In At The Deep End by Anabel Donald

Author:Anabel Donald [Donald, Anabel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Chapter Seventeen

We were in my room by five o’clock. Claudia was full of herself: on the way back in the car, she’d wanted to babble, but I’d stopped her. I wanted quiet, to think. I had to decide whether to send her back to London for the night, and I weighed up the advantages of having solitary thinking time against the advantage of a thorough debriefing, extra productivity on Martin Kelly’s notes, and two heads, however inexperienced one of them was, working on the case.

Unasked, silent, she made me a cup of coffee, and that swung it. ‘Claudia, go down to the desk and book yourself a room here. Unless you’d much prefer to drive up to London tonight and back in the morning.’

‘I’ll stay with you. But do I need another room? You’ve got two beds in here.’

‘You need a room. I need peace and quiet.’

‘I don’t like sleeping alone in hotels,’ she said.

‘And I don’t give a tinker’s teacloth what you like. I want another room for you to work in and another telephone line for you to use,’ I said. ‘Go and book one.’

She didn’t argue. She didn’t pout. She went, and came back ten minutes later with a message. ‘It was the ghastly little man on the desk. He chatted me up, and he gave me this. Masses of Japanese in this hotel, have you noticed? But the room next door was free, so I’ve got that, isn’t it excellent?’ I was looking at the message.

3.6.92am

Ring Martin Kely

it said, with a number. It gave me a prickling feeling at the back of my neck. If Kelly came through, his whole fantasy of whatever evil he’d found at Rissington Abbey could be laid out before me, and I could stop looking for corruption in the break buns.

‘He was very apologetic.’

I was reaching for the telephone. ‘Who was?’

‘The Trainee person.’

‘Why?’

‘The message. It was overlooked, he said. Mislaid.’

I looked again at the date, and time. Yesterday morning. ‘Shit,’ I said, and dialled the number. It rang and rang. I let it ring thirty times. Unless he lived in Buckingham Palace, he’d have had more than enough time to get to the phone. Maybe he was out. I grabbed the phone book, flicked through it, dialled the Banbury Courier. A man’s voice answered. ‘Martin Kelly, please.’

‘Sorry,’ said the voice, gravelly and phlegmatic, a Drunken Has-Been. ‘He’s not in today.’

He’d told me Tuesday was his afternoon off.Today was Thursday. Why hadn’t he been in? ‘Is he off work?’

‘Dunno. He’s not in, that’s all. ‘Bye.’

‘Wait! I’ve a home number for him. Could you check it for me?’ I gave him the number, and waited. The Trainee could have garbled that, surely, he cocked up everything else.

‘Confirm that number,’ said the voice.

‘Did he call in sick?’

‘No idea.’

‘His address,’ I said. ‘Give me his address, and I’ll get off the phone.’

‘12 Waterford Avenue,’ he said. ‘It’s in one of the little streets behind the church at the top of the town. Now some of us have work to do.

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