“Can we come in for a moment?” I ask. “You don’t know me Tina but I’m a friend of your dad’s. My name’s Amber.”
“What is it?” she repeats. “What’s wrong?” She turns back into the house and then, at the top of her lungs, shouts, “Dad! Are you awake? That police guy is here with somebody called Amber. Dad?”
I put an arm around her shoulders. “Amber, your dad isn’t at home. That’s why we’re here.”
She jerks away, her eyes darted from me to Charlie. “Where is he? What’s happened?”
“He’s going to be OK. He’s at the local hospital,” I say.
“What? No! What happened to him?”
“Why don’t you take a seat on the sofa for a moment?” Charlie says, his voice all calm and soothing as though he’s trying to reassure her.
“Can I get you a drink or anything?” I ask Tina. “A cup of sweet tea might help with the shock.”
She shakes her head, biting anxiously at her lower lip. “What happened?”
“It looks as though your dad went for a walk and some thugs set about him,” I answer.
“He got beaten up? Around here? That doesn’t make sense,” she says wide-eyes looking from me to Charlie.
I know what she means. I find it hard to believe myself. People don’t just attack people around Palstone. There was a reason for this; it definitely wasn’t random. Just like Joel falling into a quarry, it wasn’t an accident.
She looks terrified, poor kid.
“He’ll be fine. Try not to worry,” I say and then realise how silly that sounds in the circumstances. Of course she’ll worry.
“I want to go and see Dad, but,” she pauses, looking uncomfortable. “I might have had a bit too much to drink earlier at the Dog and Duck, I’m not sure if I’ll be legal to drive.”
“Don’t worry. Amber and I will take you to the hospital as soon as you’re dressed and ready,” Charlie says.
Tina is on her feet in seconds. “I’ll go and get changed.”
Once she’s out of earshot Charlie shakes his head, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I hate this part of the job. Having to tell people that friends and family have been hurt or…” He lets the sentence trail off.
I walk over and squeeze his arm then slip my own through his, leaning my head against his shoulder. “You really are quite a nice guy aren’t you underneath that tough investigator exterior?”
Charlie looks down at me, a faint smile on his lips but his eyes still worried. “Don’t go telling everyone will you?”
I stay in this position for longer than I probably should, enjoying the feel of his jacket against my cheek and the warmth of his body. And the smell of his aftershave. Fresh and woody with hints of citrus, I think. Nice.
I force myself to stand upright and step away from him. Is now an appropriate time to be enjoying cuddles and noticing aftershave? I think not.
Tina appears back in the room, dressed in jeans and a hoodie, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. Dark circles under her eyes suggest a lack of sleep and maybe that she’s been partying a little too much lately.
“Can we go?” she asks impatiently.
Charlie nods. “Of course. Just one more thing. Do you think you could help your dad out by throwing some things in a bag for him? You know, stuff he’ll want when he’s awake - pyjamas, comb, book, anything you can think he’ll need.”
She nods and turns, heading back to the hallway and what we presume to be Bert’s room. A few moments later she’s back with a rucksack, hastily stuffing a grey sweatshirt inside it. “I got some clothes and the book he’s reading and his phone and…”
I meet Charlie’s gaze. Phone? But wouldn’t he have had that with him?
“Tina,” Charlie says in that everything-is-going-to-be-fine tone of voice. “Any chance I could borrow that phone for just a minute? Your dad sent Amber a text earlier and we wondered if he’d tried to contact anybody else as well.”
Tina hands him the phone. “Can I take food into the hospital?” she asks heading for the kitchen. “Only Dad hates being without his chocolate digestives. I could take him some in.”
“Yes,” I reply. “Good idea. Go and get him his favourite biscuits.”
I have one eye on Tina and one on Charlie as he’s checking the phone. I watch as he scrolls through the phone which, thankfully, doesn’t require a passcode to access it. He holds the display up for me to see as we hear Tina clattering around searching for the biscuits in the kitchen. The text message I received from Bert is there.
“He didn’t make any other calls or send or receive any other text messages after the one he sent to you,” Charlie says. “You didn’t send him a reply to say you’d meet him like he’d asked?”
I shake my head. “I should have done, was going to but I was bickering with Debs about whether or not I should meet him and then…”
“And then you found the body in the road,” he finishes for me.
“Do you think someone followed him when he left this house to walk up to the moor?” I ask. “But why would they do that? Surely it wasn’t just a coincidence? We don’t have gangs going round beating people up in the middle of country lanes. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Unless they knew he had something to tell you, about the Joel case presumably and they wanted to shut him up.”
“But how could they know where he was going or what he was about to do? Unless they were somehow keeping tabs on him or his phone and saw the message but that doesn’t…”
“All done. Can we go now?” Tina asks, appearing back in the living room.
Charlie heads for the door and Tina and I follow.
When we arrive at the hospital it seems to take an age to locate Bert. Tina spots some public toilets and says she needs to go and wash her face. She looks wrung out from all the crying she’s been doing in the car on the way here. We both tried to reassure her that Bert will be fine but she’s distraught about the whole thing. As we wait outside Charlie dials the local police liaison officer on the case and asks if they have any news on Bert or the attack.
I eavesdrop anxiously, hoping Bert is going to come out of all this OK.
Just as Charlie finishes his phone call Tina appear from the Ladies, her hair tidied.
“Good news,” Charlie says as Tina joins us. “Your dad has been admitted and already checked over. He’s been badly beaten but there’s no permanent damage they say. He’s sedated for now but you can go in and see him. He’s been admitted to a private ward so the police can keep him under surveillance. Third floor.” He ushers us both towards the lift.
We locate the private room and I’m relieved to see Bert’s cuts have been cleaned up and he doesn’t look half as bad as he did when we found him up on the edge of the moor. Tina pushes forward and the policeman guarding the door steps across to stop her entering.
He glances questioningly at Charlie who flashes his badge and nods. The man moves aside letting Tina into the room where she takes her father’s hand and promptly dissolves into yet more tears.
Charlie must have requested the speedy treatment, the private room and the police watchman I realise. He knows Bert getting beaten up had something to do with Joel’s death. There’s got to be some connection, but what is it?
Charlie continues to examine Bert’s phone, scrolling through calls made and received but says there’s nothing suspicious.
“What are we going to do?” I ask. “We can’t leave a young girl here like this. I know there’s a police guard on the room but she’s upset and Bert is still out of it. I’ll stay with her.”
“Then I’ll stay too,” Charlie says, slipping into one of the plastic chairs in the corridor.
“There’s no need for either of you to stay.”
We both look up to see Tina standing in the doorway. “Before we left the house, when I was in my room getting changed, I called my mum. She’s just texted me to say she’s in the car park. I’ve given her directions up here.”
Charlie gets to his feet. “I’ll go. How do you want the coffees?”
“Erm, black for Mum, milk and two sugars for me.”
He nods. “Got it.” Turning to me he asks, “Want anything?”
I shake my head.
“Won’t be long.”
“He’s going to be all right,” I say to Tina again as we stand and look through the open door into Bert’s room. “Tina, I know this probably isn’t the right time, you’re upset, we all are. But if you can think of anything which might help us find out who did this to your dad then please just call me or Charlie or whoever you feel most comfortable talking to.”
She sniffs, wipes away a tear and nods.
“You can tell us anything in confidence, any time.” I look at her. She looks so fragile. “Promise me you’ll tell us if anything, no matter how unconnected it might seem, pops into your mind?”
“Promise.”
“Sweetheart!”
I turn to see a woman in tracksuit bottoms and a fleece running towards us. She scoops Tina into her arms and then, over her shoulder, catches sight of Bert. I see the flash of pain as she looks at her ex-husband.
She takes a step back from her daughter and looks at her, wiping a tear from her face. “Sweetheart, are you OK? What happened?”
Tina shakes her head and cuddles up to her mum again.
“I’m Amber,” I say. “A friend of Bert’s. He’s going to be fine.”
“Carole Turnbull. I reverted to my maiden name after the divorce,” she explains. “But who would do something like this to him? I don’t understand.”
“Neither do we at the moment.”
“Here you go.” Charlie arrives back with the coffees and hands them out.
“This is Charlie,” I explain. “He’s in charge of the investigation.”
The woman glances at Charlie and then turns back to the room, watching Tina who has now gone back to sit by her dad’s bedside. She sips her coffee.
“I knew I should never have let her come and stay here,” she says with more than a hint of bitterness in her voice.
“Oh?” Charlie says, prompting her to continue.
“Tina has been something of a handful. Always was a challenging child but lately she’s been getting in with the wrong crowd. I spoke to Bert,” she continues. “And we agreed she should come and stay with him for a while. Now Bert goes and gets in some fight and gets himself beaten up, that’s a fine example to set to Tina isn’t it?”
Charlie and I exchange looks behind Tina’s mum’s back.
“What kind of stuff is he involved in then?” she asks Charlie.
“We don’t know,” he replies. “But we will find out. We think this incident may be connected to another case we’re investigating.”
She nods. “Well, I’ll be taking Tina home as soon as all this is sorted out.”
“We’ll need an address and phone numbers for you, in case we need to ask Tina any more questions.”
“Of course,” she frowns. “I’ll write all the details down for you.”
Once Carole has given us a bit of paper with the contact details Charlie folds it into the back pocket of his jeans and nods his head towards the exit. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“There’s nothing more we can do for him now. It’s almost three in the morning. Bert can’t talk to us, not yet. We’ll come back later when he’s not sedated. There’s no need to wake Ennis and Siobhan up in the middle of the night to tell them about Bert. We can do that in the morning. Let’s go and try to get some sleep eh?”
I sigh, reluctantly agreeing with him. My adrenaline high is finally easing off and I’m starting to feel exhausted. “OK.”
Once we reach the road which dips down the hill from the moors into Palstone Charlie slows the car even though we’re still a few miles outside the village and then I see him indicate and pull up to the security gate of Ennis’s house.
Of course. I’d forgotten. I’m supposed to be staying with Charlie tonight at the guest house. In all the time I’ve known Ennis I’ve never stayed at his place, in the main house or the guest house. It seems strange to be staying over. Especially in the guest house with Charlie.
“Don’t worry,” Charlie says as he pushes the buttons on the temporary remote access pad on the dashboard of his car. We wait for the black metal gates to slowly slide open. “You’ll be perfectly safe here and, in case you’re wondering, there are two bedrooms in the guest house.”
Chapter Thirteen
Charlie has demolished a mug of coffee and is on his third breakfast pancake.
“Another?” I ask as I dish up a pancake and smother it with honey and blueberries. Thankfully we both managed to get a few hours rest and recuperation after the chaos and confusion of last night.
I suspect Charlie got more sleep than I did, though I wouldn’t know for definite of course as I was across the hall in the other bedroom. Charlie is used to being in stressful situations, me, not so much. Certainly not stressful situations like finding a friend beaten up on the roadside anyway. When I did manage to fall asleep it didn’t seem to take long before I’d be awake again, reliving the scene up on the moor. Wondering who would do something like that to Bert and why. At one point I ached to get up and go and knock on Charlie’s bedroom door just to ask for a cuddle.
Just a cuddle. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to be held, be reassured, feel safe, but I knew seeking those things from Charlie wouldn’t be a good idea so I’d stayed right where I was and willed myself to sleep instead.
“Tempting. You make a fantastic pancake. But I’ve already had…”
I ignore his half-hearted protest and slide the plate in front of him. He smiles. That smile.
Unsurprisingly the bedroom I slept in was straight out of an interiors magazine. King-size bed with loads of pillows and cushions, a deep soft carpet to sink my toes into and an en suite bathroom. Mine had a Jacuzzi bath tub and walk in power shower area so I’m assuming Charlie’s room does too. I’m grateful Charlie nagged me into staying over because I don’t think I’d have got any sleep at all back at my flat.
I get up to move my mug and plate to the sink when there’s a knock on the door. Charlie pops the last bit of his pancake into his mouth and goes to answer the door. He’s dressed in black tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt and looks totally relaxed.
“Ennis, come in,” he says.
“Sorry to bother you so early but I …” Ennis stops in his tracks when he sees me standing at the kitchen sink, wearing pyjamas, washing dishes. His jaw drops open a little then he ignores me and turns back to Charlie.
“I couldn’t sleep last night and I heard you get back in the early hours. I wondered if something was wrong. Has there been any further developments?” Ennis asks him.
Charlie pours himself another mug of coffee. “Anyone else want a drink?”
I shake my head. Ennis looks from me to Charlie again then shakes his head too.
He gestures for Ennis to take a seat at the dining table. “Yeah, last night Bert was beaten up,” he starts to explain. “He sent a text message to Amber saying he wanted her to meet him up on the edge of the moor near the standing stones. When she got there he was in a bad way. He’s at the hospital but should be OK. He was sedated and stable when we left.”
Ennis gets to his feet, panic in his eyes. “You’re sure he’s going to be OK? Which hospital?”
“He’s in Dinham Royal.” Charlie gets to his feet as well, guiding Ennis to sit back down on one of the dining chairs, to calm down. “I’ll get one of the local police team to take you over there if you like?”
“This has to be connected to what happened with Joel doesn’t it?” Ennis asks, pushing nervous hands through his hair.
Charlie nods. “We think so, yes.”
&nb
sp; Ennis leaps to his feet again. “Tina! Where’s Tina? Does she know?”
“Tina’s fine,” I say, earning myself an irritated glance from Ennis. “We told her and then took her to the hospital. She’s there with her mum.”
“I want to get over to the hospital as soon as possible,” Ennis says to Charlie, ignoring me.
“Of course, I’ll ring the station now,” Charlie says, wandering into the open plan lounge area to fetch his phone from the coffee table where he put it earlier.
Ennis and I stay in the kitchen but there’s a strange tension between us. I get the feeling I have some explaining to do but I’m not going to do it now, with Charlie only a few feet away. Ennis is annoyed with me and I completely understand why. He asked me to shadow Charlie, not move in with him and have sleepovers. Under normal circumstances I’d have felt awkward about staying here without asking Ennis first but last night my head was not in thinking mode and I just wanted to be here, where I felt reasonably safe. I’ll talk to Ennis later and he’ll be fine once he understands the circumstances which lead to this misleadingly domesticated scene of Charlie and me eating breakfast together.
The seconds tick by achingly slowly as silence hangs between us. Turning to the sink I finish the washing up just as Charlie wanders back through.
“All sorted. An unmarked police car will call at the house in fifteen minutes to collect you and escort you to see Bert.”
Ennis nods and heads for the door without saying a word. I glance at Charlie, wondering if he picked up on the uncomfortable atmosphere.
“I’m off to have a shower,” he says.
Obviously he didn’t pick up on it, I think with relief.
Charlie brings his empty mug over to the sink but instead of dumping it on the draining board he leans in close, reaching across me slightly, and washes it in the bowl, the warmth from his bare arm against mine making my stomach tingle.
“Ennis seems to really care about his staff,” he says. “He seemed really upset when he left.”
And The Earth Moved: Romantic Comedy Cozy Mystery (Amber Reed CCIA Mystery Book 1) Page 9