Flight Path: A Wright & Tran Novel (5 page)

“Oh yes dear,” said Daphne reaching for her cup and taking another sip of tea.

Kara waited but there was nothing more forthcoming. She considered pressing the point but then thought better of it. There were only two other pubs to check out and the walk would probably be pleasant.

“Daphne, we’ve got to go out, but you’ve been marvellous. Really marvellous. Thank you. Would it be okay for us to catch up again and hear more about the town?” Kara enthused.

“Of course dear, of course. It’s my pleasure.”

Kara nodded to Tien and Jacob to head for the door.

“Excuse me, dear,” Daphne called.

Kara turned, flanked by the others, “Yes Daphne?”

“You and your friends, you’re not journalists are you?”

“No, Daphne, we’re not. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, I just wondered dear,” Daphne said distractedly. Kara began to turn away but the old lady continued, in a much firmer voice, “it would have been normal for a fuckin’ journalist to lie to me. Treat me like some old fool. I can’t stand fuckin’ journalists. So if you were, you’d be finding somewhere else to sleep tonight.”

Kara knew her face had registered a look of disbelief at the old lady’s use of expletives.

“You look shocked dear, but I’ve run a pub less than a mile from a docks for the last half century. I can swear like a sailor if I need to. If you aren’t journalists, why do you want to know about Francis Amberley?” The Suffolk burr had fallen from her accent and she was pure East End now.

Kara walked slowly back to the bar. Daphne was standing straighter, her arms stretched out and her palms down on the counter top. She hadn’t grown in stature but her body language was so much less the frail old woman than it had been during the previous discussion. It was rare for Kara to be suckered-in by anyone, but this landlady had done it easily. She had let Kara see what she wanted to see and reeled her in. The one thing Kara knew for certain was that to lie to her again would be a singularly stupid thing to do.

“No Daphne, we’re not journalists. We’re private investigators, hired to look into the circumstances surrounding the death of Derek Swift. We just want to talk to Francis about what happened. That’s it.”

The old lady nodded slowly.

“Is anything that you told me true?” Kara asked.

“Yes, all of it. I just don’t like the press looking about the town. The way they muckrake is bad for business.”

“Is there anything to muckrake?”

“I don’t know about that necessarily, but the only thing Francis Amberley ever did to be of interest to passing strangers is to be on a boat when a man fell off it. A man who swindled a lot of money from some very sick children, so I can’t imagine any stories surrounding him would be positive.”

“Fair enough,” Kara said. “We’re just here to make sure that man really did fall off that boat.”

Daphne considered what Kara had said. She glanced over to Tien and Jacob. Then she looked up at the ship’s clock on the wall, “Well, if you leave now you’ll more than likely catch him at the Old Seafarer. I wasn’t lying when I said he drops into a pub for a drink on the way home. Though I’m not sure who told you he was part of a quiz team. Francis Amberley has never been on a team in his life. He takes part in the quiz at the Seafarers on his own. Always on his own. Wins more than he loses, or so I hear. Our quiz is for teams of four or more. Same with the one at the Angel. That’s why he doesn’t play our quizzes. But the Seafarer let him be on his own.”

“Thanks Daphne. I appreciate it.”

“Just one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“If you want to be discreet, I’d leave Tien outside.”

“Pardon?” Kara said, feeling the instant spike in her temper. If there was one thing certain to rile her it was someone discriminating against her friend.

“This is Suffolk, dear. Not London. And rural, coastal Suffolk at that. Take a good look around you as you walk down the street and count how many non-whites we have here. I’ve run this pub for a lot of years and I can tell you that a non-white person is going to attract attention. We’re not racist, but we will notice.”

Kara’s temper subsided as quickly as it had threatened to rise, “I owe you more thanks Daphne. You sure you’ve always been a landlady?”

“Since I was twenty-five dear. Before that I was a secretary, before that a schoolgirl and before that an evacuee from Hackney sent up here during the blitz. Came back here and ran this pub with my Terry, God rest him, after we got married. He’d been an evacuee here too. What made you ask that?”

“You have a particular skill for reading people and the situation surrounding them,” Kara smiled.

“You don’t run a pub and not acquire that dear, but off you go now or you’ll miss him.”

“Thanks Daphne. When we get back, you and Tien can catch up. She’s born and bred in Hackney.” Kara turned away but not before she caught the surprise on the old lady’s face.

Woodbridge, Suffolk.

Jacob and Kar
a
sat on either side of the Old Seafarer’s main bar. The exposed timber beams testified to the building’s Tudor heritage, and although it had been considerably expanded over the centuries, the main bar was still the original heart of the place. A long L-shaped counter looked like it was crafted from one of King Henry’s ships of the line. A solidity emanated from it that anchored the rest of the room. The left hand edge of the long leg of the bar disappeared whole into a bulbous deformity in the whitewashed wall. Halfway along that wall and midpoint down the length of the room, was a huge fireplace with a mantle six foot high. What looked like half a tree’s worth of logs nestled in a heap of brown and grey, orange and scarlet. Occasionally the random lick of a yellow flame cremated a small piece of unburnt bark to a wisp of ash. The smell of wood smoke and the gentle babble of voices gave the pub a homely, comforting feel.

Jacob sat at a corner table between the fireplace and the front wall of the building. His view commanded all of the bar area with its six small tables which could sit three or four people each and currently had nine patrons in total. To his right, the main entrance door, with its internal portico, was situated between two double bay windows. Opposite the fireplace and set back about five feet from the bar, was a long step that led down to a larger room filled, yet not crowded, with a further dozen or so small tables, a quarter of which were in use. Beyond this was a wall with a centrally mounted glass door that had ‘The Seafarer’s Fare’ etched into it and led through to a separate ten-table restaurant. Kara sat to the left of that door, diagonally across the room from Jacob. Between her top-right and his bottom-left location, they had eyes-on the whole of the space. Crucially, Kara had a direct line of sight to the entrance door, whilst Jacob could see anyone coming in from the restaurant. Apart from the one behind the bar, the only other door was just to Kara’s right and led to a corridor that in turn led to the toilets.

Tien was in the car, parked in the carpark, “Can you still hear me okay?”

Kara lifted her mobile phone to her ear, even though Tien’s voice was coming through the communications earpiece. It was less noticeable to be talking into a phone than talking into thin air.

“Yes Tien, I can hear you.”

“Is the fire nice?”

“It’s lovely. You should see it. All warm and inviting.”

“I really don’t like you at times.”

“How many coats have you got on?”

“Three.”

Kara supressed a giggle, “Aww. We’ll make it as quick as we can. I promise.”

“I’m sure I can sue you. Leaving me in a car in November is tantamount to leaving a baby in a hot car in the summer.”

Kara saw Jacob raise his hand to his mouth. Like he was scratching his chin. “I appreciate you taking this on Tien,” he said in a soft whisper. “Really, I do. Oh sorry, excuse me, I just need to take my jacket off, it’s soooo warm.”

“I hope you boil,” Tien said in her best imitation of a huffy child. “And as for you Kara, I-” she stopped and swapped from joking teammate to efficient operator. “Heads-up we have our target. He’s just crossing the road from the marina. Dark boots, jeans, heavy donkey-jacket. Picture we have of him is a relatively good likeness. He’s about five-five, medium build, slight paunch although that might just be his hands in his pockets. He’s hunched over slightly, but that might be the temperature out here. Rectangular face, long chin, slightly protruding ears, small forehead, thinning dark hair. He’s about ten feet from the front door. Copy?”

“Copy that,” Kara confirmed.

As the door of the pub swung open the patrons that faced it looked up momentarily. Recognising the figure coming in from the already dark evening, they ignored him and looked back down. Except Kara. She continued to watch the man as he went straight to the bar.

Francis Amberley unbuttoned his jacket and Kara could see Tien’s assessment had been correct. He had a paunch beginning to show under a cream, heavy-duty fisherman’s jumper. The slight stoop to the man’s stance apparently wasn’t due to the cold for he maintained it in the heat of the bar. He was bent at the waist to an angle of a few degrees. Kara thought it looked like a doll some child had bent forward and forgotten to straighten properly.

He didn’t appear to speak before the barman lifted a round-bodied pewter tankard from amongst a dozen or so different shaped and sized tankards that hung from hooks over the bar. After a couple of long pulls on the old-fashioned hand-pull of something called Woodforde’s Wherry, the tankard was set up in front of Amberley. He looked at it but didn’t touch it. Neither did he make small talk with the barman. He just reached into his jean’s pocket, retrieved a small pile of coins and stacked them carefully on the bar. Then he stood still, slightly bent forward, watching his beer. The barman was moving about behind the bar doing those odd things barmen did when no customers were present. Dusting or wiping surfaces that appeared to Kara to be clean enough, moving glasses and bottles forward fractions of an inch to straighten them when they weren’t crooked to begin with.

The entrance door opened and closed again and two young men, not more than early-twenties bustled in, hand in hand and making ‘Brrrr’ noises. The patrons once more looked up, but this time greeted the newcomers with broad smiles and the occasional nod, before returning to their own conversations.

The barman stopped doing his behind-the-bar-fidgeting and also greeted the men with a warm smile and a precise report of the weather conditions they’d just come from, “Hello Dylan, Rohan. It must be minus three out there and that wind’s doing nothing to make it feel warmer. Get in here and get the chill out of you. What can I get for you both?”

Amberley looked out from under hooded eyes, his head moving a fraction so he could see the two men approaching to his left-hand side. Kara saw the faintest sneer contort his lips. Reaching out for the tankard, he took a long drink, then moved away from the bar and headed for the bottom-right corner of the room. Between him and Kara were four empty tables.

Jacob raised his hand to obscure his mouth, “I can’t see him. He’s blocked by the small portico of the entrance door.”

Kara nodded the most subtle of acknowledgments.

Over the next ten minutes the main door opened and closed a number of times as the pub began to fill with a steady stream of customers. Most looked like workers on their way home and most appeared to know each other, at least by sight, as shared smiles and nods were exchanged, a greeting and sometimes the mimed offer of a drink. A point, an open hand tilting to the mouth and a nod of encouragement, normally met with a raised hand, a shake of the head, a mouthed, ‘No, I’m fine’ and another point to a half-full glass on a table. The little act ended with a mouthed, ‘Thanks anyway’ and the benevolent, would-be buyer continued their journey to the bar. It was a theatre and one that Kara warmed to, not just because of the fire. She loved to observe the interactions of people and could happily sit for hours watching unspoken language fill a room.

When Kara had come back from her final tour of Afghanistan she’d gone to stay with her parents in Somerset for almost a month. Most afternoons she had taken to dropping into the Royal Oak pub that was on the same street as her family home. She’d perch herself on the plush green velvet, deep-buttoned corner seat and quietly read a book, sipping tea. The sight of her, a single female reading in the pub, never turned a head nor garnered an unkind word. Occasionally she might be convinced to have a stronger option than tea, but the drink was of no consequence. It was the stability of sitting in a building that had been in the same spot for hundreds of years that she craved. The comfort of knowing most, if not all, the faces that came through the door was like a balm for her spirits, which were still rattled after she had come so close to dying.

Her family weren’t of ancient Crewkerne lineage. Her parents often joked that having moved there in 1975, the locals might stop referring to them as drop-ins in another thirty years, but in reality they were part and parcel of the community. Kara had been born and bred in the town so she knew most of the patrons of the Royal Oak by name, or at least by family connection. She would smile and chat without reservation, yet she was often left to her own space and company. During those afternoons she would spend more time observing the people than reading words on a page. The comfortable friendliness, the shared banter, the unspoken antagonism, the furtive glance, the flirtatious laugh. It enthralled her. It was true that she had been trained in observation, reading body language, eye mapping, neuro-linguistic programming and many other techniques to establish rapport and illicit information, but the simple act of sitting and watching people casually was a soothing pastime in its own right. But, by watching closely you could tell so much about the society that was forming, for every space was its own society.

What she knew now, sitting in this Suffolk pub, was that the society of the Old Seafarer was a society plus one. The space, at 17:30 on a Wednesday evening, wasn’t exactly full, yet there were enough people to generate a vibrant buzz of overlapping chatter and comfortable conversation. According to the ‘events’ board above the fireplace, there were no live football matches on tonight, no karaoke, no quiz, so it was unlikely to become packed. That meant people had a relatively free choice as to where they sat. In addition to her and Jacob, Kara counted another five single drinkers. Two were seated on high stools at the bar and chatted amiably to one another, the barman and many of those who came up to buy drinks. One was seated at a table next to a group of two older couples and appeared content to look at his smartphone, catching up on whatever social media platform held his attention. Another was at the table next to Jacob. She had sparked up a casual chat with him.

Kara was pleased to see Jacob could maintain a perfectly natural conversation and still remain alert to the security job he was there to do. It was one of the best covers to adopt. Just a guy, and Kara had to admit, Jacob was quite a good-looking guy, having a laugh with an attractive girl.

Kara was on her own, a hi-ball glass of lemonade on the table to her front and an open paperback in her hand. Not knowing anyone in the pub meant she wasn’t greeted like she would have been in the Royal Oak, but people still made eye contact with her when she looked up and would nod and smile in acknowledgement of her presence. Woodbridge was obviously welcoming to strangers.

That left Francis Amberley. The plus one to the bar’s society. Kara was shocked at how stark the exclusion was. Granted, he sat at a small circular table in the corner, his back to the majority of the bar, looking out of a window. Or actually looking at his reflection in the window, for the only feature visible through the glass was the fuzzy halo of a dim streetlight across the carpark. Yet other people also had their backs to the bar and they were talked to, interacted with. No one sat within two tables of Amberley. No one looked towards him, no one smiled at him, no one nodded, no one said hello. Kara had the definite feeling he wasn’t being snubbed by the rest of the pub’s clientele, but that they were acting in response to his attitude to them. She couldn’t be certain, but she was fairly sure it was Francis doing the excluding.

Holding her book so it looked like she was reading it, but in fact was reading Amberley, she watched him as he took slow drinks from the tankard. That too confused her. It was obvious this was his own tankard. Kara knew that many rural pubs would stock their regulars’ favourite drinking vessels. A fraternity thing, almost homely, so at some stage, somehow, at some time, Francis must have been on speaking terms with the bar staff at least. She considered aborting the task for the evening and spending more time on research, but in the end she dismissed it as an option. They knew as much as they were likely to find out about him and, from the looks of the bar, not many in Woodbridge would be able to add anything more. Closing her book, she lifted her glass and walked over to his table. She sat down in the chair adjacent to him before he had a chance to react.

“Good evening Mr Amberley,” she said and smiled.

He was halfway to reaching for his drink and his hand wavered in mid-air. He retracted it and set it on his lap whilst he looked out from under half-closed lids at her face. Tien’s description had been accurate, as had Daphne’s assessment. No good looks had been passed on from an attractive mother. Plain was the politically correct term, decidedly unattractive was Kara’s thought. He smelled of diesel and sea-salt. The hand that had wavered was that of a manual worker. Long hours of being outside and longer hours of fixing engines had ingrained a blackness into every fingerprint crease.

He leant back slightly in his chair and looked down at her feet. Kara was dressed in boots, black trousers, a white blouse and a wool wrap. Her padded and insulated jacket was back at her original seat. She watched as he slowly gazed the length of her. His eyes stopped at her breasts. He didn’t attempt to make it discrete. He stared at them, then raised his eyes to meet hers, then dropped his gaze back to her breasts.

Kara felt her skin crawl. She had to concentrate to restrain herself from shivering or from reaching across and smacking him with the glass she held in her hand. She couldn’t restrain her tongue, “My face is up here Mr Amberley. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to look at it?”