by Janet Tanner
‘So how long ago was that?’ I asked.
‘Maybe . . . the year before the fire? I’d have to check. But Dawn wasn’t here that long.’
‘Do you know why she chose to come here?’ I asked. ‘It’s not the sort of place I’d expect to attract a girl who’s looking to move away from home. Surely she could have got something in her line of work somewhere with a lot more life than Stoke Compton.’
‘I can answer that,’ Belinda said. ‘She came because of a boyfriend. He was another thespian and they met at some drama festival or other.’
‘George Clancy,’ I said.
Belinda’s eyebrows lifted a shade.
‘You know George?’
‘No, but your colleague, Katie, described him as the Players’ leading man, and ‘a heart-throb’. He sounds exactly the sort of chap a girl might up sticks for.’
‘I think Katie has a soft spot for him.’ Belinda smiled wryly. ‘But yes, you’re right, he’s a sort of male equivalent of Dawn.’
‘They weren’t living together, though. Obviously.’
‘Oh no, it hadn’t got that far, and never did, of course. Dawn had got a job at Compton Properties, and Lewis Crighton fixed her up with accommodation. He was the letting agent for what was the electrical shop and the flat above, and he knew Lisa was looking for someone to share – her previous flatmate had just got married, and Lisa was finding it difficult to meet the rent.’
‘Well, well! Lewis Crighton was the letting agent?’ Here was yet another link with the man who was my prime suspect for an illicit involvement with Dawn.
‘He was – still is, for all I know.’
‘So Lisa and her husband don’t own the property, then?’
‘I don’t think so. They just took over the whole of the building after whoever owns it had it refurbished.’
‘Lucky for them, then. The café seems to be doing really well.’
‘It would seem so. I don’t think it’s done a lot for their relationship, though. Word on the block is that they’re at one another’s throats half the time.’
‘Interesting.’ That could explain why Lisa was so sullen and resentful, I thought. ‘So.’ I changed tack. ‘Was Dawn still seeing George at the time of the fire?’
‘I don’t think so. They broke up not so long after she came here. I suppose what had seemed like the perfect romance at a distance lost its sparkle when they were able to see each other every day.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Much the same as Lisa and Paul, I suppose.’
‘Was it an amicable break-up?’ I asked.
Belinda shook her head, her lips pursed.
‘I really couldn’t say. All I know is that it was over, and Dawn, at least, was playing the field. And who could blame her? When you’re young and have the world at your feet, why shouldn’t you have your fun?’
I smiled. ‘Why not indeed? And George?’
‘Again, I couldn’t say. I have better things to do than track the love lives of the young folk of Compton,’ Belinda said crisply.
‘Point taken.’ I didn’t want to alienate her by pressing the point. ‘You said there were things that you never put in your reports. What did you mean by that?’
Belinda reached for a pen from the desk tidy, twirling it between her fingers, though I didn’t suppose she had any intention of writing anything.
‘This is where it gets tricky,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to be talking facts here, just impressions.’
‘Fair enough.’ From my own personal experience I knew just how important gut feelings could be.
‘Number one. Neither Dawn nor Lisa wanted to talk about the fire. Now, in some ways I suppose you could say that was understandable. But I usually find people are only too eager to talk. It’s cathartic for them, somehow, to let it all out to someone willing to listen. But not those two. Neither of them would open up. It was almost as if they were hiding something. Or were scared out of their wits that they might say the wrong thing. Don’t ask me what – I haven’t a clue. I can only tell you it’s what I thought at the time.’
I mulled this over.
‘You’re talking about the immediate aftermath of the fire, I presume.’ She nodded. ‘What about when Brian Jennings was arrested and tried? Did you interview them again then?’
Belinda’s lips twisted into a crooked grin.
‘I tried, of course. But neither of them was ever available for an interview, not even after it was no longer sub-judice. I had the devil’s own job to drag so much as a sound bite out of them. And to me, that’s . . . strange. Or certainly unusual.’
‘It is,’ I said thoughtfully. In my experience too, generally speaking, people, and victims especially, wanted to have their say. To demand justice, to express relief or dissatisfaction with a verdict. Not to want to say anything at all was certainly unusual, but something I was beginning to grow used to in this investigation. Nobody, but nobody, wanted to say anything.
‘You never wondered about that, pursued it?’ I asked.
Belinda shrugged. ‘Not my job. I did wonder, of course, but I’m a local hack, not an investigative reporter, and in any case, I’m kept too busy to look into things too deeply. The flower show has to be covered, and the swimming-club galas, and the main problem is finding a good lead story for the front page each week. Sometimes they come looking for you – parents of sick children raising funds to take them for treatment abroad, or whatever, the occasional bit of excitement like a shooting or a drowning, or plans for a new supermarket causing an upset, but sometimes I’m struggling, and it all eats into my time.’
Movement in the main office on the other side of the window attracted my attention – a tall figure in a leather jacket had come in and was walking up the aisle between the desks. Josh! My heart skipped a beat.
A moment later the door opened.
‘Oh, sorry Belinda, I didn’t realize you had someone with you . . . Sally! What a surprise!’
‘Hello, Josh,’ I said, thinking: That was a tall one! Surely Josh had seen us through the window – the slatted blinds were open and he’d been heading straight for us.
‘Just filling her in on a few details, Josh. Things that aren’t in my cuttings files that you so generously made available to her,’ Belinda said, her tone heavily overlaid with sarcasm.
‘In that case I’ll leave you to it.’
‘It’s OK – I’ve got to go out now in any case.’ Belinda got up, reaching for her jacket and slipping it on.
I got up too. ‘Thanks very much, Belinda.’
‘No problem. Though I’m not sure I’ve been much help.’
‘You have, actually.’
‘Good.’ She grabbed her bag, slid a shorthand notebook and a pencil into it, and left.
‘So what’s she been telling you?’ Josh asked when we were alone.
‘Background stuff about Dawn, mostly,’ I said.
‘Oh come on, it must have been a bit more than that.’
‘Background stuff is very useful. I’m looking for someone who might have wanted rid of Dawn – permanently – remember. And she also said the girls were very reticent about the fire. I think I should try to talk to Lisa Curry again – for all the good it will do.’
Josh sighed. ‘Oh Sally, is there no way I can talk you out of going on with this?’
‘None,’ I said flatly. ‘And by the way, I’ve been trying to get hold of you. Tara said she’d left a message on your mobile.’
‘Oh, I haven’t picked them up lately,’ Josh said blithely. ‘And I try to avoid Tara’s as long as possible, anyway. They usually mean more work. Now if I’d known it was you . . . I must give you my number. I don’t know why I haven’t. So why were you trying to get hold of me? Something nice, I hope.’
‘Actually I wanted to rearrange for tomorrow. I went to the meeting of Compton Players last night, and there’s another on Wednesday. I’d really like to make it.’
‘That’s me put in my place then,’ Josh said ruefully.
‘O
h no, it’s not like that! It’s just that . . .’
‘I know. Your investigation comes first.’
‘Couldn’t we make it another time?’
‘What about tonight then?’
‘I thought you said you were busy tonight.’
‘Things change,’ Josh said breezily. ‘If you turn me down, I’ll know you really are trying to avoid me.’
Though I was a bit puzzled as to why he was now suddenly free tonight, a little shiver of warmth tickled deep inside me.
‘You’ve talked me into it.’
‘I’ll pick you up at about eight.’
‘Fine. And now I have to go and collect my new laptop. Exciting or what?’
‘Sally, you are incorrigible.’
I grinned. ‘I know.’
Twelve
Next day I spent a good long while transferring all my notes to my new laptop, and drinking plenty of strong coffee. Goodness knows, I needed it!
Josh and I had spent another very pleasant evening together, checking out the merits of yet another country pub. I filled him in on my visit to the Compton Players, though I didn’t, of course, mention the fright I’d had when I thought I was being followed on the way home, and Josh regaled me with some amusing stories of situations he’d encountered in his line of work – the nonagenarian who couldn’t find her false teeth and refused to be photographed without them, the time he’d been trying to capture scenes of heavy snowfall, slipped and ended up in a deep drift.
When he drove me home we spent a good quarter of an hour getting to know one another more intimately in the privacy of his car, parked well out of the sight-lines from Mum’s bedroom window, and Josh suggested that our next date should be him cooking a meal for me at the cottage he was renting on the outskirts of Stoke Compton.
‘You can cook?’ I teased. ‘This I must sample!’
Josh grinned. ‘Bit of an exaggeration,’ he admitted. ‘But I’m very good at ordering tasty takeaways.’
‘That’s more like it . . .’ I began, but he silenced me with another kiss, and I thought that it really was not Josh’s culinary talents I was interested in!
Now, as I tried to concentrate on making some sense out of the tangled bits of information I’d gleaned so far, it occurred to me how things had changed. Not much more than a week ago I’d been trapped in a moribund relationship that was in even worse shape than I’d realized at the time, and bored out of my mind by enforced inactivity. Now I was fully occupied, but actually having to force myself to concentrate on Dawn Burridge’s romantic involvements because my mind was wandering to my own very promising budding relationship!
That evening I set out in Dad’s car for Stoke Compton, and once again I was lucky enough to find a parking space close to the town hall. I wondered if I’d spot Lewis Crighton and Sarah again, but tonight the upper windows of Compton Properties were all in darkness.
I made my way via the lift to the upper room in the town hall where the players met, and some of them greeted me like an old friend while others ignored me. John, the director, was quite cool – he’d realized I was no budding Emma Thompson, I supposed. Once again ‘gorgeous George’ failed to put in an appearance, and Bella Crighton was missing too. The meeting took much the same form as before, though tonight we were reading Blithe Spirit. And when proceedings drew to a close, Delyth once again invited me to join some of the members for a drink at the Feathers, and this time I accepted, having warned Mum I might be a bit late home.
The Feathers had none of the cosy comfort of the inns I’d been visiting with Josh. It was a typical town-centre pub, rather shabby, with ring-marked tables, tatty cardboard beer mats and a large screen television mounted on the wall that was, mercifully, not turned on tonight. The walls were hung with faded, ancient prints and discoloured by years of cigarette smoke in the days before the ban, the chairs were slightly wonky and the floor covered in a threadbare carpet. The members of the group didn’t seem unduly bothered, though – as their local, they probably no longer noticed how run down the place was, and they took all the liberties of regulars, pushing tables together so that we could sit in one big circle.
Everyone seemed to be buying and paying for their own drinks – a long-established ritual to avoid big rounds, I imagined – but I insisted on buying one for Delyth. She really had been very nice to me. I sat between her and the girl whose perpetual uniform seemed to be a fun fur and leggings and who, I discovered, was Amanda Fricker, the girl whom Dawn had usurped as principal girl in the annual pantomime.
At first the conversation was dominated by discussion about the relative values of the plays we’d been reading, and how they might be cast. George’s name came up. ‘He’s not here, though, is he?’ someone said.
‘He’ll come out of the woodwork if there’s a good part on offer,’ someone else remarked.
‘I’ve heard a lot about George,’ I ventured. ‘He’s very good, isn’t he?’
Delyth nodded. ‘He won best actor in the one-act festival a couple of years ago.’
‘And brought Dawn back as well as the cup.’ Amanda’s tone was unpleasant. ‘It didn’t last long, though, did it? Dawn was never going to be satisfied with someone who couldn’t afford to keep her in the manner she thought she deserved.’
There was a small embarrassed silence. Then: ‘Don’t let’s go into all that again,’ Delyth said. ‘Especially not now poor Dawn’s not here to defend herself.’
Amanda snorted. ‘What’s to defend? No man was safe with her around. She even worked her wiles on John, getting him to cast her in all the best parts. And the trouble she caused between Bella and Lewis . . .’
‘I don’t think Lewis was entirely blameless,’ Delyth said. Her cheeks had turned a little pink. ‘And John cast her because she was good.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion.’
‘She was good! And honestly, Amanda, this is the sort of talk that’s driving George away. You know how much he thought of Dawn, even after . . .’ She broke off. ‘Anyway, I don’t like to hear you speak ill of the dead.’
‘Let’s change the subject,’ one of the others said. ‘Or George isn’t the only one we’ll be driving away.’ She winked at me, and I smiled back, but my mind was busy.
Dawn certainly had made enemies, just as Alice had inferred. And it had just been confirmed to me that she did have a fling with Lewis Crighton, and probably others too, both married and single. But I was still a long way from discovering who she might have upset so badly that they could have wanted her dead.
Not George, it would seem – it sounded as if he still carried a torch for her. Or was it guilt that was keeping him away from the Compton Players? I didn’t know, and short of continuing to insinuate myself into their group, I couldn’t see how I was going to find out.
It was gone half past ten by the time people began getting up to leave, and I took my cue to do the same.
As I got into my car, the memory of the last time I’d made this journey hit me, and a sensation of unease fluttered in my tummy. Since some of the others had left the pub at the same time as me, there was a flurry of cars pulling out of the Square as I did, and there were headlights behind me through the traffic lights and the first junction. I kept checking nervously as one by one they peeled off and by the time I was out of the built-up area, my mirror reflected only the last street lamps and an empty road behind me. A little way out into the country and headlights glared in my mirror again; I put my foot down hard, but still the lights closed in on me and I saw the car was pulling out to overtake. My stomach muscles tightened and I felt the beginnings of the same panic I’d experienced the other night – was he going to box me in? But hardly had the thought formed in my mind than he was roaring past me, going like a bat out of hell. Normally I’d have been worried that I might come upon him around the next bend, having either lost control or collided with an oncoming vehicle; tonight I felt nothing but relief that at least he wasn’t following me.
Apart from a
few cars going in the opposite direction, I saw no one else. But I was very glad, all the same, when I reached the farm yard.
‘You see? There was nothing to worry about, was there?’ I said aloud. And the only reply was Scrumpy’s obligatory greeting.
Thursday dawned wet and windy; with a leaden sky making everything dark and gloomy, the onset of spring, which had seemed imminent only yesterday, now seemed as far away as ever. Definitely a day for staying indoors to work rather than going out to investigate!
I booted up my new laptop, organized the files I’d transferred from my memory stick, and was staring at the screen, deep in thought, when the phone rang. Mum was out seeing to the hens, I knew – I didn’t envy her in this weather! – so I answered it and was surprised to hear Rachel’s voice.
‘Sally? That is you, isn’t it?’
‘Oh yes, it’s me. Hi, Rach.’
‘Are you in this morning? I’ve got a couple of hours free, and I was thinking of popping over.’
‘I’m not going anywhere. I’d love to see you.’
‘I’ll be over in about half an hour, then. And we can talk about going down to Dorset.’
That reminded me – I hadn’t done any more about finding an address for Dawn’s parents. Whilst waiting for Rachel, I went on line and searched for a family named Burridge in the Wedgeley Down area. There were two, a C.T. Burridge, and an Andrew, and I hadn’t a clue which was Dawn’s father. But Burridge wasn’t exactly a common name, and the chances were they were both related – a brother or an uncle, perhaps. I checked the addresses – Ivy Cottage, Parsonage Lane, and forty-nine Keats Road. Chances were, I thought, that Keats Road was a new estate, and Ivy Cottage an older property. But I really didn’t have time to try either of them now. Rachel would be arriving at any minute.
Or was I just making excuses? I wasn’t looking forward to approaching Dawn’s family, and I knew it was just another sign that I was definitely going soft. Contacting the bereaved was never something I enjoyed, but I’d never shrunk from doing it where necessary. Now the thought of trying to elicit information from the parents of a dead girl, and possibly informing them I didn’t believe her death had been accidental at all, was making me shudder inwardly.
