“Got it.”
Then his hand turned into a finger. Whatever they said to Terry – had burned into his brain.
“They said ‘you are out of business, Terry Hamblyn. Or else, bad things gonna happen’. And than came with another smack.”
Jack had a thought then; whoever intimidated Terry was a professional. Knew how to push buttons. Knew how to deliver a message so it stuck.
“And I said… I said… ‘okay, got it. All done, I’m out’. And I meant it.”
“Bet you did, Terry.”
Terry was breathing hard. Reliving that moment – not too much fun for him.
And Jack was wondering whether to get his answer he might have to apply some of the same techniques.
Least I know Terry responds to them!
“Terry – gotta say – must have been a bad moment, I get that. But see, you still haven’t told me who. Who was it? Who did that to you?”
And then Jack watched as a cloud seemed to cover Terry’s face, his eyes shifting left and right.
“But that’s it, Jack! Swear to god. I don’t know. I don’t know who the hell it was. The guys, working for someone. Knew their business, too right they did. But I haven’t got a clue who they worked for!”
For a moment Jack thought that was it.
A small bit of information. But ultimately, what did it mean? What did it give him?
Not a hell of a lot.
He turned as if he was ready to get out of the foetid atmosphere of Terry’s lair.
Took a step to the thin door to the place, still open a crack. Hand on the metal handle that served as a doorknob. When he stopped.
Terry lived here. Terry had dealt drugs.
There might be one more thing he might know…
So, Jack turned back to the hapless Terry, already rummaging amidst his pile of papers and discarded clothes for what he probably hoped was a not-quite-empty bottle, or the stub of a joint.
“Terry. One more thing…”
And rabbit in the headlights, Terry looked up.
“Yeah?”
“If someone was moving into the area, you know – bringing in drugs – where’d they likely to be coming from? Hmm?”
Jack watched as Terry found the discarded joint he was looking for and lit it with an old butane lighter.
The joint flared and scattered sparks and ashes. Terry coughed.
Jack eased open the trailer door behind him, letting the draught blow the cloud of smoke from the joint back into the trailer.
“Where from?” said Terry. “Dunno. Birmingham? Along the motorway from London? Oxford. Could be bloody anywhere!”
“Come on Terry, you’ve got a better idea than that.”
Terry frowned and blinked.
“I dunno. Thinking… maybe Gloucester? There’s gotta be a few people operate out of there. Nobody gives a damn what goes down in Gloucester – see?”
Jack remembered trips he’d taken to Gloucester.
Tough times in a tough city. He could imagine there’d be no shortage of customers there. And dealers too, of course…
“Appreciate your help, Terry,” he said. “Anything else you think of – you come find me, won’t you?”
“Right, sure. In your dreams,” said Terry.
Jack gave him a look.
“Yeah, sure,” said Terry, quickly looking sheepish. “Um, will do.”
Jack stepped through the door.
“Hey,” said Terry, “this about that guy that died last week?”
Jack turned.
“You heard about that?”
“Common knowledge mate,” said Terry. “This place was swarming with cops next day.”
“You know anything about it?”
“He was just a guy, wasn’t he?” said Terry with a shrug. “Just another guy. A teacher, right?”
Jack nodded, then turned and stepped out of the trailer, and shut the door behind him.
As he walked back across the yard towards his boat he wondered if Terry really knew more than he was telling.
Terry seemed to have lost his mojo since Jack had last seen him. The beating he’d taken must have been a bad one.
Seemed almost like it had broken him.
Whoever these guys were – and wherever they were from – they knew what they were doing.
He stepped down into the little dinghy and fired up the outboard.
Then he untied her, pushed off from the old, crumbling jetty and headed back to the Goose.
***
Halfway back to the boat, a thought occurred to Jack.
What if Josh Owen had stumbled across something to do with the drugs in the school?
What if he had found out something about these new dealers who’d taken over the area? And what if it had been enough to get the young teacher killed?
Then, the big one.
What if Josh Owen didn’t fall from that bridge?
What if he was pushed?
What if Josh Owen… was murdered?
18. Chips with that?
“Whatcha want, love?”
Sarah smiled at the man. Blood red T-shirt with the faded logo of something Sarah couldn’t make out.
The curlicue letters of the man’s name were on the droopy T-shirt pocket.
“Rikky”.
Two big brawny arms. Dark eyebrows that – with his question of Sarah’s order – had formed a perfect “V” downwards, matched by his mouth and face, screwed up in an expression that wasn’t quite a frown but miles away from a smile.
A wooden toothpick jutted out, completing the picture.
Sarah wasn’t quite prepared for this. She had stopped on instinct, an impulse.
And here she was.
“Just a coffee please,” she said.
Not the kind of place you’d ask for a flat white or a mochaccino, she guessed.
Rikky’s face stayed frozen in its questioning state.
“Anything else? Summat to eat?”
Sarah pretended to look at the handwritten menus on either side of the open panels of the van. Everything from bacon rolls and burgers, to falafels, sausages and Cornish pasties. “Made Fresh”, was written underneath.
Ordering anything to eat here would be risking dietary disaster.
“Um, maybe some chips.”
The man nodded, his face not showing if the order pleased or displeased him. But he turned to his right.
“Ted, ordera chips and coffee.”
Sarah had dug into her handbag, not even sure she had any cash. Not a place to whip out the plastic.
She opened her purse, and gave the man ten pounds.
As the money disappeared, she knew that whatever impulse brought her here, this was the time to ask her question.
“Looks like,” she started as the guy sorted the change, “you get a lot of kids here. Is that allowed?”
The man turned back, his meaty fist filled with a crumpled five-pound note and some coins.
“Don’t ask me. Ask up at the school if it bothers you.”
O-kay. Real charmer, and obviously easy to talk to.
“What I was wondering was, do you ever see kids up here… doing things… they shouldn’t?”
She nodded toward the helmeted kid on the bike who now fired up his engine, slewed the machine round, and roared off onto the main road.
“Like that guy for instance?” she said.
And that caught his attention.
He now folded his arms and leaned close on the countertop. The toothpick moved from one side of his mouth to the other.
The man’s eyes looked left and right.
“You the police? What do you mean asking me if I’ve seen anything? Seen like… what?”
Sarah felt this had been a bad idea. Or if it wasn’t a bad idea, it would have been one better left to Jack.
“Kids drinking maybe or–” the big one coming, “drugs. Lot of kids here. So, ever see anyone hanging around maybe trying to sell them stuff? You know?”
&nbs
p; The man nodded.
He seemed to hold that pose for an uncomfortably long time.
The toothpick jutted out, now pointing dead centre.
“No. Never seen any of that. That wouldn’t be right.”
He stared at her intently.
“You a mum then? That it? Got kids in that place?” he said, nodding over his shoulder in the general direction of the school.
Sarah realised Rikky had just given her the perfect cover. She gave a comedy “cringe” as if she’d been found out.
“Thought so,” he said, with a self-satisfied smirk.
“Is it that obvious?”
“You wouldn’t make much of a cop,” he said, grinning now and wiping his hands on a grimy cloth. “Got you bang to rights, didn’t I?”
“You did,” said Sarah, forcing a laugh and playing the over-protective mum. “Saw right through me.”
The man formed his cracked, rough face into what was meant to resemble a smile.
“’s understandable, love,” he said. “You coming up here, wanting to see for yourself what’s what.”
Rikky – turning on the charm.
As if for emphasis, he unfolded his arms. Slid back off the counter top.
“But you don’t need to worry,” he said. “Worst thing that can happen to them here is an undercooked sausage.”
Then he laughed loudly at his own joke, his face twisting into a barely disguised leer.
Sarah smiled back at him – though she’d never felt less like smiling.
Which is when the man to his right – the guy called Ted – said: “Order’s up.”
And Sarah’s interview with Rikky about the kids, about drugs, thankfully ended, as she moved on to the second window.
***
Ted wasn’t at all what Sarah had expected. While she was talking to Rikky the silent chef had had his back to her.
But now, as he turned and slid a paper bowl piled high with chips across the counter towards her, she saw him properly.
He can’t be more than eighteen, she thought, surprised.
Even in his stained white T-shirt, jeans and apron he didn’t look like he belonged in this ramshackle van, flipping burgers, frying chips.
Tall, slim with dark brown eyes and a twirl of hair that kept falling across his brow, and a fuzzy attempt at a beard – he looked like he should be in a band, singing ballads on YouTube.
“You got any ketchup?” she said, just to engage him.
He pointed to the side of the counter where there was an obvious stack of ketchup, mayonnaise and sauce in big plastic bottles.
“Sorry,” said Sarah. “Thanks!”
He nodded at her, then picked up a battered old paperback and started to read.
“Don’t suppose you’ve seen anyone suspicious hanging around up here?” she said.
She watched his eyes flick up lazily and focus on her properly now.
“Hmm?”
“Ted – yes?” she said, nodding at the name written on his T. “Like I was saying to Rikky just now, I wondered if you ever saw anyone up here who looked a bit suspicious?” Then she quickly added. “We mums worry about places like this. Kids, people from off the road, from… who-knows-where. Know what I mean?”
Even as she asked the question, she felt it was ridiculous – but somehow the disguise of being “just a mum” allowed her to get away with it.
“Er – no,” he said, as if – yes – it truly was one of the stupidest questions he’d heard.
Sarah nodded and decided to retreat.
“Thanks anyway,” she said, “for the chips.”
Then she walked back to her car and leaned against the door in the warm sunshine, eating the greasy chips with a plastic fork and watching the traffic fly by.
She looked across the potholed parking area towards the school fence.
The cars and vans had thinned out. A mid-morning lull, she guessed.
The workmen had gone from their improvised seats. The girls from the school had taken their place.
She thought she recognised one of them as a friend of Chloe’s – or maybe not so much a friend as just a classmate. The girl didn’t seem to recognise her, but Sarah kept her glances – even at this distance – as casual as she could.
She ate the chips slowly, taking in everything.
After a couple of minutes, she saw the back door of the van open. Ted emerged, took a roll-up from the pocket of his T-shirt and lit it.
Then he wandered over to the group of girls.
From their reaction – or carefully constructed lack of a reaction – Sarah could tell Ted was the reason why they had sat there waiting for the last five minutes.
They obviously knew him well.
Eye-candy for the girls.
He stood in front of them, rolling his cigarette casually between his fingers, occasionally saying a few words.
The girls giggled and laughed and chatted, their eyes constantly returning to the young chef.
Sarah could see there were advantages to this apparently dead-end job turning burgers and doling out chips to passing truck-drivers and salesmen.
She heard the distant bell ringing out at the school. She watched as the girls reluctantly disengaged from Ted.
One of them leaned in close, touched him gently on the waist.
His hand briefly on her back…
Then they all scrambled through a hole in the fence into the playing fields and walked towards the school.
Sarah saw Ted watching them go.
After a minute, he flicked the end off his roll-up, put the unfinished smoke back in his T-shirt pocket and headed back to the van.
Sarah finished the last of her chips – lunch of a sort – and wiped her hands on the small paper napkin. She could still see the girls through the fence, now half way across the playing fields.
Must be quite the regular event, she thought. And who am I to blame them?
I would have done just the same myself, at that age.
She looked back at the van. Rikky was leaning on the counter again, face turned, watching her.
Unsmiling.
She walked over to an overflowing rubbish bin by the fence and dropped her paper plate and coffee cup into the mess. Then she went back to her car, climbed in and started the engine.
As she drew level with the road, checking it was clear to pull out, she was aware out of the corner of her eye of Rikky still leaning on the counter, watching her.
She didn’t look round, but drove on towards Cherringham.
Feeling somehow… spooked.
But why?
19. Dinner for Two
Lymore Cottage, read Jack on the weathered sign nailed to the fence.
This was the place.
He tucked his bunch of flowers under one arm, pushed open the gate to Sarah’s new house and closed it behind him. Then he paused for a moment, bottle of wine in one hand, flowers in the other, taking in the place.
It was the classic English country cottage, and Jack saw straight away how Sarah wouldn’t have been able to resist buying it.
It was just so… Sarah.
A small front garden with a gravelled area big enough for a couple of cars. Next to that an overgrown lawn and an apple tree dotted with green apples.
And on both sides, a sprawling hedge made up of a variety of different shrubs, all dotted with clematis and threaded with ivy.
The whole place looked like a toy house.
Built from honeyed stone that seemed to glow in the evening sunlight, it had a front door with a cute little porch and – on either side – double windows.
Then, above – on what Jack would call the second floor but Brits insisted on calling the first – three windows all the way across, under a limestone tiled roof that was dotted with lichen and moss.
Quite a change, he thought, from the little semi-detached house back in the village, where Sarah used to live. And just about perfect.
He went up to the front door and rapped the brass
knocker.
It opened, and there was Sarah in a flowery dress, hair up, apron on, cheeks flushed from cooking, he guessed.
“Jack! Perfect timing – oh, look at those roses – so beautiful, you shouldn’t have – come on through.”
And with that, she took the flowers out of his hand and led the way towards the back of the house.
Jack closed the front door and followed, past open stairs and a couple of rooms until he reached a nice-sized kitchen with a glass ceiling, stone floor, and bare brickwork.
Big improvement over her former tiny kitchen.
Sarah bent down at the oven, spooning something into a big cooking dish.
“Perfect timing?” he said.
“Absolutely,” said Sarah, not looking round. “I’ve done this ridiculously complicated casserole – God knows why – anyway, bear with me, it’ll be another half hour. I’ve got to do a special basting thing with it, and I haven’t had a moment to fix a drink, so, anyway, it’s all out there. Do your magic, Jack – please!”
Jack looked to the big folding windows that opened out onto some kind of decked area and went outside.
He saw a couple of comfy outdoor armchairs facing the garden which seemed to go right down to the river.
And next to the chairs, a long table, laid for dinner at the far end. At this end, on a silver tray, stood a cocktail shaker, a bottle of Rodnik vodka… impressive… and one of vermouth, with two bowls of sliced lemon and ice.
And two perfect martini glasses.
Jack didn’t need telling what to do.
By the time Sarah came out of the kitchen and joined him, he had the icy drinks all ready.
He handed hers over and they clinked glasses.
“Cheers,” said Sarah.
“Cheers.”
Both sipped, and for a few seconds Jack savoured that amazing taste, and this special moment out here in the late sunshine, the smell of food drifting from the kitchen, the long, tree-lined garden and the silent flowing Thames.
“’Straight up with a twist – and a side of ice’,” said Sarah. “I remember the first time I heard you say that at the Ploughman’s and Billy looking at you like you’d just landed from Mars.”
Jack laughed.
“Not the case now,” he said. “I reckon you could order a martini in any pub in Cherringham and it would be as good as my favorite bar back in Manhattan.”
Dead in the Water Page 9