From The Shadows by Neil White

Author:Neil White
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912973033
Publisher: Hera
Published: 2019-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

Forty-one

Jayne skirted the town centre as she headed for the area regenerated by Dominic Ayes, before she turned into a small maze of speed humps and brick walls covered in spray paint.

Her edginess had lifted as she drove back from Manchester and the city became nothing but a grey blur in her rearview mirror. As she passed moorland hills and the bright gleam of a reservoir, it had felt like she was coming home. Her sanctuary. Highford had appeared in the valley as she went over the brow of a hill, caught by the sun, a world made small by the way the hills surrounded it.

The romance was lost as she rounded an open circle of wasteland next to an electricity substation and came upon three parallel rows of houses, with the first street one-sided, the opposite half too derelict for renovation. The land in front was sparse grassland littered by drinks cans and two open patches of brown grit where bonfires had been lit, with five caravans lined up along a fence on the other side.

There was a shop visible on a street further along, but it was hard to tell whether it was still in business, with the windows hidden by brown metal mesh and the paintwork old and shabby.

A group of men were sitting on the kerb, passing a cigarette along.

Jayne wound her window down. ‘I’m looking for Alison Reed.’

‘Are you the press again?’ one said.

‘Yes, sure,’ Jayne said, figuring that it might get her further than the truth.

‘She likes her face in the paper, that one,’ he said, and pointed further along. ‘The house at the end.’

Jayne thanked him and drove to the end of the street, a wooden fence bringing an end to the roadway. As she parked outside, Jayne noticed graffiti on the wall. Just a tag, the sort of meaningless scrawl favoured by those whose sole ambition was to write the scrawl in as many places as possible.

She stepped out of her car. The men at the end of the road were watching.

The door was opened straight after knocking, by a short woman with dark-hair wearing a large jumper, out of keeping with the season.

‘Alison Reed?’

‘Yes?’ She folded her arms.

‘I’m working for a law firm and I want to ask you a few questions about Dominic Ayres.’

Her eyebrows raised. ‘You his friend or foe?’

‘Foe, probably. Or at least, I will be soon.’

Alison stepped aside. ‘Come on in then.’

The house felt cold when they went inside. The carpet looked threadbare and the cheap sofa had arms that had worn shiny. The fireplace was blocked off by a steel plate.

Alison must have seen her looking. ‘My landlord won’t service the fire, even though I’ve got a carbon monoxide detector that tells me it’s dangerous.’

‘Is your landlord Dominic Ayres?’

‘Who else?’

‘And the newspaper reports said that you’ve campaigned against him.’

‘I had no choice. I’ve got damp in all the bedrooms upstairs and he won’t do anything about it. A lot of the other tenants are the same, but they’re already in hock to him.

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