Dan went to his window, his phone in his hand, preoccupied.
Most mornings, the view along the canal gave him a glow, happy with his small spot in the world, in the town he grew up in. The sunlight reflected from the water as starbursts, reflected in the windows of the old stone mill further along the bank, refurbished as offices. A narrowboat puttered along, smoke trailing from it, and swallows swooped towards the water as grass trailed on the surface.
It didn’t lift him. He was too worried about Jayne. If she was in danger, he’d put her there. He’d tried to tell himself that he was thinking like a lawyer, wondering whether she could sue him, but it was more than that.
He tried to shake away his doubts, because Jayne was right, she wasn’t the little woman he had to protect. He’d asked her to do a job, and she wanted to do it, but that didn’t make him feel any better about it. He should have thought of the risks. Mark Roberts had been killed, and it must be connected to whatever he was doing in Brampton.
That wasn’t the only thing troubling him though.
His own encounter had interrupted his sleep, but it wasn’t the presence of the knife or the threat, or even how Barbara had been. No, it had been something different, simpler, except he couldn’t quite work it out. Like a scratch at the back of his head, there was a distant memory, long buried.
He clicked on the kettle and leaned back against the counter, his kitchen a steel and granite section of his living room. There were clothes over his sofa, put there as part of the route from the dryer to his bedroom but not quite making it. Shirts and T-shirts and jeans and jogging pants, all in plain colours. No labels, no outlandish designs.
Then it struck him.
The trousers worn by the threat with the knife. Joggers, black and baggy and with white lettering down the side, some kind of brand. OGGY. He’d seen them before somewhere.
He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind, hoping that it would come back to him somehow.
It took a few minutes, and the memory wasn’t clear, but he pictured a late-night brawl, figures moving in and out, just another Saturday-night scene. It wasn’t a personal memory though. It played out like it was being shown on television.
CCTV. One of the many discs sent to him by the prosecution on one of his cases. Highford town centre covered by cameras.
He rushed towards his bedroom. He had to get to his office. He had a court sitting later, as always, but he might have time to look through his files and work out who it was.
Jayne waited, checking her watch, pacing.
It was nearly nine and she was outside a row of houses on a road that ran away from the harbour, all three-storey buildings with bay windows. Some were guest houses, with wooden signs creaking outside, paint flaking, but most looked like they had succumbed to the decline of the tourist trade and taken on bedsit tenants instead. The windows were grubbier, with ragged curtains and stickers on windows, the tiny front gardens overgrown. It was within sight of the sea but was all in decay.
Whenever someone passed her, they gave her strange looks, noticing the bruises on her face and the agitated way she was patrolling the pavement. She ignored them. She could say that the injuries looked worse than they felt, but she’d be lying. Her ribs ached and made her wince and her face felt numb.
Mel, William’s mother, had given her the address, aghast at seeing what had happened to her. She had pleaded with Jayne not to tell the police, that Sean had been in enough trouble already, so Jayne had agreed in exchange for his address and a promise that Mel wouldn’t warn him first.
She had to wait for more than an hour before he emerged.
He was wearing the same coat as she’d seen in the hazy memory of the attack, the black anorak with silver cuffs.
Jayne ducked behind a lamp post, just to see where he went, even though it didn’t hide her that well. He set off in the opposite direction, his hands thrust into his pockets, his shoulders hunched. Jayne peered round, and once sure he hadn’t seen her, she followed.
He was heading towards a row of shops. There were people ahead, a group of old ladies talking outside a newsagent. This was her moment, when there were witnesses.
She sped up. ‘Hey?’
He turned. His eyes widened. He looked towards the shop, then back at Jayne.
‘You did this,’ and she pointed to her black eye.
He glanced towards the women, who’d stopped talking and were watching them.
‘No, I didn’t.’
Jayne got close to him, trying to contain her anger. She ignored the pain in her side as she shouted, ‘You did. I remember you. Your face. Your cuffs. You were waiting for me. Threw me against the wall, but I’d taken a picture of you.’ She pulled out her phone. ‘You remember that, the flash?’
He paled and leaned in closer. ‘Stop shouting, right. I can’t talk here.’
‘But you’re going to talk?’
He stepped away and took a few deep breaths. The old ladies were whispering to each other. ‘Cafe round the corner,’ he said, and set off walking.
Jayne followed, always keeping him ahead, getting ready to run in case he turned violent.
They were heading towards the seafront again, but on the other side of the harbour to the one she’d been on the day before. The sand stretched long and smooth in front of an old seaside hall with a glass roof, the sort that once housed variety acts but had started to look old and scruffy and used for eighties popstars on revival tours.
The cafe was a seaside fish-and-chips type of place, with fish stencilled onto large windows and sugar in glass decanters.
Sean held the door open and went in after her, selecting a table as far away from the counter as possible. There were no other customers.
He raised his hand to the man behind the counter, who’d been reading a newspaper, and shouted, ‘Full English.’
‘Make that two,’ Jayne said.
‘You’re paying.’
She scoffed. ‘How do you work that out? You bloody well assaulted me.’
‘And the police are where?’
‘Is that all that matters, whether you’ll go to court? What about what you actually did?’ She jabbed a finger towards her black eye. ‘Do you really think this was all right?’
He stared at the table for a few seconds before saying, ‘Are you going to the police?’
‘Give me one reason why I shouldn’t?’
‘I’ll talk to you if you don’t. If they arrest me, they’ll put bail conditions on me not to speak to you.’
Jayne sat back. ‘You really are a bastard.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m just a grieving father who is sick of being used.’
There it was, the pitiful whine, the one Jimmy had used whenever he hit her, trying to become the victim, to make it her fault. ‘You could have fucking killed me.’
He inhaled and his eyes filled with tears.
Jayne turned to look out of the window. She’d had her fill of tearful apologies from men.
The road was quiet outside. No rush hour in Brampton. There were a few strollers but it seemed as if they had nowhere special to go. A group of men trudged towards the harbour with fishing rods and tackle bags, heading for a day out on the sea in a hired boat.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the clatter of plates and their breakfast arriving.
It was a good spread and her stomach rumbled.
Just as she picked up her knife and fork, he put his hand out and grabbed hers. ‘I’m sorry. Really sorry. I didn’t know what you wanted, and I’d been drinking, and thinking about it just got me all wound up.’
‘Just eat.’ She snatched her hand away.
They both ate in silence, the only sound the scrape of their cutlery on the plates, until they were both done.
Jayne drank her tea from a chipped mug, too milky, too weak. ‘You’re going to tell me everything I want to know. Do you understand? You try to keep anything back and I go to the police.’
He nodded but didn’t look up.
‘Tell me about the reporter. Mark Roberts.’
‘He was upsetting everyone, asking all those questions. That’s all I heard, that there was this reporter in town making trouble, talking to people in pubs, going to the newspaper office, making out like that sick bastard Walker hadn’t done it. It gets back to me, you know.’
‘Did he say why he thought that?’
‘Not to me, but why should he? I didn’t matter to him, but there are always people ready to speak up for Rodney, and if enough people speak, others start to listen. After all, what are we? Just the bad parents, that’s all, the drunk who let his kid wander off.’
‘That isn’t how it is.’
‘Isn’t it? I remember how it was and I’ve heard the whispers. What about the other family? Their girl wandered off with Rodney Walker as well, but no one calls them bad parents. But no, they’re respectable doctors and they couldn’t have been careless, not people like that. But what was I, apart from some lowlife from some small-town nowhere?’
Jayne put her mug down. ‘Do you know what I see? Self-pity, that’s what. I don’t blame you, your son was murdered, but all of this whining ended up with me looking like this,’ and she pointed at her face. ‘Beaten up, my ribs aching, waking up this morning covered in blood and bruises, so don’t expect me to be bubbling over with compassion. Did Rodney Walker kill your son? Are you sure of that?’
‘Of course he did. Who else?’
‘Blame Rodney then, not yourself.’
‘Not everyone thinks that.’
‘About you, or Rodney?’
‘Rodney, of course. That’s why the reporter got so excited.’
‘What did he say? Something brought him to Brampton and then to Highford and we need to know what.’
‘I don’t know about Highford, don’t even know where it is, but I heard it was the brother of the other kid whose body they found, Ruby. Chris Overfield, he’s called. He was the one who got him going.’
‘Where do they live?’
‘You can’t miss the parents’ house. Big one on the road out of town. They’ve even called it Ruby, named their bloody house after her. We all deal with it in our own way, I suppose.’
‘And Chris, Ruby’s brother?’
‘On some shiny estate somewhere.’
‘Do you know the address?’
‘Why would I know it? We’re not exactly close.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s in the police. Don’t you get it? I’m the sort of person he locks up. He’s no time for me.’
‘Hang on, you’re saying that the brother of Walker’s second victim is a copper, and he thinks that Porter got the wrong man?’
Sean grinned. ‘Yeah. A bit bloody awkward, don’t you think? The town’s most notorious person, and a copper wants him free. You couldn’t write it.’
‘Mark Roberts was trying his hardest though.’
Jayne drained her tea and went towards the door.
Sean shouted after her, ‘Don’t you be blabbing about last night. We had a deal.’
‘Just keep out of my way,’ she said.
As she tasted the sea air on her lips, she smiled. The case was getting interesting. More than that though, for the first time in months she felt the thrill of doing something worthwhile. She felt alive.