Hot Blood (Bloodwords Book 1) (23 page)

……….

All the key members of the team were still
huddled together discussing possibilities and exploring theories. Closing the
door slowly, Radcliffe faced them with a solemn blank expression. As if the
volume had suddenly been switched off, their chatter was replaced by a heavy
silence, all eyes on the newcomer.

‘I’ve just taken a call,’ he announced. ‘We
have another murder on our hands. Not only that, we have a third death with
exactly the same cause.’

Stunned, initially there was no response from
the group. Then everybody was asking questions at once.

Seventeen

Unusually, the car park at Green Fields Caravan
Park was crowded. With its bare gravel surface and no bay markings, cars were
parked haphazardly and Simon Charlton found threading the Olympic through tight
gaps between poorly parked vehicles to the little access road leading into the
park, frustrating. The parking area had not been this full at any time since he
had first towed his touring caravan onto the site. Was Kevin holding an open
day to attract new residents? Or was he running a presentation to attract new
investment? Whatever the reason, with so many cars, and so many of them late
models, the event had attracted a good crowd and was clearly successful.

Finding his way to the access road at last,
Simon drove the short distance to his caravan and parked alongside. Along the
route he passed nobody and saw no sign of life. That too was strange. The site
was decidedly run down but normally residents could be seen here and there,
relaxing in garden chairs at the side of their caravans or tending plants in
neat borders. But today, nobody was about. The site was shrouded in a silence
broken only by the twittering of birds in the trees.

Intrigued, he locked up the little coupe and
started to walk back towards the main site buildings. Mrs Weston’s caravan door
was closed, her mobility scooter nowhere to be seen. Each plot was the same,
every caravan closed up and nobody around. He sensed an air of doom and
desolation, reminiscent of a recently evacuated army camp. Where was everybody?
Where were the people that had arrived in the cars that now crowded the car
park?

Rounding the last corner, Simon could see that
the big doors to the workshop were slightly ajar. Remembering having previously
been locked in, he gave an involuntary shudder, then walked across and pulled
the door further open. Except for a car under a cover, everything was as he had
left it a couple of days ago when he had used a little maintenance on the
Olympic as an excuse to legitimately spend time in the workshop, returning the
logbook to its shelf. The collection of registration plates was still on the
wall, overalls still hung on the inner door, and the desk was still a mess.
Nothing had changed.

Returning outside and closing the door, he
could see that the Weston woman’s scooter was parked up and he could hear a
muted hubbub coming from the open reception area door. As he approached, a
young couple came out arm in arm.

‘Hello Rick,’ he said to the young man, ‘you
look very smart today. What’s going on?’

The couple stopped and stared at him. Their
expressions were quite forlorn and from their body language Simon immediately
surmised that his question had been ill considered. In an awkward silence, the
three of them stood looking at each other, each hoping that one of the others
would speak first.

‘Mr Archer was buried this morning,’ explained
the girl, breaking the silence. ‘Kevin arranged some refreshments back here for
after the funeral. It’s mainly friends and relatives. With some of the park
residents as well of course.’

‘Oh dear,’ responded Simon. ‘I’m so sorry. I
didn’t realise. That’s just like me I am afraid – always putting my size
nines in it. I should have realised though with all the cars out front.’

‘That’s no problem Simon,’ replied the young
man. ‘You weren’t to know.’

Suitably admonished, Simon watched the couple
as they walked away from him and stopped next to a MINI parked further along
the access road. After talking for just a moment or two, the young woman kissed
Rick on the cheek, got into the car and drove off. Rick then turned and walked
away. Not wanting to get involved with what was clearly a private affair, Simon
started to retrace his route back to his own plot, but as he came level with
the open door, Kevin Archer and Joan Johnson stepped out onto the path.

‘Hello Kevin, I’m sorry to hear about your
father,’ remarked Simon. Then turning to face the woman, ‘Mrs Johnson, how is
your husband? Getting better I hope?’

They both stared at him incredulously. Joan
Johnson’s chin quivered and a tear rolled down her cheek. Comfortingly, Kevin
took her elbow. She looked at Kevin, appeared to swallow hard before turning
back to face Simon.

‘I am afraid that Mike has been attacked again
Mr Charlton.’ She mumbled.

‘At the moment we’ve just buried Dad and Uncle
Mike is critical in a side ward in Town Lane,’ added Kevin. ‘Do you two know
each other then?’

Wishing that the earth would open up and engulf
him, Simon blustered out an apology. He was so sorry. He hadn’t known. Accept
my apologies
etc
etc
, all
the while trying desperately to think up a strategy.

‘Actually, I was doing some work for Mike. We
both use computers and I helped him on the technical side, but we haven’t met
for some time. I didn’t know that he had been attacked again.’ Well all that
was obvious anyway because if he had known he wouldn’t have made yet another
major gaffe would he? Embarrassed, he stood and watched as Kevin escorted Joan
Johnson to the car park where they exchanged a few pleasantries. Kevin stood
and watched as she drove away. Then he turned around, said nothing as he passed
Simon, and returned to the gathering.

Walking back, Simon mulled over the events of
the previous half hour. He had put his foot in it with both the young couple
and then with Joan Johnson and Kevin, but quite apart from his inept remarks,
something somewhere didn’t add up. Why did the young couple not leave together
and why was Joan Johnson at her brother’s funeral when there was a bitter rift
in the family? Had Joan told her nephew that they had paid Simon to spy on his
newly buried father? He thought not. That would have undermined her own
position so with the new found family closeness, most likely she would hide any
involvement, if only out of embarrassment. And why had any of them left when
there was a wake in full progress? He had managed to return the logbook to the
workshop but with little more achievable given the circumstances, on reaching
his plot, he started up the Olympic.

Stopping at a junction, he waited while Mrs
Weston passed in front of him on her way back to her caravan. Her scooter
bounced up the kerb and the old woman appeared to hang on to the handlebars for
grim death. With driving like that it wouldn’t be long before there was another
funeral he thought as he waved. Taking one hand off the controls she waved
back, then quickly grabbed for the handgrip again as the scooter veered towards
a small wall. Chuckling to himself, Simon put the Olympic into gear and drove
further on to a tee junction close to the site buildings. To leave the park he
would have to turn left, pass the reception complex and then pick his way
through the crowded car park. Across the road he could see that the big double
doors to the workshop were now wide open and the car that had been under the
cover had been backed out. Kevin and another man swung the workshop doors
closed and chatted together while Kevin fixed the padlock.

Simon sensed a movement at the side of him.
Turning, he saw that Phyllis Weston was now coming back towards him. Oblivious
to anything else around her she bumped down the kerb and drove around the front
of the Olympic back towards the site buildings, her head down and elbows out in
the wind like a cartoon motorcyclist. Turning back, Simon saw that a low-slung
hot-blooded red sports car was moving away from the workshop. From his
viewpoint, little could be seen inside the car and he couldn’t identify the
driver, but there was nobody else around – even old Mrs Weston had
disappeared. With a muted low down howl from it’s exhaust, the car turned at
the end of the site buildings in the direction of the car park and main gates.

With the sports car now out of sight, Simon put
the Olympic into gear and made his left turn. Passing the reception building he
scanned for familiar faces but could not see either Kevin or the young man. Not
that the question of who was driving the car really concerned him. It was more
intrigue, given his love of Italian engines and cars, that such a car would be
at Green Fields in the first place.

Rounding the site buildings, Simon drove into
the still crowded car park. While he hadn’t paid attention on his arrival, he
was now conscious that with just a few 4x4 vehicles and the odd up-market
Jaguar or Mercedes, most of the parked cars were family saloons and hatchbacks.
Green Fields was definitely not Ferrari country. Taking a right turn out of the
main gates, Simon edged the little coupe onto the lane. This was a route he
enjoyed. These were roads for enthusiastic drivers and usually there was very
little traffic, the flowing bends a sheer joy to drive in the perfectly
handling Olympic.
Snicking
through the gears and with
a light touch on the steering wheel to round each bend in a continuous flowing
movement, he was soon passing the Johnson’s house, then up the hill and out of
Crosshill
Village, through
Halsall
and well on his way home.

Exhilarated, Simon slowed as he approached the
turn to his canal side house, then caught a glimpse of red in the distance as a
car some way ahead crested the canal bridge. Instinctively, he cancelled his
indicator and accelerated forward. Reaching the bridge, he could see that the
road ahead was completely clear, so the Ferrari must have turned off. Something
stirred in his memory. Casting his mind back a few days he recalled watching
from his balcony as a similar red sports car had turned off after the bridge
and followed the lane on the other side of the canal. It had then disappeared
towards
Ormskirk
.

For no real reason other than curiosity and the
enjoyment of driving the Olympic on empty roads, Simon turned off the bridge
and onto the side lane. Accelerating, he was soon alongside the canal and could
see his own house on the opposite bank. Eventually he caught a glimpse of red
up ahead – so knew that his guess had been correct. Sweeping through the
bends he gradually closed the gap on the car in front, eventually turning a
corner to find that the red Ferrari had stopped at a junction. Still not having
identified the driver – and both Kevin and Rick Worth would recognise the
Olympic – Simon pulled onto the grass verge, noting the car’s
registration in a small notebook. As the red car pulled out onto the main road,
Simon again pulled out into the lane and up to the junction, allowing two cars
to pass before he slipped into the traffic.

Keeping the two cars between them, Simon
followed at a distance, regularly losing sight of the car around bends and
corners before it reappeared on the straights. The road bore gently to the
right and a truck pulled out from a wood yard, slotting in between the two cars
in front of Simon. They drove on in convoy past a pub and a road down to the
old airfield on the left, then between rows of Victorian terraced houses
flanking the main road. The truck stopped at a pedestrian crossing, then a
little further on, turned into a small industrial complex on the right, the
hatchback in front of Simon picking up a little speed as they took a fork to
the left. The road was now clear and a few hundred metres away he could see
three or four cars stopped at a junction controlled by a set of traffic signals
but there was no sign of the Ferrari. Slowing to take his place in the queue he
considered the options. He had been unsighted by the truck and held up when it
had stopped for the pedestrians, so he had no idea which direction the sports
car had taken at the junction. Straight on or right would take him past
numerous turnings into small streets, housing estates, and other roads and the
car could have taken any one. With his quarry lost and the game over, Simon
decided that he would take a left at the junction to aim for an industrial
estate built on the edge of the old airfield and from where he could pick up a
small lane that led back home. The trip wouldn’t have been productive, but then
neither would it have been a total waste of time either. Putting miles on the
Olympic was always a pleasure.