Her head was beginning to ache, because she still felt she was getting nowhere, and it was all pie in the sky, as so much investigation often was — leading her down wrong alleys and wasting time. Just like police probes, she thought, with a sliver of satisfaction. They hadn’t found out what happened to Steven, either. But then the satisfaction faded, because maybe the trail really did end here. Keith had provided a lot more answers regarding the explosion from the calor gas bottles — but forensics had probably already got that on file. If so, it hadn’t been reported in the press, which was nothing to write home about either. They weren’t told everything.
She was sleeping fitfully when her mobile rang. Through squinting eyes she saw that it was just after half past five in the morning. It was far too early to start the day, she thought with a groan, so what now?
‘Hello?’ she croaked into her mobile.
‘Did I wake you?’ came Nick’s voice.
She sat up too quickly and felt the room spin. ‘Yes, but never mind about that. Have you found something?’ It had to be important to call at such a time.
‘Your Philip Cordell has quite a history, Alex. God knows how he managed to fool the authorities into giving him a college job, but the man’s an accomplished liar so I daresay he created his own CV from previous fictitious employers.’
‘I was right to be suspicious of him then,’ she mumbled, still half awake. Not that it proved a thing, except that he was a clever con man. ‘Is that all?’
‘Not by a long shot. He’s been in prison a couple of times for GBH and a bit of handling, and he’s had a number of aliases Patrick Walters and Grant Tobias to name but two. He’s been clean for about six years now, but I wouldn’t say he’s the most savoury character you ever came in contact with.’
‘I know.’ She hesitated, and then it all came out in a rush. ‘Nick, in case you get to hear it from that bastard Gregory, I went to see Keith Martin in Bath, and he ended up in hospital after a drugs overdose.’
‘Christ, Alex, what’s all this about now? I thought you wanted to know about this Cordell bloke —’
‘I did. I do. But it came in the wake of my visit to Bath, and there’s probably not the remotest connection —’
‘I think you’d better tell me about this Martin geezer,’ he snapped. ‘No more hedging about now, Alex.’
She swallowed, feeling as if her mouth was as dry as the Sahara as she babbled it all out.
‘All right. I wanted to hear his version of events, and I know I shouldn’t have got him drunk, but he was such a nervy type I knew he was never going to tell me anything unless I did — but how the hell could I have guessed he’d take those pills? I thought he was just going to the bathroom to throw up —’
‘And what did he tell you?’ Nick said, cutting right through the waffle as usual.
‘Nothing much. Well, quite a bit, actually.’
‘I hope you taped it.’
‘Yes,’ she mumbled.
He was icily angry now. ‘Well, now you’ve told me this much you’d better send me the tape by courier. Do it, Alex, first thing in the morning, and don’t tell me I’m not involved. If there’s anything we don’t know, you have a duty to pass on information. You know that, so don’t give me any guff about client confidentiality. The client’s dead.’
‘I know,’ she said miserably. ‘And I failed her.’
‘Rubbish. But it’s time you realized you can’t sort out the problems of the entire human race,’ Nick told her a bit less censorially. ‘We all do the best we can, Alex, and you should have left this one well alone. I told you that in the beginning, didn’t I?’
‘You did,’ she said, humbly for her.
‘Just send me that tape in the morning and I’ll take it from there.’
‘You mean you’ll file it away and forget it.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. It depends what’s on it.’
‘Unfortunately the tape ran out before it got very far — and that’s the truth, Nick,’ she added, in case he thought it wasn’t.
‘Well, don’t lose any sleep over it. I’ll expect the tape tomorrow, OK?’
‘OK,’ she said.
But she was wide awake now, and reading through the lines she knew he was mightily keen to get his hands on that tape. It may be just to consign it to the recycle bin, she thought, with her new-found computer jargon, or it might not. In any case, she had no intention of sending him her only copy.
She got out of bed, shivering in the frosty early-morning air, and wrapped herself in her fleecy dressing-gown. This was no time for flimsy kimonos, and she pulled on some thick bootsocks as well before going down to her office with the tape, and setting up her machine to copy it on to two more separate tapes. Just for security.
Then she packed up the original, addressed it to DCI Frobisher, and looked up the name of a local courier firm to call as soon as it was daylight.
It was nearly that now, she realized, seeing signs of a pale dawn streaking the sky, and she wasn’t going to get any more sleep. So she might as well turn on the computer and record all the information Nick had given her about Philip Cordell, which she found more and more disturbing.
There really was nothing to connect him with the group of boys who had set fire to an old hut in the woods for a lark. He would have been a lot older than they were, and she would hardly have called him a wino or a druggy ... except for that one remark of Nick’s. He had been in prison for GBH and handling, which could either mean stolen goods or drugs, and usually meant the latter.
Alex shivered, hating anything to do with drugs. They were the worst thing ever to have come out of recent times, in her opinion, and ruined more lives than many diseases. It sent people out of control; made them do things they would never otherwise do; gave them a false sense of courage, bravado, or whatever; made them crazy; killed them.
She finished what she was doing and went back upstairs with the package containing the tape and the extra copies, putting them in separate places in her flat, just in case. She took a hot shower and made some black coffee to wake her up properly, and then as her stomach rumbled she decided to give in to a proper cooked breakfast as her Aunt Harriet would have said sternly, none of this going to work on a breath of fresh air.
She couldn’t have said why Aunt Harriet came into her thoughts just then. Nor why she was still smiling when she went to answer her phone, and heard her cousin Jed’s nasal Yorkshire voice.
‘Is that our Audrey?’
Chapter 18
The next hours passed in a total haze for Alex. She called the nearest motorbike courier and prowled around aimlessly until nine o’clock when he’d promised to collect the tape. By then she had called Nick, who said if she wanted to get off earlier, she could always take the tape round to DI Gregory.
‘No,’ she said, choked. ‘It’s you or nobody, Nick.’
‘All right. Anyway, I’m sorry to hear your news, Alex, but you’re not seriously thinking of driving to Yorkshire in this weather, are you? By all accounts it’s pretty atrocious up there.’
‘What would you have me do? Sit here twiddling my thumbs when I’ve just heard that my uncle’s had a heart attack? I do have family feelings, Nick. Besides, they’re all I’ve got left, and my cousin says his mother’s in an awful state.’
She still couldn’t picture it. Aunt Harriet was always strong and stoical, the competent daleswoman, capable of dealing with wind, weather and underlings. But according to Jed, she had completely gone to pieces when she found Uncle Bill frozen stiff as a board in the snow in one of his chicken houses.
‘Dead as a dodo, he were, with feathers stuck all over him, and been there for hours, so the doctor said,’ Jed had declared graphically. ‘Me ma’s crying all over the place and Amy and her Vic ain’t much help, muttering and whispering and not knowing what to do for the best. Folk should be together at such times, so she thought you ought to know, you still being one of us, so to speak, and more sensible than most.’
&nb
sp; ‘Of course I’m still one of you,’ Alex had said, ignoring the bizarre turn of his conversation and trying not to visualize Uncle Bill, stiff as a board in the snow with chicken feathers stuck all over him as if he was taking part in some music-hall farce. ‘Tell Aunt Harriet I’m going to throw a few things in a bag and I’ll be with you just as soon as I can get there.’
She hadn’t stopped to think. She just knew how it was when her dad died when they were all distraught, and had clung to one another for comfort and support. And if the rest of them weren’t being much help, then Aunt Harriet would need her now. The sensible one, so to speak — though it was a long time since any of them had called her that, with her fancy boots and her soft southern lifestyle.
‘Why don’t you catch a train, Alex?’ Nick’s voice broke into her thoughts.
‘What, and get stuck for hours while they go slow or break down or clear leaves from the line? No thanks. Besides, I’m not wasting time finding out about train times, so forget it. I’m leaving just as soon as your bloody courier arrives to collect the package. I wish I’d never told you anything about it now, then I’d have been on my way an hour ago.’
Everything else had to be put on hold: her vague intention of calling Keith Martin again to see if he was safely home, and to find out if he knew someone called Philip Cordell ... or even taking him by surprise at his flat one evening and demanding to know more, since he’d already told her so much; her even vaguer plan of checking out the site where the incident had happened ten years ago and doing a little surveying of the area herself ... none of it was so important as being with Aunt Harriet right now.
She smothered a sob, and knew how fond she still was of them all, deep down. The older ones, anyway, she amended. Amy and Jed were all right in small doses — they were family. She disliked Vic, but he was totally forgettable, and she found it easy enough to blot him out of her mind.
The sound of a motorbike startled her for a moment, with thoughts of Phil Cordell still lingering, but she saw that it was the courier arriving, and she handed over the package thankfully and got the necessary receipt for it. For a wistful moment, she wished it could have been her old mate Gary Hollis in his courier gear. It would be good to meet up again, and she remembered she’d missed the opportunity in refusing Charmaine’s party invitation.
She realized that her thoughts were coming in disjointed bursts now, and she told herself severely that it was no way to be when she was about to drive on a long journey. Nick’s idea of letting the train take the strain might suit some people, but being behind the wheel had its own way of calming her nerves, if only because she had to damn well concentrate and couldn’t allow herself to think of much else.
*
Six hours later she was being ushered inside a warm and steamy farmhouse after a horrendous journey through driving sleet and snow, and had folded her Aunt Harriet in her arms. She had always thought her aunt a fairly tall and broad woman, but right now she seemed to have crumbled.
‘I’ll be all right in a bit,’ she sniffed into Alex’s ears. ‘But I’m right glad to see you, lass, and so would he have been.’
He being Uncle Bill, Alex realized.
‘Do you want to see him? He’s not so bad looking now he’s been cleaned and tidied and dressed in his Sunday best —’
‘He’s still here?’ Alex said with a small start. What was wrong with funeral parlours and chapels of rest?
‘Where else would he be but in his own home? They’ll be taking him out of it soon enough.’
She gave a deep sigh. They had had a long marriage and shared a hard life, but love was there all the same, as strong as the soil they farmed. Alex knew they had never been folk for showing feelings, and it wouldn’t be long before Aunt Harriet was back to normal, on the surface at least, hiding whatever she felt inside.
‘I’d rather not see him if you don’t mind,’ Alex murmured. ‘It will remind me too much of my Dad.’ In any case viewing the corpse was nothing short of ghoulish in Alex’s opinion.
Her aunt stared at her through red-rimmed eyes, seeing all the cowardice there was to see — and the shame of it for not wanting to see a loved uncle dead in his coffin. And she finally nodded, understanding.
‘Oh well, you’ll not be forgetting him, I daresay, and if you’d rather remember him the way he was, we’ll have some tea to warm us and then you can tell me how long you’re staying. The funeral’s next week, providing the ground’s not too frozen for the men to dig his plot.’
Alex began to feel slightly hysterical. It had been a long and traumatic drive, she was tired and hungry and dying for a pee — and she was too afraid to go upstairs to the bathroom for fear of glancing into one of the bedrooms and seeing Uncle Bill laid out in his coffin. She should be ashamed.
‘It’s all right, lass,’ Aunt Harriet said more gently. ‘I daresay you see all sorts in your job, but ’tis different when ’tis one of your own, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Alex whispered. ‘Oh, Aunt Harriet, I’m so sorry.’
‘Aye, I know you are, but we all have to go sometime, Audrey, and your uncle’s had a good innings. He always said it was the way he wanted to go, so how can we argue with that? He’s in the front room, by the way, so you’ll not find him upstairs if you want to put your things in the spare room.’
Alex fled, even more ashamed at her aunt’s calm words, and feeling as vulnerable as when she was about six years old, when she’d come here to play with her cousins and her Uncle Bill had gently chaffed her for not wanting to help him feed the chickens. And now he’d been found dead in the snow, as stiff as a board with feathers stuck all over him, in one of his own chicken houses.
Bizarre wasn’t the word for it, she thought, as the weak tears rolled down her cheeks. She was nothing like the tough nut someone in her profession was supposed to be. She had stood dry-eyed at Jane Leng’s funeral, because it hadn’t touched her personally, and she’d despised the way the obnoxious Grace and hubby had cried their crocodile tears. She’d been at the scene of other deaths, during her job, and at police investigations. She had attended funerals out of respect. But this was different. This was family. Her flesh and blood.
*
After a few days Alex realized just how stoical her aunt was, and admired her all the more because of it. She was continually irritated by her cousins whom she didn’t admire at all, except that she knew very well they would rally round and look after Aunt Harriet as much as she allowed them to. But she knew she couldn’t stand it here very much longer. She was stifled by the atmosphere of gloom and the deadpan faces, and by the people who came along to pay their respects to Uncle Bill, and looked her up and down and exclaimed at how bonny she was looking — whatever they secretly thought.
Translated, it meant that she looked far too slick and citified to be part of this close-knit farming community. She didn’t belong any more, and she longed to get back to her own kind of normality, whatever that meant to a private eye. As soon as she could get away without feeling she was letting them down.
On the day of the funeral, thankfully not delayed because of frozen ground, her aunt spoke to her firmly when they had returned to the farm with neighbours and friends for the usual tea and sandwiches. She spoke with a sense of relief that a good man had been sent to his rest with all due dignity, and all the tears were done.
‘You’ll be needing to get back to Bristol now, Audrey,’ Harriet said, ‘and we won’t delay you. I’ve been right glad to have you here, but your uncle wouldn’t want you staying any longer on his account, nor mine.’
‘I could stay another few days if you really wanted me to,’ she said diffidently, praying that her aunt wouldn’t take her up on it, but feeling obliged to make the gesture.
To her surprise, she got an unexpected kiss on the cheek.
‘You’re a good lass, Audrey, but I’ve got Jed here with me, and Amy and Vic will be looking in most days, so bless you for the thought. But mebbe the next time we see you, it’ll be w
ith happier news.’
Alex looked at her blankly and her aunt gave a small smile.
‘Mebbe wedding bells? You’re not getting any younger, and I daresay there’s some young man who’s got his eye on you. You come from good stock, Audrey, and you’ve got good child-bearing hips, so don’t wait for ever.’
‘I won’t,’ Alex said in a strangled voice, wondering whether it was appropriate to laugh or to feel totally insulted. In the end she did neither, but said that if her aunt was quite sure, she’d be leaving in the morning.
*
‘She said what?’ Nick said, when she reached home late the following afternoon and called him on his mobile just to hear a friendly voice.
‘Child-bearing hips,’ Alex repeated solemnly. ‘And before you say any more, no, I’m not looking for a husband.’
‘I wasn’t offering,’ he retorted. ‘Anyway, are you really all right?’
‘Well, apart from coming back to a freezing cold flat, yes. So what did you think of the tape?’
He hesitated before answering. ‘Alex, I’m sorry —’
‘You’ve sent it to Gregory, haven’t you?’ she said furiously. ‘Nick, how could you? This is still my case —’
‘Just listen a minute. There have been developments,’ he said, in careful police-code for big news, ‘and since you’ve had your mobile switched off for the past week I couldn’t speak to you, and I didn’t want to worry you at this time by sending a text message —’
‘What’s happened? For Pete’s sake, just tell me.’
‘Keith Martin was badly beaten up at his flat the night he got out of hospital, so he was taken straight back in again. It was touch and go at the time.’
‘My God! Do they know who did it?’
Nick was grim. ‘They’re pretty sure he knows, but he’s not telling. Somebody scared the shit out of him, and he’s being closer than a clam now.’
Deadly Suspicions (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 3) Page 24
