CHAPTER ELEVEN
Late Monday afternoon the rain came down again, out of nowhere, splashing against the windscreen of Dave Brooke’s Citroen as he drove Annie through the rush-hour traffic to Tower Hamlets, not exactly the kind of place you’d find in a tourist’s guide to London. They were in Bow, and the house they wanted stood in a row of rundown terraced houses that had survived both bombing and slum clearance. Across the street lay a couple of acres of tarmacked waste ground with weeds growing through the cracks, surrounded by a six-foot wire-mesh fence with barbed wire on the top. Who was protecting it, and from what, Annie had no idea. She guessed it was earmarked for development. On the other side of the waste ground, through the slanting rain, stood more grimy houses, slate roofs dark, and beyond them tower blocks rose bleak as monoliths against an iron-gray sky.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” said DI Brooke, as if reading her mind.
Annie laughed. “If you like that sort of thing.”
“It’s a piece of history,” said Brooke. “Enjoy it while you can.
In a year or so it’ll probably be all new tower blocks or an entertainment complex.”
“You sound as if you’d be sorry to see it go.”
“Maybe I would. Here we are.” He pulled up at the curb and they looked at number forty-six. The front door, Annie thought, could definitely use another coat of paint to cover the cracks and gouges time and, perhaps, would- be burglars had inflicted.
Alf Seaton, a retired ships’ carpenter, had not only seen Wesley Hughes and Daryl Gooch drive away in the Mondeo, but he had also seen it arrive in the early hours of Sunday morning, and this was what interested Annie and Brooke. Annie was beginning to wonder if she would ever get home again, the way things were going. She had hoped to be off that afternoon after her visit to the Berger-Lennox Centre, when Brooke called. All roads seemed to lead to London.
Alf Seaton was expecting them, and Annie noticed the edge of the lace curtain twitch just a little when their car pulled up. Before they reached the door, it opened, and a plump, gray-haired man with a broken nose beckoned them in out of the rain.
“Miserable day, isn’t it?” he said, in an unmistakable Cockney accent. Well, Annie thought, he was in the right area, probably even within the sound of Bow Bells, come to think of it. “Make yourselves comfy. I’ll put the kettle on. Got some chocolate digestives, too, if you’re interested.”
Annie looked around the small living room while Alf Seaton busied himself in the kitchen. There was an old- fashioned look and feel to the place, she thought, visible in the ornate pipe rack, the dark wood bureau and the low bookcase under the window, filled mostly with nautical tales, she noticed: Alexander Kent, Douglas Reeman, Patrick O’Brian, some old Hornblower editions. On the wall above the fireplace was a romantic seascape depicting Lord Nelson’s fleet engaging the French in rough waters, cannons blazing. The armchairs were old but still firm, and there wasn’t a speck of dust in sight. When Seaton came back in with the tea and biscuits, Annie complimented him on the house.
“I do my best,” he said. “Just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you have to be slovenly, does it? That’s what my mother always used to say.”
“Are you married?”
“Fran died a couple of years ago. Cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No reason for you to be, love. Life goes on.” He looked around the room. “We had nearly fifty happy years, me and Fran. Moved here in 1954, our first home. Only one, as it turned out. Course, I was just a young lad then, still wet behind the ears. And things have changed a lot. Not all for the best, either.”
“I’m sure not,” said Annie.
“Still, you won’t be wanting to hear an old man’s reminiscences, will you?” he said, winking at Annie. “You’ll be wanting to know what it was I saw.”
“That’s why we’re here, Mr. Seaton,” said Brooke.
“Alf, please.”
Alf was a name you didn’t hear much these days, Annie thought, and if you did you could guarantee it belonged to someone of Mr. Seaton’s generation.
“Alf, then.”
“I’m not sure I can tell you anything I didn’t already tell the uniformed bloke.”
“Let’s start with what you were doing.”
“Doing? I was sitting here in this very armchair reading. I don’t sleep very well, so I’ve taken to getting up, making myself a cup of tea and settling down for a good read. Beats lying there thinking about all your problems the way you do at that time of night.”
“Yes, it does,” said Annie. “So what was it that happened first? Did you see or hear the car?”
“Heard it first. I mean, we do get a bit of traffic down here throughout the night, but not that much. It’s not a main road, or even the quickest way to one. And as you can see, it doesn’t have a great deal of natural charm. Anyway, at three on a Sunday morning it does tend to be quiet apart from the odd group of kids stumbling home from a party.”
“Do you remember the exact time?” Annie asked.
Alf Seaton glanced at the solid, ancient clock on the mantelpiece. “Ten past three,” he said. “I remember looking. Anyway, first I heard it, then I saw the lights. It parked just across the street there. Then another car pulled up behind it.”
“And you saw the driver?”
“Of the first car? Yes. Quite clearly. There’s a streetlight and my eyesight’s still pretty good for distances.”
“What can you tell us about him?” Annie asked, glancing at Brooke, who nodded, indicating that she should carry on asking the questions. Alf seemed comfortable talking with her.
“I was a bit nervous, I suppose,” said Seaton. “I mean, there’s been quite a lot of crime in the neighborhood and when you’re old and frail in your health like I am, you do worry a bit, don’t you? Twenty years ago I’d have given anyone a good run for his money, armed or no, but these days…”
“I understand,” said Annie. “But you did get a look, didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t
“What did he look like?”
“He was a big fellow, hard-looking, as if he lifted weights. He was wearing a dark-colored track suit, the sort with a white stripe down the arm and the outside leg. His hair was a bit long, tied in a ponytail at the back like a right poofter. Black, it was, and shiny, as if he’d sloshed axle grease on it. And he had a heavy gold chain around his neck.”
It sounded like a better description of the man whom Roger Cropley had seen in the back of the Mondeo at Watford Gap, and whom the neighbor had noticed on Jennifer’s street around the time she set off for Banks’s cottage. “What happened next?” Annie asked.
“That’s when I saw him get in the other car.”
“Can you remember anything more about the second car?”
“No, except it was lighter than the first one, maybe cream or silver, something like that. There wasn’t really enough light to show up the color properly, everything was a sort of monochrome, but it was a bit more… I don’t really know cars… but it looked maybe more expensive, more flashy.”
“Did you notice any logos, ornaments, that sort of thing?”
“Sorry, no.”
“It’s okay. You’re doing fine. I don’t suppose you got the number, did you?
“No.”
“Did you get a good look at the driver?”
“Just a glimpse when the door opened and the inside light came on for a second. It was further back, out of the range of the street lamp.”
