by Penny Grubb
Annie nodded. ‘I know.’ Not that drugs explained the real reason those two men were here. That was somehow tied up in those odd-shaped packs that had gone on up in the lift. But it was the drug-dealing on the ill-lit communal landing that was Mrs Earle’s bugbear.
‘Yes, I can get rid of them if you want me to.’
‘Well, of course I want you to.’
‘Fine.’ Annie slid the form from the folder. ‘Just sign here and here. And I’ll need to come back, so unless you’re going to be in round the clock or you don’t mind it dragging on, you’d better give me a key.’
‘It’s been going on forever as it is. What’s a bit longer?’
Annie shrugged. ‘It’ll cost more.’
‘Oh all right.’ Mrs Earle spoke petulantly and snatched at a crowded key ring that jostled for position with the empty bottles. With difficulty she extracted the necessary keys and tossed them across to Annie. Annie swapped them for the all-important contract but wondered how much legal weight a signature carried when the client was this drunk. She’d let Pat worry about that.
Keys and contract safely tucked away, Annie rushed for the door and opened it a crack. She caught the whine of the lift slowing. In seconds the light from the lift would illuminate the landing. It would all kick off. She’d be trapped. As the thoughts formed, she slipped through the door and strode silently to the staircase. Laboured breathing rasped nearby. The image came to her of a hand reaching out from the shadows. Her nerve cracked and she sprinted down two flights of stairs. No one followed. She modified her pace and tried to slow her breathing as she clicked the buttons on her phone to call the taxi.
At ground level, Annie stayed in the darkness at the base of the building. The immediate area was quiet now but not deserted. Indistinct figures slouched in the glow of the streetlights. The early hours of every Wednesday and Saturday? It was a stupid time and place to peddle drugs and surely just an afterthought. She had to look at the full picture, to target their real reason for coming here.
When she saw a taxi in the right livery approach, she stepped out on to the concrete pathway.
A burst of loud music made her leap back. With a squeal of tyres and spray of turf the battered yellow car she’d seen from upstairs and assumed long gone pulled out in front of her. The suddenness of its reappearance stood the hairs on the back of her neck to attention as a leering face loomed from the driver’s window.
‘Hey, bit late for playing detectives, innit?’ A burst of exaggerated laughter and the car took off again swerving round the taxi as it drove in.
What the hell…?
‘Bloody kids!’ the taxi driver snapped, pulling up beside her. ‘You going back to Vikky Dock?’
Vicky who? Annie stopped the question on her lips. It must be the local abbreviation for the riverside where Pat lived. Victoria Dock. She nodded and settled herself in the cab, her gaze never leaving the yellow car which slalomed back up the road then snaked round a corner and out of sight.
The heat of real anger rose in her. Different car, but she knew the driver. That was the grinning face which had yelled obscenities outside Terry Martin’s funeral.
And now he was here outside Mrs Earle’s. The only common factor she could think of was herself. And the boy had seemed to know her. How? She thought of the upset he’d caused to the Martins, and vowed to nail the little bastard if she did nothing else before she left Hull.
CHAPTER 7
DESPITE NOT GETTING to bed until dawn began to spread the promise of daylight across the sky, Annie was up and wide awake again before nine o’clock. She woke with a feeling of frustration, of business unresolved, and remembered she’d gone to bed angry.
That boy and his mocking laugh. She’d never wanted to slap someone so badly. Her mind played an image of Laura Tunbridge outside the church slapping out at one of her companions who’d laughed at the antics of the boy joy-rider.
Mally didn’t mean it … Me and Kay got a lift with Mrs Kitson …
As she splashed water on her face in the small shower room, Annie was aware of someone moving about. Surely Pat wasn’t up at this hour.
It wasn’t Pat; it was Barbara, who looked up from where she bent over a chair sorting clothes. ‘Oh … hello.’
As Annie returned the greeting, she felt a dart of hostility shoot her way. What was that about? It was Barbara, with Vince’s connivance, who’d brought her here. OK, so she didn’t conform to Barbara’s view of a proper woman in housekeeping terms, but whose fault was that? They should have been straight with her.
‘Would you like coffee?’ she offered as an olive branch.
Barbara chipped off a tight-lipped, ‘No, thank you,’ rebuffing the gesture.
Annie went through to the kitchen, made coffee for herself and leant back against the fridge door as she cradled the cup and sipped the steamy liquid. Her reflection in the mirrored veneer of the cupboard opposite looked at her, its expression pleased, satisfied. No trace left of last night’s anger. Here she was, a real life PI with two cases on her books.
Two cases that needed preparatory work before she settled on a next move. A real PI with work to do who would now stride through to the living room, take out her folders and spread the papers across the table as she planned her day. The flat hummed to the roar of a vacuum cleaner. Last night in a semi-deserted car-park in a run-down area of town, she would have grabbed that boy out of his car without a second thought, but she balked at disturbing Barbara’s routine.
A boss who slept late every day was disconcerting. It put the onus on her to make the kind of decisions that had always been someone else’s. From working at the level of general factotum who couldn’t replenish the office coffee jar without a signed chit, she owned a caseload that involved sudden death and late night drugs deals. The feel was of being pushed in at the deep-end having only ever read up on the theory of how to swim. It sent waves through her that were equally anticipation and anxiety. Her reflection grinned back from the mirrored surface. She was way out of her depth and relished every second. By the time Pat was up and about, she would have strategies worked out for both cases.
Orchard Park. Drug dealing on landing six was the symptom she must cure, but what else brought the two men there in their van? What were the peculiar packages? What was and wasn’t normal human traffic late at night and what was different about Tuesday and Friday nights? Annie remembered the rush of adrenalin that had flooded her as she’d stepped out into the darkness of the sixth floor lift bay. She wanted more of being right at the edge, of pitting her wits against shadowy wrongdoers in the dark labyrinth of the tall block. The plan she would put forward would be a week-long surveillance. Tonight and every night for a week. To observe, maybe to follow, to suss out just exactly what went on. If Pat recognized the perpetrators from the photographs she’d taken and found an easy route to close the case, it would be a terrible anticlimax.
At any rate, she had a signed contract. That would please Pat.
And while her nights were taken up with Mrs Earle’s problems, her days were the Martins. Mrs Kitson, the busybody who was there the night he died, was the obvious lead, but Mrs Becke was her number-one target. It wasn’t enough to get the what and when, she needed the why. Why did Terry Martin go to Milesthorpe in the first place?
Beckes split over brook …
Mrs Kitson might be useful for the mundane detail but Mrs Becke was the one mixed up in Terry Martin’s real agendas.
The next move on both cases needed the technology in Pat’s bedroom, to print out the photographs from last night and to make some more copies of Terry Martin’s DVD.
She thought back to her time in Birmingham and the sense of belonging it gave her to be amongst people who took her ambitions seriously. Never assume you know all the answers, one of the guys had said to her. He wasn’t a course tutor; he’d been in the business for years and come to get himself the bits of paper. Don’t hem yourself in. … Spread your material however wide of the mark it looks.
She would split the film and create a carefully labelled set of DVDs, so she could show different bits to different people. Spurn Point and those few seconds in a deserted concrete bunker. One of just the fruit and veg show; another of Terry’s encounter with Mrs Becke. Then the crowds on Milesthorpe Green. There were no useful shots in the following stretch, mostly filmed at a distance, where one of the few close-ups was of Terry Martin escaping flying hoofs, but she wouldn’t exclude it just because it looked wide of the mark. Then the final sequence where he’d filmed some of the prize-winners in amongst random shots of the crowd. Leaving out the useless footage would save time, but who was she to predict what anomalies a Milesthorpe resident might notice? The guy who filmed this? Oh yes, I remember the guy with the camera … A careful operator covered all the angles.
But not a single frame or still of that dark cellar, because there must be no chance of accidentally showing the wrong person the wrong bit of film. There was no ambiguity in this case where the PI/police line lay and she had no intention of going near it.
A mental map of Milesthorpe sat in her head, dotted with the dwellings of the people she’d looked up. She planned to drive around first and get a feel for the place that had drawn Terry Martin to his death. She’d seen her prime target’s house already on his film.
And after Mrs Becke came Tremlow, Kitson and Ludgrove, the trio on the spot when Terry’s body was found. Any of them might lead to new avenues. Her other names were Laura Tunbridge and her two friends, Kay Dearlove and Mally Fletcher, all of them under sixteen. She crossed them off the list. Her job was to do her best for the Martins not to destroy their son’s reputation. The sleeping dog would never wake again, it was best to let it lie.
Mally didn’t mean it …
She would unearth every last twist of his final hours, all fifty plus of them. It would be more than a bare skeleton of a story of where and when. She would smooth away the unknowns and show the Martins the real picture of Terry’s last act.
Realizing that the noise of the vacuum cleaner had stopped, Annie broke her self-imposed exile and slipped back through to the living room. She walked in on Barbara bent over the sideboard drawer rummaging through the company paperwork.
Barbara swung round, giving Annie a hard glare as though daring her to make anything of it. Annie pretended an interest in the view across the river as Barbara with difficulty forced the drawer completely shut, locked it and marched through to the kitchen without a word. Sounds emerged of water gushing and cupboard doors banging shut.
Now their locations were reversed, Annie sat down and spread her case notes on the table. There was little she could do with them, but she let them float across her consciousness as she hardened up the plans she would put to Pat.
It was midday before Pat emerged. Annie, who had learnt the morning routine, prepared coffee and soup. Barbara had disappeared but her bag still sat on the worktop so Annie knew she’d only popped out to the bins or to see a neighbour. The surfaces gleamed; everything had been stowed away behind the pristine cupboard doors. Annie tried not to make any mess but the bread was crumbly and spread bits everywhere. Guiltily, she swept them on to the floor where they crunched underfoot.
Annie allowed Pat ten minutes with her breakfast before she began to outline her ideas for the two cases.
Pat met her plans for Orchard Park with a moment’s silence then commented, ‘Let’s see what you got on camera first. You might not need to go back at all. And every night’s a bit OTT anyway.’
On Terry Martin, she chewed her way through a substantial chunk of bread as she ruminated on Annie’s suggestions. ‘Mrs Becke? Yes, I see where you’re coming from. She didn’t like the little toerag, but you’ll need to tread softly. There might be something in the secret lover story that she won’t want to shout about.’
‘That comment he made, “Beckes split over brook”, any idea what he might have meant?’
‘Sounds like a headline to me. Fits with his journalistic ambitions. Clever enough if the lover’s called Brook.’
‘But who’s going to care enough to print a story about it?’
‘If she’s big in village politics, there might be something for the red tops, and I suppose he could have hit the Sundays if one of them was a celebrity.’ Pat laughed. ‘I can’t see it though. Not in Milesthorpe. OK, what else?’
‘Can we find out what he had in print over the last few months? I don’t see how it might help yet, but …’
Pat sat up and gave a nod of approval. ‘That’s a good idea. Yes, I can do that. I know most of the editors locally. I’ll chase that up while you’re out and about.’
The animation in her boss’s tone surprised Annie, giving her an insight into how frustrating it must be for Pat to sit about doing nothing. Surely Vince could have found something for her to do, but then according to Pat he’d starved her of work before this had happened. It was the reason she’d gone out and got the job that led to the broken leg.
‘You should be resting, getting that leg better.’ Barbara’s voice made Annie jump. She looked up at the stern face Barbara turned on her sister and saw something of the struggle Pat had to carve out a role for herself against the combined efforts of Barbara and Vince.
‘I can make phone calls. It’s only my leg, for God’s sake.’
‘Even so …’
Annie saw them square up for a spat, so slid herself off into Pat’s bedroom to access the PC to print out the photos she’d taken last night and make edited copies of Terry Martin’s DVD.
It was just two o’clock. Annie had been back in the living room ten minutes, sorting last night’s photographs and shutting her ears to the high-tension, dual monologues that were Pat and her sister organizing an outing later in the day.
With an inner sigh of relief, she became aware that Barbara had gathered her belongings together ready to leave.
‘I’ll call for you at five prompt. Make sure you’re ready. We want time to eat before the film starts.’
Pat grunted a response as the door buzzer sounded.
‘I’ll get that on my way out,’ said Barbara, ‘and if it’s Vince—’
‘It won’t be Vince. He hasn’t given me back those keys you let him have.’
‘Don’t go on at me about that! What was I supposed to do…?’
Annie sank herself lower in the cushions of her chair to shut out the bickering and concentrated on the prints of the scene from Mrs Earle’s bedroom window. She was aware of a door opening behind her, of Pat looking up, but the voice in her ear shot her up in surprise.
‘Annie, how could you!’
The words blazed with fury and loosed her grip on the prints which floated to the carpet. Her hand automatically reached down to retrieve the fallen pictures as her stare rose to look at Jennifer Flanagan, whose face blotched with anger.
‘Jennifer?’ She tried to pull her thoughts and her photographs together enough to frame a coherent question.
‘How could you? I trusted you.’ Jennifer spat the question out again.
Annie wanted to say, I didn’t know you did anger. Surprise robbed her of clear thought. Her hand floundered in the weave of the carpet.
‘How could she what?’ A creak from protesting settee springs turned their attention to Pat, a solid immovable presence, who fixed Jennifer with a stare.
‘Everyone knows! You promised to keep it quiet. I’ve seen the girl. Scott was with me. You’re lucky it wasn’t Rob Greaves. What were you thinking of!’
Annie exchanged a bewildered glance with Pat who spoke firmly. ‘Sit down, Jennifer, and cool down. Let’s have it from the top. You can start with the assumption that neither Annie nor I have a clue what you’re on about.’
‘You might not, but Annie does. I’ve talked to the girl.’
‘What girl?’ asked Annie.
Pat stopped them both with a raised hand. ‘I said sit down, Jennifer. I’m getting a stiff neck looking up at you.’
Jennifer sat.<
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‘Right then. What’s happened?’
Jennifer glared at Pat and let out an exasperated sigh. ‘It’s all over Milesthorpe that we’re looking for a body in a cellar. We’re swamped with phone calls and stupid theories and everyone’s out looking. Someone’ll stumble over it and probably the whole of Milesthorpe’ll traipse through before the SOCOs get there. And all because—’
Again Pat’s raised hand stemmed the flow. ‘Exactly what is the rumour? Do people know about the film?’
‘No, but you know how these things travel. It’s Chinese whispers now. Anyone who hasn’t been seen for a couple of days is assumed dead in a cellar. Scott and I got talking to the kids.’
‘Kids?’
‘It’s all very Pony Club out there. The kids’ network drives everything. And this one girl—’
‘Name?’
‘I couldn’t possibly give you that information.’
‘Laura Tunbridge,’ supplied Annie.
Jennifer looked from one to the other of them clearly wondering how she’d slipped from attack to defence so quickly. ‘A couple of other kids quoted her as the source of the rumour so we tackled her about it. Not formally, luckily for you. We were just going round the place chatting and trying to find out what the hell was going on. But if we have to interview her properly … well … anyway her version was that Terry Martin killed Edward Balham and put his body in a cellar. We asked where she’d heard it and she said it had come from a private detective who was investigating Terry Martin’s death. She showed us your card.’
‘But that’s ridiculous.’ Annie spread her hands wide and tried to voice her bewilderment. ‘I only spoke to Laura once. That was at Terry Martin’s funeral. That’s when I gave her the card. I hadn’t seen the film then. Look, whatever she’s got hold of, it hasn’t come from me. I’d hardly have said it was a guy’s body anyway.’
A wariness so fleeting Annie wasn’t sure she’d seen it flashed across Jennifer’s expression. ‘The funeral’s the only time you’ve spoken to her?’