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Read book online «Cold Blood by Jane Heafield (great books to read txt) 📕».   Author   -   Jane Heafield



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to be associated with the new infamy of the village. Tourists would come, but only to ask about what happened to Sally. Like the journalists, they all got told to sling their hooks. Basically, the village still has the wool pulled over its eyes about the whole Sally thing. I think they’d rather forget she ever existed.’

22

Bennet wrapped up the call when his phone beeped with another incoming. The screen said it was from a DC called Banks. One of his low-level workers, good at talking her way into homes to get information. It must be about the Pond Street case, although it puzzled him as to why a DC had gone straight to him, not to one of his sergeants or DI Todd.

When he answered, Banks was apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I messed up. I’ve got Joe with me.’

It turned out that DI Todd had had an important call while en route to collect Joe from school, and had passed the task on to DC Banks. Banks got told Bennet was in Lampton. Banks then told Joe. Unfortunately, Joe had already looked his mother up on Facebook, now that he had her real name, and knew about Lampton. And now the kid thought his dad was bringing his mother back. Bennet was nervous when Joe came on the phone.

‘Did you find Mum yet?’

He sounded elated, which made the bad news harder to impart. ‘Not yet, Joe. I think I just missed her. Look, I don’t think I can find her today. I won’t be coming home with her tonight. Are you okay with that?’

‘Where did she go? Back to Birmingham? Are you going there next?’

‘Not tonight, Joe. She might not be there. She’s got a job to do and she might be moving around. It might be for a few days. You won’t see her today.’

Silence. Bennet could almost sense Joe’s heart breaking. ‘Patricia wants to take me to the cinema tonight and she’ll make me dinner.’

Joe had changed the subject. Good. ‘That’s nice. You should do that. It’ll be fun.’

‘So you don’t need to come home yet. You can carry on searching and go to Birmingham and other places. You can take all night. I can stay with Patricia again. Will you do that? Will you carry on looking? I won’t stay up for you. I can wait till tomorrow. Please?’

‘Okay.’

Joe whooped with glee. Had Bennet just made a bad choice? His promise to continue the search for Joe’s mother might cause more pain in the long run, but he’d rather let his boy down face to face, where he had more control.

Joe talked about his school trip for a few moments and then told his dad he loved him and would see him later. After the call, Bennet sat in silence, looking out the window at the Panorama. He quickly got over his rising despair by focusing on his extended lease. He still had time to find Joe’s mother and convince her to see her son.

Then he googled the Winding Wheel in Chesterfield, where missing Sally Jenkins had attended a birthday party, and called it. It had probably been the crew’s next destination, and he hoped someone there would have information. The last thing he wanted was to stay in this place a second longer.

The conversation made his head throb a little more. The manager of the Winding Wheel confirmed he’d arranged to meet the film crew, but he’d been given no details. He didn’t have names or contact emails or phone numbers. And the number he’d been called by had been withheld. But he confirmed an appointment at 10am that very Tuesday morning. However, no one had turned up or called to cancel.

Bennet thanked him and hung up. The Winding Wheel was about twelve miles away, a distance the crew could have covered quickly. Even if they hadn’t been forced out of this damn village on Sunday, the director hadn’t booked a second night at the Panorama. So where, between Lampton and Chesterfield, had the crew planned to bed down on Monday night?

23

No one was in the Panorama’s lobby. Bennet rang the bell at reception and waited. His high patience level had taken a holiday. Waiting all night for a suspect to return to a dingy flat, no problem, but why wasn’t Gemma answering her damn bell?

On the counter were a pair of newspapers, the Peak Advertiser and Buxton Advertiser. He idly flicked through one and, in the unimportant middle, found a Lampton story: the death of a 101-year-old man. It said he was a former quarry worker who’d survived an infamous accident at the Mill Close Lead Mine in Darley Dale in the 30s, when a slime tip collapsed and killed people. Died in his bed, surrounded by family. To some, the best way to go. At the end of the article was a note saying the story was covered in greater detail in the blog of a lady called Sandra Gingham. It was a name he recognised for some reason. A shop owner, maybe. Certainly someone with clout in the village.

He rang the bell again, this time almost slapping it flat. To pacify his impatience, he pulled out his mobile and googled the blog.

It was mostly drab personal stuff, given the list of contents, but he found PDF copies of every Lampton monthly newsletter going back seven years, one a month, every Saturday. Way back, he’d seen the newsletters pinned up in shops but hadn’t really cared for what basically amounted to gossip. Now, he accessed random publications.

Each one’s format was news followed by games such as a wordsearch and quiz, and finishing with minutes from a village meeting. The newsletters were not a captivating read. A councillor and deputy chairman of the Peak District Local Access Forum had gotten in hot water for not declaring hospitality from a contractor. A buried treasure competition at a fete had become a mockery when the organisers couldn’t remember where they put the prize. Wider

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