Presumed Dead (12 page)

“She—Anita, that is—mentioned something to me once about that property owner, Terry Armstrong. Do you remember him?”

“His name’s in the paper sometimes.” Ellis frowned. “What did she say about him?”

“I can’t remember exactly. It was enough to make me think that she and him might be having an affair or something.”

“It can’t have been the same Terry Armstrong. He’s only been here for six or seven years.”

“Eight. But I gather he used to visit the area before he lived here.”

“Yeah? Perhaps she did know him then.”

“It’s probably nothing.”

“She were hard to resist,” Ellis said.

Dylan could believe that it would take a stronger man than Terry Armstrong to turn her down. “You never heard anything? Never saw them together?”

“God, no. I never heard of the bloke till he came up here and started buying up loads of houses.”

“As I said, it was probably nothing.”

“The bloke’s worth millions.” Ellis sounded envious. “That’s what happens though. Money goes to money.”

It does when you’ll do anything—including having people killed—to attract it. “Seems to.”

“Her daughter,” Ellis said, “Anita’s daughter, I mean, went off with Anita’s sister. They lived down south, I reckon.”

“Yes, I heard that.”

“I bet she’s a looker now, too.”

Oh yes, Holly Champion was a looker. She had the same features as her mother, and yet there was something missing. Holly usually looked serious, whereas her mother had laughed a lot, enjoyed life to the full. It was her devil-may-care attitude that had added to Anita’s attraction.

“I heard,” Dylan said, “that Anita was in your club the night she vanished. In Morty’s.”

“She were.” Ellis stared into what was left of his pint, which wasn’t much, presumably thinking back to that evening. “She were as pissed as a fart.” He grinned at the memory. “I mean, she were usually drunk at the end of an evening, but that night she were totally out of it.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Odd, now I come to think of it. She were really hammered, yet I don’t remember seeing her look happier. She were excited. Real excited.”

“Was she?”

“Yeah. I remember that. Mind, she only stopped for a quick word—requested a record, can’t think which one—and then went off to dance with some lucky bastard.”

“Did you recognise him?”

“Nope.”

“Did you see her later in the evening?”

“I caught a glimpse of her a couple of times, but nothing more.”

“The lucky bastard she was dancing with, did she seem to know him well?”

Ellis laughed at that. “How could you tell? She were draped all over him, but that weren’t unusual. Besides, she could hardly stand, so she’d have to lean on him a bit.”

At least Stevie had been right. Anita
had
been at Morty’s that night.

Dylan found it comforting to hear that she’d been happy. Excited even. Perhaps, after all, she
had
taken off for a better life.

“So you never saw Terry Armstrong at Morty’s?” Dylan asked.

“No.” He downed his beer. “He has a place in the States, you know. Can’t blame him, can you? If you had money, would you hang around here?”

“Probably not.”

Dylan had learned all he was going to from Sean Ellis so, after buying the man another drink, he left.

That was okay, though. At least he knew Anita had been at Morty’s. He was still on her trail.

She’d been excited. And Ellis had said he’d never seen her look happier. Why?

Maggie hadn’t slept properly for several nights, ever since Dylan Scott had called on her, in fact. When she did fall into a restless sleep, her dreams were disturbing. In one, Anita had been waving to her. In another, a policeman had been standing behind her and, when she’d spun around to look, it had been Dylan Scott.

Ron had been asking her what was wrong, but she hadn’t been able to tell him. Instead, she’d invented excuses about being too cold to sleep. Mind, that wasn’t a real lie. The temperatures had dropped, an easterly wind had sprung up, and every forecaster was predicting heavy snowfalls.

Anita was a ghost from her past, and she saw no need to dump any of that on Ron. He was a quiet, easy-going chap who wouldn’t understand how she had escaped her brutal pig of a husband every Saturday night for a few drinks and some laughs with the girls. He wouldn’t understand that, compared to Dave’s violent temper, the girls’ outrageous behaviour had been a welcome relief.

She couldn’t say she had ever really enjoyed their company, but their high spirits had brought some warmth into her cold life. They had been daring, they’d flirted with all and sundry, and Maggie had suffered endless teasing from them. Maggie the Mouse, they had called her to her face. Much worse to her back, she suspected. Yet she had been too grateful to step out of her real life for a few hours to care.

Ironically, the only one she had come close to liking had been Anita.

Sandra had been loud and hard, always boasting about her ability to “train” her men. She’d been forever telling Maggie that she must face up to Dave. “Christ, girl, you’ve got a bloody frying pan, haven’t you? Hit the bastard with that!” Sandra hadn’t trained Eddie, though, had she? He’d jumped into bed with Anita at the first opportunity.

Yvonne had been okay on the rare occasions she was sober. She was everyone’s friend until their back was turned. Then, the cruel insults flew. She had been vain, probably still was, and Maggie shuddered to recall the tantrum she’d thrown when Anita had turned up one Saturday night wearing an identical dress. Of course, the fact that Anita could have wowed the catwalk in a bin bag had only fuelled Yvonne’s anger. Anita had always been the one to turn heads and Yvonne had hated that.

As for Brenda, Maggie had loathed her. There was a cruel streak stamped right through her like Blackpool Rock.

She had once nursed Maggie’s elderly neighbour through his last days and had moaned to Maggie about him “always pissing himself when I’m on duty.” The poor man had been terminally ill, for God’s sake. She was a nurse, what did she expect? Mr. Johnson had been a kind, friendly, independent man who had deserved her respect, deserved to end his days with dignity.

Maggie had loathed Brenda for such cruelty. She wouldn’t allow her to nurse a dog.

In fact, she wished to God she had never got involved with any of them.

Now, she couldn’t stop thinking about that man, Dylan Scott. She couldn’t quite believe the story he’d given her about having a fling with Anita. Anita had never mentioned him. Jewellery had been her passion, and if a man had given her a valuable ring, or a cheap one come to that, she would have flaunted it.

Could it be that Dylan Scott was a police officer trying to catch them out? Were they, after all these years, under suspicion?

Maggie had torn up his phone number but she could call the Pennine Hotel. Even if he’d checked out, they would pass on a message.

Did she want to talk to him, though?

If she got it off her chest, she might sleep better. And really, she’d done nothing wrong. She had panicked, as had Brenda, but that was all.

He would ask why they hadn’t called for an ambulance, and Maggie had no answer to that. How she wished she’d behaved differently thirteen years ago. She hadn’t, though. Maggie the Mouse had gone along with it all, as she always had.

Early on Wednesday morning Dylan was driving toward Blackburn and Brenda Tomlinson’s home. According to her neighbour, she and her husband should have returned from Corfu yesterday.

It was a bitterly cold day with snow flurries blowing in on an easterly wind. At least it made a change from rain, and it was very picturesque where the snow had settled.

Dylan didn’t think he would learn anything new from Brenda, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a chat. And of the three women who had been with Anita on that last night, Brenda had to be the most interesting. It was she, after all, who had allegedly procured the drugs.

By the time he pulled up outside her house, a blizzard was blowing. It stung his eyes as he dashed for the front door.

“Yes?” A hefty woman with bleached hair and wearing mock combats answered his ring.

“Mrs. Tomlinson?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Dylan said, “but I’ve been talking to friends of yours, Yvonne Yates and Maggie Gibson. It was Yvonne who gave me your address.”

“Oh?” She looked as friendly as a seriously pissed-off Rottweiler.

“Yes, it’s a long story, I’m afraid, but I’m trying to find Anita Champion. Or her daughter.”

Despite her time beneath the Corfu sun, her face turned the colour of the snow that gusted into her hallway. She looked down at it. Then she looked up and down the road, presumably checking to see if any of her neighbours were watching the exchange.

“You’d better come in,” she said. He had expected the door to be slammed in his face. Judging by her scowl, it wasn’t only a door she wanted to slam in his face.

“Thanks.” He wiped his shoes on the mat and followed her into the kitchen, where a noisy washing machine was in full spin mode.

She hit the Off button and the machine juddered to a stop.

“I really am sorry to bother you,” Dylan said again, “but I need to find Anita and you’re my last hope. As I said, I’ve spoken to Yvonne and Maggie, but they can’t help.”

“I can’t, either.” Her eyes were blue and cold, like chips of ice.

“I thought not.” He smiled. “Now, the last time you saw her, she was lying in the alley at the side of Oasis. Is that right?”

Outrage registered on her face but was quickly masked. He could see her mind ticking over. Why had the idiots told him about that?

“That’s right. She never could hold her drink.”

“I gather you were the one who obtained the—well, whatever it was that made her ill?”

“Look, I don’t know who the hell you are, but I think you should leave.”

“It’s okay.” Dylan held his hands in front of him in a placatory manner. “I’m not bothered about that—I just wondered if you’d heard from her since, or if you know where I might find her daughter.”

“I’ve no idea where she went—where either of them went.” This came through thin red lips.

“I’ve heard there was a man about—when Anita was lying in the alley,” Dylan said. “Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve no idea who that was?”

“No.”

“I’d like to find him. Presumably, he stayed with her until she was well enough to go home—or go somewhere—under her own steam?”

Brenda Tomlinson simply shrugged.

“How long would that have been, do you think?” Dylan asked. “What did you give her? I mean, was it fast-acting? Long-lasting?”

“Are you a copper?”

“Good God, no.” Dylan laughed at the very notion. “I’m just a damned idiot who fell for Anita. One of the many. I was stupid enough to give her a ring, one that wasn’t mine to give. I need to find her.”

As he’d hoped, she relaxed slightly.

“I don’t care what you did to her that night,” he said. “Believe me, she’s not my favourite person.”

She let out her breath. “I was nursing back then and we wanted to teach her a lesson—”

“Because she’d been fooling around with Sandra’s boyfriend?”

“Yeah. Well, it was easy for me. I got a couple of laxative tablets and we put those in her drink. They gave you the shits, of course, but they were safe enough. They just made you sick if you mixed them with alcohol.”

“I see.”

“She’d have been okay within a couple of hours.”

“Unless she had a medical condition you didn’t know about, I suppose?”

“She had the constitution of a horse. She could eat like a pig and never put any weight on.”

Unlike Brenda, who looked as if she just ate like a pig.

“Ah, well.” Dylan smiled genially. “You’ll have nothing to worry about then.”

“Nothing at all. We slipped something in her drink, that’s all. That’s not a crime, is it?”

“Actually, yes, it is.”

“It didn’t hurt her. If it had, she’d have been found in that alley, wouldn’t she? Now, if there’s nothing else—”

“Thank you. You’ve been most helpful.”

As Dylan walked back to his car, he shuddered. It was difficult to believe there were such women in the world.

He would stake his life on Yvonne Yates and Maggie Gibson having spent all these years worrying about Anita’s fate. He very much doubted if Brenda Tomlinson had spared her a second thought.

Either way, Dylan had no intention of putting her mind at rest by letting her know that Anita had been well enough to get to Morty’s.

Dylan went straight back to Dawson’s Clough and his hotel.

“There’s a message for you, Mr. Scott.” The receptionist handed over his key and a square of paper.

Dylan’s first thought was Bev. His spirits soared as he imagined a reconciliation, then plunged as he panicked about Luke being involved in an accident. The message wasn’t from Bev, though. Of course it wasn’t. She would have called his mobile.

Instead, Maggie Gibson had tried to contact him. She had asked him to phone her before five-thirty today or between eight-thirty and five-thirty tomorrow.

Dylan was curious and, as it was a little after twelve, he called the number she’d left.

“Ah, Mr. Scott.” She sounded nervous. “I wondered if you’d discovered anything? About Anita, I mean?”

“Nothing at all. I don’t suppose you’ve remembered anything—?”

“Can we meet?”

“Of course.” Now, Dylan was really intrigued.

“Are you at the hotel? I could be there in twenty minutes.”

“Yes, of course.” Before he could say more, the connection was cut.

Dylan spent most of those minutes gazing out his window at the now steadily falling snow. It was years since he’d seen real snow. If it was snowing at home, he and Luke could build a snowman. But that was unlikely. Snow fell on the Pennines. It avoided London.

He was beginning to feel affection for this part of east Lancashire, and that surprised him. It was very much a what-you-see-is-what-you-get sort of place. No airs. No pretence.

He loitered in reception for a couple of minutes, looking at tourist brochures and deciding he’d pay Towneley Hall a visit before he left the area, and when Maggie Gibson walked through the hotel’s revolving entrance door, he was there to meet her.

“Would you like to go through to the lounge?” he asked. “We can have tea or coffee?”

She nodded, but looked nervous. “Tea would be nice.”

Dylan escorted her to the lounge, saw her seated in a sofa by the window, and went to the bar to order tea for two.

When he returned, she had removed her coat. Today she was wearing black trousers and a blue blouse. It was easy to picture her in Wellington boots, though, and hard to imagine her hitting the town with the likes of Anita Champion, Yvonne Yates and Brenda Tomlinson. She must have been like the sparrow among the birds of paradise.

“You have me intrigued,” he said as he sat opposite her.

She gave him a long, appraising look. “Are you a policeman?”

“You’re the second person to ask me that today. No, I’m not a policeman.”

She visibly sagged with relief.

“The first person was your friend, Brenda Tomlinson.”

She said nothing, but the expression on her face told Dylan that they weren’t friends. He wondered if they ever had been.

“What did she tell you?” she asked.

A young Polish girl brought the tea to their table.

“Milk and sugar?” Dylan asked.

“Just milk, please.”

Dylan poured, put a cup of tea in front her, and leaned back in his chair. “Brenda couldn’t tell me anything.”

“I don’t suppose she could.” There was heavy sarcasm in her words. “She was a nurse back then, as you probably know. A cruel nurse who cared nothing for her patients. Not that that’s relevant. Anyway, Sandra found out that Anita and her boyfriend—that’s Sandra’s boyfriend—had, well, you know. So Brenda came up with the idea of making Anita pay. Like I said, she was cruel. So when we all got to Oasis that night, Brenda put something in Anita’s drink.”

Dylan said nothing.

“Within—well, certainly within the hour, Anita was complaining of a bad headache and nausea. Yvonne went home at that point, but I stayed because—” She attempted to lift her cup but her hands were shaking too much. “I suggested to Anita that she go outside for a breath of air. I went with her.”

“Go on,” Dylan said.

“I sat with her for a while, and she said she felt a bit better. She still had a headache, though, and I said we ought to call a doctor. But Anita didn’t want to make a fuss so we went back inside.” She let out her breath. “Brenda had a go at me for fussing over her. She said that, if I told Anita what she’d put in her drink, there would be worse, much worse, put in mine.”

“Having met her, that doesn’t surprise me.”

“Yes, well, Anita felt better and had another drink. Then she felt nauseous again and I went outside with her again. She couldn’t stand—God, I was terrified. I ran into the club to tell Brenda. She insisted there was nothing to worry about but agreed to have a look at her.”

Her hands were still shaking, but she managed to pick up her cup this time and take a small sip before returning it to the safety of the saucer.

“We were walking up to her when we heard someone—it was a man’s voice and he was saying something to Anita. Brenda grabbed my arm and pulled me back to the club. All the while, she was threatening me, telling me that I should keep my mouth shut.”

“I see.”

“I did,” Maggie said. “I’ve kept my mouth shut ever since. But that was the last time any of us saw Anita, and I’ve always wondered—”

“If you’d killed her?” Dylan said, and she nodded, her skin as white as the porcelain cup on which she fixed her gaze.

“I should have gone to the police,” she whispered. “I know that, but I was too scared.”

“Of the police or Brenda?”

“I know how it sounds, but Brenda mostly. At the time, you see, I was married to a drunken bully. She’d threatened to tell him I was seeing someone else. He’d already put me in hospital twice, and I couldn’t face—I just couldn’t face it.”

Dylan lifted his own cup and slowly, thoughtfully, drank his tea. Perhaps he could put her out of her misery. “The man you heard was Stevie—oh, hell, I still don’t know his surname. Some people call him Simple Stevie.”

“It was—Stevie was there?”

“Yes. He fetched her some water and stayed with her for a while. Then he saw her into a taxi. Anita went to Morty’s. People—Sean Ellis, the DJ—saw her there.”

“Oh. So—” A tear slid down her face. “So she was all right?”

“I think so. She was dancing. Drunk. But yes, as far as I know, she was all right.”

Maggie was hanging on his every word, seemingly oblivious to the tears rolling down her cheeks.

“We knew she would have gone on somewhere else that night, but—well, she might have got ill later, a delayed reaction or something. She might have fainted or something. Fallen into a ditch. Grown confused and wandered over the moors—”

“Indeed,” Dylan agreed. “And for all I know, any of those things might have happened.”

Her relief faded slightly.

“But if she went to Morty’s,” he said, “and I’m fairly certain she did, who would she have met up with?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was shaky. “She would have flirted with Sean Ellis. He was the DJ there then.”

Dylan nodded.

“She wouldn’t have gone out of her way to meet him, though. There was Matthew Jackson, of course. He used to go there quite often. Perhaps she was hoping he’d be there.”

“Matthew Jackson?” The name meant nothing to Dylan.

“Anita was a bit tight-lipped about him, but I always thought she still had feelings for him. They’d been an item years before, but he dumped her. I don’t believe she ever got over him.”

“Oh?” Why had no one mentioned him?

“I always thought that was why she could laugh and joke with men so easily. After Matt, no one meant anything to her.”

“Is he still in Dawson’s Clough?” Dylan asked.

“No. He moved away. Him and his family.

“He was married?”

“Within six months of dumping Anita, yes. He had two boys.”

“How long ago did he leave Dawson’s Clough?”

“Ages ago. It wasn’t long after Anita vanished. Six months maybe.”

“I see.” Dylan would ask Holly if she remembered him. “What do you know about him, Maggie?”

“He came to the Clough with his parents during our last year at school. He was different. He came from Scotland for a start, and he was nice-looking, clever, good at sport. You know the sort.”

Dylan certainly did. Every school had one of those. They always had their pick of the girls and made the other boys feel totally inadequate.

“Anita used to hang around with him even then. He used to play her along. He loved to have another girl on his arm to make her jealous. In fact, I think she only went out with Ian to make
him
jealous.”

“Ian?”

“Her husband. Holly’s father.”

“Ah, yes.”

Because the man had been out of Anita’s life for so long—eight years before she vanished, in fact—Dylan kept forgetting about him. Was that wise? Maybe he’d returned to claim what he thought was rightfully his—his wife and his daughter.

“That was a marriage doomed to failure if ever there was one,” Maggie was saying. “Ian liked to settle in front of the telly every night, whereas Anita wanted to be out having fun. There’s no way Anita would have married him if she hadn’t been expecting Holly.”