downstairs to get my cycle out again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ON THE WAY back to Viv, I consoled myself: Viv was a busy woman, rarely at home; it wasn’t likely she’d be sitting around waiting for me to come back. But I never had that kind of luck. It was as if she had followed my thought processes, and knew that I would return, and, to the second, when. I had barely knocked before the door opened and Viv came out, already equipped with the stepladder. ‘The backstairs,’ was all she said as she set off towards the rear of the building, me scuttling along behind her like a remorseful child.

  Viv had been slightly economical when she described the neighbours looking through Harefield’s sitting room window from their balcony. They could only have done that by climbing over the railing that separated the single balcony into two. Viv had briefed them today, too, because their door swung open at Viv’s knock. She didn’t trouble to introduce me to the couple who stood there, just marched through their flat and out to their balcony with nothing more than a ‘Lovely day’ thrown over her shoulder. For breaking and entering? I felt like asking, but didn’t, being far too cowed. I also didn’t ask why, if they were all agreed that this was the right thing to do, the neighbours, both taller than me (and, truthfully, while I was taller than Viv, almost everyone else is taller than me), couldn’t have done it. Maybe it was against their tenancy agreement: No pets, no ball games in public areas, no B&E.

  Viv was right about one thing. If you had access to the connecting balcony, it wasn’t difficult for anyone over five feet tall to reach the next flat. I hit the qualifying height with a few inches to spare, and slid across without a hitch, unfortunately. The neighbours, still silent, passed the ladder over to me, and with that I had no trouble reaching the open bedroom window next to the sitting room, pushing it wide. I left the ladder by the door to the sitting room. I might break and enter to get in, but there was no reason not to leave by the front door.

  As I sat on the windowsill, Viv stood on the neighbours’ terrace like a staff sergeant giving me my marching orders: ‘You might not be able to tell if he packed any clothes, but see if his toothbrush is there. And check the fridge. Did he empty it out, or are there any perishables?’

  If she was going to play detective, she could be part of the illegal section of the day’s activities too. ‘I’ll open the front door. You can come in that way.’ And I slid inside without waiting for her reply.

  I didn’t stop to look around, but even walking straight through, by the time I reached the front door, Viv was there already. So were the neighbours, but she wasn’t having any of that. This was her moment. ‘Thank you,’ she said, regal as the queen, dismissing them without any other words.

  And by God, it worked. The man looked like he wanted to protest, but his wife was smart enough not to question Viv. She stepped back right away, towing her husband away behind her before closing their door firmly, leaving us felons on the other side.

  ‘You take the bedroom,’ said Viv. ‘I’ll look around the sitting room.’ I didn’t know quite what she expected to find – a hand-drawn pirate map with an ‘x’ marking the missing neighbour? But I didn’t protest, and meekly headed to the bedroom. I didn’t want to be there, and the faster I looked around, the faster I could get out.

  I stuck my head into the bathroom first: towels on the floor, toothpaste spit and beard-bristles in the sink. Toothbrush and toothpaste in a glass on the counter. I opened the medicine cabinet. If he’d packed to go away, I couldn’t tell. There didn’t appear to be gaps where things had been removed. There was a cellophane packet of disposable razors on a shelf, so if he’d taken one, I’d never know. And he might have a travel toothbrush if he went away with any regularity. The towels and the soap were dry, so either he hadn’t been back since he was last seen, or he hadn’t washed. We could put up a notice: Missing, One slightly smelly council employee.

  I returned to the bedroom, which was no tidier. The bed was unmade, piles of clothes were thrown over the single chair, and more spilt onto the floor. I checked his cupboard. More clothes on the floor of it, as well as on hangers. There wasn’t a clutch of empty hangers to suggest that some items had been taken for packing, but there was no way of telling for sure. I toed the clothes on the floor to see if there was a suitcase or bag of some sort behind them, but there was nothing. Nor was there anything on the top of the cupboard. Again, he might have taken the bag, or the bag might not exist. I checked the bedside tables. One was empty, the other had a heap of odds and ends on it: dirty tissues, a pair of reading glasses, a part-filled glass. I sniffed at it. Water. Under it was a pile of magazines. I thought that porn had all moved online, but apparently not.

  I hastily continued. The drawers beneath were empty, but whether that was because the contents were laid out above, or they’d been packed and taken with him, or whether he just didn’t keep anything in them, I had no idea. At any rate, no itineraries, diaries, notes with names of places or hotels or travel plans. I swept my hand across the bottom of the first drawer. Dust, which suggested he didn’t put anything in them.

  I turned in a circle, but there was nothing else in the room. No chest of drawers, no other furniture. I dropped to my knees and looked under the bed. If there wasn’t a bag in the cupboard, he might keep his suitcases there. The blankets and sheets thrown back made a little dark tent underneath, and I reached into my pocket for my phone, which had a handy-dandy torchlight app that my life as an editor had never provided me with an opportunity to use thus far. It gave little more light, but made me feel as if I knew what I was doing. I squinted in the gloom. There was no visible road atlas, no envelope of bus or train tickets, no pad with a list headed ‘Leave for Acapulco tomorrow’ that I could see on the side near me, but the weak torchlight beam barely lit half a metre around. I needed to check the far side to see if there were more than dust bunnies and dirty socks there. I was just disentangling myself from the hanging sheets when a phone rang behind me. In my jittery breaking-and-entering condition I jumped and hit my head on the slats of the bedframe above.

  I forgot I was nervous and in a place I wasn’t supposed to be. ‘Shit!’ I shouted. That hurt.

  The ringing phone was under the pile of clothes on the chair. I started to look through them as Viv bustled through from the sitting room, glaring. ‘Language!’

  I was damned if I was going to apologise. At her urging, I was in a place I didn’t want to be, doing something I didn’t want to do, in the course of which I’d hurt myself. That was worth a ‘Shit!’, and if she didn’t like it she could find someone who didn’t swear when they hit their head. I wasn’t planning on saying any of that to Viv. I’d hit my head, I hadn’t lost my mind.

  Instead I said, ‘There’s a phone here, in the pocket of a pair of trousers. I didn’t get to it before it stopped ringing, so I didn’t see who was calling. They didn’t leave a message.’ Viv took it out of my hand: anything worth looking over was, the gesture said, her job. I left her scrolling through his contacts, and dug around on the floor for my own phone, which I’d dropped when the one on the chair rang.

  Once I had it in my hand I gave up. There was nothing to be found in the bedroom. ‘Did you look in the kitchen?’ I asked.

  Still scrolling, she shook her head. That ‘shit’ had seriously put me in the doghouse. I didn’t care, I just wanted to be out. I checked the fridge, as ordered. There was nothing in it apart from a six-pack of beer. The freezer had a lone bottle of vodka and an ice tray. I opened the two cupboards that were all the tiny galley space contained. Four plates, four bowls, four glasses, four mugs. Cutlery in a drawer. A jar of Nescafé. No food. The bin explained that: at least half a dozen empty silver-foil containers, and a couple of bags with logos of Indian restaurants. The emptiness of the fridge didn’t indicate he had gone away, it indicated that he didn’t cook.

  Viv stood in the doorway. ‘We’re finished here,’ she said. The words every trespasser wants to h
ear, so I was right behind her.

  Once back in her flat, we went straight to her kitchen, and Viv had the kettle on in an automatic gesture: you were in the kitchen, you made tea. I told her what I’d found, or not found. There was not only no food, there had been no plants anywhere in the flat, so she seemed to be reassessing her friend’s character.

  ‘Nothing looked out of place in the sitting room, either,’ she said. ‘If he had a computer, it was a laptop, and it wasn’t there. I didn’t see a case for it, or a charger, so either he took it with him, or maybe he just used his work computer for everything.’ Viv had missed her calling. The CID should have snapped her up long ago. ‘There was a phone charger, and it fitted the phone you found.’ She looked approvingly at me, as if finding a ringing phone a metre away from me was on a par with winning a Nobel Prize.

  ‘Did you find anything on his phone?’

  ‘No messages. The texts were all sent before Wednesday, and none of the ones coming in since indicated they knew where he was, or that the senders thought he’d gone away, apart from one from a work colleague, it looked like, reminding him of a meeting he was missing.

  ‘His contacts are there, but we can’t ring each one, can we?’ For a moment she looked like she wished we could. ‘There was one labelled “Mum”, but …’

  She trailed off and I picked up, ‘But you can’t ring a strange woman and say her son is missing, and he left his phone behind …’ and you got her number by prowling uninvited through his flat, I added silently.

  She acknowledged the spoken part. ‘There wasn’t much in his desk,’ she went on. ‘Mostly to do with the boys’ club he runs. And his spare keys.’ She jingled a ring of keys at me.

  ‘His keys.’ I’d thought we were breaking and entering, but Viv had decided to up the stakes and move on to burglary.

  ‘I’ll keep the keys.’ I must have looked blank, because she became defensive. ‘It will be easier when one of us goes back for his post.’