Dying Fall by Judith Cutler Page A

him clutching his bassoon case.’
    â€˜Yes, as a matter of fact I did.’ His tone was getting offhand: I was becoming an irritant to be dismissed.
    â€˜Are you sure it was his instrument in the band room?’
    â€˜I checked when I locked it in my office. It’s still got the transit stickers from the US tour.’ Decidedly cool now.
    â€˜In that case, Tony,’ I said, ‘I’m worried. Very worried.’
    Aberlene joined me for the quickest of sandwich lunches at the Duke of Clarence, and then dropped me off at home. Before I took my jacket off, I had jabbed the replay pad on the answering machine. All I got was the library telling me a book had come through.
    I told myself firmly that there was simply no point in sitting by the phone like the HMV dog. The weather was fine and dry, if cold, and I should go for a run. When I got back I could reward myself with another try at George’s number. I took myself the long way round the Beech Lanes estate, dodging dogs and their deposits, round Queen’s Park, and back up the road. I forced myself to shower and dry my hair. Then I looked at the phone. A message.
    Ian Dale’s voice.
    I could have been sick with disappointment.
    I had to listen to it twice to take it in. And it was good news, too. Aftab had been found, safe and well. Dale would tell me all about it on Monday.
    That was all.
    I sat on the stairs. Now what?
    In practical terms there was only one answer. Safeway’s. If I didn’t shop now I wouldn’t eat this weekend.
    I was just going to bed when I remembered Aggie’s plants. It wouldn’t do any harm to go round closing a few curtains, switching lights on and off. Anything to deter burglars. I suppose that was what gave me the idea. First thing tomorrow I would burgle George’s house.
    I did it the easy way, of course. I waited till it was light, and cycled round. I knew he kept a key somewhere in his garden. He was always afraid of coming home at one in the morning only to find he’d dropped his keys in a band room somewhere in the sticks.
    I tried his rockery. I must have heaved aside every single piece. I cleared out a great deal of dead convolvulus and an incipient crop of enchanter’s nightshade. But I didn’t find the key. And then I sensed that I was being watched.
    I turned. George’s neighbour, in a bathrobe so short that at any other time I should have found him amusing, was staring at me from his front doorstep. It was simplest to tell the truth. I wanted to check that George hadn’t been taken ill. He hesitated, but I persisted: we’d met, hadn’t we, at George’s Guy Fawkes barbecue? Hadn’t he been the one letting off the rockets?
    He had. But plainly he didn’t remember me.
    At last he produced the key, and paused to watch me. He gathered up a pile of Sunday papers from his porch, quite forgetting that in all modesty he ought to bend at the knees, and eventually grunted that I should push the key through the letter box when I’d finished.
    George’s house was appallingly empty. I knew as soon as I stepped into the hall. His kitchen: there was no washing-up left in the sink, nothing on the draining board – but then, there wouldn’t be. His living room was equally immaculate. He’d left a couple of scores open on the piano in his music room, and a pencil had dropped on the floor. I tutted and picked it up.
    There was no point in going upstairs.
    I went.
    The bathroom. The toothpaste squeezed from the end of the tube, not the middle. Towels hung neatly to dry.
    Two spare bedrooms, one with the ironing board folded against the wall. In a wicker basket a pile of neatly folded washing waited to be pressed.
    His own bedroom. The smell of George which was not quite the right smell because it was stale, not newly showered. If he’d been here, he’d have thrown open the window to air the duvet he’d pulled back.
    It seemed easier