Killing Me Softly (31 page)

Abigail said goodnight and left the rest of the team getting pie-eyed at the bar of the Black Bull where they'd repaired to celebrate the wrapping up of the case.

It was a cold, starry night. She stepped outside and took a deep breath of the clear air, pulled the collar of her jacket up and walked on towards the river. She was going to Ben's flat, to wait for his return, but there was no hurry. She was in the mood for a solitary walk, through a town she was beginning to see through

Mayo's eyes. He'd come here as a stranger, but by now knew it better than she did, had walked every inch, in daylight and in the dark, too, when it was more likely to give up its secrets. It was her town, she'd grown up here, been educated at the High School, haunted its coffee bars and discos as a teenager, but never really seen it, never breathed in its atmosphere as he did, until she joined the police and began to know its darker side.

Ben was another of the same ilk as Mayo. For the duration of his time here, he'd made Lavenstock his town. He was coming home, later this evening, having fixed himself up with a Middle East assignment, then as soon as he could wind up his job here, he'd be off.

‘We're none of us very good judges of men, are we?' Ellie had said last night when she'd heard this – none of us meaning herself, and Clare and Abigail, and perhaps even Barbie Nelson and Roz Spalding – but Abigail didn't want to be included in the list. As far as Ben was concerned, she'd no reason to feel her judgement was at fault. She'd decided to be positive about the situation. There might even be advantages. Might. Well, no relinquishment of her independence, for instance. The joys of a sweet homecoming after a separation ...

But she knew what Ellie meant about wrong choices. Tim Wishart had been bad news for anybody, particularly the women who associated with him. The shot that killed him had injured them all. Clare especially. It was easy to conclude she was better off without him, but living with that knowledge wouldn't be comfortable ...

‘He offered me cocaine, you know,' Ellie had told Abigail, ‘a few nights before he was killed. Wanted me to try a snort. Or something else, he said. There's plenty more where that came from. Go on, give yourself a treat. I realized what he was up to, later, when he asked me for a loan to pay back what he owed Tony Pardoe. He said it was only short term, he'd be solvent again within a week or two. I guessed Tony had staked him in for his latest lot of drugs, but I don't know where he thought I could lay my hands on anything like such a sum. I hope', she finished grimly, ‘you get Pardoe.'

It gave Abigail a sense of the greatest satisfaction to inform Ellie that Pardoe was probably at this moment shaking in his handmade shoes. He must know that this time, despite the first-class lawyers he no doubt had ready to defend him, he was unlikely to slide past the law.

She cut through Cat Lane, and as she emerged, the houses at the Bagots were a dark huddle against the sky. The doomed Toffee Taskey's stood further along, reminding her of a girl's life which had almost ebbed away.

Some people talked and got things out of their system, some couldn't. Luce was a talker, and was prepared to talk about everything, except Morgan. He'd abused her trust and maybe her love. How much he meant to her, Abigail didn't know, and Luce wasn't saying. But Abigail sensed a lot of sadness in her.

Luce, however, was a survivor, one who lived in the present. She was gutsy, and she'd already put her ordeal behind her, after plugging whatever gaps she could for them. Gaunt and hollow-eyed as she was, in her hospital bed, it didn't stop her from telling everything. ‘I want to. Then I can forget it. Though I still see it in my head, when I go to sleep,' she admitted, filling her eyes with the sight of the sky as she looked out of the window, as if she could never get enough of it. Yet those same eyes had, amazingly, brimmed with tears when she'd learned about Neale's death. ‘He was a good man, basically, you know.'

‘A good man,' Mayo had repeated caustically. ‘He killed Wishart in cold blood. He left that girl to starve to death, and she still says he was a good man.'

‘I think she means his motives ...'

Mayo rolled his eyes to heaven. The situation was black and white to him, he saw no grey in it. ‘His motive was revenge. And not wanting to be found out. He was deluding himself if he thought he ever meant to free Luce. When he saw they were starting on the demolition of Taskey's, he knew there was a chance she'd be found still alive, and didn't give a damn about her. The possibility of shooting himself must always have been there – otherwise why that smug little record left on his computer, letting us know how clever he'd been?'

A man in check trousers and white apron came out from behind the Nag's Head with a bucket, tipped it into one of the bins, leaned against the wall. A match rasped, flared, and a cigarette tip glowed in the dark. Some people came out of the Holly Tree and went to inspect the river level before walking away. It had gone down, the long-term weather forecast gave promise of a sustained spell of dry weather.

She heard footsteps behind her. She turned round and there he was, Ben, coming towards her and smiling.