by Penny Grubb
‘What floor do you want, love?’ The voice that fired the question wasn’t unfriendly, but had nothing of the light banter she’d heard before.
‘Uh …’ Annie flinched. Mustn’t pick six or any other floor they didn’t want her to go to. Couldn’t get her head round what to say. Their suspicion rolled at her like a wave. On impulse she lurched forward and jabbed at the panel.
Her tangled hair with its vile payload pushed briefly between them. She was aware of the recoil, faces turned away. She felt relief.
As she slumped back into the corner, the relaxed chatter resumed. She tried to concentrate on it but there was nothing to bite on – a dissection of a recent rugby match and a mild debate over Big Brother. Annie raised her head a little and watched through half-closed eyes. She flicked her gaze towards the third man, the one with the bafflingly familiar air. Who did he remind her of? As her gaze focused, she felt her eyes open wide in surprise. It wasn’t the same man at all. This wasn’t the number three she’d seen last night. It was someone else altogether. Last night’s had been a big man. This one was smaller and much older. But it wasn’t that he was a stranger that shot astonishment through her. Like the man she’d seen last night, he, too, looked familiar.
She’d seen them both before, but where? She hadn’t been in Hull long enough for stray faces to implant themselves on her subconscious. Could they have been in the crowd she’d pushed through that first visit? She felt she knew their faces better than from a passing glimpse in a crowd.
A lighter flicked. A moment later smoke spiralled in silver curves and she breathed in the sharpness of tobacco mixed with the sweet tang of cannabis.
When the lift lurched to a halt and the doors slid apart she couldn’t be sure what floor they’d reached, but a voice said, ‘There you go, love.’ Hands steadied her from the back of the compartment and eased her out through the doors.
The surge of relief that coursed through her became triumph at the squeal of the doors sliding together behind her. She’d fooled them and she must only be one or two floors below the top. Straining to keep the whine of the lift mechanism at the edge of her hearing she leapt for the staircase.
The soft chatter of voices didn’t register until too late. She swung round the corner and cannoned into something semi-solid, semi-soft. At once she was engulfed in a blaze of colour and overpowered by a cloud of talcum powder.
‘Ow! What on earth…!’
A mountainous woman staggered back from her, eyes wide with shock. A man leapt forward. Annie raised her hands instinctively to ward off attack and saw fear light in his face. She’d run into a couple just leaving their flat. The woman was dressed in acres of voluminous flowered cotton that had grabbed Annie shroud-like and knocked her out of balance.
‘I’m sorry. My fault … wasn’t looking …’ She gabbled out the words, waved her hand in a gesture of apology. The lift? Was that the sound of it stopping or was it just slowing?
‘Do you realize …’ The man puffed himself out maybe to cover the fear he’d shown and set himself in front of Annie to harangue her.
It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again as she dodged round him and took the stairs in twos.
Comments followed her up the stairwell. ‘Disgusting … Leave her be … might have a knife …’
The lift? In an agony of suspense she fought to catch the sound of it. Had it stopped? Was she too late?
No! Another surge of triumph fought with the fire in her lungs as she leapt up the concrete stairs. It was just slowing now. She’d beaten them.
Above her was the top landing. She eased herself to the point where the glass wall from the staircase would show her the outline of their legs as they emerged. She would see which direction they took and then creep up and follow. The glass panes in their metal frames were a patchwork of old and new, yellowed and graffiti-sprayed. Perfect cover if she didn’t move.
A sudden tapping startled her into absolute stillness. Someone stood waiting for the lift to arrive. The steel toecaps of his boots beat an impatient tattoo on the concrete floor. Was he waiting for three men to arrive, or was he an innocent bystander off on some late errand? Annie kept her stare fixed on the impatiently tapping foot, watched it stop as the lift clanked to a halt, saw it anticipate the opening door with a forward step.
She waited for the feet to step back again to let the lift’s passengers out but they didn’t. They went on in.
No one got out.
The doors began to close.
What? Annie started up as an irrational anger grasped her. They’d stayed in the lift. It was all a front. They travelled to the top floor and then down again to their real destination to fool anyone who stood at the bottom and watched the dial.
They wouldn’t get away from her. Not when she was this close. She leapt up and round the corner and sprang at the closing lift doors. Too late. They slid shut.
Her chest heaved with the exertion. She looked at the blank metal wall and gasped in a deep breath, appalled at her own stupidity. The adrenalin rush of being so close and then losing them had almost cannoned her back into their midst. That would have blown her cover good and proper.
A sudden clunk. Before she could react, the doors in front of her slid apart again.
She stood face to face with a grizzle-haired man whose girth strained a battered blue boiler suit from under which a pair of steel-toecapped boots emerged. He was the lift’s only occupant.
‘There you go, love. Just spotted you. Hop aboard.’
Annie stammered out her thanks and stepped inside, staring into the corners as though she could possibly have failed to notice three large men had they been in there. Had they followed her out of the lift lower down? No. Impossible. And it hadn’t stopped again until now. They had to be here, there was nowhere else they could be. It had to be the wrong lift. The contretemps with the couple on the lower landing had disorientated her. She should stay up here on the top floor. She should get out of the lift before it obeyed the man’s command to take them right to the bottom of the tower.
But she didn’t get out because she knew it wasn’t the wrong lift. The sickliness of the men’s aftershave held in the air. And all the way down Annie was conscious of the sweet tang of the joint they’d smoked on their way up.
CHAPTER 13
EARLY THE NEXT morning, Annie blinked her eyes open and lay motionless bathed in a clean white light. It seemed all but impossible to sleep beyond the early morning no matter how late she went to bed. Maybe it was the way the curtainless window, undersized and high on the wall, let in the dawn that flowed up the Humber with the morning tide.
Pat had been in bed when Annie returned in the small hours. She’d stood and listened to the snores from the master bedroom and considered waking her boss to tell her what happened.
They vanished into thin air … I was that close …
Drama queen….
Pat wouldn’t say that. Pat would say … When she thought about it, Annie had known just what Pat would say.
You got in the lift with them! After all I’ve said to you. After what happened to me!
Her desperate need for sleep was overridden only by a greater need to wash the filth out of her hair, and she’d decided that whatever had happened would keep till morning. Of course they hadn’t vanished. There was a perfectly logical explanation. There had to be.
And now she found her few hours’ sleep had chased away last night’s demons. She’d woken with a perfectly respectable theory about those three men and their so-called disappearance. Her subconscious could chew it over for a few more hours and then she’d test it out before she tried it on Pat later in the day.
Her early start had the low sun blazing bright in her face as she drove into Milesthorpe heading for the crescent where she parked outside Tremlow’s house. Annie intended to get to him while yesterday’s visit was fresh in his mind.
She pulled his garden gate shut behind her and walked down the path
round to the back of the house where she paused to look at the tiny square of lawn fraying at the edges and the borders of weed-dappled soil. It was easy to picture Tremlow out here in his fussy way keeping order in his small plot, though he’d clearly let things slide over the last week or so. The lower half of the garden rambled wild, a path of sorts forced down one side. A footpath edged the bottom of these gardens so there would be access from down there, a shortcut from somewhere; it was the way the colonel had arrived that night.
She looked in through the kitchen window as she raised her hand to knock at the door. The sun’s glare created a sharp dark-light divide in the small room. Tremlow sat at the table, hands cradling a mug, face immobile. He must have seen her but gave no sign, so she rapped her knuckles on the wood of the door.
No answer.
Gingerly she eased the door open and took a step inside. ‘Mr Tremlow, may I come in?’
‘I suppose you will, whatever I say.’ He didn’t look at her; his tone was surly.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you again, Mr Tremlow, but I need a bit more information.’
‘What? What do you want?’
‘I’d like you to take me through the events of that evening just so I can get things straight in my head. There are a few details I’m not clear on.’
‘Why should I? What right have you to ask me?’
Annie kept her voice even. ‘Did you know Terry Martin, Mr Tremlow?’
‘Know him? I’d seen him about. We’d all seen him hanging about asking questions.’
‘What sort of questions did he ask you, Mr Tremlow?’
Tremlow swung round to throw her a furious expression. ‘That’s none of your business. You’ve no right asking me any questions. You’re not the police.’
‘No, but Terry Martin’s mother is very upset. I just want to help her.’
‘What’s that to do with me?’
‘I’m trying to find out what happened. She needs to know.’
‘You know what happened. Everyone knows what happened. Why is everyone going over it all?’
Annie played a card she wasn’t sure she held. ‘Did Terry try to blackmail you?’
The reaction from Tremlow was the last thing she expected. He crumpled. Annie looked on aghast as he laid his head on his hands and sobbed. She felt terrible, as though she’d violated him, forced her way into his private space. It wasn’t where she wanted to be. Through the sobs he gasped out something. She had to lean close to hear the words.
‘It’s all true,’ he moaned. ‘All of it. I didn’t know what an evil man he was, but it’s all true. Evil. He took money.’
Her hand reached out as though to touch him, to offer some morsel of comfort, but she felt any contact she made would be a red hot spear through him. The only thing she could comfort him with was her absence and she wouldn’t go yet. She leant closer.
‘What happened the night he died?’
‘Who?’ he sobbed. ‘Who are you talking about?’
‘Terry Martin. What was he doing here?’
‘How should I know?’
‘But why would he have come round? Had he come to see you?’
‘No, no! He was next door. He wasn’t in my house.’
‘But why would he go next door?’
‘Trying to break in, the police said.’ He paused then looked up at her, his face gaunt and tortured but radiating a sly triumph as though he’d got one over on her. ‘He was on that platform, you know. Just where I said.’
Annie knew she stood at the verge of Tremlow’s secret but couldn’t draw meaning from his words. His tear-streaked face was the mask on a wrecked man. His eyes lost focus as though his thoughts drifted off elsewhere.
‘You saw Terry on the platform,’ she prompted. ‘And then…?’
He screeched at her, pushing his face close to hers so she felt a spray of spittle, smelt his fusty sour breath ‘I didn’t see him! You can tell his mother I didn’t see him, all right? Satisfied? Are you satisfied? Now get out! Get out of my house!’
Annie recoiled disgusted as he collapsed again across the table, face hidden in his arms. She hadn’t meant to push him to the edge like this. Yet he still hadn’t told her anything that made any sense. Hating herself for it, she knew she could use the state he was in. If he would just calm down a little she’d attack again and he’d give her everything; what really happened that night; what he did and didn’t see; what it was he’d hidden since that night.
There was only one way to calm him back to coherence. ‘I’m leaving now, Mr Tremlow.’
She felt his relief as his trembling stilled. How long to leave him? Long enough for him to regain equilibrium. She’d return like a blackmailer who’d sworn to have taken the last ever payment. Then she’d sit down with him and demand to know exactly what it was he was hiding.
As she stepped backwards towards the door, she couldn’t break her gaze from his immobile form. Would he be OK? Should she stay in the garden, try to keep an eye on him? No, the bolts would go on and she’d be lucky if he didn’t call the police. But she couldn’t leave him alone in this state. What if he did something stupid?
She returned to the car and pulled out her phone. What Tremlow needed was to hear the solidly rational tones of his old friend.
A clipped and reassuringly sane voice answered her call. ‘Ludgrove here.’
‘Colonel Ludgrove, it’s Annie Raymond. I’m a bit worried about Mr Tremlow. I wondered if you could give him a call.’ She told him about Tremlow’s collapse, implying without speaking the lie, that she’d met Tremlow by chance and taken him home.
‘Don’t you worry,’ said the colonel. ‘The chap’s highly strung, but a good sort on the whole. I’ll call him on the telephone.’
Calm him, she wanted to say, just enough to be vulnerable to my questions.
As she ended the call, Annie checked the time. Tremlow could have ten minutes on the phone with his old mate, then she’d give him half an hour to settle down. That would allow her time to touch base with Doris Kitson. Today, she would use every second of her time in Milesthorpe and not allow herself to be sidetracked into delays and unfruitful dead ends like yesterday.
Doris Kitson’s house offered a complete contrast to Tremlow’s from the moment Annie saw it. In the middle of a small terrace, its front garden was a nightmare of ordered clutter, rockeries and mounds. Every inch of metal railing and wooden frame sported bright fresh paint in blues and greens. If the colour scheme were an attempt to blend in with the greenery and big skies, it was a comprehensive failure. Scrubbed paving gleamed between narrow borders where the geometric lines of the flower displays made Annie think of a municipal park in miniature.
As she climbed out of the car her gaze was caught by the jacket that lay on the passenger seat, an invitation to someone to smash a window to grab it. She tossed it into the boot before locking the car and making her way into Doris Kitson’s front garden.
The door swung open as Annie picked her way up the narrow path. A big woman with an iron-hard grey perm stood framed in the doorway, gave a roguish smile and raised her hand to stop the speech that Annie hadn’t begun to make.
‘No need. No need. I know who you are. Annie Raymond, the detective. And I’m Doris Kitson of course. I’ve the kettle on. Now is it Ann or Annette or is it just Annie? … Just Annie? How unusual. Do come in.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Kitson, I—’
‘Doris. Call me Doris. I expected you yesterday. Plain or milk?’
‘Milk, thank you.’ Annie sniffed appreciatively at the smell of baking that greeted her as she stepped across the threshold into the big kitchen. It looked from the cooling racks of plain and milk chocolate biscuits as if Doris expected a school trip. At one end of the wooden table, ordered ranks of uncoated biscuits waited in line to be dipped. At the other end they sat chocolate-coated and inviting.
Doris steered her to a seat and pushed across a plate of deliciously crumbly wheat rounds half obscured in not-quite-set chocolat
e. The kitchen mirrored the garden. Not a spare centimetre of space but everything neat and shining, a kitchen where anyone could safely eat their dinner off the floor. Germs, Annie was sure, were trained to line themselves up for execution with the battery of mops and cloths that stood ready for action in the recess under the stairs.
Doris busied herself near the sink. She poured boiling water into a teapot and placed two cups and saucers on to a tray which she carried to the table.
‘Help yourself.’ She waved a hand at the plate in front of Annie as she poured tea. ‘Don’t take sugar, do you? No, that’s good. Pure poison, you know. I only ever use it in baking. These are for the carnival. You’ll want to know all about young Terry I expect.’
‘Uh … yes, if you don’t mind. These are delicious. I talked to Mr Tremlow but he seemed very confused over what happened.’
‘Yes, Charles was always highly strung. His mother sent him away to school, you know. I always think that’s a mistake, don’t you? And then when his wife went off like she did … I know it’s nothing to people of your age, look at Frank’s daughter. Mind you, that man she married … Have you come here from Charles’s house just now?’
‘Uh … yes.’
‘And did you see a car pass you?’
‘Well …’ Annie thought back. The road had been quite busy. ‘Yes, several.’
‘A small blue saloon?’
‘No, not that I remember.’
Doris tutted and shook her head. ‘You should learn to observe everything around you, you know, if you want to pass muster as a detective. You’ve met young Mally I know, and now you’ve missed the chance to have a good look at her father. Now I know he doesn’t live round here anymore but—’
