by Agatha Frost
“Separate bedrooms?”
“Jeff’s idea.” Belinda forced a laugh, lips tight around the cigarette. “Happened a year ago, twenty years into our marriage. Said he’d developed insomnia, and my snoring kept him awake. I barely questioned him; I just went along with it. How long have I been ignoring the obvious, eh? Things haven’t been right for years, but I just thought that’s what marriage was. I never had a good model. My mum and dad hated each other but stayed together till the bitter end. He drank too much and she smoked too much. And look at me! Their perfect daughter, doing too much of both. I don’t blame Jeff. Who would?”
“Don’t say that.”
“No, it’s true.” Belinda brushed her wiry, greying hair from her face. “Look at me, Claire. I’m fifty and I look like I’m in my seventies. I’ve avoided getting close to a mirror for years. I knew what I was doing to myself. Not last night, though. I got right up close to the bathroom mirror and saw the truth. An ugly, old hag looked back at me, and I hated it.”
“You’re not a hag.” Claire rested a hand on Belinda’s shoulder. “And looks aren’t everything. You can’t blame yourself for Jeff straying. That’s on him, not you. If he didn’t want to be with you, he could have left you without having an affair. He could have been honest.”
“I don’t even know if he was.” Belinda tossed the cigarette and blew out the last of the smoke before leaning against the tall wall surrounding the courtyard. “Nicola is dead and Jeff is gone, and for all I know, he killed her. I hope he did. They deserved each other.”
“Do you think he could have?”
“I don’t know.” Belinda sighed. “The man I married isn’t the man I’ve been living with for the past few years. Jeff used to be sweet, caring. Affectionate, even. We met in 1990. I was working behind the bar in one of those old working men’s clubs. I was twenty, and you wouldn’t believe it now, but I was quite a looker. Never been thin, but I could turn heads. Vivacious, I think they used to call it. I had the most beautiful chocolate curls. Jeff said he fell in love with me the first time he saw me. Came in with his dad. His first time. There was a comedian on that night. Awful fella. Reggie Smith. Couldn’t tell a funny joke to save his life, but he was cheap and got bums in seats. Heard he jumped off a bridge a few years later. Poor guy, if it’s true. Gambling debt or something.”
With ten minutes to spare before they had to clock in, Belinda pulled out a second cigarette and lit it. More people in blue jumpsuits arrived, most going straight through the gates, a few hanging around for a smoke.
“We dated for ten years,” Belinda continued, eyes distant, lips smiling. “Courted, as it was called in those days. We moved in together almost straight away. He needed somewhere to live. I had a flat all to myself. I did all right behind the bar. Hours were decent and the tips were good. Didn’t propose until 1999. Never thought he would. Took me by surprise. Wasn’t really romantic. He got down on one knee outside the club. It was raining and he pulled the ring out of his shoe. Actually, that does sound quite romantic, doesn’t it? Almost like a film.”
Claire smiled. “It does.”
“We married in December 1999.” Belinda held the cigarette out between two fingers and rested her free arm under her elbow, her gaze still distant. “I always dreamed of a white wedding, and I got it. Bloody freezing, it was, but the pictures were beautiful. We moved to Northash in 2000. New start for a new millennium. Oh, we were all full of such hope back then, weren’t we? A new dawn. Tony Blair and New Labour! Things were going to change. But look at the world. It’s all gone down the drain. I didn’t have any qualifications and couldn’t get any bar work here, so I got a job at this factory. A couple of years before you, I think.”
“2003.”
“I knew you weren’t long after.” Belinda deeply inhaled the smoke and blew out a long stream. “I wasn’t too proud for factory work. When we hit thirty, we thought we’d have a baby. Kept trying, never happened. We never agreed to give up, but we did. By forty, I knew it was hopeless. Should have taken it as a sign. Things were okay until then. I got the menopause quite early. Earlier than most. Maybe that’s the reason.”
“You can’t keep blaming yourself.”
“Yeah?” Belinda stubbed out the second cigarette. “I do. Even if he wasn’t cheating on me with Nicola, something was going on. Maybe he had a gambling addiction like old Reggie Smith. He could have thrown himself off a bridge too.” She paused, looking as though she could cry at any moment. “I don’t want to cling onto him. I’ve got the message loud and clear. I just want to know if he’s all right. In the thirty years I’ve known him, this is the longest I’ve not seen him. Five days. Doesn’t seem a lot, but every day is like a week. Nobody has seen him. What if something has happened to him?”
“I saw him,” Claire finally revealed. “Last night.”
“What?” Belinda’s tired eyes shot open, and she kicked away from the wall. “When? Where?”
“Outside Marley’s Café.” Claire ducked her head, unable to look at Belinda. “About twenty past ten. I was walking my gran home.”
“We live around the corner from there,” Belinda remarked. “Did he say anything?”
“He did.”
“What?” Belinda searched her eyes. “Claire, what did he say?”
“Do you really think he could have done it?” Claire asked, glancing up at the sky. “Killed Nicola, I mean?”
“I – I don’t know.” Belinda grabbed Claire’s arms. “Please, tell me what happened. It’s written all over your face. What did he do?”
“He pinned me up against a wall.”
“What?” Belinda let go. “Why would he do that?”
Claire paused, wondering how best to frame what she needed to say. After ten seconds of silence, she concluded there was no way to sugar coat what was on the tip of her tongue.
“Because I saw him kissing Nicola the morning she was murdered,” Claire confessed, eyes on the gravel. “I told the police. That’s why they were interviewing him.”
A shiny black car with tinted windows roared up the lane, zooming straight through the gates and spraying the smokers with tiny stones. It skidded to a halt inside the courtyard, parking slap bang in the middle. Ben jumped out, shades covering his eyes and a grin already on his face. The car looked new, the glasses looked new, the suit looked new; it turned Claire’s stomach.
“Say that again.” Belinda closed her eyes. “You saw Jeff kissing Nicola on Tuesday before she was murdered, and you told the police this when?”
“Tuesday.”
“One week ago today, exactly?” Belinda nodded slowly, her wiry brows pinched together. “And you waited until right now to tell me even after you’ve seen how worried I’ve been all week?”
“Belinda, I—”
“No, Claire.” She stepped back, eyes hazy with tears. “I thought you were my friend.”
Before Claire could explain herself, Belinda doubled back and made for the lane to the village. A couple of the smokers looked at Claire as though waiting for her to explain, but when they realised she wasn’t going to, they walked through the factory gates, leaving Claire alone. As she followed them through, she realised why she hadn’t told Belinda until now.
She hadn’t wanted to see that exact look in her eyes.
Claire had hoped Belinda’s account of Monday’s horrific shift had been exaggerated, but after only an hour of working at the sticker station with only one other person, she knew Belinda had been softening the blow. The jars flew down at record speed, constantly backing up because they couldn’t stick labels on fast enough.
All were wonky; none were rejected. Claire wasn’t sure if it was because a quality control team no longer looked over their shoulders, or if everyone had just stopped caring.
When the loud classical music started blasting through the speakers at 10:03 am, it took all Claire’s willpower not to drop her work and walk out the front doors, never to return. Her anger only boiled over further when she l
ooked up to the office window and saw Ben sat with his feet up on the desk, eyes glued to what appeared to be a movie on the flat-screen TV attached to the wall.
“He’s not even listening to this music,” she shouted over the noise to Natalia, the only other person on the sticker station with her. “He’s doing it to mess with us.”
“What?” she cried back.
“I said…” Claire pointed up to the office window.
Natalia stopped working altogether to look. She let out a slow laugh as she looked down at her blue jumpsuit.
“This suddenly is not worth it,” Natalia cried into Claire’s ear. “If I wanted working conditions like this, I would have stayed in Poland. I am sorry, Claire.”
“For what?”
Natalia walked away without explaining. Instead of going to the break room or the toilet, she headed straight for the front doors. The music grew even louder, and six more people followed Natalia out of the door.
When the wick-gluing people began screaming at Claire for not being able to stick labels on the jars fast enough, and the wax-pouring people started shouting at her for not sending down enough empty jars, she wondered why she wasn’t one of the ones walking out too.
Luckily, just at the moment she was ready to lose it completely, Uncle Pat spotted how much she was struggling and sent one wick-gluer and one wax-pourer to help her. They slapped the stickers on even more wonkily than Claire, but the production line finally started moving again. Not that it mattered much; the new jobs were pouring in on the screen on the wall faster than they could clear them off.
“Break room at lunch,” Uncle Pat called into her ear in the brief pause between songs. “Pass it on.”
The message spread around the factory like wildfire, and by the time the bell rang for break, everyone had the same knowing look in their eyes. Claire didn’t know what Uncle Pat had planned, but she’d heard the word ‘strike’ muttered more than once.
“Announcement!” Ben cried, running down the metal walkway, the orchestral music finally eased. “Listen up, worker bees! We need to up our productivity. Lunch will be cut from an hour to thirty minutes. Don’t worry, it’s legal; I checked. I don’t know what my father was thinking. Who needs an hour to eat?”
When nobody reacted, he shrugged and ran back down the walkway, running his hands along the walls like a hyperactive child. The music turned on as soon as he returned to the office, somehow even louder than before. Thankfully, the canteen had no speakers – not that the door was soundproof. When Claire sat down to eat, she could barely hear herself think.
“At least he won’t be able to hear us,” Pat called out, standing on a chair like he had in the pub before Ben’s not-so-grand entrance. “I think we’re all in agreement that Ben Warton is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. I have no idea what that man-child is trying to accomplish, but we’re not putting up with this a second longer. No job is worth this treatment. When lunch is over, we stay right here and don’t move. We strike! He can’t fire us all. Raise your hand if you disagree.”
Nobody did. From the weary looks on the faces of more than half the people in the room, she gathered this was their second day of Ben’s madness. She glanced at the clock; somehow, the shift didn’t end for eight more hours. If she had to endure another second of these working conditions, she’d do more than strike.
Unable to hear each other talk without shouting, they ate lunch in silence. Today of all days, she needed her quiet lunch on the wall, but for the first time since Damon had started working at the factory, they weren’t on the same shift, and wouldn’t be for the rest of the week.
Twenty minutes into their now-reduced lunch break, the music cut off. Moments later, footsteps stomped across metal. Seconds after that, the raised voices began. Despite Pat’s insistence on staying in the breakroom to strike, they all hurried to the door. She wondered if this was what had happened after Nicola was pushed, when she’d been on the other side.
Two uniformed police officers were dragging Ben along the walkway while he thrashed like a wild animal. Graham stood in the office, watching from behind the glass, flanked by two middle-aged men in business suits.
“You can’t do this!” Ben cried.
“Yes, we can,” Graham said into a microphone, the speakers carrying his voice through the factory. “Your father left this factory to Nicola under the condition that you would never get your hands on it. I am Nicola’s next of kin, not you. I inherit her estate, not you. You’re a Warton in name only.”
“I am a Warton!” Ben thrashed all the way down the stairs. “I am the last Warton!”
Even at a distance and from behind the glass, Claire saw the smirk on Graham’s face. The two men, lawyers by the looks of it, took turns whispering into Graham’s ear. He nodded and lifted the microphone stand up to his mouth again.
“I know you’re all still on your break, but this won’t take long,” he announced. “I apologise for how things have been run since my wife’s death. This is not what she would have wanted. This is not what William would have wanted. I am sorry for leaving you to work under this madman. There were a few legal issues to iron out before we could forcibly have him removed. Ben Warton has no legal claim to this factory, and as of this morning, ownership has been transferred to me. The factory will cease production for today. Go home and rest. You will be paid in full for the hours you were supposed to work.”
It only took one person to clap for a round of thunderous applause to start. Claire couldn’t help but join in, if only out of sheer relief. She clapped for the thought of her bed, which she would be crawling into the second she got home.
“I’d say that’s a result,” Pat called out, smiling for the first time all day. “You heard the man! Get home, get rested, and get ready for him to sort things out.”
Pat hurried straight up to the office, but Claire was too tired to linger. She grabbed her jacket from her locker and set off home through Ian’s field; facing a farmer with his shotgun couldn’t compare to how terrible it had been at the factory.
After forcing her way through the narrow gap in the bushes, she fell into her parents’ garden. She spotted Sid and Domino, both alert and looking out from her bedroom. Simply seeing them brought a smile to her face. She glanced through the shed window, glad to see her father inside. Without knocking, she opened the door and was surprised to hear him talking on the house phone.
“Yes,” he said. “Okay. Thanks for telling me. Yes, I understand.”
He ended the call and tossed the phone onto his workbench, not seeming to care that he’d just dropped it into a pile of soil. He wasn’t wearing his work gloves, which meant he’d come out here specifically to talk on the phone – something he’d done often before his retirement.
Knowing it couldn’t mean good news, Claire perched on the upturned plant pot.
“That was DI Ramsbottom,” he said calmly. “He called to let me know they’ve just found a body buried in a shallow grave behind the mechanic’s shop at the end of your Granny Greta’s street. He wanted my advice on something.”
Claire’s heart dropped to her stomach. The walls of the shed closed in around her.
“Don’t worry, it’s not your gran.”
“Who?”
“Jeff.” He inhaled deeply, rubbing at his forehead. “Jeff Lang.”
Chapter Nine
Claire huddled closer to Greta under the golf umbrella behind the police cordon wrapping around Gary’s Mechanics. Greta’s Yorkshire Terrier, Spud, stood between them, his tiny grey raincoat protecting him from the downpour. It wasn’t particularly cold, but the rain had yet to let up since it started that afternoon; it was as if the sky knew what had happened.
It was an hour since sunset, and yet people were still turning up at the crime scene wrapped in raincoats and hidden under brollies. Some speculated loudly; others dabbed at tears; most simply stared.
Claire was in the latter category. Something within her had needed to see it with her own two e
yes – not that she could see much. The mechanic’s garage blocked much of the view of the place where Jeff had been found, and even if it hadn’t, the police had erected white tents to protect the site from the elements. Even with the bright floodlights washing out the darkness, the milling crowd could only make out shadows moving in the tent, deep within the dense forest.
“This is too close for comfort,” Greta said, glancing back at her front door. “What is going on in our sleepy little village?”
“I wish I knew,” Claire admitted, “but at least we know this wasn’t a random attack. Jeff was in the middle of this, and I was starting to think he had to have been behind it all.”
“There’s nothing saying he didn’t push Nicola from that window,” Greta pointed out, pulling her raincoat tighter. “If you ask me, I think you should start looking closer to home. That neighbour of yours, Graham. Did he know what his wife was up to behind his back?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
“Then you know where to go next.” Greta handed over the giant umbrella. “You can take this home with you. I’m going to get Spud back. It’s time for tea and biscuits, although knowing what happened here, I think I might need something stronger if I’m going to stand a chance of sleeping tonight.”
Claire was grateful for the umbrella as it rained all the way home. And not ordinary rain, but the sideways kind that blasted you in the face whether you wore a hood or not.
The rain was so bad, she didn’t hear the car driving up behind her until its bright headlights broke through the dense downpour. The lane up to the cul-de-sac was too narrow for two cars to drive up and down at the same time. There were a couple of meeting points up and down the walled-in lane, but cars usually had to fight for their right of way. Luckily, Claire didn’t drive, and the cul-de-sac was quiet enough that a huge argument hadn’t happened in at least a few months.
Leaning against the wall, umbrella protecting her face, Claire sucked in to let the car pass. She recognised the silver Ford Focus before she recognised the driver.