LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Eleven

      Alderley Edge is posh. Wide verges, houses set acres apart from each other. Doesn’t fool me though. Life is never like the chocolate box, no matter how much cash you have.

      ‘So,’ said Jo, as we drove past the village green for the second time. ‘What’s the plan?’

      ‘The newsagents.’

      The man behind the counter couldn’t have been more snooty if he tried. He took one look at me and wouldn’t give an inch, no matter how much I tried to persuade him I was a professional. It struck me again that we needed proper ID. A business card wasn’t enough. I gave up and went back to the car.

      ‘Not keen to lend a hand?’ said Jo.

      ‘We’ll have to go door to door,’ I said. ‘A place this small, someone’s got to know.’

      It was almost eleven o’clock and it appeared most residents of Alderley Edge did stuff on Saturday mornings. There was no answer at the first four houses we tried. A lanky streak of a teenager answered the fifth door we knocked on, but didn’t seem to know his own name, let alone anything about Jack Wilkins.

      We marched up and down the drives of the next dozen or so houses, encountering hostility at every turn. One woman shooed us off the drive with a broom. The only person who was anything approaching polite was a harassed-looking young woman who I guessed was the nanny. She invited us in for a cup of tea, which I took as a sign she was desperate for adult company. I didn’t blame her – I could hear the wail of at least two children in the background.

      ‘This could take all day,’ said Jo, as we trudged back down a rhododendron-lined drive towards the village centre.

      When a man who must have been 90 opened the next door we knocked at, I was all for packing up and going home. He was wearing a brown dressing gown that looked like it was made out of felt, rope like icing piped round the edges.

      ‘We’re looking for Mr Wilkins?’ said Jo. ‘We believe you might know him?’

      ‘You’ll have to speak up,’ he said.

      ‘Mr Wilkins,’ I said, raising my voice. ‘Owns a car dealership somewhere around here.’

      ‘Or Manchester way,’ Jo muttered under her breath.

      ‘What about him?’

      ‘You know him?’

      ‘I know everyone.’

      My heart lifted, and I couldn’t resist turning to Jo and smiling.

      ‘Pardon?’ said the old man.

      I faced him. ‘Do you know where his business is?’

      ‘What business?’

      ‘Mr Wilkins’s,’ I added, my throat feeling the strain.

      ‘You’d better come in. Don’t want everyone staring.’

      We followed him in to the strangest house I’d ever been in to. On the one hand, it was probably the wealthiest house I’d ever been inside, but it was also the dirtiest. And believe me, I’ve been in dirty houses. Antique furniture sagged under the weight of piles of books, papers, dust, tins of opened cat food, the tin lids still attached but peeled open. Ashtrays, empty bottles of whisky, wine. Bowls that may have once upon a time contained fruit now contained light bulbs, rotten vegetables, cans of WD40.

      ‘Sit yourselves down. Don’t get many visitors these days.’

      He lifted a fat ginger cat from one of the kitchen chairs and dropped it to the floor. It hissed at me, before finding itself a corner on a pile of newspapers.

      ‘So what do you girls want? Tea, wine, whisky?’

      ‘Tea, for me,’ I said. I glanced at the washing-up next to the sink. ‘I’ll make it.’ It would save me the problem of deciding where to sit seeing as how Jo had grabbed the chair the cat had vacated.

      The sink was one of those white pottery ones that are square and fashionable now, but this one was probably from the first time around. I tried to organize some kind of system, stacking as much as I could on the worktop. I eventually found the plughole, scooping out the heap of rotting tea bags that had congealed there. The dark gloopy liquid drained out, and I had an empty bowl. I even found a plug.

      ‘So, Mr Wilkins. Do you know him?’ asked Jo.

      ‘Lived here fifty-seven years. Know everyone.’

      ‘Know his son, Jack?’

      ‘Who?’

      Jo repeated the question louder as the old fella lit a Dunstan. Jo took the one he offered to her.

      ‘Terrible business,’ he said before coughing.

      ‘What was?’

      ‘Pardon?’

      ‘What was a terrible business?’

      ‘They moved here ’94. Day after Blair got elected.’ The old man shook his head, like it was more than the neighbourhood that was going to the dogs.

      ‘Blair was elected in ’97,’ said Jo.

      ‘Leader of the Labour Party, not the Government, sweet cheeks. Dawning of a new era. New money, you know. You can always tell by the plants.’

      ‘The plants?’

      ‘Got no idea, these young ones.’

      I glanced out of the kitchen window. The back garden was like a field – at the far end were so many trees it looked like a wood and made it impossible to see where the garden actually ended.

      ‘You seen Jack lately?’ asked Jo, her tone nice and conversational.

      ‘Who?’

      ‘Jack Wilkins. The son.’

      ‘Don’t get out much these days. Too much to do in here.’ He waved an arm around as if he was showing us a load of unfinished projects. He poured himself a slug of whisky into a glass, three-fingers deep. For a moment I envied him. The guy was rich and old. What did he have left to fear? Might as well get pissed from the moment he woke up till the moment he collapsed.

      ‘What about Mr Wilkins?’ said Jo.

      ‘Nick Nickerless, I call him. Ladies’ man.’ He drank from his glass without flinching. ‘Women love him. God alone knows why.’

      For a moment I thought he was going to cry, but instead, he fell backwards into the only comfy-looking chair in the room. Another cat squawked and made a beeline for the door. ‘Young whippersnapper. I’ve told him a thing a two, in my time. You mark my words.’