John Powell, haunted by the old worries, forgot immediately about the easy promise to buy Anna a Coke when the session was over. He left the Centre, ignoring the porter’s greeting, and stopped at the entrance to the car park. He’d always liked cars and it had become a habit to stop there to admire the smart vehicles left by the Centre’s patrons. But the fog and the smashed security lights meant that visibility was poor and he hurried back to the square. The pavement was covered with sodden leaves and his footsteps made no sound. Through the mist he saw his mother’s car parked outside the grocer’s shop. He remembered his dad had said he could borrow it because his was in the garage for a service, and was pleased, it would give him an excuse for not waiting for a lift home. He would say that he’d forgotten about the service and when his father’s car wasn’t around he’d presumed that he had missed the choral society because of some emergency at work. His excuses to his father grew more elaborate every day.
In the cafeteria Anna Bennett pretended not to notice that John had left without buying her a drink, without saying goodbye. The place was busy so she could chat to her friends and ignore her mother’s glances of anxious sympathy.
‘Gabby wasn’t here tonight,’ Prue said to Ellen as she collected her coffee.
Ellen looked up, said nothing.
‘She told me she’d be here,’ Prue said, trying to contain her impatience. ‘You don’t know where she might be?’
Ellen shook her head then seemed to realize that some contribution was expected.
‘Perhaps she’s poorly,’ she said.
‘She didn’t say anything this morning,’ Prue said. ‘ But perhaps that’s it. Perhaps she didn’t feel well at school and went straight home.’
‘You don’t want to worry about that one. She can look after herself,’ Ellen said unhelpfully. She began to serve the next customer and added as an afterthought: ‘No need to fuss.’
‘All the same,’ Prue said, ‘ I think we’d better go home and check.’ She imagined Gabby in the house at Otterbridge, alone, seriously ill. She drank her coffee quickly and called to Anna who was standing at the edge of a group of girls, smiling too brightly, pretending too hard to be interested in what they were saying. With a relief that was only obvious to Prue, Anna gathered up her coat and bag and followed her mother into the lobby.
At an impressive wooden desk sat a short, thick set, bald man, reading the Sun. This was Joe Fenwick, retired boxer, porter and security man. He looked up from the paper and smiled.
‘All right, Miss Bennett?’ he said. ‘Finished for the night, then, pet?’
‘Yes,’ said Prue, then, contradicting herself, ‘no, I’d forgotten. I must see Gus before I go.’ She turned to her daughter apologetically. ‘He’s worked out a final draft for the programme and I want to check it before it’s printed. I’ll take it home with me.’
‘Go on then!’ said Anna, long suffering, tolerant of her mother’s middle-aged absentmindedness. ‘I’ll wait for you here.’
Prue ran up the stairs and paused outside Gus’s office door to catch her breath, then knocked and went straight in. She saw first that Gus had a visitor then that she had interrupted some silent confrontation. Gus was sitting behind his desk facing a middle-aged woman who sat squarely in a leather chair inherited with the house. The woman was well dressed, confident, classy. Prue recognized her as Amelia Wood, Deputy Chair of the Grace Darling trustees. Prue composed herself. Mrs Wood was an intruding presence and she wondered briefly what trouble the old bat was causing now. She smiled.
‘Sorry to disturb you, Gus,’ she said lightly. ‘I’m here for the programme. I was hoping to work on it at home, this evening.’
He jumped to his feet, all tension and nervous energy. He was rattled, Prue thought. Mrs Wood sat with her gloved hands clasped in her lap and smiled.
‘Yeah,’ Gus said. ‘Right. Of course. Look, the draft’s still in my car. In a file in the boot. Why don’t you help yourself?’ He took keys from the pocket of a jacket which was hanging on a coatstand by the window, and tossed them to her. ‘Leave them with Joe at reception,’ he said. ‘Save you coming all the way up the stairs again.’
Mrs Wood watched his agitation with amusement. She stood up, offered one of her hands to Prue and said: ‘Miss Bennett! How nice to meet you again.’
Resisting the urge to curtsy Prue left the room and returned to Anna.
When they walked into the car park the Christ Church clock was striking 9.30. Usually the place was brightly lit with security floodlights but they had been smashed by vandals the weekend before and still not replaced. After the warmth and light of the house the car park was chill and uninviting. The only light came from the orange street lamps beyond the trees and from the uncurtained windows of the cafeteria. From the mouth of the river came the distant, muffled sound of a foghorn and the smell of mud. The car park was almost empty. The teachers and solicitors who came to the Grace Darling Centre to sing and write enjoyed its facilities but were nervous about its location. One heard such dreadful stories. At the end of each meeting they were relieved to find their cars still there intact, and drove back with relief to the civilization of Tynemouth and Martin’s Dene.
Gus had his own space in the car park. He had insisted that Joe Fenwick should paint DIRECTOR in big white letters on the concrete. The blue Volvo was parked at an angle between the parallel white lines as if he had arrived in a hurry. Prue fitted a key into the lock of the door. As she lifted it a bulb inside lit automatically, and she had no difficulty in seeing the contents. There, on top of the file containing the programme for The Adventures of Abigail Keene, lay Gabby Paston, curled on her side like a child at sleep. But her eyes were open and bulging. Gabriella Paston was dead.
Chapter Two
Inspector Ramsay was loaned to the North Tyneside division of Northumbria Police to work on the Gabriella Paston murder because it was desperately under-staffed. The area had seen an epidemic of what was known in the anodyne jargon of the sociologist as auto-related crime. Young people had always stolen cars and driven them dangerously. The offence was so common in the North Tyneside courts that it was hardly taken seriously. But recently the thefts had become more organized. There was a suspicion that they were being co-ordinated by more sophisticated criminals. The situation was complicated too by gangs of ram raiders who drove high-performance cars through shop windows to steal the expensive goods inside, and by the circus-like exhibition of the racing of stolen cars around the district’s council estates in the middle of the night.
Nightly street disturbances followed the police’s attempts to control these demonstrations of male bravado and there were tragedies: the death of a seven-year-old child as a stolen car chased by the police swung out of control at a school crossing, and the stabbing of an eighty-year-old man who was rumoured to have given information to the police. In the quiet period before Christmas there was little other domestic news and the broadcasters and newspaper reporters gathered in the area in their hundreds, inflaming the locals’ bitterness with their cameras and their questions. There was talk of riot and constant criticism of the policing of the area; the Northumbria Police sweated it out defensively, waiting for the situation to calm of its own accord.
The murder of a teenage girl, which in other circumstances might have been seen as a welcome break from routine, an excitement to see them through until Christmas, was only an added complication, a distraction from the important issues. Ramsay was welcome to it. Besides, they soon found that the girl had lived in Otterbridge, the Northumberland market town twenty miles away where Ramsay was based, and that was excuse enough to pass it on to him.