When he came out of the pub and walked back out into the beer garden, something made Cooper stop and stand still in the shade of the side wall. He was standing several yards behind Diane Fry, and he saw what he might not have seen from his seat across the table. He saw DI Hitchens’s arm on the back of Fry’s chair as he leaned close towards her to speak directly into her ear. He saw the DI’s hand move upwards from the chair to rest for a moment on her shoulder. Behaving like a courting couple, as his mother would have said.
And then he saw Fry nod briefly before Hitchens took his hand away. And Parkin told another poor joke that nobody laughed at.
The phone was ringing again. It had hardly stopped ringing for days. Though the answerphone had been left on and she had been told to take no notice of it, the continual noise was driving Sheila Kelk mad.
Sheila came to the Mount three days a week to clean, and Tuesday was one of her days. The fuss about the girl being found
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murdered had not put her off coming — far from it, in fact. Mr and Mrs Vernon would need her, she had told her husband. A house still needed cleaning. She might he ahle to provide some other service to poor Mrs Vernon, to be of some comfort to her. Mrs Vernon might, just might, want to confide in her, to
o ‘ J o ‘
tell her all about what had been going on.
But here she was. going over the sitting room carpet for the
The o o o I
second time, wishing the sound of the Dvson would drown out the constant ringing. She had been here longer than her four hours already, and no one had so much as spoken to her.
In a temporary silence from the phone, Sheila switched off the vacuum cleaner, flicking a cloth over a piece of pine furniture that she had never quite been able to put a name to. She thought of it as a cross between a sideboard and a writing desk.
o
While she polished, she listened for the noises from upstairs. From Mrs Vernon’s bedroom, of course, there was still no sound. But the heavy footsteps were still moving directly overhead, where Sheila knew Laura’s room lay. Mr Vernon was still up there with the policemen. He had not been in a good mood; he had been angry, in fact. Understandable, of course. But being
rude and refusing even to speak to her was going too far, Sheila
o r o o ‘
thought.
The phone began to ring again. Four rings before the answering machine cut in. She couldn’t understand why the Vernons were getting so many phone calls. Back home at Wye Close, the
phone often didn’t ring from one week to the next, and then
r o
it would only be some girl she didn’t know, who would try to sell her double glazing.
o o
Sheila Kelk was so absorbed in listening to the movements above, that she didn’t notice someone had come into the room behind her until she heard the voice.
‘Working overtime, Mrs Kelk?’
She jumped, her hand going to her mouth as she turned, then she relaxed as quickly.
‘Oh — it’s you.’
‘Yes, it’s me,’ said the young man. His jeans were grubby, and when he walked across the carpet towards the far door, his shoes left imprints on the pile. Sheila wanted to complain, but
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knew it would make no impression on Daniel Vernon. He was dark and fleshy, like his father, but sullen and quick-tempered where Graham Vernon was polite and sometimes charming, on the outside at least. Daniel was wearing a white T-shirt with the
o
name of some rock group on it that Sheila Kelk had never heard of. The armpits and a patch on his back were soaked with sweat. She guessed that Daniel had probably walked from the main road after hitching his way from Devon.
O J
‘Where’s my mother?’ he asked.
‘Taken to her bed and won’t get up,’ said Sheila.
‘And I suppose these apes tramping about the house are policemen.’
‘They’re looking at Laura’s room.’
‘What for, for God’s sake? What do they think they’ll find there?’
‘They don’t tell me, I’m sure,’ said Sheila.
When the phone went again, Daniel automatically walked over and picked it up on the second ring.
‘No, this is Daniel Vernon. Who am I speaking to?’ He listened impatiently for a moment. ‘Your name means nothing to me, but I take it you’re some sort of associate of my father’s? Yes? Then, in that case, you can fuck off.’
Daniel slammed the phone back down and glared at Sheila.
