Glass House (The Falconer Files Book 11) Page 5

  At least the builders had gone home in the evenings and didn’t work weekends. The animal part of this problem was what, although he hated to use the hackneyed expression, was called a twenty-four/seven one.

  Two doors away, in Fairview, Keith and Kim Trussler were also in a similar mutinous mood. They both had jobs that required long hours and a fair amount of stress, and had previously treasured their evenings and weekends, weather permitting, either working or sitting in their garden. Now, both activities had become a nightmare, and had been so for several months.

  They were similarly dismayed that the noise nuisance had not ceased when the last workman’s truck had driven away, and a quick peek over the wall that separated their plot from the extensive rear garden of Glass House had revealed the presence of what looked like an industrial-sized barbecue and an enormous Jacuzzi.

  Great! They inevitably indicated that there would be outdoor parties this summer, thus adding to the already disturbing and carrying cries for ‘help’ from the peacocks. They had chosen to buy their present home because of its quiet location, but with easy access to the local shops and to other towns and villages. Now, they felt that their peaceful private life had been wrested from their grasp, and that life had, somehow, cheated them; promising them paradise, only to deliver purgatory.

  ‘But you’ve got to let them settle in, Keith. It’s hardly fair that you go round and harangue them when the birds will probably get used to their surroundings and quieten down in the near future,’ Kim pleaded with her husband, who had a very fiery temper when roused.

  ‘Yes, and by then the parties will have started, all spilling out into the garden so that they can barbecue their food and frolic in that blasted Jacuzzi. I will not be driven to the expense and the sheer inconvenience of moving, just because we have neighbours who don’t spare a thought for the others who live in close proximity to them. And they’ll probably have parties that go on all night, because they don’t have to get up in the mornings to go to a proper job.’

  ‘A least give them a chance, Keith. There’s nothing worse than being at war with the neighbours. It all gets so petty and spiteful, and nothing is ever solved, before someone has to move away, eventually, to put an end to it.’

  ‘They’ve got a week,’ declared her husband, with feeling, ‘Then I’m going round to say my piece and, if that doesn’t work, I’ll contact the local authority’s Noise Abatement Officer and get him to sort it out. Deal?’

  ‘Deal.’

  In Myrtle Cottage, on the other side of Glass House, Christopher and Christine Warren were trying to deal with their fractious and tired mob of four children, which consisted of Darren (six years old), Sharon (four), Karen (two), and Aron (six months).

  None of the aforementioned had enjoyed an unbroken night’s sleep, and it wasn’t for the first time that this had happened. Neither were the youngest two able to indulge in their habitual afternoon nap any more. The new pets at The Orchards had seen to that.

  It being the summer holidays, Christine had to spend her days with four young children, two of whom usually went to school and one to a playgroup, being quite advanced for her age. She was feeling hard done by, as it was still only the end of July, and she had nearly five weeks still to endure the current situation.

  ‘You’re going to have to go round there and say something, Chris,’ she declared, a war-like glint in her eye.

  ‘Not just yet. Give them a chance, Chris, love,’ replied her husband, not eager for combat and in the hope that, given a couple more days, everything would be back to normal.

  ‘But it’s not fair. You get to go into the office every day where it’s quiet and peaceful. I’m stuck here with those filthy birds screaming their heads off, that dog of theirs howling and barking, and four whingeing kids to put the tin lid on the situation.’ The war-like glint had turned to an expression of self-pity, and her eyes welled up with tears at her plight. ‘Please don’t go into the office today. Stay here and help me cope.’

  ‘You know I can’t do that. And what good would it do? If I were here instead of at work, it wouldn’t shut the birds or the dog up. OK, I could take the kids off your hands for a couple of hours, but that would be about it; and you know we’ve got a rush on at the moment. With jobs as rare as they are at the moment, I daren’t risk mine by taking time off for trivial reasons.’

  ‘Trivial?’ his wife queried, and burst into tears.

  Others in the village had more personal reasons for resentment. Dean Westbrook lived in a tiny cottage in Old Darley Passage, a minute access road that led down to Darley Old Yard, in a property labelled 2B.

  When he had first heard it rumoured that Chadwick McMurrough had bought The Orchards, and was going to spend a fortune on doing it up, Dean had begun to shake uncontrollably. When McMurrough had actually moved in, he decided that he would have to stop using the village pub and shops in case he bumped in to him.

  The reason for this mood of rank terror in meeting the man was because McMurrough had bullied Dean Westbrook mercilessly through years of their shared schooling. The very thought of the latest media darling made Dean feel physically sick, and he was seriously considering turning his very satisfactory life upside-down by moving somewhere else, where there was no risk of seeing his one-time tormentor; the evil psyche that had been the ruination of his childhood. His antipathy and fear of Chadwick was so strong that, occasionally, recently, he had wondered if it may be advisable for him to seek some psychiatric help.

  Only his mother was aware of how he felt, and she had offered him a place to stay, temporarily, back at home, if he needed somewhere while he sought alternative accommodation. But, why should he be the one to move? Why should he have his life turned inside-out by something that happened – granted, over a very long period – years ago, before he achieved adulthood. It was cowardly even to consider this drastic course of action.

  In the adjoining, similarly bijou cottage, labelled ‘Or Not 2B’, lived Gareth Jones. It had been he who was responsible in the first place for McMurrough being aware of Fairmile Green, and the fact that The Orchards was up for sale at a knock-down price because of the river running underneath it – it being, therefore, unmortgageable, and needing a cash buyer – and the amount of updating it would need to make it habitable.

  Gareth Jones was, in fact, Chadwick McMurrough’s ex-partner, whom McMurrough had dumped pretty swiftly after meeting Bailey when he was working on Cockneys.

  A television director beat an electrician hands down, in Chadwick’s eyes, and he felt no loyalty whatsoever to the man for whom he had once declared his undying love. Unfortunately for Gareth Jones, the stars in McMurrough’s eyes had obscured his vision, and his love had caught a bad case of Asian Flu, and succumbed immediately unto death.

  Jones was left alone and lonely, feeling that he had been rooked out of his share of the limelight, where he could have basked in the spotlight of his partner’s success. Now, instead of being the long-term partner of a famous media person, he was just ‘Gareth Jones, Electrician, No job too small’, as it said on his business card.

  It should have been him, living down in the big house in the lap of luxury, instead of stuck back here in this poky little hole, with no one to share his time with. Life had definitely dealt him a bum hand.

  Bailey Radcliffe, too, had had a long-term partner when he had met Chadwick McMurrough on the set of Cockneys. They had even bought a property together, but as soon as Bailey announced his intention of leaving for the love of another, the house went on the market, and sold unbelievably quickly.

  His partner had been Darren Worsley, who had taken his share of the money and rented a tatty old house for peanuts, coincidentally, also in Old Darley Passage, opposite the pair of semi-detached cottages. His share of the house money he had rapidly disposed of in pubs, clubs, and off-licences, drowning his sorrows at losing not only his partner, but his home and rosy future too.

  Bailey had been the older and more stable partner in this
relationship, as he was in his current one, and Darren had reverted back to the loser he had been when he had first met Radcliffe and been encouraged to get his act together. Now, he was a wreck of a young man again but, this time, with no one to pick him up and set him on his feet again.

  He could not believe his bad luck in moving to the very village where his ex-partner and his new young partner were to make their home. He, similarly, dreaded running into either one of them in the street, but for a different reason. He was afraid he would not be able to control his rage at the sight of either one of the pair that he thought had stolen his life and his stable future.

  He’d already lost his job through his frequent drink-fuelled absences; not that it had been much of a job, as Bailey had earned such a good wage. On his own, he’d never have been able to pay the mortgage on the property they had bought together, let alone buy out his ex-partner’s share.

  He was definitely the loser, and there should be some way he could get recompense. He was sitting, oblivious of the gorgeous day outside, brooding on just this problem.

  Chapter Four

  Thursday

  Fairmile Green

  When Falconer and Carmichael arrived at Glass House, it was Bailey Radcliffe who answered the door to their summons. Chadwick McMurrough was still upstairs, getting dressed for the visit of the policemen.

  When Bailey had gone up to the bedroom about half an hour ago, Chadwick had been discovered still lying, now on top of the duvet, with his hands one on each side of his head.

  ‘Whatever’s up with you, ducky?’ asked Bailey.

  ‘It’s those blasted birds yelling. I’ve got such a headache. I wonder if you could be a sweetie and get me some painkillers from my bathroom.’

  ‘I’d better get some from mine. Yours is probably off limits until there’s been a forensic team over it.’

  ‘Good thinking, Bails. Do you think you could go downstairs after I’ve taken my medication and tape up their bloody beaks? I feel like I’ll never experience silence again.’

  ‘That’s what you get for being so precipitate, without thinking things through first. Remember that old Spanish proverb: Take what you want, says God, And pay for it. Well, you’re paying for it now. As are the neighbours, I hasten to add. I’m surprised we haven’t had hordes of people round banging on the door to complain.’

  ‘Give them time,’ replied Chadwick with a wince. ‘Whatever am I going to do about it?’

  ‘Put them on eBay.’

  ‘The neighbours?’

  ‘The peacocks, silly.’

  ‘Where on earth would I advertise? What section? Large group of peacocks for sale: knockdown price. Owner collects. Do they have a section for upper-crust things like that?’

  ‘The abattoir?’ retorted his partner, with an evil grin. ‘I suggest, however,’ continued Bailey, in more measured tones, ‘that I phone the local vet and ask if he knows of any local animal sanctuary that would take them at short notice. That will give you a chance to phone whoever – the maniacs – supplied the things in the first place and see if they’ll take them back, even if that means accepting a credit note, as long as you don’t use it to acquire a nice boa constrictor. We’ll take it from there, depending on what they have to say.’

  ‘The voice of reason, as usual,’ commented Chadwick, with a sigh of relief that his ordeal may be about to come to an end. ‘Anyway, that’s enough about those damned birds. Now, back to me.’

  ‘There’s the doorbell. That’ll be the police. Get yourself looking respectable and come down, so they can question you.’

  Downstairs, the three men had just taken seats in the living room when Chadwick joined them, looking none the worse for his ordeal and his headache. ‘Sorry about all this to-ing and fro-ing. I really do seem to be in somebody’s bad books with all these attacks. I just can’t think whose,’ Chadwick greeted them.

  ‘It’s better to be safe than sorry, sir,’ replied Falconer. ‘Their next attempt might be more successful, therefore it’s vital that we find out who is responsible for these incidents before you are seriously hurt, or worse.’

  ‘We’ve arranged for someone from SOCO to come over and go through your bathroom for any evidence that might help in identifying the perpetrator,’ interjected Carmichael, who still had stars in his eyes.

  ‘Don’t forget the domestic distribution unit – what we in the old days used to call the fuse box. He’ll have been in there to stick down the circuit-breaker,’ added Bailey.

  ‘Good thinking, sir. Now, Mr McMurrough, if you wouldn’t mind telling me, in your own words, exactly what happened when you went into your bathroom this morning?’

  When everything that could be told had been told, Bailey saw the detectives out of the house, while Chadwick again put a hand theatrically across his forehead to indicate suffering.

  As soon as his partner re-entered the room, he perked up miraculously, and said, ‘I say, Bails, it’s a gorgeous day, for once. The summer’s been foul and wet so far. Let’s take advantage of it and have a barbecue party this evening.’

  ‘But we don’t know anyone yet,’ retorted Bailey, a frown briefly distorting his features.

  ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire!’ replied his partner childishly, in a sing-song voice. ‘We know Gareth, my ex, in the little place down the Passage. And if we printed off invitations on the computer, we could put them through all the neighbours’ doors, and get to meet them that way – all at once, as it were – get the whole thing over with.’

  ‘You clever boy. Then, if anyone’s got any gripes with us, they can all complain at once, and we won’t be plagued with people for ever knocking on the door to give us grief. And, if I phone the vet fairly sharpish, we’ll be able to tell them that arrangements are already in hand to solve the immediate noise-nuisance problem.’

  ‘I’ll work one up on the computer right away and, when I’ve printed off the copies, you can take them round and shove them through letter boxes,’ suggested Chadwick, with a smirk.

  ‘I know why you’re looking at me like that. If anyone opens the door while I’m shoving the invitation through, it’ll be me that gets all the grief.’

  When he went out on his delivery errand, half an hour later, he commented, before he closed the door, that there was someone in the main street with a clipboard stopping people, as if he had a petition. ‘I haven’t got time to see what it’s about now, as we’ve got to get ready for this party If he’s still there tomorrow I’ll go and see what he’s up to,’ Bailey shouted through to Chadwick, before slamming the door shut.

  ‘Aren’t you the clever one, then?’ McMurrough got up and went over to the work station where they kept their downstairs computer. Time to check fan messages on his Facebook page, and get his ego stroked. That always put him in a good mood.

  If the Good Language Fairy had been listening to what was being said in Fairmile Green later that day, she’s have been absolutely scandalised at the comments made, when residents discovered they had been invited to a party at that house.

  ‘Bloody cheek!’

  ‘The sheer damned brass neck of it!’

  ‘How dare they?’

  ‘How thick-skinned can you get?’

  ‘Well, I’m sodding well going just to have my say about their bloody birds.’

  The poor GLF had a definite need for ear-plugs by the evening of that day.

  Castle Farthing

  When Carmichael got home that night, quite tired now that he was going into work regularly and getting up rather earlier than he had been used to of late, he immediately asked Kerry about having Heather to stay for a few weeks.

  ‘It won’t be for a long time, and you know what the boss is like about his things; his home; everything being just so? I don’t know how he’s going to explain it to her, but he’d better be very inventive, or she’ll take umbrage and think he simply doesn’t want her around any more.’

  ‘How very perceptive of you, Davey,’ replied his wife. ‘And, of co
urse, she can come to stay. As you said, it won’t be for ever, she’ll be company for me when you’re at the station, and she’ll be a distraction for the kids. It doesn’t matter that there’s plenty of us here already – bring it on, I say.’

  As she finished speaking, there was a knock at the front door, and her husband went to answer it as Kerry was just about to serve up their evening meal.

  On the doorstep he found Mr and Mrs Moore from further down the row of cottages, with their Great Dane, Mulligan. This enormous creature had stayed with the Carmichaels on a few occasions in the past – one memorable time being the previous Christmas, when Falconer had also, by default, had to stay as well.

  ‘Hello, you three. How can I help you?’ Carmichael asked politely.

  ‘We wouldn’t ask if we weren’t desperate,’ began Mr Moore, with a worried expression.

  ‘It’s the kennels, you see,’ interrupted his wife. ‘They simply won’t, any more.’

  ‘Won’t what?’

  Mulligan, not understanding anything of the conversation could, however, scent the children, the resident two little dogs, and one of the favourite places in his small canine world. He started with a fairly desperate whine then, when none of the people present took any notice of him, did what he always did when he wanted something and no one seemed about to oblige.

  Pulling on his lead and, due to his superior weight and strength, dragging Mr Moore, perforce, with him, he entered the house, with his hapless master being dragged unwillingly behind him, trailed along haplessly like the tail of a kite. ‘Hold on, Mulligan, boy. We haven’t been asked in,’ pleaded Mr Moore with an apologetic grin, his head turned almost backwards towards Carmichael.

  ‘Let’s just stop and go back outside, there’s a good doggy,’ Moore cajoled, without hope in his voice. He was going to lose this tussle, as he always did all the other differences of opinion he had with his pet.