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First published in Great Britain in 1987 by Collins Crime
Copyright © Emma Page 1987
Emma Page asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008175825
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780008175832
Version [2016-02-18]
For the homesteaders
(and the tramps’ kitchen) Long may they flourish
CONTENTS
In Northwick Road, a humdrum shopping area in a workaday suburb of Cannonbridge, the shopkeepers were closing the tills and putting up the shutters. An overcast evening, unseasonably cool for the second week in May, the last stages of a wet, blustery spell that had interrupted a fine, early spring.
No. 47, Franklin’s, occupied premises somewhat larger than the chemist and draper on either side; it was housed in what had originally been two small shops, now knocked into one. Franklin’s dealt in the sale and rental, service and repair of television sets, radios, washing-machines, fridges and other items of domestic electrical machinery.
One of the service engineers drew up in his van and went briefly inside to cash up, hand over his lists and jobsheets, check if there were any evening calls for him. There were four repairmen, as well as a young male assistant in the shop. Roy Franklin, the owner, worked harder than any of his employees, putting in long hours behind the counter as well as going out on emergency calls in the evenings and at weekends.
‘You can get off now for your bus,’ he told the young assistant when the last of the repairmen had made his call and left. Franklin went upstairs to the living quarters, and into the kitchen. The flat was scrupulously clean, very plainly and economically furnished. Everything severely practical, involving no unnecessary work.
He didn’t switch on the radio but stood for a moment in the middle of the room with his eyes closed and his head thrown back. The place was silent; only the muted sound of traffic and the shift and stir of the fridge. He opened his eyes and blew out a long, noisy breath. ‘Tea,’ he said aloud. He crossed to the sink and filled the kettle. He was a lean, sinewy man of medium height, in his middle thirties. Dark hair and dark blue eyes. A bony face, good-looking enough ten or fifteen years ago, but the skin stretched tight now over the cheekbones, his hairline already beginning to recede, the lines scoring his forehead deepening day by day. He had a quick, intent gaze, the look of a man who saw life as an arduous battle he was determined to win.
He made himself a sandwich while he waited for the kettle to boil; he began to eat the sandwich with an abstracted air. Every couple of minutes as he drank his tea he glanced up at the clock, crossed to the window and stooped to look up the road. The third time he did this he was rewarded by the sight of his wife Jane–his second wife, married to him for more than two years now–turning into the road on her scooter.
His air of abstraction