The Overlooker (11 page)

She slid her legs into the passenger seat. Nick started the ignition and put the car into gear. As he checked over his shoulder before reversing out he saw the blue Honda pause, as though to let Nick out first. He had a glimpse of the driver. Male. Round-faced. Black hair slicked down. There was no one else in the car.

A burst of anger shot through Nick. He was not going to drive out in front of the Honda and endure that feeling of being followed again. He waited.

There were several seconds hesitation. Then the Honda drove past. He watched it turn towards the exit gates.

On a sudden impulse he slammed the car into gear again and shot after it.

He raced along the avenue of cars, praying he would not be too late to see where the blue car went. He dodged around cars already starting to back out.

‘Nick!' Suzie exclaimed. ‘What's the hurry?'

‘If he's going to crash the car, I suppose a hospital car park is the best place to do it.' Millie commented from behind them.

‘I want to see where he goes. Who he is,' Nick muttered through gritted teeth.

When they reached the main road, the blue car was already heading down the hill.

Nick turned that way, ignoring the blasts of horns as he shot into the fast-moving traffic.

‘Nick! You cannot be serious! Just because it's the same make of car as the one at Belldale. It'll be some perfectly innocent citizen on his way home.'

‘Would somebody mind telling me what this is all about?' came a voice from the back seat.

Suzie turned round. ‘Your father's got some mad idea that somebody's been following us.'

‘Great! Like we're some sort of celebrity? Can we expect the paparazzi outside Thelma's house next?'

Nick swallowed down the guilt that told him he should have explained the situation to Millie. How long could he protect her from the frightening facts?

Nevertheless, he swept past the entrance to the shopping mall in the centre of the town, and the signs pointing to car parks. Some way in front of him he could still see the small blue car heading into the housing estates on the opposite side.

Suzie was tense beside him. He suspected she disapproved of what he was doing. A saner part of himself told him she was probably right. But she was not going to argue in front of Millie.

And Nick was not going to lose this chance of following his pursuer to his base and finding his identity.

Did the driver know that he was the one now being followed?

The car disappeared round the corner of a road in a modern estate. Nick slowed. Was it a ruse? Would the driver lurk there until he had driven past, and then slip out to follow him again?

Cautiously he paused at the turning. There was no blue car in sight.

It was Millie who leaned forward and pointed. ‘Up there, Dad. At the top of the drive, third house on the right.'

N
ick eased the car around the corner and stopped.

‘Stay here,' he ordered.

‘Nick! What do you think you're going to do?' Suzie exclaimed. ‘Just because some perfectly ordinary guy happens to drive a blue Honda, you can't go storming up his garden path and bawl him out.'

‘I've had enough.' Nick's face felt stiff, though his limbs were unaccountably trembling. He felt fury that someone had cast him in the role of victim. He wanted to be in charge of events.

He strode up the sloping drive. There was a child's scooter propped against the wall beside the open garage. The offending car was parked outside.

Nick pressed hard on the doorbell.

The door opened more abruptly than he had expected. A thin, sharp-boned woman stood in front of him. A pink cardigan hung loosely from her shoulders. Her face looked angry.

‘It's his day off,' she snapped. ‘Can't he have a single afternoon with his family? First he gets called out to the hospital, only it seems the woman's not at death's door after all. Then some nutter from the university comes barging round again. Now you . . .' Her tone changed. ‘Unless someone really has died?'

An expression of consternation was beginning to replace her indignation. Her face was colouring. She wrapped her cardigan round her thin body. ‘I'm sorry. It's awful to talk like that. But you've no idea what it's like being a Baptist minister. People just
use
him. All the time. Sucking the energy out of him. Like he doesn't need a private life like ordinary people.'

Nick found himself staring at her. His jaw had dropped. He recognized this woman. She was part of the family of four who had followed the Fewings round the exhibition of spinning and fulling at Belldale Mill. Sure enough, through the open back door he could glimpse the boy and girl playing on the lawn.

‘It's all right, Bethan.'

The door into the sitting room had opened. The same round-faced man with the slicked down hair came out into the hall. He looked Nick up and down with a puzzled smile.

‘I'm sorry. Do I know you? I've usually got a good memory for faces, but I don't think I've seen you in the congregation. How can I help you?'

‘Harry! I've explained that this is supposed to be your day off. And you've got Dominic again.'

‘Ah, yes. Dominic.' The minister's voice dropped low. He gave a weary smile and looked back over his shoulder at the sitting room.'

Past his broad shoulder Nick could see a bespectacled young man on the sofa. He was sitting tensely upright, glaring at them.

The minister held out his hand to Nick. ‘Harry Redfern?' There was a hint of enquiry in the introduction.

Nick tried to hold on to his anger. It was what had driven him here.

‘Nick Fewings. But you know that, don't you? You've been following me.'

He tried to match the minister's rather deep sonorous voice with the threatening tone of that brief phone call. ‘Was it you who rang me to warn me off? Did you send that text message?'

‘Shall I ring the police?' He heard the anxious whisper from Harry Redfern's wife beside him. She was quietly backing off towards the kitchen.

‘No, love. I'll handle it.' The Reverend Redfern turned a tired smile on Nick. ‘I'm sorry, Mr Fewings. There seems to have been a misunderstanding. Whoever's being making nuisance phone calls to you, I can assure you it wasn't me. I've enough problems in my line of work to cope with, without creating new ones. And I'm afraid you're a complete stranger to me . . .' He stiffened suddenly. His round brown eyes creased. ‘Hang on a moment. I
have
seen you before. Got it! This morning. Weren't you at Belldale Mill? Wonderful place. The kids loved it. As I remember, you had a lass of your own.'

Nick's certainty was flooding out of him, leaving only embarrassment. But at the mention of Millie he checked. Could this be a coded warning? In spite of all his protestations of innocence could this portly Baptist minister really be the man behind whatever gang was operating in Hugh Street? It seemed impossible to imagine, but it would be a great disguise.

But he looked around the modest semi-detached house, the clutter of toys in the hall, the untidy garden, the harassed look of Redfern's wife. There was no evidence here of the proceeds of crime.

He felt himself colouring. ‘I'm sorry. I think I must have made a mistake. I'd had this threatening phone call. I think it's about something I reported to the police. And then I saw your car . . .'

‘And you thought I was following you because we'd had the same idea of visiting Belldale Mill.'

‘And then I saw you at the hospital.'

‘Yes. Mrs Beasley. One of my flock. Fortunately not as near death's door as she thought she was.' He looked keenly at Nick with what might be professional sympathy. ‘Nothing wrong, I hope.'

‘My great-uncle. Martin Fewings. He had a stroke two days ago. We went to visit him, but he's taken a turn for the worse.'

‘Martin? I'm very sorry to hear that. Stoneyham Methodist. We've worked together on a few committees, Martin and I. A grand old-stager. I must look in next time I do my hospital rounds.'

‘Harry!' Mrs Redfern's voice was low but scolding.

‘Sorry, love.' He turned to Nick. ‘Excuse me if I don't invite you in. I've got someone else with me.' He smiled wearily at his wife. ‘I'll get rid of him as soon as I can, but the lad needs to talk.'

‘And you need a rest day.'

Harry Redfern shrugged. He went back into the sitting room. In the doorway he turned his head. ‘I hope you've reported those phone calls to the police. I've had my share of them. They can give you a nasty turn, even the ones that are just talk.'

‘Yes, I've told them,' Nick said dully. ‘They weren't taking it as seriously as I'd like.'

‘So you thought you'd take matters into your own hands. Go carefully.'

Nick glimpsed Dominic, the minister's other, younger visitor. He was on his feet and glaring at this intruder before he reclaimed Harry Redfern's attention.

Nick walked down the steeply sloping drive with the consciousness that he had made a fool of himself. The Reverend Harry Redfern had been courteous and even sympathetic. But Nick was appalled that he had let his obsession with those phone calls lead him into such paranoia. Mrs Redfern might not have been playing the role of the smiling minister's wife, but her indignation had been justified.

A figure shot past him. A small boy on a scooter who checked himself with a spinning turn on the pavement outside the gate.

‘Ben!' his mother's exasperated cry came from behind them.

Nick grinned at the boy as he reached the gate. ‘She's right, you know. You never know what might come speeding along the road.'

‘I can handle it,' said the boy loftily.

Nick climbed into the driver's seat. Suzie turned to him with a belligerent air.

‘Well?'

‘You were right,' he sighed. ‘He's a Baptist minister. Harry Redfern. He's a mate of Uncle Martin's. Yes, he was following us to Belldale Mill, but only because he was taking his kids there. You remember that family that were with us when the guide was explaining about the fulling mill?'

‘All those piss pots.' Millie added.

‘Apparently it's his day off. I suppose he works all Sunday.'

‘And it's half term,' Suzie said. ‘A perfectly normal thing for a family to do. Like us.'

‘He had a call to the hospital. That's why he was there. One of his congregation. I told him about Uncle Martin. He's going to look in and see him.'

‘So. A man of God. A pillar of the community. And you go and accuse him of being a criminal mastermind.'

‘But why?' Millie asked. ‘Why did you think someone was following you? Is it because you went to the police?'

Nick exchanged glances with Suzie. ‘Something like that. Sorry, kid. I seem to be getting paranoid.'

‘You've been watching too many cop shows on the telly, Dad.'

He eased the car out on to the road and found a place to turn. Once more he had let the opportunity slip by to explain to Millie just what reason he had to fear for her.

N
ick drove back towards town. He hardly noticed where he was going. His thoughts were filled with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. He sensed from the way Suzie was looking at him that she thought he had made a fool of himself. The worst thing was that he knew he had. He felt the heat creep up his neck as he realized he had stormed up the garden path of a perfectly innocent Baptist minister on his day off. He had accused him of making abusive phone calls, then tailing the Fewings down the dale with his whole family in tow.

He tried to argue back that
someone
had made those calls. Someone had threatened Nick and his family. The police seemed to have lost interest, or to have downgraded the threat. Surely it was left to Nick now to safeguard Millie and Suzie? He had tried to do that. It was not his fault that it had gone so humiliatingly wrong.

Suddenly he thumped the steering wheel.

‘Of course!'

He turned the wheel sharply and shot left into a side street.

‘What now?' Suzie snapped.

‘Look at the clock! It was just about the same time yesterday that we met that woman. She was collecting her child from nursery school. What do you bet she's doing the same today?'

‘So?'

‘If anyone can tell us what's going on in Hugh Street, it's
her
. Why didn't I think of it?'

‘You don't think that the same idea might just have occurred to the police?'

‘But they've never met her. They might go up and ask that group of mums, but they wouldn't be able to tell the woman we met from Madonna.'

‘I rather think her clothes might give them a clue.'

‘We're the only ones who've seen her face to face.'

He was threading the unfamiliar side streets, hoping against hope that his sense of direction was right and they were heading for Canal Street.

‘Dad!' Millie groaned from the back seat. ‘You
said
we could find a café.'

‘All in good time. This shouldn't take long.'

‘Leave it,' Suzie said. ‘We've poked in our noses enough. It didn't help her last time, did it?'

‘Something very wrong is going on there. I don't know what it is, but I don't think Inspector Heap is right. I shan't rest easy until I get to the bottom of it.'

At the end of the street he could see heavier traffic passing up and down the hill. He paused at the corner. His eyes swept up the road towards the school and down to the bridge.

‘There!' It was Suzie who spotted her first. She was walking up the pavement towards them.

Despite his show of confidence, Nick might not have recognized her on his own. Today she wore a navy-blue coat, with a blue-and-white scarf draped over her hair. But as he peered through his window he was almost sure Suzie was right.