Threats at Three (37 page)

She looked out of her window. Her garden was full of sunlight, and a large grey pigeon was sitting in the birdbath. It looks like a stupid duck, thought Dot, and she began to laugh. She felt ridiculously happy to be ferretin’ with Mrs. M again. And knowing the world of the Nimmos, it was more than possible she would uncover a great deal of dirt before they were finished.

 

 

VICTOR NIMMO WAS WAITING AT THE DOOR AS DOT DREW UP outside his tall, wrought iron gates. He lived in some style on the edge of town, and his house and large garden were fortified against all intruders. He had enemies, he knew. You couldn’t get as rich as he was without making enemies. Now he operated the gates remotely so Dot could drive in.

“Bloomin’ ’ell,” she said. “You expecting a terrorist attack, or something? Anyway, how are you, Victor? And how’s the wife?”

He ushered her into a long room lavishly furnished and decorated in shades of cream and gold. “Pammie’s gone to her mother’s for a few days,” he said.

Dot knew for a fact that she had been gone a few months, probably never to return, but said nothing.

“Now, Auntie,” Victor said. “What can I do for you? In a spot of trouble, are you?”

“Of course not,” Dot said sharply. “No, it’s information I need. I know you still keep the old rackets going, and might know something useful.”

“What’s it worth?” he said, pretending to be joking.

“Could be your entitlement to all this,” she said, waving her hand around. “But we Nimmos must stick together. It’s important, Victor, and you know the form. You scratch my back an’ I’ll scratch yours. Now, what I want to know is to do with missing persons.”

In a skillful way, she then described the kind of person she was looking for without alerting him to the actual case of Jack Jr. “The missing person’s probably been taken as part of an old grudge,” she ended up, “and God knows there’s still plenty of grudges in town. My old man may not have made your kind of money, but at least he settled everything before he died. Anyway, what d’you reckon?”

Victor was silent for minute, taking it all in. He might well have had brains, but they needed time. “Can I have a think, Dot, and let you know?”

“It’s urgent,” she said. “Give me a bell tomorrow. Don’t let me down, will you, Victor. But you got more sense than to do that, I know. Now, you’d better let me out of this prison and get yourself down the pub. And, by the way, I don’t want this spread around. You know how to do it. I’ll hear from you tomorrow.”

I
T HAD BEEN A BAD FEW DAYS IN THE ADSTONE HOUSEHOLD. After Kate had told Gavin about her meeting with Tim Froot, he had been stunned and silent. This had not lasted, and ever since then he had burst out into fits of anger, first at her, for taking matters into her own hands, and then at Froot for having the nerve to attempt to blackmail Kate into an intimacy that made him feel sick every time he thought about it.

“And you took Cecilia with you!” he repeated, day after day.

This evening, when he said it once more, Kate began to think this was his most important concern. “He was quite nice to her,” she said finally. “She thought he was great.”

At this, Gavin covered his eyes and moaned. “Kate, what have you done? Don’t you know that Froot never gives up? He has so many poor sods at his beck and call that he always gets his own way, especially when he has his victim over a barrel.”

“He doesn’t have us over a barrel,” she replied. “I told him straight. We would pay back what you owe in installments, and he was to leave us alone. Of course, I didn’t know about the bargain you’d made. I’m not sure I can forgive that. If anybody in the village got to know your part in it, we’d be drummed out.”

“But I haven’t done what he wanted!” Gavin shouted at her. “You know I haven’t. And I’m not going to! Christ knows what’ll happen, especially since you stuck your oar in, but I’ve finished with Froot. I just wish you’d let me handle it all myself.”

Kate was near to tears, and then she remembered something Froot said. He would make our marriage a disaster! And now it was happening. She began to see what Gavin meant about Froot being all powerful. But he hadn’t won yet. She went over to where Gavin sat and crouched down beside him, taking his hands in hers.

“Gavin, we’ve got to stop!”

“Stop what?”

“Shouting and quarrelling and starting to hate each other. It’s just what Froot threatened. He said if you didn’t play your part in the bargain and wreck the soap box day, he’d make sure our marriage was destroyed. And here we are, on the way!”

After that, they sat silently hand in hand until it was time to check on Cecilia and then go to bed.

“I love you, Kate,” Gavin said, as he moved up close to her warm body.

“I love you, too,” she said, and added, “and as I told Tim Froot, we’ll see him in jail if he doesn’t leave us alone.”

Gavin sat up. “Why did you say that?” he said. “How could we possibly—?”

“I was going to tell you. I was chatting to Paula Hickson, and discovered we both worked for Froot at the same time. She was in the canteen, and I don’t remember seeing her. But she remembered me, and we compared notes. She had some horrific stories to tell. Girls who’d been virtually raped by Froot and then paid to keep quiet. Men who had been threatened with the sack if they didn’t do really dodgy jobs for him. Oafs like that heavy he sent out to threaten me, I suppose. Yeah, Froot is into drugs and God knows what else. Paula didn’t say if he’d had a go at her, but she certainly loathed him. I reckon if we needed her, we could get her to be a witness.”

“Oh, my God, Kate, you have really got us in deep. But you’re right. If we stop trying, we’ll be in his clutches forever. Let’s get some sleep now, and talk some more tomorrow.”

 

 

NEXT DAY, PAULA HICKSON WAS DUE TO BE AT THE HALL AS usual, and she had told Lois she thought it would be safe now to get back to the job, as Mrs. Smith at the farm had said she could give Jack Jr. some work that would keep him busy all day. She would give him lunch, she said, and keep an eye on him. The work was all in the garden and the chicken run, all within sight of the farmhouse.

“In any case, Mrs. Hickson,” Edwina Smith had said, “he’s explained it all now, and we should be showing that we believe him when he says he won’t be so thoughtless in future.”

“But I don’t believe him,” Paula said to Lois. “Still, I can’t lock him up in a back room and give him bread and water forever. So I’ll be okay for the hall, if you want me there.”

Lois accepted the suggestion at once. It was not that she had come to believe Jack Jr.’s story any more than his mother did, but the pressure of work made her agree, though with some misgivings.

Now, with the twins at school, Frankie at nursery and Jack Jr. at Smith’s Farm, Paula knocked at the hall kitchen door and walked in. Mrs. Tollervey-Jones greeted her kindly, and said she was pleased to have her back.

“Before you start work, Mrs. Hickson,” she said, “I have a treat for you. I want to give you a private preview of the future soap box champion,
Jam & Jerusalem
!” She led the way out to a stable over the yard, and with a dramatic gesture pulled a tarpaulin off the gleaming scarlet soap box. “There!” she said. “Isn’t she fine?”

It was all Paula could do to stop Mrs. T-J giving her a demonstration of the vehicle’s speed, and they returned to the house. “Right, off you go, then. Your colleague has been very good, but not quite up to your standard.” She turned to leave the kitchen, and then stopped. “By the way, do you remember my new gardener who left me in the lurch?”

Paula’s heart stopped. She took a deep breath, feeling faint. But after a second or two she rallied, and said as casually as she could manage, “Yes, of course. What about him?”

“I could swear I saw him in Tresham yesterday. I was coming out of my solicitors in the market square, and he passed close by me. I think he had a funny sort of beard, and a strange woolly hat—much too warm for this time of the year—but when I caught his eye I could see it was him. Certain of it. Isn’t it odd? He seemed so happy here, and really knew his stuff, and yesterday he looked old and ill. Ah, well, I’ll give him a week or two and if he doesn’t return, I shall have to advertise again. Must do some work now. I shall be in the den when coffee’s ready.”

Paula stood quite still, unable to say anything. Mrs. T-J appeared not to notice, and disappeared. At last, Paula moved to the window and looked out. So he was still around, maybe living in Tresham? The beard and the woolly hat sounded like an amateurish attempt at disguise, and this would be just like Jack. He was not a natural deceiver, never had been. And he was ill.

More and more lately, she had thought back to their happy days before he lost his job and everything went wrong. If only they could get together in some kind of normal circumstances, without all this mystery of what happened to Jack Jr. Then maybe they could have a go at sorting things out calmly. She had begun to think they’d have a reasonable chance. The thought of being a proper family again brought tears to her eyes, and she reminded herself that she had a job to do and had better get on with it before Mrs. T-J’s euphoric mood changed.

 

 

AFTER PAULA HAD FINISHED HER MORNING’S WORK AND GONE home, Mrs. T-J went to have another look at
Jam & Jerusalem
. What a beauty! she said to herself, and stroked the shiny red bonnet. Maybe she would take her out for a little run, just to make sure the wheels were performing smoothly. She went back into the house and fetched her hard riding hat. She would need to tow it behind the car to the top of the sloping drive, and then coast back, practising her steering and crouching down in her seat as Doug Meade had told her to, in order to lessen the wind resistance, or something like that.

She had parked her Land Rover halfway down the slope on the grass verge and unhooked the soap box when there was a hooting from behind. She looked round and saw to her irritation a dirty white van veering from side to side up the drive. What on earth did it want? She wasn’t expecting a delivery, and in any case would never buy from such a scruffy-looking outfit.

“Go away!” she shouted, as it drew up closer. “You’ve got the wrong road! This is a private drive. Go away at once. And keep off the grass!”

But the van had stopped now, and a man got out, walking towards her. He was grim-looking and scowled unpleasantly at her.

“Keep yer hair on, missus,” he said. “How can I go back? Not room to turn round, for a start. And anyway, I’ve got some business to do with you. So you’d better tow that thing back to the house, and I’ll follow.”

Mrs. T-J bristled. “Don’t you order me about! If you don’t go at once, I shall call the police. And yes, I do have a mobile with me, and I am a close friend of the commissioner.”

“I don’t care if you’re a close friend of the Almighty. I ain’t doing nothing wrong, so if you won’t let me up to the house, we can have a little talk here. It’s not a criminal offence to talk, is it?”

“Very well, but be quick about it. My time is precious.”

“I doubt it,” he muttered, and then added more loudly, “I just wanted to know if you’ve seen a friend of mine. Used to work here in y’ garden. He always kept in touch, but for a couple of weeks I ain’t heard nothing.”

Mrs. T-J’s eyes narrowed. “What’s his name?” she asked.

“Hickson. Jack Hickson.”

Mrs. T-J shook her head. “Nobody working for me of that name,” she said, silently asking God to forgive her lie. Hickson was, of course, her cleaning woman’s name, but the gardener had given her another, which for the moment she could not remember. But she knew it wasn’t Hickson.

“You sure? I heard he was definitely working here. Used to be a workmate o’ mine, but we got made redundant and lost touch.”

“I thought you said you heard from him regularly?”

“Don’t try and trick me, missus!” he said, and moved towards her, fists clenched.

“Ah, now you’ll have to move,” Mrs. T-J said calmly. “I see a police car coming up the drive. You’d not want to obstruct their enquiries, I presume?”

He hesitated, sure that she was lying. But as he turned, he saw the familiar striped vehicle, and jumped into his van, revved up the engine and shot off towards the house.

“Any problems here, Mrs. Tollervey-Jones?” the sergeant said, stopping his car and getting out to greet her.

She shook her head. “No, no. Nothing I cannot handle. Just an itinerant salesman. I directed him to the tradesmen’s entrance at the back of the hall. He’ll find his way back to the main road along the grassy lane. How can I help you?” she added, smiling as she saw him take in the glories of
Jam & Jerusalem
.