‘Careful!’ Jeremy warned sharply. ‘You’re going to injure someone if you don’t watch what you’re doing!’
The lad, wearing only jeans and short-sleeved T-shirt in spite of the chill in the warehouse, muttered something under his breath and continued backing towards the door.
‘Jason Barlow,’ Jeremy said dismissively. ‘He came to my farm manager for a job once, but was given short shrift. Lewis must have been desperate to give him a job.’
Jason Barlow. The name sounded vaguely familiar to me, though I couldn’t for the life of my think why. It was only as we were driving home that it came to me where I’d heard it before, and even then I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t imagining things.
The minute I’d filled Mum in on what had happened with regard to the items we’d sold, I went up to my room, switched on my laptop, and pulled up my notes on Brian Jennings’ trial. And as I scanned quickly through them, I realized I’d been right.
Jason Barlow. A Jason Barlow had been one of the witnesses who’d claimed to have seen Brian Jennings hanging about outside Dawn’s flat on the night of the fire. And now here he was, working for Lewis Crighton.
Sixteen
Really the whole of the next day – Wednesday – is a blur to me. I went through the motions, but my thoughts were spinning around and around. Everything kept coming back to Lewis Crighton and my suspicion that he was a cold-blooded killer.
He’d been having an affair with Dawn, I felt sure, just as he was having one with Sarah, and for some reason he’d wanted rid of her, not just an end to their relationship, but something far more permanent. But it couldn’t be, as I’d first thought, simply that he was afraid she’d spill the beans about their affair – that had already been common knowledge. Mention had been made at Compton Players of the trouble that Dawn had caused between Lewis and Bella, his wife. There had to be more to it than that, perhaps some kind of shady goings on at Compton Properties: tax evasion, false accounting, offshore bank accounts. Certainly Lewis wasn’t short of a penny or two, and the property business had been very flat these last few years.
Had Dawn wanted the affair to continue when Lewis wanted it to end, and threatened him with what she knew? Had he set the fire – or got someone else to do it – and when that didn’t work, arranged for her to be mown down by an unidentified vehicle? Whatever he’d been hiding, it must have been something pretty big to go to such lengths. Or, then again, perhaps not – just something that seemed very important to him.
And now Alice was missing. She hardly seemed to me to be the sort of girl to play hookey from work and jet off to the sun, as Lewis had suggested, and I felt very sure that her disappearance was actually connected to her decision to talk to me about what she knew. It could be, of course, that she’d been so frightened that she’d gone to ground of her own volition – I certainly hoped it was that. I’d never forgive myself if something dreadful had happened to her; I wouldn’t be able to help feeling it was my fault for asking questions and, perhaps, stirring her conscience. But whatever the reason for her disappearance, it pointed once again to something big – something Lewis was determined to keep hidden.
‘You’re very quiet today, Sally,’ Mum said, but I simply made the excuse that I was tired. No way was I going to worry her by telling her the turn my investigations had taken.
Josh telephoned me in the evening, and I didn’t tell him either. It wasn’t a long call – he and his friend had landed up in a B & B somewhere along the Cotswold Way, and dinner was going to be served shortly. He was tired, footsore, and in need of a bath, he said, but he was enjoying himself, and there was a cold beer waiting for him downstairs. I didn’t mention that I was going to Dorset tomorrow – time enough to tell him when I saw him at the weekend. Perhaps by then I would have some answers. For now I absolutely did not want to face his disapproval of what I was doing.
To be honest, I was beginning to wonder just what I’d got myself into, but until I could gather enough evidence to take to the police, I couldn’t see that I could give up.
But I was going to be very careful indeed. I didn’t want to end up another victim.
Rachel arrived to pick me up as soon as she’d taken the children to school. She loaded Grace Burridge’s address into the satnav, and we set off.
To begin with the journey was far from pleasant. Thick fog hung in the valleys, making driving slow and difficult, and Rachel’s incessant chatter was wearing on my nerves. I wished she’d be quiet and concentrate on what she was doing, and I really didn’t feel like talking myself – I was too strung up at the prospect of having to talk to Dawn’s mother and try to elicit what information I could without upsetting her unduly.