The House Across the Street Page 11

  She hardly dared look at him. But when she did, he was smiling.

  ‘That’s a lovely thing to say, Katy. You’ve suddenly made Frey, Hurst and Herbert seem far more attractive.’

  Charles took her all the way home to Hammersmith on the tube.

  As they came out of the tube station, he put his arm around her and pulled her closer to him. ‘You are a treasure,’ he said softly. ‘An undiscovered one, at that, because I don’t think anyone has ever appreciated you much.’

  He turned her towards him then, and despite people walking past them, he kissed her.

  It was the best kiss she’d ever known. It made her toes curl up, her heart beat faster, and created a sensation inside her that felt like she was being gently tugged in a delicious way she’d never felt before.

  The kiss went on and on. She didn’t want it to end, but when he did break away he still stayed close, his lips on her forehead, his arms tightly round her.

  ‘I’ve already promised my parents I’ll go and see them for the weekend,’ he said after a little while. ‘I wish I hadn’t now, as I’d much rather spend it with you. But maybe on Monday night we could go to the pictures. Zorba the Greek is on, and I’m told it’s very good.’

  ‘I’d love that,’ she said, thinking she’d be happy to sit in a freezing cold bus shelter, just as long as he was with her.

  He walked her all the way to Ken and Joan’s house and kissed her goodbye, this time even more hungrily.

  ‘I have to go now,’ he said eventually. ‘Or I won’t get a tube back to Westminster. I’ll see you on Monday.’

  Katy walked up the steps to the front door and watched him walking away. Lean and lithe, despite his thick navy overcoat. He had a good walk – long strides, purposeful – and yet halfway down the road he turned and waved to her, walking backwards for a little while.

  Katy put her hands up to her face. Despite the cold, it seemed very hot, and she wanted to shout for joy and dance up and down the pavement.

  8

  Katy was woken by Jilly hopping on one foot trying to get her jeans on. She had been asleep when Katy returned home the previous evening, so Katy hadn’t been able to tell her about the date with Charles.

  She waited, expecting Jilly to ask now, but she was rushing, clearly afraid she’d be late for work.

  But as she opened the door to go downstairs, she looked back. ‘How was the date?’

  ‘Super-duper,’ Katy replied. ‘But I won’t hold you up now – tell you tonight.’

  ‘Can’t wait!’ Jilly pulled a silly face. ‘Go back to dreaming about him.’

  Katy lay there for some time, reliving Charles’s kiss, but she was so excited that it was impossible to go back to sleep. Yet she also felt guilty about being so happy while her father was stuck in prison. Charles might have advised her against going to look for that red Jaguar, but she couldn’t see what harm could come to her by just walking past each of those six addresses. People only ever remembered her bright hair, so she’d pull on a woolly hat and hide it. Besides, she wanted to explore London, and it was a lovely cold crisp day, perfect for walking.

  Two hours later, at almost eleven o’clock, with one of Joan’s big cooked breakfasts inside her, Katy was standing outside Hampstead tube station consulting her A to Z. The first address appeared to be up the hill and facing the heath. She had never been to Hampstead before, and she was somewhat surprised to find it such an obviously affluent area. It was tempting to go into some of the exciting-looking boutiques, jewellers and gift shops she passed, but she resisted, reminding herself she could come here one day with Jilly to look in the shops.

  The first address, where Margaret Foster had run away from with her two boys, aged five and seven, was a beautiful Georgian double-fronted house, set back in a walled garden. Katy paused by the tall wrought-iron gate to peep in.

  Margaret’s husband was a surgeon at the Royal Free, and Katy thought that anyone looking at this house with its shiny, dark blue front door, neatly framed by evergreen ball-shaped bushes planted in stone urns on either side, would never imagine that behind the facade lay violence and brutality. There was a small tree in the centre of the lawn, and beneath it a host of snowdrops in flower, the first Katy had seen this year. She guessed that later in the year the garden would be beautiful because, despite the season and the lack of leaves and flowers, she could see it was carefully tended.

  But there was no drive or garage, and no dark red Jaguar parked on the road. Of course he could have parked it at work; maybe she could come back here one night.

  The next address was further to walk than it looked on the map, almost at Golders Green. But although this was another affluent neighbourhood, Suzanne Freeman’s old home wasn’t as lovely as Margaret’s. It was a mock-Tudor semi-detached, and it was in dire need of a new coat of white paint. The front garden was very bedraggled, with lots of blown-in rubbish lying around.

  A man, perhaps Mr Freeman, was polishing his car on the drive; it was a dark blue Ford Zodiac. The garage doors were wide open and there wasn’t a further car inside. She walked swiftly past.

  By the time she reached Golders Green and the third address, Katy was beginning to flag. This house was a modest semi-detached with brilliant white nets at the window and a front garden that had been paved over. The car on the drive was an old black Ford.

  After stopping for a cup of tea in a café by Golders Green station, she caught the train to Hendon. Two of the addresses were close to the station, and close to each other, which was a relief to Katy as her feet were aching now. She didn’t think she could manage to get to the sixth house today.

  The fourth address was a very shabby terraced house, and she really didn’t think someone living there would own a Jaguar.

  The fifth address, number 10 Woodville Road, although only a couple of streets away, was a smart detached house built in the 1930s. It was set high up on a bank with the garage beneath it, and there were steps up to the front door. The drive swept down from the house to the garage door. Even from the road she could see a large shiny new padlock on it. The windows sparkled, with the curtains showing a uniform width at each one, and the drive was well swept and weed-free, suggesting the owner of this property was house-proud.

  Yet there was something about the newness and size of the padlock that made Katy feel suspicious and uneasy. She remembered from the notebook that Deirdre Reilly had been hospitalized with the injuries her husband inflicted on her; she’d also told Gloria and Edna that he often locked her in the garage for days on end, sometimes for something as trivial as weeds on the drive or children’s handprints on the windows. It was one of her children – a boy called Tony – who needed psychiatric care because of the traumatic things he’d seen.

  Aware she’d been standing looking at the house for too long, Katy moved on, but as she got further along the road she saw a man tinkering with his car at the side of the road.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ she said, an idea coming to her. ‘Could you tell me if there is anyone in this road who owns a dark red Jaguar?’

  ‘Yes Reilly, at number 10,’ the man said. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  Katy gulped. ‘Well, a man driving a Jag clipped my car the other day and drove off. I wanted to get his car registration for my insurance claim.’

  ‘I can’t help you with that, love. I wouldn’t know what his reg number is, as he always puts the car in his garage. But it certainly sounds like snotty Reilly. Thinks he’s above everyone else.’

  Katy felt a surge of delight that she’d got what she wanted. She had seen in the notebook that Deirdre had adopted the name Purcell once she’d left Reilly. All she had to do now was go home, telephone Mr Bonham and ask him to give the name and address to the police. She thanked the man and walked away, back up the road towards the station.

  Ed Reilly ran down the stairs and grabbed his overcoat and scarf as soon as he saw the girl looking at his house. He knew her, but he couldn’t think from where.

&n
bsp; It was a couple of moments before it clicked into place. She was the daughter of Albert Speed, the man who had been arrested for burning down Gloria Reynolds’ house.

  ‘How did she find out where I live?’ he asked himself aloud. ‘And what else does she know?’

  As he reached the sitting-room window to check what she was doing now, he saw her stop to speak to one of his neighbours, and they both looked back towards Ed’s house. He knew then he had to silence her, and quickly.

  Reilly was a fan of crime books and he’d read on many occasions that the most successful criminals laid a trail to cast suspicion on someone else. He had been doing a recce of the back of Gloria Reynolds’ house, planning how he was going to torch it, when he saw a man come out of her back gate and Reynolds blowing him a kiss.

  It was common sense to follow the man; to Ed’s delight he lived in the house across the street from Reynolds. Just the way he’d come out of the back door rather furtively and nipped along the back alley, emerging into Collington Avenue further along the street, convinced him the pair were having an affair. All at once he knew what he was going to do. He would set things up so that the man looked like the culprit.

  He started the fire in the early hours of Sunday morning, after having got into the shed of the bloke across the street and found his petrol can to put some paraffin in it. He’d left some of the same curtain material he intended to soak in paraffin and stuff through Reynolds’ letter box.

  Ed left Collington Avenue the second he’d set light to the fabric. But as he reached his car, a street away, he could see the glow of the fire and drove away very happy.

  He didn’t intend to return to Bexhill at all. But his curiosity about what people were saying about the fire drove him to it, because there was so little in the national newspapers. In Bexhill he couldn’t resist asking two or three local people how they felt about such a tragedy in their town, and asked if they knew Gloria Reynolds. Their views were mixed. Some said she was a good woman, others said she was a maneater, but they didn’t believe a well-known businessman like Speed could set a fire.

  Ed realized he needed to know far more about this man he’d framed. Engaging a plump, gossipy saleswoman in Boots, under the guise of buying cough mixture, he mentioned the fire in Collington Avenue. She instantly began to talk about Gloria Reynolds – what a nice woman she was, how lovely her dress shop was – and asked him if he’d known her. He said he only knew her slightly but couldn’t believe anyone would want to kill her. With that, the woman said she thought the police had got it wrong and Albert Speed was innocent.

  ‘I’ve known him for years,’ she said with utter conviction. ‘He came in here often, usually with his daughter, Katy. She’s all grown up, of course, now. In fact, she works for the solicitors just down the street.’

  So there he was, just half an hour later, walking past the solicitors’ office window. And there she was, a pretty, dainty girl with long strawberry-blonde hair. Albert Speed’s daughter. Katy.

  She looked different now, with a brown knitted hat covering that glorious hair. But it was definitely her. Katy Speed. Now here she was, walking past his house.

  What was she doing in London? Had she moved here, or was she just up to snoop? And how on earth had she even found out about him?

  As he waited for her to come back past his house, he found his wallet and his keys. Once she’d turned the corner, he left the house to follow her. As he turned on to the main road, she was just crossing over to the station. He caught up with her and was right behind her at the ticket office as she asked for a single to Hammersmith. When she walked to the platform, he bought a ticket too.

  Ed stayed at the far end of the carriage, keeping well away from the girl. He picked up an abandoned newspaper and pretended to read it, yet watching her closely. There were only a few people in the carriage, but he knew that once they’d got to Camden Town it would fill up.

  She was a small, pretty girl, with delicate features and a peaches-and-cream complexion; in fact, she reminded him of Deirdre when they’d first got married. But he doubted Katy was the docile type, like Deirdre. His new wife had been so grateful to live in a nice house that she did whatever he told her to do. She never worked out that if she’d just fought back or disobeyed him once in a while he might have stopped hitting her – after all, he got bored of her cowering away from him or trying to appease him all the time.

  But this girl was a warrior; she had to be, if she was trying to clear her father’s name, marching around London, practically putting her head in the lion’s mouth. That was the kind of girl he’d dreamed of all his life; one who wouldn’t bow down, no matter what he did to her. A fabulous challenge.

  How had she got his address, though? It had taken him four years to discover who had helped Deirdre when she ran from him with his kids. He knew that there was a second woman who did the driving, but he didn’t know her name. At the double funeral of Gloria Reynolds and her daughter, he mingled with the salesmen friends of hers, making sure he didn’t stand out from the crowd. He noted a short, fat woman who looked distraught. The way she kept looking around, as if she half expected someone to pounce on her, was a dead giveaway. Watching her house confirmed it; she was clearly terrified that someone was tailing her. And then, finally, she left with a suitcase once it was dark. He was pretty certain he’d finished her off by driving her off the road. He heard the splash as the car went in the river and saw the headlights go out.

  Unfortunately, he still hadn’t managed to get confirmation she’d drowned. He had hotfooted it back to London, and the story didn’t reach the national press. But even if she had somehow managed to get out of her car and survive, she didn’t know anything; she’d have been blinded by his headlights as he drove into her.

  Edward Reilly prided himself on being smarter than the average man. He’d proved that fact to be true, as he came from nothing, had only a rudimentary education, and yet he’d managed to amass close on a million if he counted his house and the value of his construction business.

  He was born in Dover, and his father disappeared off to sea even before he was born, leaving his mother and grandmother to bring him up in a hideous tenement. Ed’s view was that his father must have been a handsome, clever man who made the mistake of getting tangled up with a cheap tart who thought she’d land herself a husband by telling him she was pregnant.

  He had this view of his father because he believed he must have inherited his Latino matinee idol looks from him – and the sharpness of his mind too, because he certainly didn’t get it from his mother. She didn’t have his coal-black hair or brooding dark eyes; she was scrawny and whey-faced. Her eyes were such a pale blue that they appeared almost colourless. She was stupid too, unable to read, and so weak-willed she was a complete pushover. His grandmother was as bad, preferring to spend any money she got on gin.

  From the age of five or six, when Ed was old enough to compare how different people lived, he vowed he was going to be rich. The war started when he was seventeen, and if he had been old enough to enlist then, he would’ve done, for he was tired of trying to scrape a living working on farms. He did a bit of bare-knuckle fighting too, which was lucrative, but he was afraid if he lost his looks girls wouldn’t fancy him any more. He thought joining the army would give him the chance to show how tough and brave he really was.

  Finally, he was eighteen and able to join up. He came through the basic training with flying colours and was shipped out to Egypt. His looks, a certain rough charm and still more guile soon got him away from the dangers of warfare into supplies and a desk job. Mixing with officers gave him not only a picture of the kind of home life he believed he should have had, but also made him realize he needed to copy the way they spoke, ate, dressed and behaved, or he would always give away his true origins.

  It was an officer, Major Royston Hawkins, a man as unscrupulous as Ed, who introduced him to property development at the end of the war. Hawkins had inherited whole terraces of houses in Lon
don, many of which had severe bomb damage. Hawkins didn’t want to deal with what he called ‘the great unwashed’ who were his tenants, many of whom hadn’t actually paid any rent for the entire war. He struck a deal with Ed that he could have fifty per cent of the profits for managing the properties, but he would be responsible for getting the places repaired and getting tenants to pay the rent.

  It was the perfect job for Ed. He wasn’t troubled by sympathy for the poor, sick, old or needy. If they didn’t pay the rent, they were out. He employed desperate men to repair the houses, and paid them poorly, along with sourcing the cheapest materials for the repairs.

  He made money and started a company on his own at the age of twenty-eight that he called Reilly’s Real Homes. He bought a few plots of land around London and crammed in as many houses as he could. He met Deirdre at that time. She was convent educated, pretty, and had spent the entire war acting as a housekeeper at a stately pile in Northumberland. Ed knew she would be well up on etiquette and would know how to run the mansion he intended to own before long.

  But things didn’t go the way he expected. Deirdre became pregnant almost as soon as the ink dried on their marriage lines, and he’d only ever imagined grown-up sons just like him, not squalling babies. Then a fire broke out at one of his properties, spread to three others and a young mother died in the fire, while two children were also badly burned. An investigation proved that the electric wiring was faulty on all the houses. They had been built with such inferior materials that they had to be demolished. Further checks on other houses he’d built proved that many of them were unsafe, and suddenly Reilly’s Real Homes was a byword for shoddy building and people were baying for his blood.

  He had borrowed heavily, and he had to sell what he could to pay it back, leaving him right back where he started. The dream of owning his own mansion had gone; he took on a salesman’s job and had to go home at night to a couple of rented rooms, a bawling baby and a wife who irritated him.