by Agatha Frost
He exhaled heavily, his fingers tightening around hers. He lowered his head, and the divot of his scar was particularly jarring, highlighted by the moon’s icy light.
“Something tells me you’re going to try to do this with or without my help.” He smiled. “You get your stubbornness from your mother.”
Claire frowned at the comparison before asking, “Is that a yes?”
“Nothing dangerous.” His eyes locked on hers. “Nothing illegal.”
“Of course.”
They shared the same excited smile.
“And whatever you do,” he said, slowly standing, “please don’t tell your mother.”
CHAPTER FIVE
O ver her seventeen years at the factory, Claire’s training had covered almost every aspect of candle production. She was in the handful of people who could be moved around the factory, easily adapting to each process and machine. Of course, she liked some jobs more than others. She found gluing wicks into jars and quality control the most boring, but she’d do them if needed.
For the past few years, she had mainly worked on the label sticking station. Others often looked down on this as the easiest job, but those who worked there knew the importance of their role in the overall process. If the labels weren’t straight, they wouldn’t pass quality control, and they’d be off to the rejects bin. Either the label would have to be painstakingly removed and reapplied, or the candle sold at a discounted rate to the client of that production run.
Claire was quite proud of how few rejects she produced. After years of practise, she had an accurate eye and a steady hand. Her labels were usually straight and free of air bubbles. Today, however, she’d sent down more rejects than she cared to acknowledge, and she wasn’t the only one.
“We can’t keep up with this speed!” Damon cried over the noise of the wax-pouring machine one station down, slapping another wonky label to a candle. “They’re firing them down too quick!”
Claire glanced further up the production line to the wick-sticking station. They were gluing wicks into the mason jars and shooting them down faster than they ever had. Very few had wicks glued accurately in the middle of the jar, as they should be. Nobody was purposefully trying to be bad at their job, but accuracy was hard when they were expected to get through a week’s worth of work in one day. It didn’t help that Nicola’s brother, Ben, and her widowed husband, Graham, had been arguing loudly in the office all morning.
Claire couldn’t stop her eyes drifting up to the newly fitted glass window every time the volume rose, and she wasn’t the only one.
If the quality of their work mattered, nobody was around to tell them otherwise. The quality control team had been drafted to pack boxes, and the shift managers ran around problem-solving instead of managing. At noon, when the automatic bell rang for lunch, nobody even pretended they were going to linger around to work through their break. Every machine stopped, and the factory floor cleared in record time.
After retrieving their lunches from their lockers, Claire and Damon left the factory for the peaceful solitude of their wall.
“I feel like I’m breathing for the first time today,” Damon said, inhaling the crisp afternoon air. “We can’t keep going like that. They’re going to have to drop some orders, or at least delay them.”
“I think Ben is too wrapped up in arguing with Graham to notice how bad things are.”
“I’m starving.” Damon fished a cheese and ham sandwich, a packet of cheese and onion crisps, and a small bottle of orange juice from his supermarket bag. “Could you hear what they were arguing about?”
Claire pulled out the plastic box her mother had handed her that morning. She usually made her own lunches, but she’d been so distracted while getting ready she’d almost left the house without a thing to eat. She looked at the chicken salad, wishing she had a sandwich and a packet of crisps.
“At least she put some cheese and croutons in.” Claire dug around in the salad, hoping to find a secret chocolate bar smuggled at the bottom. “And no, I couldn’t hear a word over the machines.”
“What do you think they were arguing about?”
“Power?” Claire shrugged. “My dad said Graham has the best legal claim to the factory since he was Nicola’s next of kin.”
“But Ben is a Warton.”
“It’s just a name.”
“Yeah, the name cast in iron above the factory gates.” Damon finished his first sandwich half and immediately picked up the second. “It’s his family’s factory. Has been since the dawn of time. Surely that must mean something?”
“Usually, I suppose.” Claire reached into her handbag and pulled out the folded piece of paper she had printed off late last night in her parents’ dedicated computer room. “The reason Ben Warton spent so long in prison. I vaguely remembered bits of the story. It makes for quite an interesting read.”
Damon scanned over the Northash Observer newspaper article from 2010. In the picture accompanying the article, Ben Warton was the fresher, younger version Claire remembered more vividly.
“Wow,” he muttered through his sandwich. “Fraud, theft, and attempted murder? Why is no one talking about this?”
“People have short memories.” Claire took the article back and scanned it. “But it seems Ben’s claims that his father wanted him to run the factory aren’t quite true. Did you see this quote from William Warton? ‘I’ve no doubt my son was trying to kill me for his own financial gain.’”
“Imagine your own son trying to kill you.” Damon unscrewed his orange juice. “Why would Ben do that?”
“That article didn’t go into it, but I kept digging. William seemed to think Ben wanted him out of the way so he could inherit the factory and the family money by default, as he’s the eldest child. Switched out his blood pressure pills and drove William to the edge of a heart attack.”
“What a psycho!”
“He pled not guilty.” Claire pointed to Ben’s statement in the article. “Seemed to think his sister stitched him up and that she was the one trying to kill their father, but nobody believed him. Nicola even testified against him in the trial.”
“Must have been convincing enough for the jury if he got ten years.”
“Twenty,” Claire corrected. “Got out in half the time because he convinced a parole board he was a changed man. Apparently, he was an exemplary prisoner. My dad seems to think William’s fatal heart attack last year might have helped nudge the dial more in Ben’s favour. That, and prison overcrowding isn’t getting any better. Not much sense in keeping a man locked up for attempted murder when the person he was trying to murder died anyway.”
“And within a month of him getting out, his sister has been murdered, and he’s taken over the factory he always wanted?” Damon popped open the packet of crisps and offered them to Claire first; she gratefully took a small handful. “I don’t need to be a detective to connect the dots there. Why is he here and not back behind bars?”
“The police must have reasonable doubt not to charge him.” Claire crunched through a few crisps. “Maybe he has a solid alibi for when she was murdered? My dad is trying to call in some favours at the station to get some more information.”
“I thought he was retired?”
“He is.” Claire shrugged. “We’re looking into it.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Because we saw it happen in the place we’ve worked for years. Aren’t you even a little curious?”
“I’m stressed, that’s what I am.”
“Me too, but it’s scratching away at the back of my mind.” Claire tucked the article back into her bag, noticing how the stress had affected her chewed-down fingernails. “Two motives have already sprung forward, and the police don’t seem to be chasing either of them down.”
“Maybe they are, and we just can’t see it.”
“Maybe.”
“But you’re still going to look into it?” Damon scratched the side of his head, depositing che
ese dust into his dark sideburns. “What are you even going to do? Interrogate and threaten people until someone confesses something to you?”
Claire chuckled. “I’m going to keep my ear to the ground and my eyes open, that’s all. If I see or hear something, I’ll tell my dad, and he will give me his professional opinion. I doubt anything will come of it, but I can try, at the very least, for the sake of all our jobs. Do you feel secure working under Ben?”
“Not really, but we don’t have a lot to work on, do we?” Damon shrugged. “Still think you’re barking mad, though.”
As they finished their lunch on the wall, the conversation drifted from the murder to Doctor Who, as it often did with Damon. Claire had only caught the odd episode of the show when it happened to be on the telly, but at this point, she was sure she knew more about it than most dedicated fans. She almost didn’t want to cut him off during his passionate rant about why the companions were being mismanaged by the current showrunner until she realised they only had a few minutes to get back to work.
Once they were back inside, it was obvious they had missed something by leaving the factory. A crowd had gathered at the foot of the central stairwell, and when it parted slightly, Claire spotted her Uncle Pat next to Abdul Hussain. Her mouth dried out immediately; she hadn’t thought about Abdul’s son, Bilal, once since Nicola’s death.
“Surprised to see him back here, considering everything that happened,” Damon whispered as they walked to the locker room on the other side of the factory. “Poor fella.”
Poor fella indeed, thought Claire.
Abdul, one of Pat’s closest friends, had been a shift manager at the factory almost as long as Pat – not that he had been seen anywhere near it lately; Bilal’s death had seen to that. Claire couldn’t think of any good way to die except maybe drifting off unawares in her sleep, but what had happened to Bilal sent a shiver down her spine every time it crossed her mind.
Claire put her half-finished salad back in her locker. She glanced down the long row of beat-up lockers, eyes landing on the one that once belonged to Bilal. One of the newcomers had taken it over, but she still thought of Bilal whenever she glanced that way.
At first, people had assumed Bilal’s fall from the metal walkway into one of the vats of boiling wax was nothing more than a tragic accident. The note found in his locker, along with the diagnosis of depression he received after his marriage broke down, pushed the police to rule the death as an unfortunate suicide.
Abdul didn’t believe the ruling, and he never tried to hide it. He even went as far as pointing the finger at Nicola. Some employees were on Abdul’s side, but most found the concept of suicide easier to swallow than Abdul’s ideas about some kind of elaborate conspiracy cover-up.
“Did you believe it?” Damon asked after shutting up his locker. “The suicide thing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Me neither.” Damon glanced at what had been Bilal’s locker. “Never really knew the guy, not really. It’s hard to know everyone in a place this big. He always seemed nice. Wasn’t the same after his wife left him, though, was he?”
“I didn’t notice.”
“Me neither, but that’s what they said.”
After Bilal’s death, a wave of concern about employee mental health swept through the factory. Everyone promised they would help each other, even if it was just providing someone to talk to. Something so unfortunate wouldn’t happen again. Uncle Pat even set up a lunchtime support group. Pat and Abdul were friends and always had been. The support group was Pat’s way of honouring Bilal – but even that faded away. People stopped turning up to the meetings, and life continued on just as it always had.
Clock in.
Head down.
Work hard.
Go home.
Claire couldn’t remember the last time Bilal had crossed her mind before seeing Abdul just now, and it bothered her.
Back in the factory, the whir of the machines started up again. She slammed her locker door shut, not really ready to get back to work but knowing she didn’t have a choice. She made a mental promise to do better work on this side of lunch, but first, she needed to use the bathroom.
The smell of thick, heavy cigarette smoke hit her immediately. With only one closed door, Claire knew without knocking who sat behind it. Despite the law and the company rules, only one person continued to disobey the no-smoking rule. Today, she wasn’t only smoking, she was crying.
“Belinda?” Claire whispered, knocking gently on the stall door. “Everything okay in there?”
The crying stopped, and the toilet flushed. Belinda emerged, wafting smoke from her face, the cigarette already gone. She stepped out and clung to one of the sinks in front of the streaky mirror, her gaze fixed on her reflection’s swollen eyes. The crack right down the middle of the mirror split Belinda’s face in two, warping her features like a Picasso painting.
“It’s Jeff,” she said, her bottom lip wobbling. “He’s gone missing.”
“Missing?”
“Haven’t seen him for days,” she said. “By the looks of his drawers, I think he’s taken some clothes with him. I think … I think he’s left me.”
Belinda crumbled against the sink. It took all Claire’s effort to stop the heavyset woman hitting the floor. Claire guided her back into the stall and knocked the seat down. She sat Belinda on the lid; Belinda scrambled straight for her packet of cigarettes again.
“Heard a rumour Nicola had stuck a secret camera in here to try and catch whoever was smoking,” she mumbled through the cigarette in her mouth. “Can’t I have a little crutch to get me through these shifts? I don’t want to have to go outside every time I need a little pick me up. It’s not right, is it?”
Claire didn’t say anything. People had been complaining to Nicola about the constant smell of smoke in the women’s toilets. She hadn’t been one of them – she liked Belinda too much to get her in trouble — but she hated the scent as much as everyone else did.
“Do you really think he’s left you?” Claire asked, running a soothing hand back and forth across Belinda’s shoulders.
“He must have.” The smoke drifted up from her flared nostrils, and her eyes fixed on the light in the ceiling. “I think he was having it off with Nicola. Police interviewed him three times. He told me it was routine, but I’ve suspected something for a while. He’s been coming home smelling like cheap perfume for months. Maybe years. I don’t know. I stopped paying attention.”
“Oh, Belinda.”
“It’s my own fault.” She forced a laugh, tipping the ash from the cigarette onto the top of the plastic toilet roll holder. “I’ve let myself go, haven’t I? I used to be so put together. I eat too much. I smoke too much. I drink too much. I wouldn’t want to be with me either. I’ve been with Jeff for years. I should have known he couldn’t ignore my sorry state forever.”
“You’re not a state.”
“I appreciate the effort,” she said, smiling wanly as she sucked harder on the cigarette, “but it’s a lie. I should probably tell the police what I think. It puts him in the frame, doesn’t it? He pushed her and then fled. I don’t know for certain that he was even having an affair with Nicola. Maybe I’m just paranoid?”
Claire continued to rub Belinda’s shoulders, not wanting to confirm or deny. It wasn’t her place to tell Belinda her suspicions were rather spot on.
“That’s why I was so cagey when you talked to me outside the pub last night,” Belinda continued, stubbing out the cigarette by dragging it along the scorch marks on the stall’s wall. “He’s done this before. Taken flight for a few days and then come back without really explaining himself. I stopped asking where he’d been. But it’s never been like this. And with everything else going on. Should I go to the police? Report him as missing? Tell them what I think?”
“I – I don’t know.”
“Yeah, me neither.” Belinda pulled herself up off the toilet. “I think I need to go home. Do you think anyon
e will notice?”
“Today?” Claire stepped out of the cubicle. “I don’t think so.”
“I’ll call a taxi.” Belinda dug her phone out of her pocket. “I can’t face the thought of walking all the way home right now.”
“I’ll wait with you.”
Claire clocked back in before walking Belinda out to the front of the factory. She didn’t make a habit of trying to cheat the system, but considering how Ben and Graham were still going at it in the office, she didn’t feel a shred of guilt.
“I’ll clock you out at the end of the day,” Claire said to Belinda when the taxi finally pulled up at the front gates. “You have my number if you need me for anything.”
“Thank you, Claire.” They shared a quick hug. “You’re a good girl.”
Claire lingered by the gates and waited until the taxi vanished around the bend in the lane before turning back to the factory. Sticking labels onto mason jars was the last thing she wanted to do right now, but for the sake of keeping her job, she decided against hopping over the wall and running through Ian’s farm to discuss her latest findings with her father; that could wait.
She’d taken only three steps before the slamming of a heavy metal door around the left side of the factory made her jump. She detoured towards the sound, surprised to see someone stomping down the fire escape. It took Claire a second to figure out where the door opened on the other side, but after checking the windows, it could only have been in one of the rooms connected to Nicola’s, or rather Ben’s, office.
One mystery solved.
Claire’s father had wondered how Nicola’s murderer could have fled the factory without passing everyone below. She had forgotten all about the disused intricate system of fire escape staircases around the sides of the building.
As he reached the bottom, she recognised Graham, Nicola’s husband, and her parents’ next-door neighbour. To Claire, Nicola had always seemed glamorous and rather snobbish, and she’d thought Graham looked too square for his late wife. He was short, skinny, balding, and cared far too much about bird watching and gardening for a man in his early forties.
