by Penny Grubb
The bed was unmade, the sheets might once have been white. A constriction in her throat made Annie gulp to swallow as she stepped inside the room and pulled the wardrobe door open. Nothing more sinister than the smell of age greeted her.
She felt certain now she was alone in the house and let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Out on the landing, she gave the ceiling a glance. A small square loft access hung above her, but she could see it hadn’t been used in months.
Pat was in the open doorway as she came down.
‘No sign upstairs.’
‘I’ve just had a look in the garage. It’s empty. Does he have a car?’
‘Yes, I think so. I’m sure so. Doris Kitson mentioned it.’
‘He’s gone out. Leave everything as you found it. I daresay one of the neighbours’ll report us when he gets back. Put a card in the kitchen on your way out. Let’s see if he calls back. There’s no point pretending we weren’t here. No chance of hiding anything in Milesthorpe.’
Unless, thought Annie, you’re Terry Martin and about to die. Then you can hide yourself for two whole days and a bit.
‘We could drop in on the colonel. He might know something.’
‘OK, go on your own. Casual visit. Just passing. That sort of thing. Take me to the other end of the footpath that runs along the back of the houses. I’ll see what I can find.’
Annie didn’t like the idea of Pat stumbling about on an unmade path on her own. It was a long way from here to the nearest A & E department. But she couldn’t voice her fears without sounding like a fussy elder sister so drove back to Doris Kitson’s road and searched for the access point. It came as a pleasant surprise, neatly marked with a metal bollard and tall sign that pointed down a long narrow stretch of tarmac.
‘Thought so,’ said Pat. ‘It’s the old railway. I won’t go far. Don’t be longer than ten minutes. I’m not supposed to stand on this thing too long.’
There was no answer from the colonel’s house so Annie returned to the footpath a few minutes later and looked along to see where Pat had got to. The sun made a shiny ribbon of the smooth surface. A group of cyclists melted into the far distance as the path curved round out of sight. Walkers dotted the length of the track. Pat’s lopsided gait wasn’t hard to distinguish. She’d travelled a fair way, but was now heading back towards the car. Between her and Annie were two girls on ponies, their backs to Annie, heading towards Pat who hobbled awkwardly, head down.
Annie was filled with a sudden certainty that they would knock their ponies into Pat as they passed her. She took in a breath to shout a greeting to Pat, to signal to the girls they were watched, but before she could make a sound, the two riders turned their ponies off the tarmac strip and made them pick their way in single file along the lumpy gravel that edged the path. It was Laura and Kay. Annie thought she recognized Boxer, too. Kay’s mount, a fat orangey version of Laura’s was probably the one in the film who’d knocked Terry Martin down. Now she knew who they were it seemed natural they should have given Pat right of way. If Mally had been with them maybe it would have been different.
Unfinished business there. What had they done for Terry Martin? He’d had the film for blackmail and money for bribes.
As Pat reached her, Annie said, ‘The colonel wasn’t in. Did you notice two girls on ponies go past you just now. They’re the ones who cheated on Terry Martin’s film.’
Pat glanced back, then, with laboured breathing and grunts of effort, tottered the last few steps and hoisted herself into the car where she slumped into the seat with an enormous sigh. ‘Christ! That was hard going. So your other old man wasn’t home either. I doubt I made it far enough down that track. You’ll need to have a look later.’
Annie wasn’t sure it mattered any more. Doris’s eyes couldn’t be good enough to make out Terry Martin at night against that wall: Tremlow was the key.
‘Walk it through sometime.’ Pat lay back, eyes closed, clearly exhausted. ‘Details matter. Never forget that. But next week’s soon enough. Let’s get home.’
As Annie reached for the key her phone rang. She looked at the screen and turned to Pat in surprise. ‘It’s Colonel Ludgrove.’
‘Awfully sorry I missed you. Saw you walk away and couldn’t get to the door in time. Can’t think how I missed your knock but the ears are not as sharp as they were. Do pop back. I’m not too late, am I? Took me a while to find that card you left. Young Mel’s been looking for something on the telephone table and you can imagine the chaos.’ He gave a laugh under which Annie heard a note of defeat.
‘Well, actually I was just on my way back to town. It wasn’t anything important. I was just passing.’
‘No, please. I’ll feel I’ve offended you. Ignoring a visitor. Can’t think how it happened.’
Annie turned a helpless look to Pat who signalled an OK gesture.
‘Fine, I’ll be a couple of minutes. But I really can’t stay long.’
Annie pulled the car up out of sight of the colonel’s house. ‘I’ll park here,’ she said. ‘So he doesn’t see the car and hassle for us both to come in.’
Pat nodded. ‘Suits me. I’ve had my exercise for the day.’
‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
‘Don’t cut it short on my account. See if you can get anything out of him about Tremlow.’
When Annie saw the colonel she had no difficulty understanding why he’d missed her the first time although he carried on apologizing all the way to the living room as he waved her to a chair. His face was drawn, his hair tousled. The crisp military neatness she remembered was replaced with crumpled clothes and an air of neglect. He almost looked as though he’d just finished some vigorous exercise, but had clearly been asleep and didn’t want to admit to it. It didn’t seem fair to start straight in on an interrogation about Tremlow so she asked at random, ‘Have you managed to contact your daughter yet?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ll be frank with you. It’s becoming a bit of a strain. I’m not saying a word against young Mel. She’s a good girl, but she’s a youngster and I’m not as young as I was. It’s a job keeping up with her at times. Now you’ve time for a quick cuppa before you rush off?’
‘Well, really I shouldn’t …’
‘I won’t take no. Don’t worry, it’s already in the pot brewing.’ As he spoke, the colonel turned and headed for the door. Annie listened to his footsteps recede down the lino of the hallway. He called out something, the words disjointed as they floated back to her. ‘… little nip … keep the cold out …’
She sprang to her feet and followed him to a big kitchen. He stood in front of two steaming cups and twisted the top off a brandy bottle.
‘No, Colonel, I can’t. I’m driving.’
‘Just a small one to keep the cold out?’ There was a pleading tone in his voice. She felt desperately sorry for him. Mally must be giving him hell.
‘No, really, I mustn’t. My boss is waiting in the car outside.’ It was a risk that she’d now have to fight against Pat being dragged inside, but she couldn’t abide the taste of brandy and the thought of it in tea made her feel ill.
‘Ah, I see.’ The colonel gave her a conspiratorial look. ‘Don’t want him smelling it on your breath. Quite understand. Ah, well. Tea’ll be welcome anyway.’
‘Don’t let me stop you,’ Annie said, as he put the bottle aside unopened.
He laughed. ‘Drink on my own during the day? Good heavens no. That’s the slippery path.’
Annie smiled and pretended to believe him. No mystery now why he’d slept so soundly. She wondered if he’d been much of a drinker before he’d had to cope with Mally.
‘I called in really to know if you’d seen Mr Tremlow. He wasn’t in.’
‘Not sure where he’ll be. I think Doris said she’d seen him driving out of the village.’
Annie made a move to carry the two cups through, but he waved her aside and took them himself. ‘Was there anything special you wanted him for?’
‘Good Lord! I’d no idea. Why didn’t he tell me? I’d have sorted the blighter out. What was it about?’
‘I was hoping you’d tell me.’
‘Oh, I see.’ He paused in thought. ‘It must have been the business with his wife. Bad business. She ran off with a travelling salesman.’
‘I thought that was years ago.’
‘It was. Hasn’t lessened the shame for poor Charles, I’m afraid. He hates the idea of people knowing. I expect the young chap threatened to put something in the newspapers. Not that people these days care a fig for that sort of thing. Been through it myself with the daughter. Not pleasant, but you take it on the chin.’
Annie hoped she wasn’t about to make a big mistake. ‘There’s something else, Colonel. I’m afraid it looks as though Mr Tremlow lied about the night Terry Martin died.’
‘Good Lord! Charles lied? What do you mean?’
She outlined her theory that Tremlow had seen someone else up on the scaffolding. ‘Mrs Kitson saw someone up there, but she couldn’t have seen who it was. We’ve just been to check. And Terry Martin was drunk, really drunk. I’m not sure he was up there at all.’
‘No no, you’re wrong about that.’ The colonel looked puzzled. ‘Well, I see what you mean. Yes, Charles was a bit cagey but …’ He picked up his tea, stared into the depths of the cup with a wistful look that Annie read as regret for the lack of brandy, and put it down untouched. Then he sat upright and nodded decisively. ‘Yes, I can see it now. You’re absolutely right. Of course he didn’t see anyone up there. He’s vain. It’s his downfall. He heard Doris’s account and adopted it for his own. Blind as a bat at night. He wouldn’t have stopped to get his spectacles. He was in a panic. When he was out there he wouldn’t have seen a thing.’
‘The police told me he locked himself in his house.’
‘I believe he did after he’d rung me, but he told me he’d been out there. You see, he thought it was a neighbour’s dog come to dig up his border. Bane of his life those dogs.’
‘So it could have been someone else that Mrs Kitson saw up there?’
‘No no. It was the Martin chap all right. I saw him myself from the bottom of the path. Land drops away. Look up from there and that whole contraption they’ve set up stands out against the sky.’
Annie felt deflated. He was right. From the top of the path where Doris had seen him, he’d have been in darkness, but from nearby, not only was the angle steeper, the colonel would have been close enough to see exactly who was up there. She remembered how the branches parted to allow a small but clear view of the scaffolding tower.
‘And there was no one else up there?’
‘No. He was on his own.’
‘You didn’t see him fall?’
‘Well, no. That would have happened when I was at the back coming up towards the garden. You can’t see from there because of the bushes.’
Annie knew just where he meant. ‘Did you hear anything? Doris Kitson said she heard the crash.’
The colonel looked embarrassed. ‘Afraid I can’t say for certain. Some of that undergrowth is very tangled and the hearing isn’t what it was.’
That was that. Annie mentally berated herself for a stab of disappointment. Far better that it had been a simple fall. Her gaze strayed to the window that looked over the churned grass, the concrete blocks and wooden poles where Mally had coached Laura and Kay on their ponies. ‘They’ve made a real mess of your lawn,’ she observed, thinking of Terry Martin and forgetting about Mally’s cheating. She could have bitten her tongue the moment the words were out, but the colonel smiled.
‘She’s a little scamp at times. But she had those two girls up and down by that hedge; over that contraption I don’t know how many times. The poor beasts must have been jumping it in their sleep by the time she’d finished. Did the trick though, didn’t it?’
Annie didn’t know what action Tina might take over the cheating but thankfully nothing had reached the colonel yet. No way would she be the one to break it to him.
He still hadn’t touched his tea. She suspected the brandy bottle would be out again the moment she left. In fact, she sensed he wanted her gone now. Probably he wanted some rest before Mally turned up. Time to go and tell Pat that the Terry Martin theory was in tatters. She downed the last of her tea and stood up. The colonel made no move to stop her.
Chapter 17
Scott drove her west then north showing her parts of the city she hadn’t seen before. Evidence of a seafaring past was everywhere. Circular windows in modern façades flashed the sun’s light back at the city. A modern pub in a housing estate lay on the site of the real Timber Dock where, years ago, he told her, huge logs floated submerged until seasoned and ready for use.
‘You don’t remember it, surely?’
He didn’t, but his grandmother had told him all about Hull in the early years of the last century. Queen’s Gardens, now in the heart of the city, had once been a natural harbour. ‘People were very iffy about the idea of filling it in and building on it. Even now they have a terrible time building into the clay. There’s nothing underneath, nothing to pin anything to. Most of the buildings are on huge concrete rafts.’
She smiled because the city’s past seemed to mean a lot to him, but his words resonated with more recent events. Nothing underneath, nothing to pin anything to. She’d grasped for substance in the Terry Martin case and found only a false foundation. Would Orchard Park, so close to resolution, crumble in the same way? The cityscape had talked to her from the start. She’d woken on her first morning to the view across a calm surface on a treacherous shipping lane. Her journeys out of Hull took her past security gates at an ordinary roundabout and led to villages where houses stood with their backs to the road as though holding on to secrets that casual observers mustn’t share. Nothing much to see, but so much hidden.
‘What’s that?’ She pointed to the giant sculpture of a ship slipping beneath the waves that she’d spotted on her first evening in the city.
‘The Deep. It’s an aquarium thing. Sharks and all that.’
The drive through areas of the town she hadn’t seen or suspected caught her interest. Sweeping tree-lined roads gave glimpses of imposing dwellings behind high walls and mature densely planted gardens. She felt the contrast with the areas she’d come to know. Orchard Park with its cracked jigsaw of concrete streets simmered against the shaded velvety tarmac of these more prosperous areas. She saw patterns she recognized from the hopscotch of moves she’d made when a student. Familiar areas in a city she’d never explored. Like the men on Orchard Park. Familiar faces on people she’d never met.
‘What’s up?’
‘I was just thinking; it’s like London really. In miniature.’
And just imagine if she’d rushed to him with her theory about the mystery man on the scaffolding. Drama queen! She’d been as bad as Terry Martin chasing his big stories.
‘Do you miss London?’
‘No, not at all.’ The readiness of her answer surprised her. It was true. London seemed an age away.
‘So, will you stay when the six weeks is up?’
‘It’s not that simple. I can’t stay without a job.’
‘You don’t have to work for Sleeman. There are other firms … other jobs. How come you know him anyway?’
Something in his tone alerted her to history between him and Vince. Something else she hadn’t suspected. She stole a sideways glance. He stared ahead, eyes narrowed.
‘I answered a job advert. Why?’
‘Just wondered. You don’t know him well?’
She blew out a sigh and thought of the wing and prayer that had carried her here. ‘Hardly at all. I’ve only ever met him a couple of times.’
‘But you work at the agency in town? While you’re not out and about, that is?’
This had morphed into an interrogation. Silently she closed down the
shutters. In theory they trod the same professional line of the law, but she knew all about the suspicion between parallel professions. ‘Just routine stuff,’ she murmured, then continued on before he could speak again, ‘How about you? D’you think you’ll stay in the force? What made you join up? You never look enthusiastic when I see you in uniform.’
He shrugged and she waited for him to explain how he’d fallen into it for want of anything better to do, but he surprised her. ‘My grandmother bought me a policeman’s helmet when I was two. It’s my earliest memory. I’ve never seriously considered anything else.’
Annie turned to him with a spontaneous smile. It echoed her own aspirations so perfectly. Never seriously considered anything else. He’d had the courage of his certainty where she’d failed in hers. She’d kept her ambitions a secret because they were tied up in confused early memories and meant talking about her family. People invariably jumped to the wrong conclusions.
Her upbringing hadn’t been textbook, but whose was? She and her father had been strangers for years. He hadn’t been able to cope with her mother’s death, not that she’d known it at the time, being too young to understand adult despair. She felt no resentment that he’d palmed off his small daughter on to his sister-in-law, too old even then to raise a child. There were no psychoses or stress disorders battling within her, but people wouldn’t believe it.
‘We didn’t starve,’ she used to say in the days when she talked about it at all. ‘I wasn’t born into a famine-stricken war zone. I was looked after.’
So she’d nursed her passion for the world of private investigation like a shameful secret. If she’d only been upfront in the days when there were people around able and willing to help, maybe she’d have all the right bits of paper now and be setting up her own business. She remembered the excitement of landing her first temporary post in a PI’s office. It was a big city firm; she no more than coffee-maker and gopher, but the excitement still glowed as a physical memory though the job had been gone in a fortnight. It remained as a line on her CV, a talisman more than a position of substance. Two weeks in a real job at last.