Visiting Lilly by Toni Allen

Author:Toni Allen [Allen, Toni]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Booktrope
Published: 2014-09-25T05:00:00+00:00

19

Having forced himself to go to bed and leave the laptop and all of its interesting information alone, Talbot stared up at the ceiling. He wasn’t in the habit of lying to Bailey, but going over what had happened with Hayward would have been exhausting. Living it had been exhausting. Perhaps he should call Dorothy Hayward and ask how she’d dealt with Frankie’s tendency to self-harm. It wasn’t in Talbot’s nature to deliberately hurt himself, and he tried to imagine being in Hayward’s shoes. The closest he’d got to it of late was the feeling of sheer desperation he’d experienced after Claire had left, and the bottle of whisky he’d downed in less than half an hour. His head had ached for days afterwards, and his breath had stunk, adding to his feeling of wretchedness. That was self-loathing. That was torment. To experience that day in, day out, would be beyond human endurance.

His own spiral of torment started a little after five past nine in the morning when the Dambusters theme erupted from his old mobile.

‘Hey, Jake, Bailey’s put it around that you’re on the sick.’

No ‘how are you?’ from Yates, more an attitude of having pulled rank by saying they worked together, so he’d be the best man to put the rumour to bed.

‘Yeah, need some down time.’ Keep it simple, no detail.

‘Wow.’ Yates paused, and Talbot’s suspicious mind assumed Trudy was listening in. ‘Bailey reckons you were taking the Hayward case too personally, started adding two and two together and making five.’

Talbot doubted Bailey would say that, but played along. ‘Yeah, we had words, so I decided to back out and take some rest.’ Ouch, that hurt.

‘Probably for the best.’ Yates paused again, then in a matey tone added, ‘Well, you get your rest, eh. We’ll catch up in a week or so, go for a beer, or grab a bite to eat, do the Christmas thing.’

‘Sure, that’ll be great.’ Well, fuck you too! Talbot clenched his fist, convinced he could feel the vibe of Yates turning around and saying smugly to Trudy, ‘Told you so.’

In such situations it was always best to focus the mind, so he settled down to a morning of exploring the laptop and its secret files. From the piece of paper Bailey had given him, it looked like there were only two main files, Frankie and Lilly, but once inside there were folders within folders, hiding sub folders, until eventually it descended to subterranean depths. Bloody hell, it would take months to read all of this. There was one vital piece of information he wanted to start with, and after half an hour and three fags, he found what he was hunting for: a character profile of Keith McKenzie. He knew there would be one somewhere.

Mostly it was a police report taken from interviews with Frankie and Keith’s parents, but there was also a section written up by Weissman from having spoken with Frankie. He skipped through the visual description and concentrated on the man inside, jotting down notes as he went.

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