Resolutions

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘OK,’ Miriam muttered to herself. ‘Just your friendly neighbourhood pervert then.’ It wasn’t all that unusual for courting couples to use the pull-in as a meeting place and, considering the view, Miriam could understand that. This man appeared to be alone, but, well, maybe he was meeting someone. Shrugging, Miriam set off down the hill towards the welcoming lights of Frantham Old Town.

  Despite the fact that the streets were largely unlit, only the glow through curtained windows and the odd light above a front door breaking up the shadow, Miriam had never felt uneasy walking down alone. It was a friendly place, close-knit and welcoming, and though she and Mac were incomers, she had never felt that they were seen as intruders, a fact she put down to Mac’s job and position in the community. Tonight, though, she felt oddly uneasy. Something in the way the man had looked at her was disturbing. He hadn’t just glanced her way; he had looked and then kept on looking, and that bothered her.

  Miriam always walked fast, but she realized that tonight she had almost broken into a run. Not a good idea on the steep cobblestones, even when, as now, they were fairly dry. She blessed the fact that her work called for hours of standing and walking and sensible shoes. Heels were definitely not the footwear for Frantham Old Town. Above her, back at the road, a car door slammed, the sound carrying easily on the still evening air. For a second or two Miriam froze, listening for footsteps. From a nearby house issued the faint sounds of a television quiz show, the sound of children arguing from another across the street, and from behind her the unmistakable sound of someone following her down.

  She hurried on, tempted to knock on one of the doors and ask for help, aware of how silly that might appear. Glad that her shoes had soft soles and made little sound on the cobbles, she threw away her caution and good sense and broke into a run, the steep hill quickening her pace way beyond the realms of comfort or safety.

  Just ahead, round a bend, there was a pub, the King’s Head, and the lights beckoned her. Chances were, even at this early hour, there’d be someone there she knew, who would walk her the rest of the way to the boathouse and not think her crazy. She could stop, have a drink, have a chat, wait for the man to go away, get this speculative friend to walk her home and maybe even invite them in for coffee. Well, maybe not that but . . . but what if there was no one there she knew? What if, what if . . .

  God’s sake, Miriam, get a grip.

  Just opposite the pub was a tiny shop where Miriam had, in the summer, bought a bracelet for her sister. She had run into Mac, almost by accident, that day and they had spent the rest of it together, an almost unplanned act – utterly unplanned on Mac’s side – that had led to everything else. At the side of the shop was a set-back doorway into a baker’s shop. Breathing hard, Miriam abandoned thoughts of the pub and dodged back into the shadows of the recessed door. And waited, trying hard to control her breathing, waited for the man to go by.

  Seconds passed. Minutes dragged, or seemed to. Maybe she was mistaken. Maybe there was no one there?

  And then the footsteps, regular and deliberate and unnaturally loud in the stillness of the little town.

  Miriam pressed as flat as she could, almost willing herself through the doorway and into the empty shop. She heard him pause. Maybe she could scream? She had no doubt that if she screamed someone would come. Screams in the night were unusual enough here and the population concerned enough, inquisitive enough, that she would not be ignored. She drew breath into her lungs, heard the man cough and then move again, footsteps coming closer and then passing by. Miriam watched as he moved past her hiding place, glancing from left to right as though looking for something. She was convinced that he had spotted her. He paused again, lifting his head and pushing the glasses back up the broad nose. Distractedly, she noticed that his hair had grown too long and brushed against the collar of his coat.

  Then, relief. The man seemed to notice the pub, moved purposefully across the narrow street and went inside.

  She almost laughed aloud.

  Cautious, though, she left the sanctuary of the doorway and stayed in the shadows as she passed the door of the King’s Head. Through the windows she could see the early drinkers chatting to the landlord. The stranger ordering something and the landlord lifting a glass to one of the optics.

  Miriam was almost past, still in the shadows cast by the narrow shops and little houses, but busy telling herself that she had been a fool. The man had just come out here for a drink – that was all – and was probably meeting friends. She was letting her imagination run riot and to no purpose, none at all. And then he turned, drink in hand, and looked her way and Miriam was running again, even though reason told her he’d see nothing through the pub windows, looking out from bright light into dark. She ran and didn’t stop until she was inside the boathouse and had locked the door, the conviction that she knew the man from somewhere – and that she really was the reason he had come here – now absolutely wedged tight in her mind.

  TEN

  Saturday

  Mac had given up on the idea of going home; it just wasn’t going to happen. Wildman had declared that there was to be a case review for all senior officers: a chance to go over old ground, discuss it as a group, be open to the possibility that the original enquiry may have missed something or that tiny details, overlooked then, may come into sharper focus in the light of new information.

  Mac couldn’t fault him on his logic and, though he knew they’d all worked their backsides off during the first investigation, was not even offended by the idea that something may have been missed. He knew just how easy it was to become myopic, particularly when emotions were running so high. That said, he was not exactly enthusiastic about spending his weekend in the close company of Wildman or even such pleasant colleagues as Alec. He felt himself being sucked down into the maelstrom intensity of the original enquiry and really would have welcomed time to breathe.

  For the first time he began to wonder if he’d been right to come back; more worryingly, he’d begun to have niggling doubts that he even wanted to do this job any more. Even at the height of his involvement in the Cara Evans case, even at the deepest moments of despair that followed, he had never had that thought and he could not for the life of him understand why he should be having it now.

  He took the opportunity to call home and Miriam’s voice cheered him instantly. An instant more and he was aware that something was wrong.

  ‘I hoped you’d call last night.’

  ‘By the time I got back it was so late I thought you’d be asleep. We went to see Cara Evans’s parents. It was a long visit.’ He felt a momentary pang that he’d made time to phone Emily, but thought it best to keep that to himself. Miriam sounded tense, a little distant.

  ‘That must have been hard,’ she said. ‘I just hate it when I have to meet with the bereaved. I never know what to say.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Mac knew she wasn’t. Just something in her voice, or something missing from it.

  She hesitated. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing.’

  ‘Miriam? Come on, you don’t worry over nothing.’

  ‘Don’t I?’ she managed to laugh but it sounded false. She began to tell him about the man who had followed her, or who she thought might have been following her, though she was sure now that it had been coincidence and nothing at all.

  Mac listened, tense, and, as though her fear was contagious even in the retelling, his anxiety overwhelmed him.

  ‘Miriam, listen to me. I want you to pack your stuff and leave, now, soon as you get off the phone. Jerry will be off today’ – the boathouse owner was often around on Saturday – ‘so get him to walk you back to your car and check the car when you get there.’

  ‘Mac? I don’t understand. And I’m not asking Jerry to walk me anywhere – he’ll think I’m nuts. Anyway, it’s broad daylight. Saturday.’ She sounded braver now, relieved that she could be impatient with him instead of herself.

  ‘Get in touch with DI Kendal – you remember him? His
number should be in my book. Tell him you need to speak with a sketch artist and ask him to give me a ring.’

  ‘Mac, you’re scaring me.’

  ‘Good. Miriam, I think there may well be something to be scared about.’ He closed his eyes, swore softly under his breath. He should have called her last night, should have warned her then, but somehow he had assumed that Peel’s attention would have shifted north when he did; apparently not. Miriam’s description of the man struck a chord. Peel, with his too-large glasses and his slightly flattened nose. Like Mac, he’d been a rugby player in his youth and his face suffered the same indignities.

  ‘There’s some indication that Peel has been . . .’ Stalking? Was that too emotive a word. ‘Has had me under surveillance.’ He took refuge in more formal language. ‘Something he told a former associate makes us think he may have either been to Frantham or had someone down there on his behalf.’

  ‘What? You must be kidding me? Mac, when did you find this out?’

  ‘Yesterday afternoon. Miriam, I’m so sorry. I assumed, as I was no longer there . . .’

  ‘But you still could have called, let me know. Mac, you know how lonely that road is at night, just how cut off I’d be.’ She broke off and he hesitated, not sure what to say, realizing just how scared she’d been and that he was very firmly in the wrong.

  Would ‘sorry’ do? ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘Miri, I’m really . . .’

  ‘Stupid at times? Yeah, you really are.’

  He could hear her breathing, nervous and loud, as she held the phone close, and he could imagine her gripping it tight in both hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, meaning it absolutely, willing her to know just how much he was meaning it.

  ‘Have you spoken to Rina?’

  He would have lied now, if he’d had to, but fortunately he could be truthful. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve not spoken to anyone else yet. You think you can stay at your sister’s?’

  ‘You think he knows about my flat?’

  ‘I think I don’t know any more. Maybe . . .’

  ‘Mac, I’ve got a job to do, so don’t suggest I go anywhere. I’m not planning on running away.’

  He seemed to be surrounded by people telling him that, Mac thought. Mostly they seemed to be women. ‘I’d rather you left the boathouse though, stayed with someone. Don’t be alone. Maybe Rina—’

  ‘Mac, stop right now. I love Rina and Tim, and I’m really fond of the Peters sisters and the Montmorencys and all of them, but stay there? No, not in a month of Sundays, not to escape a whole boatload of Thomas Peels.’ She was laughing now, but Mac didn’t really think she felt amusement.

  ‘Miriam. You will leave, won’t you?’

  The laughter ceased. ‘Soon as I get off the phone,’ she said. ‘I love you, Mac. Come home soon, won’t you?’

  ‘I will,’ he promised. ‘And I love you too.’

  Next on his ‘to do’ list was Rina. If he expected to surprise her with an early call, then he was to be disappointed. She listened to his concerns and then delivered hers.

  Fitch and Abe Jackson had promised to look in on her today. Abe, a veteran of earlier Frantham crises, now had his own security firm in Exeter, mainly employing ex service people like himself.

  Fitch, she told him, would be staying in the tiny spare room at Peverill Lodge. ‘Eliza and Bethany are as overexcited as a couple of puppies,’ she said.

  ‘Well, so long as they don’t wet themselves,’ Mac joked. ‘I mean, isn’t that what excited puppies do?’

  ‘I won’t tell them you said that,’ Rina said sternly.

  ‘No, probably better not. Rina, are you really that worried? I mean, Fitch has to come all the way from Manchester.’

  ‘And the Duggans have said they can spare him for as long as I need. Better be safe, I think.’

  ‘Safe?’

  ‘Well, with what you’ve just told me, I think I’m doubly pleased he’s coming.’

  ‘But you were worried even before that. About Karen.’

  ‘Mac, I’ve learnt not to ignore my feelings, and I’ve a feeling about this. I don’t know where Karen’s been these past months, but what I can tell you is she left with little more than the clothes on her back and she’s come back with a darn sight more. Let’s just say she departed in Primark and returned in couture, and unless she’s found herself a rich sugar daddy, I’m guessing she’s earned it, and I don’t think she’s been working, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I’m being thick here, Rina.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ she said bluntly. ‘Think about it, Mac. Her father was a career criminal – a poor excuse for one, but nevertheless he moved in, shall we say, certain circles.’

  ‘So does Fitch,’ Mac pointed out.

  ‘Which is what makes him so useful. The problem with Edward Parker was that he was a bear of a man but with very little brain. The mother, poor love, well, if anyone was born to be a doormat . . . but the children are extraordinary. George is a bright, sensible, wonderful child and will grow into a very special young man. Karen, however, she has single-mindedness, intelligence and her father’s lack of respect for anything legal or respectable. She has the connections, Mac. And it’s the timing that bothers me. It’s almost as if she knew you’d be away.’

  ‘I don’t see how. You’ve spoken to Andy and Frank Baker?’

  ‘I have, and Sergeant Baker is going to have a chat to that nice DI Kendal.’

  ‘He’s not that nice.’

  ‘Jealousy doesn’t suit you. But I believe in having insurance, and Fitch is insurance, Abe is intelligence, and Kendal is backup in case we need someone arrested.’

  Mac laughed. ‘You seem to have covered all bases. Rina, I’m not going to argue with you.’

  ‘And Miriam?’

  ‘Going to stay with her sister. Ben, Miriam’s brother-in-law, he’s built like the proverbial outdoor facilities and his brothers live almost next door, so I figure she’ll be safer there, and now she knows there may be a problem . . . I told her to call Kendal too.’

  ‘He’s going to be a busy boy. Still, that’s what he’s there for. Seriously, Mac, you watch your back; we’re all counting the days until you’re home safe.’

  ELEVEN

  Fitch was a much-loved honorary member of the Rina Martin household. His introduction to life at Peverill Lodge had been somewhat dramatic; his boss’s son had been killed and Fitch had come south with Jimmy Duggan to find those responsible for the murder. Not much happened in Frantham that did not eventually involve Rina, and she had been drawn into the investigations, both official – Mac – and not so official in the shape of Jimmy Duggan and Fitch.

  His arrival had the ladies, Bethany and Eliza, in a major twitter. They’d been pacing back and forth from living room to hall most of the morning, occasionally retreating to practise the piano, leading Rina to assume that they had a special performance arranged for their guest. She hoped Fitch could cope with such adulation. The inviting scents filtering out from beneath the closed door of the kitchen told her that the men of the household were equally enthusiastic. Steven and Matthew had been closeted in there since just after breakfast, and Rina hoped fervently that Fitch had brought his usual appetite with him and not suddenly and unexpectedly taken to dieting.

  The doorbell rang just on noon and doors all across the ground floor of Peverill Lodge burst open. By the time Rina opened the front door, a welcoming committee had gathered. Fitch stood on the step, grinning broadly, and Rina stood back to let the big man in. The door of Peverill Lodge was large and impressive as befitted such an elegant Victorian villa, but Fitch practically filled the same space.

  Fitch dropped his holdall on to the tiled floor and swept Rina into his arms, kissing her soundly before opening his arms wide and sweeping both sisters into his massive embrace.

  Rina straightened herself up and watched indulgently as the Peters sisters squealed and wriggled and pretended to protest, all the while snuggling closer. The Montmorencys stood
close by the kitchen door, waiting for their turn at welcome; Rina wondered if they’d be content just to shake his hand.

  ‘Bet Fitch is the only person who gets away with grabbing you like that,’ a laughing voice said.

  Rina turned, smiling. She might have guessed that Joy Duggan would be unable to keep away. ‘I’d make an exception for you, sweetheart,’ she said, welcoming Joy with a warm hug. They watched, laughing, as Fitch was escorted into the living room by his admirers.

  ‘Is Tim here?’ Joy asked anxiously. ‘And, Rina, just how bad are things?’

  Tim arrived just as lunch was about to begin and Joy pulled up a chair and seated herself beside him at the table. Rina smiled at them both. Joy Duggan, daughter of Fitch’s now-dead employer, was more than a decade younger than Tim, but somehow Rina didn’t think that was going to stand in her way. In many ways, she was the more mature of the two. She’d set her sights on him from the moment they had met and, though distance and college kept them physically apart, Rina knew they texted many times a day and spoke to one another nearly every evening, Tim managing a quick call between sets even when he was working.

  Selfishly, she hoped that once they finally got together properly Joy would move south to Frantham rather than have Tim go north to be with her. She already missed her Tim now that he was more regularly employed and not quite as readily available for advice and support and just idle conversation, and Rina realized that she’d come to view the younger man as surrogate for the children she had never had. More than that, he was probably her closest friend.