Cold Blood Jane Heafield (the little red hen ebook TXT) 📖

12

The sandwich shop was a new version of itself, with a new name – Jenny’s – and a new proprietor. The fresh look was just an update of the original, still designed to appeal to a city slicker’s sense of rural England. Tied-back flowery curtains and a red carpet and wooden tables draped with gingham cloths and paintings on the walls showing craggy peaks and valleys. Soft music oozed from a speaker in a high corner. The menus were in chalk. Every table had a brochure displaying things to do in the local area and a little saucer bearing slices of Lampton rock. Meat and pasties and cheeses were arranged behind the glass counter, with their names in archaic script on little flags. One cheese was so grey Liam thought it should have a little toy astronaut on it. Signs everywhere promoted a local jam that was apparently ‘world-renowned’, probably meaning that a tourist from overseas once bought a jar and said it didn’t taste like shit. He’d eaten here one time only, if memory served.

As he entered, he waited for someone to recognise him. Or all of them, turning their heads as if he was a cowboy entering a rowdy bar. No one batted an eyelid. Of the ten or so patrons, he was sure he recognised all but two of them. He clocked a lady at a table near the back, certain that she had lived on Lorraine’s street: a retired school headmistress from Wales, if he remembered correctly. Near her was a beekeeper who’d been stung half to death but still loved his ‘little babies’. There was a middle-aged man he was sure had cracked a water pipe digging up his garden and caused strife because the water board had had to shut the whole street’s supply off for a while. And the young kid helping behind the counter – one of his old neighbours’ nephews, fresh out of school and with aspirations of being a racing driver. So much for that. Bennet was surprised he’d learned so much about this place and its people and had to convince himself it was less about the ‘what might have been’ and more about his detective’s brain.

The new proprietor – Jenny of Jenny’s by her badge – was fat, in her late twenties, and very tanned. Her bark-like skin would have turned heads even on a beach, never mind a community of grey and green. Way back, this sandwich shop had been run by an old couple who’d been here as long as anyone. Maybe they’d made enough money to buy a place somewhere with decent wifi. Maybe the Reaper had called their ticket numbers.

The only spare table was next to a pair of unknown faces whose demeanour pegged them as tourists. Or was it aliens? The locals had a derogatory nickname for visitors, but he couldn’t recall it. The pair were a little giddy, a demeanour more suited to Disneyland than a little Peak District village. The sour looks were reserved for them. He booked the empty table by leaving his coat on the chair and went to the counter. And told himself to chill out. The failed phone call to Lorraine, the whole reason he was here, had flared up the itchy tension again, and he was venting frustration with sour thoughts about the locals.

In front of him was a guy in oily coveralls who was waiting for Sandwich Jenny to wrap four baguettes in foil. Liam cocked an ear to some of the conversation around him, seeking a titbit about the film crew Lorraine had allied with. Nothing doing, although it was hard to net anything other than the giddy newbies discussing walking trails. But his interest piqued when he heard the guy in coveralls speak.

‘Didn’t my dad tell you to use cake domes on the cakes?’

The cakes on a shelf were uncovered. Sandwich Jenny looked quite horrified as she blurted an explanation about a delayed delivery. Coveralls Man shook his head. Jenny tried to lighten the mood, or change the subject, by asking if the young man’s father was okay this morning.

In a mirror at the back, Bennet saw the young man’s face. Under the left eye was a large mole, which had puckered the skin around it and caused the lower lid to droop. Otherwise, a pretty handsome chap. Bennet said, ‘Did you find your cat?’

The young man turned. ‘You what? Me?’

‘You lost your cat. And you thought he was in someone’s car.’

Puzzlement creased the young man’s face. Bennet smiled. ‘You were looking in cars for a cat. Or so you said.’

That did it: instant realisation. ‘You’re the detective man. You had a wife here.’

‘That’s me, although she wasn’t my wife. You’re Lucas Turner. You were about ten, right?’ Joe’s age. And, like Joe, motherless at that stage, albeit to cancer a couple of years before.

‘Yeah. You thought I was trying to steal a car.’

Indeed he had been. Lucas Turner had been a known local tearaway back then, but he was also the son of a local councillor hotshot, so no one dared do anything about it. Given the cake-dome lark Bennet had just witnessed, that hadn’t changed. Bennet had spotted him trying car-door handles and warned him. As the kid had been walking away, he’d called Bennet a tosspot. It would have been nice to have a little chat about that old event, but… chill, Liam, chill.

‘So, given the outfit, you’re still into cars. Where do you work?’

‘Showroom up the road. I run the workshop. So what you doing back here? Business?’

‘Pleasure. That old girlfriend of mine and some friends came up to film a documentary about a crime way back. I was hoping to find them.’

‘Yeah, the missing person? I was ten when she went. She was my friend. You’re reopening the case?’

‘I’m not here about the missing girl. That’s a Derbyshire police thing. I’m South Yorkshire. Any clues where the