ALF CROSS HAD lived in one of Highbridge’s red-brick terraced houses just off the Bridgwater Road ever since finishing his two years’ police probation and Kate found herself pulling up outside his place just five minutes later. Unlike Andy Seldon, who had no family as far as anyone knew (apart from a girlfriend living somewhere in Leeds), Alf had left a wife behind and despite the trauma she herself had suffered, Kate felt duty bound to call and see her. She and Pauline had become close friends when Kate had joined CID and she could not even begin to imagine how the poor woman must be feeling now. She was dreading facing her so soon after her tragic loss, but it had to be done and she made an effort to hold her own emotions in check as she stepped up to the front door.
‘And what do you want?’
The gaunt, blonde-haired woman who answered the door glared at her with open hostility and her belligerent greeting took Kate completely by surprise.
‘Pauline?’ she queried hesitantly as if the other’s uncharacteristic demeanour raised some doubts about that. ‘I – I wanted to make sure you were OK and to tell you how sorry I am about Alf.’
‘Did you?’ The woman stepped aside and motioned her past. ‘Then you’d better come inside, hadn’t you?’
The curtains were drawn across the bay window in the front room where Kate had spent so many afternoons sharing gossip over a cup of tea and the atmosphere was unusually stale and heavy. She turned as Pauline followed her through, but her natural instinct to embrace her friend in a sympathetic hug was put on hold by the hard expression in the other’s blue eyes and the grim set of her jaw. There was no evidence of tears, but shock was clearly etched into her face and a strong sour smell accompanied her into the room, suggesting that she had been drinking.
‘Well,’ Pauline snapped, almost as a demand, ‘exactly what is it you wanted to say?’
Kate felt as if she had been physically slapped in the face and for a moment was stuck for words. ‘Just - just to let you know that if there’s anything I can do—’
‘Do?’ Pauline’s face twisted into a bitter sneer. ‘Haven’t you done enough already?’
‘Done enough? I don’t know what you mean?’
Pauline stared at her with obvious contempt. ‘Managed to save your own skin, didn’t you, love? Left poor old Alf and Andy to fry.’
Kate felt the room start to close in on her and she grabbed the edge of the door to stop herself pitching sideways. ‘That’s just not true,’ she whispered, and the tears came back again in a flood. ‘I couldn’t do anything. It all happened too quickly.’
‘Yeah, while you were hiding in the bushes.’
‘Hiding? I wasn’t hiding. I was—’
‘Having a pee, I’ve been told. Lucky old you.’
Kate shook her head brokenly and reached towards her with her free hand. ‘Pauline, why are you treating me like this? We’ve always been friends.’
Pauline ignored her hand and stepped back into the hall with a curt, ‘You’d better go.’
For a moment Kate continued to stare at her. ‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered. ‘Who have you been talking to?’
Pauline reached for the handle of the front door and threw it open, admitting a shaft of welcome sunlight into the gloomy hallway. ‘Get out. And don’t ever come back here again.’
There was a barely suppressed violence in her tone that frightened Kate and she edged past her warily, eager to be out in the beckoning sunlight among the reassuring sounds of the street. The front door slammed shut behind her even before she got to the gate.
She dropped her ignition keys as she approached her MX5 and, picking them up, she leaned against the driver’s door for a moment, shaking and hyperventilating.
‘You all right, love?’ The skinny youngster in the hooded fleece had stopped and was peering at her curiously. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen, but there was a concerned frown on his acne-pitted face.
She treated him to the ghost of a smile. ‘Yes, thanks, just had a bit of a shock, that’s all.’
He nodded with the sagacity of an old man. ‘Coffee, that’s what you needs,’ he diagnosed. ‘Hot ’n sweet. Good for shock that is.’
Then he was on his way again with the cocky springy gait so often adopted by the streetwise hoodies of his generation, cigarette smoke trailing from between the fingers of one hand.
She watched him go with another weak smile, heartened by the concern of a kid who, a few hours ago, she would have written off as nothing more than a complete waste of a skin. His advice was sound too. After her shock encounter with Pauline – on top of everything else that had happened in the past twelve hours – she felt shaky and light-headed and she knew she was in no fit state to get behind the wheel of her car until she had managed to pull herself together. Coffee sounded like the ideal solution.
Leaving the car where she had parked it, she went in search of a café – and she found one within a couple of hundred yards.
The so-called ‘tea-room’ had faded red and white checked curtains tied back from the grubby window and the doorway, with its half-open scabby blue door, was about as inviting as the entrance to a run-down charity shop. But she was in no mood to be picky and she took a seat in the corner with her back to the counter, heedless of the dirty crockery piled up on the table in front of her.
The place was half-empty, with only three of the dozen or so tables occupied – one in the opposite corner by a rough looking couple who seemed to be arguing over the bill, another by a pair of labourers tucking into a serious fry-up and a third by a quartet of greasers exchanging expletives in a smoky haze of illegally lit cigarettes.
Certainly not the most inspiring company and the waitress in the stained blue apron did little to improve the situation. But at least the coffee and buttered scone arrived very soon after the order had gone in and the girl’s surly manner meant Kate did not have to engage her in polite conversation, which suited her fine.
She needed to be left alone – to be given time to think and quell the discordant clamouring of the demons inside her head – and she was trying to do just that when she noticed the sealed yellow envelope on the plate under her scone. Frowning, she tore the flap open and extracted the single sheet of paper from inside. It was a grubby note, written in bold block capitals, as if by someone used to carving their initials on a tree.
I DIDN’T DO IT. MEET ME 2 AM PAVILION PIER BURNHAM SEAFRONT. DON’T TELL YOUR MATES OR I WON’T SHOW…. TERRY DUVAL
Almost knocking over her cup of coffee, she jerked round in the seat, staring over the counter. The waitress eyeballed her from the doorway of the kitchen and she was behind the counter and in her face within seconds.
‘Did you leave this on my plate?’ she rapped, waving the envelope at her.
The girl paled and stumbled backwards, gulping. ‘Feller said it was a joke,’ she blurted. ‘Give me a fiver.’
Kate stared past her into the kitchen. A little man in a dirty white tunic and black trousers stared back at her in obvious astonishment.
‘What feller?’ she demanded, producing her warrant card and holding it up in front of the other’s bulging eyes. ‘What did he look like?’
‘J–just a feller. Wore a long coat an’ a woollen hat. Came up to me out back an’ said you was a mate of his.’
The girl’s eyes strayed to her left and Kate caught sight of the ‘Toilets’ sign.
‘Sod it,’ she breathed and lunged for the entrance to a narrow passageway alongside the kitchen.
She checked the single toilet cubicle, but it was empty. Another door opened on to a paved yard with an open gate at the far end and even before she got to it, she knew she would be too late. There was an alleyway beyond, snaking away in both directions between the walls of other premises, and she could see immediately that it was deserted.
‘Blast! Missed him,’ she said aloud. ‘Now what do I do?’
But she knew the answer to that even as she asked herself the question.