The House Across the Street Read online

  16

  Charles ordered half a pint of bitter for himself and a lemonade for Jilly from the beefy-looking barman in the King’s Head. Although it was only half past twelve the bar was already very full. In the main they looked like men who were out of work, or perhaps dockers waiting for a cargo to unload.

  ‘Do you happen to know if an Edward Reilly ever drinks in here?’ he asked as he paid for the drinks.

  ‘Can’t imagine why anyone would ask about that sack of shit.’ A tough-looking, bald-headed man standing beside him spoke out.

  Charles was a little taken aback by the venom in the man’s voice. But at least it made it easier to find out about Reilly.

  ‘I’m Charles Stevenson, a barrister. I need to find Reilly fast, as it appears he has abducted a young woman. I was actually looking for a John Sloane, who I believe grew up with Reilly. Do you know him, too?’

  The barman gave a little cough to alert Charles. ‘This is John Sloane.’

  Sloane’s belligerent expression changed to a wide grin. He held out his hand to Charles. ‘A woman from around here?’

  Charles shook the man’s hand. He was a little embarrassed, but at the same time relieved that the man seemed friendly. Sloane looked capable of knocking his head off. It appeared he was in the building trade; he was wearing dirt-covered working clothes, hefty boots, and had a pencil behind his ear.

  ‘No, it was in London, but I was recommended to come and chat to you because of your friendship with him as boys. I hoped you might have had a favourite place where you played, made camps – you know the kind of thing – especially if it’s somewhere he could be using now to hold this young lady.’

  Sloane looked thoughtful. ‘We mainly hung around the town or on the beach. We went to St Margaret’s Bay quite a bit, though. He liked it there. I couldn’t be bothered with the bloke after the war, he’d got too big for his boots, boasting all the time. He told us all so many bloody great lies about his time in service. The truth is he managed to get a desk job, when the rest of us were right in the thick of it.’

  Another taller, thinner man with red hair, who had been standing to the other side of Sloane, now spoke up. ‘He were in here just before Christmas.’

  Sloane looked round in surprise at the other man. ‘You never let that slip, Bri?’

  ‘I didn’t tell you cos I know Reilly gets your goat. I only spoke to him to be polite. He said he’d bought a property down here a few years ago and he was doing it up. He asked if I wanted some work.’

  ‘Where was this property?’ Charles asked, his heart beginning to race a bit.

  ‘He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask cos he’s always been a bullshitter.’

  ‘You could find out for certain if you go into the estate agent’s a few doors down,’ Sloane suggested. ‘Maxwell, the owner, always knows who has bought what in Dover.’

  ‘That is very helpful of you. May I buy you both a drink?’

  They both said they’d like a pint. Charles paid for their drinks, but Sloane was anxious to know more. ‘He was always weird, had a nasty temper, along with big ideas, and he lied easier than he breathed. Who is this young lady he’s got hold of? If you find his place here in Dover, come back for us and we’ll go there mob-handed. I’ve got a few things I’d like to settle with him.’

  Charles looked at Jilly, suddenly a little nervous that Sloane wanted to be involved.

  Jilly decided to take control. ‘Charles, we can’t go looking for him now. We’ve got to catch our train, if you are to make your appointment this afternoon.’

  ‘She’s right, I must go now,’ Charles said to Sloane. ‘I’ll leave it to the police. But thank you for your help.’

  Out in the street he turned to Jilly. ‘Your quick thinking was timely, I could feel myself being railroaded. I’m not sure I should have said I was a barrister, either. Even if they don’t like Reilly, they probably dislike the police and lawyers even more.’

  ‘I think they genuinely wanted to help,’ Jilly reassured him, aware he wasn’t used to dealing with rough men like Sloane and was a little nervous. ‘But I think it would be smarter not to give away too much at the estate agent’s. People gossip, and let’s face it, a local bloke wanted for abduction is pretty juicy. If they found out it was murder too, the whole town would be talking about it.’

  Charles realized quite quickly that Maxwell, the estate agent, was not the brightest of men. He was around forty, wearing a loud tie and a cheap suit. There was so much Brylcreem on his dark hair that his wife had to be changing pillowcases on a daily basis. He was the sort of man Charles most despised: loud and vulgar, cracking endless, tasteless jokes because he had no real conversation.

  Saying he was defending a client in London who claimed to have been working on a property down here at the time the crime was committed, Charles asked Maxwell for a list of people who had bought property from him in the last five years. He said he thought the owner was called Reilly, but that could be wrong.

  Maxwell made a great show of opening and closing filing cabinet drawers. He kept saying the name Reilly, over and over again.

  ‘Surely you keep a list of all properties sold? Your accountant would want it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I do. It’s not that, it’s the name Reilly. I kind of know it, but can’t remember why.’

  Charles waited, saying nothing until Maxwell brought out a file. He opened it and ran his finger down a list of properties.

  ‘Ah, that’s it! Yes, he bought a semi-derelict property in St Margaret’s Bay. It was four years ago. He acted like he was some big shot from London, talked about doing a big development on the site. That’s why the name stuck in my head.’

  ‘Could I have a photocopy of that list?’ Charles asked. ‘I need to let my client see the list and confirm it was the property he worked on.’

  ‘Funny! I remember now that Reilly boasted he could do all trades and he’d be doing it all himself, as he didn’t trust workmen.’

  ‘I expect that was just showing off, but just let me have a copy of the list.’

  He was surprised Maxwell was prepared to hand over such information without proper authority. Whether this was because he was too dumb to think along those lines, or just impressed that a lawyer had come into his office, Charles didn’t know. The man just put the three or four sheets of paper into his photocopier and pressed the button.

  ‘Good chap,’ Charles said in his most haughty voice as he took the sheets. ‘Much appreciated.’

  ‘You sounded like a right toff then,’ Jilly giggled as they walked back down the street. ‘Good chap! Do people you know really speak like that?’

  ‘Lots of them,’ he said. ‘And I have found it’s a great way of backing out gracefully from a sticky situation.’

  ‘I’ll have to remember that, then,’ she said, still amused. ‘Only there isn’t a female equivalent to “chap” is there?’

  ‘No, not now you come to mention it,’ Charles said, feeling buoyed up by Jilly’s good mood. ‘Come on, we’ll get a taxi to St Margaret’s Bay.’

  ‘Don’t you think we should call the police and hand it over to them?’ Jilly said.

  ‘Oh, Jilly, we’ve come this far, we have to go the extra mile. Besides, there’s not a lot of point in calling them if it is just a wreck, we’d only look a bit stupid.’

  ‘For a man who works in the law you don’t have much regard for the police,’ she remarked.

  ‘I do, actually. By tonight, when the message has been passed on from the Met, there’ll be officers crawling all over Dover, but I need to find Katy now.’

  ‘Does your instinct tell you she’s still alive?’ Jilly asked, her lips quivering.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Charles said honestly. ‘I really want to believe that she is. But you’ve known her for years, what do you feel?’

  ‘I know she will have fought him, if not with weapons, with her tongue – and she can be pretty scary – but that could have made him even meaner and angrier. All I know
is I can’t imagine my life without Katy in it. I have always thought when we were old ladies we’d still be going shopping and having afternoon tea together.’

  Charles hailed a taxi coming down the road. ‘St Margaret’s Bay,’ he said. He didn’t trust himself to look round at Jilly; he sensed she was crying.

  Maxwell had said the address in St Margaret’s Bay was quite difficult to find, and the taxi driver showed no enthusiasm for helping them find it. He turned them out of his cab on a steep hill that ran down into St Margaret’s Bay itself and begrudgingly pointed over to the right. ‘I think it’s up that lane. Too many potholes to drive up,’ he said curtly.

  The taxi driver was right about the potholes, and they were all full of water. Both sides of the lane were bordered by bushes, mostly leafless now in early March, but even so it was hard to see what lay behind them. They came to a farm gate on their right. Looking over it, they saw the track winding round, leading down to a somewhat ramshackle farmhouse and barns at least six hundred or more yards further on. It had a sea view, and probably looked idyllic in summer, but today the sky and sea were grey, the wind was whipping tree branches about, and it was very cold.

  Another thirty or so yards and they came to a further farm gate on their left. That huge field appeared to be lying fallow, and it sloped up towards some woods.

  Charles was just about to suggest they abandon their search, as his shoes and trousers were covered in mud, when they saw a chimney pot just above the hedge.

  They had to walk about two hundred yards further to see that the single-storey stone-built cottage it belonged to was set down in a dip. Thick woodland almost obscured the place. The sign ‘Dean Cottage’ was so faded, and partly concealed by ivy, that it was difficult to read.

  ‘The perfect spot to hide someone away,’ Charles said thoughtfully.

  There was no car parked up on the gravel-and-mud area in front of the cottage. But there was a six-inch-deep rut made by a car. It was partially filled with rainwater, but it looked as if it had been made recently, as the pattern of the tyre was very crisp.

  ‘Of course there’s been frost most nights, so that would preserve the pattern,’ Charles said, thinking out loud. ‘Come on, let’s have a look round.’

  ‘It’s not as tumbledown as that estate agent implied,’ Jilly said. ‘I mean it’s got a roof and windows for a start.’

  ‘The roof has been mended, look!’ Charles pointed at it.

  Jilly saw he was pointing to quite a large patch of new tiles. They were a brighter red than the others. ‘The stone wall has been rendered, too,’ she said. ‘Well, actually, it looks as if he’s done the whole front and possibly replaced some missing stones. My dad does work like that sometimes.’

  It was very difficult to get round to the back of the cottage. Piles of bricks, old rubble and a cement mixer blocked the way, and the bushes and trees to either side made it impossible to skirt round these objects.

  ‘I get the feeling he doesn’t want anyone looking back there,’ Charles said.

  Net curtains stopped them looking in through the windows. But they banged and shouted. All they could see of the interior was through the letter box. But it was just a bare hall, all the doors leading off were closed.

  ‘If my friend Pat was with us, he’d break in,’ Charles said. ‘But I daren’t do that. That taxi driver could identify us, and Maxwell too. Besides, it will be dark soon and we’ll need to walk down into St Margaret’s Bay to call for a taxi.’

  ‘Fair enough. But let’s stop at the police station in Dover and talk to someone before we get the train back?’ Jilly suggested. ‘The police here might not know about this place, so when the London police get on to them with the rest of the story they’ll be able to go straight there to check it out.’

  She turned her back to the cottage. In summer the view down across fields to the sea would be beautiful. She presumed, as Maxwell had said Reilly was going to develop the land, he meant the woods behind and on both sides of the cottage.

  Voicing this to Charles, she pointed out that he might have somewhere else, out in the woods. ‘I kind of feel Katy’s here,’ she added. ‘But it’s too much for us to search thoroughly. Let’s go back to Dover and get help.’

  Charles put his arm around her as they walked back up the lane. It was very cold and windy, and he could feel her fear for her friend. ‘I’m sorry, Jilly, that I wasn’t brave enough to kick that door in. Or sensible enough to insist that taxi driver waited for us.’

  Her smile was a bleak one. ‘Let’s at least walk faster, that way we’ll keep warm.’

  Katy felt that she was dying. She hurt so much that she even hoped death would come quickly to save her any more pain. The faces of her mother, father and Rob kept flitting into her mind, and with each image the memory of some happy event. There was her father breaking off from his work to come and watch her running in the hundred-yard sprint on Sports Day. It was blazing hot and he’d said he doubted he’d be able to make it. But he arrived just as she was lining up for the race. She saw him give her his little thumbs-up signal, which he had said meant he would be running with her in his head, and she took off like a rocket. She won by a huge margin, and she’d heard his cheers for the whole race.

  Her mother didn’t very often bestow any extra joy on an event, but Katy remembered her crying when she sang a solo in a carol service one Christmas. Katy must have only been eight then, and on the way home her mother had said she had a voice like an angel.

  As for Rob, the happy memories with him were so plentiful that she flitted from one to the other. Screaming with laughter as they did roly-polys down a grassy bank; swopping clothes when they were about five and eight, and going into town dressed like that. She’d tucked her hair into her brother’s school cap and could’ve passed for a boy, but Rob looked ridiculous in a dress, he couldn’t fool anyone.

  Rob going with her for her first date. She was to meet Peter Hayes outside the cinema and she was too scared to go alone. The plan was that Rob would go home once she’d met Peter, but in a moment of blind panic she asked Peter if Rob could see the film with them. Later that night, Rob said she must never do that again, he’d never felt so awkward, but they both howled with laughter that Peter had agreed and even paid for Rob. Sadly, he never asked her out again.

  Rob was the one she played board games with, batted so he could practise his bowling, played tennis in the park, dared each other to swim in the sea at Easter when it was icy. They giggled about things late at night, shared so much, and it was a wrench when he went off to university.

  She wouldn’t ever meet the girl he would marry, or hold his children in her arms. She’d never get the chance to find out why her mother was so chilly, and she certainly wouldn’t see the day when she became warm and fun loving. As for her father, life would never be the same for him without her. She knew in her heart that, although he loved both her and Rob, she was the one who was dearest to him. In fact, once she was gone, the family would break up. Rob would concentrate on his career; her father would immerse himself in his work and probably leave her mother, because there was nothing to keep him there. It didn’t bear thinking about what that would do to her mother.

  Then there was Jilly. She and her family meant so much to Katy. She had always believed that she and Jilly would be at each other’s weddings, be godmothers to their children, share each other’s lives until they were both old ladies.

  She wondered too if Charles would be sad she’d gone. Had he thought, as she did, that maybe there was something special there? Or was that just her overactive imagination?

  Yet however much pain she was in, however impossible escape seemed, a voice at the back of her head was telling her she mustn’t give up, urging her to look around her and see if there was anything in the room that could help her to gain her freedom.

  While Katy was dwelling on the happier memories of her family, and what Charles and Jilly meant to her, the pair were actually only a few miles from her at t
he police station in Dover.

  Charles wasn’t pleased at the reception he was getting. Having first enquired as to whether the Met had sent word to Dover that Edward Reilly was to be apprehended, he got only a blank stare from Desk Sergeant Forbes. Charles explained about Katy’s abduction. But even then, despite Charles telling him a young woman’s life was in danger, he got the distinct impression that Forbes resented being told what to do by a barrister. Deeply frustrated, Charles began to raise his voice.

  ‘Don’t,’ Jilly whispered to him. ‘It will just make things worse.’

  Charles knew she was right – his father had always said when you lose your temper you lose the battle – but he found it hard to believe that the Met hadn’t immediately informed the Dover police to do a check on Reilly here. Pat would’ve made the situation absolutely clear, explaining that he’d sent Charles down here to make some inquiries, and insisting that if he should come to Dover police, asking for assistance, it must be given promptly.

  ‘Look, I’m not claiming Katy Speed is definitely in that house in St Margaret’s Bay. She might already be dead and buried somewhere else. But if she is still alive now, and she dies because you didn’t take this seriously, how are you going to feel? She’s just twenty-three, a mere girl. If it was your daughter in there, wouldn’t you be battering the door down now?’ he implored Forbes.

  ‘But we haven’t had any instructions from the Met,’ Forbes said for the umpteenth time. ‘You have no proof she’s in that cottage; we can’t go breaking into a house on a whim.’

  Charles looked hard at the desk sergeant and noted his dull eyes, high colour and how fat he was. He clearly didn’t chase villains any longer, and he’d become complacent because most of his work was now related to the docks, immigrants and smuggling.

  ‘This man set fire to a house in Bexhill and killed a mother and daughter. He tried to kill another woman by driving her off the road, and an associate of mine, an ex-policeman, thinks he may have abducted another woman and her children near Eastbourne also. Now he has Katy. So tell me, do you still think it’s a whim?’