Nothing but Trouble (20 page)

‘Yes, I told Warren I’d take over at five.’

Lorna nodded towards a sturdy carrier bag on the table beside the water machine. ‘There’s a flask of coffee for you there,
and some sandwiches.’

‘Ah, you’re an angel,’ he said, leaning over the desk to give her a peck on the cheek. ‘What would I do without you?’

‘Fall asleep most probably. Now push off and leave me in peace.’

Harry picked up the bag, gave her a wave and headed for the door. Once outside, he was in two minds as to whether to take
the car or not. In the end he decided not. It was only a fifteen-minute walk, and it was still warm; he might as well make
the most of the sunshine. As he crossed the road and passed the station. The commuters were already streaming out. They had
a tired, slightly bedraggled look about them. The term
rush hour,
he thought, was a complete misnomer; in London the crush
seemed to have been extended to include most of the day and half the evening too.

As he squeezed his way through the crowd, Harry turned his attention back to David Choi’s phone call and what it had revealed
about Lynda’s preoccupation with the Donald Peck trial. A part of him – the part that didn’t want to upset the applecart –
considered that it was simply a reflection of her disturbed state of mind, an attempt to reconcile her actions with the facts
of the case. When she’d made the calls to the other girls, there had been no suggestion that she’d thought Peck was innocent
– at least not to Harry’s knowledge. So surely there was nothing to suggest that the law had got it wrong. And yet that conclusion
didn’t sit comfortably with him. He had one of those uneasy feelings shifting around in his guts.

Harry took a left and strode along the high street. As he walked past Wilder’s, the door opened and a young couple emerged.
A few bars of jazz drifted out with them into the evening air and he was suddenly reminded of Valerie. What was she doing
now? Still at Cowan Road, perhaps, or on her way home, or heading for the pub with some of the guys from work. Maybe he would
give her a ring later.

He headed south and started to wind through the back streets. After a further ten minutes he found himself in the more exclusive
part of Kellston. The houses set back off the road lay behind high walls, but he caught glimpses of them, along with their
large manicured gardens, as he passed the gates. It was quieter here, and the air smelled cleaner, as if the atmosphere, like
the fancy cars and the exotic plants, had been especially imported.

Harry, even if he had the money, doubted that he’d choose to live in a place like this; it seemed cut off from the realities
of city life, from the very things that had always made London so appealing to him – the cultural and economic mix, the hustle
and bustle, the sheer unpredictability of it all. There was something artificial about this exclusive enclave, something that
left a bad taste in his mouth.

As he turned the corner into Walpole Close, he took out his phone and let Warren James know that he was almost there.

‘Good timing,’ Warren said. ‘I was just dreaming of a nice cold beer. The door’s open. Come on in and make yourself comfortable.’

Harry took a good look around as he approached the white van. There was no one else on his side of the road. Across the other
side, however, coming from the opposite direction, there was a smartly dressed middle-aged woman walking a pedigree pooch.
She stared quite blatantly at him, her expression stern and accusing, trying to judge perhaps if he was the sort of man likely
to break into her house while her back was turned. He gave her a neighbourly nod, but she ignored him.

He slowed down, waiting until she’d passed and gone a little way down the road before striding up to the van, sliding open
the door and quickly stepping inside. Warren James, a slim black guy, was sitting at the table with a laptop in front of him.
He was the resident computer expert at Mackenzie, Lind – able to dig out a fraud from the most meagre evidence – but he doubled
up on surveillance when things were quiet.

‘Bang on time,’ Warren said.

Harry closed the door. The van was warm inside and littered with the debris of hours of surveillance – breadcrumbs, chocolate
wrappers, empty Styrofoam cups and a couple of newspapers. ‘We aim to please.’

Warren stretched his arms up over his head and yawned. ‘God, I’ll be glad to get out of here. It’s like the land of the living
dead.’

‘Not much action, then?’

‘She hasn’t been out all day. She has had a couple of visitors,
though, a woman in her late forties who arrived on foot at ten o’clock this morning and left at twelve – I think she was the
cleaner – and a guy who turned up at two and left around three thirty.’

Harry raised his eyebrows. ‘An hour and a half?’

‘I wouldn’t get too excited about it. I checked out the car and it’s licensed to an Aidan Russell.’ Warren hit on a few keys
and a series of photos came up on the laptop. ‘Here, there are some pretty clear shots of him arriving and leaving.’

Harry leaned over Warren’s shoulder and examined the snaps. The car was a pale blue Jaguar and the man was in his early thirties
with brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard.

‘So what shouldn’t I be getting excited about? They were alone together, right?’

‘The guy’s a hairdresser. He could have been here to snip the lady’s tresses.’

‘Do hairdressers usually make house calls?’

‘I should think it depends on how rich the client is. I doubt our Mrs Locke is short of a bob or two.’ Warren picked up some
A4 sheets of printed paper and handed them over. ‘Russell owns a couple of salons, one in Chelsea and one in Covent Garden.
He’s got a Facebook page for the business.’

Harry flicked through the publicity, which was mainly pictures of beautiful women with desirable haircuts. ‘I don’t suppose
it mentions if he’s gay or straight?’

Warren stood up and shrugged into his leather jacket. ‘Well, he drives a powder-blue Jag. I know where I’d put my money.’

‘I’m not sure if that counts as definitive evidence of his sexuality.’

‘Powder-blue?’ Warren said again, pulling a face. ‘That’s a crime against motoring, man.’

Harry laughed and took Warren’s place in front of the laptop. A second computer to the right was screening live footage of
the
space in front of the Locke gates. ‘See you tomorrow, then. Have a good evening.’

‘Good luck.’

Harry watched him leave. Warren James was ten years his junior, happily married with a couple of kids and another on the way.
It probably wasn’t all sunshine and roses – nothing ever was – but he seemed to have his personal life sorted in a way that
Harry could barely envisage. The older he got, the more distant the possibility of playing happy families became. His on–off
relationship with Valerie had placed him in a kind of limbo he seemed incapable of escaping from.

With relationships on his mind, Harry sat back and glanced through Warren’s notes again. Could Aimee Locke be cheating on
her husband with her hairdresser? Even with Martin Locke away, she would be playing a risky game by entertaining him in her
own home. But then people weren’t always smart when it came to having affairs.

‘Aimee,’ he murmured. ‘What are you doing?’

The traffic increased a little over the next hour. He watched as people returned from work, executive cars purring past the
van, but the Locke gates – no matter how hard he stared at the computer screen – remained firmly closed. Perhaps she would
go out later. Perhaps that was why she’d had her hair done.

At six o’clock Harry took the Tupperware box out of the carrier bag and peered inside. There were four large sandwiches, two
cheese and pickle, two ham salad, an apple, some grapes and a Mars bar. When he’d first started working for Mac, Lorna’s attempts
to mother him had driven him crazy, but these days he appreciated her efforts. He picked up one of the ham sandwiches, bit
off a corner and gave a grunt of pleasure.

While he ate, he continued to focus on the wrought-iron gates. The only movement came from the rhododendron
blossoms swaying in the breeze. He finished his sandwich and poured a cup of coffee. He sensed it was going to be a long night.
Settling back in his chair, he pulled over Jess’s file on the Minnie Bright case and started from the beginning.

At ten past seven Jess walked down to the corner shop and bought a pint of milk, a microwaveable meal for one and a bottle
of wine. Neil, who normally did the cooking, was on his way to a legal seminar in Edinburgh and she had no desire to spend
any more time than was necessary in the kitchen. Her plan for this evening was to make a thorough trawl through her notes
on the Minnie Bright case and see if there was anything she’d missed.

It was when she was almost back at the small block of flats that she began to feel it, a weird tingling sensation on the back
of her neck. Someone was watching her. She glanced quickly over her shoulder. There were plenty of people around, but none,
so far as she could tell, who were showing any particular interest. But still the prickling continued, a sixth-sense feeling
that couldn’t be ignored.

She scanned the cars parked along the side of the road, lifted her gaze to the windows of the surrounding houses and finally
looked over at the green expanse of Victoria Park before wondering if she was just imagining it. Even so, she hurried the
final few yards, reaching for her keys as she went.

Once inside the communal hallway, she walked smartly along the corridor, unlocked her front door and bolted it behind her.
She went into the living room and peered out through the window. From here she had a clear view of the main road and watched
as two young guys, a man in a grey suit and then a blonde girl walked past. None of them paid any attention to the flats.

‘Where are you?’ she murmured. ‘
Who
are you?’

Jess continued to stand there, watching. After a while she frowned and turned away, wondering if her instincts had been wrong.
It was easy to get paranoid when you were involved with secrets and lies – and the Minnie Bright case had plenty of those.
She had almost persuaded herself that she’d been mistaken when the phone suddenly rang and she jumped half out of her skin.
She gazed at it for a moment, her heart beating faster, before snatching it up off the coffee table and looking at the screen.
It was only Sam Kendall. With a sigh of relief she answered the call and passed on the information Harry had received about
Lynda returning to the house.

‘She never said anything to you about it?’

‘No, not a word,’ Sam replied. ‘We split up when we got back to the Mansfield. She went off in the direction of Haslow House
and I went to Carlton. That was the last I saw of her.’ She paused for a moment. ‘So you really think she went back?’

‘Do
you
think she could’ve?’

‘It’s possible, I suppose. She might have felt bad about leaving Minnie alone with the others. Lynda was that kind of person.
But why would she keep quiet about it?’

‘We’re still trying to figure that one out. She didn’t tell the police. She didn’t tell her family. She didn’t even tell you.’

Sam thought about this for a few seconds. ‘It might have been because she didn’t want to get into any more trouble. Back
then, I mean. Lynda’s parents were pretty strict. She wasn’t even supposed to be out with us that day. Her parents had enrolled
her in one of those summer schools, but she hated it and never went.’ She left another short pause, cleared her throat and
added, ‘When she spoke to the cops, she must have been terrified – I know I was – and just wanting to get the whole thing
over and done with. If her interview was anything like mine, it would have been pretty clear from the start that they were
more interested in the girls who were actually with Minnie when she went inside the house. All they wanted from me was to
make sure that my story, up to the point where we left, tallied with everyone else’s.’

Jess gave a nod. ‘Lynda might have realised that admitting to going back meant she would have been the last one on the scene,
and so she simply kept quiet about it.’

‘I’m sure she wouldn’t have lied – she wasn’t the type – but if the cops didn’t ask the right questions …’

‘She would have let them go on believing that when she returned to the Mansfield with you, she actually stayed there.’

‘I guess,’ Sam said. ‘I mean, if there wasn’t any extra information she could give them, she might have figured that it was
better to keep her mouth shut.’

Jess gave another nod, understanding how easily a ten-year-old Lynda could have made that decision. ‘Thanks, Sam. I’ll let
you know if we hear anything else.’ She said her goodbyes, put the phone down and wandered back over to the window. Her eyes
automatically scanned the street again, left and right, before she headed for the kitchen to put her lasagne in the microwave.

Two hours later, Jess was on her third glass of wine. Her copious notes, including trial reports, a huge pile of press cuttings
and all the information she’d gleaned from Sam Kendall, were strewn across the table. She’d decided to go back
to basics and to try and create a timeline for the day. So far she had:

And that was that, Jess thought, flinching at the knowledge of what had happened next. By the time Peck returned, Minnie would
have been in the house for about an hour. What had she been doing for all that time? Still searching for the queen’s treasure,
perhaps. Still hoping to become the princess she had never been in real life.