Kensington Heights Read online

  He ushered Savage around the front of the building again. ‘That’s your main outlook,’ he pointed. ‘Right at the top. Sixth floor, right across London, well Kensington anyway, and you get a view of Holland Park on that side, just, and Kensington Gardens on the other. And Kensington Palace, of course, where the various royals hang out.’

  Savage was looking at the highest window. Spencer-Hughes had the uncomfortable feeling that it was the look of a marksman. ‘And it’s quiet,’ Savage said again.

  ‘Deadly quiet,’ the young man assured him. ‘You could shut yourself away in that apartment and keep the world outside. Nobody need know you’re there.’ He examined Savage speculatively. ‘If that’s what you want.’

  ‘That’s what I want,’ said Savage.

  Mr Kostelanetz eyed the money respectfully but muttered that he would still like a reference. Spencer-Hughes appeared downcast and checked his watch. Savage said: ‘The only reference I can give you is my army discharge papers.’

  ‘Ah, a soldier,’ said Mr Kostelanetz who looked as though he might have been one, perhaps a guerrilla, himself. He was a squat man, wearing a heavy camel overcoat. Underneath was a luminous blue suit with wide stripes. He had short grey hair and a long grey moustache. His eyes were scoured by rings. ‘How long since?’

  ‘Since I was in the army?’ Savage seemed to have difficulty remembering. ‘More than a year. And I have been in hospital a lot of that time.’ He felt inside his coat pocket. The apartment was windowed on two sides; the ragged winter sky travelled past towards a bruised horizon. There were a wide living room, two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen. Most importantly the kitchen had a freezer. He thought it was the right place for him. Ideal.

  ‘You have been sick?’ enquired Mr Kostelanetz doubtfully.

  ‘Wounded,’ corrected Savage. ‘I was in Northern Ireland.’

  ‘Somewhere there is always fighting,’ muttered Mr Kostelanetz shaking his big silver head. ‘Always some war.’

  Spencer-Hughes sat down on one of the armchairs as though retiring from the conversation. ‘Where did you get the wound? I mean where on your body?’ asked Mr Kostelanetz.

  Savage ran his finger across his head. Mr Kostelanetz became deeply interested and asked to have a closer look at the scar. Savage bent his head obligingly. His dark, almost black hair had turned grey along the length of the healed wound. Mr Kostelanetz formed his lips into a huge but silent whistle. ‘A nice parting. Another centimetre and it was goodbye,’ he calculated. ‘Maybe less. Maybe only a millimetre.’

  Any reassurance he needed was apparently provided by the wound. He waved away the discharge papers but then, out of added interest, decided to see them. ‘Staff Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Staff Sergeant Frank Inigo Savage.’ He nodded deeply as though approving both the rank and the name. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘Excellent indeed,’ and held out a big, brown and cracked hand. ‘I was a soldier also.’ He glanced towards Spencer-Hughes. ‘These days young men do not become soldiers.’

  ‘I was in the Officer Training Corps at school,’ claimed Spencer-Hughes defensively. ‘But I can’t see straight. It doesn’t matter when you are an estate agent.’ Holding the photocopied details before him like an actor attempting some lines, he began to pace out the apartment. ‘Main room twenty-four by twenty,’ he said. ‘Outlook, outlooks I should say, south and east.’ He indicated the windows. ‘East window has a single door.’ He went across and tried the handle. ‘Locked.’

  ‘There is a key,’ said Mr Kostelanetz flatly. He rolled his ringed eyes towards Savage and shrugged.

  ‘There is a key,’ Spencer-Hughes repeated to Savage as though he could not have heard. ‘Small, very small, balcony outside. Looks as though the pigeons use it mostly. Good views of adjacent apartments.’

  ‘Miss Bombazine,’ said Mr Kostelanetz.

  Spencer-Hughes paused as though waiting for enlightenment but then moved smartly over to the opposite door. ‘Main bedroom,’ he announced opening it. ‘Eighteen by fifteen. Window facing south again. You can see lots of roofs including those of the buses in Kensington High Street. Radiator. All heating and hot water comes with the service charges. Which are . . .’ He peered at the details. ‘Thirteen hundred pounds a year.’ Mr Kostelanetz was becoming impatient. Relieving the young man of the sheet of details he strode to the second bedroom. ‘Bedroom, little,’ he said. ‘Window.’ He pointed outside. ‘Miss Bombazine.’

  ‘Who is this Miss Bombazine?’ asked Spencer-Hughes.

  ‘A chanteuse,’ said the big man adding nothing more than a lifted eyebrow. He strode to another door. ‘Kitchen. Good size, eh? Big freezer. All other machinery. Like dishwasher.’

  ‘Washing machine?’ suggested Spencer-Hughes timidly but not wanting to be left out.

  ‘No. They jump, jump, bang, bang. It’s like the war. Go to launderette.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ The youth glanced at Savage. ‘Just up Church Street in Notting Hill.’

  Mr Kostelanetz ignored him and went to the final door. ‘Bathroom,’ he said. ‘Toilet. Bidet, if you have a lady friend. Also shower.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Savage. ‘It’s what I’m looking for.’

  ‘My apartment is yours,’ said Mr Kostelanetz seriously. He motioned with his eyes towards the estate agent who picked up the advance money from the table, then turned them on Savage. ‘You are a wounded staff sergeant.’

  Spencer-Hughes said that he would bring around some papers to be signed unless Savage would like to call into the office. ‘Bring them around please,’ said Savage. ‘I don’t plan to go out very much.’

  ‘There is no need,’ agreed Mr Kostelanetz. ‘You can see everything from here.’ He went heavily to the window and spread his camel-coated arms to take in the roofs of London. ‘And nobody knows you are here.’

  ‘That’s the reason,’ nodded Savage. ‘I want to be quiet.’

  ‘Like a man you call a hermit.’

  ‘Exactly. A hermit.’

  At last he was alone. He had heard them talking outside, the booming voice of Mr Kostelanetz and the subdued responses of the estate agent, and then came the lift’s whirring arrival, the clanking of its elderly doors and the echo of its descent. The sounds were to be part of his life, the whirr and the clank and the echo; someone coming, someone going.

  Walking to the window he positioned himself where Mr Kostelanetz had stood and viewed the tilted roofs, tiled turrets and small towers that occupied the slope towards Kensington High Street. There was winter mist in the bowl of the valley mixed among television aerials and satellite dishes, and grubby afternoon clouds above. But as he watched there came a brief, dishevelled break in the doleful sky and a beam of tenuous sunlight picked out the royal parapets of Kensington Palace.

  He knew little of London. His childhood had been spent in the West Country and he had joined the army straight from school. He had served in the Falklands, in Germany and two tours in Northern Ireland. His experience of London had been during brief periods of leave and he and Irene had spent their week’s honeymoon in a hotel on the northern side of Hyde Park.

  Standing at the wide view now he thought he had probably come to the right place. He was going to be alone, isolated, a Robinson Crusoe above the London roofs. His view down the conglomerated incline was hedged by the high trees of Holland Park on one side and those of Kensington Gardens on the other, their winter heads lean and hard against the skyline. The second, smaller, window to the left of the sitting room looked due east with a partial interruption from another arm of the six-storey block of apartments, below which was a paved yard and the secondary entrance to the block. A helicopter, clattering under the skirts of the clouds, dropped towards Kensington Palace. At this time, on a January early afternoon, there were lights in the rooms opposite. Curtains were drawn across some of the windows but he had a partial view of other rooms, part of a chair, a lamp, a glowing television set, half a woman pouring tea. Scraggy pigeons flew about the brickwork; on summer nights, he was
to discover, the roof was the haunt of urban owls.

  Savage was pleased that he had come across such an eyrie so readily. Up there he could be what he wanted to be, private, safe, solitary. He needed it. He surveyed the room. The furnishings were over-elaborate for someone accustomed to military surroundings. The settee and chairs were brocaded in pale blue. There was a thirty-inch television in a lacquered cabinet and a sideboard with some Middle Eastern vases and ornaments; a bookcase untidily lined with paperbacks, mostly French and Greek and Arabic, but also with biographies of Mustafa Kemal and Margaret Thatcher. There were prints of what he judged were Eastern Mediterranean scenes and a last year’s calendar showing December and a modestly naked girl.

  He was about to look into the main bedroom again when he heard the lift ascending followed by the old-fashioned clash of its gates. The buzzer on the door sounded. He waited, tempted to ignore it, then walked three swift strides and called loudly: ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Spencer-Hughes. Freddie.’ The voice sounded surprised, a touch hurt, to be asked. Savage fractionally opened the door. The vertical mid-portion of the young man’s face was revealed. ‘I didn’t realise you’d be back so soon,’ Savage said.

  Spencer-Hughes, catching a little of Savage’s caution, stepped into the apartment and looked about as though he expected it to be already radically altered. ‘It is nice,’ he re-emphasised. ‘Very nice.’ Professionally he sniffed around. ‘Victorian builders,’ he assured Savage. ‘Solid as the pyramids. And quite genteel considering some blocks in West London. Gone downhill some of them, the inmates a bit iffy, you know, but Kensington Heights has a bit of old-fashioned class about it.’ He squeezed his eyes at the main window and said: ‘The one above sees all.’ He remembered why he had come. ‘I thought I’d just trundle around with this agreement for you to sign.’ He took the document from his pocket. ‘Might as well get it done and then I can leave you in peace.’

  ‘What happened to your girlfriend?’ asked Savage casually.

  ‘Oh, I told you, didn’t I.’ He seemed amazed that the information should have been taken in. ‘Well, I rang my place and there was no answer. She may have been in the bath or she may have flitted, I don’t know. It’s a shame if she’s gone. I was getting used to her. Are you married?’

  ‘Just about,’ responded Savage. ‘But not for long I suspect.’

  ‘Oh, it’s like that.’ He studied Savage with lack of hope. ‘It gets like that, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It can do.’

  Spencer-Hughes seemed uneasy at the answer. He appeared to want to continue with the subject but instead said: ‘You’ll want to read the agreement.’ Opening out the document he placed it on the table. ‘You can sign it now or take your time to read it,’ he said. ‘It’s not very complicated. Mr Kostelanetz liked you and in some ways he’s a simple man.’

  ‘In some ways he’s not simple then?’ suggested Savage.

  ‘No,’ conceded the young man carefully. ‘He’s a bit mysterious.’ He glanced around the room as if he suspected Mr Kostelanetz might still be there. ‘I asked him once what he did for business and he said that he comes and he goes. I thought that was a bit odd.’

  Savage read the document. ‘He doesn’t want a separate deposit then?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Normally he would be entitled to ask for one but a month’s rent in advance suited him. And it’s quite enough anyway.’ He hesitated. ‘There aren’t many people who turn up with thousands of quid in a plastic carrier.’ Savage smiled and said he would have to get a new bank. Spencer-Hughes said: ‘I think the cash from the shopping bag impressed him.’ He regarded Savage quizzically. ‘I’ve never seen anyone do that before.’

  Two

  Savage paced out the apartment as though staking out his territory; the ample main room, the large first bedroom and smaller second bedroom. The bathroom and kitchen had identical measurements. The place was comfortable but bare in the way that rooms are bare when personal touches have been removed. It was somewhere to begin again. This was to be his domain, his fortress, his own place. Here he would patiently wait to recover, wait privately for his life to come back. He had time to decide what to do next.

  By now the afternoon had dropped and faded into early damp dusk. Street lights were misty. This is what London must have looked like in the old times. At four o’clock there was a streak of red to the west, thin and apologetic, a sorry shrug from the sky after a dreary day. He switched on the three table lamps and the corner standard lamp and drew the curtains. It gave him no sensation of claustrophobia as he had faintly feared it might; it gave a feeling of enclosed well-being.

  He sat in each of the armchairs in turn and then in both positions on the sofa. Then he shifted one chair a fraction so that he would have a half-view out of the window, mostly of the sky. It would be necessary to get a clock; Mr Kostelanetz had apparently taken his with him. He needed his typewriter and he would have to return to their house to get it with his other things. Irene would not be there but going back would not be easy. And there was the gun.

  First he would have to get some food. He went into the kitchen and opened the empty freezer, feeling the iced air jumping up to his face.

  After what he had done that day – all that in a single day – his confidence was high, so high that he felt tempted to ring Dr Fenwick and tell him. In any event he was certain that he could go out of the building and find a corner table in a small restaurant close by. Almost every street had a restaurant. It would be easy although he would have preferred to stay in.

  The doorbell rang. There had been no sound of the lift. He stood in the centre of his room and then abruptly went towards the door, slowed, and cautiously opened it. Outside stood a rotund man, his uniform cap already raised. ‘’Evening, sir. It’s Mr Tomelty, the head porter. I look after the block and Mrs Tomelty. She helps too.’

  Savage invited him in. ‘I’m going to need you, Mr Tomelty,’ he said shaking hands. The man had a face of broken reds and strands of blue, his eyes bright and busy, his nose like a knot.

  ‘Most people do, sir. Some more than others.’

  ‘It’s just that I want to keep people away as far as possible. I want to be alone here.’

  ‘Doing a Greta Garbo,’ nodded the porter knowledgeably. ‘Ah, we’ve had a few of those. Mrs Barley was here for years, twenty years at least, in this block and she wouldn’t have anybody a single inch over her doorstep. Nobody. She said they would disturb the dust. The first people to go in there were the undertaker’s men.’

  ‘I don’t think I will be quite so isolated,’ said Savage. ‘But I’ve been in hospital and I just want some quiet.’

  ‘The army, sir, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Well . . . yes. But I need some solitude. There’s some writing I want to do.’

  ‘Reminiscences of soldiering, sir?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t blame you. I didn’t take to it. National Service. Royal Irish Fusiliers.’ Savage did not answer. They were both standing in the middle of the room, Mr Tomelty looking around with his bright, interested eyes. ‘Haven’t been in here for a long time,’ he said. ‘Mr Kostelanetz kept his business quiet.’

  ‘What is his business?’

  ‘Spying, so I understand, sir. But he’s retired now.’ He switched his thoughts. ‘Will you be wanting any shopping? Mrs Tomelty will be going down to the Indian. He charges a lot but he stays open late.’

  ‘I think I might eat as far as possible from the freezer,’ Savage said. ‘But if Mrs Tomelty wouldn’t mind getting me something to eat tonight . . .’

  ‘Rations,’ suggested the porter.

  Savage smiled slightly. ‘Yes – rations.’

  ‘I’ll ask her to come up, sir.’ Tomelty raised a finger. ‘Don’t go telling her anything about yourself or it will be as far as Fulham by morning. She talks more than me.’

  Mrs Tomelty arrived eagerly. She was a lanky woman, her piled-up hair making her lankier, wearing black trousers that stuck t
o her narrow legs. Her faded blue sweater lay flat against her chest and carried the slogan: ‘Save All Souls’.

  ‘Tomelty told me not to keep you,’ she said confidingly. ‘I’ll bet you didn’t hear me coming.’

  ‘You didn’t use the lift,’ Savage said. He had made a list of groceries. It was lying on the arm of the chair. Mrs Tomelty picked it up and ran her nose down it. ‘No problem,’ she summed up. She smiled with false teeth. ‘Tomelty tells me off for saying that – “no problem” – but it’s on account of the foreign residents. No, I don’t use the lifts. You never know in a place like this. And we only live downstairs. Bottom flat. There’s “Porter” written on the door. So it’s only six floors. Keeps me like a stick.’

  As she faced him her nose went up and down much as it had done with the list. ‘Are you getting better?’ she inquired bluntly.

  ‘Improving,’ he said with caution.

  ‘Tomelty said you’d been wounded.’

  ‘And I was ill after that.’

  She tutted sympathetically. ‘People getting shot,’ she muttered. ‘Disgusting.’ Her expression cleared. ‘Anyway you should be nice and lonely up here. Mr Kostelanetz was, although he was inclined to go out in the dead of night.’ She lowered her voice. ‘On account of him being a spy.’

  ‘So I understand.’

  She folded the shopping list as though ready to leave. ‘You forgot trifles like washing-up liquid,’ she observed. ‘I’ll get anything I think you’ll need. Who is going to keep the place tidy? Do the housework?’