Murder... Now and Then (12 page)

Her arms were bare; the tiny fair hairs rose visibly at the thought and Lloyd laughed at her.

‘I spy a little streak of superstition running through all that good common sense,' he said.

‘Don't be silly,' she said, sitting on the floor beside the coffee table. ‘Anyway – if you could see him and he couldn't see you, doesn't that make you the ghost?'

Lloyd thought about that, ‘ Maybe it was a premonition,' he said. ‘I could see him at some future time. That's why he couldn't see me.'

Judy felt distinctly uncomfortable. ‘A premonition of what?' she asked, trying to sound dismissive, and failing.

Lloyd grinned. ‘Unnatural death,' he whispered dramatically, leaning down towards her. ‘What else? His face looked different … I looked away. It's obvious, Watson. Violent death had altered his features …'

‘Lloyd, if you don't stop this right now, I'll …'

‘But you don't believe in all that do you?' he laughed. ‘Second sight and premonitions. Telepathy. You're supposed to be giving me a nice rational explanation of it all.'

He held out his hand, and she joined him on the sofa, reluctantly permitting him to give her a cuddle.

‘I don't trust you,' she complained. ‘ I never know when you're serious.' Her eye fell on the newspaper that he had left abandoned on the sofa. She automatically picked it up to fold it, getting up to put it where he theoretically kept his newspapers. That was when she saw the date.

She folded the paper a second time. ‘ You rotten sod!' she said, setting about him with it.

‘What?' he laughed, arms up to protect himself. ‘What have I done?'

‘You know perfectly well what you've done!' She gave him a final smack, and thrust the paper into his hands. ‘April the first,' she said. ‘Very funny.' She sat on the floor again.

Lloyd smiled at her. ‘It's not an April Fool,' he said. ‘I really did see him.' Then the smile disappeared again, and when he spoke, it was no longer in the teasing tones he'd been using to try to scare her. It was in a voice that sent a genuine shiver up Judy's spine. ‘He was a long way away,' he said slowly. ‘But I could see him quite clearly.'

Judy swallowed. She didn't want to hear this. She didn't want to know.

He frowned, concentrating, like a mind-reader at a seaside show. ‘I was close. Really close. But
he
wasn't. He was a long way away. I
know
he was.'

‘Don't Lloyd!'

He snapped out of his reverie, and grinned. ‘I never realized I could
scare
the pants off you,' he said. ‘ Or I'd have done it years ago.' He Leant down, his face close to hers, his voice low and creepy and very, very Welsh. ‘Perhaps you're right,' he said. ‘Perhaps I
am
a ghost. There are a lot of ghosts in Wales, you know. Mining disasters always have ghosts.' His eyes widened as he reached out to her. ‘Perhaps I'm the Phantom of the Pithead, come to have his evil way—'

‘Stop it,' she said pushing him away, and scrambling to her feet. ‘Or I'm going home.'

He didn't stop it, but she didn't go home.

Bannister went a yard or so down the unlit ramp up from the underground car park, and pulled himself on to the wall that was only a foot high on the ramp side and six feet high on the other, dropping down, crouching low as he ran towards the offices while the camera's back was turned. The building was in darkness save for a light at the top, which was the penthouse flat, he presumed.

The flat lights were on some sort of time switch, Annabel had said so that it looked as though it was occupied, since it was empty for so much of the time. He didn't imagine that that was true; perhaps the whole thing had been a pack of lies. But he didn't think it had been; she had wanted him to get into the flat. She wanted to embarrass Holyoak; he wanted a little more than that out of it. He was taking a risk, but it was worth it.

There was a security camera on the main entrance and exit, and a swivel camera on the roof of the office block. But the sweep of the rooftop camera didn't take in the exit from the underground staff car park; by entering there, and keeping an eye on the high camera, it was possible, Annabel had said, to reach the office block without being picked up on the video. Once there, clinging to the wall kept you out of range. He was there; he assumed that the lack of activity meant that he had indeed arrived there undetected.

Bannister looked round and picked up a half-brick left by the recent construction, swinging it hard against one of the windows, twice. It didn't break the glass, it didn't bring security, and it set off no alarm. She had said it wouldn't but he had had to be sure; he didn't trust her, even if she was mad at Holyoak, and drinking faster than a sailor on shore-leave. A successful breaking of the toughened glass would set off an alarm in security, but as long as he didn't break in he would be all right. She had said he wouldn't have to break in, and so far, things had been how she said they would be; he was beginning to feel more confidence in her.

In the darkness, he could hear the radio that was keeping the security men company; he kept an eye on the security office, the only other light, as he slipped round the corner of the building, and found the metal ladder that ran up the back, with access to a balcony with a fire door.

Silently up the ladder, in his trainers, stepping down on to the balcony. The fire door was open; Annabel had said it would be. That was what had made him doubt her story about the lights; if there was some sort of security system on the flat itself, an open door would trigger it once the system was set, and if the system wasn't set then Holyoak was in residence.

Warily, he moved the blind to one side, and slipped into the kitchen. The door was closed; no light showed underneath, and he turned the handle slowly, opening it to find a sitting room, lit only by the light spilling from the half-open door directly opposite.

A jacket lay across the sofa, an expensive wallet sticking out of the inside pocket. Bannister smiled, and pulled it out, extracting the wad of notes, and letting the wallet fall to the floor. All the doors off the main room were shut except the one opposite; he moved silently across the carpet towards the light. From somewhere behind him he could hear a low, rhythmic sound which he recognized, and couldn't quite pin down, and which stopped as he looked round the door, into the room.

But everything stopped as he looked into the room. His brain, his muscles, his heart seemed to stop; he couldn't hear, or move, or think. He could only see, until the unplaced but somehow comforting noise began again, its very familiarity returning his other senses to him and allowing him to move again.

Zelda looked even more dramatic and flamboyant than usual in her funeral outfit; she was being comforted by her son and Gerry and Jimmy's parents, so Charles didn't feel the need to go to her.

It had been a shock, even to Charles, though he had advised Jimmy on more than one occasion to modify his lifestyle. He never had, of course. He had smoked cigarettes and drunk beer and eaten pie and chips while working a ten-hour day at the factory, and then taken work home with him. All the same, he hadn't reached forty; if his lack of exercise and dodgy diet and overwork had been going to kill him, Charles would have expected it to have had the decency to wait a decade or two.

And even when he had had the heart attack, Charles had expected him to make it. But he had had another in hospital, and try as they had, they hadn't been able to save him.

Zelda was shattered; she had hidden her reaction under a veneer of life-goes-on toughness, but that hadn't fooled anyone, and had crumbled away when Tim arrived home from boarding school. Charles had been there, trying to make Zelda take something to help her sleep, when he had come in. The wordless reunion with her son had touched something, and the unnatural control had snapped.

Tim, never that close to his workaholic father, had taken over in a way that had belied his fifteen years, and had reported to Charles that his mother had cried herself to sleep, and had slept for twelve hours. It was Tim who had made the funeral arrangements, Tim who had seen to the business of death.

Spring had merged into a wet early summer; it had rained non-stop throughout the burial service. Charles was glad that he didn't have to comfort Zelda; it was hard to know what to say. You weren't supposed to be burying your husband when you were thirty-five; that was something in the future, something you'd have to do when you were old, and you had had your life together.

Jimmy hadn't had his life at all. And he had had such plans for the business, which was already employing more people than any other single employer in Stansfield apart from Mitchell Engineering, and had weathered inflation and recession without a single redundancy so far. He had been clever, and resourceful, and he had known when the time was right to do everything. So how could he have lost his sense of timing so badly? How? Thirty-nine years old, and a heart attack killed him. Old men survived heart attacks. New-born babies survived heart attacks. Jimmy had been fit, and strong … such warnings as Charles had given him had been of the ‘those things will kill you' type. Even Charles himself hadn't taken them all that seriously.

Charles looked again at Zelda, at the grief, and he knew he had let her down. He had let Jimmy down. He hadn't seen it coming; he couldn't let himself off the hook by saying that he had. And in amongst the shock and the grief, there was real worry about the business; Zelda had only ever been involved in the personnel side, the pastoral care of their employees. She couldn't make the sort of financial deals that Jimmy had made; she didn't understand that side of it.

Two ideas came to Charles, as he stood by Jimmy Driver's grave. Not in a sudden flash of inspiration; his own sense of … loss was too great for that. All he felt as the coffin was lowered was that he had lost a friend; a lively, vital man who had altered his corner of the world by his presence.

But until then, Charles had seen himself as a healer of the sick. It was in that moment that he saw that that was wrong; so many of life's ills were preventable that in a strong, civilized, rich country there was no excuse for young men's healthy hearts becoming diseased. His half-hearted attempts to alter Jimmy's suicidal regime would be whole-hearted from now on. He was there to keep men well, not to help bury them. Gerry joined him, and they walked away. He turned to say a last silent farewell, and seek Jimmy's forgiveness.

Zelda was on her own by the graveside as everyone melted away to stand by the rain-soaked cars, waiting for her. To do what? To start her life on her own? To carry on the business? Jimmy's mother and father stood together, closer to the grave than the others, but still a respectful distance away. They had never liked Zelda much; she was too flashy, too dramatic for their taste. Jimmy had loved her, and had provided for her; Zelda wouldn't be in financial need, whatever she chose to do.

But she had employees. Employees who depended on her for their livelihoods, and Zelda wasn't going to sell out; she had told Charles that. She needed help that Tim was too young to give, and that the firm's accountant was probably too old to give. He was coming up to retirement, and he didn't understand the new technology that was revolutionizing not only the security systems field in which they operated, but the running of the business itself. Zelda needed someone who could take over the financial side, someone who could take on suppliers and customers, someone who understood money, and today's business world. Someone she could trust not to cheat her.

And perhaps Charles knew just the man.

Max watched Catherine covertly as she picked up the calendar, and tore off the previous month. It was June, already; where did the time go? She had been with him seven months; in some ways it seemed like she had been there for ever. She had picked up the office work quickly, and she had gone religiously to the typing classes. She made him coffee in the morning, and tea in the afternoon. His correspondence went out on time, balance sheets and profit and loss accounts got filed away, the office looked immaculate.

But it wasn't working, and if Max hadn't noticed before, he was being forced to now. Because in another way, it seemed as if she had come into his life just yesterday. He kept waiting for the novelty to wear off, for his awareness of her to become dulled, for the pleasure he felt at just seeing her there to become simply an acceptance of her presence.

He had no illusions about himself; he had had brief affairs with several of the girls who had worked for him, and several more who hadn't. They had been meaningless, at any rate to him. He needed variety, that was all. And he had always been attractive to women, though he couldn't honestly say why. He didn't work at it much; it was just the case. Some men might have settled for just one, but he had found himself unable to do that. And he knew only too well that this was, however diverting and enjoyable, a major flaw in his character.

It had occurred to him, at Charles's wedding, that if he couldn't bring himself to employ a spinster of sixty, he could bring himself to employ a kid. Which was how he had thought of Catherine, then. A kid, in whom he had no interest. It was what she had been. Shy, young even for her sixteen years. But he had looked forward to that Monday morning like a child anticipating a birthday treat, and that feeling had never left him. She was always in the office before him; every day, his heart would give a little skip as he opened the door, just in case she wasn't there.

She smiled at him as she caught him looking at her, and sat down at her desk. He looked away, and read Charles's letter again, more for something to do than because he wanted to read it again.

Zelda Driver, a friend of Charles and Geraldine's, had lost her husband earlier in the year, and needed someone to advise her on the financial side. Her chief accountant had been doing the job, but he was due to retire early next year. Perhaps Max might be interested.