There was free parking along the seafront during the winter season, so once out of the car she decided to take a bracing walk along the wide promenade. She needed the exercise, but bracing was definitely the word for it, and after half an hour she took refuge in a small café near the grand edifice of the Winter Gardens. After she had been fortified by a steaming cup of coffee and a toasted bun she enquired the way to Alfred Street.
As so often happened, the local waitress looked completely foxed by the question, as if she knew no more of the town than the street where she lived. And the Bingo Hall, Alex guessed, letting her prejudice slip for a moment.
‘You can walk to Alfred Street from here,’ the portly guy behind the counter called out. ‘Do you know where the Odeon is — and Tesco’s?’
Alex had to confess that she didn’t, and the guy brought out a tattered and well-thumbed town map, clearly not averse to spending a few minutes with this vision on a dull morning, when tourists were few and far between. Alex ignored the general smell of cooking grease around his person, and shuffled to one end of the plastic bench seat as he sat down beside her.
He stabbed his fingers on the map until she got the general route, and realized it wasn’t very far at all. All the same, she’d had enough walking for one morning, and decided to drive. She thanked him and was glad to get out.
Now for John Barnett, with any luck. And, remembering that like all Steven’s old friends, he would have been throughly vetted in the past, she needed a tactful line of questioning if she wasn’t to scare him off altogether.
*
Alfred Street was a narrow residential street of small stone houses. Alex found the house that she wanted, and rang the bell. After a few minutes a woman looked out from behind the net curtains, took one look at Alex and swished them back into place again. When she didn’t appear at the door, Alex rang the bell again. She didn’t look like a Jehovah’s Witness, for God’s sake, nor a canvasser doing a survey on the smoking or reading habits of the neighbourhood.
Eventually the door opened a fraction, and as she saw that the woman was elderly and moved carefully behind a walking frame she was instantly contrite at her uncharitable thoughts.
‘I’m so sorry to disturb you,’ she said with a bright smile when the woman didn’t say anything. ‘I was hoping to have a few words with John Barnett. He does live here, I believe? This is the address I was given.’
For a few seconds Alex thought the woman was going to explode. Her face was already the colour of parchment, but within seconds it went a fierce shade of red. She clutched at the walking frame as if it was a lifeline, and Alex hoped desperately that she wasn’t going to have a heart attack here and now. She had done a First Aid course, and knew how to cope in an emergency, but it was a different situation when you thought you had caused the bloody emergency!
‘I seem to have taken you by surprise, Ma’am, and I’ve obviously come at a bad moment,’ she said quickly. ‘Is Mr Barnett at home — and if not, is there anything I can do for you?’
And who was she in regard to him? Lodger? Grandmother? This was the address in the phone book — unless the house had changed hands since it had been updated and the news hadn’t reached BT yet. But she doubted that this was a new tenant. From the look of her and her drab clothes, and the glimpse of old-fashioned furniture inside the hall, she had been here since the year dot — whatever that was.
When the woman continued to stare at her, saying nothing, Alex tried again.
‘Look I really am sorry to disturb you, and I’ll go away just as soon as possible. It’s just that I do want to contact Mr Barnett — John Barnett —’
‘You can’t do that,’ the woman said, speaking for the first time.
At least it was contact of a kind, and Alex spoke more quietly.
‘Is he at work, maybe? If you could possibly give me an idea of where I might find him I’d be very grateful’
‘He’s in the cemetery.’
Alex felt her heart leap. He was dead? But why hadn’t Jane Leng told her that when she gave her the list of Steven’s friends? But she remembered quickly that Jane had given her nothing more at all except the list of names. Everything else, so far, Alex had found out for herself. Maybe Jane didn’t even know. Nick hadn’t mentioned this little bit either, Alex thought resentfully.
As she struggled to find a suitable reply to the information, the old woman sniffed audibly. ‘What is it you want?’
‘I’m working on a a kind of project for the university,’ she invented wildly. ‘We’re presently gathering information on old Grammar school boys for a statistical dossier, and are interested in the kind of work they did after leaving school, and also in any photographs we can find of them and their classmates. But I’m so sorry to hear that John Barnett is no longer with us.’
She made the project sound as grand and as far removed from the truth as possible, and dangled the bait in the hope of being given as much information as this woman could tell her. If John was a relative, then surely she’d want his memory preserved in as good a light as possible.
‘You can come in, if you like,’ Alex was told grudgingly. ‘I’ve got my albums, and you can have a look.’
Bingo! Old people always kept photo albums.
‘And you are?’ she asked, as she stepped inside the front door and was immediately assailed by the stale smells of an old person’s home.
‘His granny. His folks don’t live here any more. They moved away when my son — John’s dad — got a job over in Cardiff.’ She sniffed again as if this was comparable to going to hell. ‘This was always my house, anyway, and John stayed here wi’ me, until it happened.’
‘What did happen, Mrs Barnett?’ Alex asked carefully, after following her to a sitting-room crammed with the collected paraphernalia of the elderly.
Huge potted plants in the window practically shut out the daylight. Tables were cluttered with newspapers and magazines and there were knick-knacks on every surface. There was a fine film of dust over everything. Alex felt a burst of pity that overcame the distaste she felt and sat down on the edge of a sagging armchair as Mrs Barnett sank down heavily on another.
‘I told you. He died.’
‘Yes, but you didn’t tell me how. Did he have an illness? I’m sorry if I seem to be probing, but it would be such a help for our records, you see, if we can find out what happened to our old Grammar school boys. I’m sure you mourn the passing of the old system as much as any of us.’
Well, that was a bloody daft thing to say, Alex told herself severely. If this old lady was mourning anything, it would be the passing of her grandson, not any old school system. She was on delicate ground and she knew it, but she had to keep up the pretence that this was for a project or she would get nowhere. Old people could be very protective of their privacy, and she guessed this one was no exception. She realized Mrs Barnett was staring at her now, but she was relieved to see the normal colour — or lack of it — was evident in her face now.
‘He didn’t have no illness,’ she was told, scorn in her voice. ‘He was as strong as an ox, my John. Could have been anything he wanted. Worked on the railway to keep himself afloat, but he was studying figures at night school to make summat of himself. He would have done it too.’
‘So what happened?’ Alex said, forcing herself to be patient. When they got that reminiscent look in their eyes, she knew there was no hurrying them.
‘Well, he was coming home late on that motorbike of his, wasn’t he?’ Mrs Barnett said, with a flash of anger in her eyes. ‘Nasty things, motorbikes. I always told him they’d be the death of him, but what happened weren’t his fault. He wasn’t the madhead they said he was. The road was muddy and slippery after a lot of rain, but I know my John wouldn’t have taken any chances. It was the car driver who was the madhead, going too fast and forcing him over the edge. You can still see the gap in the hedge where he went over on to the rocks below, if you know where to look. Smashed him and his precious bike to pie
ces, it did.’
She was retelling it almost by rote now, as if it all had to come out in a series of short sentences, or it would never come out at all.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Alex said, almost in a whisper.
The woman blinked, as if only just remembering she had a listener.
‘Bless you, but it was a long time ago now —’
‘How long ago, Mrs Barnett?’
‘Four years and a bit. Just before Christmas, it was. And that Toll road can always be a death trap at night, can’t it?’
Alex agreed that it could, with no idea where or what the Toll road was, but meaning to find out the minute she got out of there.
‘They never found the driver, of course. I daresay they were too busy with other crimes to bother too much about one poor boy being pushed over a cliff.’
And six years after Steven Leng died allegedly — and four years ago now and just before Christmas — Alex supposed there would have been no reason for a piece about John Barnett being killed in a motorbike accident to be reported in great detail in a Bristol newspaper. Unless she had specifically asked Charlie Adamson and Neville to suss out anything about Steven’s friends — which she hadn’t.
‘Do you want to see the albums?’ she heard Mrs Barnett saying now.
‘Oh — yes please, if it’s not too much trouble.’
Alex saw that there was a whole stack of them on the lower shelf of a coffee table alongside her, and guessed that she spent many hours looking through them.
‘My home help keeps telling me to put these away,’ Mrs Barnett went on, ‘but they’re my bit of company, see?’
The words were said so matter-of-factly they all but stifled Alex. She had spoken to plenty of elderly people during various investigations, but this one seemed so resigned to her lot that it was sadder than most. In Alex’s opinion it was a damn sight better to be in a Home than being alone, with nothing but visits from a home help and a stack of photograph albums. And the telly, she noted.
She resolved again that she should get out more. Not just in the professional sense, which was an essential part of the job, but in making friends, meeting people, having a social life.
‘These are all photos of my John,’ Mrs Barnett was saying now. She handed over a brown album, with the single word John on the front cover.
This was exactly what Alex was looking for, despite being slightly appalled to realize she was looking at an entire life between the pages of the album. There was John as a baby in his mother’s arms. John with his parents and a much younger-looking grandmother. John as a toddler on his first tricycle. John in his first school blazer and satchel. John at the beach with bucket and spade, with Weston pier in the background. John at junior school. John with his arms folded in football gear. John with a group of school friends. John aged somewhere around seventeen astride a motorbike, beefy and handsome.
There were duplicates and variations of many of the photographs. Alex asked if she could borrow one or two, especially the group photos, promising faithfully to send them back later, and was reluctantly given them.
‘He was obviously a popular boy,’ she said to his grandmother.
Mrs Barnett gave her a gratified smile. ‘He was. He and that crowd of his used to go camping and exploring, even going down them pot-holes on the Mendips,’ she said with a shiver. ‘There was nothing fearless about my John, until the happening, of course.’
‘The happening?’ Alex paused, her heart beating faster at the expectancy of what she might hear now. The happening had to be the incident when some foolhardy kids had blown up a derelict hut, which had led to the eventual discovery of Steven Leng’s hand.
Mrs Barnett looked at her suspiciously.
‘You did say this was for a — what was it — a project about the Grammar school boys?
‘Then you’ll know what happened to one of the other young-uns.’
She wasn’t daft then. She still had her marbles.
‘Steven Leng,’ Alex said, nodding. ‘Of course. It must have been terrible for all the other boys, Mrs Barnett.’
‘It fair turned my John’s brain for a while,’ she muttered, as if talking to herself. ‘He was never the same after that, as if all the stuffing had gone out of him. It took a long while for him to pull himself together, what with all the questioning and all that, and the other lads bullying him.’
‘Did they?’ The woman was obviously getting tired now, but this was too interesting for Alex to leave it there.
‘He never said so, but I knew. I reckon they were afraid of getting into trouble for dabbling in drugs. Not that I’m saying my John did, mind, but some of them others were always out for a lark, and he went along with whatever they said. And you never know these days, do you?’
‘No, indeed. Well, I’ll leave you in peace now, Mrs Barnett, and I do thank you for your patience. You’ve been a great help.’
‘Have I? I suppose that’s all right then. Just remember to send my photos back when you’ve done with ’em, and you can see yourself out, can’t you?’
She could, and she did, breathing in a great gulp of fresh air as she went back to her car, and turned off the little tape recorder that had the entire conversation on it. Normally, she asked permission to record an interview, but she had the distinct suspicion that Mrs Barnett would have clammed up if she’d revealed it and she wasn’t risking it.
It had been a shock to discover that John Barnett was dead, but even more interesting to find that he’d been pushed off the road and over a cliff. How significant was that? Did he fall or was he pushed? Well, he was obviously pushed, but was it done deliberately? That was the sixty-four thousand dollar question. And where and what was this Toll road?
She parked up on the seafront again and went back to the café she’d used before. It was nearly lunchtime and she needed sustenance now, and ham and chips sounded good. While she was waiting for it to arrive, she asked the owner for more directions, this time to the Toll road.
‘You thinking of moving down here or just visiting, Miss?’ he asked. ‘Sand Bay ain’t the best place to be at this time of year. It’s cold and windy.’
When she looked mystified, he brought out his town map again, and pointed to a long stretch of coast road leading from the town to an area called Sand Bay.
‘That’s the Toll road, alongside the woods on one side and the cliffs on ’tother. You want to watch the bends in the road if you’re going along there. It’s quite narrow and folk have been known to go over.’
‘Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.’
She decided not to enquire further. She didn’t need to find the exact gap in the hedge where a motorbike had plunged over the cliffs four years ago either — if it still existed. It was more likely that the foliage would have grown again by now, and it was only a grandmother’s horrific memory (or imagination) of the scene that still remained.
But once she had eaten a plateful of ham and chips and immediately wished that she hadn’t, she drove out towards the Toll road to Sand Bay, cruising along slowly since there were no other cars around. It would be a picturesque route in summer, but she noted how perilously easy it would be for a motorbike to be forced off the road on one of the sharp bends, especially if it were a slippery road and in the dark. Yet she didn’t find it difficult to imagine that John Barnett’s accident might well not have been an accident at all, but something far more sinister, if he had become as bullied, as vulnerable and anxious, and possibly as unpredictable as his grandmother had unwittingly told her.
Chapter 6
On Friday evening Nick swept into her apartment with his usual panache, and she was immediately enveloped in his embrace.
‘Have you any idea how much I’ve missed you?’ he demanded, when he allowed her to draw breath.
‘It’s only been a couple of weeks, but I think I’m getting the idea,’ Alex said with a laugh and a surge of pleasure that was completely disproportionate to the just-good-friends syndrome.
After she had been thoroughly kissed, he held her away from him for a moment, letting his hands run down the length of her arms and making her tingle.
‘A couple of days is too long,’ he said.
‘Oh, come on, Nick,’ she said, wriggling away from him. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been pining for me. I know you better than that, remember? You were never short of female company.’
‘True,’ he said, his face relaxing into a grin and not bothering to deny it. ‘But the one I want isn’t around —’
‘There’s a song about that, isn’t there?’ Alex said. ‘Something about when the girl in your arms isn’t the girl that you want, then want the girl that you have. Or something like that. I’m probably getting it all wrong.’
‘You always did,’ he said, more lazily now.
‘Coffee? Or something stronger?’ she asked, before she started to read things he wasn’t saying.
This was a weekend visit, no more, and the last thing she wanted was for him to start making her regret this move to Bristol.
But God, it was good to see him, and hear him, and be with him. They had a history, no matter how chequered and how often they had pulled in opposite directions — which was frequent. For all their similar ideas in bringing villains to justice, there was a huge competitiveness between them too. It got the old adrenalin going though, and maybe that was what she was missing.
She brought her thoughts up short. She wasn’t missing anything, and she wasn’t going to appear like a wimp, either.
‘Something hot and strong,’ Nick said in answer to her question. ‘But I’ll settle for coffee right now.’
She laughed as she went to the kitchen. Her spirits lifted as she heard him roaming around, opening doors and sussing out her new place. Being proprietorial, staking his claim to be here. And oh yes, she had missed him too.
Deadly Suspicions (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 3) Page 7