Small Town Secrets (Some Very English Murders Book 2) (14 page)

“Yes, and yes, I am sure of it. Well, that opens a new line
of enquiry, doesn’t it?”

“She was obviously out to get you,” Taz said. “But why?”

“We met up. Me, Cath and Clarissa. She was unpleasant and
arrogant and I couldn’t stand it. She knew my name and that I was doing crafts
online, so she could easily find me. As for why, though, I don’t know. We were
in a café and she had hidden a dog in her bag, and I let management know. But
would that be enough to have her take it out on me like this? It’s way too
petty.”

“Of course,” Taz said. “She seems spiteful and she’s a
hacker. You would simply be a great excuse for her to practise her skills.”

“Ugh. And now, the question is this: had Warren found out
about the video she put online? Did she attempt to blackmail these men, or was
it a secret from them? If he found out, did he threaten her? Would she kill
him, just to keep him quiet?”

“She makes money from all this,” Taz said. “Your question
should be: would she kill to keep her income?”

“Oh my goodness. And if she was the murderer, of course
she’d want to upset me. I need to talk to Cath. She said she was in court this
morning…”

“She is,” Taz said as she stood up and began to pack her
things away. “I’m heading back up to the station now, and I’ll talk to
Inspector Travis, and ask him, or Cath, to give you a ring. I think this looks
like vital information, don’t you?”

“Absolutely.”

* * * *

Secrets and false names, Penny thought later, as she sat
down with her laptop and went through her newly-restored accounts. Taz had
helped her out with the passwords and gave her some tips for better organisation,
and she felt a lot more safe online now.

She logged into Facebook and went into the urbex group.
Something was nagging at her. Secrets?

No,
names
, she realised. Lee and Blue. Both had
fake-looking names online, but she knew that Lee was the caretaker at the
academy. Drew had said so. She brought up Glenfield Academy’s website in a new
tab, and checked the list of staff.

Lee Machin.

That was one person identified, she thought, and wrote it
down.

Now for Blue. Or ‘Blue Foryou’ as he went by online. Drew
had said he didn’t work, and that he was one of life’s perpetual drop-outs.
‘Foryou’ was obviously fake, but what about his first name? Was it a nickname?

She studied his Facebook profile. It was mostly locked down,
but his friends list was visible. She noticed a recurring surname – Bailey – so
she clicked onto the various profiles in turn, looking for someone who was more
relaxed about what they had on show to the world.

Someone had him listed as a cousin.

That same someone had a greyed-out name listed as an uncle.
The greying meant that that person wasn’t on Facebook, Penny understood. And
she recognised the name.

Reg Bailey was Blue Bailey’s father. Which meant that Blue’s
real name was John.

Her ruminations were interrupted by a surprise phone call
from Drew, and he was insisting that he must finally re-arrange the dinner date
that he had cancelled all those weeks ago when Warren had been found dead. She
agreed, and he called back a little later to confirm he’d scored a table in a
restaurant by the Brayford Pool in Lincoln. She had a few hours to walk Kali
and get ready. He collected her in his car, and they drove up just after the
rush hour traffic had begun to die down.

“Have you seen this area at night?” he asked once they were
parked. He led her towards the pool. “It’s pretty.”

And it was. They walked around the quayside, looking at the
lights from the clubs and bars reflected in the still water. Students from the
university staggered around, intent on cheap midweek drinks and loud laughs. It
was a few weeks yet until the end of the term, and indeed the academic year.
She supposed students were the same as when she’d been at university: drinking
always won over revising. It was a warm and sultry night, and suddenly Lincoln
didn’t feel like an abandoned and overlooked backwater at all.

They had half an hour to fill before the table reservation,
and they found a free bench to sit on and watch the world go by.

“I went down Cuthbert Road and saw your handiwork for the
CCTV,” she said. “Very nice. Bindweed?”

“Thank you. Yes, a little of that. And his harassment has
stopped, thank goodness.”

“Oh, well done!”

“Cheers, but no.” Drew shook his head. “It actually stopped
before I put the camera up, but at least it hasn’t started up again. Hopefully
it will be a deterrent against any further attacks, though.”

Penny kicked her legs out and studied her sandals
thoughtfully. “When, exactly, did the harassment stop?” she asked.

Drew was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Well, it was
around the time that Warren was killed. But surely you can’t be thinking…”

“That Warren was harassing Reg? I can’t rule it out. We’re
uncovering a lot of stuff we didn’t know about Warren.”

Drew laughed. “No, not Warren. I can’t see him harassing
anyone like that. Anyway, he has no connection with Reg as far as I know.”

“Actually, he does,” she said. “Through the urban
exploration group. Reg’s son is John – also known as Blue – and Blue did not
like Warren at all.”

“I’m not convinced.”

“To be honest, neither am I,” Penny confessed. “I find it
hard to imagine Warren conducting some kind of annoyance campaign against Reg
and it’s even harder to imagine a reason why he might do so. However, if it
wasn’t Warren … maybe it was the murderer.”

Drew frowned. “I can’t follow all these what-ifs.”

“I know! Come on. Shall we walk on? I think better when I’m
moving.”

“I don’t think at all when I’m walking,” Drew said as they
wandered, choosing alleys at random. “I think that’s why I enjoy it so much. I
can turn my brain off.”

They passed a derelict warehouse and Penny couldn’t resist
peeping through a broken window. “Wow. I bet this was something, back in the
day when this was a bustling wharf.”

“You’re really getting into this urban exploration thing,
aren’t you?” he teased.

“I am. I’m going to go out with the urbex group again.
Partly it’s because I enjoy it and I took some photos that I was really pleased
with, but also…”

“Are you still suspicious of the guys in the group?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Hmm.” Drew went quiet and they walked on. It was nearly
time for their table booking, and it wasn’t until they were seated in the upper
level of the restaurant, overlooking the pool through large plate glass
windows, that he brought the subject up again.

“I did some asking around,” he said, as they tucked into
their starters. “About Lee and Blue. Well, mostly about Lee. I told you he had
a couple of kids, didn’t I?”

“Yes. Two different mothers.”

“That’s right. So, one of the kids is at university now, in
London, and the other lives in Lincoln with her mum, and he is supposed to see
her at weekends, but the kid has got to the age where she doesn’t really want
to come and spend the weekend in Upper Glenfield. She’d rather be with her
mates.”

“I can understand that,” Penny said. “Do you know their
names?”

“No. Natalie, Natasha, something like that, I think, for
one of them.”

“But is there any link with Warren?” Penny asked.

“Something happened between Lee and Warren a few years ago.
And it’s to do with the eldest daughter, the one that is in London now.” Drew
waved his fork in warning. “Now, look, a lot of this is gossip and I have no
proof. But basically the daughter came to live with Lee when she was around
fifteen or so. I dunno why. They said she was going off the rails but that
could mean anything, depending on who is doing the judging.”

Penny nodded. “Go on.”

“So, she comes to Glenfield and something happened. I am
pretty sure that Warren did
not
make a pass at her. She would have been
underage, most likely, and no matter what anyone thinks of Warren, that was
never his style.”

“I absolutely agree,” Penny said. He was a creep, but he
was a creep with
some
morals.

“Nevertheless, Warren and Lee got into a fight. And she
went back to her mum, and he had no contact with her at all until she turned
eighteen, and he blamed Warren for that.”

“Whew.” Penny sat back and the empty plate was collected by
the vigilant waiting staff. “But there’s no way of knowing how true all this
is,” she added dejectedly. “Not without asking Lee, or his daughters.”

Drew nodded. “But it might be worth mentioning to Cath and asking
her to follow it up. It gives Lee a motive.”

“I wonder if he has an alibi for the time of the murder?”
she said, and the waiter who had just reappeared with a fancy bit of chicken
breast in white wine sauce looked startled. She smiled sweetly. The waiter
dumped the plate on the table and retreated hastily.

“That’s something for Cath to find out,” Drew said. “But he
certainly has access to tools and things, being a caretaker.”

“Warren was strangled.”

“I’m sure a caretaker’s store room has all manner of things
you could strangle somebody with. And he’s a strong man.”

Penny nodded. She sank into thought for a short while,
until she realised she was being rude, and forced herself to pay attention to
Drew again.

He began to tell her about his courses, and she felt warmly
proud about his activity. Even when he said it was time to go, because he had
an early start, she didn’t mind.

She was glad it was going well for him. And she had her own
next move to plan, and she didn’t think that Drew would quite approve of what
she had decided to do…

Drew dropped her at home, and refused her offer of a
coffee, as she had expected that he would, and she was relieved. She went in
and made a quick fuss of Kali, waiting for Drew to drive off.

Once she was sure that the coast was clear, she slipped
outside and into her own car. This was not the time to be thumping around on an
old motorbike. She needed stealth and the security of a vehicle around her.

She had a plan: she wanted to find out where Lee lived, and
to discover a little more about him. The obvious way to do this was to go to
the various local pubs in the town, and simply chat to the locals. She hadn’t
been on a proper pub crawl for a long time. But first, she decided to drive up
to Glenfield Academy. She’d never been past the high school properly.

It was a typical late seventies sort of place, all great
slabs of concrete with narrow vertical windows and cantilevered overhangs that
made it look intimidating and drab and vaguely Communist. There was a small
bungalow off to one side, but within the school grounds. As she cruised past,
she noticed a figure crossing the driveway and getting into a small hatchback.

Lee! She didn’t slow down. She drove normally but as soon
as she was past the school, she pulled over. That made sense, she thought. As
the caretaker, he possibly would live on site. She backed into a driveway and
turned the car around. She knew she was going to follow him. It was too good a
chance to miss. She hung back, but it was perfectly easy to keep track of him;
there were few roads to Lincoln, and it was obvious that was where he was
going.

She focused on his red tail lights and drove carefully. He
turned off the main road before he entered the urban sprawl of Lincoln, and
instead made his way to a rather nice residential area. It reminded Penny of
Cuthbert Road, although the houses were newer and slightly smaller. They were
all detached houses, in red brick, with manicured lawns and hedges at the fronts.

She noticed, just in time, that he was heading down a
dead-end. She turned right and cruised past. The cul-de-sac he had gone into
seemed to be bordered by a park rather than houses. She drove on, and parked up
at the side of the road. She waited for a moment, straining her ears and eyes.

Before she began to walk towards the cul-de-sac he’d
disappeared down, a shadowy figure emerged from it, and she shrank back to stay
out of sight, avoiding the pools of orange light cast by the street lamps.

She felt far more furtive, skulking about in the shadows of
a pleasant suburb, than she had done when she was urbexing with Lee and Blue.
Maybe it was the sensation that she was inevitably being watched. She glanced
around. The houses were set back from the road, and most of the curtains and
blinds were drawn closed. Even so, all manner of eyes could be watching through
cracks and gaps.

When she turned back to the direction Lee had gone in, she
realised with a jolt that he had disappeared. Had he entered one of the houses,
in the split second that her attention was elsewhere?

Look, get a grip, Penny May, she told herself firmly. She’d
acted on impulse without thinking it through: none of this was in her plan at
all. She should be in a pub right now, somewhere like the Green Man, sitting at
the bar with a drink and chatting to the locals to get some background on him.
Not stalking the poor guy. He was probably visiting a friend. That’s what
blokes did, wasn’t it?

She was going to learn nothing by creeping along a
pavement. She sighed and turned to walk the few steps back to her car.

But a movement in the hedge next to her startled her, and
she jumped as a cat ran out, sending her heart rate hammering. She stifled her
yelp, and then laughed at herself. Embarrassed at her own reaction, she glanced
around again. It was surely a law of the universe that when you did something
ridiculous, you would
always
be watched.

Nothing. No – wait, she thought. There’s a man up there, she
thought. He was behind her, the way Lee had gone. He was just standing there.
She couldn’t tell from the outline whether he was facing her or if he was
turned away.