The Removal Man Read online

  The Removal Man

  R. J. Parker

  One More Chapter

  a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

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  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2022

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  Copyright © R. J. Parker 2022

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  Cover design by Lucy Bennett © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2022

  Cover photographs © Tim Robinson / Arcangel Images (door); Shutterstock.com (all other images)

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  R. J. Parker asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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  A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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  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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  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

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  Source ISBN: 9780008447984

  Ebook Edition © April 2021 ISBN: 9780008447977

  Version: 2022-04-01

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you for reading…

  About the Author

  Also by R. J. Parker

  Credits

  Subscribe to the OMC Newsletter

  About the Publisher

  To the dynamic Brewster family – Lee, Marielle, Joseph and Annabel – the sort of true friends you only meet a couple of times in your life.

  Chapter One

  Rose folded her arms across her chest and shivered in the cold air blasting through the open front door. She watched and flinched as the beloved green paisley couch that she liked to lounge on while she read was unceremoniously loaded into the back of the removal van by two paunchy and red-faced middle-aged men. Both of them seemed puffed out before they’d even started and she wondered if she’d actually end the evening calling them an ambulance. Maynard was monitoring them. It was his firm and they’d been pretty unreliable. They were the only local one, though, which was probably why they could afford to be so complacent. He had his hands on his thin waist, his thumbs jammed under the flap at the bottom of his brown corduroy jacket.

  ‘OK, that’s the lot.’ Maynard let his two employees climb awkwardly down before rattling the door shut.

  The two men caught their breath in the fading pink light. The one with ear and nose rings bent forward and rested his hands on his knees while the other secured the door.

  Maynard strolled back up the drive, an insincere smile already primed for Rose. ‘OK, we’re full up for this trip. If you can just give me a signature.’ He held out a digital screen, but he was still a few steps away.

  ‘Sure.’ She extended her hand but he slowed his pace, almost as if he wanted her to hold her arm out longer. Something about Maynard’s impish manner made her uncomfortable. He was probably in his early sixties and had only the top row of his teeth bleached. The bottom ones were more noticeably yellow because of it. And she didn’t like the way he’d ruffled her son’s hair. Who honestly did that to other people’s kids anymore?

  ‘Use your finger.’ He handed her the unit.

  She signed the screen and released a breath of relief. After two no-shows, the heavy furniture she couldn’t shift herself was finally headed for storage. ‘So you’ll pick up the boxes on Monday?’ Rose noticed how echoey her voice was now that the hall had been emptied of cabinets.

  ‘Absolutely. Should be about 8.30 but we’ll call when we’re on our way.’

  ‘Remember to call my mobile. The landline has been disconnected.’ She’d told him that already, but when they’d turned up at three instead of midday, Maynard had said he’d tried to phone her on it. She suspected he hadn’t. ‘You’ve got that number now?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied dismissively but his eyes were looking beyond her into the house.

  Rose wondered if Maynard’s silvery mop of hair was actually a wig. As she’d watched him rallying the other two, she’d noticed that the back of his neck was completely smooth. ‘See you Monday then.’ She looked at his hair closer but Maynard’s eyes refocused on her.

  ‘Just the two of you in the house then?’

  That made her even more uncomfortable. ‘My husband’s home later.’

  He nodded a little too emphatically. As if he suspected it was a lie. ‘Have a good weekend then.’ He gave her his lemon meringue smile again and trotted back down the drive.

  The van bearing the legend ‘Ty Maynard Dependable Removals’ started up before he reached it and she watched him jump up into the cab before the vehicle surged away down the narrow country road, sending crows noisily bursting from a nearby tree.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Just for tonight.’ Noah’s fawn-brown eyes pleaded.

  Rose could see his father in them. He used to employ the same tactic and got his way far too often. Her nine-year-old son had quickly adopted the strategy to get her committed to any short-term arrangement before she found herself unable to refuse the inevitable appeals to extend whatever it was she hadn’t wanted to do in the first place. ‘Once you get that tent set up, you’ll want us to be in there all weekend.’

  Noah looked affronted. ‘Just tonight. Honest to God.’

  Rose tried not to smirk. ‘I’ve told you not to say that.’

  She knew she was about to give in. Even though she was full of nduja pizza and had drunk two glasses of red wine. Even though it was April and the evenings were still cold.

  ‘Isn’t this like camping already though?’ She gestured around the lounge.

  Noah cast his eyes about the cardboard boxes stacked around them. ‘No,’ he stated categorically, shaking his head and pulling a comically long face for emphasis.

  She was only playing for time. Rose wouldn’t refuse him, but not because her discipline was lax. She was stricter with Noah than most of the others in her parents’ group, but he hadn’t complained the whole time they’d been in moving limbo. She and Noah had both said their goodbyes to the house weeks ago but the people buying had had issues with their sale. The agent had suggested putting it back on the market, but Rose had said they’d wait.

  It was a kindness to say the house they’d lived in for seven years was a fixer-upper. Built in 1902, what the property lacked in solid foundations it made up for in runaway damp. Previously a guest house, the rooms had been converted but each of the doors still had a different key. They’d turned one into Lucas’s pottery studio but that had been redundant long before the house went up for sale.

  Everything else was now packed up and ready to go. Thirty-four boxes. Coincidentally, one for every year of her life. Was that all it amounted to? It had taken three months of viewings before she’d had a solitary, significantly lower offer from a foster couple who needed four bedrooms. But Rose really didn’t want to let them down.

  It was the
ir third week of eating on a flat packing case. Noah had loved it to begin with and would have quite happily had junk food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But with the couch gone, their everyday furniture and oven already in a storage facility near their new address and the pair of them now having to sleep on folding beds, the fun of living in a maze of taped-up boxes had seriously started to fray. Plus, Noah had just spent his Saturday helping her fill the last boxes, carrying them from the cellar and setting them in the hallway. How could she say no?

  ‘I really don’t want to sleep outside.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to. I’ll be fine on my own.’

  ‘You said that before, but you only lasted half an hour.’

  ‘I was only young then,’ he countered, mortified.

  Rose chuckled inwardly. That had been less than two years ago. She eyed the remaining slices of sourdough pizza in the box on top of the packing case. ‘You haven’t finished your dinner.’

  Noah didn’t respond. He knew it was a stalling tactic and waited for her gaze to return to his.

  ‘It’s going to get cold out there,’ she warned.

  ‘I’ll wear a jumper over my pjs.’

  ‘The tent’s still got a hole in it.’

  ‘It’s not raining.’

  ‘It’s forecast though.’

  ‘I won’t sleep under the hole.’

  ‘It’ll be dark.’

  ‘I’ve got my penlight.’

  He’d been inseparable from the gadget since Lucas had bought it for him two Christmases ago. Rose sighed. If she let him sleep outside, she would end up out in the cold too. She picked up her glass of red and took a sip as if considering her answer, even though it was a foregone conclusion.

  Noah replicated her sigh, rested his elbow on the low packing case and then put his face in his hand so his face wrinkled up. The left side of his light auburn hair jutted as it always did, like he’d just been sleeping on it. No matter what she did, it never seemed to flatten. She tied her identical but longer hair up into a ponytail and he regarded her expectantly.

  Their Edwardian house with its rotting parquet floors was on its own at the edge of Hampton Forest. She’d always felt isolated there, but Lucas had enjoyed the seclusion for his work. He hadn’t seemed quite as keen on its remoteness after the attempted break-in. That had rattled them both but they’d managed to keep it a secret from Noah. That was nearly three years ago but now that Lucas was absent, the episode had taken on a new implication for a mother alone with her child. She told herself it was a one-off event, that lightning was unlikely to strike twice, but it made her doubly vigilant when it came to security. She’d looked into getting an alarm system fitted but the cost for the old property was eye-watering. Their new place was on the third floor of a residential block. Only days to go now before they got in there. Was she being hyper cautious? The rear lawn was secure and surrounded by tall red-brick walls, but she still felt uncomfortable with the idea of her son out there in the dark. Their nearest neighbours were a drive away and beyond the tall back wall was nothing but dense forest. She’d fought with Lucas about letting Noah play there. Hampton Forest was private land used for deer and pheasant shoots so she’d used that as an excuse to keep her son away from it. Lucas said there was no harm out of season but, particularly after the attempted break-in, Rose felt nervous about who could be lurking in the trees. She and Lucas argued about leisure time for Noah. Rose didn’t like tents and camping and preferred parks and hotels, but her husband loved their new bucolic lifestyle. Since Lucas hadn’t been around, she hadn’t done anything like that with Noah. She knew he missed it and felt guilty she couldn’t do some of the outdoorsy things he wanted. Also, where they were moving didn’t even have a balcony. Shouldn’t they make the most of this before they had to leave?

  ‘So…’

  Rose swallowed the last of the wine in her glass and knew she was heading for a third. It had already relaxed her but she needed it today. Today was an anniversary. A date that only Rose observed. But now she’d have to sleep with one eye on the window.

  ‘I’ll move my bed there so I can keep watch.’ She nodded to the double glazing they’d had installed that overlooked the lawn.

  ‘I’ll be OK on my own,’ he said, aggrieved.

  But it wasn’t dark yet.

  ‘So, I can pitch the tent?’ There was that entreating look of his father’s again. Its familiarity used to be an anchor for her but now his presence was a dead weight dragging her down to anxiety.

  ‘Under the tree.’ It was halfway up the lawn. He wouldn’t be too far from the back door.

  ‘OK.’ He knew when to submit.

  ‘Go and get it set up before I change my mind.’

  Noah was quickly on his feet and rushed out of the back lounge to get the tent from the boxes in the hall.

  Rose closed both their laptops, picked up a piece of cold pizza and then dropped it back on the greaseproof paper. As a dietician, she spent five days a week creating healthy eating plans for her patients at Petworth General. She wondered what they would make of her current habits. She emptied the tiny droplet in her glass and thought about the half-full bottle in the kitchen. One more.

  Four hours later, she was sitting bolt upright on her folding bed, her heart in overdrive. It was pitch dark outside and somebody was banging hard on the window.

  Chapter Three

  At first, Rose briefly forgot she’d moved her folding bed downstairs and widened her eyes to let in as much information as possible. Something clattered to the floor. Her phone. That was it – she was in the back lounge, her blankets tangled around her feet.

  The thumping on the window made her spin her head to the floor-to-ceiling double-glazed windows. Beyond the glass was pitch black and rivulets of water were cascading down the pane. It was raining hard. Rose squinted at the darkness but could see only the reflection of the paper shade lamp she’d positioned in front of it to reassure Noah. She’d left the upstairs lights on too.

  She waited for his face at the pane, felt her heart’s rapid pump in her throat.

  ‘Noah?’ She threw the blanket aside and put her bare feet on the cold floor. She’d been hot as she’d fallen asleep but now chill air wafted into the scoop neck of her white nightshirt. She briefly registered her phone on the floor but stood shakily and squinted at the window. ‘Noah?’ Her right leg trembled and she felt a little dizzy.

  Only the sound of trickling rain replied, and she quickly wiped at her eyes. What time was it? She’d told herself she’d stay awake. How long had she been asleep? Noah had set the tent up before eight and she’d been surprised at how eager he was to be left alone. After she’d made sure he was warm, had his inhaler and was tucked up in his sleeping bag, she’d kissed the top of his head. He’d been reading a graphic novel by his penlight and had said goodnight without looking up.