Strange Affair

“Absolutely,” said Templeton.

“And do give my best to everyone at the station, and my condolences to Alan Banks.”

“Of course.”

Templeton watched her walk away. Her legs weren’t bad at all. If only she could trim down that waistline a bit she might be worth a crack, husband or no. He swatted a fly away from his half-eaten prawn sandwich and it buzzed him a few times before zigzagging off into the trees. Time to head back to Eastvale, he thought, and see if anything new had turned up.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Late Monday afternoon the rain came down again, out of nowhere, splashing against the windscreen of Dave Brooke’s Citroën as he drove A

“Pretty, isn’t it?” said DI Brooke, as if reading her mind.

A

“It’s a piece of history,” said Brooke. “Enjoy it while you can.

In a year or so it’ll probably be all new tower blocks or an entertainment complex.”

“You sound as if you’d be sorry to see it go.”

“Maybe I would. Here we are.” He pulled up at the curb and they looked at number forty-six. The front door, A

Alf Seaton, a retired ships’ carpenter, had not only seen Wesley Hughes and Daryl Gooch drive away in the Mondeo, but he had also seen it arrive in the early hours of Sunday morning, and this was what interested A

Alf Seaton was expecting them, and A

“Miserable day, isn’t it?” he said, in an unmistakable Cockney accent. Well, A

A

“I do my best,” he said. “Just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you have to be slovenly, does it? That’s what my mother always used to say.”

“Are you married?”

“Fran died a couple of years ago. Cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No reason for you to be, love. Life goes on.” He looked around the room. “We had nearly fifty happy years, me and Fran. Moved here in 1954, our first home. Only one, as it turned out. Course, I was just a young lad then, still wet behind the ears. And things have changed a lot. Not all for the best, either.”

“I’m sure not,” said A

“Still, you won’t be wanting to hear an old man’s reminiscences, will you?” he said, winking at A

“That’s why we’re here, Mr. Seaton,” said Brooke.

“Alf, please.”

Alf was a name you didn’t hear much these days, A

“Alf, then.”

“I’m not sure I can tell you anything I didn’t already tell the uniformed bloke.”

“Let’s start with what you were doing.”

“Doing? I was sitting here in this very armchair reading. I don’t sleep very well, so I’ve taken to getting up, making myself a cup of tea and settling down for a good read. Beats lying there thinking about all your problems the way you do at that time of night.”

“Yes, it does,” said A

“Heard it first. I mean, we do get a bit of traffic down here throughout the night, but not that much. It’s not a main road, or even the quickest way to one. And as you can see, it doesn’t have a great deal of natural charm. Anyway, at three on a Sunday morning it does tend to be quiet apart from the odd group of kids stumbling home from a party.”

“Do you remember the exact time?” A

Alf Seaton glanced at the solid, ancient clock on the mantelpiece. “Ten past three,” he said. “I remember looking. Anyway, first I heard it, then I saw the lights. It parked just across the street there. Then another car pulled up behind it.”

“And you saw the driver?”

“Of the first car? Yes. Quite clearly. There’s a streetlight and my eyesight’s still pretty good for distances.”

“What can you tell us about him?” A

“I was a bit nervous, I suppose,” said Seaton. “I mean, there’s been quite a lot of crime in the neighborhood and when you’re old and frail in your health like I am, you do worry a bit, don’t you? Twenty years ago I’d have given anyone a good run for his money, armed or no, but these days…”

“I understand,” said A

“I wasn’t that scared. I like to know what’s going on in my street. Anyway, I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, so I turned the light off. I’m glad I did because I saw him look over at the house for a moment and pause, as if he was trying to decide whether there was anyone watching him. He seemed to look right at me, but he must have decided there wasn’t.”

“What did he look like?”

“He was a big fellow, hard-looking, as if he lifted weights. He was wearing a dark-colored track suit, the sort with a white stripe down the arm and the outside leg. His hair was a bit long, tied in a ponytail at the back like a right poofter. Black, it was, and shiny, as if he’d sloshed axle grease on it. And he had a heavy gold chain around his neck.”

It sounded like a better description of the man whom Roger Cropley had seen in the back of the Mondeo at Watford Gap, and whom the neighbor had noticed on Je

“That’s when I saw him get in the other car.”

“Can you remember anything more about the second car?”

“No, except it was lighter than the first one, maybe cream or silver, something like that. There wasn’t really enough light to show up the color properly, everything was a sort of monochrome, but it was a bit more… I don’t really know cars… but it looked maybe more expensive, more flashy.”