A Place Of Safety(68)

As she drove out of the gates and turned left towards the road to Causton, everything about her suddenly seemed transformed. The whole world seemed light and airy and free from care. That was the world - carefree.

‘I am carefree,’ said Ann aloud. And she started to sing.

‘Penny Lane’, the song her mother had loved, the song she half remembered from her childhood.

‘ “Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes . . . there beneath the blue suburban skies . . .” ’

And, as the distance between herself and the Old Rectory increased, so did the dizzy feeling of exhilaration. She was cutting herself loose. Floating away from the self-centred, querulous man around whom she had organized her life for so many years and from the huge, crumbling millstone of a house. A source of financial worry for as long as she could remember. To paraphrase a title from Lionel’s huge collection on his counselling bookshelf, this was the first day of the rest of her life.

She covered the last few miles to the outskirts of Causton anticipating her meeting with the estate agents. And wondered how soon they would be able to come and give a valuation. That they would jump at the chance she was sure. A house the same size as hers, though admittedly in much better repair, had been sold at Martyr Bunting the previous week for three hundred thousand pounds.

A roundabout was coming up. Ann started to concentrate on the road ahead. She negotiated her way round the war memorial in the main market square and down Causton High Street past Boots and Woolworths and Minnie’s Pantry. She decided to go there for tea around four o’clock, then there would be no need to have anything at home. She could stay out until almost the minute the police were due to arrive. She hoped it would be the big, burly detective who came after Charlie was killed. She had liked him and not only because he had shown impatience with Lionel’s affectations. Ann had guessed at a man unclouded by sentiment but not without kindness. Solid, self-contained and passionately interested in whatever was going on around him.

She turned left at the town hall, behind which stood the new three-storey car park. This had been built only after two years of the most ferocious opposition. Causton, population twenty-seven thousand and eighty-three souls at the last electoral listing, reckoned it did not want or need a public car park. When it was mooted, Middle England took to the streets with banners and besieged the Causton Echo with abusive or heavily ironical why oh why? correspondence. Sit-ins took place at the municipal offices and when the town planning department bravely organised a public meeting, it ended in a riot. Several people lay down when the diggers came in. It was built anyway, of course, and the moment it was open the council painted double yellow lines all over the town centre and outlying streets so people had no choice but to use it.

At three o’clock on a weekday afternoon, the car park was almost full. Ann drove slowly round the first and second tier but there was not a single empty space. At the third she found one between a Land Rover and a Robin Reliant, miles away from the exit.

Ann didn’t really like using the place except at ground level which had plenty of natural light and people passing just a few feet away. Artificial lights were installed in the rest of the building but often didn’t work. Sometimes this was due to slack maintenance but more often to vandalism

Like any public space with ease of access, lack of supervision and an opportunity for concealment, the car park had attracted those with something to conceal. Only the week before, several men had been caught after holding their very own car boot sale, swapping small bags of dream dust for large bags of used currency. They did not realise a pair of lovers were practically on the floor of a car just a few feet away. The ardent couple, passion spent, memorised the dealer’s number plate before wisely putting, and keeping, their heads down.

Ann had read about this in the paper. As she got out and locked all four doors, recalling the drug handlers’ capture made her feel slightly more confident in the way air passengers will when travelling immediately after a major disaster, aware not only that the odds against a second disaster happening so soon were astronomical but also feeling everyone on the flight deck would be concentrating one thousand and one per cent.

The long space between her and the lift was crammed with cars but apparently empty of human beings. Ann started to walk, looking around as she did so. How ugly concrete was. The bleak grey walls were already stained with running dark seams, like black tear tracks.

She found herself counting the vehicles. Two, three, four . . . On seven - lucky seven - there was a sound behind her. A creak as if someone was opening a door. Ann wheeled round. Nothing. Had someone got out of one of the seemingly empty cars? Were they even now creeping along behind her, keeping pace with her movements? Or drawing level and catching up?