Derek had been worried about going back to the flat, but with assurances that local day and night shift policemen would regularly check the perimeters of the premises, he had finally decided that with his protection too, John would be safe. The CID had tried to talk to Pearl, but she was heavily sedated and hardly able to tell them anything, other than that the two men had been looking for Kevin.
Thanks to Lucy who had taken on the job of cleaning up the blood, everything had looked normal, but Derek wondered if any of them would be able to forget that night. The door had been repaired, with new locks front and back, and Derek thanked Eddie White for all he had done.
He didn’t want to leave John so hadn’t set up his market stall and the shop remained closed, but money was the last thing on Derek’s mind.
‘Emily, are you ready?’ he asked, noting that the strain of the last five days had aged her. Pearl was no better, and when they went to visit her she was still so sedated that she was hardly aware they were there.
‘I’m ready,’ she said, hooking her handbag over her arm.
‘Me come too,’ Nora said.
‘Yes, Nora,’ he said kindly, aware that without her getting loose and summoning help, Pearl might well have died.
‘What about you, John? Are you ready?’
‘Yes,’ he said listlessly.
Derek knew that John was finding it hard to cope. Emily was doing her best to comfort him, but as he’d lost his grandfather and had seen his mother being shot, it was proving impossible. John asked if Dolly had been told, so Derek had rung the psychiatric unit. He had spoken to one of the doctors who was reluctant to discuss Dolly’s condition, though he did say that she’d be informed when mentally able to cope.
What they needed was some good news and if Pearl showed any signs of recovery it would lift all their spirits. Hoping against hope, Derek drove them all to the hospital.
They returned disappointed. There was no change.
‘Eddie, I’ve been thinking,’ Lucy said that evening.
‘Yeah, what about?’
‘Derek isn’t working on his stall and with the shop closed too, there’s no money coming in.’
‘Oh, right, I suppose that means you’re worried about getting paid.’
‘No, it isn’t that. Derek won’t let me down, but what I’ve been thinking about is offering to open the shop.’
‘What about Nora?’
‘Derek isn’t working, John isn’t at school, and at the moment Pearl’s mum is there. They don’t really need me to look after Nora and I feel like I’m just getting under everyone’s feet.’
‘In that case, opening the shop makes sense to me,’ Eddie said.
‘I’ll have a word with Derek tomorrow.’
‘Yeah, you do that, but for now, how about giving me a cuddle?’
Lucy drew strength from being wrapped in Eddie’s arms. She hoped Derek would let her open the shop, but knew she had another, unspoken reason for wanting to do it. Derek, John and Emily were so upset, Nora too, and it was awful to be upstairs in Pearl’s flat when they were all there. She felt inadequate, unable to comfort them, but at least in the shop she’d be doing something useful.
At eight o’clock, Derek went downstairs when he heard a ring on the doorbell. It was the same two CID officers and Riley said, ‘Sorry to call at this time, sir, but we have a lead. We need to have a word with Nora Dobbs.’
‘Nora?’ Derek said, puzzled. ‘I don’t see how she can help you.’
‘It was something she said that we need to clarify.’
‘You’d better come in then,’ Derek invited.
‘Before we speak to her, can you tell us if you’ve heard of a man called Vincent Chase?’
‘Yes, he used to be notorious around here, but then he moved on to bigger things,’ Derek said and then remembered something else. ‘It was a while ago now, but someone told me that that Kevin Dolby was sniffing around for information on Chase.’
Riley nodded sagely at his colleague. ‘It looks like it’s all coming together.’
‘Yes, sir, it does,’ Shaw agreed.
‘What’s coming together?’ Derek asked.
Riley ignored his question, saying only, ‘We’d like to talk to Nora Dobbs now.’
Derek led them upstairs, and though Emily and John left the room, Derek insisted on staying while they spoke to Nora.
When they all sat down, Riley said to Nora, ‘Do you remember me?’
‘Yes, I does.’
‘That’s good, and do you remember telling me about the bad man who had funny hands?’
‘Yes, he bad man,’ she said.
‘Can you describe his hands for me – tell me what they looked like?’
She frowned then said, ‘Nasty!’
Shaw took over and asked, ‘In what way?’
‘I not know.’
‘Try to remember, Miss Dobbs.’
‘Why I got rember Miss Dobbs? I know that me. I’se Nora Dobbs.’
Riley smiled and took over the questioning again. ‘Yes, of course you are. Now shall we try again? Why did the man’s hands look nasty?’
Nora looked down at her own and then said, ‘Skin, it funny.’
‘Burns, is that what you mean?’
‘I not know what burn look like, but nasty, he had nasty hands,’ Nora said.
As the penny dropped, Derek jumped to his feet. He couldn’t believe how slow he’d been, how he’d only just made the connection. ‘Vincent Chase! I thought the bloke who broke in here was after revenge and now it all makes sense. It must have been Kevin who torched his place and Chase was injured in the fire. Where is he? Where is the bastard who shot my wife?’
‘Mr Lewis, we don’t know, but we intend to find out.’
‘How did you get on to him?’
‘It was through the woman, Adrianna. When we spoke to John he said it wasn’t her real name, though he couldn’t remember what her true one was. The alias name, Adrianna, and John’s description of her was circulated, and in a very short time another branch of the CID got in touch with us. They’re involved in an ongoing enquiry regarding an arson attack on Vincent Chase’s house in which two men died. Chase escaped, but it seems a woman who lived in the house with the name Adrianna, disappeared. She was one of his strippers, and from what you and your son were able to tell us, she then turned up at the cottage with Kevin Dolby. Added to that, we were also able to ascertain that during the fire at his property, Vincent Chase sustained burns to his face and hands. When we heard that, we remembered Miss Dobbs here telling us about the bad man with funny hands.’
‘So what happens next?’ Derek asked.
‘When we find Vincent Chase, we’ll pull him in for questioning.’
Derek thought about what they had on Vincent Chase and scowled. ‘He’s hardly going to own up to it. He must know that none of us saw his face, and I doubt Nora spotting the burns on his hands will be enough to convict him.’
‘There’s still Adrianna and she may know something,’ Shaw said.
Derek shook his head. ‘She’s probably long gone.’
The men rose to their feet, Riley saying, ‘We’re doing our best to find her, but I don’t think we need to ask Miss Dobbs any more questions.’
Derek walked them downstairs, and Shaw asked before they left, ‘How is your wife, Mr Lewis?’
‘There’s no improvement,’ he said, and noted that Shaw looked sympathetic before they said their goodbyes.
Derek closed the door behind them and locked up again, his thoughts turning. Vincent Chase had been the one who shot Pearl, but Kevin had been the catalyst that caused it. Derek would never say it in front of anyone, but he was glad the bastard was dead.