When Night Closes in (11 page)

‘Oh, yes,' she said. ‘All the wrong memories.' She sipped the coffee but the sweetness made her feel sick. She put the mug on the floor. ‘Perhaps I will go away from here, move out of Jersey Marine for good.'

‘I don't think that would be advisable, not just now.' Lainey's voice was mild. She nodded, grimacing a little.

‘If you think Jon is dead then are you saying that I am a suspect?'

‘Too early to say anything of the kind.' He rose to his feet and moved to the door; his hand on the latch, he looked back at her. ‘For what it's worth I think Jon Brandon is very much alive. I mean to solve this puzzle, to find out exactly what is going on and my first step is to find out where Mrs Brandon has taken herself off to.' He let himself out and, as the door closed, Lowri resisted the urge to run after him.

She got to her feet and went upstairs to the bathroom; she realized she was nervous of being alone. She switched on the light over the mirror and applied some blusher to her cheeks. She would go out, perhaps do a bit of shopping. She could not bear to go back to the office to face questions from Sally.

The weather was cooler now; the sun had disappeared behind the clouds. Soon the leaves would turn red, then fall. Summer was coming to an end. She drove into the High Street and parked the car and began to stroll along the road, pausing now and then to look in the shop windows. She caught sight of her reflection and saw a pale, thin stranger. Perhaps she should grow her hair, find herself a new image. Her life with Jon was over for good and she must just make the best of it.

‘Lowri not in?' Mr Watson stood in the doorway and Sally looked up at him, hastily pushing her nail-polish bottle out of sight.

‘She had to go somewhere with the police, Mr Watson, they came when you were out.'

Mr Watson grunted. ‘I would very much like to know what's going on around here, Sally. Why are the police hounding Lowri?'

‘Well sir, you must know that her boyfriend Jon Brandon's gone missing. The police have found a body and they want Lowri to do the identity thing.'

‘Damn nerve!' Mr Watson said. ‘She should have called me.' He put his finger to his glasses. ‘And where in heaven's name is Mrs Brandon? She made enough fuss about being compensated for the break-in at the cottage.' He sighed. ‘Goodness knows what she'll try to claim now that the place has burnt down.'

‘I don't know,' Sally said. ‘Perhaps the cops . . . the police thought it better to take Lowri.'

The phone rang and Sally picked it up, hoping that her freshly applied nail polish would not smudge. ‘It's the police.' She mouthed the words at Mr Watson and he pursed his lips in disapproval. After a few minutes, she put down the receiver and sighed heavily.

‘What now?' Mr Watson asked.

Sally shrugged. ‘They want to see you, Mr Watson, they want you to go to the police station to answer some questions about the Brandons' tenancy.'

‘Well ring them back, Sally, and tell them they must come here if they want to see me. I'm not going running at their beck and call, I'm a busy man.'

She made the call and passed on Mr Watson's message. Satisfied, he nodded and returned to his office. As soon as he was gone, Sally dialled Lowri's number but there was no answer. Where could she be, had the police taken her into custody, perhaps? Well, there was nothing she could do about it. Opening her drawer, Sally pulled out the details of the cottages in Plunch Lane. She studied the sheet for some time before scribbling some words in the margin. Then she put the paper away again and sat back in her chair, smiling. Things were working out very well, very well indeed.

Lowri sat in the small waiting-room staring at the magazines lying on the coffee-table. She could not believe she was in Summer's Dean, in yet another hospital. A nurse hurried past, a covered tray in her hand, and Lowri shuddered. She wanted to ask how her mother was but everyone seemed so busy.

Almost as soon as she had returned from shopping the phone had rung. It was her stepfather. ‘You'd better come down here,' he said without preliminaries. ‘Your mother has been taken to St Mary's in Summer's Dean.'

‘What's wrong, what's happened to her?' Lowri clutched the phone as if she could extract information from it.

‘How do I know? I'm not a doctor.' Charles was his usual graceless self. ‘Just get here as soon as you can.'

She had thrown some clothes into an overnight bag and driven out of Jersey Marine without stopping to let anyone know. Two hours later she was at St Mary's, no wiser than she had been when she left home.

This was turning out to be some day. First there had been the awful visit to the mortuary and now she was at another hospital, surrounded by the sights and smells of sickness.

A rough-looking man in an anorak heaved his way into the room and sat down opposite her. She averted her gaze quickly, he had obviously been crying.

‘Miss Richards,' a nurse appeared at her side, ‘you can go in to see your mother now. Room three, down the corridor on the right.'

Rhian Richards was in a private room, at least Charles had managed that much. She was lying against the pillows, an oxygen mask over her face. Her eyes were open and she was trying her best to smile.

Lowri sat beside the bed. ‘How are you feeling, Mother? No, silly question, don't bother to answer it.' She took Rhian's hand, noticing how slender her fingers were. Her mother really needed to take better care of herself.

‘The gas fire,' Rhian whispered, ‘carbon monoxide poisoning. An accident.' She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Don't blame Charles, he was away. It was my own fault.'

‘Mummy!' Lowri said. ‘You always make excuses for him. He should have seen to it that the fires were checked.'

Rhian shook her head and Lowri dropped the subject. It was pointless to blame Charles – her mother would always defend him.

‘I'll stay at the house for a few days,' she said. ‘I could do with a break from work anyway.' She smiled. ‘I'll have to make a few phone calls, let people know where I am, but it won't hurt me to have a rest, will it?'

Her mother struggled to sit up. ‘What about your job, Lowri?'

Lowri frowned. ‘Don't worry, Mother, there's more here to consider than my job. You are much more important and I want to be with you.'

Rhian patted her hand. The door opened and a nurse bustled in. ‘I think Mrs Richards should rest now.'

Lowri nodded and got to her feet. ‘I'll come back tomorrow morning,' she said and, with a last glance at her mother, left the room.

When Lowri returned to the Grange she could see that Charles was home. His brand-new Mercedes was parked directly in front of the double doors to the hall, and Lowri scowled as she manoeuvred her way past the gleaming vehicle.

Charles was in the library, drinking his habitual glass of whisky in front of the ornate gas fire. No doubt he had seen to it that all the chimneys were swept and all the appliances checked now that it was almost too late.

‘How is she?' His question was casual, as if her mother simply had a cold.

‘As well as can be expected after being almost suffocated.' Lowri threw down her jacket. ‘Want a cup of tea? I'm going to make one.' She offered more out of politeness than because she expected Charles to accept.

‘Wouldn't mind some dinner,' he said. ‘Anything in the fridge you can throw together?'

Lowri stared at him. ‘It is allowed for men to cook these days, Charles.' The edge of anger she was feeling was in her voice.

Charles put down his glass and pushed himself up from the chair. ‘Don't bother!' he said huffily. ‘I'll go out and get something.'

The front door slammed and Lowri heard the Mercedes being gunned into life. Charles treated his cars the way he treated his women: he had no respect for either. Lowri made some tea and sat in the kitchen at the scrubbed pine table that had been her grandmother's.

She made a phone call to Sally. She was out, so Lowri left a brief message. She really should call Lainey, but he could enquire at the office if he needed to get in touch.

She sighed, wishing Charles a million miles away. In Canada perhaps, with her brother. Charles had never been good enough for her mother. When had Lowri begun to hate him? Was it after the hundredth time she had seen her mother crying over his affairs? Or was it when he had first slapped Lowri across the face for what he called her impudence?

She had burst into their bedroom once when they were quarrelling and Charles had been holding her mother by her hair. He did not see her at first.

‘Just remember, madam,' he was saying venomously, ‘you accuse me of having other women but at least I haven't brought any bastards home to roost.' He looked up then and saw Lowri's shocked face.

‘Yes, that's right, girl.' His tone was vicious. ‘You are a bastard, do you know what that means? You are illegitimate, a nothing.'

Lowri had run back to her own room and begun packing her clothes. Her mother had followed her and held her close and told her she loved her so much that life would be impossible without her. So Lowri had stayed. Until she went to university in Cardiff.

She had embarked on a law degree intending to become a solicitor or even a barrister. It was Charles who put a stop to her university career. He had come up to Cardiff for a dinner to honour one of the retiring masters. Her mother was ill and had stayed at home.

Lowri lifted her cup to her mouth, remembering the agony of the embarrassment Charles had caused her. He had made a pass at one of the lecturer's wives and had his face soundly slapped for his pains. The evening had ended with a drunken Charles being forcibly ejected from the hall.

The next day Lowri gave up her course and, because she had nowhere else to go, went home to Summer's Dean. Charles, far from being contrite, ranted and raged at her for being a fool. She knew that she could not stay at home, not while he was living there, so once her mother was well, Lowri began to look for work.

It was through a family connection that she got a job with Watson Jones and Fry, and Mr Watson had taken her under his wing. He was a kindly man with a face like a cherub, and Lowri established a rapport with him almost right away.

She looked around her; she might as well go to bed. She would stay in Summer's Dean only long enough to make sure her mother had fully recovered from the accident and then she would go back home.

Home? Did she have a home? She suddenly felt rootless, the nobody that Charles constantly told her she was. Perhaps it was time she began to think like an independent woman. She had relied on Jon, believed in him, thought she would marry him. He had made a fool out of her, no doubt about that. Well, to hell with Jon, and to hell with all men. Lowri would sort out her own life, make her own way in the world.

She got up and looked in the pine-framed mirror on the wall. ‘I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul,' she recited and slowly a smile crept around her lips.

‘That's better,' she told her reflection. ‘Life is for living and it's about time I realized that.'

It was in a cheerful mood that she snuggled down into bed. She fell asleep immediately but woke abruptly, sweating, frightened. The dream had come again. The masked man had held her under the water. She had felt the coldness wrap around her, the dread fill her heart and mind.

Lowri put her hands over her face and began to cry.

‘So, Jon Brandon's business is booming.' DI Lainey leaned over the desk and studied the computer screen. ‘Lucky man. Print it out, Sergeant, I can't “see” it properly until I have it in black and white.'

Sergeant Brown clicked a few buttons and the printer began to hum into life before delivering several sheets of paper in rapid succession.

Lainey waited until the last sheet spewed from the mouth of the printer and then picked them all up. They felt warm; the machine had been working overtime this morning. ‘Right, I'll take these into my office and have a good look at them.'

He closed his door and threw the sheaf of papers on his desk. The pristine rows of figures stood out black and bold. Lainey sat down, wishing he had thought to ask for some coffee. Figures gave him a headache; he was not the most numerate of men.

He studied the pages before him and, even to the most untutored eye, it was clear that Jon Brandon was doing very well for himself. Why then would he disappear?

He ran his finger along the columns and saw that the rent for the cottage in Plunch Lane was fully paid up. He checked the figures before him again: Brandon was a suspiciously wealthy man.

It was all extremely odd. He grimaced; he never trusted ‘odd'. There had to be a logical explanation for everything. He marked the sums of money deposited in the business in the last few months. They were random and varying in size, but they all added up to quite a substantial amount.

Brandon's business was supposed to be importing and exporting computer software, not the most lucrative of ventures unless you struck it lucky. There was too much competition from the big boys for that. Even customized software for expanding companies abroad would not make anyone a fortune. Unless . . .

‘Damn and blast!' Lainey pushed his chair away from the desk and stood up, running his fingers through his hair. ‘Why didn't I think of it before?' He picked up his jacket and left the station. His brain was buzzing. The mystery was beginning to unravel – just a little.

‘There, Mother, we're home.' Lowri helped her mother from the car and led her up the steps to the Grange. ‘I wish you would have come up to stay with me, if only for a few days.'

‘No, darling, my place is here in my own home.' Rhian smiled at Lowri. ‘And for all Charles pontificates and fusses, this is still
my
home in my name. One day it will be yours, Lowri.'

Lowri did not want the house; she would never live in it. The Grange held too many bad memories for her.