Presumed Dead (24 page)

Dylan stopped his car outside Verdun House and wondered what lay ahead.

He’d almost come straight to Holly’s from the ferry, but sanity had prevailed and he’d checked into a hotel. After a quick meal, he’d phoned Frank Willoughby to update him, then crawled into his bed. He’d been asleep within seconds of his head touching the pillow.

Now he had to talk to her, and he wasn’t sure how she would take it. She insisted she was prepared for bad news, and Dylan had told her often enough that he could give her nothing
but
bad news, but reality was always different.

She had the door open before he’d even switched off the engine. Knowing her, she would have been waiting at the window for hours.

He got out of his car and walked to the door.

“I’ve got the coffee on ready for you.” She gave him a quick kiss.

“Ah. Thanks.”

She asked about his journey and complained about the wet, windy weather as she took him inside and put his coffee in front of him. For all that, he could see that she was fit to burst with impatience.

“You said you had news for me,” she said at last.

“Possibly.” Dylan made himself as comfortable as he could on the hard wooden stool in her kitchen. “And it’s not good news, I’m afraid.”

She nodded. White knuckles protruded from the overlong sleeves of the red sweater she was wearing. Her shoes were olive green and the heels were like six-inch nails.

“As I’ve told you, your mother was drugged the night she went missing. However, Stevie Greenwood saw her get into a taxi bound for Morty’s. Several other people have confirmed that she was there. Everyone has agreed that she was happy that night. Overexcited. The DJ, Sean Ellis, confirmed it. As did the bouncer, Colin Bates. It was Bates who told me that she’d been talking about buying you a horse.”

“A horse?”

“Yes.” Dylan took a sip of coffee but it was too hot for comfort. “Of course, everyone laughed at her and put it down to the amount she’d been drinking. Now, the last person to see her that night was Matthew Jackson.”

“And?”

“As you know, I’ve been to France to speak to him a couple of times. Bev, my wife, even went out on his boat with him to see what she could find out. Jackson owned a garage in Dawson’s Clough and, shortly after your mother vanished, he sold it. According to the present owner, he sold it cheap for a quick sale. Jackson’s story is that he made a good, healthy profit on it and has since been investing the proceeds wisely.”

“So he’s lying?”

“Yes.” There was no doubt about that. What’s more, Dylan could easily prove it. “When Bev tried to discover where his money had come from, she pretended to have a lot of her own. She also suggested that it had come from, well, let’s say a less-than-honest source. Jackson suggested she tell people she’d had a lottery win.”

Another sip of coffee. Holly was quite still, as if she was too enthralled to move.

“I saw Stevie again and he confirmed my opinion of Jackson. I don’t like the man, and Stevie doesn’t either. To my mind, Stevie’s a good judge of character. Not that it has anything to do with it.”

“Dylan, what are you saying exactly?”

“I’m getting to it. I was thinking of Jackson’s sudden wealth and your mother talking about buying horses, and I began to wonder. I drove back to my flat and sorted through that pile of stuff you gave me, remember? There were a couple of old lottery tickets there that your mum—or you—hadn’t thrown out. Your mum used the same numbers on both. Birthdays probably, something like that. Anyway, if she’d chosen those numbers on the night she vanished—and, obviously, I can’t say if she did or not—but if she
had
used those numbers, she would have been worth two and a half million pounds.”

All colour left Holly’s face. A naturally pale girl, she usually had two spots of rose on her cheeks, but now she was ashen.

“Oh, my God.” Her words came out as a whisper.

He gave her a few moments to recover before continuing.

“According to your mum’s friend Maggie, Matthew Jackson was the man your mother loved. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I believe she liked him. I think she would have trusted him. I think she told him she’d won the lottery.”

“Jesus!”

“Quite. So yesterday, I went back to France to confront him.”

“He denied everything?” she asked.

“Of course. But he was rattled enough to warn me that I’d never prove anything.”

“Tell me about him.” She wrapped her arms around herself, her gaze on the floor. “What’s he like? Married? Where does he live exactly?” The questions came like bullets from a gun. “What did you say his boat was called? Does he have children?”

“Whoa! One at a time.”

“Sorry.”

He should have known there would be a lot of questions. Right from the start, Holly had demanded the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. She had paid, both emotionally and financially, for the truth. She deserved it.

“Okay. Jackson came to Dawson’s Clough with his parents and joined your mum’s school. He’s clever and good looking, and your mum and him went out together for a while. Then I gather he turned his back on her and married Julie. I don’t think your mum got over him. I believe she loved him.”

“I see.”

“He and Julie had two boys, and he was doing quite well for himself. He was a mechanic and took out a bank loan to start up his own business. He sold it, at much less than its true value, just after your mother vanished, and then moved to France.”

She nodded, taking in every word.

“Not long after moving to France, he met Juliet and married her. They’ve since divorced and, now, he’s married to Francois.”

“He’s been married
three
times?”

“Yes. As I told you, he lives a couple of kilometres from St-Vaast-La-Hougue where he moors his boat, the
Lucky Man.
”

“
Lucky Man!
” she scoffed.

She went to the sink and poured herself a tall glass of water which she drank straight down.

Dylan concentrated on his coffee, guessing she needed a couple of minutes for the news to sink in. It was impossible to tell how she was feeling, as all emotions were tightly in check. Dylan was glad of that—he didn’t cope well with hysterical, weeping females.

She swung round to face him. “And you’re not going to be able to prove any of this?”

“I don’t know. A friend of mine, an ex-copper, is handing it over to the police. We’ll see what they can do.”

“Why him? Why not you?”

“Frank has more friends on the force. He’s much further up the food chain, too. They’ll listen to him.”

“Right.” She paced the square metre that was her kitchen floor. “So that’s it then? It’s all over?”

“We need to see what the force can find out. They’ll be able to check where that two and a half million pounds ended up.”

“I see.”

“I’m sorry, Holly. Really, really sorry. I wish it could be better news.”

Her expression softened. “Dylan, I wanted to know what had happened to her. And now I know she was killed for money. Killed by an old school friend, too. Someone she trusted.”

“I have no evidence, but, yes, I think so.”

Perhaps she was one of those who liked to shed her tears in private. She was certainly doing a good job of smiling through it all.

“I’ll let you know as soon as I hear something,” Dylan said.

“Thanks. And you’ll send me your final bill? Or would you like me to pay you now?”

“Let’s leave it until this is over, okay?”

“Okay.”

Dylan left soon afterward, and she was still behaving as if he’d called in to borrow a cup of sugar. Perhaps he’d been wrong about her. Perhaps she’d known all along that something terrible had happened to her mother on that November night back in 1997.

All the same, it was with a heavy heart that Dylan drove away.

“Another pint?”

“Why not? Thanks, Frank.”

Dylan was in the first really decent pub he’d seen since coming to Lancashire. Right on the edge of town, and almost hidden by surrounding houses, the Queen Victoria was easy to miss, and that would have been a pity as it had everything Dylan wanted from a pub—good beer, quick, friendly service, and no TVs or music blaring out. It was warm, clean and comfortable. In short, it was one of those pubs that made you reluctant to leave.

“Of course, it could be that you’ve got this all wrong.” Frank put their pints on the table and sat down again. “There are a lot of coincidences, granted, but there’s no hard evidence.”

“Jackson’s as guilty as hell. I’m sure of it. He as good as admitted it.” Thinking back, and it was almost a week since Dylan had seen Matthew Jackson, he supposed that wasn’t strictly accurate. Jackson had merely told him in no uncertain terms that he wouldn’t be able to prove anything.

“We’ll just have to wait and see then,” Frank said.

Unfortunately, Dylan wasn’t a naturally patient man. He would give a lot to be back on the force now, to have all the facilities at his disposal to look deep into Jackson’s financial situation.

“They’ve got a lot on their plate at the moment,” Frank said, “but they’ve promised to treat it seriously.”

“They” was a slight exaggeration on Frank’s part. Frank had passed on all Dylan knew to D.I. Graham.

“What’s he like, this D.I. Graham?” Dylan asked.

“He’s good. One of us.” Frank took a sip of beer. “As honest as the day’s long. His only problem is that he does everything by the book.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No, but it means everything takes twice as long as it should.”

Frank wasn’t blessed with an abundance of patience, either.

“So what are your plans now?” Frank asked.

“I don’t know.” Dylan had only returned to Dawson’s Clough because he wanted to be on the spot if any evidence came to light. It was pointless, not to mention expensive, to stay, though. “I suppose I’ll go home, try and sort out my marriage, and carry on being an out-of-work bum.”

Frank smiled at that. “If any of this can be proved, mate, you’ll have more missing persons than you know what to do with.”

“It’s not really my cup of tea.”

“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong.”

Dylan frowned at him, not understanding.

“You’ve got a nose for this sort of thing, Dylan. And a stubborn streak. You won’t give up until you’ve unearthed the truth.”

Holly Champion had said something similar. That was why she’d employed him in the first place, because she’d believed he wouldn’t give up. “It’s not exactly exciting, though, is it?”

“Not until you get to know the person or persons involved, no.”

Dylan knew what he meant. The thought of looking into the disappearance of Anita Champion hadn’t appealed to him at all. In fact, if he’d been solvent, if Bev hadn’t thrown him out, and if his mother hadn’t moved in, he would have passed on it. It was only when he got a taste of Anita’s life that he became fully involved.

“It was Terry Armstrong’s involvement that intrigued me,” Dylan said, “and yet it looks as if he didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“So it seems. Mind, there’s a lot he
has
had something to do with. Murdering bastard!”

“Yeah.”

They supped their pints, lost in their own thoughts.

“I expect I’ll go home tomorrow,” Dylan said, reaching a decision. “There’s nothing I can do here.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep on at D.I. Graham. I’ll let you know the minute I hear anything.”

“Thanks.”

“And keep in touch, will you?”

“I will, Frank, yeah. You, too.”

As he walked back to his hotel for the last time, Dylan made a silent vow to keep that promise. He
would
keep in touch.

He would sort out his marriage, too. He wasn’t too blind to see that Bev was serious about it, but she’d come round, she always did. It had gone on long enough.

Surprisingly, he was going to miss Dawson’s Clough. He’d begun to feel at home in the old mill town where people weren’t afraid to speak to strangers. They laughed a lot, at each other and at themselves. They were blunt, speaking as they found, and Dylan liked that.

On that thought, he walked into the hotel and headed for the freezer that was his room. He wouldn’t be sorry to leave the hotel. In fact, he had no idea why he’d put up with it for so long.

Apart from the room temperature, he supposed he’d grown attached to the old place. The service, in the main, was efficient and friendly, the food was wonderful, and it was handy for the town centre. It was just the blasted temperature. They’d promised to look into it several times, but nothing had happened. Given that the radiator was always too hot to touch, Dylan supposed there was little they could do other than installing another couple of radiators and lowering the ceiling by two feet.

He was tired but, when he was lying in bed with extra blankets for warmth, he couldn’t sleep. His mind insisted on running through the last hours of Anita Champion’s life. Every scenario was played out in full, bright Technicolor.

What if he’d got it all wrong? What if the police found evidence of a winning bet Jackson had made? What if, after leaving Jackson that night, Anita had met up with someone else?

Eventually, he drifted into a restless, dream-filled sleep. What seemed like minutes later, his phone rang. According to his bedside clock, it was just after eight o’clock, which meant that he’d slept for a solid six hours.

“Morning, Dylan.”

“Frank?”

“I thought you might have left for London by now. Anyway, just thought you’d like to hear the latest. The boys in blue—the French ones—are going to question Jackson.”

“Yeah? Excellent.”

“That’s not all. Apparently, just before selling his home in the Clough, Jackson had a new patio laid.”

“Oh, Christ!”

“I know, I know. That’ll be coming up later. I didn’t get to speak to Graham, so I don’t know what evidence they have, but they must have something if they’re getting the spades out.”

Dylan could only assume they had delved into Jackson’s finances. Delved deep, too. Gone from one closed bank account to another.

“Let me know when you hear anything, Frank. I’m heading back home now. If I don’t hear from you—well, I’ll give you a ring tonight anyway.”

“Okay. Drive carefully. Speak later.”

Dylan dressed and went down to breakfast. Perhaps this meant he could stay in Dawson’s Clough another day. But what was the point? The matter was out of his hands now.

It was time to go home.