New Directions (21)

Entering the threshold I looked down at the hall mat with its yellow elephant pattern – the first thing I saw when I first visited Celia’s home. Smeared with mud and irreversibly damaged by boots of thugs, coppers and forensics wallahs, it symbolised an inhuman insult to the old lady's life. No matter how much was done to repair everything nothing would ever be the same. Emotions of disgust, outrage and fury entered my head – closely followed by revenge.

Dev stood in the lounge next to the fireplace collecting images with his smart phone. Saying the place was a mess would be polite. The police aren’t obliged to clean up after they finish investigations, but the forensic guys had made an attempt to pick up their stuff, a few marker tapes remained but that was about it. A large brown envelope with a police logo sat on the top of the oak bureau still in the place the robbers left it. It contained a bunch of the papers the vermin had scattered all over the floor when I walked in on them.

‘The police took them away and photocopied them,’ Dev informed me. ‘They thought the burglars might have been looking for something.’

‘Yeah, good point. We should go through them too, but chances are they took what they wanted or there was nothing for them.’

While Dev wandered around snapping images of structural damage for his insurance I tried to figure out where to begin getting the place in order. Karen being a woman – hence practical – disappeared into the kitchen and came back carrying a handful of rubbish sacks in one hand and dragging a vacuum cleaner in the other. Together we collected any broken pieces of crockery and furnishings and put them in a box for Celia in case she needed them for her insurance. Karen vacuumed where she could, then we moved the furniture as close as I could remember to their original positions. We found the paintings (undamaged) stacked in a corner and re-hanged them. After that we carried on in the kitchen. By then Dev had finished his photo-shoot and helped us to get things into some kind of order. It didn’t look like the rats had been upstairs although the police had. We went around putting back all the drawers and stuff the law had fished out. Karen finished it off tidying up and vacuuming the rooms.

We found an opened packet of Celia’s delicious tea and Karen used it to brew a cup for each of us. She used plain white everyday crockery rather than the antique ware I guess Celia saved for guests. Fortunately it survived although some very valuable looking vases and ornaments now resided in the box of pieces.

With little else to do we washed up and also emptied the fridge of anything that could go off. As we prepared to leave there was a knock at the door. Being the nearest to it I went into the small hall thinking the cops had come back for something they needed. As soon as I raised the latch the door swung open and a tall shabbily dressed bloke swept past me. ‘Is mister Mullar here?’ he demanded, looking at a point about a foot above my head.

My hackles rose, ‘He’s in the lounge. Can I ask who you are?’

‘More to the point, sir who are you? I am Reginald Bassett-Calne, Duke of Swindon. I’m here to see Mullar.’

Struggling to keep my fists off him I stood aside, ‘I’m a friend of Dev, he’s through there, Mate.’ He strode off like I’d ceased to exist.

I’ve known some pretty treacherous geezers in my time and this Duke set off a shitload of red lights flashing in my head.