The Armada Boy (18 page)

'I think you clicked there, Wes.'

'Not my type, sir. Too pushy."

'Very wise. Beware of journalists offering
drinks. I wonder if she did it on purpose.'

'What?'

'Called herself Sally Johnson ...
same name as the missing woman. I wonder if this was all planned.'

'It's a common name.'

' It was just a thought. Good way of
getting a bit of inside information,
 
though
... get one step ahead of the opposition.'

'It didn't work, though, did it?'

'Only 'cause I've got no manners.
Get on to the Daily Bugle tomorrow. Ask them if they've got a Sally Johnson
down here covering the arts festival.'

'And if they haven't?'

'We just remind her that wasting
police time's an offence and give her the press release like everyone else.'

'That doesn't give much away, sir.'

'Precisely. Fancy a pint?'

It was 9.30 the next morning when
Gerry Heffernan entered the double-glazed portals of the Clearview Hotel. He
had been disappointed the previous evening when Wesley had insisted on sticking
to a single half-pint and getting back home early; now he saw the wisdom of his
sergeant's strategy. He told himself he should have taken note of the sermon he
had sat through the previous Sunday and considered the needs of others: just
because he had to return to a cold, empty house, he had to understand that Wesley's
circumstances were different.

They had rung the Daily Bugle
offices and checked out Sally Johnson: she was who she said she was - arts
correspondent down to cover the annual arts festival at Neston. Wesley was
relieved that he wouldn't have to seek her out and interview her: he had
found her unsettling, though he would never have mentioned this to Pam.

Now they came in search of another
unsettling woman. They asked for Mrs Openheim and Mr Weringer at the reception
desk, and Dorothy Slater, ever efficient, sent a young girl who was sitting at
a computer behind the desk up to their rooms. The girl left her post, a bored
look on her face. Mrs Slater explained that she was there on work experience.
She obviously wasn't finding the experience to her liking - not even a murder
investigation evolving around her could lift the blanket of tedium.

The girl returned after a few minutes
and announced that there had been no answer when she had knocked on their
doors. She resumed her seat behind the computer, resigned to another day of mind-numbing
boredom. Mrs Slater handed Wesley two keys.

'You might as well go up and check.'

'Very public-spirited of her,'
commented Wesley as they climbed the stairs.

'She doesn't want any of her staff
walking in on a couple of corpses, more likely. Didn't you notice she looked
nervous?'

'Not really, sir. She always looks
like that.'

'As if her knickers are too tight,
you mean?'

Wesley smiled. 'Something like
that.'

The work experience girl had been
correct in her deductions. The rooms were empty. Heffernan undertook a swift
search of Todd Weringer's belongings.

'Should we be doing this, sir?'

'Doing what, Wes? I'm just being
nosy. I'm a nosy person.' He flicked through the diary that he found in the
inside pocket of Weringer's jacket. 'Let's see ... what does it say about
Sunday night?'

'What do you expect it to say, sir?
Murdering N.O. 10 pm ... old chapel?'

'You're right as usual, Wes ... nothing.
Still, I'll be interested to see how Mr Weringer explains himself. He's lied to
us. Colonel Sharpe saw him leaving the hotel with the grieving widow. I don't like
it when people lie to us.'

'It's an occupational hazard, sir.'

'Not if we're talking to innocent
people with nothing to hide it isn't.'

Wesley couldn't argue with that.
They went back down to reception.

'Seen anything of that nephew of
yours, Mrs Slater?' asked Heffernan in a voice the whole hotel could have
heard.

She shook her head.' I don't want to
either. Mother's not been well since the weekend so she's stayed indoors. If
she'd been out to the village she might have met him, then heaven knows what might
have happened.'

'What would have happened? Wouldn't
she have told him to sling his hook as well?'

'Oh no, Inspector, she's got a soft
spot for him. He ran away from home when he was sixteen and turned up here. She
wanted to let him stay but I insisted that he went back. If Mother had her way
he'd get his feet well and truly under the table ... and he'd take her for
every penny she's got.'

'I've heard his friends have moved
on to Morbay. Would he join them, do you think, or would he go back to London?'

'I couldn't say. Inspector. As long
as he's far away from here, I don't care what he does."

Wesley and Heffernan left the hotel:
there was nothing to stay for. They would come back later to talk to Todd and
Dorinda. The Americans were strangers in a strange country ... they wouldn't have
ventured far.

They were nearing the carpark when
they heard running foot-steps behind them. They turned to see the work
experience girl, her face uncharacteristically animated, the bored expression
gone: when there was interest in her eyes she looked quite pretty.

'Excuse me.' She was breathless from
running. 'I heard you were looking for Mrs Slater's nephew ... that beggar. I
saw him yesterday.'

'Where?'

'He was hanging around the hotel a
few days ago with his mates. He always made remarks to me as I came into work
so I recognised him. He was running towards the trees at the back of the hotel
... over there.' She indicated with a sweep of her arm.

'What time was this?'

'When I left work ... five, it'd
be.'

'Did he see you?'

'Oh no ... he was in a hurry."

'Alone?'

'Oh yes.'

'Do you know Mrs Slater's mother?'

I've seen her around.'

'And you don't know if this nephew
of Mrs Slater's managed to see his grandmother?'

The girl shrugged. 'I don't know.
Shouldn't think so.'

'Thank you .. .er...'

'Melanie... Melanie Cookson.'

'Thanks, Melanie. You've been a
great help.'

Melanie smiled shyly and ran off
back to the hotel like a startled deer.

'Well, at least we know he's still
about, sir.'

'Oh aye ... I don't think he'll be
going far if Granny's such a soft touch. Has Steve checked up on that
shoplifting yet? It's a long shot but it could take our friend Rat out of the
frame for the murder
 
if he was three
miles away without the benefit of the internal
combustion engine to whisk him to the scene of the crime.'

'We'll ask Steve when we get back
... if he hasn't been too busy dreaming about fast cars and loose women he
might have had time to have a butcher's at the reports for Sunday night.'

'Oh. Sergeant Peterson ... who
taught you to be so optimistic?'

Wesley's optimism was justified.
Steve had tracked down the report of shoplifting over at Maleton. The offender,
fitting Rat's description, had walked into the village store just before the
shopkeeper was closing up. The time had been about quarter to ten on
Sunday night.

'How far did you say Maleton was
from here?'

'Three miles, sir."

'And the shopkeeper's sure he had no
transport?'

' According to the statement, the
offender ran off. It was dark so he couldn't see where he went. He definitely
didn't hear a car engine.'

'Three miles in fifteen minutes...
unless he ran or walked at a cracking pace it'd be impossible without
transport. Next step is to show the shopkeeper Rat's photo and see if we can
get a positive ID. Ask around the local bus and taxi companies too ... find out
how he got to Maleton in the first place. He could have walked, I suppose.'

This gave Steve Carstairs more than
enough to be going on with. He sighed and winked at Trish Walton. She looked
away. Wesley was sorting through reports of sightings of Sally Johnson. They
were coming in from all over: Scotland, Wales, every conceivable comer of the British
Isles including Northern Ireland. He ignored most of them: cranks, the
well-meaning - they all had to get their two-pennyworth in when it came to a
missing person. Wesley had a strange suspicion that Sally Johnson was to be
found not far away ... if she was still alive. Devon was all she knew, after
all. He looked up from his reports to find Rachel standing there. He noticed
that dark shadows had formed beneath
her eyes. She looked as if she hadn't slept for several nights.

"You all right, Rachel? You
look tired.'

She perched on the edge of his desk,
showing an expanse of shapely leg. Wesley averted his eyes.

'I'm okay, thanks. It's just...'

'Just what?

'It doesn't matter.'

Wesley wasn't going to push it. She
would talk about it in her own good time if she wanted to.

Rachel resolved not to let her personal
life affect her work. 'I thought it'd be a good time to go and see Carole
Martin ...Norman Openheim's daughter. That okay with you? Shall I take a PC
or...'

'No. I'll come with you. I'd be
interested to meet her.'

'Yeah ... all that high romance. The result's probably plain, overweight and
wears a beige cardigan.'

Wesley laughed. But Rachel's
prediction would prove to be correct. They parked outside the whitewashed
council house in the middle of the estate on the outskirts of Tradmouth. The
net curtains at the window were respectably white and the front
garden was neat but not the work of a keen gardener. Carole Martin answered the
front door: plain, overweight and draped in an old beige cardigan. Her hair,
mousy brown peppered with grey, was swept back in an untidy ponytail. Her face,
before it had acquired its double chin, would once have been quite pretty.
But Carole Martin had let herself go many years back. She had inherited her
tendency for weight gain from her biological father and had done nothing to
struggle against nature.

Wesley introduced himself and
Rachel. Carole showed them into the living room nervously and asked them to sit
down.

'It's about my real dad, isn't it?'
Her voice was high-pitched and didn't match her appearance. 'My mum said he'd
been killed. She was really upset.'

'I'm very sorry about your father,'
said Rachel genuinely. 'It must be very upsetting for you . .. even though you
never met him.'

'That makes it worse, really ...
that I'd never met him. He'd not got any other children, my mum said. It would
have been nice for him to see me before he .. .'

'Yes ... yes, it would.' Wesley
spoke quietly. 'As Constable Tracey said, we're very sorry. Now we're trying to
find out who killed him.'

Carole nodded earnestly. 'Oh yes ...
you must. I'll help in any way I can. But I can't really tell you anything. I
never met him, see.'