by Fay Sampson
‘We don’t know what’s at the back of it yet.’ DS Bray studied her rose-patterned teacup. ‘And if we did, I wouldn’t be at liberty to tell you. But I’d ask you to keep quiet about this. My colleague outside will try to be discreet, but I’m afraid if the neighbours ask questions, you’ll have to stall.’
‘I shouldn’t want to sound stand-offish. We’re good friends here.’
‘Do your best.’
It was a second before Nick put down his cup with a shock that rattled the saucer. Geoffrey Banks. Every day since they had arrived, Thelma’s cousin next door seemed to be watching out for them. Within minutes, he had opened the door, inviting himself in to hear the latest news. Nick glanced over his shoulder. Where was he?
Stray threads of suspicion were gathering together. The embittered chemist, out of work, unlikely ever to be employed again at his age. His evident jealousy of Nick’s work, the new car. Those quotes picked from the Bible that had more to do with punishment than love. He heard an echo in that text message: VENGEANCE IS MINE.
Was Geoffrey home? Was the reason he had not come round to Thelma’s door because he was holding Suzie somewhere else? Might she even be inside his house next door?
Thelma was busy refilling teacups. ‘You can hardly credit it, can you? The way folks carry on nowadays. Even the girls are rolling round drunk at night. And the men would as soon slash you across the face with a bottle as give you the time of day. It wasn’t like that when we were teenagers.’
The voice that threatened Nick on the phone had not struck him as a teenager’s.
Should he tell DS Bray about Geoffrey Banks? Should he phone the Superintendent? He waited until Sergeant Bray left them to check on the rest of the house. He followed her into the kitchen and watched her test the back-door lock. Her face registered surprise when she turned round and found him watching her.
Even before he spoke, he was aware of the futility of it. ‘There’s something you ought to know,’ he tried. ‘There’s a man next door. Geoffrey Banks. He’s a cousin of Thelma’s. Used to be an industrial chemist, but the firm closed down. I found him this morning doing something to my car. At least . . .’
Her expression suddenly sharpened. ‘Is that why you smashed up the wing? Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘Not exactly.’ Shamefacedly he went on. ‘It was my fault. I was trying to overtake a cyclist and I left it till too near a bend.’
‘You’re saying there was nothing wrong with your brakes? Or the steering?’
‘No. I mean, I don’t think Geoffrey Banks actually had time to do anything. But he doesn’t like us. He keeps quoting biblical texts at us. It made me think of one of the text messages. Vengeance is mine.’
‘Really?’ He read the scepticism in her voice. He should have expected it.
Sergeant Bray sighed. ‘I’ll tell the boss. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll check upstairs.’
Nick turned back to the sitting room. The evening stretched away in front of him like a featureless desert. And then a sleepless night, alone in Thelma’s spare bed. He could not rest until he had Suzie back, but he could think of nothing else he could do.
Would it make any difference if he went back to Hugh Street on his own? Would the police have left officers on guard to preserve a crime scene? Could he get in, and crawl all over the house, looking for a detail they might have missed? Even break through into the adjoining houses? Had they searched those?
Even as he imagined it, he knew that the forensic team would be at work, studying the minutiae of the evidence more thoroughly than he would know how to.
He was helpless.
The children had gone upstairs. Thelma was in the kitchen preparing the evening meal. DS Bray was familiarizing herself with the layout of the house. Nick was left alone in the not-too-comfortable front room. He felt exhausted. He leaned back against the stiff upholstery of the sofa. Should he go upstairs and rest on the bed? He was afraid to close his eyes because of the images he feared would sweep in to haunt him. Better to let his tired gaze rest beyond the window on the soaring bulk of Skygill Hill.
His phone chimed. He could hardly keep his hand steady as he opened it.
‘Yes?’
It might be the police. It could be good news.
It was not. That same harsh voice grated out its message.
‘Well, well. I’m really surprised you haven’t got here yet. How much longer do we have to keep your little lady? You’ve been a naughty boy. Sending the police on a wild-goose chase. Did you know you can get done for wasting police time? See you.’
The line went dead.
DS Bray was standing in the doorway.
‘Don’t tell me. That was him, wasn’t it? You’ve gone quite white. What did he say?’
Nick told her.
She held out her hand. ‘I’m wondering whether we should pass your phone to the station. If he rings again, they might be able to get a trace on it. But they’d need to keep him talking. Does he know your voice?’
‘He never gives me time to answer.’
‘Funny, that. He’s practically asking you to come and find him. He seems sure you know where he is.’
‘Do you, Dad?’ Tom appeared behind her. ‘You’ve got to know something. It doesn’t make sense otherwise.’
‘I thought I did. I told you. They raided Hugh Street, but now he says that was the wrong place. He’s laughing at me. But I don’t know where he is!’
‘Easy, Mr Fewings. Why don’t you take a rest? Maybe something will come back to you.’
‘For heaven’s sake! We’d been here less than twenty-four hours when I got his first call. We hadn’t been anywhere else. Except Thorncliffe Mill.’
‘The working museum place? By the canal?’
‘Yes.’
The detective’s brow furrowed. ‘I don’t see how that could be a crime scene. Too many people coming and going. You’d think it would be impossible to cover up anything suspicious there. But I’ll let the Super know.’
She had her mobile out and withdrew into the hall, shutting the door. He heard her subdued voice, but not the words.
Tom threw himself into an armchair. ‘That would be pretty clever, though, wouldn’t it? School parties coming in and out all day. Dressing up in Victorian costume. And all the time, there’s this modern crime going on right under their noses.’
‘What crime?’ retorted Nick.
‘Search me.’
Nick’s mind hunted through the scenes of that first morning. The vast weaving shed with its whirring looms. The shining steam engine thrusting its piston to and fro. Room after room with displays of shuttles, bobbins, raw cotton, woven cloth. The basement boiler room. But there had been other doors marked PRIVATE. How many more rooms might there be not open to the public? Was it possible that in one of them Suzie was being held?
The detective sergeant was telling Superintendent Mason. A faint hope stirred in Nick. Would the police raid the museum as well?
TWENTY-THREE
Thelma was cooking high tea. She looked up defiantly as Nick stood in the doorway of the kitchen.
‘I know you said you were taking me out to supper, but nobody’s going to want that now, are they? But you’ve got to do something, haven’t you? It’s no good sitting around brooding.’
Nick’s eyes took in the iridescent shapes of rainbow trout, the little pile of flaked almonds. Thelma was melting butter in a large frying pan. He shouldn’t underrate her. He must adjust his mind to something more than a woman who dealt in the clichés of hotpot and meat-and-potato pie.
There were five plump trout. And only four Fewings now.
He was not going to be able to eat one, however good a cook Thelma was.
Thelma followed his thoughts. ‘Do you think that detective would like one? It seems a pity to waste it.’
‘I’ll ask her.’
He was glad to escape the kitchen. He ran the risk of hysterical laughter, asking DS Bray if she would like to join them in t
ruite aux amandes.
The policewoman shook her head. ‘Sounds lovely. But I’m on duty. I don’t think I should take my eye off the ball. Not that I’m expecting anything to happen.’ She added hastily. ‘I’m sure you’re quite safe here. And we’ve got Riley outside. If you could rustle up a sandwich, that would be good.’
He had not expected tragedy to interfere with Tom’s appetite. But he was surprised to find Millie tucking into high tea with enthusiasm.
He took a few bites of his own fish and pushed it aside. ‘Sorry. It’s beautiful, Thelma, but I’m not up to it.’
‘You’re not helping Suzie, you know,’ she scolded him. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, any more than you do. But when it does, you want to be fit to cope with it.’
He rose from the table and went to stand at the back window. Most of Thelma’s garden lay at the front of the house, across the gravelled drive, spilling down the hillside. Here at the back, High Bank rose on up to the skyline. Sheep dotted the higher fields in the late sunlight, though the valley bottom was already in shadow. He felt a sudden longing to be out in the clean air, with the cool autumn breeze bracing him. To have the big distances and the high hills speaking of a power greater than his tangled confusion of thoughts and fears.
‘Dad was asking if you’d found those letters about Russia in the suitcase.’
Thelma’s words came meaninglessly at first.
‘What suitcase?’ Tom asked. ‘Is that the one Uncle Martin said he was going to give you?’
‘We already saw it,’ Millie said. ‘Before you got here. It’s stuffed full of all sorts of family things. And there were these letters. From people with names like Jephthah and Elijah. And how they had to go to court because they were Baptists and wouldn’t pay tithes to the parish church. But I don’t remember anything about cotton mills in Russia.’
‘It’s true, though.’
Nick marvelled how they could talk normally about family history at a time like this. He wanted to shout at them that Suzie was missing. She had been kidnapped in broad daylight. They had no idea where she was. She was a prisoner somewhere. She might be injured. She might be dead. Could she have been spirited abroad? To Russia?
He fought to control his anger. He ought not to frighten Millie more than he had to. He could see what Thelma was trying to do. Keeping a semblance of normality, to protect the children from the worst of the thoughts that were tormenting him. To take their minds off the appalling reality of what had happened to their mother.
But Tom was an adult now, legally. Eighteen. Nick still found it difficult to accept the new equality this implied. Tom was Tom, his blue-eyed little son. Altered by these few weeks at university, but still a long way from maturity.
And Millie, at fourteen, was still a child, however much her elegantly cropped blonde hair and eye make-up attempted to say otherwise.
He wanted to put his arms around them and keep them safe. The horror was that he had no idea of the nature of the threat that seemed to be hanging over them. It made no sense. What could they possibly have seen or done that could call down such retribution on them, if it was not to do with the goings-on at Hugh Street?
It chilled him to think that the police seemed not to know either. Unless they had information they were not sharing with him. Knowledge which necessitated the presence of DS Bray inside the house and Constable Riley patrolling outside.
What did they suspect?
‘Dad showed me those Russian letters, Tom. You’ve a treat in store,’ Thelma was saying. ‘Two of those brothers from Briershaw, Gideon and Noah, got picked by the mill owners to go abroad. Gideon was an overlooker and Noah a beamer. The Ruskies were wanting to start up a whole lot of new mills over there, and they sent to Lancashire to find out how to do it. It was our family got picked to go to Kiev to show them how it was done.’
‘You’re kidding?’ Tom exclaimed in spite of himself. His knife and fork clattered on a plate empty of all but fish bones.
‘No, I’m not. You’ll see. Dad’s still kept the envelopes in that suitcase, with the Russian stamps. And those two boys wrote back to tell the family all about how it was like. How they helped them set up the machinery. It all had to be sent out from England in those days. They hadn’t got the factories to manufacture their own looms and spinning mules then. So then they had to show the Russians how to use them.’
Even Millie looked up from her half-empty plate. ‘So they taught these Russian girls to weave cotton, like Dad’s granny used to?’
‘That’s the size of it,’ Thelma sighed. ‘And now you look at this town, and all the little places down the dales. And there’s hardly a chimney left standing. What mills there are have mostly been turned into museums.’
The word brought Nick’s thoughts up short. They were back to that. The only other possibility to explain where Suzie was. What the Fewings might, inadvertently, have stumbled upon. The Thorncliffe Mill Museum.
But he had no idea what they could have seen there that they should not have. His mind raked frantically through his partial memories of their visit. Nothing would come.
The kitchen was too hot. It smelt of fried fish. He had to get out or he would be sick.
‘I’m going outside,’ he said, making for the door. ‘I’ve got to clear my head.’
‘I need a walk.’ Nick heard the belligerence in his voice as he informed the detective sergeant. He was challenging her to forbid him.
He saw the alarm in her grey eyes, the need to make a quick decision.
‘I’d rather you didn’t go out of sight of the house, sir. I can’t keep my eyes on both you and your children otherwise.’
‘Can’t I even take a turn round the garden?’ he exploded.
‘No problem there, sir. Riley will have you in his sights.’
It heightened the sense of unreality that he could not even step outside Thelma’s front door without a detective watching his back.
He saw the tall Constable William Riley straighten instantly from his casual pose against his car. DS Bray came out of the house and exchanged a few words with him. Nick sensed the policeman relax a little. But he was still alert, watchful, as Nick crunched across the gravel path.
He turned his back on the constable and began to walk down the grassy paths of Thelma’s garden, between the vegetable beds.
He felt a prickle down his back. He could be watched, not just from Thelma’s house, but from Geoffrey Banks’. He turned his head. There were no lights in the next-door windows. He did not know whether that was good news or bad.
He walked on.
Despite the unreality of the situation, everything about the scene that met him struck home with heart-aching clarity. The sun had dropped below the steep fells, but the air still held a pearly clarity before twilight. The solid permanence of Skygill Hill made him long to be climbing it with his family, as he had promised himself. Would that ever happen now?
Neat rows of vegetables patterned Thelma’s sloping garden. Leeks, carrots, the ragged heads of Brussels sprouts, their buds barely starting to fatten for Christmas. Street lamps were starting to come on, beading the streets of the town below him. He could pick out the cupola of the town hall. The solitary chimney of Thorncliffe Mill.
The museum. The thought made him draw his breath short, like a fist to his chest. Was it really possible that Suzie was there? He needed to have hope that there was an answer somewhere.
He could hardly restrain himself from jumping into his car and rushing there to see.
Had Superintendent Mason taken the information seriously? That Hugh Street was a red herring and the real threat lay in the museum?
Why? He found he was stamping the dew-damp grass between the gooseberry bushes. Why was her abductor taunting him? Surely, if there was something criminal going on, the perpetrator would want above everything else to keep it secret? What was the sense in goading Nick to follow Suzie to wherever he was hiding her?
He? Them? He did not know whether h
e was dealing with a solitary lunatic or an organized gang. There was something deeply wrong about the whole scenario. It made no sense.
At the bottom of the steep garden, Nick stopped. It was hard to tear his eyes away from Thorncliffe Mill. Every moment, he hoped to see flashing police lights. To know that they were going in to end this.
After a fruitless wait, he made himself turn back.
He saw the front door open. Tom and Millie came out. Both had their jackets on. He watched them look around before they spotted him below them. They crossed the drive and started down the slope towards him. Nick walked up the grassy path to meet them.
They stood in an awkward silence.
‘Do you think they’ve found her?’ Millie burst out. ‘Are they going to look in the museum?’
‘You two really think she’s there?’ Tom asked. The boyish enthusiasm for adventure had gone out of him. He looked older. His blue eyes went across Millie to his father’s. This was no longer a challenging mystery to be solved. His mother might not be coming back.
‘I don’t know,’ Nick said, exasperated. ‘Nothing in all this makes sense. Why draw attention to himself? Why take Suzie in the first place, still less taunt me to come and get her? But if the reason isn’t in Hugh Street, it’s got to be the textile museum. We didn’t go anywhere else. We spent the morning at Thorncliffe Mill, had lunch in their restaurant, then we set out along the canal path and ended up in Hugh Street. There only are those two places where we could have seen something wrong we might have told the police. And we didn’t find anything out of the ordinary in the museum. At least, it was all pretty amazing, but certainly above board. There wasn’t a single thing I can think of that looked suspicious. If she’s there, then they’ve kidnapped her for nothing.’
‘You’re wrong, Dad.’ Millie said suddenly. ‘There was something else. Don’t you remember? We were walking along the towpath and there were all those empty old mills. I found the grating over the window of one of them was loose, and we broke into it. They had machines, like the ones we’d seen in the museum, only dustier.’ Her words were coming rapidly now. ‘You wanted me to crawl under one, so I could imagine I was Millie Bootle, but I wouldn’t. So you did!’