The Overlooker (17 page)

S
lowly Nick turned to look at Suzie. She was holding the side of her head, looking dazed.

‘Are you all right?'

‘I took a bit of a bump on the side window. It's just a bruise. The car's taken more damage.'

He turned round to Millie.

‘I'm OK, thanks very much. I don't know about gangsters running sweatshops. You're doing a pretty good job of trying to kill us yourself.'

‘Sorry. I thought I had time to get round the bend.'

He got out of the car and went round to inspect the damage. There was that sickening feeling of having made a mistake he would do anything to take back.

The left wing was crumpled and there was a long scrape across the door. Nick grieved for it. He had rejected indignantly Geoffrey's insinuation that he was flaunting his wealth with such a car. It wasn't in that sort of bracket. But it was nearly new. He had been proud of it.

But the damage was irrevocably done. It had been his fault. There had been that infuriating cyclist who didn't want to let him past. But he should have controlled his impatience and waited until it was safe.

But that silver-grey car? It had been coming round the bend far too fast. Could it possibly have known Nick would be there? Could the driver have
wanted
to force him off the road? He looked back up the lane, but the car had long since gone. He had not had time to note the make or number.

He got back into the driver's seat. ‘The headlamps are OK, thank goodness. But the bodywork's a mess. I only hope it hasn't twisted the chassis.'

He tried the ignition. It sounded normal. Before he put the car into gear he turned to Suzie.

‘I don't suppose you got a look at who was driving that car?'

‘Male, I think. There were two of them. But don't ask me to describe them. I had more important things to think about.'

‘I thought those airbag thingies were supposed to pop up if you had a crash.' Millie's voice came from the back of the car.

‘Not for a side impact.' He turned back to Suzie. ‘They didn't stop.'

‘No, well, the speed they were going they'd have been round the next bend before they even noticed.'

He felt a little mollified. Suzie didn't think it was all his fault, even if Millie did.

Gingerly he eased the car back on to the road. There was a scraping noise as it freed itself from the wall. It was going to be an expensive repair. But the car appeared to be in working order. Would it get them home on Sunday? Or would he have to find a local garage? Get his insurance to provide a courtesy car?

He drove slowly on, his senses alert. Was the steering responding as normal? Slowly his breathing steadied as he decided that it was.

He still had no idea whether it had been an accident or deliberate.

They had almost reached the main road at the bottom of the dale when his phone rang. His tense nerves told him immediately who it would be. He could already hear in his mind that harsh, deep voice.

For seconds he did nothing. Then he was aware of Suzie holding out her hand. He took the phone out of his inside pocket and handed it to her.

He heard her gasp as she looked at it, and then the delight in her voice. ‘Tom!'

The name seemed to come to Nick from a long way away. Of course. There was another world beyond the shadow that had fallen over him. This afternoon they would be meeting Tom at the hospital. Uncle Martin was recovering. They would be sharing his reminiscences. Even the reluctant Millie.

‘That's great. We'll see you there.' Suzie put the phone on her lap. ‘Tom says he's out of his lecture. He's on his way to the station. He should be with us at the hospital. Before half past two.'

Nick turned on to the road that led back into town. The car appeared to be behaving itself. The sun shone golden on the oak trees along the dale. It was becoming increasingly ridiculous to think that the occupants of that silver-grey car could have known he would be driving down from Briershaw Chapel just then. Just a speed merchant who took no account of winding country lanes.

Yes, he'd taken a risk himself, and paid for it. But he hadn't been driving that fast, had he?

They were nearing the top of the hill that would take them down to High Bank when Suzie turned to him.

‘Would you mind driving on into town? Or at least to a corner shop? My head's hurting a bit. I'd like to get some paracetamol.'

He was instantly anxious. ‘You said it was just a bruise. Are you sure? We ought to get a doctor to look at it.'

‘I'm all right. There's no need to make a fuss. But you know how it is. You have a fall, or something, and you don't think you've hurt yourself much. Then when the shock wears off, all the aches and pains come to the fore.'

Millie piped up from the back. ‘You're going to the hospital this afternoon. You ought to take her into A and E.'

‘
We're
going to the hospital,' he corrected her.

‘Do I have to? It's scary. Those beds with curtains round them. You don't know whether it's somebody having a bedpan or if they're dead.'

‘Thelma rang the hospital this morning.' Suzie told her. ‘Uncle Martin's fine. He's had a good night. And he's looking forward to seeing us. And that includes you.'

There was an ominous silence from the back seat.

Nick came down the hill past High Bank, without turning in to the house. He was halfway down the hill into town when he spotted a small row of shops.

‘There!' Suzie said at the same moment. ‘That one's a chemist's.'

There was parking at the roadside for half a dozen cars. Nick waited for the traffic to ease and backed into the only empty space.

‘Bother,' Millie said. ‘I thought we were going back to that shopping mall.'

Suzie was swiftly out of the car. ‘I'll only be five minutes.'

Nick turned round to Millie. ‘We'll take you into town again after the hospital. Promise. Here, I think you're due for some extra holiday money.'

He slipped a note from his wallet and passed it back to her.

‘Thanks, Dad! You're a star!'

‘You and Mum can go off and do girl stuff, while Tom and I have a coffee and talk about football.'

‘But, Dad, you don't really like football.'

‘No, but it's what blokes do. Talk about footie as though it really matters.'

‘Men!'

Nick looked at his watch. ‘I hope there's not a queue at the chemist's. We need to get back. Thelma wouldn't have it when I told her we'd stay out to lunch. And she only gets an hour off work. We mustn't be late.'

He peered out at the row of shops. This was different from the shopping precinct, with its brand names and chain stores. The shops here were individual. They looked as if they were locally owned. There was a newsagent, Asian by the look of it. A butcher with fresh meat laid out in the window, not plastic-wrapped. A bakery with home-made cakes. His eye travelled along the row to the chemist's shop where Suzie had disappeared.

For a moment, there was a catch in his breath. It was a small shop, but its window display caught him with an unexpected familiarity. There were glass shelves arrayed with flasks and phials in striking colours of blue, yellow and green. It was like the sort of chemist's shop so old that he had no personal memory of it. Yet it was printed on his imagination as the iconic picture of how such shops once looked.

Was this how James Bootle, medical botanist, would have displayed his homemade wares?

He stared at the coloured flasks. They were only there for decoration. Today, the shop was selling modern medicines, baby goods, cosmetics, perfumes. But there was still something about it that fitted an older pattern.

He got out and walked towards it. After a moment, Millie joined him. He turned to smile at her.

‘I didn't find what I was looking for in the shopping mall where Market Street used to be. James Bootle's herbalist shop. Not that there was ever a chance it would still be there. But I wonder if it looked a bit like this.'

‘Is this what that Geoffrey bloke next to Thelma did, before he lost his job?'

‘No. He was an industrial chemist. He'd be working in a factory, probably turning out tons of the stuff, whatever it was. The sort of thing they take round the country in tanker-loads. Seriously scary stuff, to a non-scientific sort like me, if you don't handle it right. Pollutants, inflammables, that sort of thing.'

He couldn't identify the pulse of fear that quivered deep inside him as he spoke these words.

‘Still, I guess they had something in common, James Bootle, the weaver turned herbalist, and our out-of-work chemist. Only when James was put out of job by the cotton mills, he didn't just sit around feeling sorry for himself and quoting vengeful bits of the Bible at people. He reinvented himself and set up a shop like this.'

‘Is that what you think Geoffrey Banks should have done?'

‘I don't know. It's hard to make money when everybody around you is out of work too.'

He watched an Asian women in a long coat and headscarf coming out of the shop. His mind flew back to that first encounter in Canal Street, and the woman in tears. Her terrified eyes when he caught her next day. A frightening recall of the two men beating him up.

What had happened to her? He felt a sharp regret when he remembered how his curiosity about the house in Hugh Street might have cost her her job.

But he had been right to report it, he argued with himself. Hadn't he? What was happening there now? Were the police still keeping it under surveillance? Had Inspector Heap been right to dismiss it as no more than a breach of employment and factory laws? It must surely be linked to the phone calls.

And those two men who had chased him into Tennyson Street. Had they really just been members of her community protecting her? Or did they play a darker role in this? Was that why an inspector had visited Thelma's house to warn him off?

He was suddenly conscious of the mobile in his jacket pocket. No call today. No text message. Had the caller given up?

He did not know whether he was relieved, or whether it made him more on edge.

He turned away from the window, with its brightly coloured flasks.

There was a scatter of people on the other side of the road. Most were walking up or down the hill. Many had their heads bent, as though the familiar grey street held nothing of interest. There were no shops over there. Nothing to stop for.

Just one figure stood on the pavement with his arms crossed over the handlebars of his bicycle. The slight figure of a teenager in a grey hooded top. He was staring across at the chemist's shop.

Nick felt himself go still. Don't be ridiculous, he told himself. Half the teenage boys in town wear a hoodie like that.

All the same, he saw the cyclist weaving his erratic way down the hill from Briershaw, denying Nick the chance to overtake until he reached that fateful bend. And then that moment of shock after the car hit the wall. Watching the cyclist suddenly fill his windscreen as he pedalled past. The thin face turning to stare at him from under that hood.

Just as that hooded figure was staring at him now.

His foot had left the kerb, hardly stopping to notice the traffic speeding downhill, when Suzie's bright voice arrested him.

‘That's that done. And it's only ten to one. We'll still make it before Thelma gets home.'

When he swung round, he was startled to see the bruise that was turning blue-black on the side of her temple.

‘Are you sure you're all right?'

‘Yes,' she smiled at him. ‘I bruise easily. It probably looks worse than it is.'

He looked from her face back to the crumpled wing of the car. Suzie had been sitting on that side. Another foot and . . .

Nick shot a look of anger at the youth on the other side of the street. He was still leaning on his bicycle. He might have been watching the Fewings. He might have been lost in a world of his own. There was no way Nick could tell whether it was the same teenager on a bike ten miles away.

‘Come on, Nick,' Suzie chivvied him. ‘Wakey, wakey.'

He climbed back into the car, found a place to turn, and drove back up the hill to High Bank.

Nick was at the front door, tapping his car keys impatiently against his thigh. Thelma had hurried back to work. It was five past two. Suzie was getting into the front passenger seat. Only Millie was missing.

He sighed. Over lunch she had still been looking sulky about the hospital visit. But it was important that she be there. She was the fourth generation from Uncle Martin, his great-great-niece. He had never had grandchildren of his own. Now there was just Millie to carry on the family. And Tom.

Nick's blood quickened with pleasure. By now, Tom must already be on the train bringing him from his university town for the weekend. It was a month since he had left home. Nick remembered his son passing through the barrier at the station. Turning to wave one last time. The laughter in his blue eyes. Tom had never been away from them this long before. How much would the experience have changed him?

It would fall to Tom now, not Millie, to carry on the family name. In a few years' time, he would be marrying and having children of his own. Nick pulled himself up short. In these days, he might be having children, but not marrying. Maybe, after all, it might be Millie's children who carried on the Fewings name . . .

He cut this alarming thought off short.

‘Millie!' he shouted up the stairs.

No answer.

‘Millie! We have to leave now . . . What is she doing?' he said crossly to Suzie, through the open car door. ‘She went upstairs before you did. Surely she must be ready by now?'

‘It's her age. Probably having a bad hair day.' Suzie slammed her door.

Nick waited for a few more moments, then strode upstairs. He rapped on the bedroom door.