‘I haven’t got six to ten days.’
‘If he’s in the river, he’ll wait, Jim, believe me.’
‘All right then, Ron, whatever you can do will be fine. Thanks.’ He replaced the receiver with resignation.
To while away the time, Ashworth spent the rest of the afternoon mapping out a new plan for the office. The sooner he got back to his old desk in its old position the better. This new office was too isolated, made him feel apart from the hub of operations, and therefore unable to function at maximum efficiency.
Holly was relieved when, at five p.m., Ashworth said they should call it a day. Josh Abraham said he was staying on, there was some computer work he wanted to finish. But Holly grabbed her coat and was off.
She was glad that this first day with Ashworth was over, but what had she to look forward to? An evening with mother-in-law!
A slight dusting of snow lay on her Mini. She got into the car, shivering in the cold seat, and activated the windscreen wipers which cleared the glass with a single stroke. Then she tried to start the engine; it turned over but failed to fire. After a few seconds she had another go, but still it refused to bite.
‘Damn the bloody thing!’ she cursed.
This time she kept the key turned and the engine ground over again and again until a slowing signalled the draining battery.
She struck the centre of the steering wheel. ‘You bastard!’ she said with feeling.
A tap on the side window startled her. Holly turned to see Ashworth’s rugged face framed there. She wound the window down, saying feebly, ‘It won’t start.’
‘Lift the lid up,’ Ashworth said briskly.
‘The lid?’
‘The bonnet.’
Holly pulled the lever.
‘Have you got a screwdriver?’
‘No, sir.’ She felt utterly hopeless.
Ashworth selected a suitable screwdriver from the tool kit in his car and was quickly at work under the Mini’s bonnet.
He was at the window again. ‘Push the accelerator down to the floor to clear the carburettor, and give it another try.’
Holly did as he instructed and the engine spluttered into life. With a huge sigh of relief, she said, ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘You were still on summer running but it should be all right now.’
None of that meant anything to Holly, so she just repeated, ‘Thank you, sir.’
He pushed down the bonnet, leaning on it heavily until it clicked shut. As he walked towards his car, he called lightly, ‘And don’t keep upsetting it by suggesting it doesn’t know its father.’
Realising that he had overheard her outburst, Holly felt the blood rush to her cheeks. But the remark made her feel better for, contrary to what she had been told, her new boss did seem to possess a very good sense of humour.
* * *
Ashworth and Sarah were beginning to find that walking the dog was more gruelling than pleasurable.
Peanuts, not yet old enough to interpret the aromas left by other dogs as sexual, was rather like a young child who is sexually inquisitive without knowing why; her instincts told her that the messages promised pleasure so she was forever eager to investigate.
‘Walk, girl,’ Ashworth muttered, jerking the lead for the umpteenth time.
The dog obliged for a few yards then stopped again, black nose plunging into frosty grass.
A huge pale moon rested just above the horizon, its white light illuminating the lane and surrounding fields in an unnatural eerie glow.
‘Walk, girl.’ This time the dog heard the firmness in Ashworth’s voice and condescended to trot along.
He turned to Sarah. ‘Do you know a woman named Barbara Edwards?’
Sarah, her face almost lost behind a large woollen scarf, mumbled, ‘Yes, I know Barbara. Why?’
Ashworth ignored the question. ‘Would you say she was neurotic?’
‘Neurotic? Most certainly not. Nervous, perhaps . . . reserved, I’d say. Oh, let’s turn back, Jim, it’s too cold for this.’
As they began walking the two hundred yards back to the house, Sarah said, ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Her husband’s gone missing.’
‘That’s awful. Doesn’t she have any idea where he might be?’
‘No, he told her — or rather, he told her brother — that he was going on a business trip. That was two days ago.’ A thought struck Ashworth then, a thought which would keep returning to his mind.
‘Do you think something’s happened to him?’
‘I don’t know, Sarah. Tell me, does she ever talk about him?’
‘Now you come to mention it, I don’t think she does. I mean, at meetings I often say, ‘Jim said this . . .’ or ‘Jim said that . . .’’
‘I can understand you wanting to show me off,’ Ashworth laughed.
‘Yes.’ She put a doubtful intonation on the word. ‘Anyway, I’m sure Barbara never mentions her husband. I know he’s something to do with the leather factory but I don’t even know his name.’
They turned into the drive and, anticipating the comfort inside the house, quickened their pace. At the front door Sarah fumbled for the lock, then the warmth of the hall met the cold night air.
* * *
Alistair Stimpson’s assumption that the burglaries would be cleared up by nine was proving to have been a little optimistic. It was nine fifteen now and nothing had happened.
Stimpson, sitting in Michael Whitworth’s battered Cortina, was cold and bored. Whitworth broke the monotony as he clambered into the car with a large brown paper bag. Delving into it he brought out a cheeseburger and passed it to Stimpson.
‘Anything?’ he asked, biting into his own hamburger.
‘No,’ Stimpson replied.
The car was parked in a quiet street on one of the large estates. Double-bay-fronted terraced houses stood behind large front gardens. Many bore red security alarm boxes, their newness gleaming in the moonlight.
Stimpson was the more intelligent of the two men. Ruthlessly ambitious, he saw this backwater that was Bridgetown as an easy route to promotion. Even the emergence of Ashworth had not bothered him, in fact he had not given it a thought.
When he chose, Stimpson had the ability to charm the birds from the trees; an ability he exercised frequently with the female officers back at the station, and he had made two conquests already. Friends and enemies alike described him as vain, arrogant, and selfish.
Whitworth, despite the rather villainous appearance, was the more trustworthy of the duo. He held little interest in rank, wanting only to earn a decent salary. Excitement was what he craved. Although, as many of his new colleagues suspected, he was inclined to glamorise his exploits, he did not have to colour them overmuch.
The high he experienced when — with adrenalin pumping — his team forced entry into premises suspected of harbouring drug dealers, was greater than any other — better even than sex. The scar tissue above his left eye, the ugly scar high up on his right cheek, bore testimony that reception committees at such events could often be somewhat less than friendly.
The stresses of the job had begun to take their toll, however, and Whitworth’s term of duty at Bridgetown had been ordered by his superiors in Manchester as a form of rest and recuperation.
Off duty he liked loud rock-and-roll music, very strong ale, and women — in the strictly physical sense!
Both officers felt, with some justification, that they were over-qualified in the streetwise department for a hick place like Bridgetown.
Here, the uniformed branch — most of whom, from sergeants downwards, were used to being spat on, sworn at and ridiculed by the local youths — regarded the two men with a certain degree of awe. The fact that they seemed to be in complete control of the ‘yob element’ had brought them the dubious honour of being christened Starsky and Hutch.
Neither man held Ashworth in high esteem, in fact they had awarded him the derisory nickname, Dixon of Dock Green. They were judging the package
by its wrapping, a mistake made by many, and a rude awakening lay ahead.
‘What time do we give them to?’ Whitworth asked.
Stimpson glanced at his watch. ‘Ten . . . quarter past,’ he mumbled.
‘Hello, looks like we could be about to get our string pulled,’ Whitworth said, in a voice edged with excitement. ‘White van . . . just turning into the road . . . moving slow.’
‘Got it,’ was Stimpson’s curt reply.
They watched as the large van slowly cruised along the road as if selecting a property. It stopped and four men emerged, looked left and right, then vanished behind a high hedge surrounding the garden of the house.
‘They’re going in,’ Stimpson reported coolly.
Whitworth threw the remains of his hamburger into the bag, opened the car door, and knelt on the pavement behind it.
Flicking the radio on, he said into it, ‘DC Whitworth to Bridgetown Station.’ Nothing. ‘Come on. DC Whitworth . . .’
‘Sergeant Dutton here, DC Whitworth. What can I do for you?’
‘What can you do for me? God!’ Whitworth exclaimed. ‘We’ve got a happening at . . .’ He calculated the number of the house being broken into. ‘. . . 105 Denmark Road.’
‘Right, back-up will be with you in three minutes. Don’t do anything till then. Repeat . . . don’t do—’
‘Bollocks!’ Whitworth hissed, and turned the radio off.
Peace was shattered by the clanging of an alarm bell, its box flashing red, lighting up the houses opposite.
‘They’re coming out.’ This was Stimpson.
Whitworth was back behind the wheel, starting the car. Its modified engine purred into life.
The roar of the powerful motor, the piercing glow of headlights on full beam, panicked the already startled men. They bundled themselves inside the van.
Whitworth, with a sardonic grin, waited until the vehicle had pulled away from the kerb, then he let the clutch out.
‘Come on, baby,’ he said as the car jumped forward, tyres screaming, aiming straight for them.
Just at the moment when a head-on collision seemed imminent, he stamped on the brake pedal, swung the steering wheel hard to the left and, with the stench of burning rubber all around, he executed a perfectly timed skid out of the van’s path.
The other driver, possessing neither Whitworth’s driving skills nor his iron nerve, was partially blinded by the Cortina’s headlights, terrified of the car hurtling towards him, and, in his panic, he steered the van on to the pavement.
The dull, sickening thud as metal smashed into brick, the sounds of breaking glass, and a cry of human anguish, all did battle with the noise from the alarm as the detectives sped towards the van.
Chapter 5
Holly Bedford’s father had always described home as a haven beyond the reaches of life’s woes. But for Holly, her bedroom was the only place where any tiny vestige of peace remained, even though life’s woes still followed her there, and its domain was far from sacred as, unannounced, Emily would often violate its sanctuary.
Holly had arrived home to find almost sub-zero temperatures over the whole house, apart from the kitchen, where, in addition to heat being generated by the cooker, an electric fire was fully on. Emily was in there preparing chips and battered fish.
‘Mum, the house is freezing. Why haven’t you got the heating on?’ she said, flicking the switch and turning the thermostat to high.
‘We haven’t got money to burn,’ Emily sniffed, ‘have we?’
This innuendo was a direct reference to a discussion they’d had a few days ago, during which Emily had complained about being left on her own all day in a strange place. Holly had impatiently explained that the only money they had coming in was Emily’s pension, and her own salary. There was the mortgage to pay, food, and other living costs — it would be impractical for her not to work.
It had ended with Emily’s brisk retort, ‘You should have thought of that before you asked me to come and live with you. I only had my pension then and I managed.’ Followed by, ‘If you ask me, I think you like working with all the men.’
Culinary skill had never been Emily’s forte and this meal had not provided a breakthrough: the chips were soggy, the fish overcooked to the point of being burnt.
Holly ate as much as her jaded appetite and indifferent tastebuds could tolerate, before pushing the plate to one side.
Emily’s sideways glance at the discarded food did not require words to convey its message.
‘There’s one of them ballets on Channel Four tonight,’ Emily said, in a conversational tone which Holly had learned to dread. ‘Don’t know what you see in them. They’re boring. All them men prancing about in tights, showing all they’ve got.’ She paused to eat a soggy chip. ‘Anyway, it clashes with Coronation Street.’
Trying to sound cheerful, Holly said, ‘I don’t feel like watching television tonight, mum, I’ll listen to some music in my room, then have a shower.’
It seemed that the more tolerant, considerate and patient she was, the more cantankerous, unreasonable and bloody-minded Emily became. The trait had been there for some years now, but it had definitely worsened since the move to Bridgetown. Holly knew there was an almighty row brewing and she did not want one this evening.
Emily stood up and began clearing the table. She was engaging in one of her more irritating habits: making muttered statements not directed at anyone and not requiring answers.
‘I suppose the days when children sat with their parents have gone,’ she mumbled, hobbling to the sink, her limp too exaggerated for the pain caused by her slightly arthritic knee. ‘They’re too selfish nowadays.’
Then tutting as she scraped Holly’s almost untouched meal into the waste-bin, she went on, ‘There’s them in Africa that would murder for a meal like this . . . and there’s them here who turn their noses up at it.’
Holly spent the evening lying on her bed, listening to Radio 5. It relaxed her a little and at ten p.m. she showered. She was back in her bedroom, naked, searching through the dressing table for her long flannelette night-shirt, when, unheralded by a knock, Emily opened the bedroom door. She viewed Holly’s nudity with distaste. ‘I’m off to bed. I’ve got fed up sitting down there on my own.’
Holly was glad when she found the night-shirt, and quickly pulled it over her head to cover herself up.
‘You want to be careful with all this Aids about. They’ve just said on the news it’s an epidemic.’
Holly had reached seven in her count to ten when she heard the door close.
How was it possible to have loved, body and soul, the offspring of someone she now viewed with a feeling akin to hatred?
But it had been so. Holly had met Jason Bedford when she was nineteen; he was twenty-one. She was a WPC; he was a long-distance lorry driver.
Jason had definitely veered towards his father’s side of the family: outwardly jovial and very good company; inwardly sensitive and caring.
Their courtship had been unremarkable, like many others, much planning and saving, and when they walked to the altar eighteen months later, they had a house, furniture and most of the things they needed.
The first two years of their marriage had been idyllic. Even their jobs had been compatible, as often Holly’s spells of night duty would coincide with Jason’s nights away from home.
His father, Bill, had taken to Holly from their first meeting, but Emily never had, although in the early days she had been far too astute to allow it to show.
Then a chain of events began which shattered Holly’s life.
Jason lost some of his sparkle. At first, Holly put it down to overwork. They had decided — with the ambition of the young — to save enough money to move into a larger house and start a family, so Jason was working all the hours the law allowed, and although he stopped doing this, his condition deteriorated rather than improved.
He postponed it for as long as he could, but finally made an appointment with his GP. The d
octor appeared disinterested, non-committal as he carried out the examination, refusing to be drawn on the series of tests he wanted Jason to undergo at the hospital.
In contrast the hospital staff were cheerful, reassuring, and they both reasoned that if there was anything wrong — really wrong — the occasion would have been far more solemn.
They used this thought to nourish themselves during the sleep-disturbed nights that followed, and finally came to believe it . . . until the GP insisted on seeing them both at the surgery.
Holly remembered little of what happened — only ‘leukaemia’ and ‘successful treatment possible’ had survived in her memory.
The possibility of a successful treatment sustained them until it became obvious that the disease would not be halted.
In desperation Holly turned to the power of prayer, but as the disease and the drugs began to disrupt the mental stability of the man she loved, she abandoned any hope of divine intervention and prepared herself for the inevitable.
Even now, more than three years after it had happened, the memories could still cause dry sobs to rack her body. Tears no longer accompanied the sobbing, for her heart told her it had wept enough — it was time to live again.
When Jason finally died, a few days before Christmas, Holly’s overriding emotion had been relief. She told herself at the time it was because Jason was now beyond suffering — which was true — but it was also relief for herself.
That was the beginning of the guilt from which she still could not escape. To admit to oneself that the demise of a loved one heralds the opportunity to begin living again sets into place a number of obstacles which prevent one from doing so.
Her parents, wonderfully supportive, had argued that at twenty-four she was still a young woman, and no one would expect her to waste the life which lay before her. And with the candour that befits the modern woman, Holly admitted that she had physical needs which were only remotely attached to the spiritual aspect of love; but those needs remained unfulfilled — she felt that her body belonged to the man who lay deep in the earth, beneath a marble headstone.
THE PRICE OF MURDER a totally gripping British crime mystery Page 5
