His thoughts went round and round and somehow ended up back with Bev. Who the devil was she with?
Coming up with no answers, he went to the fridge for another beer. She’d called him a drunkard so he might as well live up to his reputation.
On Sunday evening, Dylan stopped the car outside the marital home. He was determined to indulge in a spot of straight talking with Bev. Apart from anything else, keeping two homes going—if he could call that flat of his a home—was downright expensive. Also, it gave his mother an excuse to hang around. She’d be far better off back in Birmingham. At least, Dylan would be better off if she was back there.
Luke, his bag swinging off his shoulder, raced on ahead. Bev was home because her car—their car—was on the drive, but the door was locked so Dylan rang the bell. How many husbands had to ring the confounded bell to gain entrance to their own homes?
She opened it and her face was bathed in smiles. “Hello. How are my two favourite boys?”
Oh, for—she’d been drinking. He was the drunkard and the bloody loser. Allegedly. Yet she was the one having to lean against the door frame for support.
Luke looked at Dylan and rolled his eyes. “Hi, Mum. You all right?”
“Never better.” She bumped into the wall as she walked down the hall and into the kitchen where Dylan saw an inch of white wine in the bottom of a bottle.
She spun around to look at him and he saw her struggle to bring his mouth into focus.
“Have you been fighting?” She wagged a finger at him as if he were one of her pupils.
“Sadly, no. That was the other bloke.” He didn’t want to talk about it. “Have you had a good time?”
Straight talking was out of the question. She didn’t drink often but, when she did, all she did was giggle. Until she had more than she could handle, at which point she burst into tears about something trivial.
“Great.” She picked up the bottle and waved it in front of Dylan. “You want a drink?”
He didn’t, not really, but it would give him an excuse to stay. “Why not? Thanks.”
She took an unopened bottle of white wine from the fridge and handed it to Dylan to open. At least he still had his uses.
“You’re drunk, Mum!”
“Nonsense. A bit tipsy, that’s all. So how’s your gran? Have you behaved? Did you have a good time?”
“Yeah, it was cool. What about you?” Luke asked. “What have you been doing?”
“Oh, a bit of shopping.”
“It’s a long way to go to shop.”
Laughing, she hugged him tight. “You’re as nosey as your dad.”
The phone rang out. Bev reached for it, dropped it, picked it up and almost dropped it again before trilling out the number. “It’s Tom for you, Luke. Don’t chat too long and you can’t see him after school tomorrow because it’s Lucy’s party, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Luke carried the phone to the sitting room to chat to his friend in private.
Bev fell into a chair at the table. She looked—well, Dylan couldn’t decide. There was an excitable look about her, but that could be alcohol induced. She was wearing black jeans and a loose white shirt. Her hair was blonder than when they’d lived together.
“Are you celebrating?” Dylan sat opposite her.
“Celebrating what?”
“You tell me.”
She took an enormous swallow of wine. “No, I’m not really celebrating. I just fancied a drink. Although it’s always good to get home, isn’t it?”
Her comment warmed him. This was her home and she was happy to be here. So she couldn’t have any desire to up sticks and live in Edinburgh.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Oh, Dylan.” She wagged an accusing finger at him. “Your flat must feel like home now.”
“Of course it doesn’t. It never will. It’ll always be temporary.” But he knew there was no reasoning with her when she was drunk. “So what did you find to do in Edinburgh? And who’s this friend you’ve been with?”
She looked at him for long moments. Either she was considering how to answer or she was trying to get him in focus. “His name’s Leonard.”
Dylan felt the air leave his lungs as if someone had punched him. Hard. Twice he opened his mouth to speak and twice nothing happened.
“I met him on the internet,” she said.
“What? You did what? For Christ’s sake, Bev.” Now he couldn’t seem to stop the words tripping over themselves. “How old are you, for Christ’s sake? You can’t go off meeting strangers. Anything could happen!”
“I’m not stupid.”
“You’re exactly that if you’ve gone all the way to Edinburgh to meet some aspiring fucking axe murderer.”
She rolled her eyes and sighed loudly. “Dylan, I am not stupid. I met him over the internet, yes, but through work. I was in contact with him through the school. He’s a librarian.”
For some reason this didn’t make Dylan feel any better. Leonard was still a he. Bev had still spent the weekend with him.
“Christ!” Dylan helped himself to another glass of wine. He’d have to leave his car here and get a taxi home. Which would mean getting another taxi early in the morning. He was past caring though. Well past caring. He drank some wine and took a deep calming breath. “Where did you stay?”
“What do you mean?”
Before Dylan could give vent to his frustration, Luke came back. He grabbed an apple and sat beside Dylan. “Tom’s got a new mobile phone. I think I should have one, don’t you?” He looked from one to the other of them. Even he sensed the charged atmosphere in the room. “Perhaps now isn’t a good time to ask.”
“Nonsense.” Bev put down her glass and gazed at their son. “What sort do you want?”
“It’s not a good time to ask.” Luke was confident of that. “I’ll have a think and we’ll talk about it tomorrow, yeah?”
“Good idea,” Dylan agreed. Talking to Bev right now was a waste of breath.
They chatted about mundane things, like the new “weirdo” teacher at Luke’s school, but Dylan’s mind was still going to dark places that centred around Bev and the unknown Leonard.
By the time Luke went to bed, Dylan was feeling slightly sick.
When they were alone again, Bev descended into silence. Dylan guessed it was the calm before the proverbial storm. Any minute now, she’d be crying about some long-dead pet hamster.
“Let’s go and sit down, shall we?” She picked up the wine, steadied herself with the help of the back of her chair as she stood and then swayed into the lounge.
Dylan was surprised he hadn’t been thrown out. Then again, nothing should surprise him when she was drunk.
She sat on the sofa and Dylan sat beside her in what had always been his place. She didn’t object.
“I didn’t sleep with him,” she said.
Her statement should have brought relief and reassurance, not another punch in the stomach. “Did you want to?”
She kicked off her shoes and curled her feet beneath her. “I wanted to want to.” She turned to look at him. “Does that make sense?”
“Of course it does.” He longed to shake her until she saw sense. People fell in love, they got married, they had kids and that was that. Some people fell out of love and got divorced. He and Bev, however, had never fallen out of love. And she knew it. “I feel like that all the time.”
Her expression changed from shocked to sad in the blink of an eye.
“When I’m stuck in that flat,” he said, “I long to go out for the evening with an interesting, attractive woman, take her back to my place—no, take her back to her place—”
“All right, I get the picture.” She banged down her glass on the table. “That’s charming, that is.”
“I wasn’t the one who spent the weekend in Edinburgh with someone else.”
She was quiet for so long that Dylan thought she’d fallen asleep. Her eyes were closed, her breathing regular—
“I di
dn’t spend the weekend with him,” she said at last. “Our school and his local school are doing a swap in the summer. A load of our pupils are going up there and the Scots are coming down here for a fortnight. The logistics are a nightmare. I’m one of six trying to sort things out this end and he’s liaising with the school up there.”
“I see.” He didn’t, not really.
“So, along with two teachers from their school, I met up with Leonard.” She sniffed, and then a solitary tear rolled down her cheek. “That was Friday night and the four of us spent an hour together on Saturday morning. The rest of the day I shopped. Today, I had a walk up by the castle and then caught the plane home.”
“Right.”
She promptly burst into tears and Dylan had no idea why. Was she thinking of the day she buried Goldie Goldfish, was she upset because she’d told him the real reason for her trip to Edinburgh, or was she sad because she hadn’t found her way into Leonard’s bed?
“You’ve had too much wine, Bev.”
“I know.” She rubbed the tears from her eyes, smearing makeup across her face. “Will you stay here tonight, Dylan? Please?”
Mentally, he rubbed his hands in glee. This was the first step. Once he spent the night, it would become permanent. Life would return to—
“You’ve spent enough nights on the sofa in the past,” she said, “so one more won’t hurt, will it?”
“The sofa?”
“The spare bed’s a mess. I’ve been sorting out junk in the attic and it’s all piled up in there.”
It was Sunday. The last time he’d had the luxury of a bed was Thursday night. Hell’s teeth.
“Listen, why don’t I sleep where I should? In my bed? In our bed?”
She made a noise that could have been yes or no. Seconds later she was snoring like—well, like a woman who’d polished off the best part of two bottles of wine.
Chapter Thirteen
“Stop snivelling, Crina!” Anca was trying to be patient with her sister, but it was difficult. “It’s going to be fine. Better than fine, it’s going to be wonderful. You do want to go to England, don’t you?”
Crina sniffed and nodded.
“Well then, stop snivelling and give me a smile.”
“Sorry.”
Crina’s sobbed apology softened Anca’s mood. Her sister had just had her thirteenth birthday so it was natural that she should be frightened. Anca was fifteen and even she was scared. She knew, though, that their only chance of a decent life was in England.
She couldn’t think about the horror stories she’d heard or worry about the statistics surrounding girls forced into the sex trade. All she could do was trust George. He’d said he could only get cleaning jobs because they couldn’t speak English. That was fine. Better than fine. For herself, she could cope with anything if it meant a better life for them. The thought brought an involuntary shudder and she amended it to almost anything.
George could be trusted, she was sure of it. She must be positive and upbeat.
“We’ll sleep in a real bed, Crina. Imagine that. No more sleeping in the rain. No more begging for food. We’ll eat and sleep, earn lots of money—I can work hard, you know I can, and I bet it’s not long before we can buy our own apartment. It’ll have a bed, a kitchen and everything.”
Crina nodded again, but she didn’t look excited by the prospect.
As frightened as she was, Anca couldn’t wait to get moving. She felt sure they could trust George. He wore clothes unlike anything she’d ever seen. They’d been so fine, she’d longed to reach out and touch his sleeve. She hadn’t, of course.
“Come on.” Anca reached for Crina’s hand. “If we walk slowly, it will be almost eight o’clock when we get to the station.”
Crina put her smaller, trusting hand in hers and they set off at a slow pace.
Please be there, George. Please be there.
When they arrived at the station, the big clock told them it was only twenty past seven. They still had forty long minutes to wait.
They sat on a bench outside, close enough to see who came and left, but not close enough for the police to move them on. Even at this early hour, there were a few rich tourists about, but Anca ignored them. If the police caught her, if she missed George—
She couldn’t bear it.
Crina was sobbing again. She’d be fine for a few minutes, her attention on something else, then she’d start crying.
“Crina, stop it. Soon we’ll be in England. Maybe even tonight.”
Crina looked at her, her big dark eyes filled with doubt, and Anca had to look away. Maybe it was foolish to trust George. “Trust no one,” had been Danut’s advice.
The minutes dragged by.
Anca was hungry, but she couldn’t risk begging or stealing food. This was too important. It was worth starving for.
At ten minutes to eight, Anca’s spirits dipped. He wasn’t coming. It cost a lot of money to get them to England and, although they would pay him back, that would take time. He’d probably found someone more grateful to take their places.
“He might not come,” she warned Crina.
“What will happen if he doesn’t?”
“Why, you silly thing, we’ll get by. We always get by, don’t we?”
“Yes.” Crina smiled at her.
Anca went inside to check the clock and watched it touch the hour. Just as she stepped outside again, a large car slowed to a stop. It had dark windows so she couldn’t see inside. The door opened.
“It’s George!” Anca could have wept with relief. “Crina, it’s George!”
He walked toward them, looking up and down the street all the while, until he was standing in front of them.
“Get in the car,” he said. “Quickly.”
Anca tugged on Crina’s arm and half-dragged her slow-moving sister to the vehicle.
George opened the back door and bundled them inside. “Good girls.”
Anca had never been in a car before or, if she had, she couldn’t remember. She certainly hadn’t been inside one like this. The seats were a beautiful dark blue leather. She inhaled, drinking in the smell of the hide.
George sat in the front seat. Another man was driving.
The car pulled away and Anca was surprised to discover that, although no one could see inside the car, she had a perfect view of the streets. She felt an urge to wave at the people, to shout out the good news. We’re going to England!
Crina shivered beside her, which was silly as it was warm inside the car.
“Are we going to England now, George?” Anca asked.
“Soon. First you must have a medical.”
“A medical? Why?”
“It’s the rule. Don’t worry, it won’t take long, and then you’ll be on your way to England.”
He turned and spoke to the driver in a language Anca didn’t understand.
Anca was terrified. She hadn’t expected them to undergo a medical. She and Crina were both healthy, at least, she hoped they were, but Danut knew all there was to know about England and he’d never mentioned such a thing.
It felt like hours but was probably only minutes later when the car slowed in front of tall metal gates. The gates opened as if by magic and the car glided round a curve in the road to stop in front of a tall house with shutters at the windows. It reminded Anca of the first orphanage she and Crina had stayed in. The memory made her shudder. They’d had to run from there.
“Is this where we have our medicals?” she asked.
“Yes.” George didn’t seem as friendly as he had last week. Perhaps he was worried. Anca knew he was breaking the law, and she tried to feel grateful to him.
The house had a grand-looking exterior, but, when they were led inside, Anca thought it shabby. Dirty too.
She and Crina were taken to a small, windowless room and told to wait.
“I’m frightened,” Crina whispered.
“Don’t be silly. What is there to be frightened of?” The only thing that worri
ed Anca was failing their medical. Once they reached England, they would cope with anything. If the jobs George found them weren’t what he’d promised, they would run away and find something else.
A large woman came into the room. “You first.” She addressed Crina.
“Can’t we both—”
“Of course not.” She dismissed Anca’s protest. “The room is very small and the doctor is a busy man.”
Anca nodded. It made sense and she didn’t want to be a nuisance. “Go on, Crina. I’ll be right behind you.”
With Crina gone, Anca grew nervous. She was supposed to look out for her sister and it didn’t feel right to be parted. No harm could come to her though. She was only having a medical and would be back soon.
A couple of minutes later, the nurse returned. “Your turn now.”
Anca jumped to her feet, pleased that it hadn’t taken long. “Where’s Crina?”
“Waiting for you. Come along now.”
Anca followed her to another small room where a young man with a stethoscope round his neck told her lie on the couch. Shaking, Anca did so.
“Right,” he said, “this won’t take a moment.” He filled a syringe.
“What’s that?” She hated the way her voice shook.
“Inoculation for England,” he replied. “Hold out your arm.”
Anca thrust out her arm. She hadn’t realised inoculations were needed, but was more than happy to have one. This was it. She was going to England.
He plunged the needle into her arm, then took the stethoscope that was hanging round his neck to listen to her heart.
“That’s it,” he said. “All done.”
How stupid they’d been to worry. Their medicals had taken two minutes at most and soon, they would begin their new lives in England.
Anca tried to sit up. The room began to spin, forcing her to grip the sides of the couch. “I don’t feel—”
Her voice wasn’t working properly. Again, she tried to sit up. She couldn’t. Her muscles refused to cooperate.
Where was Crina?
It was her last conscious thought.
Chapter Fourteen
Dylan had arranged to meet Elma Ritchie at Starbucks at eleven-thirty and he was there with twenty minutes to spare. As he’d been late setting out for Lancashire, thanks mainly to having to leave the marital home—make that marital bed, oh yes—and go to his flat for his clothes, he called that a result.
Dead Silent (A Dylan Scott Mystery) Page 10
