Murder Served Cold

by Paula Williams

  “Yes, but there’s something else. I’ve found out that he has financial problems. According to my source, he and Donald – that’s the landlord of the village pub – had quite a set-to about his bar bill. And then, of course, there was the row that he had with Doreen Spetchley. It’s all beginning to stack up against him, wouldn’t you say?”

  “What I would say, Kat, is that you should back off,” Liam said sharply. “This isn’t a game, you know. This is the real thing. Two women have died.”

  My stomach lurched. “Are you saying Doreen was murdered as well?”

  “No, I’m not. At the moment, the police are treating her death as an accident, but what I am trying to say is that somewhere out there is a very desperate person, someone who will stop at nothing to cover his – or her – tracks. Someone, too, who may not appreciate somebody like you going around asking awkward questions. So, my advice to you is to forget all about Gerald Crabshaw.”

  “But if he’s guilty…”

  “Then the police will deal with it. That’s their job. And I might as well tell you, I’m putting my investigation into him on hold for the moment. At least until the police have finished looking into the fire. The last thing I want is to tread on their toes. And that’s the last thing you should want as well. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”

  “Yes, ok. I take your point. To be honest, I’m more than a little relieved. The whole thing was giving me nightmares. So, I suppose this means there’s no point in us meeting up tomorrow now?”

  “There’s every point in us meeting up. Is 11 o’clock in the coffee shop in Dintscombe High Street convenient for you?”

  “I’ll be there,” I assured him. “What sort of job are we talking about? It’s not another surveillance job, is it?”

  “Hardly. But I’ll explain tomorrow. However, I should warn you, it has nothing to do with murder, corruption or anything like that. Something much more mundane, I’m afraid.”

  With the image of the blackened wreckage of Doreen Spetchley’s cottage still fresh in my mind, I reckoned I’d settle for mundane any day.

  ***

  “I’m so sorry I’m late,” I said, as I hurried into the coffee shop a little after ten past eleven. “The bus was late, then there are temporary traffic lights on the main road that took ages and…”

  “It doesn’t matter a bit,” Liam closed his laptop and stood up. “I’ll get you a coffee. You look as if you could do with one. How do you like it?”

  “Black, no sugar, please.” I watched him as he threaded through the crowded tables and made his way up to the counter. Tall, slim and elegant in a casual, unstudied way, with his faded denim jeans and soft leather biker jacket, he drew admiring glances from most of the women there.

  So Liam thought I looked as if I could do with a coffee, did he? What was that supposed to mean? I took an anxious peek in the mirror on the wall opposite. I looked – and felt – a mess. The succession of sleepless nights I’d had were written in the dark circles under my eyes, the pallor of my skin and the lankness of my hair.

  Liam, on the other hand, looked like he was fairly crackling with life. There was an air of suppressed excitement about him and the sparkle in those clear grey eyes was like sunlit frost on a crisp winter day. No wonder every woman in the coffee shop was lusting after him. I’d probably be doing so myself if I had the energy.

  “So, how are you?” he asked as he placed the coffee in front of me and took the seat opposite.

  I shrugged. “I’ve been better. I’m not sleeping too well at the moment. I keep thinking of Doreen. First Marjorie, now her, and it’s really freaking me out, the thought that I’m involved in some way with both. I’m beginning to think I must be jinxed.”

  “Of course you’re not jinxed. You just had the terrible bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s all.”

  “Correction. Wrong places at the wrong times. Plural.” I pointed out.

  He shrugged. “Like I said, bad luck. I think the best thing to do is to forget all about that and concentrate on something different. That is, providing you were serious about working for The Chronicle?”

  “Of course I am,” I said, my tiredness miraculously slipping away. “So, what is it? Another research assignment?”

  He grinned. “Nothing so exciting, I’m afraid. Just plain, boring, run-of-the-mill stuff, as I warned you.”

  “That’s ok. After the week I’ve had, I’m more than happy to settle for boring and mundane.”

  “OK. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. There’s a meeting of Much Winchmoor Parish Council tonight and when I told Mike – that’s the editor – about you, he was willing to let you have a go at covering it for us. You’ll be paid lineage – that is, so much per line, at standard NUJ rates. It won’t earn you a fortune, but it’ll be a start. Something to put on your CV. How about it? Are you interested?”

  “I certainly am.” I thought how Will had teased yesterday about how The Chronicle was nothing but parish council meetings and dog shows, and couldn’t wait to tell him. “And the dog show? Would you like me to cover that too?”

  “Is there one? Well, you can, if you like. It’s up to you. What Mike’s trying to do is set up a network of local correspondents in the area, who report on things of interest in their own villages. You would be the first. If it works out, he’s hoping to extend it to more villages.”

  “Local correspondent, eh?” I laughed. “You mean, I’d be a sort of Kate Adie?”

  “Yeah, I suppose so. Although I have to say, you’re a whole lot better looking than her.”

  Suddenly, I forgot the rings under my eyes, the pallor of my skin, the lankness of my hair. If Liam thought I looked ok, that was good enough for me. “I can’t thank you enough, Liam,” I said. “I’ll do a good job, I promise.”

  “Sure, I know you will. And I’ll be on the end of the phone if you need any help. As for thanking me, you can do that by holding your nerve and not saying anything about Sunday. If it gets out that I asked you to put Doreen Spetchley under surveillance, that’ll be my job on the line and yours will be over before it even started. Ever since the phone hacking scandal, Mike’s been as jumpy as a kitten about anything that smacks of press intrusion.”

  ***

  It took me longer to get ready for the Parish Council meeting than if I was going on a hot date. Out went the ripped jeans and skimpy tee shirt. In came a skirt I’d found lurking in the back of my wardrobe, and the only remotely sensible sweater I possessed that didn’t have a rude slogan scrawled across the front of it. As for my hair, three shampoos later and I’d finally got rid of most of the purple and green stripe that I’d only sprayed on because I knew it would wind up Mum’s customers. I’d got that right at least – which is more than can be said for the makers of the spray-in colour, who’d promised that it would easily wash out. But, at least after three washes, it had faded to a more subtle shade of lilac with just a hint of sludgy green.

  The care I took over my appearance was a measure of how important this assignment was to me. It was only a parish council meeting, in the village school. But it felt like the first positive step on my road back to a decent job – and out of Much Winchmoor.

  I was way too early, of course. I left my bike propped against the school wall and checked my bag for the third time that evening. Notebook, pen, spare pen. That, according to Liam, was all I needed.

  I took my time, dawdling across the school playground where Jules and I had first met when we started school at the age of five. I lingered under the climbing bars, still there, although the surface beneath them was now a strange rubbery one rather than the bone-crunching tarmac that had been there when I’d swung above it as a harum-scarum kid who, egged on by Will, didn’t know the meaning of the words, ‘be careful’. Just in front of the main door that led into the school were the lines marking out a game of hopscotch and, for one second, I was tempted to see if I could still do it.

  I was so pleased I res
isted the temptation as, seconds later, I heard the click of the gate as someone came in to the playground from the car park.

  “You!” Gerald Crabshaw halted in mid-step, one hand still holding the gate, while his face contorted with rage at the sight of me. “What the devil are you doing here? You’re following me again.”

  “How can I be following you?” I said, sounding a lot more courageous than I felt. “I was here before you. So I could accuse you of following me.”

  “And what are you doing here?” he scowled.

  “If you must know, I’m here for the Parish Council meeting. I’m covering it for The Chronicle.”

  “What?” His short humourless laugh was more of a sneer. “You? Working for The Chronicle? Barmaid to journalist in one day, eh? Well, let me assure you, your new job won’t last any longer than the previous one. I’ll see to that. I’m a personal friend of Mike Chalmers and I’ll be having a word with him. This is harassment, that’s what it is.”

  “What’s going on here, Gerald? Is something wrong?” A tall, white haired man, whom I recognised as a retired solicitor who lived in the High Street, came up behind us. I’d done my homework and knew his name was Stuart Davies and that he was the Chairman of the Parish Council.

  Gerald whirled round. “Good to see you, Stuart. I was just sending this – this person on her way.”

  “Are you here for the meeting?” Stuart smiled kindly at me. Then he turned to Gerald. “Members of the public are welcome to attend council meetings, as Councillor Crabshaw here well knows,” he said.

  “Oh, I’m not a member of the public. I’m from The Chronicle,” I said quickly, and couldn’t resist adding: “I’m the newly appointed local correspondent for Much Winchmoor.”

  “Are you, indeed? How splendid. Come along in then. It’s really rather chilly out here, isn’t it?”

  “If she goes in, I won’t.” Gerald Crabshaw’s voice bristled with scarcely contained anger.

  Stuart turned to face him, his expression bland. “That’s your choice entirely, Councillor Crabshaw. As you know, as our District Councillor, you are always welcome to attend our meetings. So, too, are members of the Press who represent the public. Now, shall we go in?”

  Gerald Crabshaw swore, turned round and stalked off in the direction of the car park, slamming the gate behind him so hard it shook on its hinges.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t want to cause trouble.”

  “Don’t worry. You haven’t. To be perfectly frank, my dear, the fellow’s a complete pain in the you-know-where. But that’s strictly off the record, ok? I’m delighted that we’re finally going to get our meetings covered in The Chronicle, if only to let people in the village know what we as a council do, and, hopefully, to get more of them involved. So, come along in and I’ll introduce you to the Clerk. She’s the one who does the real work around here.” He opened the door for me, ushered me in and added in a low voice, “be prepared to be bored rigid.”

  But as it turned out, I was nothing of the sort. In fact, I was so busy taking notes, trying to keep track of who said what, that an hour and a half flew by in no time as the pages of my notebook filled up nicely. I kept reminding myself that the more I remembered, the more it would earn me in lineage.

  Compared with dispensing pints or rinsing off perm lotion, this was going to be a far easier way of earning money.

  Or so I thought.

  ***

  An easy way to make money? I found out next morning that the previous night’s confidence was sadly misplaced.

  I was sitting at my laptop, the notes from the previous night’s meeting scattered all across the table in front of me, and panic churning my insides. Pages and pages of hieroglyphics and weird, meaningless initials that meant absolutely nothing to me. Who was FS? And what did I mean by ‘fdsly’?

  My head was aching with the effort of trying to make sense of it all. Then there was the small matter of trying to recall all the things I’d learnt in college, things you had to check when writing a report. Then there were those questions I had to ask – and answer – each time I drafted a piece. What were they, now? Something like who, what, where, when and why?

  After a few abortive attempts, I began to produce what I hoped would be acceptable copy. I was struggling to decipher the notes for my third story, an account of a number of complaints that had been received about overgrown footpaths in the area, when it suddenly occurred to me. Last night I’d been too busy just trying to keep up with my note-taking to realise the significance of the item, but now, this morning, I realised that the people who’d taken the trouble to complain to the Parish Council – and Marjorie Hampton’s name was not among them – could also have spoken to her about it, knowing her interest in the village footpaths.

  Excitement fizzed through my veins. This, surely, was something worth following up. I didn’t have the names of the people who’d complained, but I was sure the Clerk would have. I was about to call Liam to see what he thought about it when Mum yelled up the stairs.

  “Katie? Will you come down here, please? Now?”

  Her voice had that she-who-must-be-obeyed quality about it that made me sigh, so I hit the save button and closed my lap top. I looked at my watch. How unfair was that? Just when I was getting stuck in to my ‘proper’ job, and the 11 o’clock shampoo and set must have decided to arrive early.

  “Katie?” Mum’s voice had a strange edge to it that I couldn’t identify. She sounded pretty stressed, that was for sure. “Are you coming? Hurry up and come down. There’s someone here to see you.”

  “Ok. I’m coming, I’m coming. What’s the rush?” I muttered as I hurried down the stairs. Then I stopped dead, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. A policeman was standing in the kitchen, filling it up with his big, dark blue presence. He turned as I came into the room. Then I saw it was Ben and started breathing again.

  “Oh, hi Ben,” I said brightly. “Mum, you remember Ben Newton from school, don’t you?”

  “This is not a social call, Katie,” he said, and something in his voice made my heart skip a beat, before continuing at a fast, erratic pace that couldn’t possibly be good for it.

  He took his notebook out and flipped it open. “Were you driving a pink Fiat Panda in Dintscombe on Sunday afternoon? Vehicle registration number…”

  As he reeled off the number, Mum’s face paled. She looked anxiously across at me. “That’s my car,” she said. “And Katie was driving it with my consent. Is there a problem?”

  “If you don’t mind, Mrs Latcham, I’d prefer it if your daughter answered the questions. Were you driving that particular car in Dintscombe on Sunday afternoon?”

  I nodded, hoping against hope I’d been captured on CCTV going through a red light or something. “Yes.” My voice came out as a high pitched squeak.

  Ben moved forward. Gone was the mate I went to school with. In his place was PC Newton, grim-faced and serious. Something told me he wasn’t interested in me jumping red lights. I took an instinctive step backwards.

  “Then would you care to explain what you were doing, parked outside a house in Park Road, Dintscombe, for over an hour on Sunday afternoon?” he said. “A house which has subsequently burnt to the ground?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I stared at Ben as my brain turned to porridge and my legs to jelly. I put out a hand to grab the back of the nearest chair. What to do? What to say? The only thing I could think of was Liam, warning me that his job, as well as mine, would be on the line if the editor found out that he’d asked me to watch Doreen Spetchley that afternoon.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t quite get that,” I said, playing for time in the hope that my brain would start functioning again. “What was I doing where?”

  “In Park Road, Dintscombe.” He didn’t quite succeed in hiding his impatience. “The lay-by, just outside the entrance to the park, to be precise. Your car was seen there.”

  “My mother’s car,” I hurriedly corrected him before M
um could. “But, yes, I remember now. Of course I do. I’d stopped to take a phone call. After all, that’s what we are told to do, aren’t we? Not to answer our phones while we are driving. Which of course I don’t. Ever. So – so when this call came in, I pulled in to take it.”

  “Really?” He lifted one dark, heavy brow and I couldn’t help wondering if he spent hours in front of the mirror practising that particular yeah-yeah-I’ve-heard-that-one-before look. “It must have been a pretty long phone call. According to our information, you were parked there for well over an hour.”

  “I was?”

  He nodded. “According to a very security-conscious neighbour. He became so suspicious about the length of time you were there that he took the trouble to take a note of your registration number, as well as a very accurate description of the vehicle. And he wondered, as indeed do we, exactly what you were doing all that time?”

  “Yes, well, I admit I stopped there for a few minutes, but I wouldn’t have thought it was that long. Maybe there was another car that came along when he wasn’t looking. I can’t believe he sat at his window watching me for a whole hour. That would have been bonkers.”

  “Indeed. But how many other bright pink cars are there in the area with ‘Chez Cheryl’ painted down the side?”

  I shook my head. What did I do now? Hold out my wrists and say something like ‘it’s a fair cop’? Think, Kat, think, I urged myself.

  “Exactly,’ he said. “Now, shall we start again? What were you doing, parked in the lay-by for over an hour, on Sunday afternoon?”

  I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck. “Well, if you must know,” I said with what I hoped was a sheepish grin. “It’s all a bit embarrassing.”

  Behind me, I heard Mum’s sharp intake of breath. I looked at her, then looked back at Ben and shrugged.

  “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “It won’t be anything I haven’t heard before.”

  “But it might be something—” I took a deep breath and went for it. I was hoping Mum would have taken the hint and left us to it. But she sat there, looking from one to the other of us, like she had a front row seat at a Wimbledon final.