"Name it," he said, putting the magazine aside.
"I want Jed to go to his grandparents' place for a few days, get him away from the Bay for a while. Will you drive him down for me?"
"When?"
"This afternoon. I'll pack him a bag, and you can pick him up from Mrs Neary's."
"Consider it done," Ivie said. "Where do they live?"
"Richmond," Diane said, and saw Ivie's interested smile fade a little.
"Oh," he said hollowly, but it was too late; she had him.
"Thanks, Bob, you're a love," she said. "I'd take him myself… but suddenly I've a zillion things to do."
PART SEVEN
“No One Here Gets Out Alive”
THIRTY-SIX
It was late in the afternoon when Ross Aldridge left his Metro in the square by the Lakeside Restaurant and climbed the pavilion steps to come inside; Angelica Venetz saw him through the window as she passed through on her way to the kitchen and her first, anxious thought was for Alina.
And then Aldridge, after taking off his uniform cap, asked if they could speak privately somewhere, and so she led him through into the tiny office where, twice a week, she placed their orders and brought the accounts up to date. Aldridge's eyes were hard, his manner almost grim.
But the waitress wasn't the reason for his visit, after all.
He began by telling Angelica about his day's work so far; about the unknown, untraceable stranger who'd somehow managed to incinerate himself in his similarly untraceable car. When he started to tell her about how the body had come apart as the morgue men had begun to remove it from the vehicle, she got him a chair and persuaded him to sit.
"I don't see how you can ever get used to anything like that," she told him.
"You can't," he said bleakly.
"Have a brandy."
"I'm all right." He looked up at her. "You can do something for me, though."
"What's that?"
"Tell me what you know about Tom Amis."
This was unexpected; it was as if the conversational ground had suddenly shifted, and it took Angelica a moment to regain her balance.
"He's a carpenter," she said. "He hung a couple of doors for me at the start of the season."
"You know where he's from?"
"Down south, somewhere. He says he travels around in his van, going wherever the work is. Why?"
"I'd just like to get a look at him. Is he still in the area?"
"I wouldn't know. He was working up at that new ski centre, but I haven't seen him in a while. What is it, Ross?"
Aldridge hesitated for a moment, as if this was one of those newly shaped thoughts that had never before been put into words. Then he said, "Probably nothing. It's just that there have been too many coincidences around here of late, and I'm not happy. This is the fifth 'accident' in the past three months, even if you don't count Ted Hammond's boy and his girlfriend. We average maybe one serious incident a year around here, and the season isn't halfway over yet. Back on my desk I've got seven missing persons reports, just general sheets from other regions on kids who set out hitching and were maybe heading this way. That's apart from dead stags and dead dogs and who knows what. It's too many."
"What are you saying?" Angelica asked, and Aldridge made a who knows? gesture as if he'd already said more than he'd planned.
"Nothing," he said. "I don't know. But there's a classic picture for a situation like this, and I'm looking for someone who fits it. Someone who lives on his own, so nobody knows too much about him. Friendly on the surface, but he mainly likes his own company. And he didn't get here until sometime after the beginning of the year."
Next door in the kitchen, the warning signal on the water heater began to sound. Someone switched it off.
"Oh, no, Ross," Angelica said, disbelievingly. "Not Tom."
But Aldridge was already getting to his feet, and he held up a calming hand.
"Look," he said, "nothing about this to anybody. It's just a stupid idea of mine, and I want to be the one to knock it on the head before it goes any further. There's no theory or anything, it's just… too many accidents."
So, feeling strangely like some kind of a Judas even though she knew that Tom Amis couldn't have been involved, she told him how to find the old hunting lodge up on the treeline that, after a few false starts in the past three or four years, was undergoing final conversion to become the new High Rigg ski centre. It wasn't a place that Aldridge had known much about, although this was bound to change when the next winter season arrived. This is simply a matter of elimination, Angelica told herself; a helping hand toward proof of innocence, rather than a betrayal.
"Thanks," Aldridge told her as he made for the door. "I've got a few calls to make about the wreck, and then I'll go up and see him. Not a word to anyone."
And then he left.
Angelica stood at the main door, watching through the lace curtained glass as his car made a turn in the square. Now she was thinking, what did she really know about Tom Amis anyway? And she was so intrigued by this new light on an untested idea that she didn't even notice Alina's emergence from the kitchen until the waitress was standing alongside her.
"Miss Venetz?" she said.
Angelica looked at her, a little dazed as if she'd just been jogged out of a waking dream.
Alina went on, "I wonder if I can take the afternoon off. I'm not feeling so well."
"Of course," Angelica said. "Sonia can cover." She looked out again through the glass.
"And may I borrow the van to get me home," Alina added, "if you weren't planning to use it? I can bring it back in the morning. I wouldn't ask, but I don't quite feel up to the walk."
"I'll drive you," Angelica said, beginning to tear herself away, but Alina didn't seem to want to cause so much disruption.
"I can drive," she said. "Please, I'd rather."
It didn't even occur to Angelica, at least not straight away, that an illegal immigrant with no valid license probably wasn't the best insurance risk in the event of any accident; almost absently she went back to the office and opened a drawer to let Alina have the van keys, and then she returned to one of the windows overlooking the square. It was almost as if the life going on outside had taken on an entirely new and fascinating aspect for her.
Tom Amis? she was thinking, almost entranced.
And she was still thinking it a few minutes later when their small Renault van went by, with Alina at the wheel.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Pete had been back at the yard for little more than half an hour and was making himself useful by restocking the Coke machine on the marina wharf when he saw Diane again; he quickly threw the cans in wherever they'd fit, Coke in the Fanta line and Fanta in the Seven Up, and then he closed up the front of the machine and went to meet her.
"Busy day?" she said, looking him over. Getting the burned-out car up onto the hoist in a way that satisfied the police lab officials had been a messy, complicated job. He'd tidied himself up on his return but there hadn't been time for him to run home and change; he'd considered it, but he hadn't wanted to risk missing her.
"Busy enough," he said. "How about you?"
"You're going to hear all about it," she said. "Can we go somewhere and talk?"
Pete glanced across the yard. "How about in the house? Ted won't mind."
"That could be a problem. I don't want Ted or anybody else to hear this."
So Pete looked around; a big Birchwood and a smaller Chris Craft stood empty at a couple of the nearer jetties, but they were sales stock it wouldn't look good if the yard staff were to be seen using them like a rest area.