by Jill McGown
Michael smiled. “You’re welcome, Jack—no one’s done more than you to make this evening a success. I don’t know how you persuaded them all to come, but it’s been a great program so far.”
“Oh, I enjoyed twisting the boxing clubs’ arms. And by the look of the tables, we’ve made a fair amount for the charity.”
“You know this do is going on until the small hours, don’t you? There’s no need to go yet.”
“I need my beauty sleep.”
Tony Baker stood up, and leaned awkwardly over the table to shake Michael’s hand. “Me, too,” he said. “I think I’ll call it a night. Thanks, Mike. It’s been a very interesting evening.”
As soon as Michael had realized that Tony Baker had bought a ticket for the boxing evening, he had arranged to have him at the top table, so he could show him off to his other VIP guests. It was a shame he was leaving early.
“I had no idea that so much betting went on at things like this,” Tony added, and grinned. “Are you opening a book on the talent contest, too?”
Michael laughed. “Oh, I forgot,” he said. “Another perk of coming to the May Day do is that you’ll get to see this one make a prat of himself Morris dancing.” As soon as he’d said it, he wished he hadn’t—Jack looked less than pleased with him. He’d always made fun of Jack’s Morris dancing—it never usually annoyed him.
“I look forward to that,” said Tony.
Having made their way through the tables, both Jack and Tony made for the nearest exit, being the fire doors, but whereas Jack made it, the mother of one of the talent contest hopefuls waylaid Tony, and she didn’t seem inclined to let him leave, so Jack went on alone. Poor Jack—Michael imagined that he would be all too aware that he could leave a room any time he chose without anyone begging him to talk to her before he left. Another black mark against Tony, Michael was sure. But he was equally sure that Tony would just as soon leave as be set upon by females—he was trying to edge closer to the door, but without success.
At quarter to eleven, Keith returned. Once again they caught each other’s eye, and this time, the merest movement of Keith’s head from side to side told Michael what he wanted to know.
He realized, a fraction late, that he was being addressed by one of the people at the table, and tried hard to look as though he had been listening to what she had been saying. What with not knowing what she was talking about, and finding it difficult to hear her above the noise of those watching the next bout, he didn’t think his attempt was entirely successful.
He signalled a waiter, and ordered more wine. Clearly, most of his guests had every intention of staying until the end and getting their money’s worth, and who could blame them? He smiled as he saw Tony Baker finally making it to the door, and leaving, at ten to eleven.
Outside the Barton bingo club, Stephen tried once more to start the bike. The bingo had finished at half past ten, and he had been about to leave when the caller had made an announcement.
“Before he goes, we want you all to sing Happy Birthday. Stephen—where are you, Stephen?”
A spotlight had found Stephen, who had smiled winningly.
“He’s twenty years old tomorrow—remember when you were twenty, ladies? Of course you do—King John had just signed the Magna Carta, hadn’t he? In 1215, wasn’t it? It was supposed to be at twelve, but he got held up in traffic.”
Oh, God, Stephen had thought. Was he going to go into some comedy routine? But he had confined himself to that one unfunny joke.
“Anyway—he’s only here tonight, so we’re celebrating a day early. Now—all together, let’s give Stephen’s teens a rousing Bull’s Eye club send-off.”
“. . . happy birthday, dear Stephen, happy birthday to you!”
Stephen had waved, and smiled, and had very nearly made it to the door when two ample ladies practically jumped him.
“Are you new here? I haven’t seen you before,” said one.
“I don’t often work in Barton.”
“Oh, that’s a shame,” the other one said. “Will you be working here in the future?”
“I don’t know—I’m mostly in Malworth, and now and again in Stansfield. The rota goes up on the wall, if you want to look out for me coming back here.”
“Oh, I think I’ll have to move to Malworth, if that’s where you usually are! Is that a crash helmet? Do you ride a motorbike?”
“Yes.” If he didn’t, it would be an odd sort of fashion accessory, thought Stephen.
“You don’t fancy a pillion passenger, do you?”
“Get on!” said the other one. “He’d be doing wheelies whether he wanted to or not, with you on the back.”
And so it had gone on, with Stephen smiling gamely and laughing at their ever more risqué jokes until at last they reluctantly let him go.
He would have been home by now if it hadn’t been for them, he thought, as the bike, after several attempts, reluctantly fired into life.
Jack had been furious when Tony Baker had got up at the same time and said he was leaving, too, and blessed Mrs. Turner for stopping him when she did. Patsy Turner went in for every talent contest ever held, and was presumably going in for this one that Baker was judging, so Jack imagined that he would be held up for some time. Presumably he would have a little while in which to try to impress Grace before Baker got here.
He had never worn a dinner jacket and bow tie before; looking at himself in the long mirror of the plush private toilet in the casino, he had been startled to see what a difference it made to him. And maybe, just maybe, so would Grace.
He had been in one of the cubicles when Tony Baker had come in, and had met someone who’d said in fun that he had it made, staying at the Tulliver, because an unattached good-looking blonde with a pub was every man’s dream. And he’d listened as Tony had dismissed Grace as nothing more than an empty-headed irritation. He’d waited until they’d left before he came out, and decided to go home when the next bout finished. Not that he would dream of telling Grace what Baker had said, but she shouldn’t be wasting her time with Baker and his overblown ego, and maybe if she saw Jack in his finery, she’d find him not so bad after all.
He had walked into the pub to find it empty, not an unusual occurrence. Stoke Weston people had to get up early, and it wasn’t yet that time of year when people came from the surrounding towns to spend their evenings in country pubs. Grace had come through as soon as she had heard the bell, run past him, locked the pub door, grabbed his arm and practically dragged him upstairs. He had a feeling that the dinner jacket was unlikely to have produced that effect, and anyway, she was gabbling something about Tony Baker all the time she was doing it. It took longer to get upstairs than she would have liked, because steps were another thing that gave Jack a little trouble.
Now, they were in Tony Baker’s room, and she was showing him what she had found.
“I don’t pry, Jack, I really don’t. But he locks the door all the time, and I hadn’t cleaned in here for over two weeks, so I just let myself in with my key, and I was dusting this table when this file fell, and things came out, and—look. Look what I found.”
She thrust a printout of a photograph into his hands. “Look,” she said. “That’s that bit behind the bank in Stansfield where that man was killed.”
Yes, Jack had recognized it. “Well,” he said, “he’s a journalist, isn’t he? Maybe it was for his paper or something.”
Grace made an impatient noise. “Look at the date!” she said. “The date’s on it, along the bottom. Look at it. That photograph was taken in February, and the murder happened in March. And look at this.” She handed him a sheet of paper on which a list had been ticked off.
Jack read, and what he read certainly did make disturbing reading. No cameras. Room for two cars only. Secluded. Poor lighting. No residential buildings . . .
“Jack—do you think it’s him?” Her voice was no more than a whisper. “Do you think he’s the one who killed these people?”
It was
clearly what she thought, and that rather suited Jack, but he thought it best not to reply.
“What else could that mean?” she demanded. “It must be him. I don’t want him here—should I call the police?”
Jack looked at it. “I don’t know what to make of it,” he said. “But calling the police might be a bit strong, without hearing his side of it.”
“But what’s it all about?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “But I think you might be jumping to conclusions. Let’s look at the other stuff.”
They spent some time going through the papers, and everything they found made Grace more and more suspicious.
“I’m going to call the police,” she said.
“I really think you should wait and see what he says.”
“Are you going to wait with me?”
“Yes, of course I will.”
“Maybe we should put on his laptop,” she said. “See what else he’s got.”
“I think that might be a bit—”
“He could be sending these letters to himself! How do we know he isn’t?”
Jack didn’t have the chance to respond to that, because Tony Baker himself was in the doorway.
“Is there a problem?” he asked.
For a moment, neither he nor Grace spoke, then Jack felt that there was little point in trying to be diplomatic, and plunged in. “Grace is a bit bothered by what you’ve got in this file,” he said.
“It fell open,” Grace said quickly, her voice scared. “I couldn’t help but look at it.”
Baker looked puzzled. “Did I forget to lock the door?”
“No, but the room has to be cleaned.”
“Of course it does. I’m sorry, I didn’t think.” He came in, and picked up the file. “And I’m not surprised you’re worried about me, if you’ve been looking at this,” he said. “But I can explain. Shall we go down?”
Baker led the way, and Jack stood aside to let Grace go ahead of him. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m right behind you.”
Well, he was behind her, at any rate. Not exactly right behind her, since it took him rather longer than it took her to get downstairs again. Grace waited at the foot of the stairs for him, and they went into the sitting room together. Tony Baker was standing by the fireplace, looking penitent.
“I’m glad you’ve decided to hear me out,” he said.
Jack sat beside Grace on the sofa, and waited to hear what he had to say for himself.
“I’m really sorry that you got such a shock,” he said. “But that’s how I hope to find out who the murderer is.”
Jack frowned. “How come you’ve got a photograph of the very place that bloke in Stansfield was killed? Taken three weeks before it happened?”
“It’s in the file because it did happen,” said Baker. “I took photographs of a dozen places in Stansfield, and one of them turned out to be where it happened, as I thought it would. And now it’s in that file, because I can study it, and that lets me know his preferences.”
“I don’t understand,” said Grace.
“I know how this man thinks,” said Baker. “I’ve met him a dozen times in my career. I knew from what happened in Malworth what sort of place he would choose in Stansfield. And I tried—unsuccessfully—to narrow it down to one place. Because if I can do that, there’s a chance that I will even be able to work out who his victim might be.”
“What good would that do?” asked Jack.
“If I can find his likely victim, I can find him, and stop him before he does any harm.”
Grace still looked at him suspiciously. “How?”
“I don’t have a clue who the murderer is,” Baker said, “so I have no suspect to tail. But if I can work out who he might have down as his target, I can tail the potential victim, like I did before. If I’m wrong, then it makes no difference to anyone. But if I’m right, then I can prevent him killing again.”
“Covering yourself in glory while you’re at it,” Jack said.
“Yes.”
Jack was startled by the candid answer.
“I’m quite prepared to admit that I’d like to find him myself, and beat the police to it for the second time. It would do me no harm to win this challenge, and my pride is even a little bit at stake.” Baker sat down in the armchair opposite them.
“Do the police know what you’re doing?” Jack asked.
“They know I’m trying to find him. They don’t know how. And they would laugh at me if I told them, but—as you see—it was partially successful. I really do know quite a bit about this sort of thing.”
Grace had never lost the look of distrust. “But how could you know where he was going to kill that man?” she asked.
“I just . . . think myself into his mind. I knew it would be somewhere like the alley in Malworth—somewhere that wasn’t overlooked by houses, that didn’t have strong lighting. I thought it would be carried out at night again. But there were about ten places that it could have been—that was just one of them. I can show you all the other photographs if you don’t believe me.”
Grace didn’t respond.
“But the second murder gave me a lot more to go on than the first, and I might get closer this time.” He smiled. “I don’t stand a hope in hell of succeeding, but to be honest, I’m almost enjoying the challenge. No—if I’m really being honest, I am enjoying it. I know people have died, and I know it isn’t a game, but it’s much more my thing than documenting people’s gambling habits.”
Jack looked at Grace, but despite the frank explanation she still looked thoroughly scared by what she’d found, and totally unconvinced. He would wait until Stephen was home before he left, he decided. She would be afraid to be left all on her own with Baker. Jack was surprised when he saw the time; Stephen was a creature of habit.
“Stephen’s late tonight, isn’t he?”
“What? Oh, yes. He was working in Barton tonight.” Grace looked at the clock. “All the same,” she said, “he is late.” Her eyes suddenly widened in fear again. “You don’t think anything’s happened to him, do you?”
Jack wished he had kept his big mouth shut. “No, of course not. He’ll just have been held up. How come he’s in Barton? He doesn’t usually go there, does he?”
“Not usually. But he finishes at half past ten. What if something’s happened?”
“I’m sure nothing’s happened,” Jack said. “Maybe he went out for a drink to celebrate his birthday.”
“He wouldn’t do that—he’s on the bike.”
“Well, it wouldn’t have to be alcoholic, Grace. Like I said, he’ll just—”
As he spoke, the back door of the pub opened and closed, and Stephen appeared in the sitting room, looking a little startled at the threesome he found there, as well he might, thought Jack.
“Where have you been?” said Grace. “I was worried about you.”
“I got held up at the club. And then the bike wouldn’t start, and it broke down on the way home.”
“You could have phoned.”
“Sorry.”
“It’ll be your birthday in twenty minutes,” said Baker. “Would you like your present now?”
Stephen looked for a moment as though he was going to say that he didn’t, but then he smiled. “Why not?” he said.
And thus it was that Jack found himself at an impromptu and rather strange birthday party, with everyone trying to look as though that was what they wanted to do. But Grace opened a bottle of champagne, and that seemed to relax her a little.
“Well, I’ll be off then,” said Jack, when Stephen had opened his presents, and the champagne had been drunk. “I’ll give you my present tomorrow, Stephen. I’ll see myself out, Grace.”
But Stephen followed him to the door. “What’s going on? Mum looked as if she’d seen a ghost when I came in.”
“Just a misunderstanding. She’ll tell you herself if she’s a mind to.”
Stephen looked puzzled, but he didn’t inquire further. “Oka
y,” he said, his voice doubtful. “I’ll see you.”
“Yep. See you, Stephen.”
Jack went out into the still balmy night, and began the short walk home. Thinking that Tony Baker was the murderer had meant that for once Grace wasn’t making eyes at the man, which was better than nothing, he supposed. But his own new suave image hadn’t exactly taken her breath away.
Still, she had turned to him when she needed help, so things were definitely looking up.
CHAPTER SEVEN
* * *
Stephen had gone to bed not long after Jack had left, but he hadn’t slept. Ben had rung to wish him happy birthday, and had asked him all about the murders, which were national news once again. Stephen still didn’t tell him that he had been questioned about them.
They had talked for a long time, until Ben had to go to bed. He had lectures to attend in the morning, he’d said. It was all right for Stephen, working the odd hours that he did—he could stay in bed in the morning, but Ben couldn’t. So Stephen had finally let him go, but not until he’d asked him what he thought about his dad playing host to Stoke Weston’s May Day celebrations—Ben always found his father’s grand gestures a bit much. But it turned out that Ben didn’t know about it. When Stephen explained, Ben said that it would give him an excuse to come down that day, so they could see each other. He couldn’t get away over the weekend because there was something he had to do at university, but he had the Monday off because it was a holiday in Scotland, too.
He found it hard to sleep after that, as he always did when they had spoken. He wished Ben was here, that he hadn’t had to go to university so far away, and he was excited about May Day. But another reason that he couldn’t sleep was his awareness that his mother and Tony Baker were both still downstairs, though it was now well after three o’clock in the morning. He could hear the rise and fall of their voices as they spoke quietly, though he couldn’t make out what they were saying. It was unusual for his mother to stay up so late, and it was unheard of for Tony, who usually shut himself in his room as soon as he came in. But the evening had been strange—finding Tony and Jack and his mother in the sitting room had been odd, to say the least. Tony and Jack had been in their tuxedos, so they must have come to the pub from the boxing thing that Waterman had put on. Whatever this misunderstanding had been was presumably still being discussed, far into the night.