House of Bones Read online

  Mr Cleat said, “Thank you, Liam,” in a voice like concentrated nitric acid. Then he said, “That door, to the right, leads to Mr Vane’s office. Mr Vane is semi-retired now, but occasionally he comes in to deal with certain favoured clients. I must advise you that Mr Vane expects a high standard of decorum.”

  Again, John blinked. Liam said, “He doesn’t want you eating fish and chips in the office or mooning at clients who annoy you.”

  Mr Cleat said nothing to that, but he gave Liam a stare that would have killed a tortoise. Then he looked at his watch and said, “Anyway, I have to go. I’m meeting some prospective buyers for the Wavertree Estate, and I’m running late. I have to tell you, John, that punctuality is absolutely essential in this business. You must never leave people hanging about. You understand that?”

  “Yeah. I mean, yesss.”

  As soon as Mr Cleat had left, everybody relaxed, except for Courtney, who picked up the phone and started talking to a prospective buyer about a house overlooking Tooting Bee Common. “I know you think it’s too expensive, but think of the view. Grass, trees, tennis courts. If you look out of your kitchen window, you could be living on your own private estate.”

  “I don’t know where he gets the nerve,” smiled Liam. “Have you seen Tooting Bee Common on a weekend? Crowded? It looks like a tinful of maggots.”

  When he had finished on the phone, Courtney came over and said, “Right, John. You won’t have too much to do today except make the tea and answer the phone and take the post to the post office. But I’ll take you out with me when I visit some houses that people want to sell.

  “There may be a couple of times when you’re alone in the office, all right? If people come in and ask about any of our houses or flats, all you have to do is go to these filing cabinets, find the right particulars, and give them a copy.”

  He opened up one of the filing cabinets and took out a glossy folder with a colour photograph of a large six-bedroomed house on the front. “If they say they want to see it, take their name and their phone number and say that we’ll arrange a visit to suit them. That’s all you have to do.”

  “Do you always have to go with people when they look at houses?” asked John.

  “Well, mostly we do, except if we’re really busy, or the owners prefer to show people around themselves. Or sometimes, if a house is empty, we lend people the key so that they can go and look on their own.” He opened a drawer in one of the filing cabinets. “All the keys are in here. And the alarm codes, too.”

  “All right,” John nodded.

  “There’s one more thing you need to know about—” Courtney began, but at that moment his phone rang and he went to answer it. John hung around his desk, not knowing what to do, but in the end Courtney put his hand over the receiver and said, “This is going to take a bit of time. Why don’t you take that desk and go through the property lists – get to know what we’ve got on our books.”

  John sat down and tried to smile at Lucy, but Lucy looked through him as if he were the invisible office junior.

  3

  John’s first day at work was a mixture of boredom and confusion, seasoned with occasional moments of embarrassment. He spent over an hour photocopying the particulars of a block of new flats in Gipsy Hill. Then he made tea and coffee for everybody: tea with three sugars for Courtney; white coffee for Liam; black coffee for Lucy. All Lucy said was, “Where’s the biscuits?” and sent him down the road to Sainsbury’s for a packet of chocolate digestives. He saw two boys he knew outside Our Price records, laughing and smoking and chatting up girls. He felt trapped and frustrated, and he walked back to the office by the longest route possible: all the way along Pendennis Road and then left down Gracefield Gardens. It was hot and he loosened his tie, and by the time he opened the biscuits they had all melted. Lucy said, “Where did you go to get those? Zimbabwe?”

  Just before lunch, Courtney took him out in his metallic blue BMW to meet a couple who wanted to view a small two-bedroomed house in Streatham Park. John enjoyed the drive and the car had a fantastic sound-system. Courtney turned the volume up to “deafening” and John was sure the outside of the car must be bulging out with every beat.

  The house in Streatham Park was cramped and chilly and had obviously been unoccupied for a long time. There was a large brown stain on the shagpile carpet in the living-room. Somebody had stuck a poster of Barry Manilow on the back of the larder door and circled his eyes with felt-tip spectacles. The couple who came to view it were fiftyish and vague. He wore a brown nylon short-sleeved shirt and she wore a dress like a chintz chair-cover. They peered morosely into every room and made no comment whatsoever, except at the end, when the husband said, “What’s the soil like round here? Acid or alkaline?”

  “Clay,” said Courtney.

  “Well, that’s no good, then. I want to grow azaleas.”

  On the way back to the office, Courtney said, “You want to do them an injury sometimes. I mean, you physically want to beat them up.”

  He laughed, and John laughed, too. He was beginning to think that he might grow to like this job, after all.

  At lunchtime, Courtney invited him to come along to McDonald’s for a cheeseburger and fries, but he said no.

  “Listen, man, I’ll pay for you. I know what it’s like when you first start work.”

  “No, no. I’ve got enough money. I’m just not hungry, that’s all.”

  “All right, then. Please yourself.”

  Lucy said, “Well, if you’re going to stay here, I’m going to go and do some shopping.”

  They closed the door behind them and left him alone. The truth was that he was starving, but he only had enough money for his bus fare home, and he was too embarrassed to admit it. His dad had offered him lunch money but he hadn’t wanted to take it.

  Mr Cleat had given him a desk right at the front of the office, so that he would have to get up and greet anybody who wandered in. He had a PC terminal which he didn’t know how to use, a blotter, and a pencil holder with Blight, Simpson & Vane printed on it.

  He opened all the drawers but they were empty except for a few stray paperclips and a scenic postcard from Rhyl: Dear All, it hasn’t stopped raining since I got here. Love, Bill.

  Time seemed to crawl. John leafed through the local Property Gazette. Then he went to the window and stared out over the oak-framed display board, in the same way that Mr Cleat had stared at him. Streatham High Road was dusty and bright, and he saw lots of girls in very short skirts. His stomach made a noise like a cistern emptying.

  He made himself a cup of coffee and ate three chocolate digestives all stuck together like a sandwich. He was wondering if he ought to risk eating another chocolate digestive when the front doorbell jangled, and a tall man in a cream-coloured blazer walked in. He had a big, suntanned face, immense eyebrows and thick horn-rimmed glasses. He banged down a brown leather briefcase on to John’s desk and said, “66 Mountjoy Avenue!” His voice was so booming that John could have heard him three miles away.

  “Oh,” said John.

  The man stared at him for a very long time without saying anything. Then, enunciating his words as if he were speaking to a complete idiot, he said, “I want to look at it.”

  “Oh,” said John.

  “I called last week. I spoke to David about it.”

  “Oh, I see, Mr Cleat. He’s not here at the moment. Nobody’s here at the moment.”

  “You’re here at the moment.”

  “Yes, but this is my first day.”

  “What difference does that make? All I want is to look at it. I’ve been trying to find a house in the Mountjoy Avenue area for God knows how long. They only seem to come on the market when somebody dies.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. There’s nobody here at the moment.”

  “I can borrow the key, can’t I? I can have it back to you in three-quarters of an hour.”

  “I don’t know. I—”

  “Listen, sonny, I’ve been using this estat
e agents since you were in nappies. David and I play golf together. The house is empty; there’s nothing to steal. And I don’t exactly look like a squatter, do I? Or do I?”

  “No. Well, no.”

  John went to the drawer and sorted through the keys. They were all in alphabetical order and all clearly tagged, but there was no sign of a key for 66 Mountjoy Avenue. “Sorry,” he said. “It isn’t here. If you could come back later …”

  “I can’t come back later. I’ve got an important appointment at two. You must have a key. David said that it was one of your special properties and that Mr Vane was dealing with it.”

  John shrugged. “I’m sorry. If the key’s not in here—”

  “Well, perhaps Mr Vane’s got it in his office, if it’s one of his properties.”

  “All right” said John, unhappily. “I’ll have a look.”

  He cautiously opened the door to Mr Vane’s office and stepped inside. The blinds were drawn so that the office was very gloomy. There were rows of old mahogany filing cabinets and a huge mahogany partner’s desk heaped with papers and books. On the wall was a portrait of a good-looking woman in a crimson 1920s dress.

  “Come on, lad, I haven’t got all day,” the man urged him.

  John opened the middle drawer of Mr Vane’s desk. It was crammed with an untidy collection of spectacles, pens, elastic bands, envelopes and old photographs. In the left-hand drawer there were bundles of letters tied with pink tape. In the right-hand drawer he found the keys – nine of them in all, and each of them clearly tagged. Here it was – 66 Mountjoy Avenue.

  “Have you found it yet?” the man demanded.

  John hesitated. Surely it wouldn’t do any harm to let somebody look at one of Mr Vane’s properties? If he liked it, he might make an offer, and surely Mr Vane would be pleased about that, even if he hadn’t been here at the time.

  He closed the drawer and returned to the main office.

  “Well done,” said the man, and held out his hand. He had a thick wedding ring, made of intertwined bands of yellow and white gold, like a rope.

  John closed his fist around the keys. “I think I’d better write down your name. You know, it’s my first day and I don’t want to get into trouble.”

  “Rogers,” said the man, impatiently.

  John wrote it on the Blight, Simpson & Vane notepad. “And address?” he asked.

  “David knows where I live. He’s been to dinner, for goodness’ sake.”

  John kept his pen poised over his pad.

  “All right, then,” the man told him. “103 Welham Road.”

  John slowly wrote down the address while the man tutted and fidgeted. When John handed him the key he marched out of the office, almost colliding with Courtney as he came back in.

  “Who was that?” Courtney wanted to know.

  John held up the pad. “Mr Rogers. He wanted to look at a house, so I lent him the key. I hope that’s all right. I made sure I got his address.”

  “That’s great. If he buys it, you’ll get some commission. At this rate, you’ll have your BMW by Christmas.”

  “Thanks,” said John, and felt extremely pleased with himself. “Do you want a cup of coffee? I was just going to make one.”

  “Yes, great,” Courtney said. “What you can do this afternoon is sort out some of these files. Any property that’s been on the market for longer than three months put over here, so that we can discuss whether we’re going to re-advertise it in the property papers, and whether we’re going to advise the owner to cut his price.”

  “All right. I see.”

  At that moment, Lucy and Liam came back. Liam was telling Lucy a long shaggy-dog story about Tarzan applying for a job-seeker’s allowance because there was no work in the jungle.

  “How was your lunch hour, John?” said Liam. “Sell any property while we were out?”

  “He may have done,” said Courtney. “Somebody came in asking to look at a house.”

  “That’s terrific. I hope it was The Cedars. We’ve been trying to get rid of that mouldering old heap for nearly three years now.”

  “No. It was 66 Mountjoy Avenue.”

  Liam stared at him with his mouth open. Courtney covered his face with his hands. Lucy said, “I don’t believe it!”

  “What?” said John. “I didn’t do anything wrong, did I? The man said he knew Mr Cleat. He said he played golf with him and had him to dinner and everything.” He could feel his face reddening and his heart starting to thump.

  Lucy said, “66 Mountjoy Avenue is one of Mr Vane’s properties. It’s on his special list. He doesn’t allow anybody else to sell houses on his special list.”

  “Where did you get the keys?” asked Liam.

  “I looked in Mr Vane’s desk.”

  “He looked in Mr Vane’s desssk!” said Courtney, through clenched teeth. “He’s going to go ballistic!”

  “I didn’t know,” said John. He was close to tears. He kept swallowing and swallowing to clear the catch in his throat.

  “Didn’t you tell him?” Lucy asked Courtney. “Oh God, Courtney, you should have told him!”

  Courtney looked at his Rolex. “How long ago did he leave? Maybe I could catch him before he gets there.”

  “About ten minutes ago,” John told him.

  What did it matter if he had given the key to Mr Rogers? He hadn’t actually tried to sell him the house or anything like that. He wouldn’t have known how.

  Liam put an arm around his shoulder and said, “It’s all right, John. It wasn’t your fault. You weren’t to know, were you? And you thought you were doing the right thing.” John nodded: he didn’t trust himself to speak.

  Lucy said, “All we can do is wait for Mr Rogers to bring back the key and hope that he isn’t interested in making an offer.”

  They were still talking about 66 Mountjoy Avenue when Mr Cleat came back, carrying his brown leather briefcase and a Tesco’s shopping bag containing a bottle of Lambrusco, a chocolate eclair and a frozen lasagne dinner-for-one. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “This is supposed to be a working estate agency, not a mother’s meeting.”

  Liam kept his arm around John’s shoulder. John appreciated his protectiveness but really wished that he wouldn’t. It made him feel ridiculously young and stupid.

  “John here’s made a bit of a boo-boo,” said Liam. “A fellow came in and he gave him the keys to 66 Mountjoy Avenue.”

  Mr Cleat put down his bags and blinked at John as if he didn’t know who he was or where he had come from. “You did what?” he said.

  “His name was Rogers,” said John. “He told me he knew you.”

  “He does. He does know me. But you gave him the key to 66 Mountjoy Avenue?”

  “It wasn’t John’s fault,” said Courtney. “I forgot to tell him about Mr Vane’s special list.”

  Mr Cleat opened and closed his mouth as if he were finding it difficult to breathe. He walked over to his desk and then he came back again. “What are we going to do now?” he asked. “What on earth are we going to do now?”

  “I’ve got his name and address,” John told him. “And he did promise to bring the key straight back.”

  Mr Cleat didn’t seem to hear him. “Maybe the phone’s still on. We could try calling him.”

  “I could go round there if you like,” Courtney suggested.

  “No, no,” Mr Cleat insisted. “I’ll go round there myself. I don’t know what Mr Vane’s going to say. He’s had another attack of asthma this week and he isn’t in the best of sorts, believe me.”

  John said, “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I didn’t know.”

  Mr Cleat handed his Tesco bag to John and said, “Put this in the freezer compartment, will you? If anybody wants me, I’m out, and my mobile’s out of order, too.”

  With that, he hurried out of the office. John could see him running across to the car park on the other side of the High Road, dodging in between buses and lorries.

  “I don’t get this,”
he said. “It’s only a house. What difference does it make who sells it?”

  “I don’t get it, either,” said Lucy. “But if there’s one thing you learn when you work for Blight, Simpson & Vane, it’s ‘do what you’re told and don’t ask stupid questions.’”

  “Oh,” said John. “I’m sorry. Do you want a cup of coffee?”

  “Go on, then,” Lucy told him, and for the first time that day she smiled at him.

  Mr Cleat came back over an hour later. He walked straight back into Mr Vane’s office and dropped the keys to 66 Mountjoy Avenue back into the drawer. He looked pale and upset, as if he’d witnessed a road accident.

  He came up to John and said, “We never, ever, release the keys to any of Mr Vane’s properties. Do you understand me? Never! I’m willing to accept that this is your first day, and that Courtney failed to warn you about the special list. But if anybody makes an enquiry about any of our properties, you always check in the file first. If it’s on Mr Vane’s special list, then you take the interested party’s name and particulars, and you leave a note on Mr Vane’s desk for his attention. That’s all you have to do.”

  John nodded. “I’ve got it now. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known.”

  “Yes, well. Let’s hope that Mr Vane is as forgiving as I am.”

  John spent the rest of the afternoon pasting colour photographs of houses on to display cards, and answering the telephone. But every now and then he glanced over at Mr Cleat and wondered why he had got into such a blind panic about 66 Mountjoy Avenue. And why did Mr Vane insist on keeping a special selection of properties all for himself? John thought that he would be really pleased if one of his staff sold a house for him, not angry.

  He was still thinking about it at the end of the day when Mr Cleat suddenly snapped his folder shut and said, “That’s it. Five-thirty. I think we’ve all had enough for one day.”

  4

  He arrived home at six and his father was already grilling pork chops for supper. His mother was sitting at the kitchen table in her dressing-gown, with a cup of tea. Her hair had turned white since her stroke, and she looked much older than she really was. But at least she could talk and use her right hand, and she was able to shuffle around the house.