The Company She Kept

by Marjorie Eccles

  Abigail put down her plate and cup, took stock of what she could see of the rest of the shop and sat herself down on the same side of the table as Alex. ‘Better sit here, where I can keep a weather eye. I’ve been following the woman who’s just gone into the back premises.’

  ‘Who is she?’ Alex asked.

  ‘Name of Sophie Lawrence. Earlier this morning we interviewed her, in the course of which she told us a fib about having an appointment with her hairdresser. Maybe it was just to get rid of us – the DCI was getting a bit too near the mark for comfort as far as she was concerned – but when I saw her in front of me at the traffic lights a few minutes ago, I knew she hadn’t had time to get her hair done. It’s nearly as long as mine,’ she said, tossing the thick chestnut plait that hung between her shoulders. ‘So I decided to follow her, since I’d also just found out she’d lied to us about something else, from a girl who lives with her.’

  Abigail had found the girl alone in the art room at the Poly, in a thick fug of turps fumes and tobacco smoke, enjoying an illicit drag before her class began. Her name was Maggie Renfrew.

  ‘Yes, I was out on Tuesday evening, from quarter to seven to about ten,’ she confirmed, stubbing out her cigarette and throwing the windows wide. ‘I run a couple of evening classes here every week, as well as this one.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t know if Mrs Lawrence was home all evening?’

  Maggie regarded Abigail steadily. ‘What does she say?’

  ‘It’s just a matter of confirmation. She says she was.’

  ‘Well, then, she was.’ Examining a clutch of brushes which had been stuck in a jar, the girl added, ‘Anyway, she would be at home, wouldn’t she, when she was entertaining a gentleman friend? Oops, not quite what I meant!’

  ‘Who was this? Someone you know?’

  ‘Couldn’t say. I never actually saw him – only heard his voice when I passed the drawing-room door. How it was, I got half way here on my bike and then found I’d forgotten something ... actually it was the written assessments of my students’ work. They’re a bind to do but the Poly decrees they must have them and the pupils are apt to get a bit shirty if I forget.’ Squatting in front of a low cupboard, she began extracting piles of drawing paper, speaking over her shoulder. ‘So even though it was raining cats and dogs, I shot back and that was when I saw the car outside and realized Sophie had a visitor.’

  ‘What time would that have been?’

  Maggie sat back on her heels and considered. ‘It didn’t take me more than a minute to dash upstairs for my papers and be off again, but I only just made it back here for half past, so it must’ve been about ten past, quarter past seven. The car wasn’t there when I got back again, though, just before ten.’

  ‘Was it one you’d ever seen there before?’

  ‘No,’ Maggie replied, standing up. ‘But I don’t clock in all her callers. None of my business.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you know what kind it was, either?’

  ‘Well, I can’t say I know much about cars, a bike being the most I can aspire to for the foreseeable future, and I was in a big rush, but I reckon even I know a Jag when I see one.’

  ‘What about the number?’

  ‘Not a hope. I’d never notice that, I’m numerically illiterate. I can tell you the colour, though – that’s something I always notice! It was that lovely dark racing green. It might have been one of the newer models – or on the other hand, just in good nick, I wouldn’t know.’

  It was only a few minutes after leaving Maggie Renfrew, when Abigail was halted at a red light, that she had seen Sophie Lawrence a couple of cars ahead in the red Datsun which had been parked outside her house, and realized that she couldn’t have been to the hairdresser in the time – so she’d either failed to keep the appointment, or been fibbing about having one in the first place. The lights changed and on impulse she had followed her into the car park, through the shopping centre and had finally seen her enter the bookshop, have a word with Liz Conran and go straight into the back quarters.

  ‘I’m beginning to think I’ve over-reacted and she’s here quite legit, but I might as well have some lunch while I’m here,’ she said to Alex, tucking into a large wedge of quiche.

  ‘A man went through to the back about fifteen minutes ago,’ Alex offered. ‘Then when the woman arrived Liz took coffee and cakes in for two.’

  ‘What was he like?’ Abigail was suddenly hopeful again. ‘Big chap, reminded me of someone.’

  ‘You couldn’t hazard a guess who?’

  ‘Sorry, it was only a fleeting glimpse. Someone you’re interested in?’

  ‘Could be – especially if he came in a dark green Jaguar.’ She didn’t expect Alex to have seen it, though, since there were double yellow lines in the street outside.

  ‘Unlikely,’ said Alex. ‘He was carrying a crash helmet.’

  ‘Oh. Oh well, I suppose she’s a right to arrange her assignations here if she wants. He might even be her accountant! She owns this place, did you know?’

  ‘No, though I knew the Conrans didn’t. Does she really? She looks a bit young for that sort of caper.’

  ‘She’s older than she looks, and anyway she has money, left her by her parents. She bought it as an investment, or so Nick says.’ The pause was barely perceptible. ‘Nick Spalding, I mean, he’s married to her sister,’ she said, a little too casually.

  For a while they talked station gossip. ‘Any joy with your house-hunting?’ Alex asked, finishing the last chocolate mouthful and pushing her plate away.

  ‘As it happens, yes. I’ve seen the loveliest little house, two up, two down, kitchen added to the back, bathroom above. Not in very good shape, which is one of the reasons I can afford it, but –’ Abigail broke off, tracing the chequered pattern of the cloth with her finger. ‘It might not be such a good spec ... if I had to leave quickly, for instance.’

  ‘Leave? You haven’t been here five minutes!’

  ‘All the same, I’d move tomorrow if it meant promotion! Oh, I’m happy enough here. But there’s a possibility I might have to move, for personal reasons.’ She added after a cautious assessment of Alex, ‘To do with Nick Spalding, as I think you’ve guessed.’

  Alex had for some time been intuitively aware of the situation existing between the young Sergeant and DC Spalding, though both Abigail and Spalding himself had been careful not to make it obvious and Alex thought few others suspected. Perhaps her awareness of it sprang from the fact that it was in some way a reflection of her own circumstances. She thought Abigail had brains, ambition, and susceptibility, a dangerous combination, and that Nick Spalding was deep and difficult. Also much older than Abigail, besides being junior to her in rank. She could see trouble ahead but that was their business; they were both old enough to know the score.

  She wouldn’t have pursued the subject had Abigail not made it plain she wanted to talk, so she drank the last of her coffee, registered interest and waited for Abigail to go on.

  The two women had struck up an immediate rapport when they’d first met and Abigail knew Alex would understand, if not sympathize with her. It wasn’t really an appropriate time to broach the subject, when their talk was likely to be interrupted any minute, but Abigail was possessed of an impulsive streak, the same unthinking impulse that had started all this miserable business. She was aghast now, looking back, at how careless she’d been, how thoughtlessly she’d allowed the situation to develop, with the possibility of endangering not only her career prospects, but Nick’s chances of mending his marriage. ‘It wasn’t because of me they split up,’ she said, pushing the quiche around with her fork as though she’d all at once lost her appetite. ‘They’d already parted company before we met, but it wasn’t terminal. They were going through a difficult patch – she has money and he has a DC’s salary and quaint old-fashioned ideas about not living beyond it. I didn’t know anybody when I came here and he was at a loose end, having just left Roz ... I suppose we gravitated to one another. Just
mutual sympathy, I thought, nothing heavy. Naive, wasn’t I?’ She ate some quiche, sipped some coffee and was suddenly quiet. ‘There’s a child,’ she said at last, ‘a little boy. Michael. He’s six years old and he has leukaemia.’

  ‘Abigail!’

  ‘I know, it’s diabolical. I feel savage when I think of it.’ The only way was not to think of it any more than she could help, but this happened to be a great deal of the time. ‘But just now they say he’s in remission, which is marvellous. There’s talk of a cure. He’s coming out of hospital and of course he needs both his parents ...’

  ‘Naturally. But it’s pretty tough on you as well.’

  Abigail threw Alex an unreadable look. ‘Well, Nick says he’s going back to them only for Michael’s sake, but he knows that she – Roz – will think it’s all stations go again. And he won’t admit that’s what he really wants, too, though he says he also wants us to carry on just the same – which just isn’t on, as far as I’m concerned,’ she added with a return of her usual spirit.

  Alex wasn’t sure she understood what Abigail was driving at. She had begun to look hunted. ‘He’s so damned stubborn! He’s convinced himself that if he goes back to her I’ll be devastated, and nothing I say will make him admit otherwise. He prefers to think I’m pretending it’s all over between us because I’m just being noble about Michael, rather than admit the truth.’

  ‘Which is – ?’

  ‘That there was never much to begin with, and there’s nothing left now. But there’s no way of putting that one nicely.’

  ‘Niceness is what you don’t need in a situation like this,’ Alex said bluntly, with some feeling. ‘Take it from me.’

  It was as near as she could go, or intended to go, towards talking about herself, but she saw that Abigail understood the oblique reference. She was very quick on the uptake, the sort of person on whom nothing was ever lost. What she couldn’t possibly know was that Alex had worked through a bad relationship with one man who’d never had any intention of leaving his wife for her and immediately she’d freed herself had become involved in another, this time with Gil Mayo. Far from bad this time, but fraught with peril, all the same. She could alter that situation in a moment, simply by saying yes, she’d marry him, but that discounted the small matter of her own ambition and their conflicting aims.

  And yet ... wasn’t it, she thought suddenly, time she took another look at herself and what she really wanted? If she were totally honest, there had been opportunities lately that she had let slip. It was such an astonishing acknowledgement she felt stopped in her tracks, though Abigail didn’t appear to notice the silence that fell between them.

  The taped music stopped. Abigail looked up from trying to find the solution to her problems in her coffee and smiled. She had the sort of smile that lit the air around her when she was really using it. ‘Thanks for listening, Alex. It’s done me good to get it off my chest – though I think I probably knew what I have to do all the time.’

  As she spoke a man carrying a motorcycle helmet emerged from the back premises and strode to the door. Alex said, ‘That’s him.’

  Released, Abigail pushed aside her chair and with a quick, ‘Bye!’ plunged after him into the market-day crowds, leaving most of her quiche and some of her coffee untouched.

  Her quarry was threading with some speed between the rows of market stalls that lay on the other side of the street. Nevertheless, she was able to keep him in view until an old lady with a basket-on-wheels suddenly swung it round from the stall where she’d been buying vegetables, catching Abigail a smart and exceedingly painful blow on the ankle and blocking the gangway between the stalls.

  ‘Ooh, sorry love, didn’t hurt you, did I?’

  ‘Not a bit,’ Abigail lied, hopping out of the way. ‘No problem.’ The incident had halted her no more than a few seconds, but when she refocused on the spot where the man had been a moment before, he wasn’t there. He’d been near the place where the market ended and several roads came together, and he could have taken any of them, or have gone into the open air car park round the corner and by now be half way down the Coventry road. At any rate, he didn’t materialize when she stationed herself at the car park exit, giving herself fifteen minutes to watch, and finally she had to admit that she’d lost him.

  While Abigail was walking back to the station, filled with disconsolate thoughts and furious with herself for having lost her quarry, Alex, having finished her coffee, went to position herself near the door to the back premises, on the pretext of looking at the enticing display of cookery books in that corner. Finally, when she was sure Liz was no longer occupied with customers, she asked if she might speak to Sophie Lawrence, explaining that she had seen her go through the door marked ‘Private’. After an initial hesitation Liz, knowing Alex in her capacity as police sergeant as well as customer, took her into the office. Whereupon it was discovered that Sophie had already left by the back door.

  And, no doubt because the shop had private parking facilities at the rear, not only Sophie, but the second person she’d been speaking to had also left that way. For after Abigail had left in pursuit of the motorcyclist and while she, Alex, was leafing through Elizabeth David, she had distinctly heard two people talking. One had definitely been female but she couldn’t have sworn to the other.

  CHAPTER 12

  Moses the cat was seriously displeased with Mayo, turning his back on the erstwhile object of his adoration like a wife with a headache. For weeks after Bert’s arrival grey old Moses had sat outside the door of the upstairs flat with his head on one side and a puzzled expression on his face, but by now it seemed to have dawned on him that he’d been beaten in the race for Mayo’s affections by a parrot – though Moses, poor unlovely cat, had never had much of a chance in the first place.

  Feeling in no mood for eating police canteen food the previous night, Mayo had settled for fish and chips for supper, believing he’d be eating alone, and had opened his door and found Alex there. Supper had ceased to be a matter of importance. Later, they went out for a Chinese meal. But when he donated the unwanted piece of cod the next morning to Moses, as usual slinking about outside the upstairs flat, the cat sulkily wouldn’t touch it – not if it had been Dover sole, he wouldn’t.

  ‘Don’t be like that, Mosh, life’s too short,’ Mayo jollied him, refusing to take offence, full of the milk of human kindness, prepared to forgive even Moses on this beautiful morning. But Moses wasn’t prepared to reciprocate, and he had to throw the fish into the dustbin on the way out.

  His buoyant mood lasted all the way to the station, where he was greeted by Kite, back at his desk, cock-a-hoop, mission accomplished, his runaway witness found and brought back to Lavenstock. They discussed procedures for about twenty minutes. The weight of evidence gathered was enormous: enough to keep Kite busy with reports, court appearances and collating witness statements for the foreseeable future; enough to bring charges and be certain of committal proceedings – these men were going to be put away for a lot of years, if Kite had anything to do with it. Mayo had barely turned round to face the inevitable weight of paperwork landing on his own desk when he was intercepted by Atkins with further news: ‘There’s been another one of those break-ins.’

  ‘Another doctor?’

  This time it was the Freeman, Lall, Smith practice. ‘Just like the others,’ Atkins commented, ‘same MO, has to be the same lot. It bears all their trademarks. We can’t really spare anybody but I’ve sent Deeley and Jenny Platt – they’ve been working on the others.’

  Mayo had already made up his mind that the time had come to pay Madeleine Freeman another visit. The last time he’d seen the doctor there hadn’t, at that point, been anything to link Angie Robinson and the anonymous letter. But now, having established that she had written it, and having learned of Madeleine Freeman’s connection with Kitty Wilbraham, it was logical to hope that Dr Freeman might be able to throw some light on the contents of the letter.

  On his way
out, he met Abigail, just returned from Pennybridge, where she’d been to question Sophie Lawrence about her visitor on the night of the murder. ‘She denied it, of course – said the Jaguar must have belonged to someone visiting one of her neighbours – and the voice Maggie heard must have been the television.’

  Mayo found Deeley and Jenny Platt had already left the surgery, having done what was necessary. The waiting-room was in even greater chaos than before, with an identical lot of whingeing tots scrapping with one another over a box of plastic toys and an identical set of young mothers looking as though they’d just about had it up to here.

  Only the dragon was different, and Mayo took a perverse satisfaction in seeing that she’d gone to pieces over the break-in and was being sharply admonished for it by one of the doctors.

  ‘Pull yourself together, Jane, it’s not the end of the world.’ The speaker was a blue-eyed, russet-haired Irish beauty, who introduced herself as Dr Mary Smith. But Jane was inconsolable. ‘How am I ever going to put things right again?’

  ‘I expect you’ll manage, you always do.’

  ‘Is Dr Freeman here?’ ventured Mayo.

  ‘Oh, she’s in her surgery!’ returned the distracted dragon, flapping her hand towards the door. This time she didn’t advise him to knock. He could have kicked the door in for all she cared.

  The probability of the culprits being apprehended wasn’t one Mayo could view with optimism, but he felt obliged to reassure the doctor. ‘We’ll let you know how things progress, Dr Freeman. Yours is just the latest in a series we’ve had to contend with lately, I’m afraid, but we’re bound to catch them soon.’

  ‘They won’t have got much if they were looking for drugs ... we’ve more sense than to keep much here.’ She was philosophic about the burglary, calmly waiting for him to begin what he had patently come for. A Chief Inspector in the middle of a murder case wouldn’t be concerning himself with minor break-ins.