The Anna McColl Mysteries Box Set 1

by Penny Kline

  ‘I had a phone call this morning,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Whoever it was he didn’t speak, just hung on for a moment or two, then rang off.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘Or she. I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Probably a wrong number. Oh, you’re thinking it could’ve been Luke. Maybe he just wanted to hear your voice.’

  He drew in to the side of the road, pulled up behind an ice-cream van and switched off the engine. ‘Feel like a walk? We’ll have a look round, then decide what to do next.’ He turned to face me. ‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He said nothing. Just waited for me to decide if I was going to tell him about it. We had left the car and he was walking fast across the Downs. I had to run a few paces to catch up with him.

  ‘Doug Hargreaves came to see me this morning,’ I said. ‘Luke’s old landlord.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Apparently Luke’s been helping him to develop his photographs.’ I paused. ‘In a shed at the end of the garden. I’m not sure exactly what happened but … ’

  ‘Go on.’ He sounded intrigued.

  ‘To put it in a nutshell, as Doug would say, he found the close proximity something of a temptation.’

  ‘Doug did.’ He sighed. ‘Poor old Luke. Women old enough to be his mother, men hanging about in bus shelters.’

  ‘It’s happened before?’

  ‘Oh, I imagine so, don’t you?’ For the first time he sounded depressed, as though he believed his brother was doomed to make a mess of his life.

  ‘I blame myself,’ I said. ‘It was my idea he should go and live with Doug and Elaine.’

  ‘It was hardly something you could’ve foreseen. Anyway, Luke’s a big boy now. A swift departure from the darkroom should’ve done the trick.’

  We reached a clump of trees. Michael bent down to re-tie his shoe lace. ‘Good up here on the Downs. D’you come here often?’

  ‘Quite often. Sometimes first thing in the morning. It’s deserted then apart from a few people walking their dogs.’

  ‘You like dogs?’

  I expected him to make the usual remark about dog shit spoiling the environment. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘don’t you?’

  ‘Of course. All animals. I have a cat — a Burmese brown.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t look so surprised. Cats don’t mind being left on their own all day. You should get one.’

  ‘What’s he called?’

  ‘She. Her name’s Sasha.’ He kicked at a heap of sticks and dead leaves, revealing several empty beer bottles and the remains of an old shopping bag on wheels.

  I shivered a little, catching hold of a branch to steady myself. Once, walking on the Downs with a friend, we had spotted a crumpled blood-stained sleeping bag pushed under some bushes and convinced ourselves it contained a body. Approaching it nervously I had flicked over a corner of it with my foot, then jumped back for fear of what might emerge. It had turned out to be stuffed with newspaper and the ‘blood stains’ were just damp patches.

  ‘Now what?’ said Michael. ‘Something else you haven’t told me about?’

  ‘No.’ I started walking across the grass. ‘If we walk in a circle, well, more of a rectangle, we can cover most of the open space.’

  Half an hour later we arrived back by Michael’s car.

  ‘Right,’ he said, ‘where now? Luke’s old lodgings are out. Paula’s room — we could waste ages and still draw a blank. If you can stand it I’d like to go to Keynsham. I don’t imagine for one moment Luke’ll be there but I want to introduce you to someone who might have a few ideas.’

  I hesitated. How long was the trip going to take?

  ‘This woman,’ he said, ‘she’s a friend of the family, not a blood relation, but as good as.’

  ‘A sort of honorary aunt.’

  ‘Something like that. She used to live in the village. When we were kids she’d baby-sit, that kind of thing.’

  ‘If you think it’ll help,’ I said doubtfully.

  I was glad to be back in the car. The walk across the Downs had been aimless, whereas driving provided a sense of purpose. Moving from A to B, on the way to somewhere important. Part of me was wishing I had stayed in the flat. If the phone call had been from Luke he could ring again and next time he might pluck up courage to speak. On the other hand I couldn’t think of anything worse than a day waiting for a phone call that never materialized and, besides, whereas Howard Fry had made me irritable, uneasy, Michael was making me feel a little better.

  We were approaching the city centre, queuing up to join the roundabout.

  ‘Her name’s Faith,’ said Michael. ‘Faith Gordon. She lives alone, values her independence, plus the fact she’s got a fairly low opinion of men.’

  ‘She might be out.’

  ‘Unlikely. I don’t want to phone or she’ll start making elaborate arrangements, dusting the furniture.’

  The digital clock on the Evening Post building said twelve thirty-three. We were going to reach Keynsham in less than half an hour and that would mean Faith Gordon might feel obliged to offer us something to eat.

  ‘What about lunch?’ I said.

  ‘You’re hungry?’

  ‘No, but if we’re going to reach your friend around one o’clock — ’

  ‘We’ll tell her we’ve eaten already.’ He signalled to change into the left-hand lane. ‘She won’t try and force-feed us, she’s not that kind of person. You’ll like her. She’s very down-to-earth, hates cant, anything pretentious.’

  ‘I doubt if she likes psychologists.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ He glanced at me and smiled, negotiating the next lane-change with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the edge of the passenger seat.

  I looked away. He noticed and a slight current passed between us. We both knew what it meant.

  *

  Faith Gordon lived in a flat in a small purpose-built block. Each flat had a balcony and most of the balconies held pots of geraniums in varying shades of orange and red. I had expected the flats to be full of old people with a warden employed to make sure nobody had been taken ill or fallen and broken a hip.

  I was wrong. A youngish women was sitting on the grass in a deck-chair reading a newspaper, and a few yards away a girl of seven or eight was threading daisies together to make a chain. It broke and I saw her turn to the woman and mouth an obscenity. The woman slapped her leg and the child let out a high-pitched shriek. Michael pointed to a window at the corner of the building.

  ‘That’s Faith’s flat. The ones on the first floor only have one bedroom. Some of the others have two or three. It’s quite likely she won’t know anything about the accident or Luke’s time in hospital, never mind the latest development.’

  ‘Won’t your parents have told her?’

  He shook his head, pushing open a door that led to the flats with uneven numbers from one to twenty-three. I followed him up the stone steps and we waited outside flat eleven until someone came to answer the bell.

  Through the ribbed glass I could see a figure approaching. She appeared to be dressed all in white but when she opened the door I saw that only her top half was white. Her skirt was a great swirling mass of yellows and reds. It came almost to the ground and looked as though she had worn it each summer for the past twenty or thirty years, taking it out at the beginning of June and putting it back in mothballs at the end of September.

  ‘Michael.’ She held out both hands. ‘What a surprise.’

  He kissed her lightly on the cheek, then turned towards me and made the introductions.

  She looked me up and down, then smiled to herself as though she had observed something no one else had noticed. ‘Come along in, both of you. I’ve never met a psychologist before but I’ve heard you’re all the rage.’

  The rooms of the flat led off one corridor and all the doors on the right-hand side were closed. On the left was a tiny kitchen, then we entered a fairly large living-room wit
h two windows overlooking a stretch of lawn, and beyond the grass another block of flats.

  We were commanded to sit down.

  ‘Have you eaten? Of course you haven’t.’

  ‘We had a snack,’ said Michael. ‘No, really, neither of us is very hungry. Look, I’d better tell you straight away, we’re here about Luke.’

  She drew in a sharp breath, then covered it up with a laugh. ‘Well, I didn’t think it was a social call.’

  Not surprisingly she had assumed Michael and I knew each other well. Sitting back in a large shabby armchair she hitched up her skirt, crossed one freckled leg over the other and waited with her eyes half closed. She was a large woman but big-boned rather than fat. Her hair was white, cut short, with a thick straight fringe. From the rest of her colouring I guessed that it had once been red. There were freckles on her arms too and the back of her hands.

  ‘Anna’s been helping Luke the last couple of months,’ said Michael. ‘You know how nervous he is, lacking in confidence.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Her tone was matter of fact, as though Luke’s treatment came as no surprise.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Michael, ‘last Saturday, a week ago today, there was a road accident.’

  ‘Not Luke.’ In an instant she was sitting up straight, bracing herself for a shock.

  ‘No, not Luke,’ I said hastily. ‘A friend of his called Paula Redfern.’

  The name meant nothing to her. Why should it?

  ‘What kind of an accident? Was it fatal? Oh dear, oh dear, I sometimes wonder how any of us survive into old age.’ Michael moved his chair closer to her. ‘It was nobody’s fault, just one of those tragic … Anyway, Luke took it very badly and Anna decided he’d be better off in hospital.’

  ‘Hospital? Oh, one of those places. And that’s where he is now?’

  ‘No.’ Michael glanced at me, acknowledging that clearly she knew nothing of Luke’s whereabouts. ‘He came out of hospital on Wednesday and Anna took him back to her flat in Cliftonwood.’

  ‘That was good of you, but don’t your superiors frown on that kind of thing?’

  He laughed. ‘Anna’s not bothered what her superiors think. Luke talked to her, trusted her. You know how wary he’s always been. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the following day he disappeared.’

  ‘Into thin air? You mean he’s gone off to lick his wounds.’ She stood up, walked across to a revolving bookcase, then returned and handed me a silver-framed photograph.

  ‘It’s the only one I’ve got. Taken about twelve years ago. How old would you all have been, Michael?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Oh, come on, you must have been just fourteen and that would make Luke nine and Diana six.’

  I studied the stiff studio portrait. Neither Michael nor Luke had changed very much. All three of them were sitting down so it was difficult to judge how tall they were but the two boys looked more or less the same height. The girl was much smaller. She had beautiful eyes with long thick lashes and her fair hair was tied back in a pony tail.

  ‘Michael wondered if you might have any idea where Luke could have gone,’ I said, still studying the photo. ‘He’s not with his parents and we’re not sure where to look.’

  The two of them exchanged glances. Then Faith moved towards the window and stood with her hand resting on the sill.

  ‘Can’t help, I’m afraid. Doesn’t he have friends in Bristol who’d put him up for a night or two?’

  ‘None that we know of,’ said Michael. ‘He was in lodgings up near the Downs but Anna’s certain he hasn’t been back there.’

  She didn’t enquire about the lodgings.

  ‘Poor Luke, I haven’t seen him for well over a year and then it was quite by chance — in the Galleries at the shopping centre.’

  Michael raised his eyebrows. ‘Really? I thought you couldn’t stand Bristol, always shopped in Bath.’

  ‘I felt like a change. Regretted it, of course, the parking was well nigh impossible and they overcharged me, I know they did.’ She coughed. ‘What about Oxford? I know he wasn’t there long but he must have met people at his college. He might have kept in touch.’

  Michael looked doubtful. ‘What d’you think, Anna?’

  ‘As far as I can tell he shut himself away in his room most of the time. I doubt if he made any close friends.’

  Faith turned round sharply. ‘You know what happened, I assume? Of course you do. Nothing’s been the same since — since the … ’ Her voice trailed away. She was close to tears.

  I expected Michael to comfort her, put his arm round her, say something reassuring. But he stayed quite still. His lips were pressed together, his eyes looked cold, angry. Then he turned towards me, smiled briefly, then looked away and started studying his fingernails. A small twinge of fear pinched the back of my neck. I sat on the broad arm of a chair, gripping the rough worn material with both hands.

  Straining her eyes to make out the figures on the grass Faith started speaking slowly, carefully, almost as though her words had been planned for just such an occasion.

  ‘I’ve been expecting something like this for a long time. Oh, not the road accident, but something that pushed people just that little bit too far. It’s easier for me, of course. I’m single, unattached, and besides I’m a Christian.’ She glanced at me to make sure I was listening. ‘Of course when I say I’m a Christian I don’t mean I believe in God. Well, certainly not in the sense that our vicar does. Still, for all its shortcomings the Church is better than nothing.’

  I put my hand up to my face. She thought I was smiling but she was wrong. I was wondering what she meant by something pushing people ‘a bit too far’.

  ‘Oh, you can smile,’ she said. ‘Most people think I’m rather a joke.’

  ‘I wasn’t laughing at you,’ I said.

  ‘No? Well you, no doubt, can see some deep, underlying meaning in every word I say.’ She crossed over and patted me on the shoulder. ‘You haven’t said much, haven’t had a chance, but I like the look of you.’

  Michael stood up and walked towards us.

  ‘We’ll leave you in peace, Faith, but I’ll let you know if there’s any news. In the meantime if you hear anything perhaps you could get in touch with me — or Anna if I’m out of the office.’

  He handed her one of his business cards. She turned it over and I saw that he had written my office number on the back.

  ‘That’s all right with you, is it, Anna?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Faith wasn’t listening. I felt as though I was intruding on private grief. Diana’s death six years ago had obviously been a shattering blow for her as well as for the whole Jesty family. Nobody had really recovered.

  *

  It was so long since I had defrosted the fridge that the thickness of ice was making it impossible to close the door properly. I had switched off the electricity a couple of hours ago. Now it was time to mop up the mess. As I transferred soggy newspapers to the washing-up bowl I thought about Michael. When he dropped me off at my flat he had expected to be invited in, but when no invitation had been forthcoming he had appeared quite unconcerned. All in good time, that was the message his eyes had conveyed. No need to rush things, that could spoil everything.

  Tipping the newspaper in the sink and pressing hard to squeeze out as much water as possible, I switched my thoughts to Doug. Why had he been so keen to bare his soul? There was no need to tell me about the goings on in the garden shed. At the time I had assumed he felt guilty, worried in case it was his fault that Luke had disappeared. Now I wondered if his confession was a smoke screen, a way of diverting my attention away from something more important, something he was desperate to conceal.

  Spreading more newspaper on the floor and stuffing a tea towel into the bottom of the fridge I left the flat, slamming the door behind me, ran down the steps and climbed into the car.

  It was just before six thirty. If I was right Doug would leave the house around six forty-five, s
et off in the direction of the mythical framing class, then make his way to his real destination. Perhaps he spent the whole evening in the pub, but somehow I doubted that.

  If I stayed in the car I would be less visible. On the other hand, if he took a short cut through an alleyway I would be unable to follow and might lose track of him altogether. I reached the end of his road just after twenty to. The best thing would be to park the car near by, then walk to a spot where I was out of sight but could keep an eye on the house. Of course, I might be too late.

  I wasn’t. The porch door opened at ten to seven and I saw a slight figure in a beige anorak hurry down the short path, then turn right and set off in the direction of the main road.

  Standing in the doorway of a boarded-up wool shop I watched him reach Coldharbour Road, then turn left and increase his pace. He was carrying a brown polythene bag with the name of a chain of supermarkets printed in orange on the side. I stepped out on to the pavement, convinced he had no idea he was being followed. Perhaps I was right and what took place next was only what happened every Saturday evening. A bus passed by and Doug started running. He reached the stop as a couple of middle-aged men were boarding, and jumped inside a moment before the doors swung shut.

  I started running back to my car but by the time I reached it I had already decided it was pointless to try and catch up with the bus. In the first place I had no idea which route it followed and, in the second, Doug might have alighted at the next stop. Annoyed with myself for having planned the whole operation so badly I left the car where it was and walked back towards a pub I had noticed the day I collected Luke’s box of belongings. The King’s Arms? Queen’s Head?

  From the outside it looked quite imposing but once inside it turned out to be small and slightly scruffy. No alterations appeared to have been made to the decor for the last two or three decades. The people in the bar looked like regulars. Four old men sat together at a table looking up at a television on a wooden shelf near the entrance to the Gents. The colour was turned up almost as bright as the set in the hospital day room.

  One of the men was dabbing at his lip with a greyish-looking handkerchief. The other two kept their eyes glued to the screen.