by Tom Bale
He had put his arms around her. Looking back on it, he was sure he’d intended no more than a hug, an innocent show of support. But the hug was followed by a kiss, and then another: long and deep and passionate, until they broke apart, shocked, panting, reality like ice-cold water thrown over them.
Afterwards, the guilt had lingered for a long time, vying with a half-acknowledged desire to do it again. But Joe was happily married, with a young family, and not about to betray either Helen or Roy. He told himself it was a regrettable lapse, blamed it on the booze and thanked God that no one had seen them.
Nothing like it had happened since and, in truth, Joe hadn’t given it a thought in recent years. But it was certainly on his mind now, as they sat and ate together. Diana had insisted on providing him with a meal, a spicy chicken risotto.
‘This is a treat,’ he told her. ‘I’ve not had much home cooking for a while.’
‘Don’t,’ Diana said. ‘It breaks my heart to think of you and Helen being stranded from each other.’
They talked about the situation for a minute or two – as long as Joe could bear – and then he suggested they wander along to the pub after dinner. ‘I can just about afford to buy us a drink.’
She laughed. ‘That’s a nice offer, but Glenn’s coming round later.’
‘Ah.’ He felt oddly rejected. ‘I might grab a pint, though.’
‘Glenn and I will probably have a bottle of wine and watch the telly. Not the most thrilling way to spend an evening, but you’re welcome to join us.’
Joe politely declined, and Diana didn’t push it. ‘So how come you and Glenn don’t live together?’ he asked.
‘There’s no good answer to that. He has his own place up the road. I don’t really want to give up the B&B. We just prefer it this way.’
‘As long as you’re happy …’
‘Isn’t happiness a bit of a myth?’ Diana’s voice had a tinge of bitterness to it. ‘At my age, anyway. You have to settle for whatever you can get.’
The night was cold, with a fresh wind and clouds scudding across the sky, suggesting that today’s dry spell would be short-lived. Joe decided to try the Harbour Lights, at the foot of the High Street, on the basis that he’d walked up and down enough hills today.
He pushed through the doors and found himself in a genuine old-fashioned pub. Lots of wood and leather and brass, but all of it weathered and comfortable, not newly installed to fit some designer’s view of an olde-worlde inn.
It was quiet, but not entirely deserted. Maybe a dozen customers in all, of varying ages. There was background music: something light and classical, pleasantly unobtrusive. A couple of fruit machines, but nobody playing them, and no arcade games. A basic menu written out on a blackboard, and a good selection of real ales.
The barman was short and plump and vaguely piratical in appearance, squeezed into a tight black waistcoat over a frilly white shirt, though he greeted Joe in a broad Midlands accent that couldn’t have been further removed from the swashbuckling Spanish Main.
As Joe ordered a pint of Tribute, he sensed that he’d caught the attention of the solitary drinker at the bar: a man whose bony middle-aged frame didn’t quite do justice to his Calvin Klein jeans and exquisitely tailored jacket.
When he glanced round, Joe saw it was the man he’d met in the hallway at Leon’s. His eyes were filmy and struggling to focus, though from his posture he appeared perfectly sober. A finely honed talent for concealment, Joe guessed.
‘Met you today, didn’t I?’ the man said, with barely a slur to his voice. ‘Jim-somebody?’
‘Joe. Can I get you a drink?’
‘God, yes. Thought you’d never ask.’
Twenty-Seven
THE FORCE OF the punch sent the chair tumbling over. Alise screamed as her head hit the floor. Leon made no move to help her.
‘You’re going to talk to me,’ he told her. ‘Don’t make me hit you again.’
Reece and Todd set her upright. There was blood pouring from her nose, running over her lips and dripping from her chin. With her hands tied, she couldn’t wipe it away. Instead, she kept dribbling it out of her mouth, her face twitching in a desperate reaction to her helplessness.
Leon knew it was going to drive him mad, so he got Todd to clean her up. For good measure, he stuffed thick wads of tissue up her nostrils. They all had a laugh at that.
‘Fucking hell, you’re a sight,’ Leon said.
‘Ought to get it on YouTube,’ Todd muttered.
Leon gave him a withering look. ‘That’s how half those arseholes end up in jail. Twat.’
There was a knock on the door. Cadwell eased into the room, nodded at Leon and took a seat next to Fenton. He studied Alise, a satisfied smile creeping onto his face. ‘Have I missed anything?’
‘Only the warm-up,’ Leon said.
Infuriated by the way Alise continued to glare at him, Leon faked another blow, making her jump so violently that the chair actually moved an inch or two. More laughter.
‘Her shirt’s covered in blood,’ Cadwell observed, the comment weighted with meaning.
‘Yeah?’
‘Well … shouldn’t we remove it?’
‘Plenty of time for that.’ Leon snickered, his gaze never leaving Alise’s. ‘You were in the cafe today, pouring out your heart to some feller. What did you tell him?’
She shrugged.
‘You are going to talk to me,’ he said quietly.
‘It was … same thing as to others. About Kamila.’
‘That wasn’t very wise, was it? I told you to stop badmouthing me. Derek here told you to stop. We asked you nicely, and you ignored us. Now we can’t be nice any more, and it’s your fault.’
He hit her without warning, a slap this time, fast and strong but not so powerful that it knocked her over. Her scream set his teeth on edge, which earned her another slap, and then he just lost it: laying into her with both hands, hungrily, jubilantly, building a rhythm, loving the sound it made, drowning out her cries. He had no idea how many times he hit her before the others waded in and pulled him away; his only concern was to draw up his legs, curling his body so that they wouldn’t see how aroused he was.
Cadwell stepped past him, walking gingerly around the polythene, and observed the girl from a safe distance. She lay in a twisted heap, the chair clinging to her back like prototype wings. Leon realised the plastic sheet was running with blood.
‘Dear me, she’s a mess,’ Cadwell said. Unspoken was the accusation: You’ve gone too far.
Leon’s response was a grunt: Fuck it.
Behind him, Fenton said, ‘You might want to see this.’ He passed Leon a pink Nokia phone. ‘The text she sent today.’
Leon read the message. Something about a man called Pearse, who lived in Poundbury. A phrase caught his eye: K’s friend.
K for Kamila.
‘Look who it was sent to,’ Fenton said.
The number had been programmed into the memory with a single name: Joe. And there was a reply from him: Thanks, Alise. This is a good start. Speak soon.
‘Joe,’ Leon murmured. Alise was conscious again, her breathing harsh and ragged, her face swollen almost beyond recognition. Even Leon was a bit shocked by the sight of her. Had he really done all that?
‘What’s with this text you sent Joe?’
Her head rose, then dropped back to the floor. No fight left in her, thank Christ. She tried to speak, dry lips smacking together.
‘I asked … I asked him to help me.’
‘Yeah? Well, that’s too bad. Because you’re way beyond help now.’
Jenny had been sleeping – or what passed for sleeping in the not-real world of her cell. With no sense of day or night, no energy or desire to move, her existence was reduced to a state of permanent semi-consciousness. She drifted, sometimes dreaming even while she could feel her hands around the torch her captor had left her.
It was a nightmare that shocked her awake. The images, the details, faded imme
diately. What lingered and would not be repressed was the soundtrack: a distant but piercing scream.
She sat up, carefully placing the torch between her feet, and rubbed her face with both hands, reassuring herself that she was intact. Then she wrapped her arms around herself. It was usually too warm in the cell, but now she felt cold.
The batteries in the torch had begun to fail. Jenny spent most of her time in darkness, reserving a few moments of weak, flickering illumination for when she needed to use the bucket. It seemed as though her captor hadn’t visited for a long time. When he did, she would beg him for fresh batteries.
And she knew she would offer him anything in return.
Now, though, the darkness aided her concentration. She strained to hear above the trip-hammering of her heart. In all her time in the cell, there had been no external noise, no evidence of an outside world at all—
She heard it again. A scream. A woman: terrified, in pain. Not a nightmare, not an aural hallucination, but real. Happening somewhere beyond the cell. Somewhere close by.
The thought gave her a rush of confidence, for a second, at least – and then the reality of the situation came crashing down on her.
It meant there was another victim. Someone else was suffering in the way that she had suffered.
Jenny wept for her, even while she felt a terrible, shameful sense of relief.
Because it also meant that she wasn’t alone.
The man who’d introduced himself as Giles Quinton-Price sipped the whisky that Joe had bought him and said, ‘So, you’re taking up employment with the mighty King of the Chavs?’
‘I haven’t decided yet. Do you work for Leon?’
‘Lord, no. I’m a journalist, writing a feature article on Trelennan.’
‘A travel piece?’
‘Lifestyle, with a strong political slant. For our readers, this place is the embodiment of their wildest dreams.’ He spread his hands as if displaying a banner. ‘“The town that puts the rest of Britain to shame.” And it’s all down to your chap Leon.’
Joe shrugged. ‘I hardly know him.’
‘No? Then beware. To look at him you’d conclude that he was little more than a drug-addled dollop of benefit-scrounging, housing-estate scum, destined for prison and a pauper’s grave.’ He laughed, then realised the barman was loitering close by, possibly within earshot.
Slightly abashed, he hurriedly added: ‘The fact is, what he’s achieved here is nothing less than a miracle. To all intents and purposes, there is no crime. Women can walk the streets at night. People leave their doors unlocked, their valuables lying around. Not only that, but there’s no vandalism, no antisocial behaviour. And it’s clean.’
‘I had noticed that,’ Joe admitted. ‘There’s hardly any litter.’
Giles lifted his eyebrows, as if to impart some extra meaning that should have been obvious to Joe. ‘It’s “clean” in more ways than that. Put it this way, there’s a notable lack of variety, shall we say, as regards ethnicity.’
Joe played dumb. ‘What?’
‘Between you and me, doesn’t it make a refreshing change from London these days, where there’s barely a white face or an English accent to be found? And I don’t just mean the less salubrious parts of town. Kensington and Chelsea, you can’t move for the bloody Arabs, the Russians and God knows who else.’ With a disgusted sigh, he lifted his glass and gulped the whisky down.
Joe took a deep breath. ‘So Trelennan represents an ideal world, in your view? An “England for the English”?’
Giles gave him a cautionary frown. ‘I’m rather too discreet to use a phrase like that, but yes. Certainly that’s how our readers see it. Poor old Mr and Mrs Middle-Aged Average – from the vantage point of their little white bungalow in Surrey the world is a dark and dangerous place, teeming with hostile foreigners.’
‘Isn’t that only because the newspapers tell them so?’
Giles chuckled, as though accepting a compliment. ‘Quite. Absolutely. Whereas Trelennan, as portrayed by moi, will seem like Shangri-La. Of course, you and I know it has its downsides. Atrocious food. No theatres or museums, no bloody nightlife at all. That’s why I’m slumming it in this … in here.’
‘But you don’t you think that, beneath the surface, Trelennan has exactly the same problems and inequalities as anywhere else?’
‘Not part of my brief. This is about one strong individual providing something that’s proved to be beyond the wit of the public sector. Precisely what our readers want to hear.’ He grunted. ‘And, rather more importantly, what our proprietor wants our readers to hear.’
Joe smiled. ‘Sounds like the story was already written before you came here.’
Giles stared at him for a long time, as though he was deciding whether to take offence. Finally he nodded. ‘Truth is, it could have been, but I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Three days on full expenses. Besides, I’m on the lookout for a holiday home. Just sold a place in Italy and quite fancy a bolt-hole down this way.’
Twenty-Eight
JOE WOKE THE next morning to the sound of heavy rain drumming on the roof. He listened to it as he thought about Diana and her new boyfriend, Leon Race and Derek Cadwell, Ellie Kipling and Alise and her missing sister. It had been an eventful first day; not at all what he’d have wished for.
So leave right now. He could do it. Retrace his route to Bristol, maybe hitching rides to save on rail fare. Scope out Lindsey Bevan’s home to make sure it wasn’t under observation, then retrieve his belongings and get out of there. He could go anywhere. Forget all about Trelennan, Diana, Ellie, Alise …
His idle speculation ceased when he realised he was smiling. Who am I kidding?
He had no intention of leaving. It simply wasn’t in his nature to walk away from a challenge. He knew he possessed the skills to help Alise with her search, and it wasn’t just guilt that compelled him to offer his services. For his own sake, he wanted to find out what had happened to Kamila.
And then there was Diana, and the impression he had that she was concealing something from him. Something that made her profoundly unhappy. Something that frightened her.
* * *
Last night Joe had endured Giles’s company while he gulped down another pint, and then only because he wanted the journalist to buy a round. When he got up to leave, Giles looked bereft.
‘Don’t say you’re baling out on me …’
‘Sorry,’ Joe said, though he wasn’t. ‘See you later.’
‘You won’t, actually. I’m leaving tomorrow.’
‘Oh. Good.’ The response was automatic, and earned a baffled stare from Giles.
Joe had returned to the B&B, feeling as apprehensive as a teenager who fears he’ll stumble upon his parents having sex. It was a huge relief to discover that Glenn and Diana had gone out.
He’d been asleep by ten and hadn’t heard Diana come in. Now, slipping from his bed at seven o’clock, he wondered if he still had the house to himself.
He showered, dressed in the clothes she had bought him, and went downstairs. The kitchen was deserted, but Diana’s handbag was sitting on the counter.
He started up the coffee maker and ate a bowl of cereal. He was slotting bread into the toaster when Diana padded in, sleepy-eyed and wrapped up in a thick robe. She gazed at the rain streaming down the glass and tutted. ‘This weather.’
‘I know. I considered a run and quickly changed my mind. Coffee?’
‘Please. How was the pub?’
‘Not bad.’ He told her about Giles Quinton-Price and the article he was writing.
‘Glenn mentioned that. He says Leon’s delighted by it.’
‘Really?’ Joe remembered Giles’s less than flattering description of Leon. ‘What does he hope it’ll achieve?’
‘A better public profile, I suppose. He grew up on the Trelawny estate, on the way into town. It’s nowhere near as bad now, but twenty, thirty years ago it was a hellhole, apparently. Huge problems with crime, drug abuse,
kids running amok. He’s done well to get out, and he wants everybody to know it.’
‘Fair enough. Uh, I thought I would accept his offer,’ Joe said. ‘Give it a week or so. If you’re okay with that?’
She sighed. ‘Is that wise?’
‘I don’t honestly know,’ he admitted. ‘A calculated risk.’
‘Mmm.’ Diana nodded, looking pensive, but he knew she wasn’t going to voice her objections. The silence that followed was comfortable enough for Joe to take a bold step.
‘What did Roy think of Leon Race?’
The question made Diana flinch. She got up and walked across the room, one hand up over her face.
‘They didn’t have a lot to do with each other.’ She opened the fridge, took out a pot of yogurt and turned back to him, having regained her composure. ‘Hardly anything, in fact.’
‘And what about Glenn?’
Diana pondered the question while peeling the foil lid off the pot. ‘We don’t tend to discuss his work. I suppose Glenn looks up to him. Say what you like about Leon, you can’t dispute that he’s made a success of himself.’
‘And he’s a big fish in a small pond.’
‘Yes. I hadn’t thought of it in that way.’
As she opened the cutlery drawer to get a spoon, Joe was sure he heard her murmur: ‘A shark.’
By the time Joe left, at just after eight o’clock, the rain had eased to a light drizzle. He took a meandering route into town, exploring some of the narrow lanes and alleys that ran crossways to the High Street. In one, a couple of blocks up from the seafront, he found Derek Cadwell’s funeral parlour.
It was housed in a modest two-storey building with blinds in the windows and only a few discreet posters advertising its services. There was a gated yard at the side, with a hearse and another Daimler limousine parked beside a single-storey adjoining building that might once have been a blacksmith’s forge. There was no sign of anyone; probably still too early.
In the High Street, Joe passed a council truck clearing leaves from the gutters. There was a pleasant buzz of activity as the town came alive: shutters opening, stalls being set out on the pavement; enticing smells wafting from the bakery, which was already doing a brisk trade. Made it feel like a nice place to live and work.