Trembine Halt Read online

  Julia screwed up her nose, “If Petra’s an estate agent then I’m an opera singer. She knows absolutely nothing about conveyancing or stamp duty. I had a good chat with her over breakfast and I suspect that she is an actress who is, as they say, ‘resting’ and working as an estate agent in the meantime. I’ve not talked to him as he’s a bit of a weirdo. He does Yoga all right, and I’ve no doubt that he’s got lots of courses organised, but somehow he doesn’t ring true. It’s more like he’s on the Yoga bandwagon because there’s money to be made from it rather than he actually believes in it.”

  Buster sniffed, “Onto a good thing then?”

  Julia smiled, “You should have heard him swear when Colin told him that the exhaust had been flattened. For someone who is supposed to believe in inner strength he sure places a lot of store on worldly goods.”

  Buster grinned from ear to ear, “Can you describe them for me?”

  “Petra’s about my height, but a size twelve with an hourglass waist. She monitors everything she eats, she even turned down some of mum’s treacle pudding. Blonde, from a bottle, blue eyes, short well shaped nose and perfect teeth. I’m not being bitchy, but I think she’s had a nose and ear job and extensive dental work. She’s also short sighted,– she wears contact lenses and Norman had to lend her some cleaning fluid. As for Simon, I’d say he’s just over six foot tall, dark black hair, though I’d guess he uses one of those blackening hair gels, grey eyes and rotten teeth. If he ever goes to the dentist it’ll cost him a fortune, his teeth are crooked and his bottom ones are showing signs of gum disease, and his breath smells. Otherwise he’s got a bland face with a squat nose.”

  Buster turned his head slightly as if to hear better, “When you say squat nose, is that natural do you think?”

  Julia shrugged, “Who knows, but I’ll tell you one odd thing about him, he’s got two mobile phones. He was using one to make calls to change hall bookings when the other one went off in his pocket as it received a text message. He pretended not to notice.”

  Buster smiled, Simon had just ousted Daniel for his prime suspect slot. He stood up, “Thanks for that. Care to take a walk to the safe?”

  Julia hesitated and then stood up. This is what it was all about, covering up the deaths and taking the money, but would she be able to live with her conscience?

  “So you see if you add a few small lines above her eyebrows it looks as though they’re moving and it brings the picture slightly to life.”

  Harriet watch Colin deftly add a few lines above the rough drawing of her mother and then had a go on the other eyebrow. Jill put her had around the door, “Harry, that film’s on if you want to watch it.”

  Harriet looked blank, “What film?”

  “Annie.”

  Harriet got up and turned to Colin, “Thanks for that, makes my pictures look a lot better, Miss Hambling will be pleased.” She then wandered out. Jill smiled at Colin, “Her school choir is singing a couple of songs from the film, she’s been driving me mad with ‘Tomorrow.’”

  Colin pointed to a small folded paper model of a frog, “Rupert been visiting?”

  “Came to check that we were OK, he’s a nice man; he’s really concerned how we’ll manage if the power goes off. I used to think that he was keen on me, but actually he’s just being neighbourly.”

  Colin grinned, “How do you know he’s not keen on you?.”

  She laughed and rearranged a pile of cloths on an armchair to prevent overspill. “I don’t think Rupert thinks like that, I reckon he knows that he’s not attractive to women, in any case I think he’s too scared of women to let one close enough to look after him properly.”

  She crossed the room and sat on Colin’s lap. She whispered, “Thanks for coming, you’re the man I really wanted to see.” She gave him a big, sloppy, lingering kiss.

  He put his arms around her and squeezed gently, “Had a secondary motive. First I needed to see you, secondly, how do you and Harriet fancy coming back to the farmhouse for tea?”

  Jill sat bolt upright, “You kidding? Won’t you’re father throw a fit.”

  He squeezed her again, “Fed up of doing things in the dark, time to be open.”

  She flashed him a super-white smile, “Coming out you mean, you and your Asian mistress.”

  “You’re not my mistress because, contrary to my dad’s procrastination, I’m not married. And it’s not coming out, I want to show you off. To let them know who I love.”

  She placed a hand on his forehead, “Poor man, he’s gone snow-crazy.”

  They laughed and Harriet, peering through the crack in the door, smiled in unison. She liked Colin and knew that her mother liked him too, so much so that she was always happier when he was around. She crept off to watch the film and hoped that Colin and her mum would also have a happy ending.

  The safe turned out to be in the lounge behind the fireplace. Buster pulled a lever on the side of the fire-surround and it rose slightly, he then swung it out the way to reveal the fire, still burning, surrounded by metal. Each side of the fireplace there was a safe door. He opened the left one without using a key, it exposed a small cavity where there was a telephone handset. Buster gave his crooked grin, “Battery Powered Satellite telephone, the antenna is on the roof mixed in with the solar power thingamabobs. Shows how paranoid they were. He moved over to the safe, inserted a key and swung the door back till it lay flush against the wall. Julia could now see a similar inner door. Buster unlocked it and it swung on hinges along its base until it lay open like an oven door. The safe was crammed full of brown envelopes on top of a small slot containing a laptop computer. Buster surveyed the morass of envelopes. “Jeremy used to bundle his notes in hundreds, so if they’re £20 notes that makes £2000 and so on. He grabbed an envelope and tossed it to Julia, her heart missed a beat.

  Norman looked up from his script as Petra entered the lounge. She flopped into an armchair and surveyed him through her lively blue eyes, Norman noted that her eyelashes were a sort of mousy brown. She gave him a keen look, “Your sister was telling me that you’ve landed yourself a job on a soap – Nightingale City - I am envious.”

  Norman was temporarily fazed, she grinned, “I did three years on Stannard’s Cove.”

  Norman stared at her, he’d watched Stannard’s Cove as a teenager and couldn’t place her. She rolled her eyes, “Go on say it, ‘which one were you?’”

  Norman, now totally fazed, stammered, “I’m sorry, but…”

  “I was Mille, the headmaster’s daughter, remember?”

  Norman stared, she looked nothing like the Mille he remembered, the nose was all wrong and the ears didn’t stick out. She gave him a cross between a reassuring smile and a grimace. “Two months before my contract came up for renewal ,I was just turned twenty but could easily look fifteen on screen, I fell down a lift shaft visiting my grandmother in her block of flats. I didn’t fall far, about half a story, but I tried to rearrange the pulleys on top of the lift with my face, the pulleys won.”

  Light dawned in Norman’s brain, “I remember that, they wrote you out of the story by saying that you’d had a car accident and showing a body, but no face.”

  She nodded, “Ruthless bastards, my mum told them that I’d need plastic surgery and they decided straight away to dump me claiming that as I’d be changing my looks I couldn’t continue playing the character.”

  “Were you in hospital long?”

  “Not as an in-patient, but I’d broken my upper jaw and folded it round into my palette plus trying to take off my left ear with one of the steel lift-ropes. They had to do the plastic surgery and orthodontics in stages, I’m still 50% deaf in my left ear.”

  “I hope you got some compensation.”

  She screwed up her face, “Judge said that I was partly at fault as I’d not noticed the lift wasn’t there when the doors opened. The council paid for all the surgery and dentistry, but I didn’t get a penny on top for lost earnings.”

  “Have you worked since?�
�

  “Not on TV, least not in person. I’ve done a fair bit of voice-over work and a small stint in the theatre, but I prefer TV and films.”

  Norman finally got his brain into gear, “I thought I recognised your voice, you did Antipodean Animals and Britain’s Birds.”

  She gave him a broad smile, “And I’m due to do Californian Cats and Zimbabwe’s Zebras, but they’re behind with the editing, hence my estate agent job.”

  “No TV work?”

  She sadly shook her head, “Not a sniff. However, my agent says that he’s lining up a series for me on BBC World Service. If it comes off I’ll be gainfully employed for years.”

  Norman waved his script at Petra, “Sometimes I think I’m mad, leaving the stability of the farm for the fickle world of show business.”

  She unconsciously moistened her lips with her tongue and said quietly, “All I say is ‘don’t give up the day job, or at least the possibility of a day job’. That was my problem, I fell into the part in Stannard’s Cove as soon as I’d completed my O Levels. My drama teacher encouraged me to have a go at the auditions, I never expected to land a part, but believe me it’s a relentless treadmill. The program went out three times a week and we were on set six days a week shooting the episodes and making those one-off specials and videotape extras, so I never had time to learn anything else. Frankly I didn’t think I’d have to do anything else.”

  She scratched behind her left ear, “Just be sure you know what you’re letting yourself in for, Nightingale City goes out three times a week on cable TV and that’s condensed, with some extra scenes, into two weekly episodes on commercial television. To do that they must shoot at least five days a week, if not six. In other words, for the duration of your contract – which no doubt can be terminated at the drop of a hat by the TV Company – forget that you have a life, your life will be the TV studio and endless scripts with multiple rewrites.”

  Norman thought for a minute that she was talking out of envy and pique, but then he realised that he’d read the shooting schedules and he knew that what she said was true. He tried to appear nonchalant, “Be worth it if it was a way of breaking into TV drama and films.”

  She nodded, “That’s what I hoped, but I’ve become a realist. Of all the actors I knew in Stannard’s Cove and Mosley’s Murder Mysteries that they shot in the next door studio, not one made it into TV drama, apart from bit parts, or into Film. Not one; and they were both highly successful series that ran for years. Frankly, if radio and voice-overs keeps the wolf from the door for me, that’s good enough for me; I’m past my TV sell-by-date.”

  Norman raised his eyebrows, “But you’re a very attractive woman with a decent track record.”

  She shrugged, “But there are younger women with better pedigrees.”

  She gave a knowing grimace, “It’s all right for men, they seem to get more and more parts as they mature, but for women it’s the opposite; that is unless you’re already a household name.”

  Norman sat back in his arm chair a severely rattled man. He’d been able to argue with his father from a combative position, but Petra’s words hit him at a totally different level.

  Chapter 10

  Tea and Cake

  Julia wiped her hands on her dark blue denim jeans, “So far my pile is worth £250,000, mostly in £20 notes, yours?”

  Buster added another brown envelope to his pile, “£55,000 all in fivers and £10,000 in fifty pound notes.”

  “Is there much more?”

  Buster tossed her another envelope, “About ten envelopes that I reckon have money, the rest are a different size.”

  The sat in silence on the floor counting money. Twenty minutes later Julia put her hands on the small of her back and stretched. “That’s £290,000 in twenties and £25,000 in tens.”

  Buster looked at his pile; “£20,000 in twenties, £55,000 in fivers and £10,000 in fifties.”

  They both did a mental calculation and Julia whispered, “That’s £400,000 all in used notes.”

  Buster poked about in the safe, “Ready for more work?”

  “Think I’ll make some tea first, never realised that counting money was so tiring.”

  Buster nodded, “Real tea is in the plain silver tin, the tin labelled ‘Tea’ contains Lady Grey Tea.”

  Julia wandered off towards the kitchen and Buster waited until she had left the room, he then extracted a small snub-nose revolver from the safe and slipped it in his pocket. He hated guns, but at the moment the feel of the cold gun in his pocket was reassuring. He sat back on his haunches, he had expected over half a million in cash, in fact nearer six hundred thousand. He knew that Jeremy normally kept about £150,000 in £50 notes and wondered where the other money was and whether or not Jeremy had paid it to whoever had killed him. He listened to Julia making tea in the kitchen and fretted over her protection, he hated her going back to the farm, especially as Simon was his prime suspect.

  Petra watched Norman, she’d only been making conversation, but something she had said had set him thinking. She looked at his big frame, massive weather-beaten hands and blue eyes, he looked more like a steeplejack than an actor. She decided to add to her comments on acting. “Having said all that, offer me a contract and I’d be there like a shot, there’s nothing like the buzz on set or the feeling of satisfaction when your program wins an award.”

  Norman seemed to come out of a trance, “Didn’t you win an award as best adult actor playing a child from the TV critics?”

  She nodded, pride spreading across her face, “Yes, and Stannard’s Cove won three awards for best children’s soap while I was on set. As I said it’s a wonderful feeling.”

  Norman nodded, “We won an award last year from The National Farmers Society for our Organic Wheat and I know what you mean.”

  He suddenly rolled his eyes and squirmed, “But is that what life is about, winning awards? What about doing good and the future of mankind?”

  Petra blinked; philosophy was not in her repertoire.

  The much battered spoon scraped around the edge of the bowl putting Sarah’s teeth on edge. Rupert licked his already moist lips, “My that was good, what was it again?”

  “A mixture of tinned beef stew with what I could salvage from your carrot collection and a tin of beef soup that was only one day past its eat-by date. You really ought to take more care with your pantry, if you ate some of the stuff in it I doubt that you’d survive.”

  He wiped his mouth on a handkerchief that had once, long ago, been white. “I work on the margins. The dates can only be an estimate and I reckon the manufactures will be a little conservative in their labelling.”

  Sarah crossed her arms, “Does two years out of date on a tin of apricots seem conservative? I thought it was going to explode when I put it in the dustbin!”

  Rupert gave a minimalist shrug, “Always seems a waste to throw food away.”

  She replied brusquely, “If you don’t, it could be the waste of a life – your life!”

  Sara realised that she was being very firm, but the more she investigated Rupert’s food supply the more unusable food she discovered.

  He surveyed her from under his bushy eyebrows, “Anything else you want to berate me about, or have you finished?”

  She briefly wondered about telling him to dump his duffel coat and have a decent shave, she softened here voice, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to go on, but you’re putting yourself in danger.”

  He stood up, “Thank you for the soup, it was delicious. But as for my pantry, it is my life and frankly that’s worth nothing.”

  He stormed out leaving Sarah wondering what she had said to trigger such a reaction.

  “Yes mum that’s right, I’d like to bring Jill and Harriet to tea.”

  Colin paused to listen, “I know you’ve got a full house mum, but it’s not often I ask to bring my girl-friend to tea.”

  A smile spread across Colin’s face, “Yes I said girl-friend, Jill and I have been seeing each other
for some time.”

  Pause.

  “I didn’t want you and dad to start making a fuss, but before you ask it is serious.”

  Pause.

  “Thanks mum, by the way Harriet thinks she’s a vegetarian.”

  Pause.

  “See you.”

  He turned off the phone and sat down by Jill, “There you are, it’s all arranged.”

  “You didn’t tell your mum that my Grandparents were born in India.”

  “Is it important?”

  “It might be to her.”

  He put his arm around her and chuckled, “Trembine Halt is a small place and I reckon my family know you are Asian and believe me it’s not important to me, it’s just part of who you are and a lovely part of who you are.”

  She nestled into him, “Seeing your parents is one thing, seeing mine…”

  Julia drained her tea-cup, “What else do you think is in the safe?”

  “Business papers, but not much for us, I’ll leave most of it for Dermot.”

  “Who’s Dermot?”

  “Jeremy’s so called business manager, he’s as bent as a nine bob note.”

  “So why does Jeremy use him?”

  “’Cause Jeremy’s even more bent.”

  He slid some papers across the floor, “What do you fancy? A Mercedes or a Land Rover?”

  “Pardon?”

  “They’ve got four cars, all of the Vehicle Registrations are here and all have their pass-on certificates signed. Jeremy and Maria may have fought like cat and dog, but they trusted each other implicitly. They always kept the documents signed so they could dispose of a vehicle quickly when the other one wasn’t around.”

  “Why would they want to do that?”

  “Pay somebody off, give somebody a reward, have instant cash or a million other reasons. Anyway the Mercedes and the Land Rover are in the garage here so they’re ours for the taking.”

  “Show me.”

  Julia struggled to her feet and Buster held out his hand to help her and pull her to her feet. She noticed that he didn’t let go of her hand as he led her towards the garage, least she hoped it was towards the garage.