Killing Me Softly (8 page)

‘Don't – just don't! I know there've been other women, and why not? He's single, unattached.'

Sam knew his daughter. She'd inherited a surprising stubbornness from her mother, besides much else that made him love her, and nothing was worth losing her, especially a row over Tim Wishart. He'd given in gracefully and helped them financially, though judiciously, knowing instinctively that it would be wrong to trust Wishart too far, to allow him to get his hands on too much of his own hard-earned money. Clacks Mill had been his wedding present to Clare. He had made sure the deeds were in her name.

The rumour had soon reached him that his son-in-law had maybe sailed too close to the wind once or twice. Heck, no, there was no maybe about it, to those in the know! Yet the fact that Sam had been proved right on all counts didn't make him feel any better. Clare wouldn't talk about it – and he hadn't helped by not troubling to hide his opinions over the years about Tim Wishart. But she couldn't hide from him how patently unhappy she now was, whatever face she put on it; when Sam thought about what her life must be like, he felt his blood pressure rise dangerously. His hands itched to get themselves around the bastard's throat and throttle the life out of him.

He changed the subject with a reference to her suggestion that they should start their lunch immediately they arrived at his house and get it out of the way before David Neale, whom Sam hadn't yet met, arrived.

‘Suits me. It'll give me plenty time to get to the match.' He never missed when Lavenstock United football team were playing at home. ‘Mrs Wilton's left us one of her famous soups, I believe. But we needn't drink it.' An adequate, if unimaginative, cook in other directions, Mrs Wilton produced soups which were famous for their awfulness.

In fact, she must have been having one of her better days. She'd left quite a passable light consommé, much improved after Sam, who enjoyed cooking and made his own meals, except for the days Mrs Wilton came to do for him, had added a dash of sherry. And the chicken casserole which followed was decidedly tasty.

‘This Neale chap,' Sam began, as they sat in the small, heated conservatory overlooking what in summer was a very attractive garden, with the coffee and cake with which he invariably liked to finish his meal. ‘Shaping up all right, is he?'

‘David?' Clare concealed a smile at ‘this Neale chap'. She was used to the suspicious treatment meted out to any man who came within a mile of her. ‘Lord, yes, I don't know how we managed without him. Keeping the books used to be a major headache for us, but it's child's play to him. He can almost make that wretched computer talk!'

Sam nodded. He knew the value of someone like that. His own business had benefited from having a shrewd financial man about the place who knew the ropes, especially in the beginning, when Sam himself had been no great shakes with the paperwork. He'd started his business with one small car-repair shop, gone on to body-building and then to selling cars. He'd gradually acquired a string of garages and later added a small coach-hire firm. His fleet of distinctive dark red buses with the name ‘Sam Nash' in gold across their sides was now a familiar sight on the hilly roads all around the Black Country. Though he was retired, he still retained a controlling interest in the business. Kept him on the ball, that and being on the Borough Council, with a bit of gardening on the side to keep him active. Speaking of which, he'd noticed that morning the plants in his borders were already pushing up through the sodden ground. He kept an eye on them throughout the winter, knowing where every dormant plant in the garden lay. He'd worked it, getting it to his liking, ever since he'd brought Clare's mother to live here as a bride.

Clare was asking about Sam's and Mary's plans for their marriage.

‘Oh, we're not about to rush into anything. It's hardly a shotgun wedding, you know.'

‘Sam Nash, I should hope not!' Clare laughed. ‘But where are you going to live?'

‘Why here, of course, where else?'

‘Does she know that?'

Her father said of course she did. Clare reflected that Mary

Bellamy must indeed be smitten, to be prepared to leave her modern, well-furnished bungalow on the outskirts of the town. Or astute enough to realize that Sam, amenable in most things, would never be prised out of here. This house was unassuming, a pleasant, double-fronted Edwardian villa, one of a small terrace of four in a quiet road near the park. Her mother had made it pretty and comfortable, and they had stayed put while houses around them changed hands for ten and twenty times what had originally been paid. Despite his increasing wealth, Sam had never seen any reason to move. It suited him, there was room for her mother's piano, which he'd taken to playing most days, never mind that he didn't do it particularly well. It breathed a bit of life into the house, he said, stopped him talking to himself to fill the empty air.

Sam let Clare tease him a bit about Mary Bellamy, glad enough to see her cheerful. They lunched together as often as not on Saturdays, usually with the accompaniment of a bottle of wine, and today he'd managed to persuade her to have a cognac with her coffee as well. For a while, she looked happy and relaxed.

Later, Sam watched her depart with David Neale. The man had seemed a decent, reliable sort of chap, but Sam thought he'd interpreted pretty correctly the look in his eyes when they'd rested on Clare, and he hoped that didn't spell more trouble, Clare's situation being what it was. He knew he really shouldn't be so protective about her – but, that bruise! Though maybe another man in her life was what she needed, he thought, sitting at the piano for a few minutes before getting ready for the match, playing ‘Bring On The Clowns', one of his favourite songs that Clare's mother had played so often for him. A good man. Yes, maybe that was the answer.

The clock struck the hour. It was time to get ready.

One thing Grace had begged of him before she died: ‘Promise me you'll never interfere, Sam. It never does any good, between husband and wife.' He'd promised. He thought it was a good maxim – within certain limitations – but he suddenly knew now that it was a promise he was prepared to break.

The meeting in Mayo's office was well under way when Abigail arrived. Present were DI Skellen and his sergeant, Ray Tillotson, from the Force Area Drugs Squad, plus Roger Steele, a detective from the divisional drugs team; they were actively discussing the abortive surveillance at the Bagots on Wednesday night, and why it had gone wrong.

‘Your weekend off, Abigail – sorry to have to bring you in.' Mayo's apologies were a matter of form, saying sorry took second place to the subject in hand. ‘But as you were in on this originally –'

Abigail flapped a hand in a don't-mention-it way. She'd long since grown philosophical about interruptions to her private and social life. To the hard work and being chronically short of sleep, as well. That was what it cost for a job you were willing to give your eye-teeth to get, even though you sometimes hated it. But it was ultimately stimulating and fulfilling, which was more than you could say for most jobs. And she'd have come in on her wedding day if it meant catching the scum who were responsible for this lad's death. Drug dealing was despicable, the rock-bottom end of a dirty business; it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

She sensed an atmosphere of tension building up in the room. A suggestion was being put forward by DC Steele that they should lose no time in raiding the Bagots, but this was immediately vetoed by Skellen.

Mayo, arms folded across his chest, was obviously of the same opinion as Steele. ‘Time to get the priorities right, Inspector,' he reminded Skellen. ‘Before any other youngster cops it. We know who the dealer is – so we pull him in. What's your problem?'

‘My problem is we've spent weeks on this. There's a new supplier on your patch, and the jungle drums say the dealing's going on from the Bagots. We can bust them any time, but we can't guarantee they're going to grass on their source, and that's who we want.'

‘How much longer do we have to wait?'

‘We should've had him last Wednesday, we'd good information he'd be there, but word must have got out. We need more time.'

‘I'd be asking your informant for your money back, if I were you,' Mayo remarked caustically.

‘He's always been reliable enough in the past.' Skellen shrugged, not liking the implied criticism, and looked to his sergeant for back-up. ‘We're building up good intelligence, but sometimes it all comes unhinged, despite best efforts.'

‘Somebody got wind,' agreed the laconic Tillotson. ‘It happens.'

The two men trod a dangerous line, sometimes working undercover, playing with fire. Mayo thought they overdid the streetwise bit. They were wearing the required gear, jeans and leather and scruffy trainers. Skellen sported a grade three haircut and an ear-ring, wasn't as young as he looked. His eyes were the giveaway. There was something about him Abigail tried to remember, a background of trouble, something menacing. His sergeant, a thin, cadaverous man, looked so like a druggie that certain people had been known to wonder if his double life hadn't skewed him in the wrong direction. But he wouldn't have lasted long with Skellen if he had.

‘This guy who's dealing, he's small potatoes,' Skellen said. ‘He's not part of any organized drug-trafficking that we know of but there's more stuff getting through to this neck of the woods than there should be, and we've a chance here to get back to the source if we get it right.'

No one said anything for a moment.

‘The ACC's not happy about this. “Crime-related drugs-taking”', Mayo quoted, ‘"is costing this force alone twenty-three millions a year."'

‘Yeah,' Skellen said, ‘and
forty-three
millions next time he blinks. Catching a two-bit street dealer isn't going to stop that. There's dozens more ready to crawl out of the woodwork and take his place.'

‘I know, I know.' Mayo sighed irritably. Skellen was right, of course. It went against the grain, however, to allow drug-pushing to go on under their noses. But it was good policy to let it continue, for months sometimes, never losing sight of what they were after, in an attempt to get a definite line to the supply chain. ‘But don't expect me to like it. A kid out there on my patch died last night.'

‘I hadn't forgotten,' Skellen said quietly. ‘But we'll get nowhere compromising the operation.'

‘OK. You win. But for God's sake, pull your finger out, and get something moving.'

‘Who was he? The boy who OD'd?' Abigail asked, thinking Skellen looked as though he hadn't finished arguing the point.

‘Damien Rogers. Fifteen. Pupil at Woodmill Comp,' the divisional man, Steele, recited. ‘Good school, good home. No reason for it.'

Abigail thought of the grey, faceless tower blocks where drugs were pushed as a matter of course, needles were left around for kids to find, where unemployment was the norm, crime was rampant ... No reason?

‘E, was it? Ecstasy?'

‘Smack.'

This raised her eyebrows. Not many of his age had the money to spare for hard drugs like heroin. Solvent abuse, glue-sniffing for the kids, the twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, progressing to marijuana, amphetamines, Ecstasy, LSD. Grass, uppers, downers, acid. Pocket money drugs. Anything else usually indicated too much money to throw around. But Damien's parents were an insurance salesman and a hairdresser, with nothing to spare and too much sense to be over-lavish with pocket money. Damien was a certainty for one of the number who'd turned to crime to pay for his habit. A dead cert, unfortunately.

Clare had no need to get out of the car to see that the house they'd come to view was a non-starter. What amazed her was that David Neale, shrewd, sensible and used to a comfortable, even luxurious mode of living, in one of Lavenstock's most upmarket houses, had ever dreamed it would be. Set in a field, half-way down a muddy lane, miles from anywhere, the house was simply lacking in any sort of charm. It had been erected nearly forty years ago for a farmer, from the profits made by selling off his original Georgian farmhouse to a Birmingham company director who fixed coach lamps outside the front door and made the farmyard into a patio. The farmer had been happy enough to end his days in the New House, a brick-built, flat-faced, utilitarian construction with mean windows and an ungenerous roof overhang, standing in a garden which had been mainly given over to cabbages. But who else would be?

Clare told herself the bad impression may have simply been due to the grey lowering skies and the soaking drizzle, but inside, it was no better. Walking from one square, box-like room to another, taking gloomy note of the out-of-date central heating and bathroom facilities, the cold, bare kitchen, she felt it had a mean soul.

‘Well?' David asked, watching carefully for her reactions. ‘I dare say it'd look a whole lot different with the garden landscaped, it needs modernizing, and a few gallons of paint...'

‘Depends on how much money you're prepared to spend, of course,' she began cautiously, not wanting to disappoint him, if he'd set his mind on living here, though privately she considered he must be mad if he thought a bit of tarting up would make much difference.

Suddenly, he laughed outright. ‘You don't like it, I can see – and you're right, of course,' he said to her relief and perhaps, she thought, to his own. ‘I was taken in by the price, and the possibilities of the garden. I can see it won't do.' He wasted no more time on fruitless speculation, but slammed the front door firmly behind them.

While they'd been inside, the lowering cloud had settled into a persistent, heavy rain. Now the heavens opened. Nothing for it but to make a dash, umbrella-less, down the concrete driveway, before diving into his car, laughing and breathless. He peered doubtfully through the streaming windscreen when they'd finally mopped themselves up. ‘I'd thought of a walk, perhaps, if we'd had time, but this has put paid to it ... Shall we look for a café and a cup of tea?'