Proof of Life by Steven Suttie

Author:Steven Suttie [Suttie, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-05-18T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Palladium is one of Llandudno’s best-known bars. Part of the Wetherspoons chain of cheap and cheerful gastro-pubs, this particular one is extremely unusual in that it started out as a theatre.

Built in the 1920’s, The Palladium was the number one entertainment venue in the tiny sea-side resort, presenting shows which featured the biggest stars of the day, the best known regular was Gracie Fields. But as time went on, the magic of live theatre slowly but surely gave way to the excitement of cinema, then television, followed by home video players, and eventually satellite TV.

Struggling to make ends meet during the 1970’s, the theatre converted into a dual-purpose entertainment venue. During the daytime, The Palladium introduced a bingo-hall on the ground floor, using the space that the stalls had previously occupied, but retained the upper seating circles, which were used for cinema screenings in the evenings.

But in 1999, the tired, worn-out looking building closed its doors to its bingo and cinema fans for the last time and was sold to JD Wetherspoon. Two years later, the beautiful Baroque style building opened its doors once again, following a major refurbishment and modernisation into a pub. Typically of Wetherspoons, they were keen to preserve as much of the building’s heritage as possible. Many visitors are amazed to see that most of the original features remain, including the seating circles up above their heads.

It was this fascination into the building’s history which had first aroused the attention of The Palladium’s manager. Philip Pollard had been ordering food at the bar, when he’d struck up a conversation with the bar-tender.

The young man behind the bar didn’t know too much about the building’s history, but promised to send his manager across to speak to the bloke who’d been asking all the questions.

The manager, Lee Travis, wasn’t impressed. He had two staff off sick, a late delivery, and he didn’t know much about the building’s history anyway. But, customer service training kicked in and he did a quick Google search, before heading across to speak to the geeky bloke, who was sitting with a young lad, who he’d automatically assumed was his son.

They talked for several minutes and Lee admitted that he wasn’t as knowledgeable about The Palladium as he ought to be.

Since the news had broke on Wednesday tea-time, Lee had been considering that the missing teacher was the same man that had been asking questions and the pupil was the kid that he’d assumed was his son. Now that DCI Miller had made a direct plea for information in the Llandudno area, he knew 100% that his instincts had been correct.

Miller was on the phone to Lee, quizzing him about the encounter.

“How did he seem, was he calm, nervous?”

“He seemed perfectly fine. Calm, relaxed, he said that he’d fallen in love with the building, said he’d never been in a pub like it before.”

“And what about the lad?”

“Yeah, fine, like I say, I just thought they were father and son. The young

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