After an agonizing few minutes a whole page of information began to unroll as if by magic in front of her eyes. They were legit then. They existed. The sense of triumph Alex felt was almost orgasmic at that moment. Well, almost: it took more than a page of information about some freak cult that had captured Steven Leng’s imagination, and possibly Lennie Fry’s too ...
She felt another surge of excitement as she saw several contact addresses scattered about the country. Not Bristol, though. The nearest one was Exeter. She didn’t know the location or the area, but there was always somebody who would. She had contacts too. Ray Smart. Or Phil Cordell. Or Charlie Adamson. Anyone but the local bobbies.
She clicked off, feeling as if she had climbed a mountain at even finding anything on the bloody Internet at all. Her pride in getting to grips with this alien thing was paramount, even though she knew she could simply have asked Nick Frobisher where the Followers operated from, but the less he knew how deeply she was going to get into this, the better.
*
She turned up at the Patterson house armed with a box of chocolates, since she guessed Gran wouldn’t be into drinking wine. The minute she walked in the door, the aroma of cooking met her nostrils and alerted her taste buds. It smelled fantastic, and she was immediately transported back to a warm and steamy farmhouse with her mother’s huge portions of comfort meals placed in front of her.
‘Now then, my lover, I hope you’ve got a hearty appetite,’ Gran said with a chuckle. ‘We don’t want no leftovers for tomorrow, and Mavis here sometimes eats no more than a sparrow.’
‘I’ve got to think of my figure, Gran,’ Mavis told her, but although she started off with a small amount on her plate it didn’t stop her having second helpings, Alex noted, which rather defeated the object.
‘So how are things going?’ Gran asked, when they were all replete and sitting around the fire.
By then Alex and Mavis had done the washing-up and Gran was softly belching onion-breath at frequent intervals. As long as it stayed up top and didn’t descend below, Alex thought.
‘I wanted to ask you something,’ she began without any messing around. From the look of her, Gran would be asleep soon, and she needed to know. ‘Did you ever hear of a group called the Followers?’
‘Oh ah, everybody knew about them. Oddballs, if you’ll pardon my French.’
‘Oh Gran, that ain’t French!’ Mavis said with a laugh.
‘Well, Alex knows what I mean, don’t you, lover?’
She said solemnly that she did.
‘Funny folk, wore a lot of pale colours and did charity work, so ’twas said. Busking and that. They never stayed in one place for long, though I don’t think the police were ever bothered by ’em. They had a place around here somewhere.’
Alex gave her a dazzling smile. She was a gem if she ever met one. This was a piece of information that wasn’t on the Internet. Sometimes it paid to just ask people, she thought more humbly — and hadn’t she always said as much? She smugly ignored her new-found expertise with the Internet.
‘Did they? Do you know where it was? This place, I mean. Their headquarters, I suppose you’d call it.’
Gran shrugged. ‘’Tain’t here no more. It was pulled down after they moved on. ’Twere ready to be condemned anyway. I dunno where they went after that.’
‘When was that then?’
Gran leaned forward to give the fire a poke, and let out a gentle explosion of wind at the same time, and Mavis made wafting gestures behind her back.
‘I dunno now. Must have been eight mebbe ten years ago. They never did no harm, mind, but folk probably got tired of seeing ’em in the Centre and in Broadmead all the time, begging for money.’
She gave a huge yawn, which was marvellous timing, Alex thought, since a breather in the fresh night air was just what she needed. No offence to the old darling, but enough was enough.
‘I’ve tired you out, and it’s time I went, but thank you again for a lovely evening, and a perfectly splendid meal,’ she said. ‘I really enjoyed it, Gran.’
‘Good. Come again then,’ she said vaguely, with a final rip-roarer that sent Alex scuttling to the door, with Mavis laughing her head off behind her.
‘She can’t help it, and half the time I don’t think she knows she does it. See you around then, Alex.’
‘See you, Mavis,’ Alex answered in kind, thankful that the girl hadn’t wanted to prolong the evening when she had to think very hard about whether to find Keith Martin of Bath first, or drive down to Exeter and suss out these Followers. But there was really no contest. She was as intrigued as the next person about these strange cults — and Keith Martin wasn’t going to go away.
Chapter 10
Since writing her letter to the press, naming Alex as her accomplice in the search for information about her son — which was the way Alex was viewing it now — Jane had stepped up her aggressive correspondence, and the letters now appeared every few days.
Bob Leng had stayed in Somerset longer than he had intended, if only to get away from his wife’s acid tongue, and he was well aware of what was happening. Before he went back to London, he had stormed the newspaper offices in Bristol, demanding that they stopped printing his wife’s letters or he’d have the law on them.
He had met with reasonableness from older members of staff who knew the whole story and his involvement in it, but pointed out that it was a free country and they were simply publishing one person’s opinion, while stating that the newspaper didn’t necessarily agree with the views of contributors — the usual editorial get-out clause.
He also had met with sniggering insults and mockery from several young cub reporters who were unaware that at the time of the incident, he had been the one to make the horrific discovery in the woods, and told him he didn’t know his arse from his elbow if he didn’t know that such letters made good copy, and they thought he’d be glad of the ongoing publicity.
Still incensed at the injustice of it all, he then went to the local nick and demanded that they put a stop to it. He bellowed at Frank Gregory that it was killing him, eating away at him like a bloody great cancer, since his wife made a great show of not only shoving a copy of what she had sent under his nose, but also having the relevant newspaper copy (which was regularly posted to her on subscription from Bristol) placed on his breakfast plate, with her letter heavily ringed in red.
‘She couldn’t even mark it in black. She has to do it in red, just like blood,’ he raged to Frank Gregory, becoming irrational and close to hysteria now. ‘The bitch is heartless, and she knows fucking well what she’s doing to me. We lost our Steven years ago, so why can’t she let him rest in peace? You’ve got to stop this campaign of hers. If you don’t, I swear I will —’
It’s hardly a campaign, Mr Leng —’
‘It fucking well is. It’s a campaign of hate, and she knows it. She’s picking away at me, bit by bit.’
‘Have you seen a counsellor about this? Or a doctor? You obviously need to take things more calmly, Mr Leng, and to try to look at it from your wife’s point of view —’
‘I don’t need fucking counsellors and doctors. I just need to be rid of that blood-sucking vampire!’
He blundered out of the office in a blazing rage just as the young WPC bringing in Frank’s morning coffee came in. He knocked Frank’s prized Queen Mother’s 100th birthday commemoration mug flying out of her hand, splattering her brand new uniform as it smashed on the floor. She looked at Frank in dumb horror, expecting fireworks, but instead, he merely gave a deep sigh of resignation as she stuttered out her apologies.
‘Not your fault, Carol. Just get a mop and bucket and clear it up, there’s a good girl. And bring me some more coffee. I need it after dealing with that one. It’s a toss-up whether it’s him or his wife who ends up in the funny farm first.’
It wasn’t a politically correct remark, and he’d have been howled at by the righteous for saying it, but Frank was beyond thinking politically-a
nything at that moment. He felt more like wringing Bob Leng’s neck, and hoped the man’s fury towards his wife didn’t portend a murderous intent. It might be as well to give DCI Frobisher a call sometime and alert him to the current climate.
In Frank’s opinion, and like most others, any sympathy for the Lengs had long gone because of their bloody dramatics. The temperamental old fool never knew when to leave well alone, and neither did his crazy wife. Between them, they were heading for a wonderful retirement together, I don’t think, Frank mused sarcastically. And then he turned to calmer police matters and promptly forgot about the pair of them.
*
At that moment Bob was heading blindly for the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Anywhere to get away from his own thoughts, even though he knew that was an impossibility. Nobody was ever going to listen to his side of the story. It should be dead and buried, anyway, he thought savagely. He wanted shot of it. He had intended closing his eyes and ears to the whole affair years ago — and would have been able to do it but for Jane’s obsession and his terrible nightmares. He blamed those on her too.
If she had any feelings for him at all, she’d stop sending these bastard letters to the press, and get rid of all the pictures of Steven, so that he wasn’t constantly reminded of him wherever he looked. It wasn’t that he hadn’t loved his son, as far as he was capable of loving anyone, but couldn’t she see that in all those bloody photos where the boy was holding a fishing-rod, or folding his arms with his school mates, or holding up a trophy for some sporting achievement — that all he could see was that festering, heaving, maggot-ridden hand?
There was only one sure way to rid himself of the horror of it all. He’d imagined himself free of her so many times, dreaming up the most elaborate ways to do bloody murder and get away with it. But he knew he wasn’t clever enough. He didn’t have the guts for it, either. He could bully her and strike her, but he knew he’d never be able to go through with the final act. So it had to be this way, and his last gleeful thought was that at least she wouldn’t get his insurance money. They didn’t pay out for suicides, did they?
*
Witnesses on the bridge swore that it was a tragic accident. One minute the man seemed to be walking purposefully from one side to the other, and then he paused as if he was intent on studying the shipping passing below on the full tide. He leaned further out, as if to see something in particular, and the next minute his feet had left the ground and he was hurtling over the side of the bridge and into the swollen river below.
*
‘Oh no, he couldn’t swim,’ Jane Leng said complacently to the police officers who came to inform her a few hours later. ‘Didn’t see the need for it, you see, and he’d never go to anyone for lessons. He was as stubborn as a mule in that respect. Well, in everything, really. If he couldn’t do something by his own efforts, he’d just heap scorn on anyone else who could. Our Steven was an excellent swimmer, of course.’
The two police officers glanced at one another. The WPC spoke gently, while the other officer continued to take notes.
‘Mrs Leng, you do understand that your husband is dead, don’t you?’
‘Oh yes,’ Jane said, more brightly. ‘I understand perfectly.’
‘And is Steven a relative? Where can we get hold of him?’
Jane looked at her pityingly. ‘Steven’s my son. I’m not sure where he is just now, but I’m sure he’ll be in touch very soon.’
The second officer looked at her sharply as memory clicked into place. ‘Mrs Leng, was your husband a fireman, and was there a terrible incident some years ago? I’m sorry if this is insensitive, but I didn’t connect the name at first.’
‘He was a fireman, just retired, so there shouldn’t be any problem about his pension coming to me. Actually, I shall come into quite a nice little sum of money in insurances too. Enough to be comfortable and to make a nice home for when Steven comes home.’
The WPC stared at her in shock, clearly too new at the job to know what she was talking about. She just saw her as the coldest fish imaginable, she told her oppo later, to dismiss her husband’s death like that, as if she was only interested in his pension and his insurance money.
‘It’s a long story,’ he told her. ‘But I’ll fill you in when we get back to the nick. And I’m very sorry, Mrs Leng, but we have to ask you to identify your husband. A car will take you down to Bristol whenever you’re ready.’
Her first instinct was to say she wouldn’t go and she never wanted to see the fat oaf again. But then she realized there wouldn’t be a death certificate without a positive identification, so she said she’d be ready in ten minutes, providing they would bring her back again, since she had things to see to.
‘Probably suffering from shock,’ the police officer confided to the WPC at her outraged look. ‘It takes some of them that way sometimes.’
*
He might not have been so compassionate had he been able to read Jane’s mind as she looked down at her husband’s body on the marble slab. Like a great grey slug, was how she thought of him, and silent for one of the few times in his life. But it wasn’t his life now, was it? It was his death.
She kept her eyes lowered so that the police officer and mortuary attendants wouldn’t see the gleam of pleasure in her eyes, and nodded quickly.
‘That’s him. That’s my husband,’ she said in a muffled voice.
Once the car had taken her swiftly back to London again, as she insisted that was what she wanted until she had time to think, she lost no time in calling Alex Best.
‘Fished him up out of the river, like the drowned rat he always was,’ Jane said viciously. ‘So now I don’t have to bother about him any more, do I?’
‘Mrs Leng, I don’t know what to say,’ Alex began, appalled at this callousness. She knew there was no love lost between them, but Jesus, there were limits. ‘Does this change your plans for moving to Somerset at all?’
Please say that it does. Please say that I need have nothing more to do with you.
The hell of it was, though, she was already caught up in the mystery of Steven Leng’s whereabouts, and knew she would have to carry on.
‘Oh, it doesn’t change my plans at all. I’ll have to be there for the funeral, anyway, though I’m sure my sister will see to that side of it. I was never any good at all that. So I’ll see you quite soon.’
She was unbelievable, thought Alex. Hateful, and unbelievable. She spoke as if she was obliged to attend a social function she didn’t much care about, and a far more important occasion would be meeting Alex again.
‘I have to be away on business for a week or so,’ Alex said quickly, having no intention of waiting around to watch her crow. ‘In fact you only just caught me before I leave town, but you can always contact me on my mobile phone.’
She hung up before there was any reply, hating the woman, hating the job, hating the whole rotten human race that could tear one another apart.
Her phone rang again, and she was tempted to leave it. But if she did, her answer machine would only kick in, and she’d have to check it out later. She snatched up the receiver again, and heard Nick’s crisp voice.
‘Alex, have you heard?’
‘If you mean have I heard that Bob Leng’s jumped off the Clifton Suspension Bridge, then yes, Jane has just told me very charmingly.’
It was a relief to hear his voice, and yet it brought her to the edge of tears, reminding her again of how sweet life could be, and yet how destructive people could be to one another.
‘Jumped? The witnesses are adamant that he fell.’
‘Well, I’m sure that’s what Jane will want to hear, so she can claim all his insurance money.’
‘Since when did you become so cynical?’
‘That’s my prerogative,’ he said, clearly intending to jolly her along despite the seriousness of the call.
‘Not any more,’ Alex retorted.
‘Do you want company this weekend?’
God, that was
so tempting. It was exactly what she wanted, and needed. But there was also the thought that Jane Leng might be descending on her, twittering about her new-found widow’s wealth, and she couldn’t bear that. If it seemed like running away, so be it.
‘Nick, can we leave it a while? I’d love to see you, but I’d planned on going away for a few days.’
‘Hardly the time of year for holidays, is it?’
‘It’s business, and don’t ask any more, because I’m not telling you.’
But he knew her too well. ‘Don’t be an idiot, darling. If you’re still at the Leng woman’s beck and call, she’ll never leave you alone if she’s coming into money. Haven’t you worked that out yet?’
‘Nick, I have to go. I’ve got an appointment. Sorry. I’ll call you, OK?’
Her voice always became jerky when she was nervous or upset, and right now she was both.
But she was already mentally planning which clothes she was going to throw together before she drove down to Exeter and looked for the Followers, though she didn’t have a clue what she was going to say to them. One thing was for sure: there was no way she was going to apply for membership, if that was what you did, and no way she was going to let herself get into their clutches.
*
She switched off her mobile while she was getting ready, unwilling to answer any more calls, and didn’t turn on her answer machine until the last minute before locking up the flat and the office. By now she was dressed as an ordinary tourist. There was no sense in trying to make a fashion statement when checking into a B&B for a couple of nights, especially as she needed to merge into the wallpaper, so to speak.
You could never do that, doll, she seemed to hear one Gary Hollis’s sexy voice drawl. She ignored it, twisting her hair up into a large clip and pulling on her brown fleece bomber jacket over her check shirt and jeans.
Then she bundled everything she needed into her car, making a mental checklist as she did so: tote bag, notebook, laptop, camera, tape recorder, mobile phone, route maps and AA town maps. She had no idea how long she was going to be away, but she needed to be prepared for everything. Then she headed out of Bristol, and didn’t start breathing easily until she reached the M5 motorway and cruised towards the south-west. Only then did she start to think seriously about the implications of Bob Leng’s death.
Deadly Suspicions (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 3) Page 13