A Winter Flame

by Milly Johnson

  Her coat afforded her plenty of warmth but it really needed to go in the bin. The sleeves were going at the elbow and there was a pull at the back. And she couldn’t remember how many times now she had had to stitch a button back on. She had bought it new to go out with Jonathan on their first dinner date. That March was freezing and she had been delighted to find a coat that looked smart and was in the sale because she didn’t have a lot of spare money to spend on herself in those days. Then again, she was a damned sight happier and warmer back then than she ever was now.

  Jonathan had held both sides of the collar when he kissed her for the first time as girlfriend and boyfriend, before his hands had slipped around her back. Her memories were tied up in the threads. The thought had crossed her mind more than once, when she opened up a bin bag to throw in the coat, that she would be throwing a part of Jonathan away if she got rid of it.

  But as she tried to recall that first kiss, she found that as soon as Jonathan’s hands touched her, they changed into those of Jacques Glace yesterday, holding her as she shook with aftershock from delivering a baby reindeer. Why had she let him cuddle her? Why hadn’t she extricated herself from him? Why had she needed to feel someone’s arms around her so much – and not just anyone’s arms – but his. Jonathan was a man of honour; God knows what Jacques Glace was and she had let him hold her like a lover.

  She stood at the Portakabin window and watched him holding court with the elf-people. He was amusing them with a tale, claiming their attention as he gesticulated wildly with his long arms. Then his audience fell about laughing together, real laughter, not fake laughter to get on the right side of the boss. Had Eve looked at herself then, she would have seen she was smiling too. She wasn’t aware that she was touched by the ripple effect of Jacques’ charm. Then one of the elf-people saluted Jacques and he returned that salute, and Eve’s jaw tightened. What right did he have to do that? Any softening she had done towards Jacques Glace hardened right on up again. He was using a military gesture in a light-hearted, mocking way. She knew she was over-reacting but she couldn’t help it. The military was a hair-trigger as far as she was concerned.

  Eve knew she needed to get inside his house sooner rather than later, and find out who Jacques Glace was and where he came from. The man was a one-man charm offensive and she didn’t want anyone else getting close to him until she had worked out what his game plan was. Charlatans often played a long and sneaky game – she’d watched all the series of Hustle, so she knew how polished they could be. But con men in real life weren’t nice people turning the tables on the greedy. They knew that people were pre-disposed – wanted – to trust and they used that trust to trample all over people’s lives.

  So whilst Jacques was still regaling a crowd with his raconteuring skills, Eve quickly rang Barbara, Mr Mead’s secretary, to ask for Jacques Glace’s address.

  ‘He’s asked me to order a chair for his house, and do you know, I can’t put my hands on my address book and he’s not answering his phone,’ she lied with a tinkly, innocent laugh. She felt a soupçon of guilt that Barbara believed her rubbish lie and trustingly recited the address, but still she wrote it on her hand, grabbed her car keys and sneaked out to the innocuous enough address: 1, May Green, Outer Hoodley.

  The village was situated off the Barnsley–Wentworth road, although the word ‘village’ was pushing it a bit. Really, it was more of a hamlet, consisting of a shop, a pub at the side of the river – Dick Turpin’s Arms (as if it could be anything else, thought Eve when she saw it) and some very old cottages. Eve pulled up in the village car park and looked round for the presence of a wicker man. These places were curtain-twitching heaven.

  She grabbed an old envelope from the car so she could look as if she were posting a letter if anyone asked her ‘what she was doing in these parts’. Blimey, it was only a few miles from Barnsley town centre and yet she could have been forgiven for believing that it was The Hills Have Eyes territory. It was too quiet, too pretty, too still. Like Midsummer Murders land.

  May Green was easy enough to find. She guessed that he lived in one of the five houses around a central square of grass with an ornamental maypole in the centre. Each one very different, too: number 5 was a tall, three-storey construction; number 4 had large picture windows and a roof terrace; number 3 was a bungalow, hidden by tall trees; number 2 was a medium-sized house painted white, decorated with lots of hanging baskets; and then there was number 1. Eve hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about what sort of house a man like Jacques Glace might live in, but it wouldn’t have been this. It was a double-fronted, but tiny, cottage with a bright-red front door. She noticed that the door knocker was a brass soldier, which made her bristle.

  Cream linen curtains hung at all the windows, the paintwork looked fresh, and when she went around the rear, she found a small but impeccably neat garden. She peered in through the back window and saw a tidy kitchen with a wooden work surface. Through the second window she saw a beamed lounge with a battered, but chic, leather Chesterfield sofa opposite a stone inglenook fireplace. There didn’t seem to be much furniture in it at all.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  A voice cut into Eve’s reverie and scared her to death. She jumped and yelped at the same time, and patted her chest to still her heart. For a moment, Eve turned into a human beat-box.

  ‘I’m looking for Mr Glace’s house,’ said Eve, growing menopausally hot under the little old lady’s hawk-like gaze.

  ‘This is Mr Glace’s house, yes,’ came the scratchy, suspicious reply.

  ‘I was hoping to catch him in rather than just post this, so I came around the back because I couldn’t hear anything when I knocked at the front,’ said Eve, all too aware that she was over-explaining. She must have looked as guilty as a Great Train Robber with a bag full of loot and a Ronnie Biggs name-badge.

  ‘He’s not in,’ said the pint-sized village guard dog.

  ‘No, well, I’ll . . . er . . . call back,’ said Eve, backing away. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Who shall I say called?’ said the old lady, padding towards Eve at an alarming pace.

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ said Eve. ‘He doesn’t know me. Thank you, bye.’

  She walked off as fast as she could without making it look as if she was running. She was slightly worried the villagers would appear with burning torches if she didn’t get out of Outer Hoodley quickly. She slid her key in the ignition and twisted it, thinking that this was the point in horror films when the engine made a tired cough and died. But instead, her car vroomed into life and Eve crunched over the gravel and out of the car park, and in her rear-view window was the little old lady watching to make sure she went.

  It wasn’t going to be easy to get inside that house if the chance arose. Not if May Green had its own Leo the lion patrolling it. It needed a little planning. And a disguise.

  Chapter 31

  The Daily Trumpet would like to apologize to the family of Harold Lamb for the error in last week’s obituary. The entry which read, ‘To Our Dead Dad’, should of course have read, ‘To Our Dear Dead’.

  We truly regret any distress caused.

  Chapter 32

  The chance to suss out Jacques Glace fell so beautifully into Eve’s lap, she was almost suspicious that he had planned it himself.

  Four days after the little old lady had badgered Eve, Jacques burst into the Portakabin office as he always did. The man was incapable of opening the door and walking in, he had to throw himself in as if he was finding sanctuary from a minus forty-eight blizzard.

  ‘Eve, are you leaving the park today?’ he asked.

  ‘Only at home-time,’ replied Eve.

  ‘I’ve got to go out for a few hours, but I’m hitching a lift with Effin. My car needs a new battery and a mechanic in Maltstone is dropping one off and fixing it in for me. If I leave you my keys, would you hand them over to him for me, please?’ And he fished in his coat pocket and put his ridiculously loaded key ring down on her desk.
r />   ‘Could you give me a clue as to which one it is?’ asked Eve.

  ‘Yes, sorry, of course. It’s the one with the red top. I keep all my keys on the one ring for convenience sake – even if they do take up half my pocket.’

  All of his keys? Including his house keys, that must surely mean.

  You’re joking, thought Eve to herself. He was handing over the bullets which she was going to use to shoot him.

  ‘No worries,’ she said, with an inner Dick Dastardly laugh. ‘They’re in safe hands.’

  ‘I won’t be back before lunchtime. I’m going to have to hang around with Effin at a builder’s merchants.’ Jacques sighed, but his eyes were sparkling with mirth. ‘I hope he keeps his temper. He threatened to eat Arfon’s liver earlier on. I was tempted to send out for some fava beans and a nice Chianti.’

  ‘Enjoy,’ said Eve. ‘By the way, when do we have the pleasure of meeting Santa Claus?’ She wanted Phoebe to vet him. There would be no more stringent test for Santa than meeting Phoebe May Tinker.

  ‘Nick is coming over on Saturday,’ said Jacques.

  ‘Nick?’ Eve rolled her eyes. ‘Is he really called Nicholas? Have you picked him just because that was his name?’

  ‘I didn’t choose him, your aunt Evelyn did,’ replied Jacques. ‘And yes, he really is called Nick. Nick St Wenceslas.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yep,’ smiled Jacques, with that lop-sided easy grin he always had. ‘Okay, not really. He’s called Nicholas White. Santa Claus extraordinaire. He said he’s looking forward to meeting you too. Again.’

  ‘What do you mean, “aga—”,’ but Jacques had gone with his customary door slam. What a stupid, immature man, thought Eve. ‘Again’, as if it was the real S. C. and he was going to remember what she used to want for Christmas, like they did on those schmaltzy films. The thing she used to want most at Christmas, which she would never have admitted to anyone, for obvious reasons, was for her mum to fall a bit ill so they could move to Auntie Susan’s for the whole week.

  Santa was quickly forgotten as Eve picked up the keys and examined them. She heard Effin’s voice call out to Jacques and wondered which one of them would come out the winner in a noisy competition. She watched Jacques climb into Effin’s truck and it drove off. Then she zoomed out of the Portakabin in the direction of the ice-cream parlour.

  Violet looked a little glum when Eve opened the door. She was staring into space and looking as if the cares of the world, wearing weighted boots, had settled on her shoulders.

  ‘V, you okay?’

  Violet forced on a smile. ‘Yes, I’m fine. Just deep in thought,’ she fibbed.

  ‘Where’s Pav?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ replied Violet, shrugging her shoulders. He was disappearing more and more these days without saying where he was going. She wanted to ask him who Serena was, but she was frightened. So she bottled up her fears and they fermented and fizzed horribly inside her.

  Eve, however, was too focussed on the opportunity which she had been offered that morning to notice the extent of Violet’s angst.

  ‘Violet, I need your help. It’s an emergency.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Violet, pushing her own problems away. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Just sit in the Portakabin and wait for a garage mechanic, whilst I slip out for an hour. Ring me immediately if Jacques comes back but don’t tell him where I am, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Eve, what are you up to?’ said Violet, narrowing her eyes.

  ‘Can’t tell you,’ said Eve.

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’

  ‘Won’t.’

  ‘You’re going to Jacques’ house, aren’t you? Eve . . .’

  ‘Violet,’ Eve grabbed her small cousin by the arms. ‘This is really, really important. I have to know more about Jacques Glace. If I can’t find anything, I promise you I’ll let it drop.’

  And because Violet was a soft touch and because she needed something to fill her mind other than the awful thoughts that insisted on forcing themselves into her head, she sighed in a very resigned way and said, ‘Okay then, what do you need me to do?’

  Eve stripped the car key from the ring and handed it to her. Then, after leaving Violet in position in the Portakabin, she set off for Outer Hoodley with a clipboard, a set of curtains, a white overall, a pair of Harry Potter wire-framed glasses and a long black wig, left over from a Halloween do. All this had been collected over the weekend and put in Eve’s car, ready and waiting for the perfect moment.

  Eve pulled in just outside Outer Hoodley so she could dress up. The old lady who lived next to Jacques was like Cerberus, but with only one head, and she didn’t want to be recognized. Eve checked her appearance in the wing mirror and found she looked as much like an interior designer as Mr Bean looked like a lifeguard.

  Then she drove on into the village car park, picked up her clipboard and the curtains and locked up the car. She tried to walk confidently and innocently towards 1, May Green, with the chutzpah of a person going through customs with twelve bottles of brandy stuffed down their pants.

  Eve stole a glance through her wire rims at number 2, but no curtain was twitching. She strutted around to the back of number 1 and tried a key in the lock, taking a deep breath and then another. She didn’t know if an alarm was going to go off but would have to risk it. If it did, she would calmly walk back to the car and get the hell out of there.

  She twisted the key and the door opened silently.

  Eve entered quickly and closed the door behind her, locking it in case the neighbourhood witch came a-knocking. So far so good.

  The inside of the house smelled of polish and some sort of spiced-apple air freshener. It was so tidy. There wasn’t much furniture, yet it felt cosy and comfortable. The beamed ceiling looked very low; Eve wondered how many times Jacques had cracked his head on it. There were some sealed boxes in the corner. Evidently he hadn’t been living in the cottage very long and was still in the process of unpacking.

  ‘Right, no time to lose,’ said Eve, slapping her hands together and then opening the single drawer in a long trestle table. There was nothing of interest really: two pens, a plain, unused notepad, a book of stamps, and an electricity bill in the name of Mr J Glace.

  There was a file of Winterworld business on a shelf underneath the coffee table and a well-worn copy of the Robert Harris book Fatherland. But on a small wooden tray on the deep window sill, Eve found a hospital appointment card. Apparently, Jacques had been to see a Dr C Khan in August at Norgreen, which was a private hospital in Sheffield. Or was it O Khan? She would google that name and hospital when she got home.

  There was nothing at all in the kitchen cupboards and drawers other than what one would expect to find in there, so Eve tried upstairs. The small bathroom was glaringly clean with a residue scent in the air of an expensive manly deodorant. The mirrored wall cabinet housed toothpaste, one toothbrush, soap, razor, shampoo, aftershave and some ibuprofen. Towels, folded to Benetton-standard, resided in a long cupboard alongside a huge, blue fluffy robe. There was a family of yellow rubber ducks sitting in a line on the side of the bath – typical.

  There were richer pickings in the bedroom. Again, there were things in boxes not yet unpacked, but still, there was a veritable treasure trove of information available from what was.

  ‘Oh, this is more like it,’ laughed Eve, opening up a huge chunky wardrobe and seeing his clothes. Because on one side were shelves of jeans and jumpers, and on the other side were military uniforms encased in plastic. ‘My God, would you look at this?’

  She lifted a red uniform out of the wardrobe. It weighed a ton. The word Major came hurtling back to her mind with all the force of a landing airplane. What on earth was he doing with this in his wardrobe? She recognized it as an officer’s ceremonial uniform. A very large uniform which must have fitted him.

  Eve shuddered as the vision of Jacques Glace strutting up and down in front of the mirror dressed as an officer rose in her he
ad. And oh boy, what was this? She replaced the uniform and lifted out another encased in plastic also: a green, female officer’s uniform. It looked very sizeable too. There were other uniforms in there as well, all military ones, but Eve had seen all she needed to of those. She moved over to the chest of drawers at the side of his bed.

  The top drawer was full of underwear – very male underwear – no sign of very large stockings or suspenders, thank goodness. The second drawer housed socks, a small box with a watch in it, and some cufflinks. The drawer below though was much more interesting because it was full of military memorabilia. Caps, hats, flat boxes, which Eve opened to find an array of old medals – and in a beautiful red box on a bed of velvet was a new shiny one: a cross suspended from a ribbon of white and purple. She wondered what the story was behind that one. And most worrying of all, underneath the cross, she found an instantly recognizable battered brown box.

  Eve’s fingers started to tremble as she opened it up, but she knew what was in there already: Stanley’s medal. Why would Jacques Glace have this?

  Why weren’t there any photographs anywhere? she mused, too. She wondered if they were in the sealed boxes, but they would have been impossible to open secretly. Then again, she had seen quite enough for one day. She had been right, surely. The presence of Stanley’s medal alone proved that. Talk about catching someone red-handed.

  She checked that all was as she found it, wiped as many touched surfaces as she could with her sleeve, just in case Mr Glace wore a detective’s uniform at weekends and did a spot of fingerprinting, and exited quickly with her head bowed and the curtain over one arm and the clipboard in the other hand.

  Back at Winterworld, Violet was disappointingly dismissive about the ‘evidence’.

  ‘It’s Stanley’s medal, Violet,’ Eve emphasized. ‘Why would Jacques Glace have it?’

  ‘Well, Evelyn obviously gave it to him,’ said Violet.

  ‘She wouldn’t have given it to him,’ growled Eve. ‘She would either have given it to me or to the military museum at Higher Hoppleton. He has to have stolen it – I bet you anything.’