by Ann Cleeves
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Stephen was there.’
‘Does he know who killed Mrs Wood?’
Prue shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. Not yet.’
‘Will it make any difference to the production?’
Prue shrugged. ‘I wanted to cancel but Gus thinks we should go ahead.’
‘So do I,’ Anna said firmly. ‘It can’t make any difference to Gabby and Mrs Wood now.’
Prue was surprised by the strength of her words.
‘Gus thinks you should play Abigail Keene,’ she said.
‘Does he?’ There was no clue in the girl’s voice to what she thought of the idea. ‘Does he think I can do it?’
‘Apparently.’
‘And you?’ Anna asked quietly. ‘What do you think?’ Then before Prue could answer she cried: ‘You don’t think I’ll be anywhere near as good as Gabby. I’ve never lived up to your expectations, have I? You don’t want me to try in case I make a fool of you.’
‘No,’ Prue said, distressed, wondering if that was what she thought. ‘I didn’t mean that.’
As they stared at each other angrily, shocked by the unusual tension between them, the telephone rang.
After speaking to Connor, John Powell hung round the lobby of the Grace Darling, reading posters on the noticeboard advertising the Contemporary Dance Festival in town and Shakespeare at the Theatre Royal. He was putting off a decision about what to do next. The evening stretched ahead of him as a prospect of unendurable boredom. Sod Connor, he thought. This was no time to lose his nerve.
He was just about to leave the building when Joe Fenwick called him back.
‘Hey!’ he said. ‘You. Young Powell. I want a word with you.’
‘What is it?’ John stood at the door.
‘Come here, bonny lad. I don’t want the whole world to hear. And nor will you.’
‘What is it?’ John said again, sauntering towards the desk, refusing to be rattled.
‘What were you doing playing silly buggers in Anchor Street a couple of nights ago?’ Joe said.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He was superior, haughty. It was a faultless performance.
‘Don’t come the innocent with me. I saw you and your mates driving like lunatics. What had you been up to, eh? It wasn’t your car you were driving. Don’t you think the police would be interested?’
‘No,’ John said calmly. ‘I don’t think they would. They’ve more important things to worry about than a few lads mucking about. Besides I’d deny it.’
‘Deny what you like, bonny lad. But if I see you at it again I’ll be on to your father as quick as you like. Or to that Inspector Ramsay.’
‘I shouldn’t do that,’ John said. ‘That would be a mistake.’
He was more worried by the exchange than he let on but he refused to run away. He wasn’t going to be intimidated by an old man like Joe Fenwick. He told himself it was the lack of information which was frightening. If he knew which way the police investigation was moving he’d have more to work on. He’d know what line to take. He thought then that Anna Bennett might be a source of inside information. Her mother was close to the inspector leading the investigation. It was an outside chance but he’d always been willing to gamble. Ignoring Joe Fenwick’s disapproval he walked defiantly back to the pay phone.
‘Hi!’ he said when Anna answered. ‘I think we should meet.’ He thought it was beneath him to identify himself. He took it for granted she would recognize his voice. He knew she liked him. ‘We’ll need to talk about the play if you’re taking over from Gabby. You are going to take on Abigail Keene?’
‘Yes,’ she said, then consciously echoing her mother: ‘Apparently.’
‘I’ll borrow my mum’s car and pick you up,’ he said and replaced the receiver before she had a chance to refuse.
Anna walked slowly back to the kitchen. She was flushed with excitement.
‘That was John,’ she said. ‘He’s asked me out.’
‘Tonight? Will you go?’
‘Yes,’ Anna said, then added sarcastically, ‘if it’s all right with you.’
What can I say? Prue thought. She’s eighteen. An adult. At her age I was making love to Stephen Ramsay in the dunes at Duridge Bay.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘ Of course it’s all right. I hope you enjoy yourself.’
‘Oh, Mum,’ Anna said impulsively. ‘You don’t know how much this means to me.’
Prue did not know what to say.
John arrived at the house later than they had expected and the waiting only increased the tension between them. When the door bell rang Anna rushed off to answer it. Prue wished that she was not so eager. She would be so easily hurt. Through the open kitchen door she heard John say, without apology, that he was late because he’d had problems arranging transport. Then the front door slammed and Anna went off without saying goodbye.
John knew from the beginning that the evening was a crazy idea. Why Anna Bennett, for Christ’s sake? It had started logically enough with a desire to find out more about the police investigation but as soon as he got hold of the car he knew he wouldn’t be satisfied with a quiet drink and a chat. He needed danger like a drug. Her affection for him was a challenge, as Gabby’s had been. He wanted to shock her out of it.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked. She had changed from her school uniform into a long black skirt and boots. He could tell she had made an effort for him. She sat primly with her hands on her lap. What had she expected? he wondered. The pictures? A meal in a wine bar in Otterbridge? Did she think he fancied her when he could have had Gabby Paston? Her passivity made him want to hit her.
‘You’ll see,’ he said roughly. ‘It’s a surprise.’
He drove fast out of Otterbridge and joined the main road south. He realized it wasn’t too late to save the evening, to stop him making a fool of himself. He could buy her a pizza, a few glasses of wine, make her feel good and deliver her safely home to her mother. But he had never played safe and he recognized the self-destructive excitement, the lack of control, which made him drive too fast and spend his time with Connor and which was his only antidote to boredom.
‘I thought we were going to talk about the play,’ she said. He overtook a lorry and just missed an oncoming vehicle. She clasped her hands in her lap more tightly.
‘Not talk,’ he said. ‘Talk’s not enough. We’ll never understand Abigail and Sam just by talking. They took risks. They lived on the edge.’
‘So,’ she said more loudly, too proud to let him see how frightened she was by the speed. ‘Where are we going?’
‘We’re going to the races,’ he said and braked sharply as they approached a roundabout. She thought she must have misheard and did not like to ask what he meant. She felt out of her depth. As they waited for the traffic to pass he said: ‘What do the police say then about these murders? Your mam must know. They were at the Grace Darling today. And didn’t you say she was a special friend of Inspector Ramsay’s?’
‘My mother was at school with him,’ Anna said, ‘but they’ve not seen each other for years. I don’t think he’d confide in her.’ She paused. ‘Wouldn’t your father be able to tell you more?’
‘Oh, him!’ John said. ‘He’ll give nothing away. Not to me.’
‘I never knew my father,’ she said. ‘ It made me different right from the start not having a dad. I hated being different.’
It was a difficult admission for her to make but he seemed not to hear.
‘Who do you think killed Gabby Paston?’ he asked suddenly.
‘How would I know?’ she said. She shivered. She never wanted to think of Gabriella Paston again. The traffic cleared and John drove on, down Anchor Street to Hallowgate Fish Quay and over the cobbles past the new flats at Chandler’s Court. The fog had returned to the river with dusk.
‘I’m hungry,’ John said. He looked at his watch. It was nine o’clock. ‘There’s an hour to wait yet. Do you fancy fish and chips?’
She nodded and he pulled in under a street lamp close to the Seamen’s mission. They crossed the road together and she wondered if he would put his arm around her, give her some sign of affection. She longed to touch him but he seemed wrapped up in thoughts of his own and oblivious to her presence. A queue snaked around the inside of the chip shop and they joined it, standing one behind the other as if they were strangers. Inside the shop it was beautifully warm and the windows were misted with condensation. The talk in the queue was comfortingly domestic: of family rows and minor illnesses. No one mentioned the murders. Anna turned to John hoping to establish some contact with him but at the same time a customer opened the door to leave the shop and John’s attention seemed caught by a movement outside.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I thought I saw someone I recognized in the street. But it couldn’t have been.’
Because he thought he had glimpsed his mother running across the road towards Chandler’s Court, her raincoat blown open, and he knew that was impossible. His mother would be at home in their dull grey sitting room waiting for his father to return and provide a brief vicarious excitement with news of his work.
John would not let Anna eat the fish and chips in the car. It was his mother’s, he said. She would object to the smell and not let him borrow it again. They sat, huddled in their coats against the cold on a bench looking out over the river and still there was no physical contact between them.
He jumped up impatiently before she had finished, making a ball of the chip papers and throwing it into a rubbish bin.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘ We’ll have to go now if we’re going to get any sort of view.’
She followed him, caught up by his mood of expectation and his restlessness. Suddenly it seemed the most exciting thing in the world to be out with him with no idea how the evening would end.
This is it, she thought. This is how Abigail Keene felt when she left her stuffy family and went out into the world looking for adventure.
He drove up the hill away from the river past an old industrial estate. Most of the factories were empty and grass grew in cracks through the concrete. The few units still in production were protected by grilles and covered by spray painted graffiti. John turned into a wide street which Anna recognized immediately.
‘This is the Starling Farm estate,’ she said. She had never been anywhere near the place but she had seen it on the television. There was a small row of shops—a launderette, a bookmaker’s, a general store—which had been pelted with rocks and petrol bombs. Further up the street she saw the boarded-up houses, from which even the roof tiles had been looted. Because she had seen it on television she thought the estate was glamorous. It was like seeing a famous film star walking down the street.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘I told you,’ he said. ‘ To the races.’ He reached into the glove compartment and took out a cassette. The car was filled with music and she had no chance to ask what he meant.
The roads were quite empty and almost dark. Some of the street lamps had been shattered in the previous weeks’ disturbances. Anna thought it must have been like this in the blitz. She found it hard to believe that behind the blacked-out boarded-up windows families were living normal lives. The association with war-time Britain made the place seem exotic, different from anything she had ever known. It conjured up the nostalgia of an age—big-band music, Land Girls, stolen love affairs before men went away to fight.
John pulled off the road on to a piece of grass, a school playing field. Once it had been separated from the street by a high wire-mesh fence but the fence had been flattened and lay in a tangled heap to one side. In the headlights she saw white football goals, a climbing frame. There were dozens of other cars parked in an orderly line, facing the road. John found a space, switched off the music and the engine. In each of the cars were passengers staring at the darkness. Somewhere in the distance a clock struck ten.
‘We were just in time,’ John said. His hands were still clenched tight on the steering-wheel. ‘Now you’ll see.’
But still the street was quiet and she sat, waiting for something to happen.
She heard the engines first, revving up somewhere to the right of them, shattering the silence. Then there was the sound of a horn, loud as a starting gun, and the race had started. Two cars sped past them, bumpers almost touching so close to the audience that Anna could feel the vibration, smell the burnt rubber as they braked to turn the corner. John leaned forward, tense with concentration. It was as if he were competing himself.
‘This is the finishing line,’ he said. ‘They’ll do two complete circuits of the estate and end up here.’
‘Isn’t it dangerous?’ she asked.
‘Of course it’s dangerous!’ he said, not taking his eyes from the road. ‘That’s the point.’
‘How can they afford that sort of car,’ she asked, ‘living here?’ They had passed so quickly that she had not been able to identify the make but could tell they were big, powerful, expensive.
‘Don’t be dumb!’ he said. ‘They’re all stolen. It’s hotting. Haven’t you heard of it?’
Where do you think I got this one? he wanted to say. I chose it specially because it looks respectable, but it’s stolen just the same. I’m an expert. When I put it back tonight they won’t even have missed it. But he said nothing. Perhaps some faint instinct of self-preservation remained.
Before she could answer him the cars flashed past again. This time there was a gap between them and he said, almost to himself: ‘That’s Baz in front. I knew he could do it.’ Then, under his breath: ‘Hang on, man.’
‘You know these people?’
For the first time he looked at her cautiously. ‘Some of them,’ he said. ‘I went to school with some of them.’ Then more aggressively: ‘It doesn’t make them different, you know, living in a place like this.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘ Of course not. I didn’t mean that.’ But as she watched the tail-lights disappear into the darkness she thought that they were different. Her conventional upbringing re-asserted itself. ‘They’re breaking the law,’ she said. ‘ They’re criminals.’
‘Abigail Keene and Sam Smollett broke the law,’ he said savagely. ‘We think of them as heroes. It’s all a question of perspective.’
As the race reached its climax she expected the audience to leave their cars, to gather together at the roadside to cheer and shout but they remained where they were, insulated from each other by the vehicles. Still she could sense their tension and excitement. John wound down the window to listen for engine noise.
‘They’ll be changing gear at the Community Centre,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘Up the hill to the Keel Row… Here they come.’
Suddenly the place emptied into noise and light with the blaring of horns and the flashing of headlights to make the end of the race.
‘Who was it?’ she demanded. ‘Was it your friend?’
He looked at her. ‘Do you care?’
‘Of course I care.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘ It was Baz.’
‘What does he win?’ she asked.
‘Win? Nothing. He does it for the honour and the glory.’
She stared at him but found it impossible to tell if he was being serious.
‘Will you go and congratulate him?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not today. I just wanted to be here to see him do it.’
‘Is that it?’ she said. ‘ Will there be another race tonight?’
‘It depends,’ he said, ‘if they get the chance.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That,’ he said suddenly. ‘ That’s what I mean.’
In the distance there was the wailing of a police siren and beyond the houses she saw a flashing blue light.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to get you out of here.’
‘But we’ve done nothing wrong,’ she said. ‘It can’t be illegal to watch the
m?’
‘Do you think that makes any difference to them?’
All around them the cars were scattering, some driving over the grass towards the school. John switched on the ignition and pushed the gear into place. He drove forward with a jerk, swerving to avoid the battered mesh fence, and down the street away from the flashing blue light. He felt drained and exhausted. Was it worth it? he wondered. For a few minutes of excitement.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’d better take you home.’
‘I won’t say anything,’ she said. ‘About tonight. I won’t tell anyone where we’ve been.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s up to you,’ he said. ‘As you say it’s not illegal to watch.’
‘I’d like to come again,’ she said. ‘If you’re going.’
He looked at her in surprise and realized that he was disappointed. He had been hoping to scare her and she had been excited. She had treated it all as a game.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘But next time I go I’ll be racing.’
From the kitchen Prue could not hear the traffic at the front of the house and she went every so often to the front bedroom to peer down the street to watch for her daughter’s return. She found it hard to account for her unease. It was not that she believed John could be involved with the murders but she was unsettled. She told herself that there was nothing wrong with him. He was bright, from a respectable family. Most mothers would be glad to entrust their daughters to a boy like that. But it did no good and she could not relax. Absentmindedly she cooked and ate an omelette.
She told herself she should be pleased by Anna’s new confidence. Hadn’t she spent the past ten years wishing she would be more assertive? Yet as the evening wore on her anxiety increased and she remained in the front bedroom despite the cold, with the curtains slightly open so she could look down into the street below and watch for headlights coming up the hill.
Because of that she saw the car quite clearly, registered that it was new, a bright red Polo. She was surprised when it slowed down and stopped outside the house. Policemen could not be so badly paid, she thought, if they could afford to let their offspring run around in a thing like that, but she felt no real envy. She was just ridiculously relieved to have her daughter safely home. She shut the curtains quickly before Anna could say she’d been prying. Would she invite him in for coffee? Would they kiss? It was not, she supposed, any of her business. When Anna came into the kitchen immediately afterwards she found her mother apparently engrossed in a book.
