by Penny Grubb
‘What does Dish do?’
‘Nothing. He’s a lush. Never moves much beyond these two rooms. This is his world. Pretty crappy, ain’t it?’
She said nothing. She’d had a glimpse of a glazed pair of eyes, near-death, looking out on a different universe. She remembered the deadly spiral she’d been caught up in at school, not so far from here – there but for the grace of God – and thought Dish’s world felt fine to him as long as he had the money to keep it at arm’s length. It was inconceivable that Dish himself had shambled his way over the mountain and raided Mrs Watson’s.
‘So why did Charlotte have someone else’s papers?’
‘How did you get to hear about it anyway? Oh right, your father.’ He answered his own question. ‘I suppose you get to know all the inside stuff.’
‘Not at all. He’s a stickler, lets nothing slip. What was this Julia person to Charlotte?’
‘She didn’t say.’
‘Mrs Watson said someone had called round for Charlotte on the Saturday evening. She had a face like she’d sucked on a lemon. I suppose it was you. When did Charlotte call you up?’
‘The day before. Midday.’
So Charlotte had called Jak before she’d left the message for Margot. ‘She told me she wasn’t expecting anyone.’
He shrugged. ‘I can’t help what she said.’
‘It was you who followed me up the hill, wasn’t it? I saw you watching me.’
‘I only wanted to talk out of sight of the old biddies. What made you go all the way up there?’
‘I always do. I like the hills.’
‘Too bloody high for me in all that heat. I was waiting for you to come back down, only then you cut back.’
‘I cut back because I saw you. I didn’t know who you were.
What made you go round to the Doll Makers?’
‘The who? Oh, that creepy house in the wood. I wanted to catch you on the way down. You were there, weren’t you? Watching me.’ He laughed. ‘I had a feeling you were.’
‘But how did you know I’d come that way?’
‘I can read a map. What other way would you come from that direction?’
Fair point. ‘What did they say at the house?’
‘Just some dozy kid. She hadn’t seen anything. So what’s your father said about this body they fished out of the water?’
‘It was a leg.’
‘Half a leg, I heard. Charlie wanted to know all about it.’
‘Did she?’ Annie didn’t remember Charlotte showing any special interest.
‘So what’s the gen? I’d like to know, if it was important to Charlie.’
‘But why? What did it have to do with her?’
‘I dunno. She was like that. All sorts of stuff she used to get wound up about. But I’d like to find out. It’d be like doing something for her, you know, now she’s gone.’
Charlotte’s death had shaken him more than he’d admit. ‘Yeah, I … I know what you mean, but I can’t help you. My father doesn’t talk to me about the cases he’s working on.’ Annie had no difficulty meeting his gaze as she spoke the lie. She would never betray her father’s trust.
‘Come on. He must do.’
‘Nope. Never. He never has.’
She drained the cup, then stood up and wandered across towards the window. There was a curtain rail, but no curtains, just a stained sheet tacked across the gap. She lifted a corner and peered through filthy glass to the street outside. At once, anger mushroomed. ‘The bastard’s in my car!’
Jak was on his feet and out of the door before she could fight her way across the packed space. When she reached them, Jak had hauled Dish from the car and swung him round against the wall.
‘Nah … nothin’ … I got nothin’ … weren’t nothin’ there …’
‘Leave him be, Jak,’ Annie ordered, not wanting to be the cause of a deadbeat getting mashed to a pulp on the pavement, and feeling some alarm at the sudden rush of anger in Jak. ‘He’s right. There’s nothing in there.’ As she spoke she leant into the car, flicking open the glove-box, glancing in the door pockets. No, she kept nothing in the car that a lush like Dish could turn to ready cash.
Jak glared into Dish’s face from an inch distant, gave him a final shake and pushed him away. ‘Here …’ He tossed Annie’s keys over to her. Dish must have dipped her when he pushed past in the corridor. It said a lot about him that he’d retained such a light touch.
‘Thanks for the drink, Jak. I ought to get going.’
She saw Jak struggle to get his anger under control. ‘You sure he’s got nothing? Any secret compartments? He’ll have ferreted them all out.’
‘It’s OK, really. There’s nothing at all. I never keep anything in the car.’
He closed his eyes and took in a couple of deep breaths. ‘Let me come back with you, Annie. If I stay another night in this dump I’ll pan the little bastard.’
‘Where will you stay?’ she asked in some panic, in case he thought she could find him a bed.
‘I’ll find somewhere. Might head off up the coast. The weather’s not so bad that a night in the open’ll kill me.’
She didn’t mind driving him back and felt only mild irritation that his motive was clearly less to do with distancing himself from Dish than in looking for further opportunities to interrogate her about anything her father might have found.
She didn’t ask Jak where he wanted to be, but just pulled up on a deserted stretch of road close to her father’s. ‘Hope you find somewhere,’ she said.
He made no move to get out of the car. ‘In case I don’t, a coffee would be nice.’
She almost laughed at his transparency. He was asking her to take him to her father’s. Did he think she’d allow him to rifle through things in the office? No reason not to give him coffee though. She was twenty-eight years old and could bring friends home. He’d known Charlotte. She’d known Charlotte. More to the point, Mrs Latimer wouldn’t be there and her father was unlikely to be back for ages. It was only coffee. ‘Yeah, OK then.’
She felt relief that her father’s car wasn’t outside as they pulled up. He followed her into the house.
‘Is this where he works?’ Jak rattled the handle of her father’s office as he walked past. ‘He must have said something about that body.’
‘Jak!’ Annie spun round on him. No one threatened the sanctum. ‘Coffee’s all you’re getting.’
‘OK, OK.’ He raised his hands in mock surrender.
She ushered him to the kitchen while she made coffee. ‘Tell me some more about Charlotte.’
‘What’s to tell?’
‘Whatever … How did you get to know her originally?’
‘Can’t remember really.’
‘She mentioned a friend. Someone who might have been in trouble. Did you know anything about it?’
‘I don’t think Charlie wanted your father knowing she was asking questions about that leg.’
Annie paused by the open fridge door. She didn’t like the sound of that. It implied things like her father having to be involved in Charlotte’s hidden agenda, and somehow it felt like her doing, because she’d got to know Charlotte.
‘You’re not saying she had anything to do with it?’ The severed legs had been thrown in just down the way from Mrs Watson’s, but Charlotte hadn’t been there then. She’d still have been in London working for Margot. At least, that’s what she’d said.
Annie regretted letting Jak in long before either of them finished their coffee. She’d learnt nothing of any use about Charlotte. When they’d both drained their cups, she walked with him out of the front door. They stood awkwardly on the pavement for a moment.
‘Annie, could you do something for me? Uh … just a small favour. I wouldn’t ask but …’
What now? Annie framed a refusal as she tipped her head in invitation to him to elaborate.
‘You know the guy in the shop down there? He’s kinda taken against me. Won’t serve me. And I’m out of fags.�
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He wanted a few minutes on his own here, knowing the house was empty, knowing she’d pulled the front door to without locking it. What sort of a fool did he think her?
‘No, sorry.’
‘Oh, right. You got a thing about smokes then?’
Suddenly she couldn’t read him any more. Was he on the level? Was she just being paranoid? An anger that she knew to be irrational rose inside her. She had to clench her fists not to fly at him with the intention of doing real damage. It was like facing Beth across that room again. These were her own memories, her own worries, clouding her judgement.
‘See you, Jak.’ She turned on her heel and marched back to the house.
‘Yeah, Annie. See you.’
She heard his footsteps retreat down the road and when she reached the door and looked back, he was gone, but her father’s car was just pulling up so she had to paint on a pleasant smile and put a lid on the turmoil of emotion that threatened to flood out.
He smiled, too, and patted her arm as he came past her and headed for the office. She wondered if she could escape and have a run up into the hills, but his voice caught her before she could make a move.
‘Have you been in the office, Annie?’
He always knew. She’d moved nothing, but he always knew. She wanted to be open with him and simply say ‘Yes, I used the phone,’ but knew that her voice would come out too high and he’d think she was hiding something. Damn Jak to hell and back. If he hadn’t riled her, she’d deal with this.
‘No, why, what’s the matter?’ She heard her voice, calm and measured, as she went to the door and looked in
‘Nothing, I just … I had to go off in a rush. I wouldn’t normally leave everything out.’
The seed of doubt in his tone made her breathe an inward sigh of relief. Everything was exactly as he’d left it, she knew it was.
She left him rummaging through his papers and escaped to the kitchen. It was both irrational and unfair to feel anger towards Jak. She’d barely known him five minutes, yet felt he’d won her trust and then betrayed her.
As soon as she could, she would be out of the house, into the open to run her anger into the hills. But for now, she’d return to the office to act like a rational being and tell her father the things he needed to know.
‘Dad, I found out something about the woman who died in the car, Charlotte Grainger. Well anyway, about a story she told Aunt Marian and me.’
He looked up from the desk, pen poised, clearly surprised she’d broken the taboo of no interruptions, but signalled her to go on.
She started on the story Charlotte had told about Lorraine, but he stopped her.
‘It’s OK, Annie. We know all about that.’
‘It isn’t just the accident on the moor, Dad. She knew someone called Julia Lee. Charlotte had her driving licence. And this Lorraine person claimed to have met–’
Again, his raised hand stopped her. ‘We know about Julia Lee too. Now.’ He gave her a smile and the ghost of a wink that made a brief intimate bridge between them, and at the same time asked her please to back off.
‘Oh … right then … and is it all connected? Is it important?’
This time, the look he gave her from beneath raised eyebrows was an unmistakable warning. ‘Annie, you know better than that.’
‘OK.’ She retreated.
They were the wrong pair of shoes, and it was the wrong time of day, but she sprinted straight from her father’s front gate to the nearest break in the houses that took her to the hills. It was a steep track, strewn with ankle breakers – holes, dips, loose rocks. Not a track at all, just a gully carved out by a small burn. None of it bothered her. As soon as she knew she was out of earshot, she let rip and cursed Jak to hell and back for making her feel so vulnerable.
She walked now, her legs on fire from the sprint up almost vertical terrain. What was it about him that had made her trust him as though she’d known him for years? What was it that he’d sparked inside her to bring out that reaction? She couldn’t believe she’d acted so foolishly. Going off with a complete stranger after what had happened to Charlotte on the road where she’d been within a snip of going over herself. And yet … what had Jak done? She’d had no business putting any trust in him, so why see him as under any obligation? He’d tried to find out what her father knew about the leg in the loch. He said he’d been doing it for Charlotte. Had he? His attempts had been ham-fisted enough that they were never in danger of succeeding and didn’t dampen her first impression of him as friend rather than foe.
‘Jak, you bastard,’ she muttered as a way to push the blame away from herself as she strode through the trees. She knew she’d never see him again, not unless she sought him out and she had no reason to do that. Her task now was to forget him, forget all the things that had cluttered her mind. Tomorrow she had to be back at work. She had the Buenos Aires report to deliver in the evening.
She looked around. The light had begun to leach out of the woodland that surrounded her. It must be later than she realized. This was an unfamiliar stretch, the unattractive underbelly of the woods that the tourists didn’t reach. Up ahead, she saw an irregular space between the trees and made towards it. The ground was cleared in a rough circle. She sat down in the middle of it, wrinkling her nose at the smell that rose from the disturbed earth.
Margot had said she would look up Charlotte in her personnel records if Annie wanted. There would be no harm in taking up the offer. Annie thought of the scrap of paper Aunt Marian had given her with the address of Charlotte’s flat and felt a flush of guilt. There was no excuse to keep that to herself, but it could do no harm to have a quick look.
As she calmed down, Annie became aware of the feel of the ground beneath her. Soft ash, and quite deep. She’d pitched herself on to the site of a fire. Quickly she patted the ground. It was cold, but the sickly smell of burnt straw rose around her and made her nose wrinkle in disgust. She ran her hands through the ash and found it full of tiny globes, smooth, hard and round. As she rubbed at one and saw it glint back at her, she knew exactly what she’d found: tiny glass eyes and burnt straw.
Of course he didn’t sell any. It was absurd to think he did. In this out-of-the-way and little visited area not so far from the post office, Caine disposed of his dolls.
A breeze whispered through the undergrowth making her skin prickle. She was sitting in a dolls’ graveyard.
Chapter 15
That night, Annie twisted restlessly in and out of sleep, trying to push aside a parade of straw dolls to see if it was Jak who was rifling through her father’s desk, knowing he was searching for the real Lorraine who lay hidden inside a scratchy recording. Somewhere beyond them, way out of her reach, her mother laughed.
The monotony of the long motorway drive south pulled the tiredness of a restless night to the fore. She struggled to concentrate, and when her phone rang just as she approached the services at Leicester Forest, she was glad of the excuse to stop. It showed Mike’s number. Before returning the call, she armed herself with a large coffee.
‘Annie. Where are you? Why didn’t you answer?’
‘On my way back. More than halfway.’
‘Will you come straight round to my flat, Annie? Before you go home?’
‘Why?’
‘Uh … I’ll tell you when you get here. It’s tricky by phone.’
‘I need to get back to my place, Mike. I have to go into work. I’ve that report to deliver tonight.’
‘I won’t keep you. I’ll come back with you. But please come here first.’
‘What’s the mystery? OK, OK, I’ll come round.’
When she arrived, he came out to meet her.
‘You’re running late.’
‘The traffic was bad. Come on, what’s this all about? I need to get back and get ready for work.’
He climbed into the car and she set off again. ‘I’m afraid you’ve had a break-in. Your flat’s been trashed.’
‘Hell, when? Wh
at did they take?’
He spread his hands in an I-don’t-know gesture. ‘I only found it this morning. There’s papers and stuff all over.’
She felt grateful he’d kept it from her so she hadn’t had it in her head during the long drive. It was just one thing after another at the moment. ‘Just mine, or did any of the others get hit?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘They missed me last time, just did the east side. Maybe it was my turn.’
Her mind went to the tapes. Aunt Marian had been sure they’d been the target at Mrs Watson’s. The thought was too ridiculous to give it headroom. Break-ins were a known hazard around here. Her glance flicked towards the glove compartment where Lorraine’s tapes were now stashed. The important thing was had they taken anything that would stop her doing her job. She hadn’t much left that was worth stealing.
‘Much damage?’
‘Afraid, so, yup.’
Oh hell, her clothes! ‘Mike, have they trashed my clothes? I’ve got to be all dressed up this evening.’
She stood in the doorway and surveyed the wreckage. Pre-warned and prepared, she could take it calmly.
Brute force had jemmied the door. No subtlety, just an opportunist taking advantage of an empty flat.
‘The police said not to touch anything until you got back. So you could tell what had been taken.’
‘Fair enough.’ She waded through the debris. The kitchen was bad. Jars and pots overturned, smashed. Shards of razor-edged crockery and glass littered the floor. She headed for the bedroom. Papers and clothes ripped and strewn at random. Cupboards and drawers hung open. It wasn’t nice, but it was OK. Given all that smashed crockery, she felt lucky it wasn’t all drenched in the intruder’s blood.
‘I’ve had the locks changed.’
Smiling, she turned to him and put her arms round his neck. ‘Thank you. It would have been awful just to walk into it, and still have to get to work … Oh my God! The Margot jacket!’