Jess
Friday, eight in the morning, and my taxi is in pieces on a concrete floor.
Gavin's yard is at the back of the lodge field, a long tin shed with a roller door and a mechanic in it called Les, who has the back seat out on a pallet, and the front seats out on two more, and the door cards off, and a hairdryer going on the dashboard. It looks like a dentist's waiting room. The carpet's in a heap, and it's still dripping. The whole shed smells of eels and pine.
"Be a week," says Les. "If the electrics take. Could be two."
"I haven't got a week."
"I've got your camera back." He holds up a little black unit on a cable. "Card's the one in the rice, my lad gave it you yesterday. Don't put it in anything wet. I mean, it's been wet. Don't put it in anything else wet."
I take the camera. I stand there with it in my hand and my taxi in pieces in front of me, and I don't say anything, because there isn't anything. Fourteen thousand two hundred, and a taxi I can't drive, and a voicemail from the insurer last night that said section nine and have a lovely day, and a finance payment on the first of the month for a car that's lying in a shed.
"No charge," says Gavin, from the door. He's in the gilet. He's been there a minute, with his hands in the pockets and his weight on one leg, looking like a man in a show home. "That's on me, Jess. I had a word with the lads and Les was very happy to. No strings. I'm not a man who'd want you stranded."
"Right," I say.
"I'll follow you up. There's a couple of things." He pats his chest, where there's a folder. "Whenever you're ready. No rush."
Mo's car is the size of a biscuit tin, and it smells of Fisherman's Friends and has a cushion on the back seat. I drive it back to the cottage at twenty with the window down, and when I get to the gate there's a Range Rover behind me, and I think, nope, and go in anyway.
The laptop's on the kitchen table, where I've left it since Monday. It's the one thing I carried in from the boot that night, in a bag with some pants. I open the lid and put the card in from the rice bag.
It's the camera software, a grey box with a little timeline across the bottom, and a clip. It opens on the oldest clip on the card. It always does. The card holds a fortnight and then eats itself. I reach for the marker to drag it up to the Wednesday, and the clip starts on its own.
Gavin's at the door. He's got his folder open on his arm. He's smiling.
"Kettle on?" he says.
It's not Wednesday.
The first thing is the sound. It's a man singing. It's very loud, because the microphone's by the mirror, and he's right behind it, and he's singing the way you'd sing in a shower you'd paid for. It's Islands in the Stream. He's got both parts. He does the woman's bit in a high voice and he does the man's bit in a low one, and he comes in wrong on every line.
The picture's the inside of my cab, at night, from the windscreen. There's the road ahead through the glass, wet, with orange lamps. There's the meter, glowing green. There's the date in the corner in white. Sunday. The eighth of March. Twenty-two, oh four.
I know the road.
I don't know the man, not yet. I know the road. It's the Lincoln Road out of the city, from the pub at the top with the sign of a bull, left at the lights by the garage and over the roundabout and down the long one with the speed bumps. Pub on Lincoln Road to the estate with the fountain. Twenty-four minutes. Fourteen pounds forty. I've done it a hundred times.
"Is that your camera?" says Gavin. "Funny."
I reach for the lid. The cat lands on the keys from the dresser, all four feet, with his whole weight, and a long line of letters goes across the top.
"Off," I say.
He doesn't. He sits on the keyboard with his head turned to the screen.
I look at the mirror in the picture. In the mirror, in the back, there's a man in a gilet with his head back against the seat and his mouth wide open. He's got his arm round an invisible woman. He's got a lanyard from a conference round his neck. He's got a lot of teeth.
I look at the door. I look at the screen.
"Hello, sweetheart," says the man in the back of my cab, to my windscreen. "Do you know, you've got a lovely little voice. Are you from round here? Your mum's, what is she, round here? Is it a fen thing? I'm told there's a great-aunt out on the fen. Is that right? The old girl? Do you see much of her?"
"No," says the voice from the front, which is mine.
"What's the, tell me about your mum. What's she like?"
"I'd like to get you home."
"Quite right," says the man. "Quite right. Where was I? We'd a hotel in Skegness once, I'll tell you about it," and he starts to sing again.
I don't say anything. It's a quiet kitchen with a man in it, singing, and another in the doorway with his folder on his arm. Gavin looks at the screen. He's very still. He's got the look on his face of somebody who's walked into a room and been handed a drink he didn't order.
"That's me," he says.
"Sunday," I say. "The eighth. Ten past ten."
"Well, to be fair."
"I never looked at you."
"I noticed," says Gavin. "I did twenty minutes on that hotel."
On the keyboard the cat has turned all the way round. His two coins are fixed on the screen, and his ears are back, and he says, so low that to Gavin it's only a noise, "That is the woman from the wireless. I believe it is. She and the gilet disagree about the key, madam, and one of them is correct."
"Shut up," I say.
"Excuse me?" says Gavin.
"Not you."
I stop the film. The man freezes in the mirror with his mouth open. I count it, because there's nothing else to do. Ten past ten. Forty miles of fen between this and her garden. A drunk in a gilet in my back seat, going the wrong way.
"What did you want?" I say.
"Sorry?"
"In my cab. What d'you want, in my cab?"
"Okay." He puts the folder down on the dresser. He holds up both hands. He's still got every tooth, but he doesn't use them. "Okay. To be fair, it's not what it looks like. All right, it's exactly what it looks like. There's a probate genealogist in Birmingham, they find people. He found you in about October. Before she died. I was trying to buy round the old girl, I'd tried for two years, she told me where to put it in writing, and then he rang me up and said, Gavin, there's an heir. A woman in Peterborough. A taxi driver. And I thought, I'll size her up. So I rang the rank myself and asked for the Skoda with Crowle on the licence, no other car, and I got in the back and sat behind you for twenty minutes." He shrugs. "I was a bit gone. It was a Sunday. I just wanted to see what sort of person."
"And?"
"You didn't say a word to me for twenty minutes."
"I was driving."
"I know. I noticed that, as well." He rubs his neck. "Listen, Jess. That's all it is. I'd had a few. I was in your car at ten past ten, and out of it by half past, and in my own bed by eleven with a pint of water and a Ginsters. You've got me on camera. You've got me to the minute. At the end of the day, I'm the one man in this town who can prove he wasn't at that house. I was forty miles away, singing."
I look at him.
He's nearly right. He's a man in a gilet in my kitchen, with a folder, who tried to buy a dead woman's house round her back, and he was in my car. I look at the little white date in the corner of the frozen picture. It's got him to half ten, forty miles off. After that it's an hour back across the fen, and a bed I've only got his word for. I don't like him any more than I did. But I think of the steps, in the dark, and I can't put the man in the gilet on them.
"Fine," I say.
"Fine?"
"Probably not you."
"I'd not, Jess! Jesus. What d'you think I am?" He looks hurt. It's a real one. It's the first one I've seen on him. "I don't push old ladies. I buy their houses."
There's a pile of post by the kettle. I haven't touched it since Tuesday. Mo's been collecting it from the gate. There's a letter with a window in it and a red stripe, a long brown one forwarded from Orton. I open it with my thumb.
It's a bailiff's letter. It's got a date on it. It says the first of April, with a time, and an address in Peterborough that I don't live at, and a number at the bottom that is fourteen thousand two hundred and a bit, in red.
I read it twice. I count the days. Twelve.
"Everything all right?" says Gavin, quietly.
"It's fine."
"Because I've got the option here." He's holding it, with the pen on top. "The one I mentioned. I'm not going to push it. I'm only saying it's here. Ten thousand pounds now, today, cheque on the table, that's the fee, in your hand. Three hundred and fifty on completion, less the ten. I'm not asking you to sell. I'm asking you to not sell to anyone else." He puts it down in front of me, on the table, next to the laptop, with the man in the gilet frozen on it. "And your car, Jess. Les'll have it right. That's on me regardless. But the ten, that's, you could pay the finance. You could stay on the road."
I look at the paper. It's three pages, stapled. It's got a line at the bottom with a cross.
I look at the cat.
He's on the dresser, now. He's got his feet together and his ears up, and he's looking at me. He doesn't say anything, and I know every word he's not saying, in the order he'd say them: the cottage, the wall, three hundred years, a witch who isn't, the wrong side of a flood.
Ten thousand pounds would pay the finance and keep me driving. It would pay the bailiff something before the first of April, and the rest is a number I'll have a long time to look at.
"Nope," I say.
Then I think of section nine. I think about Wednesday night, with the water at my chest and the locks going clunk. I think about a clock with twelve days on it.
"Where do I sign?"
"There," says Gavin. "And there. And initial there, that's the standard clause." He puts the pen in my hand. It's a heavy one, with a gold nib. He's very gentle about it.
I sign. Jess Crowle. I sign it where he tells me, three times, and I initial it. The cheque's written out already in a very neat hand, for ten thousand pounds, with a date, and I fold it and put it in my sock, which is where the sixty went. Gavin takes the pages and puts them in his folder and does it up. He doesn't smile.
"Thank you, Jess," he says, quietly. "I mean it. You'll not regret it."
"Go away."
"Right." He goes, and he shuts the door softly, behind him, and I hear the Range Rover start, and go, and the sound of the engine goes up the drove for a very long time.
On the dresser the cat hasn't moved.
"Don't," I say.
He doesn't. He sits there with his feet together, and I can hear it all anyway. The paper in my sock is warm. I look at the laptop. The man in the back of my cab is still there, frozen in the mirror, with his arm round the air.
"Christening's at four," I say, to the screen. "Mo says. The Pomfret baby. They're calling her Agatha."
The cat says nothing.
I shut the lid.