AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Hello there.’
The smile on his face faded, and was replaced by a puzzled frown. ‘Oh,’ he said, with disappointment in his voice. ‘I thought you were Peggy. I thought . . .’ His words ground to a halt, but even so they were like a punch to Maggie’s solar plexus.
She dredged up her cheerful mask. ‘She’s dead. You know that. Mum is dead.’
Her father didn’t reply. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. He had said something similar the previous Thursday and it had been such a shock that Maggie had gone home determined to contact the doctor the very next day. Only she hadn’t. By the following morning she was telling herself that maybe it had just been a one-off, a case of him having had a bad day. So she had delayed making an appointment. He hadn’t made that same mistake on any of her visits since, so she had begun to think of it as just one of those things. She continued to tell herself that reporting it to the doctor would make it official. Then they would test him and analyse him, and before you knew it, her father would be classified as having dementia when all that was happening was that he was getting a wee bit forgetful. Actually it was more than a wee bit. Twice she had come home to find the gas ring turned on and no saucepan anywhere near it. She ought to do something about it.
Arthur, her father, had returned his attention to the magazine that was in his lap. Maggie watched him. He was looking at the pages, but was he actually reading them? Was he taking in any of the words? Did he recognise the photo of that comedian in the middle of the right-hand page?
Maggie went through to the kitchen and switched on the kettle. She stood there, lost in her own world. Why hadn’t she just admitted to the police that she had gone to see her father? They would find out in the end if they were half competent. It was easy to tell a small lie. ‘I went to see a friend.’ And then another little lie and then another. Except that much of what she had said had been true. They had been to War Horse in London. They did go out for meals sometimes (though not recently). He was in his sixties. And he had got some form of dementia, maybe Alzheimer’s. She now knew that with frightening certainty. It was strange how talking to the detectives had crystallised it. She wondered if they would call her in for further questions with a solicitor present. And if so, how soon? Perhaps they would wait until they had a full forensics report on the shop and the explosion. Perhaps she had a few days’ grace — a few days to make and implement a plan.
She made a cup of tea for each of them and returned to the living room, placing his mug on the table beside the sofa. She noticed that he hadn’t turned the pages of the television magazine at all because there was still the photo of that wretchedly egocentric comedian there. Then she realised that he had got it open at the previous day’s programmes.
‘Thank you, Peggy dear,’ he said without looking at her. Maggie’s stomach lurched again and for a moment she thought she was going to vomit. Her father picked up the mug, took a sip and smiled. ‘Just right, my dear. You always could make a good cup of tea.’
* * *
DI Reid could feel the sweat pooling in his armpits. He knew that if he took his jacket off there’d be two embarrassing damp patches on his shirt. It wasn’t that it was particularly warm. This office, unlike his own, was air-conditioned. The source of his discomfort was the man sitting across the desk from him, Bill Bowman. Half shut your eyes and he became a Billy Bunter with a fat round face, black-rimmed spectacles and crumpled white shirt. That was what Ashcroft sometimes called him, Billy Bunter or the Fat Owl, when Reid and he were in the car together. But never in the office and never down the pub with the lads. Even Ashcroft wasn’t so stupid as to risk career suicide like that. Reid opened his eyes and Billy Bunter became Bill Bowman, the fat bastard. The crumpled shirt was immaculately ironed and the eyes behind the pebble lenses were those of a hawk — or a vulture. He was, Reid knew, some fifteen years younger than him and yet he had already risen higher up the greasy pole than Reid ever would. In fact, Reid suspected that he might soon be slithering back down, unable to hold on to the modest rank he had managed to achieve, while Bowman soared into the stratosphere.
‘Not good,’ Bowman was saying. His voice was high and squeaky, like Bunter’s, but that was where the similarities ended. ‘Not good at all.’
The room fell silent. Bowman’s bulbous hands were steepled together as if in prayer, which was the last thing Reid could imagine him doing. Bowman picked up the glass of water in front of him and took a sip.
‘We’re making progress,’ Reid said. It sounded feeble.
Bowman laughed. Reid flinched. It wasn’t funny. Nothing was funny about being interrogated in the fat man’s office. Reid didn’t report to him normally. He had only been summoned there once before and that was an experience he wished he could expunge from his memory. So why had he been summoned now? Why was Bowman so interested in this particular case?
‘Our key witness is dead, Inspector. She died before you got round to asking her any questions. Is that correct?’
Reid licked his lips. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Whereas two unknown persons masquerading as police picked her up from the hospital, drove her home, gave her a cup of tea and presumably asked her a lot of questions before she so inconveniently died. Is that right?’
Reid nodded. ‘That is our current assumption.’ He could hardly deny it. Less than an hour previously Ashcroft had spoken to the auxiliary nurse who had escorted Mrs Gupta to the hospital doors and passed her into the care of a man in a suit and a woman in uniform.
‘Cause of death?’
‘We expect to get the results of the post-mortem later this afternoon.’
‘Waste of time,’ snapped Bowman. ‘If it’s natural causes, I’m from Azerbaijan.’
‘We have a scene-of-crime team going over the old woman’s flat. There may be something . . .’
‘Another waste of time. These people are professionals. They aren’t going to leave cigarettes lying around, impregnated with their DNA. They aren’t morons.’ He didn’t say “unlike you,” though Reid had no doubt that was what he meant.
‘I’d like to put a 24/7 watch on Miss Rogers,’ Reid said.
‘Expensive,’ Bowman said. Reid waited. He knew the game. If it was important enough, the money would be found. He was pretty certain that for Bowman it was extremely important, though he wasn’t sure why. Even
tually Bowman gave another laugh, short and sharp. ‘It’s your call, Inspector.’ Then he picked up the phone. Reid stood up. It was his cue to get the hell out of there. He withdrew to the door and opened it.
‘Last chance saloon,’ the squeaky voice said. Reid pretended not to have heard. He shut the door softly behind him.
* * *
The girl sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the TV. Bambi was her second favourite film ever. She wiped her eyes. Bambi’s mother had just been shot. It was so sad that she felt her heart would burst, except that she knew things would get better from now on. Bambi would meet Thumper and make friends and grow up and everything would be alright in the end. Except that it wouldn’t because Bambi’s mother would never come back.
She liked this hotel. It was the fourth one in four days and it was definitely the best. The last one had been a bit stinky. Even Sam had said it was ‘crap,’ and if Sam had noticed, it had to be true. But this one was a huge room, and her bed was soft and cuddly with pure white sheets and a duvet and three pillows with little red flowers on them. On top there was a dark red bedspread that was silky and shiny. There were lots of posh-looking plastic bottles in the bathroom. When Bambi was finished, she was going to have a bath with lots of bubbles and pretend she was in heaven. She would wash her hair until it was silky, and afterwards she was going to rub the moisturising cream all over her legs and arms and tummy like ladies did. Then she would brush her teeth before she went to sleep because Mummy was sitting up there in heaven watching to see that she didn’t forget.
