Chill Factor (34 page)

She bowed her head and put her other hand on mine.
After a few moments she looked up and said: “That’s really lovely of you, Charles. Dad had told me that, too, but…”

“What?” I interjected. “He told you to come to me if you were short of money? Wait ’till I see him…”

She squeezed my fingers, saying: “No, silly, he told me to go to him first, not Mum.”

We sat smiling at each other in the dark, our fingers
intertwined
. After a while Sophie asked: “Is it true you saved Dad’s life?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“He told Mum you did. She said he won’t talk about it but that’s why you are such good friends.”

“I hope we’re good friends because we get on well together,” I replied. “We’ve had a few adventures, like all policemen, that’s all.”

“She said it was a long time ago, when you were both PCs.”

“Oh, I remember,” I declared. “Yes, it was when we were both PCs. We were at Leeds Town Hall Magistrates’ Court, and your dad had to go in the witness box to give evidence. Someone pinned a note on his back that said:
I am a plonker
. Everybody would have seen it when he went to the box, so I told him about it. He said: ‘Thanks, Charlie, you saved my life.’ That must be what he means.”

Sophie squeezed my fingers. “I don’t believe you,” she giggled.

“Well it’s true.”

“Charles…”

“Mmm?”

“I…I love you.”

It was a tiny, hesitant voice, but the words were
unmistakable
, what we all long to hear: I love you. What do you say: “Don’t be silly” or “You’ll get over it”? I never
subscribed
to the views that babies don’t feel pain, or that the emotions of the young are less valid than those of their parents. Love at eighteen is probably as glorious – or as
agonising – as it gets.

“Yes, I know,” I replied, softly, aware that I hadn’t used the words myself for a long time, not sure how they would sound. “And I love you.” There, it was easy, once you took the plunge. The pressure of her fingers increased. “I loved you when you were a baby,” I explained, but it was not what she wanted to hear and her grip loosened. “And when you were a moody teenager.”

“I was never a moody teenager,” she protested.

“No, you weren’t. You’ve never been anything less than delightful. And I love you now, as a beautiful young woman. Love changes, and it’s a different sort of love.” She was squeezing my fingers again.

“But,” I went on, “this is as far as it can go. You realise that, don’t you?”

She looked at me and nodded. We held each other’s gaze for a few moments until, as if by some secret signal, we both moved forward and our lips met.

We pressed them together, held them there, and then parted. I disengaged my fingers from hers and sat back. Her mouth had stayed closed, no tongue sliding out like a viper from under a stone to insinuate its way into my mouth and check out my fillings. She was still her daddy’s little girl. “That was nice,” I whispered.

“Mmm.” She agreed.

“Remember what I said.”

“Yes.” She reached for the door handle, then turned,
saying
: “I think Annabelle is a fool.” From the pavement she added: “And I hate her,” and reinforced her words by
slamming
the door so hard that the pressure wave popped both my ears. Why do women do that? I watched her into the house and drove home. I don’t know why, but there was more joy in my heart than I’d felt in a long time.

Somerset Bob rang me Friday morning and I told him what I wanted. He was pleased and eager to be on the case and
suggested I come down the A420, M4, and A350, but not the A361. I began to worry that we’d spend most of Saturday discussing the merits of the motorway versus those of A-roads, in which case I’d have to remind him of why I was there, but he was just being helpful and I needn’t have worried. He invited me to stay the night with himself and his wife if we had a long day and I couldn’t face the journey home, which was thoughtful of him.

I pulled everything that might be useful from the Silkstone file and made copies for Somerset. I was
extricating
details of his early life in Heckley from the photocopier chute when Annette joined me, holding a letter she wanted duplicating.

“What’s all that?” she asked.

“Stuff about Silkstone, for Somerset,” I replied. “I’m going down there tomorrow to look at their files.”

“There looks to be a lot.”

“There is.”

“Why didn’t you ask? I could have done it for you.”

“Because: a, you were busy; and b, you’re a detective, not a clerical assistant.”

“Sorry,” she replied. “Put it down to a hundred thousand years of conditioning.”

“Pull the other one,” I responded, lifting the original off the bed and gesturing for her to put her document on it.

“Thanks, I only want one copy.” I pressed the button for her. “Are you driving down?” she asked.

“’Fraid so. Early start, about six o’clock.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

The light tube moved across and back again, and I lifted the lid. “Why?” I asked. “Aren’t you going to York?”

“No. He’s taking the girls to see their grandma. It’s her birthday, and I’m not invited.”

“Damn!” I cursed. “I wish I’d known. I’ve arranged to stay the night at Bob – the DC’s – house. It would have been a good day out, and you could have shared the driving.”

“Tell him there’s been a change of plans.”

I thought about it. “How were you going to spend the day?” I asked.

“Shopping in Leeds, and a hair-do,” she replied.

“Harvey Nick’s? House of Fraser?” I suggested.

“That’s right.”

“Treat yourself?”

“You bet!”

“Made an appointment for the hair-do?”

“Yes. What’s all this leading to?”

“No,” I said. “Thanks for the offer, Annette, but you have your day out in town. You’ve probably been looking forward to it, and you deserve it.”

“I don’t mind cancelling,” she offered.

“No, but there is one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t let him cut too much off. I like it how it is.” She blushed, so I followed up with: “And as it’s an early start for me in the morning I won’t feel like cooking tonight, so I might pop out for a meal somewhere. Some company would be nice.”

She tipped her head on one side and gave a little
tight-lipped
smile. “Would I do, Mr Priest?” she asked.

“You’ll do just fine, Miss Brown,” I replied.

I decided to splash out, demonstrate that I know how to treat a girl. Annette protested, said it was her turn, offered to at least split the bill, but I asked her to indulge me. I laid it on a bit thick, said I felt like a treat, something more
special
than our usual curry or Chinese. I drove us into Lancashire, to a place near Oldfield that Jeff Caton had
discovered
, run by a French-Persian couple and attracting rave reviews.

We started with kebabs and I followed them with lamb done in goat’s milk and smothered in a spicy sauce. Annette had chicken in a fruity sauce with lots of chutneys, which I
helped her with. We washed it down with a full-bodied Bordeaux. The proper stuff, all the way from France. The reviews, we agreed, were well deserved.

“Phew!” Annette exclaimed, dabbing her lips with her napkin. “That was good.”

I finished my coffee. It came in tiny cups and was strong enough to drive a nuclear reactor. They didn’t throw the grounds into the waste bin; they sent them to Sellafield for re-processing. A waiter appeared with the coffee jug but I held my hand over the cup and shook my head. “Any more of that and I’ll be awake all night,” I said.

“And you’ve an early start in the morning,” Annette reminded me.

“Six o’clock,” I groaned. “As much as I’d like to take you for a night on the town, it had better be some other time.” I paid the bill, which went a long way towards compensating the proprietor for the oil wells he lost when the Shah was deposed, and we left.

It was raining and dark, but I decided to take the scenic route back, over the tops rather than the motorway. I pushed the heater control over to maximum and pressed the Classic FM button on the radio. Rodrigues, excellent. I’d thought about pre-loading the cassette with a romantic tape, but it had felt corny, even for me. And what could be more
romantic
than Rodrigues? Annette wriggled in the passenger seat, making herself comfortable, and hummed along with Narciso Yepes.

A sudden flurry of sleet had me switching the wipers to maximum, but it only lasted a few seconds. “Where does Grandma live?” I asked.

“Scarborough,” she replied.

“And does she know about you?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“So why aren’t you going with them?”

“Because they’re staying overnight, and there isn’t room for me.”

“I see.”

More sleet splotched on to the windscreen, blobs of shadow that slithered upwards until the wipers swept them to the sides, where they clung to each other for security. “Brrr!” Annette exclaimed. “It looks a bit bleak out there.”

“Ah, but…” I argued, raising a finger to emphasise the point I was about to make, “we’re not out there.”

“Do you think…” she began, then stopped herself.

“Do I think what?”

“Do you think he is, out there?”

“Who?”

“Chilcott. Chiller.”

I hadn’t forgotten him, just pretended to myself that he’d gone away. “Somewhere, I suppose,” I replied. “Probably where it’s a little warmer than this, if he’s any sense.”

“Have you heard anything about him, since he escaped?”

“No, not a word since the Calais sighting. When we interviewed Silkstone we made it clear that they’d conned him out of his money. That’s probably what happened. Shooting me was never on the agenda.”

“I don’t believe you,” she stated.

“Well I’ll be off it now, that’s for sure. All he’ll want to do is survive. If the look on Silkstone’s face was anything to go by he’d been paid in full, and there’s no honour among thieves. None at all.” Apart from the odd fool like Vince Halliwell, I thought, doing ten years for someone whose name he “couldn’t remember.” Except that a hit man who ran off with the money without delivering the goods would very soon be an ex-hit man, but I kept that to myself.

I changed gear for the hairpin bend at the end of the reservoir and let the car drift over to the wrong side of the road. We were the only people up there, and it was easy to imagine, after just a few minutes, that we were completely alone in the world, snug in our private cocoon of warmth and music. Now it was Samuel Barber,
Adagio for Strings
. Someone was making it easy for me.

I slowed and turned off the road. A length of it, right on the top, has been straightened, but the old road is still there, used as a picnic place for day trippers from both counties, risking ambush by the old enemy.

“Don’t panic,” I said as we came to a halt. “I bring all my female friends here to admire the view.” Usually it’s the sky, ragingly beautiful as the sun sinks somewhere beyond the Irish Sea; or the lights of the conurbation, spread out below in a glowing blanket. Tonight it was a streak of paler sky marking the horizon, with indigo clouds bleeding down into it. Ah well, I thought, at least I got the music right. As I killed the lights I noticed the time. Twenty-two hours
earlier
I’d parked up with young Sophie sitting next to me. This was beginning to be a habit.

“I’m not panicking,” Annette said, turning towards me.

“I just thought we should talk more,” I began. “It would have been really nice to have had you along, tomorrow.”

“We could have had a cream tea in the Cotswolds,” Annette suggested.

“Or Bath buns in Bath,” I added. The music paused, hanging there like an eagle over the edge of a precipice, held by the wind. It’s moment, near the end of the adagio, when the silence grips you, forbidding even your breath to move. We sat quietly until the end of the piece, when I pressed the off button. Nothing could follow that.

“What will you do?” I asked, breaking the silence.

After a moment she said: “He wants to marry me.”

The rain on the windows had completely obscured the view and a gust of wind rocked the car. Who’d believe we were just into October? “Do you want to marry him?” I asked.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Will you leave the police?”

“Yes. If I go back to teaching we’d all have the same
holidays
. It would be an ideal situation.”

“You tried teaching, once.”

“I was twenty-two. I’ve learned a lot since then.”

“Like karate,” I said. “How to disarm an attacker, or use a firearm.”

She didn’t reply. I said: “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be trying to dissuade you.”

“What would you do, Charlie,” she asked, steering me away from the private stuff, “if you weren’t a policeman?”

“Same as you, I suppose,” I replied. “I was heading for a career in teaching. Physical education and art. Non-
academic
, looked down upon by all the others in the staff room, with their degrees in geography and…home economics. The police saved me from that.”

“What would you really like to do? If you could do
anything
in the world, what would it be?”

“Cor, I dunno,” I protested, my brain galloping through all the fantasies, searching for a respectable one.

“There must be something.”

“Yeah, I think there is.”

“What? Go on, tell me.”

“Swimming pool maintenance,” I announced.

“Swimming pool maintenance!” she laughed.

“That’s right. In Hollywood. I’d have a van – a big macho pickup – with
Charlie
’
s Pool Maintenance
painted on the side, and I’d fix all the stars’ pools.” I liked the sound of this and decided to embroider it. “When I’d finished checking the chlorine levels, cleaning the filters or whatever,” I continued, “the lady of the house would come out with iced lemonades on a tray, and she’d say: ‘Have you fixed it, Charlie?’ and I’d reply: ‘No problem, Ma’am.’ ‘What was the trouble?’ she’d ask, and I’d say: ‘Oh, nothing much, only your HRT patch stuck in the filter again.’”