Rest Assured (3 page)

Elfrida was doing her very best to give class 3B a lively experience on this Monday afternoon, when the temperature was far too low for May and the clouds scudded low and threatening past the windows. Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's fourth wife, has gone down in history as ‘the mare of Flanders'. So she was no looker: Elfrida quelled lively discussion on that topic from the male section of the class. But how did it feel for a foreign lady who had only a few phrases of English to be deposited in an alien land as a mere marriage pawn in a political game she did not understand? What did Anne feel after her rejection by Henry and her consignment to affluent obscurity in this strange country? How would you feel if that happened to you?

Mrs Potts sternly diverted an attempted discussion on whether the ageing English monarch could ‘still get it up' and how much his new spouse's disappointing appearance might have contributed to that. She concentrated on the relative opulence in which Anne was allowed to live after her humiliations at court. She managed to draw from her class a good twenty minutes of lively exchanges and initiate some real learning. Without realizing it, her charges discovered a good deal of what life was like in sixteenth-century England for the various levels of society below the aristocracy.

At the end of the day, the teacher was left with a feeling of modest satisfaction. She knew by now that the teaching experience will rarely be perfect and that its successes will almost invariably have limitations. But now she had other, more personal concerns to occupy her. She told herself firmly that she was thirty-five, not nineteen, and that she should control the excitement she felt coursing through her veins.

That must be literally the case, because she felt her pulses racing as she sat in the staff room, crouching dutifully over some fifth-form essays and waiting for the rest of the staff to leave. She wondered again if her name would affect her relationship with him. Elfrida was bad enough, but she'd made it much worse when she'd married George Potts. It was all right for George, stuck away for weeks on the oil rigs. Your name was the least of your problems there. No doubt you lived for the money and the good times which came between the periods of intensive work.

But Potts made the Elfrida much worse. Elfrida Potts. It sounded like a name from a kids' comic. It would sit well alongside Desperate Dan and Dennis the Menace and Pansy Potter. Hopefully Wayne wouldn't be as conscious of her name as she was. Hopefully she'd set his hormones racing so fast that he wouldn't give a bugger about names. She was pretty sure hers were racing, along with her pulse. That must be a good start. But she needed privacy, if she was really to enjoy this. Go home to your wives and your loved ones, you teachers, for God's sake. And leave those of us with hormones to get on with it.

Mercifully, most of them took their work home with them rather than lingering over it in the staff room, as she had pretended to do. There were only two other cars in the staff car park when she put her case in the boot of the small blue Peugeot at quarter past five. They belonged to two older blokes who were running after-school clubs. The men wouldn't even see her leaving – and why should they be interested if they did? No need to become paranoid; that was a guaranteed method of drawing attention to yourself and your actions.

The lane which ran past the top of the corporation park. That's where they'd arranged to meet. Beside the third big tree past the gates, rather than at the gates themselves; he'd laughed at her when she'd stressed how important it was to be discreet about this. But she had a lot more to lose than he had. She hadn't said that to him, but she hoped he realized it.

She was scared that he wouldn't be there, that she'd have to wait and be conspicuous in her bright blue car. She'd always liked the colour until now. But tonight it seemed garish and far too noticeable in this quiet place. But he was there, bless him. Waiting for her, transferring his weight from one foot to the other and pretending to stare into the park on the other side of the big oak tree.

He was in the car almost before she had slid it to the kerb beside him. She glanced behind them, saw no one on this quiet road, and drew him swiftly to her. He kissed her more expertly than she had thought he would, his tongue hard and exploratory against her teeth, his hands caressing her shoulder blades and pressing her willing torso against his. She wanted the embrace to go on and on, but she pulled away from him after a long, exquisite moment. ‘That was good!' she said breathlessly, wondering if she could check for any observers without offending him.

He smiled and said, as if he couldn't believe this, ‘Mrs Potts!'

‘It's Freda here!'

She wanted to kiss him again, to feel the uneven, breathless intimacy of him. He'd cleaned his teeth for her. And his body was very excited. She ran her hand down the inside of his thigh, feeling the warmth of the flesh beneath the thin denim of his jeans. Then she grasped his erect and very excited member, exulting in the gasp she heard from him at the move. No need to worry about her name here. His hormones were rampant and she was in charge of them.

Hormones dictated everything, in a boy of sixteen.

It was late in the day before Bert Hook got the chance to speak with Lambert alone. ‘Did you put the Chief Constable right on things?'

‘On a few things. I told him DS Hook was a bloody nuisance. An egghead who refused to become a DI.'

‘Do I look like an egghead?'

The burly Hook held his arms wide in mute appeal. His features had the ruddy and weather-beaten hue of an outdoor man. His powerful physique had struck fear into the hearts of many a batsman as he had turned at the end of his pace-bowler's run. He looked like the archetypal village bobby, open to all, reliable as an oak in small matters, slow-moving and slow-thinking.

‘That's just it, Bert. You present yourself as a thicko and yet you're subtle as a fox underneath. Dangerous man for a CC – he might even see you as a mole in his organization, not a fox. It's only fair that I should warn him against men like you.'

‘Did he say that you should be pensioned off and digging your garden?'

‘Not in so many words. He gave me coffee in china cups, so I was naturally suspicious. But he seems to be prepared to let us proceed as we've done in the past. So long as we produce results.'

‘They all say that. It's like a nervous tic, with the top men. They have to say that to cover themselves. It's in case they want to bollock you and change the system, when they've got their feet securely under the table.'

‘There you go again, thinking for yourself, offering your opinions. I'm not sure the latest manual allows a DS to do that. It's just as well I told Gordon Armstrong all about you.'

‘And it's just as well that I know that a humble DS is far beneath the vision of a CC. He'll be much more worried about the super-sleuth in his cupboard.' Hook gave his chief a wide, bland smile, knowing just how much he hated the tabloid expression.

‘Have you anything of CID interest, Bert, or have you just come in here to annoy me?'

Hook's yeoman brow was suddenly furrowed. ‘Probably not. I expect you'll tell me to go away and sort out my own small problems, whilst you get on with major frauds and serial killers.'

Lambert sighed elaborately. ‘Let's have it, Bert.'

‘A neighbour of mine came in to see me on Saturday morning. The way neighbours do, when they're worried. Eleanor says the woman's not normally an alarmist, but I scarcely know her. She's called Lisa Ramsbottom, but we can't really hold that against her.'

‘And what is it that's worrying the non-alarmist Mrs Ramsbottom? I'm assuming that she's a wife; that she volunteered herself for this surname.'

‘She is indeed – so she may be a masochist. She says she's received death threats. I gave her the usual guff about anonymous threats usually coming from mistaken jokers, who have cruel minds but not the courage to reveal who they are.'

‘And she didn't react well to that, or you wouldn't be in my office telling me about her now.'

‘She said she was still worried. There's been more than one threat, apparently. She has a daughter and a husband. She's worried about them as well as herself.'

‘As we would be ourselves, in the same circumstances.'

‘Yes. They have a weekend retreat in one of these leisure parks. It seems most of the threats have been delivered there.'

‘Where is this?'

‘Somewhere up near Leominster, I think. In the northernmost tip of our patch. On the very edge of civilization – very nearly in Wales.'

‘I forgot to tell the new CC that you were a raving racist. But I do think you should investigate, Bert. Get to know the northernmost tip of our patch.'

Lisa Ramsbottom had already invited him up there for a visit. There was a lake and a bowling green and a nine-hole golf course on the complex. He wasn't going to tell Lambert that. Bert sighed deeply. ‘If I have to, I have to.'

‘Y
ou're welcome to spend a day at Twin Lakes whenever you like. I told you that.' Lisa Ramsbottom wished she'd had time to look in the mirror before she'd invited Bert Hook from next-door-but-one into her house. She'd whipped her pinafore off when the bell had rung, but she'd had time for nothing more. She was sure that she looked a mess.

‘Thank you. I'd like to have a look round there when it's quiet, rather than full of people, if that could be arranged.'

‘If you can make next Friday, that would be perfect. Ellie's off on a school trip with the netball team, so Jason and I are planning a long weekend in our place at Twin Lakes. They're classed as temporary homes and you can't live in them permanently, but they're like moveable bungalows, really. You and Eleanor could stay the night, if you'd like to.'

‘Oh, I don't think we could manage that, because of the boys. But thanks for the thought.' And thanks for the presence of Jason at this mobile home on Friday, Bert thought. Some women thought CID men were glamorous conquests, even when they were as stolid and uninteresting as he was. ‘Friday sounds perfect. I'll clear it with my boss. And I can easily drive up and back in the day. It can't be more than fifty miles from here.'

‘It's almost exactly that. Bring your golf clubs.'

‘I'll do that. It's much better that I seem like a friend on a social visit, if I'm to discover anything. That way, people won't be immediately on their guard against me.'

A game of golf whilst on paid police duty: things were looking up.

He was a big man and very black. Most people found him intimidating, at first. But George Martindale was warm and friendly; his broad smile and large, very white teeth helped people to feel at ease with him.

He was a very physical man. He worked long and hard with the council road team, and he never shirked his share of physical work, even when the foreman wasn't present. He was popular with the mixed gang of people who worked with him, because he was always willing to do more than his share, always cheerful, and always willing to accept his ration of the sometimes dubious banter which passed as humour during the rough and tumble of the working day.

George took racism in his stride. He never seemed to get upset when clumsy taunts were offered to him as wit. He was from Jamaica, he said. He never revealed whether he had been born there or whether he was a first-generation immigrant of Jamaican parents. No one was quite sure about his age and he never volunteered it. Early thirties, most people thought, but it was difficult to be certain, because he had an unlined face and clear dark eyes and not a grey hair among the crinkly black ones which grew so plentifully upon his large head.

There was an incident on this warm May day which showed that George Martindale should not be treated lightly. His formidable physique in itself made people cautious, but he was so affable that sometimes they didn't even consider that he might turn aggressive. Afterwards, it seemed to most of his fellow workers characteristic of George that he should react violently not on his own behalf but on someone else's.

The latest recruit to the gang was a stringy youth who was barely seventeen and who looked two years younger. Damien Field was willing but not over-bright; his temperament, combined with his physical limitations, led to a series of gibes from his insensitive seniors. When your thin arms worked with spades and picks, when you struggled hard to control the vigorous movements of a pneumatic drill, you were an easy target for men seeking to lighten their day with cheap humour.

They were repairing the pavement and road outside the main entrance to a now derelict building. The repeated passage of heavy lorries had caused serious potholes as well as broken flags over the years. It was heavy work and young Damien endured a series of gibes about his physical weakness. They became cruder and more sexual as the day went on. The fact that Field reacted only with a weak smile and an unconvincing pretence of finding the comments amusing only incited greater insults. According to his harassers, he was now not only incapable of getting a girl but incapable of ‘giving her one' if he did. Damien didn't feel strong enough or well-established enough to tell his insulters to get lost.

In this context, that only made them bolder. They would go on baiting him and get ever more obscene until they wrung some sort of violent dismissal from him. Damien vaguely realized this, but he felt that if he turned aggressive they would bludgeon him and drive him out of this job he so badly needed. His dad was out of work and his mother was an invalid, but he couldn't tell them that. It would only show further weakness.

It was when Field almost lost control of the pneumatic drill, saw it sliding out of his grasp towards the horizontal, and had to switch it off that the day's incident occurred. The worst of his tormentors, a squat man with grimy tattoos upon his brawny forearms, was delighted to see Damien defeated. ‘Too strong for a raving pooftah like you, those machines! Young lad with a delicate skin like yours could do much better as a rent boy in Brum. I could put you in touch with a man who pimps for young nancies like you, if you asked me nicely.'