Something is very different

He'd never had a cleaner before. His mother had briefly been a cleaner until her knees packed up, and he dimly remembered earning pennies as a nipper helping old people get their heavy bins to the kerb for the bin men. But he'd never had a cleaner in before and he wondered what to expect when he got home. Not that he was expecting too much: the state his place was in, the woman would need a sand-blaster to get rid of the ingrained dirt. As a sop to his latent decision making, he'd checked out the cleaning company online and they looked on the up and up, which was good news. Likewise, if Colin and Maeve Linesmith vouched for them, there couldn't be too many problems. And the woman, Rowan, who had appeared with such miraculous timing … well, she certainly seemed kosher. Odd though, now that he thought, Rowan Good wasn't really the sort of person he imagined being a cleaner. She was clearly educated: just listening to her speak and seeing how she dressed and behaved was enough to make that obvious. Mind you, the only experience he'd had with people who cleaned other people's houses had, apart from his mum, been with individuals he'd met in the line of duty, so to speak. Thus, some of his encounters with the profession had been less than positive; the Milehouse Murderer who bludgeoned several of his customers to death for their antiques being one that particularly sprang to mind. Not that the charming Ms Good had given any indication she was so inclined. Greg knew his thoughts were rambling but he was unaccountably nervous. Of what, though? Something had set his antennas twitching, though he had no clear notion what it was. He just knew he was waiting … for something.

Poking listlessly through the various piles on his desk he wondered if he needed a life-coach more than a cleaner. Since the end of his marriage, he seemed to have veered from the straight and narrow. Not that it was anyone's fault but his own, but everything felt like it had gone downhill of late. It was as it he'd taken a left-turn when he should have gone right and now he was hopelessly lost. Or maybe it was just that he was always so bushed, so bone-deep tired. Sighing, Greg lifted the thick current investigations file out of the morass and began working his way through the developments on all active cases for his end-of-week report. Not the most exciting or engaging activity but it had to be done and at least it passed the time.

Half-five rolled around and, despite his lacklustre approach, Greg had to concede that a fair amount of work had been completed. Not all of what was needed by any means, but a respectable dent had been made and the knowledge lifted him a little. He'd had a couple of discussions with the Welfare Officer after his divorce, not that it had made any great difference at the time. The divorce rate among Met employees was just about the highest in the country, so he was only one of many. The knowledge hadn't helped in the least, but he seemed to be encased in some sort of fog as far as his personal life went. Nothing really made any sense anymore. The welfare woman had suggested some general counselling sessions might help but Greg had been too emotionally spent to do anything about it at the time. Perhaps he was ready now.

But today, he had a cleaner and as Greg cleared his desk prior to leaving for home, a flicker of excitement stirred in his chest. How sad was that. The only thing he had to look forward to these days was a clean flat. Chucking things in his lockable desk drawer, he was mildly pleased to see some clear desk space for once. He smiled briefly. Perhaps he should ask Rowan Good to come and sort out his office as well.

Traffic on the way home wasn't all that bad. Having phoned an order in ahead, Greg was able to park his car outside of his favourite Chippie and collect his dinner without waiting. He was going to celebrate whatever his cleaner had managed to do with a Cod-and-chips and a bottle of lager. The fresh tangy scent of hot chips and vinegar made him realise how hungry he was for once and he headed for home with a growing sense of anticipation.

Outside his front door, Greg hunted for his key, shaking his head at himself. He knew he was building this up out of all proportion; after all, his situation was hardly unique. Sliding the brass Yale home, he pushed the door open and stepped inside. It was dark, naturally, at this time of evening in March, but he paused again before switching on the hallway lights.

It was the faint smell that caught his attention, holding his fingers on the switch. An old fragrance, distantly recalled from his childhood, reminiscent of the seaside and warm hay. Sniffing again, Greg detected something fresh and faintly sweet; not a perfume or a cloying artificial air-freshener, but something that might have blown in from a summer's day. It was really quite lovely. Breathing the nostalgic scent deep into his chest, he clicked the main hallway switch on, not sure what he was expecting. The woman was only a cleaner after all. She couldn't work miracles.

Unaware his jaw had dropped; Greg stared at the bit of real estate immediately in front of his eyes. Was this actually the correct flat? For a second, he almost stepped back outside to check the number on the door, but stopped himself. It had been the right key, after all.

The cluttered, grungy hall connecting the main living space in the flat with the kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms at the back was neither cluttered or grungy anymore. Beneath all the detritus and dust, there was some decent natural timber flooring, the dark golden wood now gleaming softly off into the distance. There was even an elegant carpet runner extending the length of the passageway, a soft moss-green with some sort of subtle classical pattern down its centre. The rug, which he couldn't remember owning or having seen anywhere in the flat, looked as if it had just been shampooed. Bending down, he brushed his fingers across the top of the deep, thick pile. It was softest wool and must have cost a packet. Now where in the hell had such a nice rug been in the year he'd lived here?

Against the wall behind the front door was a tall but narrow piece of furniture he'd pulled out of a skip one day on the way home. With a variety of shelves and hooks and small cupboards, it fitted perfectly in to the limited available area and did useful service as a coat rack. Tugging off his heavy winter overcoat, he stopped again before he could hang it up. The old storage cabinet shone, the wood having almost the same dark golden glow as the newly-revealed floorboards. Greg had no idea the thing was even real wood: he'd imagined it was cheap, held together with ancient melamine and glue, but there it was. Cleaned and polished and looking right at home in the space behind the door. There was even a shallow china dish waiting for his keys and loose change. He'd not seen the whole of the flat yet but already he was feeling irrationally cheerful.

Taking his bag of fish and chips into the kitchen to grab a plate and fork, Greg swayed a little as he took in the scene under the electric lights. The small table and chairs had been moved over to the far right wall, freeing up far more room in the middle of the kitchen than he thought was possible. The floor itself, which he assumed had been covered in old brown lino, turned out to be the same golden boards as the passageway and it looked unbelievably good in the warm brilliance of the downlights.

Downlights? Since when did he have downlights? Glancing back at the light switch by the door, not only was there a light switch for the central kitchen pendant, but also a second, smaller one directly beneath it. Had he been using this kitchen for a year and not noticed there was a second switch? Peering closer, he saw the actual tab was round rather than square ... no. Dimmers? Twisting the round tab a fraction, he found he did indeed possess dimmers as the downlights muted and flared beneath his touch. Bloody hell.

Hardly daring to look at the cesspit of a sink or the crusty old windows, the bag holding his dinner dropped to the floor from suddenly nerveless fingers. It really looked as if he'd got a brand new kitchen. Everything that was stainless steel shimmered brightly without a scratch or dent. The glass in the windows, backed by the night sky, were perfect mirrors, lacking any mark or spot to mar their flawless finish. Even the paintwork looked new and unscratched. Turning to stare at the kitchen cabinetry, now surely a far more intense grey and white than he'd left them that morning, everything not only looked more vivid but things seemed to fit better inside the room itself, though that surely had to be a trick of the eye. Opening one of the lower cupboards to get a dinner plate, Greg paused yet again. The inside of the cupboard was a pristine shining white, his few bits of china and crockery rearranged, giving off a glossy patina you only saw on the brand new stuff. Had Rowan Good cleaned the contents of his kitchen cupboards as well as the kitchen itself? Feeling almost blasé now, Greg slid open his cutlery drawer to find that, yes, all his bits and pieces of cutlery were ordered and shining. Even the cheap plastic drawer-divider looked as if it'd been replaced by a newer, better version of itself.

Deciding to leave his dinner for a couple of minutes while he took a look around the rest of the flat, Greg headed into the small but relatively modern bathroom. Pushing open the door, he saw that every scrap of fluff and lint that had gathered in the corners had not only been thoroughly evicted but the tile grout around the entire room had been scrubbed to a brilliant white. The glass walls surrounding the shower were showroom fresh and he now had matching navy towels on the heated steel rail which for once, he reached out tentative fingers, was actually warm. Shaking his head in mild disbelief, he poked his head around the back of the door and ... yes. His old blue robe hung there, apparently freshly laundered and looking far newer and more attractive than it had any right to do. Everything in the place matched beautifully, like one of those bathrooms you sometimes saw in design programmes on the telly. Shaking his head, Greg stepped back out and aimed for the main bedroom.

Jesus H. Christ. If the bathroom was ready for the photographer, then the bedroom was ready for a film crew. Same furniture, same bedclothes same ... everything, but it all looked so much more luxurious than he remembered, the various shades of murk he'd had strewn about the place this morning were now tasteful hues of coffee, tan and white and seemed far more coordinated. One of his mismatched bedside lamps seemed to have vanished. The floor was the same gleaming golden wood that had suddenly appeared in the rest of the apartment. Now, he knew there used to be a big old square carpet on the floor in here, although he'd not seen it rolled up anywhere since he'd got home. Maybe it had fallen to pieces when it was being cleaned ... vacuumed ... whatever, though Greg didn't really care if it was missing because what was left, what was here, now, was fucking amazing.

His stomach reminded him that he was actually quite hungry and that his dinner was cooling in a bag on the newly cleaned kitchen floor. Hustling to throw everything onto a plate and pop it in the microwave for a minute, Greg felt only mildly surprised when he saw the inside of the micro looking as brand new as the rest of his stuff. Deciding to leave any further exploration until he'd eaten, he immediately changed his mind when he remembered there was a chilling bottle in the fridge with his name on it.

The intense arctic glare that was now the inside of his sale-bought Kenwood fridge-freezer made him squint. He couldn't believe it. The woman had cleaned the inside of his fridge? Reaching down for his beer, he saw the green bottles were all neatly arrayed in one of the fridge's lower racks. His bits of cheese and dairy were in the cheese and dairy shelves, the fruit was in the crisper drawer at the bottom and everything else was carefully placed with their date labels facing front. Who, in the entire history of refrigeration, actually ever filled a fridge like this? Shaking his head, he grabbed his reheated food and, yes, dammit, a glass. As with everything else, his few odd gleaming pieces of glassware were now artfully arranged inside a glinting glass-fronted cabinet. He could see all the empty space inside and decided that maybe going out and buying some nice beer glasses wouldn't be such a terrible idea.

Apart from the spare bedroom he'd been using as a makeshift office and storage dump, the only other place he'd not looked at yet was the main lounge. He had no idea what could possibly have been done in there because the only things in there was a flat TV, a banged up coffee table he'd rescued from the same skip as the coat rack, and a leather Chesterfield so ancient Methuselah would have recognised it. Balancing his plate and cutlery in one hand and his glass of beer in the other, he pushed the lounge door slowly open with his foot.

That there were the same burnished floorboards in here was almost to be expected by now, but the room had a new sort of spartan minimalism that whispered deliberation rather than desperation. Greg peered at the walls. They were clean and white, mind you, they'd been white when he left, but now... they seemed to have taken on a faint glow. The flatscreen TV, his one major indulgence since the divorce, had been lifted up off the floor and rested on some kind of low black table. On closer inspection, he saw it was the wooden shoe rack from the bottom of his wardrobe. It looked much better out here than in there. It raised the telly just enough so that its positioning looked calculated and fully intentional rather than completely uncaring. The old settee was still clearly old, but its leather had been cleaned and conditioned and buffed to a sumptuous lustre. He could even smell the rich oils in the polish and a faint reminder of old summer flowers. The scarred and dented timber coffee table, now cleaned and burnished, had taken on an altogether darker tint, more russet than anything else and looked artfully worn rather than simply beaten up. The combination of the austere gleaming walls and the few feature pieces was unforgivingly masculine. The rich, dark colours, the lack of anything remotely delicate: this was definitely a man's room. He found the atmosphere surprisingly agreeable.

A quiet thrill ran down his spine. For the first time in a very long time, Greg experienced a sense of pride and quiet enjoyment in having somewhere like this to live and call his own. It was the first time he could remember feeling this way since long before Angela had left, taking the remains of his self-worth and dignity with her. Using the remote to switch the TV on, he sat back in his newly revived couch with a newly revived sense of self-esteem and ate his chips with enormous enjoyment. He'd have to get a message to Rowan and send his unreserved thanks for her efforts which were, in his eyes, little short of magical. Not only had the woman somehow completely renovated his flat but in the doing, had given him back a nebulous feeling of value, as if living in a nice place with nice things was a right he had abrogated for too long. If a complete stranger could see the potential in here, then perhaps, so should he.

Whatever else he was going to do, Greg was determined to send her a thank-you bunch of flowers. First thing in the morning.

###

"What do you mean you've got nobody called Rowan Good working for you? She was cleaning my flat only yesterday!" Greg pressed the phone hard against his ear as if that might make the words clearer.

"I'm very sorry, Mr Lestrade, but we've only just actioned your contract this morning. We were going to contact you later in the day to arrange a time for your first clean. If anyone came in and serviced your property yesterday, it certainly wasn't one of our cleaning teams. None of our people even work on Sundays, at least, not for us."

"But she gave me a copy of your card, she even mentioned you personally by your first name," Greg shook his head as Lily, the company receptionist, continued to sound genuinely baffled. "Nicely spoken lady, medium height, silvery-grey hair but looked mid-thirties, grey eyes, brought a big grey trolley on wheels with her." Greg knew there had to be a logical explanation for this, some reason that brought Rowan Good into the picture in a sensible, rational way.

"Did this lady actually say she worked with us?" the receptionist wasn't backing down despite his insistence. "Did she have one of our identification passes?

Did she? Had he even thought to ask for her ID? Greg blinked and frowned. It was one of the most basic rules of urban behaviour these days; you never let anyone inside your house until you knew exactly who they were and why they wanted to come in. Why hadn't he asked to see her identification?

"She gave me one of your company cards and she used your name specifically," he spoke slowly as he thought back to the conversation of two days prior.

"A card that any one of our previous clients might have on hand and my name which, as I recall, you used when you said hello to me on the phone, possibly overheard? While I agree it does sound very strange, I can only repeat that we do not have anyone called Rowan Good working for us, nor anyone who looks like the lady you've described. I'm really sorry; Mr Lestrade, but I can't explain why she did what you say she did. Do you still want us to proceed with your contract?"

Agreeing that yes, he still wanted a regular cleaner, beginning next week now that his flat had already been well-cleaned only yesterday, Greg ended the call. Sitting back in his office chair deep in thought, a calculating expression sharpened his features as he worked his way through all his dealings with the mysterious cleaning lady. He intended to find her and discover what she was up to.

"You got a minute, Guv?" Donovan knocked and poked her head around the door, only to pause on seeing his face. "Something wrong?"

"Just thinking about how domestic cleaners are invisible," he murmured with a faraway look in his eyes. "They're like postmen and bus drivers; you never really pay them any attention, do you? They come in with a trolley full of buckets and dusters and that's it. You don't even ask for an ID."

"You're thinking about the Romsford case, aren't you?" his sergeant slowly raised her eyebrows, nodding. "There actually was a cleaner on the list of people who had access to the deceased, but nobody thought about looking in the trolley for the murder weapon." Pausing again, Donovan smiled. "That's a brilliant bit of deduction," she said. "I'll pop round with a uniform and have a chat with her, shall I? Maybe ask her for a look in that trolley of hers. If she says no, I'll call in for a search warrant and let the forensic boys have it. You've still got it, Boss." Giving him a wide smile that he couldn't remember seeing for some time, Greg watched, mildly amused as Donovan talked herself into an idea. Though, come to think of it, it actually was a neat bit of rationalisation even if it wasn't his. It would do no harm to check.

But where would he go about finding the mysterious silver-haired cleaner? Rowan Good genuinely seemed to know everything about the cleaning company, up to and including the receptionist's name. She also knew about the company's procedures and processes; she knew about the need for a contract, for instance. But how could she possibly have known he'd just spoken with Lily the receptionist on the phone? Was it conceivable she'd been stalking him for some reason? But no, that wouldn't work either as she'd been waiting for him outside the main door of his building, so there was no way she could have been following him to hear his phone conversation and been in front of him to wait at the front door.

Racking his brains, Greg tried to recall the actual words the woman had used. She'd said something about Lily wanting to get the contract finalised and then there was something else, something… about… being in a place the week before with thirteen cats. That was it! Rowan Good had told him she'd been in a place with the cats and three kiddies and a boy working on a motorbike. He'd pressed the redial on his phone without knowing he'd done it. Waiting for the long-suffering Lily to get through her spiel, Greg got to the point.

"Lily, my apologies, this is Greg Lestrade again. When I spoke with the woman calling herself Rowan Good, I remember her saying that she'd been in a place last week with thirteen cats… do you have a customer with lots of cats and three small children? I realise this sounds like something for Alice in Wonderland, but I am simply trying to get to the bottom of the mystery. It must be the policeman in me."

"Police?" Lily paused before saying anything else, her voice uncertain and very young again. "Is this a police matter, then?"

"No, not as such," Greg rubbed a hand over his eyes. "I'm asking as a private individual, but you can rest assured that I'm not making this up and, if it turns out that this is some sort of scam, then it will quickly become a police matter. If this woman is a con-artist and she got past me then she's going to be able to get past anyone. I really do need your assistance here, Lily. Is there anything you can tell me?"

There was a faint but extended sigh.

"We don't have anyone like that woman working for us…" Lily spoke slowly and deliberately.

"But?" Greg sensed there was more.

"But you're not the first person to ask about her."

Rowan Good had done this before?

"You've had another customer who's had dealings with a silver-haired woman claiming to be a cleaner working for your company?"

"Only one," Lily said, clearly unhappy. "There's no evidence of anything and the lady decided not to report it to the police as no key or anything had been taken or done wrong..."

"I gave Rowan Good my spare key," Greg frowned again.

"Didn't the woman leave it behind this time? She did at the other place."

"Lily, I want to speak to your other customer who met this woman. I need their details."

"Oh, I can't do that, Mr Lestrade," young Lily was back on firmer ground. "We're absolutely forbidden to give out customer information to anyone, not even the police. We've been told."

Sighing silently as he stared up at the ceiling of his office, Greg had an idea. "If I give you my office number, would you please contact the other customer and ask them to phone Inspector Lestrade at Scotland Yard who would very much like to have a chat about a mutually concerning mystery?"

There was a pause as Lily thought it over. "I can do that," she said. "But what if she doesn't want to talk to you?"

"Then I'll have to chalk it down to experience and change the lock on my front door, I expect." Greg felt his patience wearing thin. "Will you at least try for me?"

"I will, Inspector Lestrade. I'll do it right away."

###

For some reason, the strange situation with the cleaner seemed to have sharpened his thinking about other things as well. Sorting through several piles of forms and printouts on his desk, he realised that a good percentage were either out of date or really shouldn't have come to him in the first place. After weeding out those documents that were less than confidential and of no real relevance to him, Greg calmly chucked them all in the recycling box.

The next thing he did was sift through the remaining stuff to see what could possibly be handed to someone else with very little effort on his part or preferably, no effort at all. Once he'd done that, what was actually left for him to action was in fact a much smaller and surprisingly neat little pile. Of these remaining forms, a third required only a quick review and a signature, another third required that he discuss the contents with others and the last few bits of paper were updates of information for ongoing investigations.

Tearing through the reviews, Greg signed the lot one after another. Taking a deep breath, he pulled the middle bunch to the front of his desk and picked up his phone, speaking to each recipient quickly and efficiently. Inside of an hour, he was able to scribble a quick note of completion on the bottom of each one and set them aside for filing. Spreading out the remaining sheets like a hand of cards, he shouted for Donovan.

"Yes Guv?" Sally looked around the half-closed door.

"I need the Martine Galloway file, as well as the files for the Keith family, the Santana night club, the Camberwell arson case and the Lambeth cigarette factory file," he looked up, grabbing the pile of signed papers. "And you can take all of these with you for appropriate further action, if you don't mind."

Her eyes widening in surprise, Sergeant Donovan looked between the cleared desk, the expression on Lestrade's face and the pile of papers in his outstretched hand.

"Someone's been a busy bee," she observed, taking the papers. Her eyes scanned the cleared desk. "Nobody's seen the top of that desk since Christmas."

"I decided it was time for a change," looking up, Greg smiled briefly. "Fresh start and all that."

"About damn time," Sally nodded as she headed back to the door. "I'll get you those files right away."

Deciding to grab a coffee and a sandwich, Greg headed downstairs to the small staff teashop on the first floor. Though there was far less space in this new building than there had been in the older Yard headquarters in Victoria Street, the internal spaces had been very cleverly redesigned. The small eatery had the look and atmosphere of a trendy café. Deciding not to head straight back to his small office and eat over a file, Greg ordered a large and aromatic coffee and something with chicken and green stuff and bean shoots all wrapped up in a soft blanket of unleavened bread. It tasted surprisingly good. Grabbing an unoccupied seat by a window facing out over the river. As he admired the scudding clouds filling the London skyline, his mobile rang.

"Lestrade."

"Inspector Lestrade?" A woman's voice, slightly cautious. "Greg Lestrade? This is Joanna Foy up on level five in the Counselling Office. You left a message for me?"

Frowning, Greg thought back through his phone calls of the day. He knew he considered speaking with the welfare mob, but he couldn't recall actually doing anything about it. Or had he? He'd piled through so much stuff during the morning, was it possible he'd done it and forgotten?

"Sorry," he paused, unsure what to say. "I can't actually remember leaving a message for anyone in staff welfare. I must be losing the plot."

"Oh no," there was a slight hesitation. "You didn't ring me here in work. You wanted to speak to me about that odd cleaning lady we both seem to have encountered."

Greg's skin prickled. Two people in the same building, working for the same organisation with the same problem? His copper's intuition took off its coat and rolled up its sleeves.

"I think we need to talk," he said.