Beside me, Sam murmured, “Uh-oh,” under his breath and I raised an eyebrow at him. “Slick’s missus,” he added, catching the look.
I hadn’t known Slick had a regular girlfriend, never mind someone who was permanent enough to qualify as a wife. He’d never behaved as though he had any commitments, that’s for sure.
Now, she came storming across the waiting area heading straight for William, with the big biker stalking in her wake.
“What the fuck was he up to, William?” she demanded, her voice harsh and shrill. She was, I realised, quite a bit older than her first impression. There were deep lines etched in round her eyes and from the outer edges of her nostrils down to the corners of her mouth.
“We don’t know any more than you do, Tess,” William said, sounding snappy rather than sympathetic.
Tess was shivering violently. She gave a sniff, wiping her face with the back of her hand. I winced in case the bundle of silver rings on her fingers became entangled with the pewter ones in her nose but, remarkably perhaps, she came away unsnared.
“Stupid bastard,” she muttered bitterly. “How could he do this to me? Just when he was about to do something right for once, he chucks it all away over some blonde bimbo.”
There was enough blonde in my own hair for me to feel included in that insult. I got to my feet and moved in deliberately. The big biker who’d arrived with Tess took one look at my face and put himself between us.
It would have been easy to dismiss him just as muscle, but the eyes that stared out of his slightly flattened face like two hard grey pebbles were bright with intelligence.
“Leave it, Tess,” he snapped, the way you’d speak to a dog. “We dunno what happened to Slick.”
William looked momentarily surprised at this reasoned argument. “Yeah, Tess. Don’t say or do anything in haste you might have cause to regret at leisure,” he said, with a meaningful glance in my direction. “Like while you’re having your jaw wired back together, hmm?”
A picture floated into my head of Slick’s grinning, cocksure face. I would have sworn Clare had been just as disdainful of him. I could see him on that flashy gold and blue custom-painted bike of his, setting off just about every time up on the back wheel. Always close to the edge. This time over it.
“No way would Clare ever cheat on Jacob, so before you start accusing her of anything,” I said, making an attempt to keep my voice level and hearing the sting the effort of doing so was putting into it, “you might want to think about the fact that Slick Grannell was asking for trouble.”
Tess’s face darkened and she took a step forwards, bristling. With the hairstyle and the thin pointed features the overall effect was that of a Yorkshire terrier on speed. It seemed to take her a moment to realise that neither of the two men had made any moves to back her up. She stopped and glared at them, then turned back to me.
“Oh yeah?” she jeered. “Well, if everything’s so lovey-dovey between them, why isn’t her old man here by her bedside?”
I didn’t have an immediate answer to that one but at that moment I heard footsteps along the corridor and turned, hoping for Jacob himself or, at second best, my father. Instead, it was Pauline who hurried back into the waiting area. She’d clearly caught the tail-end of the conversation and was staring at the group of us, white faced.
“Pauline!” I said, relieved. “Did you find Jacob?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “The house is locked up with the dogs still inside, and the car and Jacob’s bike were both there but . . .” She hesitated a moment, uncertain. “It’s like Jacob himself has just, well, disappeared.”
Two
I sat on one of the chairs in the now deserted waiting area, absently building a stack out of the empty paper cups from the coffee I’d drunk during the last five hours.
Maybe it was just the caffeine that had sent my mind into overdrive, flitting from one subject to another without seeming able to concentrate on anything.
Still there was no news of Clare.
And no sign of Jacob.
Things hadn’t been quiet, though. I hadn’t quite come to blows with Slick’s widow, but that was more down to the intervention of his friends than any particular self-restraint on my part.
That and the fact that the police had chosen that moment to turn up, as I’d known they were bound to do at some point. Two uniforms, laden down with handcuffs and CS gas canisters and body armour, had swaggered into the waiting area.
They hadn’t seemed to notice the almost tangible resentment their arrival had caused. Everyone concerned had suddenly turned into one of the three wise monkeys. Tess and her oversize companion, I’d noticed, had slipped away almost immediately.
“Officious bastards,” William had muttered under his breath when the pair of coppers had gone away empty- handed. “Anybody want to take a bet they’re going to put all the blame on Slick for either cocking up or just riding too damned fast?” Nobody was foolish enough to take him up on the wager, least of all me.
When it became clear that they weren’t going to get to speak to Clare today, William and his mates had departed. Before he left, William had given me his mobile number and asked me to let him know any developments. I’d had a momentary picture of Tess’s sullen face but promised to call him, nevertheless.
Sam had gone not long after, with much the same request. Pauline had stuck it out the longest, but she finally threw in the towel around six o’clock.
“I suppose I’d better go and feed that hound of mine before he eats any more of the sofa,” she’d said,
