by Clare Revell
“OK. This has been going on since...” Jude told the officers everything, including the time she’d assumed she’d been sleep walking as things had gone missing from the house and washing line, or been moved, but now wasn’t sure.
Bev listened with a growing sense of alarm. It sounded more and more like stalking to him, and judging from the look the two police officers exchanged, they’d reached the same conclusion. But Jude seemed to have relaxed a little having said what was going on.
“I want someone to check the car over before you get it repaired,” DI Jenson said. “Was the shop locked?”
“Kate said she’d lock up before she left. I normally go out the back way and set the alarm.”
“And it was the same bloke?”
“Yes. He was here earlier, I recognized his voice.”
Bev sat up straight. “What? When?”
“The bloke at the door when you went to look at the car and check the house.”
“The one Gran spoke to—the one I got rid of?” He pulled the leaflet from his pocket. “This one?”
DS Holmes took the leaflet. “I’ll chase it up. I’ll also go and speak to your grandmother and then track down this Kate. Do you have her address?”
“At the shop.”
DI Jenson nodded. “I’ll call you with it, Nate. I’ll take Miss Travis over to the shop now and check it out.” She turned to Jude. “I’ll bring you home after.”
“OK.”
“Thank you for your time, Mr. King, and for informing us. We’ll handle it from here.”
Bev stood up. “No worries. Gran is this way, sergeant.” He touched Jude’s hand as she stood. “Are you still on for later or do you want to give it a miss?”
She tilted her head.
“The walk and cake test,” he reminded her.
She smiled. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. That cake won’t eat itself. I’ll call in when I get back.”
~*~
Jude locked the shop and let Milly drive her home. “Sorry I can’t be more help.”
“At least we know how he got in. You need to get the locks changed.”
Jude nodded. “I’ll do it first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Good. And if you see the bloke again you call us. No arguments.” Milly stopped at the lights. “So, tell me about Bev King.”
“Not much to tell. He’s Mrs. Bowen’s grandson.”
“And you’re walking out with him, so I want the details.”
“I’m not walking out with him.” Jude frowned, worry flickering. “Are you still on duty?”
“Only if I need to be. You’re going for a walk and eating cake with a bloke I’ve only just discovered exists, at the same time you tell me you’ve been stalked for weeks. I have every right as a friend to be concerned. So, details, girlfriend.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Don’t give me that.” Milly’s voice sharpened and sounded distinctly official. “I could just put his name into my computer back at the nick and see what turns up.”
Jude sighed. “Fine. He’s in the army and that’s why I can’t tell you anything. He’s on R and R and we met for the first time properly yesterday. Though I’ve been writing to him for two or three months now.”
Milly raised an eyebrow. “He’s your squaddie?”
“That’s why you’re a cop.” Jude winked at her. “Please don’t ask me more, because it’ll put him in more danger than he’s already in wherever he’s based.”
“And you like him? Because his body language earlier gave away the fact he likes you.”
She huffed. “Like I said, we only met yesterday. But yeah, he’s nice. Ruggedly handsome, funny, and a Christian. A few things he said in his letters make me think so anyway.” She paused. “But yes, I’ll make sure before I commit to anything.”
Milly parked outside Jude’s house. She pulled up the handbrake and turned in her seat. “Now, remember. If you see this bloke again—”
“Which bloke? Bev, or the other one?”
“The stalker,” Milly said sharply.
Jude resisted the urge to roll her eyes as her friend was only looking out for her. “Then I’ll ring 101 or 999 if I’m threatened. Thank you. I’ll call you tomorrow.” She hugged Milly and jumped out of the car. She ran up the path and let herself in. She noted that Milly waited until she was inside before pulling away.
She shut the door and leaned against it. Was she over reacting here? Perhaps it was nothing, although Milly and DS Holmes didn’t seem to think so. She deadlocked the front door and went upstairs to close all the rest of the curtains. It wasn’t quite dark yet, but wouldn’t be long before it was.
The doorbell rang, making her jump. Then she shook her head. Stalkers or thieves didn’t ring the doorbell. She peered through the spyhole, then opened the door.
Bev stood there, a bunch of forget-me-nots in his hand, and a smile lighting his eyes. Five o’clock shadow, or was it the beginnings of a beard, covered his chin. “Hi.” He held out the flowers. “These are for you.”
Jude took them. “Thank you. I love forget-me-nots. They’re my favorite flower. Come in.”
“Thanks. Gran had a whole load in the garden, she won’t miss a few.” He closed the door, raising an eyebrow as Jude deadlocked it immediately. “How are you doing? Other than jumpy and double locking doors.”
“Stupid, relieved someone else knows. Milly wants me to get the locks at the shop changed as there is a set of keys missing.”
“Then get the house ones changed as well,” Bev said firmly. “Whoever this bloke is knows where you live and from what you said could have been in here already moving things. Ring a locksmith now, and see if he could come out tonight to change the house locks and do the shop first thing tomorrow.”
“I don’t…” Jude hesitated, worried about the callout fee. “Besides, I need your Gran’s permission to change the locks.”
“You have mine,” Bev told her. He shook his head and grabbed the phone book. “Pick one,” he said tossing the book to her. “I’ll call and stay while he comes out. And I’ll pay for the new locks.” As she raised an eyebrow, he winked. “Well, the house ones, anyway.”
Jude pointed to one at random and gave him the phone. “I’ll go and put the kettle on.” She headed into the kitchen while Bev spoke rapidly on the phone.
After a moment, he joined her. “OK, he’ll be here in twenty minutes and at the bakery at nine tomorrow morning. So maybe we’ll just eat cake tonight and go for a walk tomorrow. As your car is out of action tomorrow, I’ll drive you in when you need to go.”
“At six in the morning?”
“Why not? I can help, maybe, and hang around until he’s changed the locks there. I don’t like to think of you being alone when some maniac has the spare keys.”
“Sounds good.” She smiled faintly, hoping it wasn’t a maniac who had the missing keys. “The plates are in the middle cupboard, forks in the top drawer.”
Bev looked surprised. “Forks?”
“To eat the cake with.”
He shook his head. “That’s a bit posh, isn’t it? God gave us fingers long before forks were invented.”
“OK.” Jude tilted her head. “Forget the forks and plates. We’ll just have to clean up the crumbs afterwards. Or we can use kitchen roll.”
Bev chuckled. “That would save on the washing up. Plates are kind of essential though, especially when eating curry.”
“Do you use your fingers for that too?” she asked, trying to keep a straight face. Around him she could forget her worries and just be herself. Something she hadn’t been for a while, not since Jayden died.
“Oh, all the time,” he deadpanned.
Jude cut four slices of cake, putting two on each plate. “There you go. Both identical, bar the sprinkles on the top. One’s green and one’s yellow so I know which is which.”
“But red velvet cake should have red—oh, I see what you did there. Clever.”
She grinned. �
��Dig in. I’ll make the coffee and join you.”
“Black with no sugar, please. As Gran would say, I’m sweet enough without needing the extra sugar.”
“Really?” she asked. “Then what do you do with all the sugar I send?”
“Give it to someone else. Nothing goes to waste out there.”
She poured the coffee. “Hmm, maybe you should pack your next box. I was going shopping tomorrow.”
“Nah, you get far more in a box than I ever could. Besides, if I packed it, then it wouldn’t be a surprise when it came.” He grinned. “This cake is good.”
“Thank you. Now try the other piece.”
He did so as she took the cups over. “It’s a shame you can’t send me cake.”
“No homemade stuff in case we give the troops food poisoning,” she told him seriously.
“You’re kidding.” He looked at her aghast. “Some of the wives send stuff out.”
“That’s different. They’re family and you are used to their cooking. I might put nuts in it and kill you.”
He studied her over the top of his cake. “I like nuts. But is that really one of the rules?”
She nodded. “Along with no top shelf stuff from the newsagents.”
“Now that I wouldn’t want. I know most of the lads do, even some of the married ones, but I wouldn’t.” He swallowed and looked hard at the cake. “It isn’t easy being a Christian on the battlefield anyway, but there are some temptations I don’t even want in my way to complicate things. The pastor in my parents’ church on my last leave said ‘once seen something can never be unseen’. So I’d rather not see it if that makes sense.”
“It does.” She watched him, then broke off a piece of cake. “It must be hard on the married blokes out there.”
“It’s part of the job. It’s actually harder on the wives, to be honest. We’re out there working, doing what we’ve been trained for. Yes, we’re putting our lives on the line every minute of every day, but back here, they don’t see it like we do. For example, when Op Minimize is on we’re completely cut off. No one can contact home, to reassure them it’s a drill, or just an injury, or that the PM or someone else has made an unannounced visit, and we’re on lockdown.”
Jude nodded. “Someone did mess up once. They discovered the name of a soldier who’d died before it was officially released by the MOD and put it on social media.”
“What?” His eyes darkened. “You are kidding me?”
She shook her head. “They posted his name, rank and unit along with an RIP on their status and tagged him in it. The problem was his wife saw it before she was informed by the MOD.”
Bev looked away, sighing heavily, his eyes clouding. “That’s just horrible. I’m surprised they still let you friend us.”
“We can’t tag you in anything. I can like, comment, but have to be careful what I write. So a status saying that Bev King’s squaddie box is on its way to BFPO blah blah blah isn’t going to happen. But I can say squaddie box posted. So long as you don’t like that particular post.”
He clicked his fingers. “Darn. Actually if you did send it to BFPO blah, blah, blah I’d never get it because I’m not based there.” He finished the cake. “That was really good.”
“So, which one was the packet mix.”
Bev scrunched up his nose in thought then pointed. “The green one.”
The doorbell rang. “That’ll be the locksmith,” Jude said.
Bev stood. “I’ll deal with him. Just tell me, was I right?”
She grinned. “No, it’s the yellow one. Should I be insulted?”
He blew her a kiss on his way to answer the door. “Yes. Probably. I think. I’ll have to have another piece to test it again.”
She shook her head as she cleared up, hearing him chatting to the locksmith in the hallway. She could get used to having him around. But his leave wouldn’t last forever and this was only the second time she’d seen him.
6
Sunday morning, Bev sat with Jude and Gran. As the service finished, he smiled. Jude had been right about not being able to sing, but he didn’t care. “Are you busy today?”
She shook her head. “I was planning a microwaved ready meal for dinner, so no. Why?”
“Gran’s off to the manse for the day, so do you fancy coming out with me?”
She smiled. “I’d love to. Where did you have in mind?”
“The beach.”
Jude laughed. “Really? The beach and sand? A busman’s holiday or what? But, yes, I love the beach.”
“Then let’s go. We can be back in time for the evening service, or we can find a church down there.”
“The latter,” she said.
Bev drove down the motorway to the coast, his mind whirling. It had only been five days since he’d met her. Was that all? He’d seen her every evening and she was the most amazing woman he’d ever been fortunate enough to meet. If this bloke was still hanging around, they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him. Perhaps he’d backed off since the locks had changed.
Or perhaps it was because Jude was being chauffeured to and from work for now. Her car had been fixed, but she wasn’t objecting to Bev driving her in each day. It hadn’t just been the tires, the brakes had also been cut, although he hadn’t shared that snippet of information with her when he’d arranged for the garage to come and collect the car.
“Which beach are we going to?” Her voice cut into his thoughts.
“Bournemouth. We can park in town and walk down through the gardens. Figured we’d have ice cream on the sand. We might have to stop at the service station to eat though. I’m starving.”
“That will cost a bomb…I mean a fortune,” she corrected.
“Nah, it’ll be fine. It’s my treat today because you paid last night.”
“So long as you let me buy the ice creams.”
“Deal.” He drove for another hour and then stopped at the busy services. He led her inside and after a pit stop, walked with her to the eating area. “Go and find a table, and I’ll get the food.” He watched her head off as he joined the queue. He decided on a roast and got bottles of soda with straws to go to accompany the meal. That way they could take the bottles with them if they didn’t finish them.
He paid and then picked up the tray, looking for Jude in the packed seating area. He spotted her by the window and carried the tray across. He set it down on the table.
“That looks good,” Jude said. “My stomach’s decided it’s hungry after all. I got cutlery. Unless you don’t want to use any again.”
He chuckled. “Today I will.”
“I thought it was Sunday not cutlery-day.”
He laughed as he sat down. He set the tray against the table leg. “Oh, we could have sundaes for dessert. They did have some over there. In those really tall glasses.”
“I haven’t had one of those in years.”
Bev gripped her hands for a moment as he said grace. Then he let go and shook out his serviette. “We created our own sundaes in our stainless steel mugs once, with whatever we had to hand.”
“Was it any good?” She began eating.
“Crushed up ginger biscuits, cold rice pudding, more crushed biscuits, chopped up jelly and marshmallows on top.” He paused. “What do you reckon?”
Jude scrunched up her nose. “Ewww.”
“Yup.” He took a bite of his meal. Jude was so easy to be with. His heart thrilled to be around her, the thought they had the whole day together caused his spirit to sing. Is she the one, Lord? I’m normally so useless around women, with no idea what to say. I’m clumsy and basically what the lads call a blithering idiot. But with Jude it’s so effortless. It’s like it’s meant to be. Two halves of the same whole.
“What are you thinking?”
He realized he’d been staring at her as he ate and swallowed, covering his lapse by picking up his drink. “How much I like being with you.” He may as well be honest, rather than just making something up.
Her smi
le lit her eyes and sent ripples running through him. “The feeling’s mutual.”
“It…it is?” He stumbled over the words, not quite believing what he was hearing.
She nodded. “You’re just like your letters. Cute, funny, dashing.”
Bev’s cheeks burned. “Don’t let my unit know you think I’m cute,” he managed. “I’ll never live it down.”
Jude grinned. “Next letter comes addressed to Lt. Col Cute then.”
He rolled his eyes. “It’d never get delivered, fortunately.”
“What I meant was, there is nothing false about you. You’re a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of a bloke.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” He gave her a half salute.
She grinned. “Whereas me—?”
“You, Miss Jude, are nothing like you think.” He interrupted her firmly.
“I’m not pretty. I’m not thin, despite being on a constant diet. I’m no singer.”
“There are more important things to be and looks…” He paused, not wanting to mess this up and have his words come out wrong. “While you are quite pretty, looks are only skin deep. It’s what’s on the inside of a person that counts. I mean, you can be a size six, skinny as a rake, with blonde hair, or be a page three pin-up, but have a foul mouth and temper to match.” He held her gaze. “You have the most amazing eyes, did you know that?”
She blushed.
“And you may not think you’re pretty, but you are.”
“Pretty plump,” she muttered.
“No, you’re not,” he countered. “And it’s time you realized that numbers are irrelevant.”
“My numbers aren’t irrelevant. They are too large.”
“Sizes vary from shop to shop. Some places I’m a medium and others I need a large. I just buy things that fit, feel comfortable and ignore the labels. I had this amazing leather jacket once, that fitted to a tee. But because it was an XXL, I cut the label out so no one else would know.” He ran his gaze over her and smiled. “Looking at you, honestly all I see are curves in all the right places. You should dress to flatter them.”