Samantha Jane Dawber.
Sammy Jane.
Sam.
She had been posted to London six months earlier and easily fitted into the small team. She was recently divorced, but the break-up — without kids to worry about — did not seem to have affected her too deeply. She kept in regular touch with her ex, a Special Agent from the New York office.
Donaldson fell into an easy working relationship with her. When she subsequently met Karen, his wife, they too became friends.
It had been a good six months.
With her assistance (she had done most of the legwork) he had helped the police in Cornwall to crack a long-running fraud case. She was a good worker who took the job seriously, constantly updating herself on criminals who drifted around the international scene. One of her favourite games was to get the mugshot books out — which contained hundreds of photos — remove about fifty, cover their names, shuffle them and challenge Donaldson to name them. Usually he might recognise five or six. Without fail she could name every one, every time.
Sammy Jane. All-American girl. Whatever that meant.
Now dead in a way Donaldson didn’t like.
She ‘got into’ walking in a big way since coming to England. She often dragged the Donaldsons out all over mainland Britain to hike over hills. One memorable walk had taken place in the Lake District over a weekend when Henry and Kate Christie had been invited along. Donaldson and Henry had met and become friends on the same enquiry when he’d met Karen. It proved to be a tough walking weekend, both nights of which ended up in exhausted revelry in way-out pubs in the middle of nowhere. He and Henry had got extremely drunk and were watched with severe pity by the womenfolk.
Donaldson remembered the laughter of those two days. Sam’s giggles and wry outlook on life had been infectious.
Her visit to Madeira had been prompted by an urge to explore the levadas — footpaths running alongside irrigation channels — that crisscross the island. That was the plan.
Donaldson sat up and made himself not cry. He shook his head, breathed heavily and attempted to combat the sobs building up inside him.
He won. It was a close-run thing.
‘ Phew.’ He blew out his cheeks. He rubbed his eyes and looked across at Sam’s luggage which he’d deposited on the spare bed. Maybe the reason for her death was amongst that lot. He hadn’t sorted through it yet.
In his heart he was convinced she hadn’t died a pathetic drunk in a bath. That was not Sam.
Reaching across to her suitcase, he flicked up the catches.
John Rider coughed long and hard. He managed to clear his chest and throat, picked up the King Edward cigar from the ashtray, put it between his lips and re-lit it with a ‘pa-pa-pa’ until the flame had taken properly.
He blew out a ring of smoke.
‘ You OK, John?’ Isa enquired, gently resting a hand in the centre of his back.
He squinted sideways at her and nodded. ‘Never better.’
‘ You should give up.’
‘ One of life’s last few pleasures,’ he said to justify the habit.
Isa tried to hold his gaze a little longer, but he looked away and reached for his drink. She emitted a short, dissatisfied sigh and her mouth warped in frustration for an instant before returning to its normal self.
She took a step to the bar and leaned on it.
Jacko gave her a mineral water and she took her first sip of it, wishing she had the guts to tell Rider how she felt about him. It’s ridiculous! she told herself. A woman of your age and experience being unable to tell some two- bit ex — gangster that you love him. Her overriding fear was that it could spoil both their friendship and business partnership if he didn’t reciprocate.
The club was extremely quiet. Monday. January. Blackpool. Hardly worth opening. But Rider believed it might as well be open as shut right up to the refurbishments starting.
Rider, perched on a bar stool, hoped he had come back to emotional equilibrium. Yesterday had been a nightmare. That Henry Christie. Looked quietly ruthless. Looked like he knew about the zoo. Looked like he wouldn’t let it rest.
Then the news about the gorilla splashed all over the telly and the papers. That had really gutted Rider, the suffering of an animal.
Today, thankfully, had been peaceful. A couple of detectives, not including Christie, had visited and searched the flat which might have been the dead girl’s. They had found nothing but might possibly have got an ID from her property and fingerprints on a glass. Rider gave them a short statement.
And that was that. Back to square one. Normality. Or so he hoped.
There were very few customers in the club. A few lonely souls. A few canoodling couples ensconced in the alcoves. Later, when the pubs closed and the disco cranked up, it would get busier. Not much. It would close at 12.30 a.m.
Rider couldn’t wait to get stuck into the place. Get the builders in, ripping the guts out of it, giving it a full body transplant. Transforming it into a ritzy, glitzy entertainment spot. If the planning application was successful, the builders would be in within six weeks. Four months after that, barring accidents, the doors would re-open just in time for the summer trade.
He shivered in anticipation. His eyes drifted around the floors, walls and unsafe ceiling, seeing it all. His baby.
Two young men at the far end of the bar caught his attention. Initially they had been sitting in one of the booths and Rider thought they might be gay. They had sauntered up to the bar, leaned on it and rudely rapped bottles on it to attract Jacko’s attention.
Rider’s bowels gave a sudden flutter.
He knew the sort. Not too far removed from the two who had appeared in the zoo, but maybe not as far down the road as them, being slightly younger.
Jacko served them each with a bottle of Foster’s Ice. Both drank from the bottle, their teeth showing as they swallowed each mouthful, almost as if it was painful. The ‘in’ way to drink.
Rider beckoned Jacko over. ‘Know ‘em?’
Jacko knew most locals.
‘ No. Blackburn lads,’ he said. Over the years of working behind bars in Blackpool, Jacko had learned to identify regional accents, quite specifically in many cases. He could tell easily whereabouts in Lancashire a person came from and his other regional specialities were the West Midlands, Scotland and London. He was rarely wrong. The Blackburn accent was a common one in Blackpool.
‘ You happy with them?’
‘ They’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘ Yet.’
‘ Yet,’ agreed Jacko.
Rider glanced down at them. One eyed the other and nodded. He held out his bottle at arms’ length and smashed it onto the floor. It shattered spectacularly.
‘ Yet,’ said Rider again under his breath. He lowered himself from the stool. Before he could get to them, the other one swept his left arm across the bar top, catching half a dozen newly-washed pint glasses, sending them crashing to the floor. As though he was throwing a knife at a target, he lobbed his bottle of Foster’s into the optics behind the bar. A large bottle of Bell’s and a few glasses exploded.
‘ This is a shit-awful place,’ the young man roared.
‘ Oi oi oi,’ shouted Jacko, running down the bar.
‘ Hold it, Jacko!’ Rider screamed.
The two youths turned to face Jacko and Rider, adopting the threatening pose so beloved of the British hooligan/hard case: legs apart, fingers gesturing to come forwards, eyes bulging in their sockets, rocking on the balls of their feet.
