Nothing but Trouble (7 page)

‘You say that like you
want
her to be cheating on him.’

‘That’s not what I meant. All I’m saying is that if someone’s not being truthful, you have to wonder why. She told her husband
she was working, but instead she went and had dinner with a solicitor. That’s suspicious in anyone’s book.’

‘We don’t know that Vita Howard is
her
solicitor. They could just be mates.’

‘So why lie about meeting her?’

‘But did she actually lie?’ Jess said. ‘Perhaps she just forgot to mention it.’

‘Hang on, Vaughan. Wasn’t it you who suggested earlier that she could be the one getting in first with the divorce proceedings?’

‘I’m always suggesting things. It doesn’t mean they’re right.’ She inclined her head and smiled at him again. ‘Although it
doesn’t mean they’re wrong either.’

Harry put his foot down and set off towards Jess’s flat in Hackney. He wasn’t sure how much he’d learned tonight, other than
that Aimee Locke was a stunner and that she’d been less than honest with her husband. That, however, didn’t make her a cheat.
Oh, and there had been that one other revelation: Ray Stagg was the power behind the throne at Selene’s. That single fact,
however, was more than enough to set alarm bells ringing.

It was shortly after six when Harry was woken by the thin morning light filtering through the flimsy curtains. He had a moment
of confusion, of disorientation, as his eyes flickered open and he peered at the unfamiliar green walls. It took a few seconds
for his brain to register where he was; not at his old flat in Kentish Town but in the new one in Kellston. This, in turn,
reminded him that he still had a pile of unopened crates awaiting his attention. With a groan, he rolled out of bed and padded
through to the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, showered, shaved and dressed, he was standing by the living room window eating a slice of toast and
sipping from a mug of coffee while he gazed idly down on the street. Nothing much was happening. The shops weren’t open yet
and even the station was quiet. There were only a few people passing by, on their way to work perhaps, or going home after
a night shift.

He lifted his eyes to the pale blue sky. It was going to be another nice day, but only nice, he suspected, in the meteorological
sense; he wasn’t looking forward to his appointment with
Sam Kendall or the memories it was bound to revive about the tragic Minnie Bright case. Before the prospect could cast too
great a shadow, he pushed it to the back of his mind. He’d agreed to the meeting and there was no point in stressing over
things he couldn’t change.

Turning, he walked across the room, put his mug down on the table and surveyed the surrounding chaos. His heart sank. Just
how much stuff did one human being need? He’d had a major clear-out before leaving Kentish Town, but he still appeared to
be in possession of enough for a family of five.

For the next few hours he worked methodically, unpacking the crates one at a time and finding a place for everything before
moving on to the next. As he filled cupboards, wardrobes and drawers, his thoughts drifted to the previous night and his first
sight of the lovely Aimee Locke. He had a weakness for beautiful women, especially tall, cool blondes, and he wondered if
her personality was as seductive as her appearance. Not that it was any of his business. His only business was in finding
out whether she was a faithful wife or not.

From Monday, one of their full-time employees, Warren James, would be doing the surveillance during the day. Harry would take
over the watch in the evening. Usually these jobs were the height of tedium, with endless hours spent doing nothing more interesting
than sitting in the van twiddling one’s thumbs and waiting for something to happen. He wondered if Martin Locke had really
needed to go away this week, or if he was simply giving Aimee enough rope to hang herself with.

Harry’s thoughts were still fixed on the long, shapely legs of his client’s wife as he dug into one of the crates and came
across two framed photographs: one was of his father taken a few Christmases ago, the other of himself and Valerie. Both of
the pictures, for different reasons, made demands on his conscience.

It was over a fortnight since he’d last phoned his dad, and he
knew that a call was overdue. He’d been putting it off, the way he put off anything uncomfortable. Their conversations were
always strained. His father, a firm believer in repression over expression, was of the stiff-upper-lip school of thought:
bad stuff was to be swept under the carpet, feelings never discussed. Harry still couldn’t work out whether this had been
the cause or the result of his mother’s desertion. Whatever the reason, she had walked out when Harry was five and had never
– as far as he knew – been in touch since.

He glanced at his phone, thought about it, then decided to ring later. It usually helped to have a glass of whisky to hand
when he made these calls, and it was too early to start drinking. As a salve to his conscience, however, he placed the photograph
in a prominent position on top of the bookcase.

Walking back across the room, he picked up the second picture and sighed. Valerie’s smiling face could not be so easily dealt
with. Over the past few months they’d been seeing more and more of each other, sliding back into a relationship that if not
exactly passionate was certainly easy and comfortable. They knew each other inside out, too well perhaps, and it was only
a matter of time before a decision would have to be made about their future. Did she want them to get back together on a permanent
basis? Did he? They were questions he didn’t have any answers to at the moment. Harry stared down at the photo before opening
the top left-hand drawer of the dresser and slipping it inside.

By half past twelve the unpacking was finished. He took the empty crates out to the corridor and stacked them against the
wall for the delivery company to collect next week. Then he went downstairs and unlocked the office. The pungent smell of
paint was still in the air and so he opened the windows again.

Sam Kendall arrived punctually at one o’clock. She was a small, slender girl, about five foot two in height, with an elfin
face, short, spiky brown hair and brown eyes. There was a smattering of freckles across her turned-up nose. She was wearing
a pair of grey jeans and a long-sleeved black-and-grey-striped T-shirt.

‘Thanks for seeing me,’ she said, shaking his hand. ‘I really appreciate it.’

Harry took her through to his office and gestured towards the chair. ‘Would you like a coffee?’

‘No thanks,’ she said, sitting down and crossing her legs. ‘I’m fine.’

He walked around the desk and sat down too. ‘Jess has explained what’s been going on, but why don’t you go through it again
for me.’

Sam gave a nod, took a few seconds to gather her thoughts together and then started. As she recited the details, pretty well
repeating everything that Jess had said, Harry listened closely, absorbing not only her words but the careful way in which
she delivered them. Quickly he began to form an impression. She seemed intelligent and thoughtful, certainly not the type
who was prone to hysteria, attention-seeking or exaggeration.

When she got to the end, Sam delved into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out an envelope. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘I got another
of those notes. This one wasn’t posted; it was pushed through the door to my flat. It was there when I got home last night.’

Harry reached across and took it from her. He sat back, pulled the sheet of paper from the envelope and stared at it. Like
the others, it had been compiled of cut-out letters from a newspaper.
YOU GONNA DIE LIKE MINNIE YOU BITCH.
Glancing up, he saw the worry in Sam’s eyes. ‘Did you talk to the neighbours, ask if they noticed anything?’

‘Only the woman upstairs, and she didn’t see anyone. But it would have been dark. And it’s a busy street; people are passing
by all the time. I went to work at seven so it must have been delivered after that.’

Harry leaned forward again, folded the note and laid it on the desk. ‘So who do
you
think is responsible?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ she said, looking slightly startled. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

‘But what was your first instinctive thought?’

Sam gave a shrug, frowning briefly before her brow cleared again. ‘I don’t know. Someone connected to Minnie, I guess. Her
mother or some other member of the family?’

‘But why should they blame
you
for Minnie’s death?’

Sam worried at her lower lip, gazing down at the floor for a moment before looking up again. Her voice had a slight tremor
in it. ‘Because we
were
to blame, partly at least.’ She hesitated before continuing. ‘Do you know what happened that day?’

Harry didn’t divulge that he was one of the officers who had found the body. He was careful to keep his voice neutral. ‘You
were with Minnie Bright, yes? You and four other girls.’

Her face twisted a little. ‘We should never have let her go inside that house. We should have stopped her.’

Harry found himself wondering what it was like to carry that sense of guilt around. It was a burden, he suspected, that would
never be lifted. ‘You were just kids. You couldn’t have known what was going to happen.’

Sam gave a small, dismissive wave of her hand, as if that was an argument she’d heard before, and one that didn’t sit well
with her conscience. ‘We were old enough to know that Minnie wasn’t … well, that she wasn’t like the rest of us. She was kind
of young for her age, a bit odd, the kind who never really fitted in.’ She paused again. ‘In all honesty, we weren’t very
nice to her.’

‘Kids are often cruel to each other.’

‘I know,’ she sighed. ‘But I was mean
and
cowardly. I knew it
was wrong, what she was being asked to do, but I didn’t have the guts to try and stop it. I was too scared of being picked
on myself.’

He could understand what she was saying. He still recalled his own daily panic at school, the constant fear of doing or saying
the wrong thing. Although he already knew the answer to his next question, he asked it anyway. He wanted to see how she’d
respond. ‘So one of the other girls dared her to go inside?’

Sam’s face flushed red and her hands briefly wrestled in her lap. ‘Yeah, that was when me and Lynda legged it. We could have
taken Minnie with us, but we didn’t. We left her there and …’

She didn’t need to finish the sentence. Both of them were aware of what had happened next.

Harry left a short silence and then tapped his fingers on the note. ‘So do you know if any of the other girls have received
threats like these?’

Sam shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen them for years. My mum moved us to Hackney after the court case. Lynda was the only one
I kept in touch with, and she … she passed away last year.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I heard. I’m sorry.’

Sam suddenly sat forward, putting her elbows on the desk. ‘I think Lynda had found out something, or remembered something.
She called me on the night she died. I was working and had the phone turned off, so I didn’t get her message until after I
arrived home. That was about two o’clock, and I didn’t want to ring at that time, but when I called her later that morning
she didn’t pick up …’ She raked her fingers through her hair and rubbed at her face. ‘I was too late.’

‘What did she say in the message exactly?’

Sam wrinkled her brow. ‘It wasn’t very clear. I think she’d been drinking and she sounded upset. She said she had to talk
to me about
that day.
That’s what she always called it. She
thought about it a lot, even after all these years.’ She paused. ‘I think about it too, of course I do, but for Lynda it was
like a great dark shadow that was always hanging over her.’

‘And that’s all she said, that she had to talk to you?’

‘No, there was more. She said that it was important, that it
changed things.
I think those were her words. I didn’t keep the message. I was going to ring her back, so I deleted it.’ Her face twisted,
her eyes becoming bright with tears. ‘I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I’ve got this feeling that whatever it was might
have been the final straw, the thing that pushed her over the edge.’

‘You don’t believe it was an accident?’

‘I don’t know what to believe. She’d been depressed, I mean
really
depressed, and back then I thought she might have … I know what the police thought, and what the coroner said, but …’

‘You suspected suicide?’

She bowed her head before slowly lifting it again. ‘No … yes … Christ, I don’t know. Yes, I suppose I did. She’d been drinking
heavily, that’s what they said at the inquest, so I thought she might have decided to end it all. And she might have wanted
to make it look like an accident so her family wouldn’t feel so guilty. I mean, people always do feel guilty, don’t they?
How can they feel anything else? But now, with these threats and everything, I’m starting to wonder if it was something else,
if someone might have …’

Harry could see where she was going without her having to spell it out. Not an accident, not suicide, but murder.

Sam gazed at him pleadingly. ‘Please help me, Mr Lind. You probably don’t think I’m in any real danger, but I can’t think
straight with all this going on. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I’m always looking over my shoulder, wondering what’s going to
happen next. I have to find out who’s doing this. I have to make them stop.’

Harry, although he didn’t entirely buy into the murder theory, could see how upset she was. Lynda’s death must have knocked
her for six, and now she was the target of a malicious campaign. He didn’t have the heart to refuse, even though he still
had reservations. If he started digging around in the Minnie Bright case, he was likely to upset the Kellston police, and
that was hardly smart when Mackenzie, Lind had only just moved into the area. On the other hand, the wrath of the local constabulary
was nothing compared to the grief Jessica Vaughan would inflict on him if he refused to help. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll make
some enquiries, see what I can find out.’