The restaurant was a clear rip-off of the Hard Rock Café, with an enormous electric guitar poking out from the roof and an outside paint job that was either reminiscent of piano keys or a sun-faded zebra.
Jessica pushed through the double doors, which were sliced into a garish fading musical note, and waited in the area close to the welcome counter. She smiled at the hostess and asked for a few moments as she took out her phone and pretended to have a conversation. As she did that, she scanned the room. The kitchen was open-plan on the far wall, with the rest of the restaurant split into two by a ‘wall of fame’ that was plastered with photographs of rock stars, few of whom had likely heard of Blackpool, let alone eaten there.
As with so many of these places, there were few staff and the poor sods on duty were vastly overworked. Jessica watched a skinny lad skid his way out of the kitchen, balancing a metal tray laden with half a dozen plates piled high with meat, eggs and potatoes. He spun on his heels, sashayed around a small child and then hurried towards the family who were sitting in the window. On the other side of the room, there was a young woman who was probably still a teenager. Her blonde hair was wound into a bob and held back by a crimson bandana that matched the colours of the restaurant. A blue biro was tucked behind her ear, a loose strand of hair looped around it. She crouched next to a table to ask a young boy if he was enjoying his meal, winked at his mother and then skipped back to the counter to fetch a tray of drinks.
Jessica knew almost nothing about Sophie Johns, but, if she worked here, chances were that she’d more likely be friends with the blonde girl than the skinny lad on the other side.
She put her phone away and caught the eye of the hostess – an older woman with short grey hair, a name badge reading ‘Irene’ and a drowsy gaze that meant she’d likely been up for hours. Jessica was capable of many things, but spending hours smiling and saying hello to strangers was not one of them. She’d crack within an hour, especially if there was some bratty little kid full of entitlement.
‘Are you ready?’ Irene asked.
‘Hungry,’ Jessica replied with a grin. It wasn’t strictly true. She’d already had one breakfast.
Irene picked up a menu and took a step towards the half of the restaurant being served by the young man, but Jessica pointed towards a table on the other side, close to the kitchen.
‘Can I sit there?’ she asked.
For the merest fraction of a second, Irene’s features bristled with annoyance, but then the smile returned. ‘Of course.’
She led Jessica to the selected spot, passed across the menu, recommended the waffles and then introduced the blonde server.
Lorna planted a pair of plates on a nearby table and then breezed across the floor, full of smiles and hair twirls. She also recommended the waffles and filled Jessica’s mug with coffee, before saying that she’d return shortly.
Jessica took out one of the flyers with Bex’s face on the front and laid it flat on the table. She scanned the menu but continued to watch Lorna over the top. The young woman was effortless, drifting from table to table; carrying food and drinks, saying hello to the kids, gently batting an eyelid towards the receptive single men and generally doing half a dozen things at the same time.
A few minutes later, Lorna returned to the table, still smiling. ‘Have you decided what you want to eat?’ she asked.
‘Seeing as you said the waffles were good, I may as well go with them.’
‘Blueberries and cream on top?’
‘That sounds incredible.’ Jessica motioned towards the poster on the table. ‘Can I ask a weird question? I was wondering if you might recognise my friend? I think she could have been in here once or twice.’
Lorna stared down at the paper and then picked it up. She shook her head slowly. ‘Sorry, I don’t know her.’ She took a small step backwards, but the smile had gone, her lips pressed together as if she was about to say something.
‘You okay?’ Jessica asked.
Lorna handed back the page. ‘Yes, it’s just… it’s strange that your friend’s missing.’
‘Why?’
She glanced towards Irene, who was busy shepherding a couple onto the other side of the restaurant. ‘Because my friend disappeared last night. Her name’s Sophie.’
‘She just disappeared?’
‘She finished her shift and nobody’s seen her since. I got a call last night asking if I’d seen her and that the police wanted to talk. She was due in today… but I suppose that doesn’t matter now.’
‘Was there any sign she was unhappy?’
Lorna glanced towards Irene again and shook her head. ‘Not really – but it was only two days ago that they found out Peter had died.’
Jessica bit her lip to stop the gasp escaping. ‘Who’s Peter?’ she asked, narrowly keeping her surprise in check.
The waitress flipped the loose strand of hair behind the pen. ‘One of our regulars. He used to come in a few times a week, sometimes with his friends, sometimes by himself. Sophie had a thing for him.’ She blinked rapidly, pinching the bridge of her nose. ‘Sorry, I’ll go sort out those waffles for you.’
Twenty-Three
With Foo Fighters in the background and a plate chocked with waffles, cream and blueberries, Jessica should have been a lot happier than she was, given the new information.
Peter Salisbury was dead, Sophie Johns was missing – and they knew one another. DCI Fordham and his mob would have to be complete idiots to have missed that. Not that a CID team overlooking the obvious was completely out of the question.
Jessica picked at her food, finishing off the coffee and its refill until her head was buzzing with ideas and conspiracies.
And caffeine, definitely caffeine.
Sophie claimed that she knew Bex, which could have provided some sort of link to the diner – and Peter was a regular. Was Bex really connected to this place with its rows of mass-produced gold discs, endless posters of rock stars who’d not visited and musical instruments that were never played? If so, how? Did she eat here? Hang around? Work? Even at the end of the tourist season, with winter well on its way, this place was packed. She wasn’t a full-on paperclip face, but with her piercings and tattoos, someone would know her.
When Lorna came across with the bill, Jessica again asked her to look at Bex’s flyer. She did so without complaint but shook her head once more, replying with a genuine-sounding ‘sorry’, before taking the poster and saying she’d ask around. Jessica believed she was telling the truth and, aside from interrogating everyone present, there was little else she could do.
Jessica left the Honky Tonk and crossed to the cashpoint opposite. She fed it her bank card and removed the daily maximum of cash. She had just finished separating the notes into her various pockets when her phone started to buzz. Andrew’s name was on the front. ‘Hi,’ she said.
‘You okay to talk?’ he asked.
‘Give me a minute.’
For a reason of which Jessica wasn’t quite sure, there was a brass band set up across the street. They were rump-a-pump-pumping their way through a tune she vaguely recognised but had no idea of the name. She skirted away from them, heading into a narrow street and finding a spot underneath the awning of a tat shop that had gone out of business. A faded green ‘50% off EVERYTHING’ banner was welded to the scratched window with a mixture of dust, dirt and rain.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said.
‘You got a pen?’ Andrew asked.
Jessica dug around in her pockets and then sat in the doorway. She cradled her phone between her shoulder and ear while resting the flyer with the white van’s number plate on her knee. To an unknowing passer-by, she might appear homeless.
‘Go for it,’ she said.
‘That van’s registered to someone named Vince Waverly. I’ll give you the address.’ Andrew read it out, postcode and all, as Jessica wrote the details underneath the number plate.
‘Any idea where this is?’ she asked, not recognising Poulton-le-Fyld
e as a real place name. It sounded a bit French.
‘About four miles outside of Blackpool centre,’ Andrew replied. ‘It looks a bit, well… farmy on the map. Middle-of-nowhere, bodies-under-the-patio-type thing.’
He laughed but Jessica didn’t. It was a bit close to home for her liking.
‘Do you want me to email or text you the details?’ he asked.
‘No, you never know who might be keeping an eye on it.’
She heard him tut. ‘How much trouble are you in?’ he asked.
‘None… well, hopefully none. I don’t know.’
‘Do you need some help?’
‘I’ll sort it. Thanks – I owe you one.’
The taxi pulled up alongside something that couldn’t really be called a kerbside. For one, there was no kerb; for another, the grass along the edge of the road was so long and wild that it was more of a jungle-side.
‘You sure you want dropping off here?’ the taxi driver asked.
Jessica peered through the windscreen at the long stretch of crumbling single-track road and the desolate expanse of grass and bushes on either side. She trusted that Andrew Hunter knew his stuff, but if this was some sort of joke…
‘Here’s fine,’ she replied, handing over cash and climbing out.
‘Do you want me to wait, or anything…?’
The driver wafted a hand to indicate the nothingness around them. Clearly he thought she was some kind of nutter – either that or some dogging fanatic without a car. It looked that sort of area.
‘I’m fine,’ Jessica said, closing the door. The driver offered a ‘suit yourself’ shrug and then did a U-turn before haring back the way they’d come.
‘Bloody Andrew bloody Hunter,’ Jessica muttered, taking out her phone to see if he’d sent her any further details. Then she remembered that she’d told him not to.
She turned in a circle, but there was little to see other than the tall grass growing into the verges. With the recent wet weather, the twisting mound of marshland and plant life had sprouted endless shades of green. The remains of an overnight frost glistened on the ground as the chilled sun hung low in the sky. Jessica tried standing on it, but the soil was sandy and soft, perhaps not a surprise, considering how close they were to the coast. It was disconcerting how near they were to Blackpool with its people, lights and noise; yet here, there was nothing except wilderness.
Andrew might have joked about this being an area in which bodies were buried, but he didn’t know how unnerving that now sounded. If Jessica ever needed to bump somebody off, she’d be getting rid of the body here. No one would ever find it.
She started to walk in the direction away from where the taxi driver had come. She’d only gone a few metres when the hedges parted, revealing a thin, rocky track that stretched through a dark overhang of trees. It was a tunnel to… somewhere.
Jessica’s first footstep along the lane went straight through a pile of twigs into a pool of muddy water. It spilled over the top of her shoe, drenching her sock. Her second step had a distinct squelch to it as well.
‘Andrew bloody Hunter,’ she repeated to herself.
The temperature in the shadow underneath the trees was at least a couple of degrees colder than on the other side. Crispy white mounds of frost were defiantly clinging to the edges of the path, inviting Jessica to slip on her arse.
She carefully passed underneath the natural tunnel, emerging onto a gravelly courtyard. It was only a few metres away from the road, but a large farmhouse was completely hidden by the greenery. If anyone were home, Jessica would have been in clear view, so she scooted back to the cover of the trees, keeping tight to the boundary and edging her way around the perimeter of the farm.
The farmhouse was huge, with long rows of windows over two storeys, plus a tall sloping roof, meaning there was probably a sizeable attic, too. It was at least three times the size of her three-bed Manchester terrace.
A short distance away, there was a barn that was comfortably as big as the house. There were few windows but massive doors at either end. The buildings were covered in a thin layer of grime, with dust and grit carpeting the paved areas in between.
Jessica continued around the line of the hedges until she reached an opening into a vast field. She didn’t know what type of farm was operating, but there was no sign of animals, so it was likely crops. If that were true, then why were the adjoining hedges so overgrown? Even in winter, surely a farmer would take care of his or her land? When she peered closely, Jessica could see that there were tracks across the ground where something would have been planted and harvested, but it didn’t look as if anything other than grass and weeds had been doing so for a long a time.
She crept closer to the barn, constantly peering towards the house in case the owner emerged. There was nobody, not even the hint that anyone had been there recently. Even the trees were still. It was so eerie that Jessica was shivering, imagining movement where there was none. If it were dark, dusk even, this would be prime horror-movie territory. She’d be the shrieking lone female being pursued by some maniac with a mask and a weapon. The Blackpool Chainsaw Massacre.
There was a thick bar and padlock across the front of the barn, so Jessica moved around the side close to the hedgerow until she was at one of the windows. The glass was single-pane, ancient and rickety in a rotten, damp wooden frame. Nearby, a second window was clear of glass, with the hedge growing through the open space. Jessica peered through the gap, half expecting to get an ‘oi’ from an unassuming farmer.
Nothing.
All she could see was a tractor parked in the centre, with bales of straw and some tools clamped to the far wall. Vertical metal bars were bolted into place in another corner – probably some sort of secure storage area – and there was lots of empty space.
Jessica finished squishing herself through the gap between barn and hedge until she emerged close to the house. Her feet were now cold and really wet from the loop she’d done walking in the mush. She pulled her jacket tighter but couldn’t stop her teeth from chattering. The word ‘barren’ was invented for places like this: sprawling farms hidden behind swampish jungle along a single-track road in the absolute middle of nowhere.
She thought about knocking on the front door – how much harm could it actually do? – but there was something about this place that stopped her.
Fear.
It wasn’t an emotion she felt that often. That part of her make-up had been hammered away at by years of running into stupid situations, of dealing with men and women who’d tried to intimidate and bully her. She’d become desensitised, and yet this place was so… nothing… that she felt certain there had to be something going on.
There was nowhere to hide if anyone happened to be watching from the house – but Jessica continued along the hedgerow until she had a view of the back of the house. At some point, this would have been a pleasant garden, but the grass was even more overgrown than around the rest of the property. In the centre of the lawn was an old swing, the chain wrapped around the top. It had rusted years before, as had the swingball post that was planted in the ground nearby.
Nestled between the lawn and the house on a patch of gravel was the white van that arrived at the hotels to drop off the maids each morning and evening. The lower half was coated with the same sort of grime that infested the rest of the farm. Seen in the context of the desolation, it was even stranger. Did the maids live here? Were they picked up from somewhere?
Jessica shivered, but this time it wasn’t the cold. She glanced towards the house, but there was nobody at any of the windows. The walls were free of cameras and the hedge that skirted the rest of the property offered nothing but darkness. She felt watched, turning in a circle, half expecting there to be someone on her shoulder.
There wasn’t.
She moved slowly across the gravel, unable to prevent the bottom of her shoes from scrunching on the jagged stones. It was only as they crunched together that she realised how quiet it was otherwis
e. At the hotel, there was a constant buzz of the ocean, tourists, cars… a living, breathing town. Here, even the birds had sodded off.
Jessica peered through the front windows of the van, but there was little to see other than a screwed-up Ginsters wrapper, two red-top tabloids and half a dozen air fresheners. All very normal. She made her way back to the hedge more quickly this time, wincing at the noise she was making until she was back under cover.
Silence.
She thought about the maid at the Prince Hotel and her expression upon seeing Bex’s photo. Jessica was convinced the woman had known Bex, that the ‘no English’-thing was to stop her having to talk to anyone. She was connected to this van, this place.
But had Jessica seen only what she wanted in the maid’s face? Perhaps it had been confusion? Fear, even? It wouldn’t be the first time – everything about this trip had been based on a phone call from someone she thought sounded like Bex. There was no proof, no rerun. Now she was at a remote farm, examining rubbish in the front seat of a van and listening to the wind.
Jessica was between the house and the barn, with the arched entrance on the other side of the courtyard. It would take her ten seconds at most to dash across and be back on the road. Then she could begin the walk back to the town centre. She eyed the house once more, seeing nobody and figuring the direct route was preferable to sloshing the long way round the property. Jessica took a couple of steps onto the yard, still watching the house, ready to run, and then…
Thunk!
The noise had come from the barn, something hard bashing on wood, like someone was cutting down a tree. She was level with one of the barn windows and stepped across, peering through the murky glass towards the wide-open space. The tractor was still in the centre, the straw around the edge untouched. There was nobody there, let alone anyone making a noise.
She cupped her hand across the top of her eyes to eliminate the glare, squinting towards the corners, yet there was still nothing. The sound had come so out of the blue that she could almost still hear the echo, reverberating around the farm. Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk…
Silent Suspect: A completely gripping crime thriller with edge-of-your-seat suspense (Detective Jessica Daniel thriller series Book 13) Page 13