Dark Briggate Blues by Chris Nickson

Author:Chris Nickson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780750963107
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2014-11-04T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

By ten on Thursday morning no one had come out of the Jenkins’ house. He poured more tea from the flask and waited.

A pair of women strolled along, pausing for a moment outside the place. One shook her head before they moved on. Odd, he thought.

Markham waited a few more minutes then opened the latch on the gate and walked down the gravel drive to knock on the front door. Nothing. He tried again. No answer.

The grass of the square front garden was neatly trimmed, the rose beds dug and weeded. He peered through the front windows. The curtains were open. Not a stick of furniture inside, just bare floorboards. He darted round to the back of the house. Exactly the same in the living room. Empty.

‘They flitted last night.’

The woman leaned against the fence between the drives, puffing on a cigarette and watching him with amusement. She had a pleasant, plump face with smile lines around her mouth and eyes, an apron tied around her waist.

‘A flit?’ he asked in surprise.

‘After dark. It’s not quite what one expects around here,’ she said with a brief grin. ‘A van came and they put in what they had. Not that they had much,’ she added with pleasure. ‘They’d only been here three days, too.’

‘They were here yesterday,’ he said. It was a pointless remark, more to himself than to her.

‘How do you know?’ She jumped on the remark. ‘Were you watching the house? What’s going on? Are they criminals? I thought he looked a bit shifty. Are you a policeman?’

‘No. Mr Jenkins wanted me to keep an eye on things.’

‘Who’s Mr Jenkins?’ she asked. ‘The landlord?’

‘He’s the husband,’ Markham said.

She shook her head.

‘No. I had her round for a cup of tea. She said they were called Thompson.’

‘I see.’

He saw all too well. He’d been conned. A job to keep him out of the office whilst they hid the counterfeit money. And once they were done they’d pulled down the tent and vanished.

‘Why were you watching her?’ the woman asked. She ground out the cigarette and picked up the butt. ‘Did he think she had a fancy man?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Well,’ she said slowly and glanced over her shoulder. ‘Would you like to come in and have a cup of tea? I’d love to hear about it.’

***

In the office he tried the telephone number on the card. A dead line, of course.

It had taken time and effort to set everything up, to find the couple and make the arrangements. If he dug a little he’d probably discover that Carter owned the house.

If Carter’s plan had worked, Markham would be in Armley jail now, on remand and waiting to be tried. Prima facie evidence; a five-year sentence. No question about it.

Carter was worried. Now Markham needed to make things bite.

He smoked his way through two cigarettes without finding an answer. It was almost noon. By now Freddie Hart would be in the ground, friends and family getting drunk in his memory.

On the way to the post with his tax return he stopped at the secretarial agency.

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