Not In The Flesh Read Free Page A

homeless, not Somalis, but decent people with a bit of money.”
       “Oh, John,” said Kathleen.
       Wexford got to his feet. He said sternly, “Mr. Grimble, either tell us what you have to tell us now or I shall ask you to accompany us to the police station and tell us there. In an interview room. Do you understand me?”
       No apology was forthcoming. Wexford thought Grimble could take a prize for surliness, but it seemed the man hadn't even begun. His features gathered themselves into a bunch composed of the deepest frown a human being could contrive, a wrinkling of his potatolike nose and a baring of the teeth, the result of curling back his top lip. His wife shook her head.
       “Your blood pressure will go sky high, John. You know what the doctor said.”
       Whatever the doctor had said, reminding Grimble of it caused a very slight reduction in frown and teeth-baring. He spoke suddenly and rapidly. “Me and my pal, we reckoned we'd put in the main drainage. Get started on it. Get rid of the old septic tank. Link the new houses up to the main drain in the road. You get me? We got down to digging a trench—”
       “Just a minute,” said Wexford, loath to remind him of his grievance but seeing no way to avoid it. “What new houses? You hadn't got planning permission for any new houses.”
       “D'you think I don't know that? I'm talking about eleven years ago. I didn't know then, did I? My pal knew a chap in the planning and he said I was bound to get permission, bound to. He said, you go ahead, do what you want. Your pal—meaning me—he may not get it for four houses but there's no way they'd say no to two, right?”
       “Exactly when was this? You said eleven years ago. When did your stepfather die?”
       Unexpectedly, Kathleen intervened. “Now, John, you just let me tell them.” Sulkily, Grimble nodded, contemplated the television on which the sound had been turned down fully but the picture remained. “John's dad—his name was Arthur—he died in the January. January '95, that is. He left this will, straightforward it was, no problems. I don't know the ins and outs of it but the up-shot was that it was John's in the May.”
       “That piece of land, Mrs. Grimble, and the house on it?”
       “That's right. He wanted to pull down the old place and get building, but his pal Bill Runge—that's the pal he's talking about—he said, you can't do that, John, you have to get permission, so John got me to write to the council and ask to put up four houses. You got all that?”
       “Yes, I think so, thank you.” Wexford turned back to John Grimble, who was leaning forward, his head on one side, in an attempt to hear the soundless television program. “So without getting the permission,” he said, “you and Mr. Runge started digging a trench for the main drainage? When would that have been? . . . Mr. Grimble, I'm speaking to you.”
       “All right. I hear you. Them busybody neighbors, it was them as put a spoke in my wheel, that fellow Tredown and those Pickfords. Them McNeils what used to live at Flagford Hall. I know what I know. That's why I never pulled down my dad's old house. Leave it there, I thought to myself, leave it there to be an eyesore to that lot. They won't like that and they don't. Leave the weeds there and the bloody nettles. Let the damn trees take over.”
       Wexford sighed silently. “I'm right, aren't I, in thinking that you and your friend started digging a trench between where you expected the houses would be sited and the road itself?” A surly nod from Grimble. “But your application for planning permission was refused. You could build one house but no more. So you filled in the trench. And all this was eleven years ago.”
       “If you know,” said Grimble, “I don't know why you bother to ask, wasting my time.”
       “Oh, John, don't,” said Kathleen Grimble, slightly varying her admonition.
       “We dug a trench like I