by Penny Grubb
She had to get out, to get something else in between now and the inevitable discussion with Pat to blunt the edge of what had happened with Scott.
So much for her useful contacts. Scott wouldn’t speak to her again and nor would Jennifer once she’d heard Scott’s side. One week she’d been here: she told herself the next five couldn’t pass quickly enough.
It was with a moment’s misgiving that she grabbed her phone. She ought to leave it on charge. A glance at the screen decided her it would last out. Pat might want to ring her and she wouldn’t mind having the initial conversation about Tremlow’s note by phone rather than face to face.
She ran down the stairs to the car, not able to relax until she was out on Hedon Road and beyond the risk of running into Pat and Barbara returning. As she drove along the dual-carriageway that swept her east out of Hull, her hands tapped impatiently on the wheel. This had become a familiar route, but today its 40 m.p.h. limit irritated her. She wanted to put her foot down, to increase the distance between her and that awful moment when Scott had walked in on her going through his pockets.
Small factories and business units hid the huge estuary behind a bleak industrial landscape. So much hidden …
Salt End roundabout, with its forbidden exit road to the chemical works, slipped by. The limit dropped to 30 m.p.h., then rose again to 40. Stupid bloody road, twisting and turning through an endless parade of settlements. Thorngumbald melted into Camerton without a break. Trees, a vein that snaked through the built-up area, thinned to nothing. On and on. Keyingham, Ottringham. Anger rose, even against Tremlow. If he hadn’t done this, she wouldn’t have invited Scott round. Why had Tremlow done it? How dare Scott call her a drama queen! Where had Terry Martin disappeared for two and a bit days?
Signs she’d passed every time she came this way now jarred on her consciousness. Sunk Island … Fort Paull …Who had ever needed a fort out here? What use an island that had sunk? Even the landscape mocked her.
At last, a familiar white oblong sign appeared propped in the hedge. Its peremptory order, Visit the Lighthouse, signalled the Withernsea boundary and the end of her journey.
She should have waited for Pat to come home to tell her about Tremlow’s note. It was too soon to come to the Martins with her fragments of information. As she pulled up outside the house, she wondered about setting off again and heading back to the city, but she saw a shadow move behind the heavy curtains. Martha had spotted her.
Both Bill and Martha met her in the hallway.
‘There’s been a development,’ Annie said. ‘I don’t have all the details but I thought I’d let you know.’
‘Come through and sit down, love.’ Bill waved her towards the small sitting room.
She took her seat in Terry’s chair and told them about Tremlow; how his body had been discovered that morning and how he’d left a note in which he’d confessed to killing Terry.
‘But he’s a church warden,’ Bill said, bewildered.
Annie looked to where Martha sat at the end of the small settee, her face as still as though someone had pressed a pause button. It took only a second to realize why she couldn’t read anything of Martha’s feelings; Martha herself didn’t know what she felt. It was one blow too many. In the turmoil of the day’s events Annie had forgotten that Tremlow might not be a stranger to the Martins. The church was a tight network across the area.
‘Did you know him well?’ she asked.
Bill shook his head. ‘I don’t think we ever met him, did we, Martha?’
‘And the other two who were there that night, Colonel Ludgrove and Doris Kitson, did you know them?’
‘No, love. We never met any of them. We know of them, of course, through the church.’
Annie breathed an inner sigh of relief. She didn’t analyse why it would be worse to have handed over this news if they knew their son’s killer, but it would have been. She waited for the flood of questions. Why? How?
Bill grasped the arms of his chair and pulled himself to his feet. ‘Tea’ll be brewed by now.’ He looked neither at Annie nor his wife as he spoke then clumped out of the room.
Annie saw that he wasn’t going to ask anything she didn’t volunteer. The structure of his life to date didn’t allow it. Until this awful calamity, he’d swum with the tide, done as he was told and bowed to authority in whatever guise it came. Out of his depth now, he could only flounder along and accept whatever the tides washed over him.
Annie watched him leave the room. She wanted Martha to follow. They needed each other and they needed their own space without her sitting in the middle of it. She began to rise. ‘I’ll go now, but if you want—’
‘Wait.’ Martha’s upraised hand stopped her. ‘Did he … the man who did it … did he say where our Terry was on the Monday?’
‘No,’ said Annie. ‘Just what happened on the Tuesday evening.’
‘You say he left a letter?’
‘A suicide note, yes.’
‘Have you read what he wrote?’
‘No, but I spoke to one of the policemen who was involved. I made sure I got everything from him.’
‘Will we be able to see it?’
‘I don’t know. I expect the police will come here to tell you about it.’ She saw Martha’s lips purse. They’d had enough of officialdom on their doorstep. ‘You should ask them. I might be able to get hold of it later. It depends who they release it to. I’ll try.’ As she spoke, Annie wondered who Tremlow had addressed his note to. Had he any family? She didn’t think so. Maybe it wasn’t addressed to anyone.
‘What do you think?’ Martha stared at her hard. ‘Did he really kill our Terry?’
‘Well, he said so … it seems consistent with … The police think …’ Annie floundered as Martha’s words painted a picture in her mind of Tremlow hitting out in blind terror. She tried to imagine how it might have happened but a viable scenario wouldn’t gel. And she still hated the feel of those two blank days.
‘It’s only just come to light,’ she told Martha. ‘I’ll make more enquiries. I’ll find out more about Mr Tremlow.’
Martha looked up at her, the expression in her eyes overshadowed by the heavy weight of defeat that the loss of her son had etched there, but something else too. Just for a second, the light of battle sparked. ‘I want to know,’ she said. ‘I want to know where he was those two days.’
She feels it, too, thought Annie. Not an investigator’s muscle in her body, but a mother’s instinct has faced her the same way I’m looking. There’s something wrong about all this. Very wrong.
She thought back to the last time she’d seen Tremlow and scoured her mind for a report from anyone of a positive sighting between then and his being found this morning. Someone must have seen him. Of course they must, she just didn’t know about it.
Drunk like Terry and neither of them drinkers. Missing like Terry for just over two days. It was a good thing it was unequivocally suicide, because there was a limit to how high the coincidences could stack up before they began to fall down.
As Annie left the Martins’, the breeze that stroked her face held the first chill of early evening. The street lay empty, but within a stone’s throw the sea-front would still be packed. On impulse, she drove the short distance to the sea and parked by the high sea-wall.
She leant on to the wall, elbows on the rough stone surface, chin cupped in her hands. The North Sea spread in front of her, the sun glinting off incoming waves as they rushed the shore in small explosions of white frothy foam. Children raced about, their laughter and shrieks overlying the rhythmic swish and rush of the waves’ ebb and flow.
Even here at the edge of the sea and with the first chill of evening in the air the day lay heavy as though the atmosphere was over-laden with the sun’s heat. Annie looked up and saw clouds a long way off in a sky that had begun to boil. There’d be a storm in the next twenty-four hours.
The sea and sky with their direct link to the beginning of time put perspective on to he
r immediate worries. She might have stood there a long time soaking up the ambience of a summer’s day winding down, but the familiar chirp of her phone cut in. She stood up straight and stretched her arms before pulling the mobile from her pocket and glancing at the screen. It was Pat, but that was fine. She was ready to talk now.
‘Where are you?’
‘Just outside the Martins’ in Withernsea.’ It was true to within a few hundred yards.
‘Oh right, you’ve decided to go and see them. OK. You’re coming back here though, aren’t you, before you go on anywhere else?’
‘That’s what I had in mind. Why?’
‘I just need a word, that’s all. What time will you be back?’
Annie bit back a question, suddenly realizing what it was Pat wanted to tell her and knowing she didn’t want to hear it. She glanced at the time, crossed her fingers and said, ‘Not sure. I could be with the Martins for a couple of hours.’
Pat had been to see Barbara. They were to discuss Orchard Park. Pat had told her she might have seen the last of the Earle case. Annie knew she shouldn’t do it, but she wanted one more trip to that tower block. She didn’t want the case pulled from under her like this. And as long as Pat hadn’t explicitly told her not to go there, what harm could it do to have one more look?
If Pat found out, Annie would say, I thought you meant me to come back when I’d finished work for the evening – you know, the Martins, Mrs Earle …
The bumpy concrete of the tower-block’s car-park bounced the car as Annie pulled in. It was packed. For the first time ever, she had to manoeuvre the vehicle to get into a space. She’d never seen it so full. Pat had drummed into her that she mustn’t leave the car unattended here at night, but it was barely evening and there would be safety in the number of vehicles here just now. Her watch showed just after seven o’clock and she’d won herself two extra hours when Pat thought she was in Withernsea, but she wondered if there was anything useful she could do with them. What she needed was to swap her early evening hours for later ones, but could think of no means to make the trade.
A sudden rapping on the window inches from her face made her start up in alarm. Scott!
The face staring back into hers flinched at the hard glare she gave it. Of course it wasn’t Scott. What had made her think it? It was more obvious than that. The joy-rider, Maz. He’d been frantic to talk to her when she’d cut him off. In all that had happened since, she’d forgotten him, but he hadn’t forgotten her. Desperation had brought him within arm’s length. She lowered the side window a short way.
‘They won’t be ’ere tonight,’ he said. ‘It’s Sunday. They don’t do Sundays.’
She held her expression steady – neither friendly, nor threatening. How did he know who she came here to watch? How come he knew so much about her? Some of it could have come from the girls in Milesthorpe but not all.
Maybe this wouldn’t be a wasted journey after all. She’d hear him out but anything she gave him would come at a high price and he’d pay her in advance.
As she climbed out of the car, he took a step back, on guard for attack. She stood with one hand on the top of the open door and looked towards the tower block, first the entrance then right up to the high roof that stood out against the veins of dusk across the sky. She sensed his hesitation. The direction of her stare wasn’t lost on him.
‘You want something from me,’ she said, not looking at him. ‘Then you’d better have something good to offer in return.’
‘There’s summat I need you to keep safe.’
‘What is it? And what do I get for it?’
‘Say you’ll keep it and not say owt, and then I’ll tell you.’
‘What’s in it for me?’
He hesitated. ‘I’ll show you the setup. Up there. I’ve got keys. No one comes on Sunday. Is that why you’re here?’
This was beyond what she’d expected. Could he be on the level? An offer to see the top flat while it was empty. It wasn’t a chance she could pass up. Did he know that? Was she snapping at hooked bait…? The car…? She shot him a look, then stared again at the high building.
‘I’ll see no one touches the motor,’ he said, anticipating her.
He turned away, put finger and thumb to his lips and emitted a low piercing whistle. A pool of shadow by the edge of the concrete broke up and became two small figures. Children aged about ten, Annie judged, sex indeterminate. They approached warily, eyes on the boy who seemed to swell in height and breadth as he assumed authority over them.
‘You know whose motor that is?’ he barked out in a low voice.
The two small figures tipped their heads towards Annie in unison.
‘Nah,’ said Maz, crooking a finger and beckoning them closer. ‘I’ll tell yer whose it is.’
He leant to whisper in their ears and Annie saw their eyes widen. Their stares rested on her again but this time with unmistakable respect. Whatever name he’d given them, Annie suspected it wasn’t Pat Thompson.
‘OK. It’s safe now.’ The boy turned back to Annie with a throwaway comment over his shoulder. ‘Anyone comes near, make sure they know.’
He set off towards the building. Annie took a couple of seconds to weigh up the risks, then slammed the car door, clicked the key fob to lock it and followed him.
The entrance lobby pulsed with activity and laughing crowds. They jostled through the throng, people all dressed-up, eyes blurred with the slight haze of an afternoon of drip-fed alcohol. The pristine crispness and flamboyant style of the clothes they pushed past marked this the aftermath of a wedding. The lift was packed, too, but the crowds melted away at floor nine, chatter and laughter replaced by the hum of machinery; when they arrived on the top landing they were alone.
Annie walked with Maz, heard the jingle of keys as he delved in his pocket. She watched in detail the pantomime she’d listened to in the early hours of Saturday morning. A key in a lock. Another key in a lock. And then another. How many damned locks did this door have and why?
Now she knew how many and would soon know why.
‘Why all the locks?’
‘Need time to get out if there’s a raid, don’t they? There’s like as not guys in what won’t want hauling into the nick, be all over the telly an’ all that. Reinforced steel.’ He banged his fist on to the door panel. ‘You’ll not ram yer way through that.’
OK, that wasn’t perfect sense, but she’d let it do for now. She stepped inside and looked round. It was a smaller apartment than Mrs Earle’s and, beyond the entrance lobby, fitted out so it bore little relation to conventional living space with none of the usual boundaries to show where living room became bedroom. The air was cool, the atmosphere antiseptic. The mismatched furniture was sparse. Three functional armchairs and two hardback chairs in amongst tables topped with electronic equipment. Wires looped across the open spaces. Headphones dangled untidily from chair arms. Some semblance of normality remained in what was left of the kitchen. A bin overflowing with pizza boxes, a stack of stained mugs, a jar of Kenco Rappor on its side, contents heaped out on the draining board.
She saw Maz hunch his shoulders as he saw the mess, felt surprise that he noticed, then as he made a stack of the dirty boxes and carried them through to the main area she realized that his role in the setup included mucking out the place. It made sense that he was just a gopher.
‘So what the hell is it?’
He stared at her. Amazement and doubt crossed his features. He thought she already had the answers. She read in his expression that if he’d known how little she knew, he wouldn’t have brought her here. Too late now.
‘Radio, innit?’ His voice was sulky.
She understood and swung round again to take in all the setup. Pirate radio. She’d known a couple at college who’d done a bit of broadcasting out of their rooms at hall. That had been amateur stuff, nothing like this. She had no idea that pirate radio could be this sophisticated. Whoever ran this little lot had plans … big plans. No way they in
tended to sit out their lives at the top of this block.
Tuesdays and Fridays – that was, early hours Wednesdays and Saturdays – two guys operated this setup on their own. And that’s when they put a few spare minutes into their little sideline, their little drugs’ store on the sixth floor. She stared again at all the equipment. It had cost serious money both to set up and to run.
She would get the details from Maz and listen in, later tonight. With the setup they had here and … She stalled her own train of thought to slot another piece into the puzzle. Those odd-shaped packages. Suddenly, the shapes made sense. She knew just what she’d watched the two guys bring to the tower that first night. Aerials. Yes, with the size of the aerials they now had on the roof she’d pick them up from the other side of the city no problem.
Was it drugs money that financed them? Yet their sixth-floor activities were sordid small-time stuff. High-risk too, to use a regular venue like that landing. And right on the doorstep of the operation they took such trouble to protect. She looked again at the door. All those locks. And now she looked from this side, all those steel bolts.
‘How scared are they of being bust?’ she asked.
He pulled himself up basking in the reflected glory. ‘Yeah, real scared. They’ve some mint gear stashed. ’s a real finite setup. Big names an’ all.’
Big names? Mentally she struck her forehead as she remembered the times she’d felt frustration at Pat for always having the TV playing. How many times had she had those faces almost in her grasp and felt the blare of the television wipe them from her mind. It hadn’t been that at all. That’s where she’d seen them, those bafflingly familiar third parties who arrived with the white van on non-drug nights. Celebrity faces. Not big mega-celebs but big enough and just off mainstream. She’d clocked their pictures in the music press; on local TV. These were names big enough to have red-carpet treatment when they came to the area, and this setup was big enough to tempt them in to do guest spots. Big enough and secure enough.
