“I don’t know yet, but I’ll let you know.”
She really was angry.
“I’ve been wondering if there’s any point to this,” she said.
“To what?”
“To you wasting so much time on it. Perhaps the police are right, after all.”
He leaned back against the counter. “You’re thinking of pulling me off the case?”
“I don’t know.” She gave him a smile. “Just look at you. You’d think I’d just taken your favourite toy away. I’ll have a think and we’ll talk about it when you come back. Who knows, you might have found out something interesting by then. We’ll have dinner and discuss it then, yes?”
Dylan nodded. “Okay.”
“Wonderful. I’ll look forward to it.” She threw her arms round his waist and squeezed. “As for the rest, take no notice of me. I expect I’m overreacting just because every damn thing I touch at the moment seems to fall apart.”
She made no effort to let him go so he held her hands and put them in front of her. “I’ll call you, Maddie.”
“Yes, do, and I’ll book us a table somewhere special.”
When he was sitting in his car, he let out his breath. Somewhere special. He didn’t like the sound of that. He was forty years old, though, and could take care of himself. In a way, he was flattered that she enjoyed flirting with him. She probably wouldn’t do anything more than flirt. Although if she believed Chandler had been having an affair with her sister, she might fancy the taste of revenge.
Prue and Chandler. It was feasible, Dylan supposed. A damn sight more feasible than Prue and McIntyre in fact.
Sex had a lot to answer for when you stopped to think about it, and he’d been thinking about it a lot lately. If he hadn’t slept with Maddie, she would have employed some other investigator to look into her sister’s death and he wouldn’t have been plagued by memories of that blue bedroom. If Prue hadn’t embarked on an affair with Jack McIntyre, she might still be alive. If Dylan’s mother hadn’t—
He stopped before that particular thought took root. He didn’t know what his mother had done or not done.
He’d been looking forward to a decent lunch in Dawson’s Clough, but now he felt compelled to take a quick detour.
For once, his sat nav took him to the correct address and he sat in the car for a moment to look at a house that was very similar to his own. This one was much bigger and had a huge, well-tended garden, but the design was the same.
Before he could change his mind, he walked up the drive, looked in vain for a doorbell and then tapped a brass knocker against the wooden door. Suddenly realising that this was the most stupid idea he’d had to date, he was about to make a run for it. But the door opened and there was Boris. He looked smaller today, and slightly scruffier, thanks to a pair of well-worn jeans, ill-fitting sweater, and the fact that he hadn’t shaved this morning.
There was no way this man could be his father. Bev was putting two and two together and coming up with forty-two.
“What a nice surprise, Dylan. Come in. Is everything all right? The family well?”
“Yes, fine, thanks. I was out this way and thought I’d stop and say hello. I’m on my way north, so it will have to be a very quick hello.”
They passed a spacious kitchen and ended up in what was obviously Boris’s study. Apart from a desk and two chairs that looked to be antique, everything was modern. His computer screen was huge and paper thin. Classical music was coming from an iPod attached to Bang & Olufsen speakers.
“Have a seat.” Boris gestured to a captain’s chair. “Let me get you a coffee. I was about to have one myself.”
“Well—thanks. As I said, I can’t stop long, but a quick coffee would be good.”
“Back in two ticks.”
No way was Dylan descended from a man who said “two ticks.” What the hell was Bev thinking?
Wooden framed photos of a woman—Boris’s late wife, Dylan assumed—sat on the desk. On one wall was a huge photo of a gleaming Harley-Davidson. A small TV hung from a wall bracket.
“Here we go.” Boris put two chunky pottery mugs on the desk. “Sorry, do you take sugar?”
Before Dylan could say that he did, the phone trilled out.
“Help yourself,” Boris said, gesturing in the direction of the kitchen they’d passed at the same time as he reached for the phone.
Dylan took his mug into the kitchen and soon found the sugar. He pulled open four drawers before he found a spoon. As he stirred in a couple of spoonfuls, he looked around. It was all oak and granite—very nice—and hanging from hooks on a set of shelves were eight identical mugs to the one he’d been given.
On hearing Boris finish his call, he returned to the study.
“You have a nice house.” Dylan had never coped well with small talk. “And it must be good to be able to work from home.”
“It’s okay,” Boris said, “but you need plenty of self-discipline. It’s far too easy to work long into the night. You never leave the office, you see.”
“A lot of us are guilty of that. The invention of computers gave us a portable office.”
“True. Well, it’s really good to see you, Dylan. I was hoping I’d see a bit more of Vicky but—” his eyes twinkled, “—she’s shying away from me. She’s said she doesn’t want to get involved. I’ve told her that I don’t either. I’ve had two wives—that’s enough, isn’t it? I was only asking her out to dinner. I wasn’t expecting her to marry me.”
“Women are funny creatures.”
Boris smiled. “I’ll give her a call in a couple of months.”
“Good idea.” Dylan was mentally forming a dozen questions, but asking a man about his sex life didn’t come easy. “I bet you had some good times out in Turkey.”
“Yes—there was a whole gang of us. We thought we were immortal and could do drink and drugs until we dropped.”
“Sounds great.” It sounded hell.
“We all moved around a lot. We thought nothing of travelling the world. We had no money, all we had were a few dreams and our sleeping bags, but it didn’t seem to matter back then.”
It was no use. Dylan couldn’t ask if his mother had shared that sleeping bag. He’d indulge in some inane chat for a few minutes and then leave.
“So you’re travelling north again?” Boris said. “That car of yours gets through some miles.”
“I know.” It was a worry and he touched the wooden desk for luck. “She hasn’t let me down yet.”
They talked cars. At least, Boris talked cars. Dylan had always thought he could talk cars as well as the next man, but long before they’d finished discussing Boris’s first company car—a beige Ford with matching upholstery—Dylan had lost the will to live. He could see why his mother was so reluctant to ride Route 66 with him.
He was taking his last swallow of coffee when the phone rang again.
“Could I get another coffee?” he asked on an impulse.
“Help yourself.” Boris reached for the phone.
“Do you want one?”
Boris shook his head and greeted his caller.
Dylan picked up both mugs and took them to the kitchen. Boris’s was still half full. He emptied the contents into an identical mug and wrapped Boris’s mug in a couple of sheets of white kitchen towel. He rammed it in his jacket pocket, tried to hide the bulge, failed, and made himself a fresh coffee.
When he returned to the study, Boris was just finishing his call.
“Sorry,” Dylan said. “I took your mug. I didn’t realise you hadn’t finished. Here.”
“Thanks.”
Boris took a sip of coffee that had to be cold by now. “I’m surprised Vicky never married, you know. She was always the type to have people around her.”
“She still is,” Dylan said. “But I suppose having a baby changed her. Even she had to lean toward responsibility.”
He smiled at that. “True. Of course, none of us knew she was expecting you. She just upped an
d left one day.”
“What? No one knew?”
“Not a soul.”
It was the perfect time to talk possible fathers, but Dylan couldn’t do it. Instead, he finished his coffee and rose, somewhat awkwardly given that he had a fair-sized mug in his pocket, to his feet.
“Thanks so much for the coffee, Boris, but I must get off or I’ll be late. It’s been good to see you.”
“You, too, Dylan. Keep in touch, won’t you?”
“I will. And you.” He knew he wouldn’t. At least, he hoped he wouldn’t.
He walked, crablike, to his car, waving at Boris all the way.
Once inside, he fired the engine and drove off in totally the wrong direction. He couldn’t believe he’d actually stolen one of Boris’s mugs. It was complete and utter madness.
Now that he had it though, he needed to find a lab. If they could lift DNA from the mug and compare it to a swab taken from him, he’d be able to quash all notions of Boris being his father.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Trying to talk to teenagers while staying off CID radar wasn’t easy. It had taken Dylan three days to get to this position.
His first job on arriving in Dawson’s Clough had been to meet up with Frank and see what he’d managed to find out from his chums on the force. Not a lot, was the answer. They seemed to know little more than had already been reported in the local press. Kevin Mills had met up with a girl and a few other friends and had never made it home. No one knew any more than that.
Kevin’s parents had believed he was at a football practice session arranged by the school that night. There had been no activities at the school though. Kevin had dumped his football kit in the cemetery close to his home, intending to collect it at the end of the evening, and met up with his girlfriend.
Dylan had spoken to several of Kevin’s school friends, but none had known anything that hadn’t been reported in the local press. When he’d asked if Kevin could have known Prue, they’d all looked at him as if he’d bungee-jumped from the moon. Now, finally, he was walking through the shopping centre with Carly Trueman.
“We’ve told the police all we know,” she said. “They were at the school for days. We’ve had them asking us questions, we’ve had to sit through services for Kevin, we’ve had some woman talking about counselling—we’ve had the lot.”
She looked pale and frightened, and her eyes darted left and right as if she expected to see a killer or Kevin’s ghost.
“The police have been to my house, too,” she said. “They think I was the last person to see him.”
Kevin’s killer was the last person to see him.
“The police are okay,” he said. “They’re just trying to find out what happened. His parents will feel better when they know that.” At least, he hoped they found some sort of closure.
“Yeah.” She gave him a long distrustful look. “So why are you here asking questions? Why don’t you just ask the police?”
“I used to be a policeman, Carly, but these days, I work independently. They get busy and I have more time to get to the bottom of things.” That sounded official, as if the force would welcome his input. He didn’t attempt to make it clearer.
They passed a small café and he saw her gaze linger on a plate of cakes.
“Would you like a drink or something to eat?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t mind.”
The warmth hit them as soon as they stepped inside. There was only one customer, a woman sitting at a table who had a coffee in one hand and a sniffling toddler in the other. Hopefully, she’d be too preoccupied to wonder what this nervous-looking fifteen-year-old girl was doing with a forty-year-old man.
“What would you like, Carly?”
“A lemonade, please.” She looked at the display of cakes. “And a slice of chocolate cake?”
He ordered two slices of cake, a lemonade and a pot of tea.
While they waited, he talked about the weather, and about Bev and the kids—anything to get her to relax. It didn’t work. The poor kid was too shaken.
“You said a woman talked to you about counselling,” he said when their food and drinks were finally in front of them and they were sitting in a warm corner. “That’s not as bad as it sounds, you know. All it means really is having a chat with someone who understands how awful it is when a friend dies.”
“Yeah, I know. She was all right, too. The woman who came to the school, I mean. She didn’t talk to us as if we were kids. I might go.” She bit into her cake. “I’ll think about it.”
“Good idea. It’s hard to lose a friend. Talking about it often helps.”
She bit her lip and nodded.
“Were you good friends, you and Kevin?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“How was he when he left you that night? Was he okay? Was there anything bothering him?”
“He was great—the same as he always was. The police kept asking me that. There’s nothing I could tell them and there’s nothing I can tell you. Kevin was the same as he always was.”
Dylan nodded and smiled, but there was probably a lot she could tell him if he fed her the right prompts. “You’d been under the bridge, hadn’t you? I hear you met up for a couple of drinks?”
“That was my idea.” She picked at her cake. “There were a few of us there. We had a couple of drinks and a laugh. That was all.”
“And then Kevin walked you home?”
“Yes.”
“And he was happy enough?” Dylan asked.
“Of course he was.” She sounded confident about that. “We were going to meet up the next night.”
“He didn’t discuss any problems he was having?”
“No.” She shook her head slowly. “He didn’t have any problems. I know his dad was drinking a lot, ever since he lost his job, but that didn’t worry Kevin. He didn’t like it, but as he said, there was nothing any of them could do about it.”
Thanks to a chat with Frank and a scan of the local paper, Dylan knew about Kevin’s father and he could sympathise. Ron Mills had been drinking and gambling in equal measures since losing his job and his driving licence. Dylan could still remember the dark days after he’d been thrown out of the police force and, as he’d seen it then, onto the scrap heap. He’d hit the drink, too. But now, Mills had lost his son. Dylan hoped the poor bugger was getting support from somewhere.
“Did you know he’d told his parents he had football practice that night?” Dylan asked.
“No, he didn’t mention it. But I told my mum and dad I was going round to a girlfriend’s house to do homework, and I didn’t tell Kev that. It never crossed my mind.” She gulped down half a glass of lemonade. “I’ve told the police all this.”
“I know, Carly, and I’m sorry to make you go over it all again, but you might know more than you think.”
“I don’t know anything.”
Only a few crumbs, and an empty glass remained in front of her.
“Did you know Prue Murphy?” he asked her and her head flew up.
“Why do you ask that?”
“I’m curious.”
She traced something on the table. All the while her foot was tapping on the floor. “No. I didn’t know her.”
“Did Kevin?”
“No.” Her answer was too quick and she knew it.
“I think he did, Carly. I was at her funeral and I saw Kevin hanging around the church. How did he know her?”
“He didn’t know her so I don’t know why you’re asking about her. Kev said—” She broke off. “It was nothing though. Even he didn’t know what he’d seen.”
“What do you mean, Carly?”
“First off, I didn’t know Prue Murphy. Second off, Kev didn’t know her either.”
Dylan waited but she was still tracing lines on the table. “But?” he asked.
“He saw something.”
“What did he see?”
“Well—it’s hard to say. You know the night she was killed? He’d be
en grounded that night. He’d crept out of the house, though, and he stopped near her house to have a smoke before he went home. While he was standing there, a man came out of that woman’s house. He wondered if it could have been the burglar they’re looking for but, like I told him, it couldn’t have been. Kev said he was wearing a suit. Who heard of a burglar wearing a suit?”
So that was it. Kevin Mills had seen Prue’s killer and it had cost him his life.
“Not me,” he said. “What did this man look like?”
Carly shook her head and shrugged. “I told Kev he should have gone to the police but, like he said, what was the point? He couldn’t have given them a description of the bloke. He thought he was wearing a suit, but that was all.” She thought of something else. “It was the car he noticed. The day before—before Kev was killed—he saw a car and he thought it might have been the one outside that woman’s house that night.”
“Oh?”
“It was a different one though.”
“What was different about it, Carly?”
“I don’t know. Sorry.”
“The car he saw when you were with him. What was it like? Was it a sports car? A big car? An old car?”
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t see it.”
“How did he know it wasn’t the same car that was parked outside Prue Murphy’s house?”
“I don’t know.” She stopped for a moment to replay everything Kevin had said. “I don’t know, but it might have had something to do with the registration plate. When I said he should have gone to the police, he said there was no point because they wouldn’t thank him for giving him no description of the bloke and only half a registration plate. He couldn’t have gone anyway because he didn’t want his dad knowing he’d sneaked out of the house when he was supposed to be grounded.”
Dylan tried everything he could to refresh her memory, but she was adamant that Kevin hadn’t said more about the car and she hadn’t seen the one that had been similar.
“Who else might he have spoken to about it?” he asked.
“Probably no one. He only told me because I was with him when he saw that other one.”
“Who are his friends? Who’s his best friend, Carly?”
Dying Art (A Dylan Scott Mystery) Page 19
