Presumed Dead (5 page)

The large estate was a mix of modern townhouses, semi-detached and detached properties, and the roads had been named after birds—Kingfisher Rise, Swallow Drive, Heron Road. You certainly couldn’t accuse the planning departments of lacking imagination, Dylan thought.

Brenda Tomlinson lived at number four, Nightingale Avenue, a detached house with a neat front garden. At least, if Yvonne Yates was to be believed, she lived there.

No one answered the door but curtains twitched at the house opposite so Dylan dashed across the road, cursing the steady rain, and rang the doorbell.

“If you’re looking for Brenda or Tom,” an elderly grey-haired woman said, “you’re out of luck. They’ve jetted off to Corfu.”

“Ah. No matter.” At least he had the right address. Courtesy of a small canopy above her door, he was sheltered from the rain for the moment, too. “I’ll catch them when they get back.”

“A week on Tuesday.”

“It’s all right for some.”

“If that’s what appeals.” She sniffed. “It’s not my cup of tea. All they’ll get in Corfu is a jiffy tummy. Foreign food? You can keep it.” She pulled a face. “Still, live and let live, that’s my motto.”

Dylan very much doubted that. “Be nice to see some sunshine, though.” Although the wind had dropped and the temperature had risen slightly, it had rained solidly since two o’clock this morning.

“You don’t see much sunshine when you’re confined to bed with food poisoning.”

“True. All that hanging about at airports, too. It’s not for me.” He nodded at Brenda’s house. “Been before, have they?”

“Always jetting off somewhere. Three foreign holidays a year. They always have a fortnight about now, a week in June and another in September.”

“Very nice. Well, nice if you can afford it.”

“He’s a car salesman,” she said, as if that explained everything. “Still, I suppose you’ll know that.”

“No. It was Brenda I was hoping to see. We’ve not met, but a friend gave me her address. She knew an old friend of mine—Anita Champion.”

The woman looked blank. “You’ll have to come back a week on Tuesday then.”

“I’ll do that. Thanks. And I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

Dylan drove back into Dawson’s Clough, parked the car, grabbed his big black umbrella and went for a walk round.

He’d done the same yesterday, after his meeting with Maggie Gibson, and he still needed to get to know the town. It was much bigger than he’d imagined, and an odd mix of old and new. The cotton industry had brought prosperity to the area and, with the looms now silent, the mills were either in various states of disrepair or had been renovated to provide fully-serviced luxury apartments. The pedestrianised shopping centre had been revitalised, yet the buildings around its perimeter looked old, tired and forgotten.

Tesco loomed large in front of him and he decided to have a coffee and a sandwich while he thought of the best course of action. He needed to talk to Yvonne Yates again and, as he would be the last person she wanted to hear from, he would have to use all his charm.

He was shaking excess rain from his umbrella, about to walk in the store, when he saw a sign. Two shirts £10.

He inspected them and wondered how much profit there could be in selling what looked like good quality shirts at that price. Perhaps it was down to sweat shops and child labour. Surely Tesco wouldn’t go along with that?

With four in his hands—two blue, one maroon and one grey—he double-checked they were a sixteen-and-a-half collar size and carried them to the till.

If he did nothing else, he would get the washing machine working at the weekend. Perhaps his mother could do it while he took Luke to the match. Fat chance. She would be too busy meditating or practising her tai chi, whatever that was.

He didn’t want to think about his mother, though. He wanted to know why Yvonne Yates and Maggie Gibson had lied to him. What were they hiding?

A coffee and a sandwich later, his new shirts on the passenger seat, he sat in his car and called Yvonne’s number.

She answered almost immediately.

“Yvonne? It’s Dylan. Dylan Scott.”

“Oh, yes?” She sounded guarded.

“Yes. Two things. First, I must apologise for my behaviour. A delightful dinner companion and all I did was talk about another woman. I can’t believe I did that. I’m so sorry.”

“That’s okay.” Slightly less guarded.

“Second, I’m going home on Friday and I wanted to make amends. Would you have dinner with me tomorrow night? If I promise not to drone on about other women?”

“Well—”

“I can’t blame you if you say no.”

“Er, no. I mean, yes. Yes, okay.”

“Really? Hey, that’s brilliant. Tomorrow, I’ll be the perfect gentleman. Promise.”

He’d even wear a clean shirt. A new clean shirt.

“I’ll look forward to it,” she said.

Perhaps this time, he needed her tongue loosened by alcohol.

“Shall I come to your hotel again?” she asked.

“If you like. Then we can go on somewhere else. You choose. I’ll be ready and waiting at six.”

She laughed. “See you about seven then.” The connection was cut.

Dylan drove back to the hotel and left his car there. It was time to go to work.

Broad Lancashire accents were all around him—some people sounded as if they had never been outside Dawson’s Clough. There must be plenty of people who could remember the Oasis club and, more important, Anita Champion. All he had to do was find them.

And the best starting place was the pubs. God, it was a tough job.

By nine o’clock that evening even Dylan, who dreamed of living in a pub, was keen to get back to his hotel and his bed.

He’d started in the Commercial, dark and dingy with a miserable landlord and a clientele of no-hopers, then moved on to the Red Lion, where he was the only customer for an hour.

Now he was at the bar in the Pheasant, a warm and homely pub if a little jaded, where the walls were covered with old photographs of Lancashire scenes. Better still, he had finally found someone who had known Anita Champion.

“Once seen, never forgotten,” his companion said. “An absolute stunner, she were.”

“I know. I was in the queue of admirers. A long way back, but at least I was in the queue.”

“I were more of a—friend.” The man put out his hand. “Bill Thornton. Let me buy you another. Black Sheep, is it?”

“It is, yes. Thanks, Bill, that’s generous of you.” They shook hands. “Dylan, by the way. Dylan Scott.”

After Bill had enjoyed a joke with the barmaid, a loud young girl in tight denims and even tighter T-shirt, their drinks were in front of them, two pints of Black Sheep.

“The landlord’s a miserable bugger, but he does keep a good pint. Yorkshire beer, this is.” Bill took a swig from his glass, savoured it, and licked the froth from his top lip. “Brewed in Masham. Do you know the story?”

“Story?”

“Paul Theakston’s family had been brewing beer in Masham for—ooh, probably six generations—but then, much to Paul’s disgust, it were sold off to become part of Scottish and Newcastle Breweries. But young Paul were the black sheep of the family—you get it?—and he decided to stay on in Masham and do what his family had done best, that is, brew damn good beer in the traditional manner.”

“Really?” Dylan took a swallow from his own pint and decided that Paul Theakston had done them a huge favour. “It’s a cracking pint.”

“That it is.”

“A good story, too.”

Bill nodded, and concentrated on his beer.

“So you were a friend of Anita’s?” Dylan asked.

“I were. I can’t say there weren’t times when I didn’t want more, but really it were better like that. We used to have a drink together now and again. Sometimes we went to the cinema. She loved films, didn’t she?”

“Yeah.” Dylan nodded as if remembering happy evenings in front of the large screen with Anita.

“I remember we saw
Braveheart
three times,” Bill said. “She could almost recite the script.”

“Oh?” There was an old ticket for a showing of
Braveheart
in the stuff Holly had given him.

“She were a big Mel Gibson fan. Never read much, did she?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Nah. She liked biographies, though. And, of course, she loved Princess Di. Read everything about her after she died.”

Of course. Princess Diana died three months before Anita disappeared. Newspapers and magazines would still have been pushing the story to the front page.

Bill smiled. “She’d have been in her element with all this celebrity-this-that-and-the-other they put on telly these days.”

“She would, wouldn’t she? Do you remember the last time you went out together?”

“I remember all right. It were a Monday night, the Monday before she disappeared, in fact.”

“Oh?” Dylan supped from his glass.

“Yes,” he said, clearly thinking back. “I were off to my uncle’s funeral in Glasgow the next day. I were going to be away for ten days, catching up with family, so we had a farewell drink.” He looked wistful. “I didn’t realise then, of course, that it really were farewell.”

“How did she seem?”

Dylan respected a male perspective more than a female’s. You got logic from a man whereas, so far, he’d had nothing but crap from her female friends.

“Fine,” Bill replied. “The same as ever. Happy, content—the same as she always did. She made me promise to call her as soon as I got back.”

“So you don’t believe she had plans to—go somewhere?”

“Never in a month of bloody Sundays. I told you, she were happy with her lot. Content. She might have had a few boyfriends, more than a few to tell the truth, but she weren’t daft. She liked a good time and there’s no harm in that.”

“None at all,” Dylan agreed.

“Besides, she wouldn’t have left Holly behind. She loved that kid. Holly meant the world to her.”

“People seem convinced that she went off with someone.”

“I know they do and they’re bloody daft.” Bill took a quick swallow of beer. “No way. She wouldn’t have left Holly. I’m telling you, just as I told them bloody hopeless coppers when they finally decided to show some interest, that she didn’t go nowhere. Willingly, at least,” he added.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Exactly what I said. Look, I have no idea what happened to her, but I know it weren’t good. She wouldn’t have left Holly with no word.”

Dylan didn’t know what to make of that. Sandra, Yvonne and Maggie all seemed to believe she’d met a rich toy-boy and gone off for a better life. Bill, on the other hand, suspected something far more sinister.

A few minutes later, a chap in his late sixties entered the pub and walked up to the bar. “All right, Bill?” He looked Dylan up and down and gave him a brief nod.

“Geoff.” Bill tugged on the man’s arm. “You’ll never guess who we’ve been talking about. Anita Champion!”

“Christ, that’s going back a bit. Why? You’ve not heard from her, have you?”

“No.”

Bill made introductions and Dylan decided to get another round of drinks in.

“Dylan here has come to the Clough hoping to find Anita,” Bill was saying.

“You’ll be lucky,” Geoff scoffed. “I bet she’s in bloody Brazil or somewhere.”

“You think so?” Dylan asked.

“Yes. Oh, I know Bill thinks something terrible happened to her.” He grinned. “But he reckons the CIA had Kennedy shot and nothing will convince him that the Yanks walked on the moon.”

Dylan smiled, as was expected.

“She were a handsome woman,” Geoff said, chuckling, “but I can’t imagine she were abducted by Martians.”

“How well did you know her?” Dylan asked.

“Not as well as Bill. I have the newsagent’s on Trueman Street, just round the corner from where she lived. She used to come in for her lottery ticket and a packet of fags on a Saturday night.”

“She didn’t smoke,” Bill said, and Geoff rolled his eyes.

“Of course she did, man. A packet of ten every Saturday night she bought.”

“She might have had the odd one,” Bill said. “A social smoker, I suppose you’d call her. If she were out with the girls, she might buy a pack.”

“There’s no might about it.” Geoff’s sigh was impatient.

“When she disappeared, Geoff,” Dylan asked, “did she come in that night?”

“No. Well, she stuck her head inside the door to tell me she’d been into Manchester the day before and that she’d see me next week. She’d have bought her fags in Manchester, you see.”

“How did she seem?”

“The same as always. Full of life. Like a bloody whirlwind. Opened the door, shouted that she’d see me next week, and were gone.”

“Did you see her after that?”

“I didn’t,” Geoff said. “That were the last I ever saw of her.”

“What about her friends?” Dylan asked. “The night she went missing, she went out with Yvonne Yates, Maggie Gibson and Brenda Tomlinson. Did you see any of them that night?”

“No. But I wouldn’t. They used to meet in the Commercial, and they’d have walked straight there from their homes. There would have been no need for them to pass my shop.” He emptied his glass. “I saw Maggie a couple of days later, and she were right upset about Anita.”

“Was she?”

“Yes. Upset or annoyed, it’s a job to tell. Like everyone else, everyone except Bill here, she assumed that Anita had gone off with some bloke and not bothered telling anyone. Well, I mean, even her daughter, young Holly, assumed she were staying out all weekend. That’s why none of us knew she hadn’t got home until the Monday.”

Dylan could understand why the police hadn’t shown much interest. Just because Anita had stayed out for weekends before, everyone—everyone except Bill—assumed she’d met a sure thing.

Dylan might have shared that view if he hadn’t been convinced that both Yvonne and Maggie had lied to him. Or at least been very economical with the truth.

One thing was certain, he would handle Yvonne with care tomorrow night. She knew something, he was sure of it, and he was determined to find out what it was.

“What about that property owner?” Dylan asked. “What was his name? Terry Armstrong? Was he one of her admirers?”

“Terry Armstrong?” Geoff laughed at that. “He weren’t even living here back then. He came from your neck of the woods, mate.”