by Faith Martin
Wanting to get some answers before Joan Hughes returned, she turned to Benny and said gently, ‘We’re here to talk about your grandfather and what happened to him. Would it frighten you to talk about that?’
Benny shot a quick glance at his sister, whose big blue eyes rounded slightly, but showed no signs of filling with tears. ‘Nah, we don’t mind that. Gramps died in the shed when it caught fire. But it never hurt him, because Daddy said he fell and hit his head and so he was asleep when it happened.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Clement said. ‘I’m a doctor, and I promise your Gramps didn’t feel a thing.’
‘Did you see Gramps go into the shed to get the fireworks, Benny?’ Trudy asked, and felt her heart leap a little when the little boy nodded solemnly.
‘Yes, I did. Lukey said that he was really looking forward to seeing the rockets being let off, and Gramps said he’d better go and get them then.’
Trudy nodded. Lukey, she suspected, was Lucas Wilcox, Alice’s twelve-year old son.
‘Did you watch him go all the way to the shed?’ she asked next.
‘Yes – me and Lukey did. We were looking forward to the fireworks beginning, see,’ Benny said earnestly. ‘We were getting bored with just the bonfire, although it was rather fun watching Uncle Godfrey and Uncle Kenny try and get it started.’
‘Did you see anyone else go into the shed? After your Gramps, I mean,’ Trudy said quickly, as her young ears had caught the sound of Joan coming back down the stairs.
‘Nah, cause Auntie Alice went in and brought out the hot chocolate, and we wanted to make sure we got first dibs.’
Trudy’s heart fell a little, but she knew she shouldn’t have expected miracles. Quickly, just as the door to the lounge began to open, she said, ‘Can you remember who it was who said that the bonfire needed paraffin to get it started?’
‘What’s that?’ Joan asked sharply, a puzzled look shooting from Trudy to her son and to Trudy again. She was obviously unhappy that they had been talking to the children about that night without her, and Trudy, knowing she was technically in the wrong, bit her lip guiltily.
‘Nah, sorry,’ Benny said, his eyes dropping quickly to the floor. He stretched out with elaborate casualness once more to help his sister build up the snort of fire that was coming from the dragon’s nose. ‘Here’s a bit with flames on it, Clarrie,’ he said helpfully, handing it over. But his gaze, Trudy noticed, slid from his mother to her visitors and then back to his mother again.
Joan, hearing the mention of fire, shuddered visibly, then sat down abruptly on the sofa. ‘This whole thing has been a nightmare,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll be glad when it’s all over and done with.’
Trudy looked at the other woman thoughtfully. Not long ago, Joan had learned that her husband had just inherited a fortune. Yet she didn’t look at all happy. There was no … joy at all in her. Which was odd, surely? All right, Trudy mused, nobody liked to come into money by having a family member die. But from all that she’d learned about Thomas Hughes, she couldn’t imagine that he’d got on any better with his daughter-in-law than he had with anyone else. So it wasn’t as if she was actually grief-stricken. And wasn’t it only human to want to celebrate a life-changing event, such as inheriting a huge amount of money?
For a moment, Trudy tried to imagine what she would do if she came into a million pounds. Images of holidays abroad, the latest Paris fashions, bright sparkly jewellery, and a big shiny motor car, all flittered in and out of her mind.
‘So, how can I help you?’ Joan asked helpfully, interrupting Trudy’s fantasies.
But, as it quickly transpired, the other woman couldn’t help them at all. She thought it might have been Godfrey who suggested the paraffin, and her husband who had called the fire brigade. And she hadn’t taken any particular notice of her father-in-law’s movements at all, preferring to stay in the kitchen and help Alice with the food. Twice during the interview, she left to pop upstairs to see to her little one, but whilst, each time, Trudy asked Benny about the night of the tragedy, the lad had nothing useful to contribute.
‘Well, that was more or less a waste of time,’ Trudy said grumpily as they made their way back into the city. She would have to put in an afternoon’s work at the station, but it wouldn’t be that long – especially on such a cloudy and overcast day – before it was dark again. With the winter nights drawing ever closer, soon, she knew, the shops would start to display their Christmas wares. Not that she minded – she rather liked Christmas-time, with all the pretty lights and decorations.
‘Was it?’ Clement asked. He thought he’d detected a certain reticence in the lad Benny, when his mother had come into the room. He’d certainly stopped being so talkative. But that might simply be because he’d been raised to understand that children were meant to be seen and not heard.
On the other hand, it wouldn’t surprise him if the lad had remembered something about that night, and, for reasons of his own, hadn’t want to talk about it.
He made a mental note, if all else failed, to see if he could talk to young Benjamin Hughes alone.
‘Shall we talk to Alice tomorrow?’ Trudy said as they approached the remains of Oxford Castle, and Clement agreed. So he dropped her off at the police station and drove back to his office.
As he did so, he felt the tremor return to his right hand.
That night, in his pleasant terraced Victorian house near Keble College, and with a nice view overlooking the park, Clement ate the supper that his charlady had left for him, then went through to the cosy front room, where he soon got the fire merrily crackling away.
With a sigh, he poured the merest splash of his favourite brandy into a bulbous glass, and leaving it to warm and settle, sank into his chair. Following his nightly ritual, he reached for his regular paper, found a pencil and turned to the crossword page. Picking up the notebook that was kept on a sideboard within easy reach, he checked the time on the grandfather clock that was ticking away contentedly in one corner, made a note of it in one column and then proceeded to do the crossword.
When he’d worked out the final clue – an anagram – and jotted it down with a distinct sense of satisfaction, he noted the time and wrote that down in a second column. This procedure was one of several that he’d thought up to try and keep a measure of his mental acuity.
After casting his eyes over three months’ worth of crossword completions, he was reassured that he wasn’t slowing down in any significant manner. So far, his damned disease seemed to be content to cause him only minor symptoms.
Though it was only a matter of time before they got worse, and he knew it.
But that was a bridge to be crossed only when he came to it. Ruthlessly squashing any feelings of depression or anxiety that tried to nibble at the edge of his consciousness, he swallowed his meagre mouthful of brandy, and walked over to the wireless to search for a concert to listen to before going to bed.
Beethoven, Bach, Haydn or (at a pinch) Chopin, he’d found, could usually be relied upon to restore a man’s spirit.
Chapter 20
The next morning, bright and early, Duncan stepped under the shelter of a shop doorway opposite the Police Station and cursed the weather. It wasn’t actually raining, as such, but it wasn’t dry either. It was, as his dad would have said, ‘damping’. A dull grey miasma, not as thick as fog, but not as thin as mist, seemed to drape over the city, coating everything with a slick, cold dampness. It made the pavements slippery and slowly soaked through your clothes, making you feel uncomfortable. Luckily, there was no cold wind to speak of, otherwise he might have put off his surveillance for another day.
But now that he’d managed to track down the name of the police officer tasked with investigating the Thomas Hughes case, he was eager to start work. It had cost him a few pints down at the Dog and Duck, but PC Rodney Broadstairs had been easy enough to pump gently for information. Especially since the poor lad was feeling a bit put out that his more junior colleague – and a wom
an at that – had been given the job instead of himself.
It had surprised Duncan too – and annoyed him considerably. It just went to show, as he’d suspected, that Oxford’s finest weren’t taking the Tribune’s campaign seriously. He’d done a quick trawl through the archives on the intriguingly named WPC Loveday, and although she’d had a few unexpected successes since joining the force, the truth was that she’d barely finished her probationary period. And at just twenty years old, she was hardly a seasoned and experienced investigator.
No doubt her remit had been to just to cross the ‘T’s’ and dot the ‘I’s’ and be seen to be paying lip-service to the investigation, and then after a few days, a week at most, file it away as case closed.
Well, they’d see about that!
He grinned then perked up considerably, as, through the police station doors, a gaggle of uniformed constables came out, and set about their daily routines. They nearly all set off on foot, though some, he was sure, would collect bicycles so that they could ride to wherever their beats began. There was only one woman in the bunch, and luckily for him, she didn’t seem to be in need of two-wheeled transport.
Keeping back, he slowly followed her, relieved when all of her male companions gradually fell away, scattering across the city with various degrees of enthusiasm or ennui. He knew his luck was really in when she stopped by an otherwise deserted bus stop and stood patiently waiting.
As he approached her, Duncan’s eyes widened appreciatively. It had been hard to tell what she looked like from a distance, and the rather dull uniform hadn’t done her any favours, but as he moved to stand beside her, he could clearly see what a stunner she was. Her complexion was clear and flawless, her figure full and curvaceous without being dumpy. And even though the bulk of it had been hidden under her cap, he could now see that she had beautiful, long, curly dark hair.
When she turned, sensing his presence beside her, and looked up at him, he was just a little taken aback by the heart-shaped face and the stunning, big, dark brown velvet eyes. His heart gave that little flutter it always gave when he found himself near a really beautiful young woman, and his appreciative smile was automatic.
Trudy, on her way to interview the witness to a purse-grab last evening, sensed the nearness of a fellow passenger, and turned to see who it was. She expected to see a middle-aged housewife, perhaps, on her way to the shops further down the street, or maybe a car factory worker on his way to the early shift, since the bus terminated in Cowley, where Morris and the other motoring companies had their manufacturing lines.
Instead, she found herself looking into a pair of cat-green eyes, set in a very good-looking, triangular shaped face. A few inches taller than herself, the man had a mass of near-black hair, and was dressed in a smart suit, underneath a damp black-wool overcoat. He was, Trudy guessed, not quite thirty. His smile showed a set of near-perfect white teeth, and she felt herself stiffen in response to the look in his eye.
She knew he was going to try and chat her up, and for some reason this threw her into a bit of a panic. It puzzled her, even as she took a step back and turned to face him more fully, feeling her face tighten into the look she reserved for strangers who had the potential to cause her trouble. She couldn’t understand why she felt so defensive about something that she would normally dismiss without a thought.
It wasn’t as if lads trying to get her attention was anything new to her. Often they teased her about her uniform, and she’d josh them along, threatening to arrest them for being cheeky, and no harm was done. So seeing a look of speculation in a man’s eyes wasn’t something that normally ruffled her feathers this way.
She’d only had one boyfriend, Brian, and she’d known him all her life. In fact, she wasn’t even sure that he could properly have been called a boyfriend at all, since their ‘courtship’ had mostly consisted of her watching him play rugby, interspersed by the odd trip to the cinema. That, and a few meals at the local café that invariably consisted of fish and chips.
But since she’d become ‘available’ again, she’d not wanted for potential suitors to take his place. So far, though, she hadn’t really been interested. She’d been too caught up in her work and coming to grips with her feelings after her near-death experience.
But now, looking at this very attractive, older man, her heart was doing a little pitter-patter in her chest that made her breath literally catch. And it felt both good and worrying at the same time.
‘Hello. It’s WPC Loveday, isn’t it?’ Duncan said.
Trudy’s look turned ever more wary. ‘Yes. I don’t know you, do I?’
Duncan, reading her body language, felt alternatively amused, intrigued and annoyed. Annoyed, because the last thing he wanted was for her to get her back up, since he was going to need her co-operation. Getting on her good side and buttering her up necessitated earning her trust, and dealing with a suspicious little madam was the last thing he needed.
On the other hand, she was so obviously young and inexperienced, and yet very much attracted to him, that he couldn’t help but feel amused by it. It had such entertaining possibilities.
It was not that he was so full of himself that he thought every woman would fall at his feet, but he wasn’t unaware that the opposite sex usually found him attractive. He’d had enough dalliances with a variety of women, starting at the age of sixteen, not to recognise the signs when a woman had been smitten.
Although Glenda liked to think he was monogamous, he’d made no such promise. Which made for intriguing possibilities in a situation like this.
In that initial moment of meeting and mutual awareness, Duncan had to admit that had WPC Loveday been anyone other than who she was, right now, his thoughts would be running in a very different direction.
In fact, they still might, if he didn’t keep a strong hold on himself. But, he reminded himself grimly, he had other priorities right now.
So he smiled again, making it a totally sexless effort this time, and held out his hand. ‘No, you don’t know me yet, but I think it might be a good idea if you remedied that. My name’s Duncan Gillingham.’
For a moment, Trudy thought only how unusual his first name was. She’d never met a Duncan before, and it suited him. It was slightly exotic, but manly at the same time.
Then her brain seemed to give her a mental kick, and she remembered where she’d heard it before. ‘You’re the reporter for the Tribune,’ she said, her tone of voice now definitely accusatory.
Again, Duncan felt a little thrill kick his insides, a purely instinctive male response to an attractive woman’s disapproval.
‘Guilty m’Lud,’ he shot back, with another grin. ‘But please don’t hold that against me. Somebody has to go around asking questions and being a nosy parker. And we don’t all have the luxury of a police officer’s badge to help us out.’
Trudy blinked. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she was being teased – and maybe put in her place. And maybe put on notice of something – something that she didn’t quite understand. Annoyingly, her heartrate accelerated a little further.
‘Is there something I can do for you, Mr …’ For a horrific moment she couldn’t think of the damned man’s name. Then, thankfully, it came to her. ‘Gillingham?’
‘Well, as a matter of fact, I rather thought there might be something I could do for you, Constable,’ Duncan said, with a far softer smile. She really was a prickly little cat. And at the moment, all he was getting from her were claws and the odd hiss or two. That wouldn’t do. ‘I have some information that might be pertinent to your investigation into the Thomas Hughes case and thought that you might be interested.’
It was, he knew, an irresistible piece of bait to dangle in front of the police, and he saw her eyes flash with curiosity. He might, under other circumstances, have warned her just what curiosity was alleged to have done to felines, but he couldn’t afford to be that generous right now.
‘I see. Well, I can’t stop just this minute,’ Trudy stunned him
by saying casually, her eyes going over his shoulder towards the bus she could see approaching them. For a moment, she wished that it was her father driving, but as it got nearer, she could see that it wasn’t him behind the wheel. And then, inexplicably, she was suddenly glad that it wasn’t him.
‘What are you doing later on this afternoon?’ she asked abruptly.
Duncan – whose experience of being given the brush-off by women was practically zero, felt a flash of anger, followed by a flash of appreciation, shoot through him. So she wanted to play a game of one-upmanship did she? Well, that was all right by him. He could eat young girls like her for breakfast. Then he reminded himself that he needed this particular young girl and smiled amiably. ‘For you, I’ll make time, Constable Loveday,’ he said with mock suggestiveness. ‘Just say when and where.’
Trudy, who’d been pleased with the way she’d gained the upper hand after such a slightly rocky start, gave a small shrug. ‘Do you know the coffee shop opposite Christ Church college? The one with the green and white awning?’
‘Yes. What time?’
The bus pulled in, and Trudy turned to face the opening doors. ‘Sometime around three o’clock. I can’t be more precise. I may be late.’
‘For you, I’ll wait until the end of time,’ Duncan promised with a theatrical sigh, and gave her back another grin as she stepped on board the bus.
He stood and watched her, totally confident that she would turn around and look at him over her shoulder. He knew she just wouldn’t be able to resist it.
Trudy dug into her purse for pennies as the bus conductor watched her board. It took more of an effort of will than she would have liked to walk to the nearest seat and sit down, and not glance out of the window at the handsome, sure-of-himself reporter.
But she managed it.
Just.
Chapter 21