The Overlooker (12 page)

He slammed the car into reverse and backed away from the corner to park in the side street. He pulled on the brake and leaped out.

Suzie was still unfastening her seat belt. ‘Nick! Wait for me!' she called.

But he was off for the main road, determined not to miss their only witness.

He strode down the pavement towards the approaching woman. Her head was down, her shoulders hunched, but the height and build were familiar.

He had suddenly no idea what he could say to her. For a troubled moment, he wondered whether he should have waited for Suzie. He glanced back. She was not yet in sight.

His momentum had carried him on down the hill. He almost cannoned into the woman. She stopped in sudden alarm.

‘Please! Don't be frightened. We met you yesterday.'

‘No! I don't know you. Get away from me!' She backed against the wall. He met her large terrified eyes.

‘You're the only one who can help us. Just what is it that's going on in Hugh Street?'

‘I don't know anything.'

She tried to slip away from him. Nick grabbed her coat.

‘Someone's been threatening me because . . .'

A roar of anger made him turn sharply. A man was charging up the pavement towards him. Nick took one look at him and knew he was never going to be able to explain the situation. His grip loosened on the woman and she fled up the hill.

Nick lingered only a moment longer. He thought of apologizing, then saw the rage in the man's face. He sped for the side street where he had parked the car.

At every stride he expected to see Suzie coming towards him. But he had turned the corner before he saw her. She was standing beside the car talking into her mobile.

Hands grabbed him from behind. He was spun round. A second man was facing him, fists raised. Nick struggled against his captor as the blow connected with his chin.

He was knocked sideways. The man behind him let him fall. He hit the kerb bruisingly and rolled into the gutter. He threw up his hands to shield his face. A kick landed in his ribs.

Somewhere at the back of his mind he had heard Suzie cry out. He curled up, helpless to avoid a second kick. But none came. He dared to look up through the fingers protecting his eyes. There was no one near him. Suzie and Millie were running towards him. The two men had gone.

He scrambled to his feet and gasped at the pain in his side. A wave of dizziness made him lean against the wall.

‘Are you all right?' Suzie had reached him. ‘What did you do?'

‘What did
I
do? You saw those thugs. They punched me and then kicked me when I was down.'

‘The police are on their way. I was already on the phone to them to tell them we'd seen the woman. You should have waited.'

‘Oh, so it's my fault now?' Nick fingered the corner of his jaw tenderly.

‘What happened down there? Did you stop her?'

‘She didn't want to talk. She's still frightened.'

‘And?'

‘Well . . .' The foolishness of what he had done came over him. ‘She was trying to get away. I guess I did catch hold of the coat-thing she was wearing.'

Nick! And you wonder why two Muslim men come haring after you to teach you a lesson.'

‘Is that all the sympathy I get?'

She cupped his head in her hands and leaned forward to kiss his bruised face.

‘Idiot!' she said softly.

‘Mum! The police are coming.'

The two of them spun round. Two tall uniformed constables were turning the corner of the road. They made straight for Nick and Suzie.

‘Are you the lady who put in the call?' one asked.

‘That's right. This is my husband. Two men saw him in Canal Street, talking to the woman I was telling your switchboard about. They chased him here.'

‘Can you give me a description, sir?'

‘They're not the important thing. It's the woman you need to go after. She's wearing a navy-blue coat and trousers and a blue-and-white scarf. She was heading up the hill towards the nursery.'

‘And why would we want to talk to her?'

Beside Nick, Suzie sighed with frustration. ‘Didn't they tell you that when they put the call out? I was trying to explain to your operator. You must have heard there's something going in Hugh Street. Inspector Heap said they've got police watching the place. Well, this is the woman we saw trying to get in there yesterday, only the man sent her away. She's a key witness.'

Nick saw the two police constables look at each other and shake their heads. He could almost see their eyes roll.

‘All we heard was a fight going on in Tennyson Street. Two black guys beating up a white one.'

‘That's not how I put it. And that happened when I was in the middle of phoning. It wasn't the reason I made the call.'

The two policemen looked at each other again.

‘Stay here,' one said. ‘We'll want a statement.'

All the same, Nick was glad to see the speed with which they bounded back to the corner. They disappeared from view.

Millie looked from one parent to another. ‘Is this really all because someone's moved into a boarded-up house?'

Nick moved carefully away from the wall. He held his breath, waiting for the sharp pain that would tell him he had a broken rib. But when he put his hand to his side, he could only feel bruising.

‘I was just trying to do my citizen's duty. It's bound to be something illegal. And that woman we met knows what.'

The warning messages were reeling through his brain. Had those two men really only been protecting the woman from his advances, or had they more to do with Hugh Street?

The two policemen were coming back.

‘Sorry. By the time we got there, the mums and kids had gone. Nobody else has seen a woman matching your description. Or if they have, they're not admitting to it.'

‘Now, sir,' said the other, taking out his notebook. ‘If you wouldn't mind giving me a full statement of what happened, I'll get you to sign it. If you want to press charges against those two gentlemen, I'll need you to come down to the station.'

Nick felt a deep weariness. ‘I didn't get a proper look at them. I only know that woman's a vital witness. It's her you've got to find. What happened to me was . . . incidental.'

He hoped that was true. That the two men were not more deeply involved.

He saw the look that passed between the policemen.

M
illie gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Dad! Look at the time. We're hardly going to have any time in town. Do you have to play Superman and solve all the world's crimes single-handed?'

‘Sorry, kid. I guess you think I should leave it to the police. I know that's what your mother thinks.'

He eased himself into the driving seat. ‘Still time for that latte.'

They were halfway down the hill to the bridge. The phone in his pocket rang.

It was not the illegality of talking on his mobile while driving that stopped him from reaching for it. He felt a huge reluctance to answer his phone now. Why had he not switched it off?

He told himself it could be a double-glazing salesman, or Tom to talk about meeting them tomorrow, or Thelma with more news about Uncle Martin. He was convinced it was not.

‘Do you want me to see who it is?' Suzie asked.

She held out her hand.

‘Leave it,' he muttered. ‘It's probably nothing important.'

If only.

When he parked the car in town, Millie leaped out of the car before Suzie, with an alacrity she had not shown before.

‘Honestly! We could have been here an hour ago.'

Nick waited until Suzie got out. ‘You girls go and find a café. I'll catch up with you in a minute.'

He had not fooled Suzie. She gave him a troubled stare. ‘There's no hurry. We can wait.'

‘Just go on, will you?' he snapped.

She gave him a long look, then reached back into the glove compartment. She drew out what looked like a map of the town.

Nick envied her. She had been troubled by yesterday's threatening call, but it did not seem to obsess her in the way it did him. Perhaps she shared the inspector's view that it needn't be taken too seriously. And, of course, he hadn't told her about the sinister text message after they'd been to the police.

He watched Suzie and Millie's retreating backs as he took the phone from the inside pocket of his leather jacket. There was no reason to suppose that the caller had left a message. Probably it would just tell him he had missed a call.

But the screen showed him there was one message on his voicemail. He punched the key more viciously than he needed to.

The voice was harsher than the first time. Angrier.

‘
What game do you think you're playing at?
'

That was all. The anonymous caller had snapped off.

Nick stared down at the little screen. It was odd. He realized his mood had changed subtly. He had no idea what his tormentor was talking about, but he sensed a shift in their power play. Yesterday and this morning, the caller had seemed totally in control of things. He knew who Nick was, what he had done. He made it sound as if he was planning sinister consequences which would flow from those actions.

Now something had made him angry. Not in that cold, menacing way of the first call. Nick had done something the man had not expected. There was not just viciousness but surprise in this latest voice message.

He shook his head in puzzlement. The man already knew that he had been to the police. All Nick had done since then was to foul things up by haring up to a housing estate and accusing the wrong person.

It couldn't really be the Baptist minister, could it? A complicated disguise, involving his wife and children? Nick tried to remember the voice of Harry Redfern. Yes, it had been deep. The sort of voice that would resonate well from his chapel pulpit. But harsh, angry, like that question he had just heard? No. He resisted the urge to play the message again and try to compare them.

Suzie and Millie were disappearing through a gap between rose beds that led into the shopping precinct. On a sudden decision, he switched his phone off, put it back in his pocket and strode after them.

The pedestrianized street was an incongruous mixture. There were two boutiques, one displaying elegant clothes, the other expensive jewellery. At the far end rose two tall department stores. But for the most part, there were the little chain-store shops that you could see in any high street. Most bore printed stickers or crudely lettered placards proclaiming massive discounts. A significant number of shops were boarded up.

Millie was casting longing eyes at the sales in the shop windows all around her. She turned to greet him eagerly.

‘Dad, you couldn't, like, advance me next month's allowance, could you?'

‘That depends,' Nick told her, ‘on just how ridiculous a purchase you've got your eye on.' He grinned for her. In spite of the violence he had just been subjected to, he was surprised to discover a new buoyancy in his spirits. Something he had done had unsettled the mystery caller. He had no idea what it was, but it felt good to know that he too had the power to startle the other.

But he knows, a chill voice whispered in his heart. He still knows what you've been doing. He's tracking your movements.

Did that mean that Nick's suspicion about the blue Honda had not been paranoia? Innocent or not, the Reverend Harry Redfern
had
been following them, first to Belldale Mill and then to the hospital. But if he was not the caller, somebody else must be trailing them. How likely was that?

Had the two men who had beaten and kicked him only been in Canal Street by coincidence?

He looked around at the faces strung out all along the shopping mall. Elderly couples walking slowly, busy women with shopping bags, dispirited-looking teenagers, probably out of a job.

He glanced round quickly, half expecting to surprise someone behind him. The few people between him and the car park had their backs to him.

Suzie fell back behind Millie to join him. She kept her voice low. ‘Well? Was it anything important?'

He switched the phone back to voicemail and handed it over to her.

She listened and gave the mobile back. ‘I don't understand what he's talking about? Do you?'

‘Not a clue. But we've obviously done something he didn't expect. And he's not pleased about it. Somehow, we've wrong-footed him.'

‘He wasn't pleased when we poked our noses into Hugh Street. Do you think this makes him more dangerous? Should we tell Inspector Heap?'

Nick sighed. ‘We tried that last time. As long as she thought it was a brothel trafficking foreign women, she was keen as mustard. But now she seems to feel factory laws are someone else's pigeon.'

Suzie swivelled her toe thoughtfully on the cobbles. ‘She has a point. But there's something that doesn't feel quite right about all this. Are we missing something?'

‘If we are, I can't think what.'

She shrugged. ‘If we stick together, he can't do anything, can he?'

He looked ahead for Millie, and found her staring avidly into a shop window.

Suzie glanced down at the map in her hand, and then at the shopping mall around her. Nick looked at what she was holding. It was not the modern street map he expected. It showed the town as it had been, what, 150 years ago? Suzie had drawn a circle round a little side road halfway along one of its central streets. He squinted to read the small print.
Market Street Court.

‘You won't find that. This whole area was demolished to build the new shopping centre.' He cast his architect's eye over the undistinguished buildings around them. ‘Well, I suppose they thought it was the latest thing about thirty years ago. It's all looking a bit sad now.'

‘All the same . . . Market Street must have run more or less through here. This is where James Bootle had his herbalist's shop in the trade directory for 1865.'