Cover Up by Patricia Hall

Author:Patricia Hall [Patricia Hall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2017-01-16T05:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

After her fruitless visit to the police station, Kate went back to Barnard’s car and stood indecisively beside it. But it did not take long for her to decide that the only place for Barnard or anyone else to contact her with any chance of success was the Lancaster Hotel. She walked back through the city centre, which was still uncannily quiet after the excitements of the last few days, and wondered if there would be another film premiere in the Beatles’ home town if they made another film. Or whether the quartet, who seemed to have settled in the south when they were not globetrotting to concerts around the world, had now effectively left the Mersey and the Merseybeat and the faltering docks behind. Her brief acquaintance with John Lennon at the College of Art had never given her the feeling that he was closely attached to battered old Liverpool, still trying to put itself together again after the war. He’d always seemed to have his eyes on something else entirely. And who could blame him now it looked as though he had achieved it in spades? There would be those who begrudged his success, but she was not one of them.

She took a detour up Matthew Street but the doors of the Cavern were tightly closed, the posters outside beginning to look wind-blown. The underground club where she and so many of her Liverpool friends had sweated so many deafeningly claustrophobic nights away was becoming a blurred memory, effectively cut off from her own new life in London. Those days, she suspected, were over and would not be coming back either for her or for the bands who’d made a success on a bigger stage, however loyal their fans up here might be.

Before she started to climb Brownlow Hill to the hotel, she looked up to where the stark struts of Paddy’s Wigwam were just visible amongst the surrounding buildings along Hope Street and thought of the two priests who had so arrogantly tried to reorganize her life for her. What made them think they held any sway over her after all this time? How dare they interfere! It was not just for the Beatles that Liverpool was over, it was over for her too.

The receptionist glanced up from the register as she walked in.

‘I’ve got a couple of messages for you, Miss O’Donnell,’ she said.

The first was from Harry Barnard, simply saying he was going to the police station to find out what had happened to Tom. The second, from her sister Annie, left at reception a couple of hours later, answered that question in a way that filled Kate with horror: Tom had been taken to Casualty, and she was on her way to the hospital to find out how he was and why he had been rushed there by ambulance.

Kate felt breathless with anxiety. She turned to the receptionist, who was looking at her with concern.

‘You’ve gone white as a sheet,’ she said. ‘Is it bad news, la? Are you all right?’

‘Not really,’ Kate said.

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