by Gemma Fox
‘Big Tone?’ said Nimrod with surprise, before he could stop himself.
Cain nodded. ‘Yeah. He looked real well. Put on weight, good tan –’
‘What, your Tone was on the box? I didn’t know they’d pulled him in for another job.’
Cain pulled a face. ‘Well, I assumed it was him. The photo-fit was a dead ringer.’
‘What do you mean our date’s off, James?’ snapped Stella Ramsey, pouting angrily. ‘I was just going upstairs to put my face on. I’ve been looking forward to it all day.’ She was standing by the back door of the post office wrapped up in a pale blue dressing gown with a towel around her hair. She smelt warm and womanly and looked all pink and shiny from the bath. ‘Pension day is a real pig – I’ve been on my feet in that bloody shop since eight o’clock and you know how much sleep I had last night.’
Bernie grinned, struggling to keep his mind on track. The combination of memories from the night before and a bathrobe that finished well above Stella’s knee, and certainly wasn’t generously cut, meant the struggle wasn’t a walkover by any means. Where the two sides of the fabric crossed he could see the rise of a generous creamy-white breast. Bernie swallowed hard, reminding himself that this really wasn’t the moment.
‘I’m really sorry, Stella, but something has come up. I’ve got to go and – and go –’ Bernie hesitated, hastily re-embroidering and bolstering the story he’d been cooking up on the short walk over from the caravan park. He glanced back over his shoulder implying it was vital that no one overheard their conversation and also to check that the police hadn’t followed him from the car park.
‘The thing is, Stella, what you have to understand is that a lot of my work is top secret, all very hush-hush. Government mostly; I can’t say too much at the moment, but I’ve just had a phone call.’ Bernie tapped the mobile in his top pocket, then looked up to see how he was doing. He was hoping that if he played his cards right Stella might lend him her car. It didn’t look good; she had crossed her arms over that wonderful chest of hers and, pale-faced and silent, appeared to be sucking her teeth. Dark eyes watched his every move.
‘I know you’re disappointed but I haven’t got the time to hang around to explain. Those men this morning, at the caravan?’ Bernie continued. ‘Let’s just say they weren’t from the gas board after all. I don’t want you to be muddled up in this, Stella, it might get dangerous and messy. But I do want to take you out again – I really did have a lovely time and you truly are an amazing woman. I should be back tomorrow, probably – maybe the day after. I’m really sorry.’
It was almost the truth; certainly the bit about being sorry but perhaps not the bit about coming back. How long would it take the police to find his caravan? Five, ten minutes at most? How much information did they have? From somewhere close by Bernie could hear the sharp, agitated sound of little dogs barking and wondered if one of them was Stella’s mother’s parrot.
‘I see,’ Stella said coolly; she didn’t sound or look at all convinced. ‘Why don’t you just say you don’t want to see me again, James?’ And then she paused and added, ‘You know my mother said you looked like trouble.’
Feeling wounded Bernie was about to protest that he hadn’t even met Stella’s mother when a crisp vision of some wizened old bat watching his progress across the village green sprung into his mind. Bernie could almost see her studying him through a set of high-powered binoculars from an upstairs window.
‘I thought we’d had a really nice time,’ said Stella.
‘We did and it was great,’ he protested. ‘Honestly – I truly mean it. I’ve already told you that I’d really like to do it again.’ On the walk over it had crossed Bernie’s mind to ask her to come along to Norfolk for the ride but then again there were just too many things he would have to explain – like Maggie, for a start.
Maggie. Her name switched on like a neon light in Bernie’s head, refocusing his mind and sharpening his resolve.
‘It’s not like I don’t want to see you again, Stella – it isn’t that at all. It’s just that I can’t see you tonight.’ Bernie looked down at his feet. Given another half an hour he knew from experience that he could have won her round, but he didn’t have half an hour and it didn’t look like he was going to get the car, either. ‘I have to be going.’
‘You could have rung me,’ Stella said huffily, pulling her robe tighter. ‘You’re all the same, you men, take what you want and then bugger off, just like that. I feel used,’ she snapped and, turning on her heel, scuttled back into the post office.
Bernie sighed. There was no time to protest his innocence and so he headed out towards the main road. It was early evening and still quite light, although the heat was leeching out of the day. As he passed the front of the shop he pulled a piece of card out of the bin, hoping that Stella’s mother had got her spyglass pointed elsewhere, took a felt-tip pen from his jacket pocket and wrote ‘Cambridge/A14’ in big bold letters. At the next junction he stuck out his thumb and tried hard not to look like an escapee from a lunatic asylum.
‘Do you want me to drive for a little while?’ asked Nick. ‘Give you a bit of a break?’
‘No, you’re all right,’ said Maggie. ‘Why? Bored already are you?’
‘No, it’s just that if I drove for a few miles you could eat that ice cream without having to steer with your knees,’ he said, grinning at her.
‘I am not steering with my knees.’
‘You are.’
She made a face. Nick held up his hands in surrender. ‘All right, all right, I’m not going to argue with you,’ he said, and then, ‘How much further is it? Are we nearly there yet?’
Maggie looked across at Nick and laughed. ‘Oh come off it – it’ll be absolutely ages before we get there. You sound like one of the boys. Just eat your sweets and relax; enjoy the scenery. It’s a lovely drive and a beautiful evening. Chill out.’
Nick’s expression didn’t change. ‘I would if I didn’t have to keep worrying about what you were going to do next,’ he said.
‘What do you mean, what I’m going to do next? Are you criticising my driving?’
‘No, no, not at all. I’m impressed, so far you’ve tuned in the radio, changed the tape over, rung up the holiday place to let them know we’re coming, opened a bottle of water and now you’re eating an ice cream. What’s next? A crossword puzzle and a bit of light reading?’
Maggie looked at him, eyes alight with mischief. ‘Are you serious? Oh for God’s sake, Nick, lighten up. Although actually there is a crossword-puzzle book in the back if you fancy doing one. You could read out the clues. I’ll even let you write the answers in; I enjoy a good crossword.’
They had been driving for the best part of two hours. The daylight was slowly fading, the sun dipping down into the western sky, tingeing everything with a delicate golden light. Maggie was right, it was a glorious evening.
Nick folded his arms over his chest. ‘Coleman said that he was going to send in a crash team to pick me up.’
Maggie looked across at him. ‘Yes, he did, and he also said you would be perfectly safe at my cottage and that there was no such person as Bernie Fielding. Call me cynical if you like but it’s not the most impressive track record I’ve ever come across.’
He shook his head in exasperation. ‘I know, but I need Coleman. I need him and his bloody relocation squad to keep me safe and help me start over again. I can’t do this on my own, Maggie. I’m a chef, not some kind of undercover super-sleuth. Those people will kill me if they can find me. This is not some game. I’m deadly serious. I have to believe that Coleman can make this come right.’
Up until that moment Maggie had almost had a bunking-off-work feeling about the drive, her sense of relief and elation increasing with every mile, but the tension in Nick’s voice knocked the feeling right out of her.
‘You’re not on your own. You can ring Coleman when we get to the beach hut and arrange for him to come and pick you up from there. Surely as far a
s Stiltskin is concerned one place is much the same as another?’
Nick shook his head. ‘God this is such a mess.’
‘We had to leave,’ Maggie said as gently and persuasively as she could. ‘You saw that trailer on TV – we couldn’t stay at the cottage. You’ll be fine now.’
‘If you tell me that this is just a glitch –’ Nick said, swinging round to glare at her.
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Maggie said. ‘But it will be all right. Cross my heart.’ Making the gesture with the hand that she had the ice cream in, Maggie was going to add ‘hope to die’ but decided under the circumstances it probably wasn’t appropriate.
Recovering his composure Nick picked up the map. ‘Okay. So where did you say we’re going to again?’
Maggie swung round to point out their destination on the road map he was holding. The car swerved with her.
‘Just tell me where it is,’ Nick growled, hastily shaking the map out straight. ‘And keep your bloody eyes on the road, will you? I want there to be something left for Coleman to rescue.’
‘You worry too much,’ Maggie laughed. ‘It’s a little cove in the Bristol Channel. Find Minehead first and then come back a little way. It’s not far from Watchet, near East Quantoxhead. St Elfreda’s Bay.’
Nick looked at her blankly.
‘Here, give it to me, let me show you,’ she said with a broad grin, making as if to take it away from him.
Nick held the big, badly creased map tight against his chest like a security blanket. Maggie laughed again and licked at her ice cream. ‘You are such a big baby.’
‘Am not,’ he snapped, but she could finally see flicker of humour lighting behind his eyes.
‘So tell me again, Robbie, if we filmed the wrong man, why is it that we’re going back to West Brayfield?’ asked Lesley anxiously, peering out at the passing countryside careering by the car’s windows. ‘I don’t understand. I thought you said we were going to go out for a meal and a drink tonight?’
‘You’re right, I did say that we would eat out and we will, but not yet. The thing is that they’re not answering the phone,’ growled Robbie, pulling out from behind some cretin driving a classic Jag at forty-five miles an hour in a flat cap and driving gloves. Old farts reliving their youth, they shouldn’t be allowed out on the bloody roads. Robbie had not been best pleased to find that Madam Upstairs had pulled the plug on his Bernie Fielding special at the last minute. Bitch. No consultation, not so much as a word to him. It was a personal insult – particularly as once he’d finished editing Robbie had spent the rest of the afternoon in the office composing his speech for the Journalist of the Year Award. Sodding bloody woman.
And that stupid bloke from Norfolk had made a complete and utter fool of him, although in his mind Robbie was rapidly transferring the blame squarely onto Bernie Fielding’s shoulders. Bernie-fucking-Fielding’s prints were all over this one; Robbie could almost hear the smug bastard laughing at him. Well, he’d be laughing on the other side of his face when Robbie Hughes caught up with him. Oh yes he would.
Robbie slapped his hand down hard on the car horn to frighten a woman in a blue Renault out of the middle lane. ‘Move out of the way you gormless bitch,’ he shouted, powering up behind her and roaring past as she squeaked into the slow lane.
‘I thought you said we were going to the Lamb tonight,’ said Lesley, in a nervous undertone. She looked a little pale. Robbie put his foot down hard and stormed past the Renault and a dozen others. It felt good. That’s what he needed, a bit of speed, a renewed sense of his own power, his own dominance. He was alpha male on a mission.
‘What I want to know is why didn’t that stupid bugger tell us that he wasn’t Bernie Fielding?’ Robbie growled.
‘I think he tried to,’ said Lesley, voice tight. ‘Aren’t we a bit close to that van?’
‘He didn’t try very bloody hard, did he?’ Robbie snapped back, braking furiously within six feet of the van in front. White vans were all the bloody same; all driven by brainless morons. ‘He should have told us – he could have told us. Besides, you told me that when you rang the cottage his ex-wife said that Bernie was there.’
‘Well, yes, she did,’ Lesley protested. ‘She said that she could hardly throw him out on the street even though the thought had crossed her mind.’
Robbie, eyes bright, said, ‘Exactly. And when we got there she didn’t deny he was there, did she? Oh no. She just said that Bernie was out in the garden. Out in the garden, that’s what she said. We’ve got it on the bloody videotape.’
Lesley nodded, her expression suggesting that she hadn’t got a clue what Robbie was going on about. He sighed in exasperation. Bright girl like Lesley and she just couldn’t read the signs when they were there, all laid out in front of her like cue cards.
Robbie had been mulling the conversation he had had with Maggie Morgan over and over in his mind since Madam Upstairs had called him into her office and announced she was pulling the plug on the Bernie Fielding special. Madam had gone on to give him a long expletive-ridden lecture on the importance of a chain of command and how his actions had been a waste of the station’s precious resources not to mention the risk of denting their media credibility.
But now that Robbie had had the chance to think, he had been kicking himself for what he was convinced he had missed while they were in West Brayfield. How could he have been so stupid as to have overlooked what was now so glaringly bloody obvious? Bernie Fielding had been there at the cottage all the time and let some other poor sucker take the fall for him.
‘So,’ Robbie said slowly so that Lesley could keep up with him. ‘What if Bernie was there all along and we missed him? What if he really was in the garden but we didn’t see him?’ Robbie looked at his assistant triumphantly. ‘That’s what she said, didn’t she? “Bernie is in the garden.” Surely to God she must know her own husband.’
Lesley’s eyes narrowed as comprehension dawned. ‘Oh yes, I see what you’re saying now – I suppose that it’s a possibility.’
‘It’s more than a possibility, it’s bloody obvious. Bernie most probably spotted the cameras and the outside broadcast van and hid in the shed, or went next door. He could have done anything, but she did say he was there. In which case it makes sense to start looking for our Mr Fielding back at the cottage, back where we left off,’ Robbie said. ‘Now just get the map out and see which junction we have to come off at, will you?’
Lesley pulled the road map out of the glove compartment. ‘Robbie, I’m not very good at this sort of thing,’ she said nervously. ‘Not with maps and stuff. I get into a flap with directions. Under pressure I tend to forget which is right and which is left.’
‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ snapped Robbie, ‘it’s very simple. Just look at the big map on the back of the book and find the page we’re on – a child could do it. Just look for Cambridge.’ He waved a hand towards the road atlas.
‘Yes, Robbie,’ Lesley said miserably, turning the pages frantically. ‘Cambridge you said?’
Robbie sighed. ‘Yes, Cambridge.’ God save him from women. His wife, the Bitch Upstairs, that stupid woman who was married to Bernie Fielding, and now Lesley. Lesley of all people.
He had been thinking that if it looked as if they were going to be late back they would book into a hotel, but now he wasn’t so sure. He could feel his blood pressure rising. Wouldn’t do to have a heart attack while on the job, would it? What would it look like in the press? Brush with death for TV anchorman in secret love tryst. Robbie cringed; he could almost see the headlines now, there was bound to be some terrible play on words involving Gotcha.
There might be no such thing as bad publicity but Madam Upstairs would go ballistic about what it would do to their serious journalistic credibility. And shagging your PA was so passé, he thought, mimicking his bitch of a boss. And with all the stress Robbie was under it was possible – more than possible – probable – that he’d have a heart attack or worse. And besides, Lesley
was beginning to get on his nerves.
‘Well, where are we then, woman?’ he snapped.
Lesley had turned the atlas upside down and was busy running her finger along what looked suspiciously like the road to Grimsby.
‘I told you to look for Cambridge,’ he growled.
‘I am,’ she whimpered miserably.
‘It’s in East Anglia.’
‘I thought Grimsby was in East Anglia,’ she said, pushing her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose.
Robbie groaned. Bloody women.
In West Brayfield, Mrs Eliot, Maggie’s next door neighbour was enjoying the last of the evening sunlight. She had been busy outside on the terrace watering the hanging baskets while it was cooler but still light. It had been a really nice day so far. Mrs Eliot stretched, pressing her hands into the aching hollow of her back and then walked into the kitchen and plugged in the kettle.
Puffing a little from her exertions the old lady washed her hands. The kettle clicked off the boil and, glancing up at the kitchen clock, Mrs Eliot thought what a shame it was that Maggie wasn’t home. They often got together in the evening to talk about the day and the kids over a mug of tea and a slice of cake.
It was a pity Maggie had had to go back to the beach hut. It always sounded like such a long drive. She hoped it wasn’t anything too drastic, things always seemed so pricey these days.
As she made the tea, Mrs Eliot glanced at the postcard the boys had sent her. It looked like a lovely place, though. At least this time Maggie had gone with that nice new young man of hers, Mrs Eliot smiled, and not before time either. He looked familiar, she was sure she had seen him around somewhere but couldn’t quite place the face. That girl spent far too long on her own with just the boys for company. It would do her good to have a decent man in her life again. Life could be so lonely all on your own.
She pulled out a tray from behind the bread bin. There was just enough time to make a cup of tea and a ham sandwich before Holby City started. She enjoyed having Maggie and the kids living next door, not like the rest of the old farts who lived in the Row; they didn’t know what living was, most of them. Nothing ever happened down this end of the village and she barely saw another living soul when Maggie wasn’t at home. Life hadn’t been the same since her Albert passed on, God rest his soul. Mrs Eliot took the tray and settled down in the big armchair by the hearth. It had been Albert’s chair when he was alive. She had started sitting in it because she couldn’t bear to look at it empty and somehow it had made her feel closer to him; not to mention that she’d discovered it was a lot comfier than hers.