by Penny Grubb
‘What is it?’ Pat prompted.
‘Doris Kitson’s pretty old. I mean, she’s full of energy and all that, but she’s getting on a bit. And it was dark.’
‘What are you saying? Could she have seen Terry Martin on that scaffolding or not?’
‘Oh yes, she could have seen that there was someone on that platform, and once she got there and found Terry in the hole, she’d have assumed it was him, but …’
Pat looked troubled. Annie saw her flick the Martins’ file open and finger the distinctive paper that held the post-mortem report; the report that implied Terry was too drunk to climb. Someone had been on that platform. Terry had died in the hole beneath.
‘Pat, what if it wasn’t Terry that Doris saw? What if there was someone else there that night?’
Chapter 15
Annie felt suddenly breathless, both excited and uneasy. ‘Pat, if I’m right about this, he might have been pushed.’
Pat puffed out her cheeks as she hauled herself upright on the settee. ‘Christ, I hope not. We don’t want that sort of complication.’
‘What should we do? I’m seeing Scott tomorrow. Should I–?’
‘Hell no. At least not yet. Let me think.’
Pat tossed the TV remote from hand to hand and eventually said, ‘No one wants a murder case. You’ll make yourself very unpopular if you spring it on them and they take it up.’
‘Yes, but if …’
Pat raised her hand. ‘Think it through. They’ve one murder on their hands already. You sew enough doubt that they take it up then they’re into all manner of hassle, more cancelled leave, trying to dredge up resources, all that stuff. And if they go through all that and you’re wrong you end up without any credibility. You become the hysterical tart who cries wolf.’
Drama queen!
‘I know you’re only here a few weeks but you’ve built up a good relationship with a couple of the local plods one way or another. You don’t want to wreck that. It could be useful.’
Only here a few weeks. The words burnt painfully into the tension of Annie’s theories about Terry Martin. She’d put everything into these two cases and begun to feel she belonged here, but, of course, she didn’t.
‘Saying that,’ Pat went on. ‘You’d better watch it with the guy. I don’t want any pillow talk; anything leaking out about the agency.’
‘What d’you mean, pillow talk? I’ve only known him five minutes. And anyway,’ she snapped with an added layer of umbrage at the way Vince had brought her here as a skivvy, ‘I don’t know anything about the agency.’
‘I’m just saying be careful. Now let’s get back to Terry Martin. Go through the timings for me again.’
Annie went over everything she’d squeezed from Heather Becke, Tremlow, Doris Kitson and the colonel and tossed in the shreds of gossip she’d picked up around the village.
‘OK,’ Pat said. ‘You need to go back and walk the key routes. Be precise, follow exactly in their footsteps, figure out just how much they could have seen. Do that first and see where we get.’
‘And I can have another go at Tremlow, too. It’s obvious what’s happened isn’t it? He saw someone all right, but he’s not saying who.’
‘Hold your hosses. Don’t run away with this. If we get a shred of evidence to say things weren’t as straightforward as the official report, it isn’t our case any more. But let’s test the theory first.’
‘But if he is protecting someone, why would he be doing it?’
‘It’s someone he cares about, or it’s someone he’s frightened of.’
‘Terry Martin was trying to blackmail him.’
‘Terry Martin’s the one person he isn’t trying to protect. Terry Martin’s dead.’
‘But … well, it means Tremlow’s blackmail-able.’
‘True. And that’s something your mates in blue can dig out if and when we break it to them their holidays are under threat.’
‘I’ll nip out tomorrow morning and check those routes.’
Pat laughed. ‘You’re allowed weekends off, you know, and if you’re staying in this business you want to learn to take them when you can. Some cases don’t give you much timeout. And when you go, you should go at the same time of night so you get the conditions they had. You won’t get the right light if you go in the morning.’
Pat was right, but Annie was reluctant to change her plans for Saturday. Scott was coming round about three o’clock to show her more of the area. He’d said with a laugh, showing the smile she couldn’t resist, that she hadn’t seen the best of it with Orchard Park and Milesthorpe. They were to make an evening of it.
‘It’ll keep till next week,’ Pat said. ‘Terry Martin’ll be no less dead for being pushed. You’ve worked some long hours this last week. You’ve done well. Have a couple of days off.’
Annie returned Pat’s smile pleased at this praise. At the same time she itched to get back out to Milesthorpe to test her theories. What use did she have for time off at the moment? Today … tomorrow … next week … it was all the same to Terry Martin. But she decided to slip out tomorrow morning anyway. She’d be back before Pat woke.
Her theories about Terry Martin burnt bright enough to cover the chill of the night air as she made her way out to the taxi later. They were on their way and too late to turn back when she remembered that her jacket lay in the boot of Pat’s car outside the flat.
‘You take care up there at this hour. I wouldn’t let my daughter come here at this time of night, you know.’
Annie smiled. The driver, sixtyish, large head partly bald, had countered his stereotype the first couple of trips she’d made with him and been monosyllabic. These last two nights though he’d opened up and told her something about his family.
‘I’ll be OK. We have training for this sort of thing.’ She knew the words stretched the reality of her few days in Birmingham; but she spoke with a well of pride in her profession and he nodded, taking it all in.
He dropped her at the entranceway. It was too early for the white van, but she knew there’d be customers already huddled in the shadows of the sixth floor landing. She stepped into the lift and hit the button for floor seven.
When it stopped and the doors slid apart, she stepped out and peered down the stairwell to the inky blackness of the floor below. A rustle of soft words in the darkness played like the whisper of a breeze through undergrowth. They didn’t matter tonight. Her target was higher.
She climbed the stairs, alert for trouble and trying to get a feel for the building and all its tiny communities. Not a single landing had escaped modifications to its toughened glass panels. In some, it was a single mismatched square. In others, the patchwork glass was studded with wooden panes and graffiti. The light swayed between standard brightness from ordinary bulbs through dim fitful beams that escaped paint-sprayed covers to pools of blackness where fittings were smashed.
Concrete stair followed concrete stair. A burst of shrieks and giggling halted her as a gaggle of young girls burst out of a flat and jostled down past her, their scant clothing like daubs of paint across their skinny bodies. It was the early hours of the morning, but in this concrete cocoon she could be anywhere … anywhen. She paused to rest when the blood in her legs ran like lead. It took longer to reach the top than she’d estimated, and when she arrived, a glance at her watch showed her the white van might be drawing into the car-park right now.
Five minutes later, the mechanical whine told her the lift was climbing beyond the upper floors. This was it. She watched through cracked glass, knowing there’d be nothing to see, knowing they’d go up beyond her reach. It slowed, clanked to a halt. Shock rushed the blood from her skin. The metal doors slid apart.
Two pairs of legs emerged. She knew the shoes well after the long minutes she’d spent staring down at them in the lift. They stepped out on to the landing and headed left. Hardly daring to pull in a breath, she crept up the stairs and peered after them. She heard laughter as the two men headed for
the far end of the corridor.
She caught half a remark, ‘… said to that Peter Levy on the TV …’ another laugh, before the rattle of a key in a lock drowned out what they said. The overheard name stopped her for a moment. Did it sound familiar? Then the sounds she heard banged on to her consciousness. A key in a lock. Another key in a lock. And then another. And another. How many damned locks did this door have – and why?
After they disappeared inside she crept closer. There was a spy hole that she put her eye to but was met only with darkness. She tried her ear to the door but could hear nothing. Temptation rose to knock and see what happened, trust to the lucky star that had protected her this far. But no, Pat would kill her if she tried anything so foolish. She took note of the number and retreated.
Inside the lift, the cloying scent of after-shave fought with remnants of chemical cleaner and the hot machinery smell. She watched the light track her path down the building and tensed as floor six approached. The clients waiting there would expect the lift to stop, but the downward movement carried her smoothly past. She punched the taxi driver’s number into her mobile.
The car-park was empty of people but had acquired the smouldering remains of a small saloon car while she’d been inside the building. The acrid smoke drifted across; the sharp tang cut into her nostrils making her screw up her face. She prowled the concrete surface keeping a wary eye on the surrounding streets. So Pat was right. They had a flat up there on the top floor, a wellsecured flat, but she wouldn’t abandon her theory. They’d been on the roof last night.
She craned her head back and looked up at the outline of the building against the pale moonlight. That first night she’d been up there watching down on them. Tonight, she was at ground level looking up. Memory showed men with packages whose weird shapes fought back as they manhandled them towards the building; then spider-thread wires high above the city glinting through the lenses of the binoculars.
The distant sound of a siren cut into her thoughts. A car approached. Her taxi.
As she stepped forward to intercept its path, the memory popped up like the replay of a single frame of a film. Sharp as flint for a second, then gone in a burst of light. At once, she spun round and looked up again, straining to see anything beyond the bare outline of the roof’s edge. Her mind’s eye superimposed the view from the traffic island where she’d squinted up through sunlight to the high roof. Cut to a sordid flat, photographs culled from a difficult angle.
The toot of a horn sounded the driver’s impatience. She turned to climb into the taxi.
She still had no idea what she’d been looking at, but the shapes were the same. Whatever the two men had taken up in those packages the first time she watched them was now on the roof of the tower block and visible to anyone who took the trouble to look.
Back at the flat Annie waved a companionable goodbye to the driver and jogged across to Pat’s car to retrieve the jacket she’d left in the boot. The Orchard Park puzzle must be close to solved. She didn’t understand much of what she’d found, but felt she held almost all the pieces. The flat on the top floor; the trips to the roof; the dealing when the two men were on their own. Between them she and Pat would slot everything into place.
She opened the boot, stared nonplussed at its emptiness then spotted her jacket in a tight ball in the corner. She’d shaken it out and slipped it on before recalling the careless gesture with which she’d tossed it in there outside Doris Kitson’s. No way had it rolled itself up like that. It hung awkwardly at one side. She reached into the pocket and pulled out a torn cigarette packet ripped and refolded into a cube. Unfolding it gingerly because she knew she hadn’t put it there and inside Pat’s car boot it sure as hell hadn’t got there accidentally, she felt anger rise. A mobile phone number was etched into the card with a largely ink-free pen.
The boy at the traffic island. Phone me. His presence in Withernsea hadn’t been coincidence. He’d known Terry Martin. She needed to speak to him and now she had the means. The little bastard had not only left her his number, he’d cocked a snook by showing he could break into her car.
Chapter 16
The next morning, Annie marched through to a kitchen that sparkled from the scouring Barbara had given it the day before. The distant rumble of traffic accompanied the rattle of the kettle as it came to the boil.
The little git with his phone number cast a small shadow. She was curious but not convinced he’d have anything of use. For some reason, he needed her. For now, he could wait.
The deep aroma of coffee wrapped itself round her. She wanted to get out to Milesthorpe and test her theories. No way could she have left it till Monday.
‘Make that two cups,’ a voice boomed into her ear from close behind.
Annie leapt with the shock. Pat stood in the doorway, her bulk all but blocking the light.
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘What? But…?’
‘You are going to Milesthorpe, aren’t you?’
Annie could only nod as she felt for a second cup. She wanted to say, you can’t come with me, but, of course, Pat could go where she pleased.
By the time they were on the road, Annie’s astonishment had dissolved. It felt good to have someone to share her thoughts and theories. They talked about Tremlow. The winding lanes on the approach to the village were easier to navigate because the roadside undergrowth had been cut and lay in yellowing heaps. They passed a small tractor that dragged a giant egg whisk behind it fluffing up the grasses as it went by and filling the car with the smell of fresh hay.
Pat sneezed.
Annie took advantage of one of Milesthorpe’s many loops and came at Doris Kitson’s road from the top so as not to pass her house and have their presence broadcast. She eased the car to a standstill and pointed between the houses.
‘That’s the crescent where Tremlow lives. There, can you see the scaffolding?’
Pat nodded.
They sat in silence. Annie kept her stare on the backs of the far houses. She could make out both Tremlow’s and his neighbour’s, but if there had been anyone up on that scaffolding now, could she identify him?
Sunlight hit the buildings with the white intensity that presaged a baking hot day. Milesthorpe’s few trees waggled their leaf-ends acknowledging the closeness of the sea and the constant breeze.
‘Well you’d certainly see someone from here,’ was Pat’s verdict.
‘But could you see who it was?’
‘Maybe. If it was someone I knew.’
‘In moonlight, not daylight?’ Annie tried to imagine the scene against a night sky. ‘Doris Kitson’s sharp as a knife, but she’s getting on. She wears glasses. He’d have been against the house wall and that would have been in darkness. I don’t think she had a cat in hell’s chance of seeing who it was.’
‘Security lights?’
‘I don’t know.’ Annie felt foolish because she should have checked.
‘Let’s go and see.’
‘And if there aren’t?’
‘You want to have another go at Tremlow, don’t you?’
‘Yes. The sooner the better. I’m sure I can get him to talk.’
As they stopped at Tremlow’s gate, Annie cast a doubtful look at the uneven path round the side of the house.
‘He seems to live in his kitchen round the back. Let me go and rouse him and I’ll let you in through the front door.’
She left Pat struggling out of the car and made her way down the side path. The bushes that grew in the shadow of the house brushed their glistening leaves wetly against her. She took a few steps down the garden and turned back to the house which she raked with an intense stare. No sign even of a conventional outside bulb, let alone security lights that might have lit the next-door elevation. The colonel’s daughter’s house under the same inspection produced the same result. Annie felt a surge of triumph.
Gotcha, Mr Charles Tremlow. You saw someone that night, someone you knew well enough to recognize in the dark. An
d it wasn’t Terry Martin. Now let’s find out who you’re covering for.
She peered through the kitchen window. The room was empty, so she knocked a brisk tattoo on the door and waited. Had he seen her and decided to lie low? She wasn’t having that. He would come out to face her if she had to drag him.
The door yielded to her and she stepped inside. The kitchen felt as empty as it looked. No trace of recent activity. No background smell of tea brewing or toast crisping.
‘Mr Tremlow,’ she called, surprising herself at a nervy edge to her voice.
No answer.
Triumph faded into apprehension as Annie crept through to the front of the house. Empty rooms greeted her. She looked for cups, used ashtrays, recent indentations in the cushions. Nothing. What was she to make of the unlocked door? He’d claimed he didn’t like to lock up, yet the day she’d visited with the colonel he’d been behind more bolts than a high security prison. She looked at the staircase, listened for any sound from above, and felt reluctant to ascend. Instead, she turned to the front door and pulled back the bolt. Pat stood at the gate and made her way down the path as she saw Annie.
‘He’s not here. Not a sign. But I haven’t looked upstairs yet.’
They made fleeting eye contact. ‘Go on up. I’ll wait here.’
Annie climbed the stairs, all her senses alert and straining upwards. She listened for breathing or snores. Was there a trace of anything in the air? What was that stale smell? Would it burgeon into something more sinister? Would she find him up here huddled in a corner hiding from her … or something worse?
The stairs led to a tiny landing and three closed doors. The first was a small bathroom that smelt sour and decayed. The next was a box room. A bed-frame and bare mattress sat beneath a pile of miscellaneous junk. No sign anything had been disturbed recently. The third room was bigger, clearly the master bedroom. An old-fashioned double bed fought for domination of the room with a dark wood wardrobe. A matching dressing-table stood across the window, its mirror blocking the sun, making the room oppressive and gloomy where it could have been airy and light.