Murder in Langley Woods

by Betty Rowlands

  ‘No, don’t do that!’ He sounded so alarmed at the prospect that she almost burst out laughing. ‘Tell you what,’ he went on urgently, ‘call me on my mobile if you come across anything interesting and I can maybe join you later.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Melissa was just about to leave the house when the phone rang. Gloria was on the line. There was no mistaking her disappointment in what she had to report. ‘I asked my Stanley about that bloke what he saw with the girl, but he weren’t nothing like what you said … quite a lot older, he thought, and dressed different … he never saw his face, but it definitely weren’t a young man.’

  ‘Oh well, thanks anyway. Just the same, it could be important. You will make sure he tells the police, won’t you?’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ said Gloria resignedly. ‘He promised to do that.’

  It was gone half-past one when Melissa reached the Golden Bell and the car park was two-thirds full. The place appeared to be a popular lunch-time venue for business people; as she made for the entrance to the saloon bar a couple of smartly dressed young men carrying briefcases emerged, one with a mobile phone clamped between ear and shoulder while juggling with a bunch of keys as he strode towards his car.

  Inside, there was an appetising smell of food, a subdued clatter of cutlery and the inevitable background of piped music. On the off-chance that one of the customers might be the man she was looking for, Melissa glanced quickly round the tables, but there was no one there that she recognised. A few were in pairs, but the majority seemed to be on their own, almost all preoccupied with their own affairs. Some were studying papers, others stabbed the keys of their personal organisers with one hand while forking food into their mouths with the other. A man and a woman in earnest conversation, both formally clad in dark suits, stood at the bar with drinks in their hands. They spoke in low voices, their heads close together and their expressions serious and intense. At Melissa’s approach they picked up their drinks and moved away. They might have been high-powered executives discussing some highly confidential business deal … or lovers snatching a few stolen moments together.

  There was no sign of the woman who had been serving there the previous evening. Instead, a jovial-looking man of about sixty with thinning hair and a wispy beard, temporarily unoccupied with customers, was rinsing glasses at a sink beneath the counter and drying them carefully before stowing them on a rack above his head. On seeing Melissa, he laid down his cloth, gave her a pleasant smile and said, ‘What can I get you?’

  She ordered a white wine spritzer and perched on one of a line of tall stools ranged along the bar. While the man poured her drink she said, ‘There was a lady serving when I was in here yesterday evening … is she working today, by any chance? A blonde lady with a nice smile …’

  The man gave a nod of recognition as he set her drink in front of her and took the money. ‘Ah, that’ll be Rosie. She’s popped out the back for a minute. Can I help you?’

  ‘I wanted to ask her about a man who was here at the same time. I had a feeling I’d seen him somewhere before, but I couldn’t think where. I wondered if he was a regular.’

  ‘Could be. What did he look like?’

  ‘Mid-thirties, well set up, wearing a brown leather jacket that looked expensive …’

  The barman gave a knowing grin. ‘Give you the eye, did he?’

  ‘Er, well …’ Melissa was momentarily taken aback. ‘I was with a friend … I was going to have a word with this chap, only he got up and left in rather a hurry before I had the chance.’

  The barman held a glass up to the light and squinted through it before placing it in the rack. Behind him, a door opened and a woman appeared. ‘That’s the lady I saw last night,’ said Melissa eagerly. ‘Excuse me, is your name Rosie?’

  The woman nodded. ‘That’s right,’ she replied with a smile of recognition. ‘I remember you. You came in yesterday evening with a gentleman.’

  ‘The lady wants to ask you about a customer who was here at the same time,’ said the barman. ‘Sounds as if it could be Rocky Wilkins.’ He put down the cloth and moved away to take an order.

  ‘He was sitting over there, reading a newspaper,’ Melissa said, nodding towards the fireplace. ‘In his mid-thirties, well-dressed, very attractive. Is he an actor or a TV presenter or something? His face was awfully familiar.’

  Rosie gave a wheezy laugh, displaying lipstick-stained teeth. ‘That’s our Rocky!’ she said. ‘Got what it takes, hasn’t he? I tell him he should be in show business and he laps it up.’

  Melissa pretended to look disappointed. ‘So he isn’t anyone famous?’ Rosie shook her head. ‘That’s funny. I could have sworn I’d seen him before.’

  ‘You could well have done. Rocky gets around … in more ways than one.’ Rosie gave a sly wink as she picked up the cloth and continued with the barman’s abandoned task.

  ‘You mean, he’s a rep of some sort?’

  ‘Nothing so classy as that. Not that he wouldn’t be good at it, mind, specially if the customers were female.’ The notion set Rosie chuckling again.

  ‘So what does he do?’

  ‘Drives a truck … one of those big artics. Goes all over Europe, he does … sometimes he’s away for a couple of weeks at a time. No telling what he gets up to when his wife’s not around to keep an eye on him.’

  The words sent the adrenalin racing through Melissa’s system. She tried to sound casual as she asked, ‘Does he live round here?’

  ‘A couple of hundred yards or so up the lane opposite.’ Rosie gestured with her cloth. ‘I know that ’cos me and the guv’nor had to practically carry him home one night,’ she confided. ‘Legless, he was. We propped him against the truck while we got his wife to open up and help us get him inside.’

  ‘I’ll bet they had a few words the next day, when he’d sobered up.’

  ‘From the look of her, they’d had more than words before he left the house.’ Rosie’s manner became suddenly serious. She leaned forward, rested her forearms on the bar and lowered her voice, ‘Between you and me, there’s more than one side to our Rocky. He’s a charmer all right … chats up any bit of skirt that catches his eye, me included. I kid him along ’cos it’s good for trade, see – him being a regular – but I wouldn’t get involved with him if he won the lottery and offered to share it.’

  ‘You reckon he could turn nasty?’

  ‘It’s only guesswork on my part, but I put him down as one that wouldn’t take no for an answer. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t know anything definite against the fellow. For all I know, his wife did get her black eye walking into a door, but you never can tell. Not that he’s ever made any trouble in here … in fact, when Julie’s with him, he doesn’t so much as look at another woman. In a way it doesn’t add up, but there it is.’

  ‘Never pays to go by appearances, does it?’ Melissa remarked, helping herself to an olive from a dish on the bar and privately wondering how the woman would react if she knew the real motive behind her questions.

  A customer approached with an order and Rosie moved away. Melissa, by this time bursting with suppressed excitement, finished her drink, said ‘Goodbye,’ and slipped out. She crossed the road and followed the direction Rosie had indicated. The lane curved away to the right for a short distance and then straightened out. A little further on was a row of houses; opposite them, in what appeared to be a lay-by, a couple of cars were parked and beyond them was the tall outline of the tractor unit of an articulated truck. She stood for a moment, trying to decide what to do next. Then she remembered her promise to keep Bruce in the picture. There was a payphone in the entrance lobby of the pub and she hurried back there, put in a coin and tapped out the number of his mobile phone, hoping that she wouldn’t catch him at an awkward moment. As it happened, he was on his way back to his office to deliver his story; his reaction on hearing what she had discovered was both predictable and gratifying.

  ‘You’re brilliant, Mel!’ he exclaimed. ‘Where exactly are y
ou?’

  ‘A few hundred yards from Rocky Wilkins’s house. He lives up the lane opposite the Golden Bell and his truck’s parked outside. He’s not in the pub, so the chances are he’s at home.’

  ‘And you’re planning to pay him a visit?’

  ‘Sure, why not? Even if it’s a false alarm and he isn’t the man Hannah ran off with, there’s no harm done.’

  ‘Can’t it wait till I’m free to come with you? It’d make a brilliant story … intrepid lady novelist and journalist from local paper track down vital witness in murder hunt—’

  ‘And while we’re waiting for a convenient time to call on him together, Rocky gets into his truck and heads for a destination unknown,’ Melissa interrupted. ‘Or worse still, Hannah’s people get to him before we do. If I can find him, so can they.’

  ‘You’ve got a point there,’ Bruce admitted.

  ‘All we want to know is, is he or isn’t he the man who took Hannah Rose to Eastern Europe? If he is, he needs to be warned as soon as possible of the danger he’s in.’

  ‘Hmm … okay then, go ahead, but promise to keep me posted.’ It was clear from Bruce’s tone that the danger to Rocky Wilkins from a possible revenge attack from Hannah’s relatives was only marginally more important than getting a scoop for the Gazette.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll call you the minute I know anything.’

  ‘Thanks.’ The reception became distorted; above the crackle on the line she heard him say, ‘Touching base now. Call me here if there’s any news.’

  The minute he set foot in the newsroom, Bruce Ingram was aware of an atmosphere of suppressed excitement which meant one thing: a big story was about to break.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

  ‘Word’s just come in from the nick,’ said Alec Trimble, one of the other reporters. ‘The two scrap-metal dealers in the freezer case have been released without charge.’

  ‘No kidding! Any details?’

  ‘Not yet. You were at the earlier briefings … how would you say the inquiry’s been going?’

  ‘DCI Holloway was playing it close to his chest as usual, but it’s pretty clear he was having a hard time building up a case against those two. He was granted one extension … maybe there wasn’t enough evidence to justify another. I’ll bet he’s sick as a dog!’ Bruce rubbed his hands in glee at the thought, remembering his own short career in the police and the ambitious detective’s seeming delight in humiliating his juniors.

  ‘So where does he go from here, I wonder?’ said Alec.

  Bruce frowned. ‘Dunno. Carry on with the house-to-house in the hope of tracing the girl’s movements, I suppose.’

  ‘I wonder if the police are any nearer finding the bloke she ran off with. If he had nothing to hide, you’d think he’d have come forward by now.’ Alec toyed absent-mindedly with a paperweight on Bruce’s desk. ‘Y’know,’ he went on thoughtfully, ‘he could be the killer … I’ve always had my doubts about him.’

  ‘Hells’ teeth!’ Bruce jumped to his feet.

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘Here!’ Bruce slammed his cassette recorder down in front of a startled trainee journalist who was studying a page mock-up on an adjacent desk. ‘You can type, can’t you? Transcribe that interview for me. Then have a go at writing the story. I’ll look it over when I get back.’ He grabbed his jacket from a nearby peg and made for the door. ‘If the boss asks for me,’ he said to Alec over his shoulder, ‘tell her I’m on my way to the Golden Bell at Carston and I’ll call in later.’

  Fourteen

  The sun had been shining earlier, but now the sky was overcast and a stiff breeze had sprung up, sweeping across the open fields that surrounded the village of Carston and sending fallen leaves careering in all directions. Shivering a little as she stepped outside, Melissa put on her gloves, turned up the collar of her coat, recrossed the road and set off to find the Wilkins’ house. She had walked only a few yards when a woman cyclist appeared round the bend in the lane, pedalling with her shoulders hunched over the handlebars and her gaze fixed straight ahead. As she passed, Melissa caught a brief glimpse of pale, drawn features framed in a head scarf and eyes watery and reddened by the wind.

  She was trying to decide which of the row of cottages might be the one where Rocky Wilkins lived when the problem was solved by the man himself emerging from the one at the far end, crossing the road and climbing into the cab of the tractor. Alarmed at the thought that he might be about to drive off, she hurried forward, but almost immediately he jumped down again with a briefcase in his hand, slamming the door behind him with a violent movement that suggested he was not in the best of tempers. He headed back to the house without appearing to notice Melissa and was halfway up the path to his front door by the time she reached the gate.

  ‘Mr Wilkins!’ she called.

  He pulled up, swung round and glared. ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘My name’s Melissa Craig.’ She pushed open the gate and walked towards him; as she drew near, his expression relaxed into a smile which, had she been an impressionable twenty-year-old instead of a mature woman enjoying a perfectly satisfactory love-life, would have set her heart thumping. As it was, she merely said in a brisk, businesslike voice, ‘I’d like a word with you if you’ve got a moment.’

  ‘An … ny time! Come along in!’ The words fairly throbbed with a seductive intensity that was so plainly the result of constant practice as to be almost comical. With a slight bow and a gesture of invitation, he stood aside while she stepped past him into the tiny entrance hall. He closed the door behind her with no sign of the ill-temper she had witnessed a few moments earlier. There was something in the controlled, deliberate movement and the click of the latch that struck her as vaguely menacing. It gave her a feeling of being locked in and for a moment she found herself wishing she had agreed to wait until Bruce was free to come with her. Still, she was here now. She resolved to be as brief as possible, say what she had come to say and leave.

  Rocky put the briefcase down at the foot of the stairs and, with another devastating smile accompanied by a further bow and gesture, ushered her into a small but comfortably furnished sitting-room where a log fire burned in an iron grate. He put a hand under her elbow, guided her towards one of a pair of armchairs placed on either side of the fire and said, ‘Sit down, make yourself comfortable.’

  A trifle hesitantly, Melissa complied, ‘I won’t keep you long,’ she began.

  ‘No need to rush!’ He settled in the other armchair, nonchalantly crossed his legs and sat studying her with such undisguised admiration that she began to feel uneasy. To avoid his gaze, she glanced around the room. There was a pleasant hint of lavender polish in the air and the general impression was of order and an almost aggressive cleanliness. The fitted carpet was spotless, the curtains were artistically draped and held back with matching ties, the furniture had a waxy sheen, the windows and the looking-glass above the mantelpiece sparkled and the graduated row of copper jugs on the hearth shone like miniature suns.

  ‘Cosy, innit?’ he said, as if reading her thoughts. On the face of it, it was an innocuous remark, the comment of a man proud of his home, but he managed to infuse the word ‘cosy’ with a disturbingly sexual overtone. He spoke with a local accent, but his voice had a throaty, sensual quality that sounded put on, as if he was trying to give an impression of Humphrey Bogart. She guessed it was part of his seduction technique and decided it was time to get things back on track.

  ‘Very cosy,’ she agreed, adding pointedly, ‘and your wife keeps it beautifully.’

  Mention of his wife did not appear to cause him the slightest embarrassment. ‘Yeah, Julie likes to see things just so,’ he said carelessly. He might, Melissa thought, have been talking about a housekeeper. ‘She’s just gone to work, so there’s no need to worry,’ he added with a suggestive leer.

  ‘Worry? What should I be worried about?’

  This was getting trickier by the minute. It had not occurred to her, in her
excitement at having found him, that he might jump to the conclusion that she was following up his unspoken invitation of the previous evening. She looked back at him warily, sizing him up. He was sturdily built, with powerful-looking hands and wrists. If he started to get physical, things could turn very nasty. ‘Look,’ she said hastily, ‘don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not—’

  ‘Oh, come on!’ he said, his bold eyes devouring hers, ‘I know exactly why you’re here. I saw you in the Bell the other night and I read the message. I could see you fancied me and—’

  ‘No, really,’ she protested. ‘You’ve got it all wrong … just let me explain—’

  ‘It’s mutual,’ he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘No need to be shy.’ With a sudden movement that took her completely by surprise, he stood up, bent down and grabbed one of her hands, hauling her to her feet. ‘We’ll have a great time together, you and I!’

  ‘Now, just a minute!’ She made an effort to pull away from him, but he held her against his chest in a bear-hug, making it difficult to breathe. She put both hands on his upper arms in an effort to break free, but it was like trying to push over two oak posts set in concrete. ‘Pack it in, will you!’ she gasped.

  ‘Why? It’s what you came for, innit?’ His face moved closer to hers and she leaned back as far as the iron grip would allow.

  ‘No it isn’t. I came to warn you—’

  ‘Oh yeah, what of? Been caught fiddling me tacho, have I? Pull the other one!’ He put a hand behind her head, his open mouth reaching for hers. Thankful that she was wearing her Dr Martens, Melissa aimed two vicious kicks at his shins.

  Both found their target. Rocky gave an agonised yelp and slackened his grip just enough for her to wriggle free. His face contorted as he bent down to massage the bruises. Like many bullies, he appeared to have a low pain threshold. ‘Spiteful bitch, you’ll be sorry for that!’ he snarled.