Tony settled a hand on Alex’s and squeezed. ‘Lots of thoughts,’ he said. ‘No conclusions.’
‘I thought you two spent your nights at Tony’s now. Or so the scuttlebutt goes.’ He smiled but they didn’t seem to relax even a fraction.
‘We do,’ Alex said. She turned her attention on Tony who ran his spare hand through his hair. ‘We had to stop by for a bit.’
He’d be within his rights to ask a bald ‘why?’ to that, Bill thought, but he didn’t want to risk turning off any communication.
‘Anything I can do to help?’
They both stared at him. He didn’t blame them for looking confused. What were they supposed to say to that?
‘Will they really send a diver into the pond tomorrow?’ Tony said. ‘You know how stupid kids will take risks. When I was still in school a boy who was a really good swimmer went in to try to find out how deep it was. He almost drowned. A couple of others went in and dragged him out. He wasn’t going to make it all the way back on his own. We actually did CPR on him and a bunch of water came out when we did that holding up by the waist thing. It was horrible.’
‘I heard about that,’ Alex said. ‘I’d forgotten it.’
Did Tony not want anyone to go in because he was afraid for their safety, or because he didn’t want them to find something he’d rather they not find? ‘He went down without equipment, but he made it out. Thanks to you kids. And he lived?’ asked Bill.
‘Yes, he lived.’ Alex pressed her thumb knuckles into her eyes. ‘And later he said he never found the bottom. A diver shouldn’t go in there.’
Tony raised his eyebrows at Bill but didn’t add anything to the conversation.
Heavy footsteps pounded toward the snug and the door flew open. ‘What the hell were you two thinking of?’ Hugh just about shouted, before he saw Bill.
‘Natty duds,’ Bill said of Hugh’s striped sleep shorts and black hoody with frayed cuffs and bottom. The man had enviably muscular legs.
‘We phoned because we wanted to have a word with you,’ Alex said and Bill noted how Tony’s mouth dropped slightly open. ‘Sorry we woke you up.’
The lady was almost a talented liar only it would be hard not to wonder when exactly they called Hugh, and why he hadn’t done a better job of getting some clothes on after what Bill figured would be at least a twenty-minute time lapse if the call had been made right before he arrived in the snug. And where was the advance guard who went to his room?
Alex raised her hands and let them fall in her lap. ‘I give up. I’ve made a complete mess of this. Where’s Annie now?’
‘That’s probably the best decision you’ve made tonight,’ Hugh said. ‘Some corners are so tight there’s no way out other than to be honest. But thank you for trying to save us all. Annie is upstairs in my room. She’s exhausted and I’m no shrink but she seems close to some sort of breakdown. Why you let her come to my rooms like that I don’t know. Some people would have a good time making something of it.’
‘There’s no one here but us and we knew she’d be safe with you.’
‘Dan’s upstairs,’ Bill said. He was overdue to say something around here.
‘Annie wouldn’t listen to us,’ Tony said. ‘We tried everything to make her wait until tomorrow to see you, but she wouldn’t have any of it. As far as she’s concerned, you’re the only one who can be trusted to help her. She was coming here with or without us so we just tagged along. Better we were here than she was alone – not that we thought you were a danger to her – as Alex already said.’ He cast his eyes to the ceiling.
‘Sheesh,’ Hugh said, pulling a chair forward and sitting. ‘I know that. She’s beside herself. Over the top. I made her lie down and she seemed to pass out in seconds. What the hell are we going to do?’
‘Get Doc James over here,’ Alex said.
‘Exactly,’ Tony agreed. ‘And ask your mother if she will come and help us. Lily is always the rock.’
Bill reached for his mobile but Alex had already started using hers.
Hugh looked like hell. He hunched over with his elbows on his knees and his fingers driven into his thick, currently wild hair. ‘Do you remember who she is, Bill?’ he muttered. ‘Annie Bell? You would have seen her during the case at Green Friday.’
It would have been easier if no one had asked and he could have found out from records of the Elyan Quillam case. ‘Not really.’ He shouldn’t be getting any deeper into this discussion.
‘She’s Elyan Quillam’s fiancée of almost three years. He’s probably never getting out of a secure forensic psychiatric hospital at Ashworth as far as I can tell, but she’s not about to give up on him. She blames Percy. But so do I. The man pushed him so hard from when he was a little kid – and all the way up until the disaster when Elyan snapped. He was a prodigy and that was that. Practice, practice, practice. The boy loved the piano but he wanted to live as well … did you ever hear him play jazz the way he did at the Black Dog on occasion?’ Bill shook his head, no.
Hugh sighed. ‘Percy wouldn’t have that. Or he wouldn’t have it other than the way he, Percy, allowed it. He was a pig to the boy. Everyone he touched, he hurt. I didn’t know most of this until Elyan was locked up. I still visit him and bit-by-bit he’s told me.’
‘And you believe his story about Percy?’ Bill asked. He knew he was in dangerous territory, and with witnesses.
‘I do.’
‘Did you kill Percy Quillam?’
Hugh looked at him, his dark eyes narrowed. ‘There’s no doubt that body is Percy Quillam’s? I didn’t see it, remember?’
‘None. And my question stands.’
The Scottish accent that was unexpected with Hugh’s Welsh name snapped out, crisp and sharp, ‘Will you believe me if I tell you, no?’ He waited while Bill stared back and said nothing. ‘I didn’t think so. That’s for you to find out, then.’
TEN
‘She’s still asleep, James,’ Lily whispered. She got up from a chair beside Hugh’s bed where Annie Bell lay beneath a quilt. The room was cool but she looked feverish with her auburn hair a tangle around her flushed face.
Doc James Harrison came into the bedroom and closed the door to the hallway quietly behind him. He went into the combination office and sitting room that had been converted from a second, smaller bedroom adjoining Hugh’s. He indicated for Lily to follow him. The two of them had been very close for years and Lily spent a good deal of time at Doc’s home which was also where teenagers Scoot and Kyle Gammage continued to live while their father was absent from their lives. Doc James and Lily had become the boys’ stand-in parents and so far the arrangement had been good for all of them.
‘Any developments?’ Lily asked James, all but shutting the door between the two rooms. She stood with her back to the window, leaning against the sill. Her spine ached from napping on the side of the bed where Annie slept. ‘Alex thinks the police are going to take Hugh in for questioning this morning.’
James and Tony were obviously father and son, both tall, good looking and curly haired, although James’ curls had been white for years and he’d formerly been dark-haired, whereas Tony’s coloring was lighter. They both had dark-blue eyes.
‘Tell me how you are first,’ James said.
‘A bit stiff.’ Lily smiled at him. ‘I’m too accustomed to a comfortable bed. Annie doesn’t seem well to me. You didn’t say much when you examined her last night.’
‘That was perfunctory,’ he said. ‘She’s an essentially healthy young woman, as far as I can tell, but she’s exhausted and probably emotionally compromised. She should be examined more thoroughly by her own doctor. I understand from Tony that she talked quite expansively to Harriet and Mary Burke at their tea rooms, but clammed up when he and Alex showed up there. We can’t help her if she won’t let us but I’m hoping that will change.
‘Did I tell you I got the white handkerchief wave out of the sisters’ windows when I passed Leaves of Comfort earlier?’
‘Ea
rlier?’ Lily said. He had so much more energy than she did. ‘No you didn’t tell me. It’s only eight thirty now.’
‘Harriet flagged me in to give me a brief rundown. I don’t think we’ve got a lot of time to get our ducks in a row – or at least to try to work out what we’re dealing with. Not if we’re going to help Hugh. Harriet let me know that one of her scouts saw Dan and Bill leave here before seven this morning.’
‘Darn, I wonder if they had breakfast?’
‘Lily, my love, we don’t care about their breakfast today. We care that they were picked up by LeJuan Harding and set off out of Folly, so we can hope they’re on their way back to Gloucester and we’ve got some time to get together with Hugh. If necessary we’re going to hammer some information out of him.’ He frowned. ‘Do you know if Neve Rhys came back last night?’
‘She didn’t but she hasn’t checked out. Her things are still in her room. I don’t know if both of them are there, though. She said her husband would be joining her but there’s been no sign of him yet.’
‘We’re getting together at my house later this morning,’ James said. ‘We can all make it there by the back way and hope not to be seen. I’ve talked to Hugh. He’ll be coming down from Tony and Alex’s – thank God he agreed to spend what was left of the night there. He knows where our spare key is so he’ll let himself in.’
‘I’ll stay here. It’s more important for Alex to be there with all of you. Liz Hadley comes in this morning. Scoot is an angel. He did the fireplace as well as setting up as much as he could before he went to school. Carrie Peale – our village potter – has been putting in a few hours and she’ll come in, too. I think she’s finding it hard to make ends meet with just the pottery and a husband who does little else but drink, ride around on the back of his friend’s motorbike, and talk about his future literary stardom.’
James opened his briefcase and pulled out several pieces of printer paper. ‘This is information on Quillam’s concert schedule. I’m sure the police already have it. He’s supposed to be in Paris – in the middle of an engagement. Supposedly it’s been announced that he’s ill and there’s a stand-in everyone is raving about.’
Lily crossed her arms. ‘This is only getting nastier. Lies, lies and more lies. Mr Quillam couldn’t be more ill than he is now, could he? Those people in Paris probably have no idea he’s lying in a morgue. But someone must be speaking for him over there – telling them he’s ill. Whoever that is would know something’s gone very wrong, surely.’
‘Tony’s seeing what if anything he can find out about that. The news will have it all out there today but the police won’t be giving away any of the details we’d like. I’d better get going. When Annie wakes up try to have her stay in bed. She needs her own things. Those can be brought from wherever they are. I assume she has a car.’
‘We don’t know,’ Lily said. ‘I’ll get back to you as soon as I have any information. James, what if the police come looking for Hugh?’ Tiredness was overtaking her and anxiety about what would happen next only made it worse.
‘Tell them you’ll ask him to contact them – when you speak to him,’ James said.
‘I don’t think they’ll accept that. Especially not from me … or any of us. They could insist on knowing how I’ll go about finding him. If they think I know where he is … that scares me.’
The door to the bedroom swung open wider and Annie stood there, her clothing rumpled. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said, her hand at her throat. ‘What do you mean? Hugh hasn’t done anything, so the police don’t want to talk to him.’
‘It’s just that Hugh knows all the people involved in what’s been going on here pretty well,’ Doc said. ‘Lily’s quieter than most of us – thank goodness she is – so she doesn’t like dealing with the police.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Lily,’ she said. She put a shaky hand to her mouth and started chewing a thumbnail. ‘Hugh always knows how to deal with people.’
Burford was a pretty town; old, picturesque and slathered with tourists all day, every day at this time of the year. Nevertheless, once away from the famous and steep main road that poured down from the wolds to the Windrush valley, terraces of stone cottages reminded you of the way the place must have looked a century and more earlier.
Alex knew she was out of her depth. She slipped past bursting flower baskets hanging from walls, climbing roses, wisteria, every possible flower that might bloom now and they all bloomed with an almost overwhelming fervor. What did she think she was doing here in the early morning – trailing Detective Sergeant Jillian Miller as she studied numbers outside front doors? At least Miller was so intent on reaching her target that a novice boy scout could probably have followed her without being seen.
Dodging into doorways, behind bushes and into narrow alleys felt ridiculous but what choice did she have? She’d stayed out of the way while Hugh got ready to leave Tony’s house, assuming he would go straight to Doc’s. A couple of minutes after he drove away in the Subaru he used to run around the area, the car Alex recognized as Bill Lamb’s followed. She didn’t know Miller was driving until she saw her get out in Burford. Alex had tucked the Range Rover into the forecourt of a butcher’s shop and set off at a trot.
Miller stopped in front of a short row of houses with a board outside advertising holiday rents. There were three houses with curly stucco rooflines atop flat fronts. One pink house, one yellow, and one green. The window at the very top suggested a fourth and very small floor. The detective sergeant breezed on past but quickly turned down a tiny alleyway toward the back of the buildings.
Loaded with guilt, Alex phoned Tony and started talking before he got past his first question about where the hell she was. ‘In Burford,’ she said. ‘Hugh left right after you. I was looking out of the window and saw Jillian Miller drive after him. Thank goodness I was ready to go. I couldn’t understand why Hugh didn’t suggest we drive to Doc’s together, but now I know. He had somewhere else in mind.
‘Wait … Miller just went behind a row of houses and I think Hugh must be inside one of them although I can’t see his car anywhere. Since Miller was following him it must be around, or she wouldn’t have stopped. Got to go or I’ll lose her, if I haven’t already.
‘Yes, I know you don’t like me doing this, but it seemed like the only thing to do. Hugh’s being ambushed and I’ll at least be able to break things up with one of my brilliant excuses for him being here.’
She had started to jog and turned in at the alley in time to see Miller make a sharp left behind the pastel houses.
‘Sorry, Tony. Gotta go. Tell everyone to hang in and I’ll be there as soon as I can – hopefully with Hugh in tow. Maybe I can head Miller off … yes, I’m interfering with the law. Hugh is my friend and until I know he’s guilty of something, I’ll stand up for him. Get the sisters to tell everything they heard at the tea rooms when Annie was there. Bye.’
She was in time to see Miller open a rotting wooden gate and slip through. This was the middle house.
Alex stopped. She looked at her mobile and punched in a contact. If she had really been thinking she’d have done this before, probably as soon as she saw Miller following Hugh.
‘Alex?’ he answered. ‘Sorry I’m going to be late. I’ve got an unexpected meeting but I’ll get there as soon as I can. You’ve got plenty to discuss—’
‘Just get out of that house, Hugh. Detective Sergeant Jillian Miller is looking for a back way in – probably to spy on you or whatever. Just get out.’
‘Good God.’ He spoke to someone else but what he said was very unclear. ‘Right, on my way, Alex. We’ll talk about why you followed instead of calling me when I see you. Thank you, anyway.’
‘Where’s your car?’ She wanted to snap back that he wasn’t in a position to be snarky. ‘Do you need a lift?’
‘No, thanks. See you at Doc’s – I hope. Please keep on trusting me. I know it must be looking bad – suspicious – but it will all work out. I’m out of the h
ouse and on my way. You’d better be on yours.’
Alex backtracked to the street but saw no sign of Hugh or his black Subaru Outback. She ran for her own vehicle and drove too fast to get out of Burford and on her way back to Folly by winding, little used roads through mostly deserted fields.
Parked behind Doc’s house, she went through the back gate, let herself in by a side door to which she had a key and hurried through the mud and laundry rooms, following the rise and fall of voices. She found her people gathered in the little used sitting room, seated around a low, ebony and brass table where empty cups and saucers, plates, and the remnants of croissants, meant someone – probably Harriet – had provided a late breakfast.
Alex dropped onto a sofa beside Tony. ‘Hugh’s on his way. He should have been here before me but I’m past trying to make reason of anything he does. Where’s Annie?’
‘Sleeping,’ Doc said. ‘I gave her another sedative. She’s exhausted and needs complete rest for a day or two. She’s been staying in Stow-on-the-Wold. She’s got a Mini – which used to belong to Elyan Quillam – parked behind the Black Dog. Convenient since her things were in it.’
‘Shouldn’t she be here?’ Tony said.
‘No,’ Mary Burke said. Lillie Belle, the tiny Maltese with her long pink tongue, watched from Mary’s lap with inquisitive black button eyes. ‘We don’t need Annie here. Not if you want us to be able to talk freely about what was said at Leaves of Comfort. You didn’t get her to tell you anything, did you? And you tried.’
Always blunt. ‘That’s right,’ Alex agreed. ‘I was hoping Hugh would be here by now, but we’d better get on with it. Tell us what you heard, ladies.’ She held up a hand. ‘Why isn’t my mum here?’
‘She thought she ought to run the pub,’ Doc said, straight-faced. ‘Or that someone should.’
Alex nodded, yes. There was too much to think about.
Harriet looked at Mary who indicated for her to continue. ‘The woman who moved to Annie’s table after we closed behaved like she must be a friend. Annie looked confused, but I don’t think she knew what to say and she’s too polite to tell someone to go away. I got the definite impression she’d seen the woman before. I don’t know about the man.’
Trap Lane Page 9
