Small Town Christmas (Some Very English Murders Book 6) (2 page)

Everyone began to cheer and
clap and grin like children.
Surely even the hardest of hearts would be able
to smile at this scene?
As soon as she thought that, Penny began to look
around to spot the miserable man from earlier.

There he was: Clive, and he
seemed to be in a confrontation with another man. Penny nudged Drew, and they
crept a little closer.

“Do you know who Clive is
arguing with?” Penny whispered.

“Not a clue,” Drew said. “I
know I’m local but I don’t know
everyone
in this town. I think I might
have seen him around, but not regularly.”

“Huh.”

Penny and Drew weren’t the
only ones watching the show. Clive was haranguing the younger man, who was
half-turned away and quite red in the face. The other man was giving all the
signals that he did not want to be involved. He was clutching a bottle of beer
to his chest.

“…your responsibilities?”
Clive shouted, jabbing his fingers towards the younger man.

The younger man muttered
something. His face was very angry, and his hand was trembling.

“Speak up!” Clive said.
“You’re not in a meeting now. You’re free to say what you like. But you still
can’t face me, is that it? It’s all behind my back. But I’m not your manager
any more. So what do you want to say to me, eh? To my face?”

This time Penny did hear
what the other man muttered. He said, “Some people get promoted way beyond
their competence.”

Clive heard it too. “Some people
should never have been promoted at all, isn’t that right, Haydn? Tell us about
that, why don’t you!”

The man now named as Haydn
spun around to face Clive, but two men came up either side of him and took his
arms, urging him to back down. “Come on, Haydn, mate, step away.”

Penny thought that although
Haydn was making the right sort of threatening face, he seemed very willing to
be led away from the fight.

Clive, however, was
deflated. He shook his fist and threw a few more insults after the departing trio.

“Sort that house out! I’m
telling you, I’ve already written to the council about it. Slum landlords like
you ruin the whole community! Or do you lie to the council like you lied at
work?”

Haydn whirled around but his
two friends-cum-minders were ready for him. They grabbed him and hauled him
away into the crowd, which parted to receive him and closed after them.

Clive threw his head back in
triumph, shot one more filthy look up at the Christmas lights, and half-smiled.

Everyone around him looked
away. No one wanted to be his next target.

“Come on,” Drew said, his
arm around Penny’s shoulders once more. “There’s trouble in the air tonight.”

“I hope so,” she said,
daringly cheeky, and he laughed.

He walked her home, and they
chattered about inconsequential things, but her mind was picking away at the
curious characters she’d encountered that evening. Linda was a pain, but she
was a familiar pain, an inevitable bitter presence at the Christmas planning
meetings. Clive and Haydn had some history between them, though, and she
wondered what it was all about.

The following day was a Saturday. Penny woke at a
surprisingly reasonable hour, especially considering that she and Drew had
stayed up late, watching films and talking about their respective pasts. He had
left just after midnight, and she had fallen into a deep and happy sleep.

So she was remarkably refreshed when she bounded into the
kitchen, surprising her lazy Rottweiler, Kali. The dog looked up from her
basket under the table, but took her time about getting up, stretching, yawning
and scratching.

Penny busied herself with breakfast for Kali and herself,
and planned out her day. Kali was a rescue dog that Penny had taken on when she
moved to Lincolnshire, and she had entered Penny’s life with a disruptive set
of unpleasant behaviours such as extreme panic when she saw anything she wasn’t
sure of. Extreme panic, in many dogs, looks like aggression. So a Rottweiler
having the canine equivalent of a panic attack because a leaf blew across the
road was a severe problem in the first few months.

But Penny had been both lucky and stubborn. Lucky to meet
others who could help her, with advice and training and gadgets like a
headcollar. And stubborn enough to not give up on the crazy six-stone mess of
teeth and muscle and paranoia.

Now, Kali was a much more relaxed animal. She had made
doggy friends at the stray dogs’ home where Penny occasionally volunteered.
Kali knew that people who came to the door usually brought treats. She had
learned that she didn’t need to bark furiously when she saw other dogs, litter
or invisible gnomes, and she was well-known in the area for being a friendly
daft lump of a dog. She was always going to be cautious in new situations, but
she rarely entered full melt-down and Penny knew how to spot the early warning
signs.

So Penny decided that Kali could accompany her on her
morning’s tasks, even though the first job of the day involved walking around the
busy weekend streets of Upper Glenfield and putting up posters to advertise the
forthcoming Christmas market.

* * * *

Penny soon regretted her decision, but not for the reasons
she would have feared a few months previously.

No. Her task was made much lengthier because everyone
wanted to stop her and chat about her dog, or pet her dog, or – in a few, rare
cases – tell her that her dog was a “dangerous breed”.

“Not as dangerous as the owner,” was her stock reaction to
that nonsense, usually accompanied by her bared teeth even as Kali rolled over
to present her belly.

The morning was dragging on. Penny didn’t really mind
talking to people and catching up on the gossip, but she had a heap of posters
in her tote bag and she had promised the committee she would get them
distributed around neighbouring villages as well.

On top of that, she had some health and safety duties to
complete, in spite of her reassurances to Drew that it was a nominal role. She
did see it as mostly box-ticking, but it was necessary. She extracted herself
from a long, drawn-out conversation with Mary, an old friend from the craft
group, and made her way to the area at the far end of the open air market
place, where there were some service buildings and a cabin that had started out
as temporary about two decades ago, all for the use of the market traders.
Glenfield also had an indoor market, and the service buildings abutted the
larger brick-built market hall. Here, the Christmas Planning Committee had been
able to store some of the items that they were going to use for the festive
fair.

Penny had a key in her pocket. She needed to check that
everything had been put away after the lights switch-on the previous night. The
only things she was really worried about were the ladders and the long hooked poles.
The borough council had used their fancy mechanical lift for most of the
lights, but the planning committee had added to the main display with a few
hanging snowmen and the like, as a last-minute decision.

Halfway across the market place, she was waylaid once more,
and this time by a fair less welcome prospect than Mary.

“Hi, Linda. Sorry, I can’t stop…”

Such a blatant excuse meant nothing to Linda. She was
dressed for the cold weather in a bright green and lilac coat that had been
amazingly fashionable in the late 1980s. Teamed with her dark blue mascara, she
looked like an intimidating version of Penny’s old head teacher. Penny
suppressed the flashbacks with a shudder.

Linda said, “Now then, you’re in that walking club, aren’t
you?”

“Ed’s the one in charge. Do you know him?”

Linda waved a bony hand in the air. She had an oversized
ring on every finger. “Oh, that Montgomery man. He’s no use to me. No, it’s you
I need to talk to. You were somebody in London, weren’t you?”

“No, not really–”

“Yes, you were. So you know about how these things work,”
Linda went on, ignoring Penny’s denial. “That brute of a brother of mine is set
upon ruining everything! And you must help me to stop him.”

Penny stepped back and said, very firmly, “Wait. I have no
idea what you are talking about.”

In any other person, Penny’s tone would have brought them
up short.

But not Linda.

“The right of way across the field at the back of the
industrial estate! It runs through some land owned by the utility company. He
doesn’t even work for them any longer but he can’t stop meddling. I
know
it was him that stopped the company allowing the path to be opened up. He
insists on thwarting me! He has always been against me. Always!”

It clicked. The repetition of works, the strident bullying
tone, the tall stature and the sandy hair.

“Is your brother Clive Holdsworth?”

Linda stared at Penny as if she had asked if the sky was
above them. “Yes, of course he is. Everyone knows that. So you must get the
ramblers to come behind my campaign. I need people to write letters. I need to
light a fire under the local Member of Parliament, but he’s so old and daft it
would take a bomb not a fire. I won’t bomb him. Don’t worry. But I will
organise a protest. You’ll need to make placards. I am sure you can cope. It
won’t need your …
photography
skills
.
But do ask Jared if you get
stuck on anything.”

“Is he involved?”

“He will be,” Linda declared, and it seemed to ignite a new
impetus in her. She spun around and strode off without saying another word.

Penny glared after the woman. Even Kali seemed unsettled.
She was standing up, her tail raised like a warning flag, and Penny noticed
that she was staring with a hard-looking eye.

“Come on, you,” she said. “It’s okay. Just some
power-hungry busy-body. Let’s get home and give you a good brushing.”

Kali glanced up but she was not happy. The dog could feel
the undercurrents of dislike that ran between the two women.

She trotted alongside Penny as they headed for home, but
she kept an ear cocked behind in the direction of the enemy.

* * * *

Penny was just spreading some butter on a slice of bread
when her phone buzzed with an incoming text.

“Fancy pub lunch?” it said. It was from Drew.

There were a handful of pubs around Upper Glenfield, but
the only one that did food was the posh gastro-pub on the south side. It served
elaborate and trendy meals, often on slates or wooden boards rather than real
plates. It was very upmarket in that way.

Penny looked at the unappealing slab of white bread. The
butter was quite hard and had torn holes in the slice. She texted back, “Yes,
great!”

“Meet me at The Green Man.”

That confused her. The Green Man was the town-centre local
pub, right at the bottom of her street.

It took her less than ten minutes to get her outdoor gear
on, leave Kali with a puzzle toy stuffed with peanut butter, and reach the pub.
Unlike the gastro-pub, The Green Man was definitely “a local pub for local
people”, with small windows, a dark interior, old wooden tables with wobbly
legs, and a limited range of drinks. The smell was one of old men and stale
beer.

Drew was sitting on a tall stool at the bar, and he grinned
and waved at her as she peered in tentatively.

“Come on in and take a look at the menu!”

The girl behind the bar passed them both a sheet of paper.
It was been printed on a home printer, and had already accumulated some stains,
which thankfully covered some of the spelling errors. “We’ve just started doing
bar snacks,” the bar maid explained. “If there’s anything you want that you
can’t see, just ask us and we’ll try to do it. Our guy in the kitchen is really
keen.”

Penny was pleasantly surprised when the food arrived. It
was plain and basic, but very hearty and the plate was generously loaded. She
had opted for sandwiches, which arrived with a colourful salad and some salted
crisps, and Drew was delighted by his enormous ploughman’s platter. Even
better, it was a third of the price of the gastro-pub, and didn’t arrive on a
bathroom tile or some other silly novelty.

“So, what’s new?” Drew asked, and they fell into a happy
conversation. Food, warmth and good company – what was better on a cold winter
day? The convivial atmosphere made Penny relaxed and content.

But it soon became evident that not everyone was experience
peace and goodwill to all men.

At the far end of the bar counter, someone was arguing with
another man. The bar maid kept glancing their way, and eventually she went into
a back room to bring her manager out. He was an imposing man who spent all his
free time swinging weights around. He and his muscles went over to have a word,
and the raised voices gradually lowered.

“Can you see who it is that’s arguing?” Penny whispered to
Drew.

He leaned back. “I’m not sure. I’m going to the gent’s,
anyway, so I’ll take a peek as I go past.”

Drew got up and left. Penny shifted in her seat, trying to
see who was the cause of the rumpus, and unfortunately timed it completely
wrong, because the man who had been shouting was suddenly looking her way, and
their eyes met.

It was the man called Haydn, from the night before.

He was dressed in a shirt that had once been white, and
crumpled jeans. Some jeans didn’t look like they needed ironing; but these did.
He eyeballed Penny, and as he came over to her, she could smell the rank
alcohol on his breath. His flushed face told her he’d been drinking for a
while. She did not want to speak with him. She didn’t even know him. But eye
contact was an invitation to conversation, unfortunately.