‘What, like those twits who stroll around the town busking every afternoon? My mum always puts something in their charity box, but I’d like to know what they do with it!’
Bingo! Before Alex could ask any more, an older woman came out from the kitchen area of the coffee shop, exuding a variety of cooking smells. The girl spoke to her.
‘The lady’s asking about them buskers, Mum. I say they’re only after your money, but you quite like ’em, don’t you?’
This was obviously something about which her Mum was quite passionate, and on which she disagreed.
‘Oh, you always get uppity about ’em, but they’re all right, I reckon.’
She turned to Alex. ‘They bring in business, see Miss,’ she said. ‘Folk stop to look at them and listen to them, and then they come in here for a coffee or a snack. They’re always friendly and smiling too, which is more than can be said for some.’
This was said with a glare at her daughter, and then she spoke more sharply. ‘Don’t forget they paid to send a child to the deaf school and helped to pay for repairs to one of the old buildings that got damaged in last year’s storms, so they’re not all bad, my girl.’
She disappeared again, and the waitress sniffed. ‘Mum’s got a bee in her bonnet about them twits, and she likes it when young men smile at her. Nothing funny about it, mind,’ she added hastily, just in case Alex thought there was.
‘Well, I must say these people don’t sound too bad if they do these good works in the town — er — Tracey,’ she said, noting the girl’s name badge. ‘I shall have to take a look at them myself.’
‘We’ve got a bigger dining-room upstairs, and if you’re in for lunch, I’ll reserve you a window table, and you can get a good look at ’em from there. You might spot your young man.’
‘Who? Oh, yes. Well, reserve me a window table for one o’clock then.’
She beamed at the girl, thinking it was fate that sent her here. It always felt good when that happened. With an upstairs window seat, she could probably take a few camera shots of the group, as well as mingling with the shoppers later on and getting some at street level. Instinct and common sense told her they wouldn’t be exactly happy at posing for a camera, but a few unobtrusive shots could produce wonders.
‘How many buskers do you usually get around here?’ she asked Tracey casually.
‘Oh, quite a few. There are the singles, of course, and a guy who does a kind of one-man band thing. The police usually move him on after a bit, but the yellow twits are always here. They’re a bit of a tourist attraction now.’
Alex remembered being told that they always wore pale yellow colours, which was presumably why Tracey called them yellow twits. It was descriptive, if nothing else. She finished her coffee and cream doughnut and decided she had probed for long enough. Any more, and her curiosity would be too noticeable.
‘I’ll see you later then, Tracey,’ she said, leaving a generous tip, ensuring that she would get the best window table going.
She eventually found the library and spent an hour browsing among the shelves and assimilating a bit of local culture. She knew it would be a long shot to expect any books about religious or other cults, let alone one that was specifically about the Followers. There was no point in having a secret or closed-shop society if you were going to tell the world about it.
*
She was back at the coffee shop before one o’clock, and there was already a small clientele inside. It was clearly a popular eating-place, and she was glad she had booked a table in the upstairs dining area. From here she realized she could see the cathedral, which gave her a good excuse for taking some photos before she concentrated on the arrival of some of the Followers.
She felt a growing excitement. If Lennie Fry was among these buskers, she would surely recognize him from the photos she had seen in Gran Patterson’s scrap books. Just as quickly, she remembered that it was ten years on, and she had already told Jane Leng that Steven would have physically changed. But the Wilkins brothers hadn’t changed that much, and with any luck, there was no reason to think that Lennie Fry would have done, either.
‘What can I get you?’ she heard Tracey say beside her, tapping the menu deliberately, and reminding her that she wasn’t here just to admire the view.
‘I’ll have the lasagne, please,’ she said.
‘Good choice,’ Tracey told her. ‘And chips?’
‘And chips,’ Alex said weakly, knowing she shouldn’t.
Even before it was ready, she heard the sound of music from the street below. It was a tinny sound, mostly penny whistles and drums and a guy on the banjo. But right then, Alex was more interested in the group themselves than in the music they were playing. She leaned forward to get a better look, and began shooting off her camera as they came nearer.
There were eight of them: five smiling young men and three equally smiling young girls. They all wore long robes in pale lemon or cream, made out of some cheap cotton stuff, as far as Alex could make out. It was presumably to add to the effect of suffering for their art, sackcloth-and-ashes-style, she thought cynically. It looked pretty cold for this time of year, but she’d bet a pound to a pinch of snuff that they all wore thick sweaters underneath.
What intrigued her even more was the colour of their hair. They were all bleached to the colour of corn, tending towards a yellowy-blonde, which gave them all a cherubic, youthfully uniform appearance. They were certainly striking enough to make heads turn, and so similar that it would be hard to differentiate between them. And Lennie Fry, one-time hippy rebel of Steven Leng’s group, if appearances were to be believed, had been dark.
‘Here you are then,’ came Tracey’s cheerful voice. ‘A plate of Mum’s finest, and she’s put a few extra chips on for you.’
‘Thanks,’ Alex said. ‘That’s just what I need!’
In fact, if the smell of her lunch hadn’t been so inviting, she would have left it all and gone down to the street to watch and listen to the group of buskers. But since they would presumably be there most of the afternoon, there seemed little point in wasting a good meal. As it was, the lasagne was so steaming hot it burned her tongue with the first mouthful, and she had to treat the rest of it with caution.
By the time she had finished, with liberal quantities of iced water to help her through, the buskers had moved on a few hundred yards, which was presumably their modus operandi. They had a small crowd around them now, and one of the young girls was weaving in amongst them with a collecting tin in her hand. It had a large label on it announcing that all money went to charitable causes.
Alex studied the faces of the young men. It was too much to hope that he could be one of these five — except for the fact that he had been a one-time wannabe musician, she remembered. So why not? But as far as she remembered, not one of them resembled the Lennie Fry in Gran’s scrap book photos. Or rather, all of them did. That was the hell of it. They were all clones of one another.
The Mormons toured housing estates dressed in smart black suits looking like businessmen while they tried to convert you, Alex thought. And there was another lot who did the same thing done up like elderly housewives with shopping bags on their arms, and often a younger woman with a child in a pushchair in tow, all chattering nineteen to the dozen while they thrust their tracts under your nose and asked if you believed in Jesus.
Just like them, these Followers were all an identical set. So how the hell was she going to separate any one of them to ask any pertinent questions?
She hovered in a shop doorway, ostensibly taking photos of the street, and occasionally centring her gaze on the cathedral, but in reality zooming in on one or another of the smiling faces until she realized the girl with the collecting tin was rattling it under her nose, and smiling right into hers.
‘Oh yes, hang on a minute,’ she said quickly, and fumbled in her small change purse for some coins.
‘Peace and harmony,’ the girl said in a soft, melodious voice, and moved on to the nex
t person.
She could only have been about seventeen, Alex thought, and she wondered instantly if her parents knew where she was, or if she had been listed as a MisPer as the police called them. In the pale persona of the Followers, any missing person who wanted to disappear for whatever reason would have an ample disguise. It was an intriguing thought.
‘Beautiful, aren’t they?’ she heard someone say close by. An elderly gentleman with a military bearing was smiling benignly on the group as they moved on, resembling a cloud of yellow butterflies as their robes fluttered in a small gust of wind.
‘I suppose they are. People don’t resent them then? Forgive me if I seem inquisitive, but I’m new to the area, and I’ve never seen these people before.’
‘They brighten up a dull day,’ the man went on. ‘And they’re properly licensed for the busking, of course.’
‘Oh well, you can’t say fairer than that then, can you?’ Alex said.
‘Do I take it that you don’t approve, young lady?’ he asked her. ‘I assure you that we in the civic society have had cause to thank them in the past for their charitable efforts.’
‘Then I think that’s admirable,’ she said. ‘Please excuse me.’
It was just her luck to run into a member of the civic society. But perhaps it wasn’t bad luck, because it had told her that the Followers knew how to keep their noses clean. What better way to cover up any less than legal activities than to keep in with the civic fathers and help the town? She was becoming as cynical as any hard-nosed copper, since she had no idea at all what their activities were, other than what she had already seen.
Without warning it started to rain, with what began as a shower quickly becoming a downpour, and the streets emptied just as quickly as people scuttled inside the shops. It was enough to curtail the Followers’ busking for the day, anyway, and since the rain had brought a decided late-January chill to the air it was time for her to call it a day too. The thought of Mrs Dunstable’s warm and cosy B&B, with-afternoon-tea-if-required, was a temptation she couldn’t resist.
Once she arrived back at Dun Roamin’ she told Mrs Dunstable she’d be down to join the regulars at half past three, and then went to her room to pull on a sweater. She got out her sketch pad and did a few skilful sketches of the buskers while she could still remember the way they had looked, and then took notes of all the conversations she had had that day.
It hadn’t been entirely wasted, even though it might not be as easy to check out Lennie Fry as she had hoped. Short of marching right up to the front door of the headquarters — whose address she hadn’t been given, she remembered — the only way would be to speak to one of the buskers and ask outright. It was hardly the simplest way to go about tracking down someone who had chosen to hide his real identity, especially since she had no idea whether or not she was barking up the wrong tree. There was no definite evidence that said Lennie Fry had gone to join the Followers, only her own instinct.
She closed the notebook as she heard the distant sound of a bell from the bowels of the B&B. Mrs Dunstable was calling her troops to order, she thought with a grin, and even though she seemed to have been eating and drinking all day, she was more than ready for afternoon tea and home-made cakes. At this rate she’d end up looking like a beached whale so, tomorrow, she made a firm resolve to walk into town and leave the car behind.
She joined the regulars and spent a jolly touristy hour telling them where she had been that day, and hearing about the history of the town and its people. She was tempted to ask them if they knew anything about the Followers, but decided better of it. The fewer people who knew her real reason for being here, the better. She finally left them in the afternoon lounge, with the excuse that she had a phone call to make.
Actually, she liked talking to them. They were all pretty long in the tooth, but they were still with-it and interesting, and they reminded her of her own family when they got to reminiscing. But she wanted to check her answer machine to see if there were any messages. Thankfully, there weren’t, and she let out a long breath of relief, realizing she had been half-expecting Jane Leng to call and tell her the errant Steven had finally turned up. Not that it would have been him, of course, just some bogus guy on the make, reasoning that there was a packet to be made from a doting mother and non-grieving widow.
So now all there was to do was watch TV in her room, take a shower and get ready for the evening meal. More food? asked a little disapproving voice inside. The answer was that she needed all her energy, and she was going to be no good for anything if she fainted away from lack of sustenance.
But when the time came, she couldn’t face another gargantuan meal after all, and she felt all the nobler for leaving half of it. She left the dining-room after coffee and went back upstairs to loosen off a few things, and turned on the TV again. The local news might be interesting.
Her mobile rang before she could find the right channel, and she answered it quickly. Her heart jumped at the sound of Nick Frobisher’s voice.
‘Hi, Alex, just thought I’d give you a call,’ he said easily. ‘And how’s the big city? Living it up, are you?’
‘Not exactly,’ she said cautiously. ‘I’m just about to watch TV, actually.’
‘Good God, that’s no way for a babe to spend an evening,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Not that I mind if you’re pining for me. Are all the studs in Bristol spoken for or something?’
‘As far as I know. I haven’t seen one yet to tempt me away from my fireside, anyway.’
Why did she have the sudden feeling that he might be testing her? Checking up on her whereabouts? But he couldn’t know, could he? She had told nobody she was coming here.
‘Well, I wanted to be sure you were all right,’ he said, more seriously now. ‘You had a shock, and I daresay the black widow got on to you pretty quickly, didn’t she?’
For a few seconds Alex didn’t connect his words. What shock had she had? And then it flooded back. Bob Leng’s death, of course. How could she have forgotten for an instant?
‘Oh yes. And she’s convinced it will bring Steven out of the woodwork now. You’ve heard about the latest letter she sent to the paper, I suppose? I know news travels fast between you lot.’
The minute she said it, Alex knew. There had been something in the penetrating looks that desk sergeant had given her when she asked about the Followers. She ground her teeth, furious with herself for not thinking that one out. Knowing she was hot on the trail (tepid to ice-cold was more like it), she wouldn’t put it past Nick to have put the word out to alert him if anyone started asking questions about the Followers. Anyone with a certain striking description.
Too late, Alex knew she should have gone to the Tourist Info place instead. They might even have given her the address of the Followers’ headquarters instead of being so bloody cagey. It would have to be her first port of call tomorrow now.
She realized Nick hadn’t said anything in the few seconds when the wheels were turning around in her head, and she gave a deep sigh.
‘All right, so what do you really want, Nick?’
‘I want what I’ve always wanted.’
‘As well as that.’
‘I want you to give up this pointless case before you get hurt.’
‘What makes you think I’ll get hurt? From what I’ve seen of the Followers, which is very little, and only from a distance,’ she amended hastily, ‘they look like a harmless bunch. They do good works, so I’ve been told. And since I take it you know where I am, you’ll know that the local police tolerate them.’ She paused for breath. ‘So stop bloody tracking me, will you? Are you my keeper now?’
‘You know the reason for that,’ he said shortly.
‘Good night, Nick,’ Alex said, and switched off her mobile.
*
She felt angry and uptight for the remainder of the evening. He was her best friend, and she loved him, but he had no right to treat her like an imbecile who couldn’t do her job. She didn’t need police
backup for everything she did, for God’s sake, and the more she thought about that, the angrier she got. Having him track her every move was worse than being a criminal.
The bed was unfamiliar, and nothing like as comfortable as Mrs Dunstable had intimated. Alex spent a restless night, her brain still too active for sleep. By morning she had a thumping headache, and after breakfast she found the nearest chemist and bought some super-strength painkillers to ward it off. She needed her wits about her if she was going to approach one of the Followers later that day.
She had noted that the soft-spoken girl with the collecting tin went into several of the shops after the busking group moved a little way down the street, so presumably that was also allowed. She found her way to the same coffee shop as yesterday and asked Tracey casually if any of them ever came in here. They must get dry throats singing their awful chants, which were never going to get in the charts, nor the Eurovision —
‘Sometimes a couple of them pop in for a cuppa,’ Tracey reminded her.
‘Do your customers object to the collecting tin?’
‘Nah,’ said Tracey. ‘The girl who usually does it is a nice enough kid. Calls herself Zelena, but I bet that’s not her real name. More like the yellow peril, if you ask me. They’ve probably all got made-up names, though I’ve never heard any of the others.’
She left Alex to serve several shoppers taking a breather. This was a useful bit of information, thought Alex, but it was hardly going to help if she wanted to trace a young man called Lennie Fry. She reserved the same upstairs table again for lunch, and just hoped that Zelena would pop in with her collecting tin.
She heard them long before she saw them. They had quite a distinctive sound, she thought with a grin, though the guy on the banjo wasn’t bad, and she wondered if he could possibly be Lennie Fry. The trouble was, he didn’t look in the least bit like Lennie Fry, or the way she imagined him to be.
Halfway through her chicken salad she caught a glimpse of yellow cotton out of the corner of her eye, and she saw Zelena come smilingly towards her.
Deadly Suspicions (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 3) Page 15