A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [117]
Dan came home after the pubs had shut. Fifi tried to apologize and ask him if he’d got something to eat, but he ignored her, stripped off his clothes and went to bed.
He was asleep within seconds, but because he’d got into bed without washing, smelling strongly of drink and cigarettes, and never even asked how her arm was without its plaster, she got angry all over again.
In the morning Dan got up at his usual time and left without a word, or even a cup of tea. As it was Saturday, she had wanted to know if he was working all day or coming back at noon, but he left so quickly she didn’t get a chance to ask.
It wasn’t until about eleven that morning that she thought gain about Stan and the man in the red Jaguar. Last night, long before Dan came home, she’d decided it wasn’t a good idea to tell him any of it. Setting aside that he’d be cross she’d gone to Stan’s depot, he wasn’t likely to believe that the man she saw driving past was the same man she’d seen with John Bolton going into the Muckles’. He’d think she was becoming obsessive again and it might lead to a row.
But she knew she was neither obsessive nor imagining what she’d seen. That man in the Jaguar was definitely the same man she’d seen before. Maybe he wasn’t Stan’s boss, but he had some connection with the council yard or he wouldn’t have been going in there. She felt it was her duty to go to the police with this, and she would go now and do the shopping for the weekend on the way back.
‘Thank you for coming to us with this, Mrs Reynolds,’ PC Tomkins said as he showed her out of an interview room at the police station. ‘We’ll look into it.’
Fifi was disappointed that Detective Inspector Roper hadn’t been available for her to talk to. Tomkins had been nice, far nicer than Roper who could be curt, and he was young, no more than thirty, and quite attractive too. But to her disappointment he seemed to know very little about the case. She’d spilled out that she went to the council yard because she wanted to help Stan, and carefully repeated the conversation she’d had with the men there. She explained about seeing the man in the red Jaguar turning in there, and how her memory was jogged about where she’d seen him before when she saw John Bolton. But the young policeman had looked at her in the same faintly bemused way her father used to when she was making an excuse for why she was late home.
Maybe she’d talked too much? She did go on a bit about what a kind, good man Stan was, and how furtive the men at the depot had been. And even as she was explaining it all, she felt it all sounded weaker than it did in her head. Without any hard facts like the registration number of the red Jaguar, she supposed Tomkins couldn’t really be blamed for thinking she was a bit hysterical, with an overactive imagination.
She had also been forced to admit that she’d only known Stan a few months, and Tomkins raised one eyebrow in a way that suggested he didn’t think a few months was long enough to make a judgment about anyone’s character. As she left she could imagine him laughing with his colleagues about nosy people who justified themselves by trying to be amateur sleuths.
On the way home she got some shopping, including a half-shoulder of lamb for Sunday dinner. Roast lamb was Dan’s favourite meal, and even she couldn’t mess that up. She was still very embarrassed about the stink of the fish pie, it was the first thing she’d noticed when she woke up. It was a wonder Miss Diamond hadn’t complained.
As she got to the corner of Dale Street, Yvette came out of the shop with some shopping in her arms and smiled at Fifi.
‘Ah! Ze plaster, they take it off,’ she remarked. ‘’Ow does it feel to use your right hand again?’
‘Strange. I keep forgetting to use it,’ Fifi said, grinning and wiggling her fingers. ‘I’m going back to work on Monday. It will be nice to get back to normal.’
As they walked down the street together Fifi asked her if she knew about Stan.
Yvette nodded. ‘I