Trembine Halt Read online

  Colin ran his fingers over the buttons. “Minder, she told me he was a professional minder.”

  Mark raised an eyebrow. “Bodyguard? Him?”

  Colin turned the TV on. “Seen the size of his forearm muscles, I wouldn’t go arm-wrestling with him if I were you.”

  Mark settled down in his chair, “Perhaps that’s the attraction, arm wrestling!”

  They both burst into laugher as their dad came through the door. He sat on the settee between them, “Started yet?”

  Colin pressed a button and the screen of the large TV filled with a picture of a football pitch and two lines of men in coloured shirts. “Just about,” said Mark and they all settled down for an afternoon’s football, after else there was nothing else to do.

  “I’d want more,” said Sarah ending the silence. “Having a refuge up here and companionship is fine, but after a while I’d want more I know I would. We’re not too old age pensioners seeking solace and economies. I’m not saying that we ought to rush into anything, but I’d want you to know that if I agree, and our companionship is agreeable, then I would probably want more than companionship in the long run.”

  She turned to look at him, “Are you capable of that?”

  He took on the appearance of a startled rabbit and then grabbed a fistful of duffel coat, throttling it between his hands. “I don’t know. I’m not very good with…”

  He took a deep breath, “But I’d like to try, I can’t promise…”

  She laid a hand on his twisting pair of hands, “Well that’s good enough for a start.”

  He looked helpless. “What do I do?” he whined.

  She stood up and looked down at him. “For a start you take more care of yourself and throw out that disgusting coat and next you can tell me what you want me to do with Anna’s things. Charity shop?”

  He looked aghast, shuddered and gave her a troubled smile, “I’d rather you took what you want and we burn the rest, plus Peter’s things. I know it’s a waste, but it somehow seems right.”

  Sarah rubbed his shoulder, “You mean closure. Once they’re gone they’re gone and there’s no turning back.”

  He shuddered again. She half sighed, “Are you ready for this?”

  He nodded and muttered something she didn’t catch. “Pardon?”

  He gave a fleeting grin, “It’s what my headmaster used to say. ‘The prize is worth the pain.’”

  She punched him on the shoulder and they made their way back to the rectory.

  Come half time Colin stood up, “I’d better go and get Jill before it gets dark.”

  Harry nodded, “Keep an eye out for Simon will you? Think he’s down at the Arms sizing up his new empire.”

  Mark stretched his arms up in the air, “Can’t be. Petra must have the keys and she’s in the back room talking acting to Norman.”

  Harry looked up, “Well where is he then? Don’t tell me he’s still out there since lunchtime.”

  He rose, “I’ll go and ask Petra to phone him on his mobile.”

  Mark leapt to his feet, “You sit down dad, I’ll do that, need to go for a leak anyway.”

  Before his dad could answer he was halfway to the door; one thing was for sure Mark did not want his dad discovering what ‘acting discussions’ really involved. To his relief, Norman and Petra were sitting close, but not doing anything else, when he went into the back sitting room that was normally his parent’s domain. He explained to Petra their concerns and she fished out a mobile phone and pressed a pre-set button. She put the phone to her ear and after a minute of so said, “Simon? We were wondering where you were.”

  She listened and her immaculately plucked eyebrows twitched, “Say again.”

  She looked at Norman, “He’s in some country lane that’s been dead straight for ages and turns sharply by a large tree which has some sort of brass plaque.”

  Mark leant against the wall, “Stone me, he must be at Anna’s tree, however did he get there in weather like this.”

  Petra’s eyebrows twitched again, “He says that the lane round the corner is totally blocked with snow and there’s a lorry across the road, obviously been there sometime.”

  Mark looked out of the window at the failing light. “Tell him to stay there and I’ll come with a tractor, silly twerp whatever is he thinking of?”

  Norman stood up, “It’s OK bro, I’ll go, I’m more used to our new tractor than you. I’ll take that, it’s got really decent a cab heater and all the wheels are the same size so they shouldn’t dig in. Petra put her head on one side as soon as Norman had left, “Why is it called Anna’s tree?”

  Mark made a helpless gesture with his hands. “Woman called Anna died there a few years ago, she wasn’t the first, and there’s been a death since, but her death was memorable so it’s sort of been named after her. If Simon can brush the snow away he should find her name on the plaque.”

  She shuddered, “Gruesome, don’t like to think about death.”

  Mark tossed his head slightly, “Happens to us all sooner or later, after all life is a terminal illness.”

  Petra made a face, leant back and crossed her long slim legs while Mark studied her. She would not have been his choice of partner for Norman, she was over-fastidious about her appearance and definitely too flighty in her demeanour. “Can I ask you something?”

  Petra interlaced her fingers, reversed her palms and thrust out her arms, “If you want.”

  “Not playing about with my brother’s emotions are you?”

  Her face suddenly transformed into a look of hardened steel. “I think that’s for me and him don’t you?”

  Mark recognised the signs and left the room none the wiser, but considerably more apprehensive.

  The deodorant stick lay in tiny pieces before them, but there was not a single sparkle of diamonds. Buster picked up the portable shaver and dismantled the shaving head – nothing. He put it down and then picked it up again. Using his knife he prised off the battery cover and took out the battery, squashed into the underside of the battery were three diamonds of roughly the same size as those in the lipstick. Julia studied them as they sparkled, “I thought you said they’d have diamonds in their deposit box.”

  Buster carefully prised the diamonds out of the battery. “Probably, these must be some sort of safety net, just in case of a real emergency.”

  Julia pursed her lips, “Fancy living like that, always prepared to run.”

  Buster laughed, “It’s all a matter of reward. The way they were creaming off the takings I suppose they were making eight to ten grand a day. You work it out – over a year that’s about three million a year.”

  “And nobody noticed?”

  “Of course they’d noticed, but if your willing to plough half your illicit earnings back into sweeteners, never pay your friendly tax man and charge extortionate interest on any loans you issue, you could probably still make a couple of million a year. And that’s not counting any illegal gambling. As I said they popped up from nowhere already loaded and intended to disappear even more loaded.”

  Buster paused, “But your right, these last few months they’ve been frightened of their own shadow and spending more and more time here where they assumed they were safe. I guess they were waiting for the sale of the casinos to come good, or some other deal.”

  Julia wrinkled her brow, “Why didn’t they run earlier then?”

  Buster sighed, “I guess it’s all a matter of risk and the lure of yet more vast amounts of money. It becomes a drug in the end, perhaps worse than a drug.”

  Julia shook her head, “There’s more to life than money.”

  Buster grinned, “But it sure helps the wheels go round.”

  They laughed, but Buster could see the worry on Julia’s face. He reached over the desk and held her hand, “I’ll protect you, believe me I’ll protect you. I may not have done such a good job for them, but no-one, no-one, is going to get anywhere near you.”

  They went downstairs and Buster starte
d to close the blinds in the lounge. Julia suddenly darted forward, “Wait!”

  She peered through the window at some headlights moving down the lane. “That must be one of my brothers going out in a tractor.”

  She fished a mobile phone from her pocket as Buster closed the window blinds. She talked with Colin for a minute or two and then put her phone back in the pocket of her jeans. “Apparently Simon’s gone for a walk and ended up at Anna’s Tree.”

  “Anna’s tree?” Echoed Buster.

  “It’s about two miles from here on the way to West Dereham.”

  Buster stood stock still, “Did they say if he was intending to leave?”

  “No, they thought he’d just gone down to look at the Trembine Arms.”

  Julia paused, “You don’t think that he…”

  Buster shrugged, “Must have a hell of a reason for leaving to try and walk through that lot.”

  He didn’t tell Julia, but Simon was now back as definitely top of his list of suspects

  Chapter 16

  Disposal

  Sarah became flabbergasted at the effort and decisiveness Rupert suddenly put into the task of clearing out Anna’s bedroom. He opened the window in her room, ignored the icy air it allowed in, and started throwing items out of the window. Anna had been at least one size, if not two, bigger than Sarah so there were virtually none of her clothes that would fit Sarah, apart from a pair of red denim jeans and a couple of skin tight polyester turtle neck jumpers that were languishing in the bottom of the chest of drawers and obviously forgotten. Sarah did, for modesty sake, save some of the undies. After about twenty minutes, and every drawer and wardrobe, Rupert paused before starting on the bookcase. Sarah watched him and then darted forward, “Stop!”

  He paused and stared at her. She gently took some photograph albums from his hands. “You might want these later.”

  He seemed bemused and she said gently, “You’re not destroying her memory, just re-using the room. You might need these sometime, happy memories and all that.”

  She could see in his face the strain this was all causing him. She touched his shoulder, “Do you want to stop for a cuppa?”

  He shook his head violently, “No, I must do it now, before I …”

  He suddenly thumped his arms on his sides, “Sorry, sorry, this is going to be your room. You must decide what goes and what stays. I’ll do Peter’s room.”

  Sarah moved to go with him and he stopped at the foot of the stairs, “If you don’t mind I’d like to do this myself.”

  Sarah moved over to him, “Are you sure?”

  He reached out and gently stroked her right cheek, “I’m sure, I’ll be OK.”

  With that he ran up the stairs and Sarah looked round the room. She said to herself, “Well that picture of The Scream is definitely going, work of art or not.”

  She lifted it off the wall and went to throw it out through the window face down. When she got to the window she stopped, taped to the back of the picture was a small plastic bag of white powder. Sarah tore it off the picture and stuffed it in her pocket. She looked at the picture of Anna that was still sitting on the dressing table. “Just how much more cleaning up after you am I going to have to do?”

  She threw the picture out just as a plastic crate of toys fell past her from above.

  Norman sat in his cosy cab crawling through the snow. Despite large wheels and four wheel drive the tractor was not having an easy time in some places. Eventually he reached the main road and turned towards West Dereham. The road here was not so much buried under snow as covered in a thick layer of ice crystals. Norman began to wonder how Simon had managed to get so far in such dreadful conditions. Eventually, in the beam of the powerful headlights, Anna’s Tree came into view. Norman brought the tractor to a halt almost at the base of the tree. He killed the head lights and opened the cab window. “Simon, are you there? Simon!”

  There was no reply, Norman swung the movable spotlight around and eventually found a set of tracks leading to the passenger door of the skewed lorry. He went to climb out of the cab, but the lorry door opened and Simon climbed out; even by the light of the one spotlight Norman could see that he was almost exhausted. Norman opened the cab door and Simon started to climb in. “Stand behind me and you’ll find a little dolly seat to rest your bottom on.”

  Simon, however, had other ideas. He pulled himself up into the cab, but stood beside Norman. “Look mate I want to go on, can you take me?”

  “No way, we’re going back.” Replied Norman decisively.

  “£50.”

  “No, we’re going back, there’s no way through from here.”

  “£100? £200?”

  Norman looked at his anxious pale white face, “Not for a million pounds. We could die out here if I turned the tractor over or if we got stuck.”

  Norman suddenly let go of the cab support and grabbed Norman’s thick waterproof just below the throat. “I said I wanted to go on! Don’t you understand?”

  Norman laid a huge paw of a hand across Simon’s hand placing his thumb on the ball joint of Simon’s thumb. He started to squeeze. Simon screamed in agony two seconds later. Norman shouted at him to let go. Eventually Simon did let go and Norman obliged by doing the same. Simon toppled from the cab and fell into the soft snow. He gave Norman a frightened haunted glance and for a moment Norman thought he was going to run for it. However, some form of common sense must have kicked in as he stood up, brushed himself down and climbed into the cab to stand behind Norman. Norman put the tractor into gear and did a careful multi-point turn before starting to follow his tracks home. All the way he was conscious of Simon standing behind him and all the way Simon said not a single word.

  Meanwhile Petra was experiencing a new phenomenon, worry: or to be more exact worry about another person. Normally she breezed through life concerned only for herself, but she found herself looking at the clock and anxious about Norman’s safety. She knew that she’d started the ‘acting lessons’ with Norman for a bit of fun and to relieve the boredom of life in a snowed in farmhouse where the only satellite TV channels were dedicated to sports. However, over the last few hours she’d talked to Norman more than she’d talked to anyone. She knew a lot about him and his fears and he knew a lot about her life and experiences. She couldn’t put it into words, but she knew some sort of bond was growing between them. She left the sanctity of the back room and sought out Mark. “He’s been an awful long time.”

  Mark looked up from the football, Petra sighed inwardly, why did men get so exited about football? “He’ll be OK, don’t forget he’ll be taking it slow in this weather.”

  “But he’s been nearly an hour and you said it was only a couple of miles.”

  As if in reply the windows started to light up with the tractor’ headlights. Petra, to her great surprise, found herself sighing with relief.

  Sarah held her hands out hand towards the bonfire and warmed them. Her face already felt like toast. They’d carried all the stuff from the bedrooms to the end of the vicarage garden where Rupert had poured a gallon of paraffin onto the pile before setting it alight. He stood next to her, hands in his pockets, staring at the flames as if they were Jenny and Peter’s funeral pyre. After what seemed to be an age he seemed to come to. He deftly took off his moth-eaten duffel coat and threw it onto the bonfire. Sarah was startled by the action. He turned to face her seemingly oblivious to the snow, “It’ll be safe now, we can go in.”

  “But your duffel coat, what’ll you do?”

  He ran his hands through his hair, “Wear Anna’s, well it was never actually hers. I saw it in a sale and bought it for her for the winter, but I never had a chance to give it to her.”

  Sarah fixed him with a friendly stare, “Don’t you ever, on any pretext, at any price, under any circumstances ever by me a duffel coat.”

  Rupert burst into cackles of laughter, “Round here, in the winter, believe me you’ll soon want one.”

  They went inside and the bonf
ire burned on, burning not only the tangible reminders of times gone by, but – perhaps – also destroying some of the destructive emotional ties to that time as well.

  Buster drummed his fingers as the tractor’s headlights briefly lit up the window blinds. “Could you invent a reason for going to the farm?”

  Julia looked up from Maria’s electronic diary, she’d been trying different passwords for almost half an hour. “Don’t need a reason, it’s my home.”

  “Hmmm,” said Buster, “I’d like to know what Simon was up to.”

  Julia sighed and stood up, “OK, you win, we’ll try your pop it in the freezer trick.”

  Buster extracted the data card and took the diary to the kitchen and stuck it in the freezer. “Remind me again why you’re doing this.”

  Buster grinned, “Some electronic devices loose their memory when you take them below the temperature at which they’re designed to operate. With any luck this little beauty will wake up as if it’s just been born. And that means without a password protection.”

  They went to the lobby and Buster held up Julia’s duffel coat for her to put her arms in. She shuffled into it and they went through the booting up procedure. Julia pulled on her bobble hat, “I’ll set the alarm.”

  She went into the hall, opened a cupboard door and pressed in six numbers, the alarm began to bleep gently. They exited the house and Buster slammed and locked the door. Julia looked at the snow which was just beginning to fall again. “Don’t know why we do that, I mean if it went off the police couldn’t get here.”

  Buster took her arm, “I know, but believe me the sound of the bell they installed would scare the burglar to death.”

  They set off for the farm and halfway down the drive Julia glanced back and then stopped dead. “Windows! That’s what’s been bugging me. This house is all windows, except one room and that’s where…”

  Buster rubbed his black gloved hand across his face, “No-one to see.”