Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [89]
Victoria had made a good job closing both doors before she left. Goodhew pressed his hand against one of them, testing how tightly it fitted, and realized that opening it silently would be difficult. He dug the tips of his fingers into the join and pressed gently, then harder. It creaked slightly as the doors parted by quarter of an inch, and just as Bryn was dragging the curtains half shut.
Goodhew put his eye close to the opening. The only illumination came from the streetlamp outside, still drizzling just about enough light into the room to leave Bryn O’Brien bathed in anaemia. Bryn was too busy frowning down into the street beyond to sense he was being observed.
He buckled his belt, brushed down the front of his shirt, then stepped into the dark interior of the flat.
Goodhew didn’t dare move, just listened as Bryn moved slowly through the sitting room, feeling his way from door frame to chair, and from chair to wall. It was slow but uneventful until he reached the landing. A stumble. A clatter.
‘Oh, fuck. What the hell is that?’
Bryn must have kicked something, for wood cracked as an object bounced on the stairs. He ran down after it, then the street door opened and slammed shut.
Goodhew scrambled from the wardrobe and staggered to the window as fast as his numb legs would carry him. He was just in time to see Bryn stride out of sight, but there was no way of telling where he was heading. Goodhew sighed in disappointment, but what did he expect? Bryn wasn’t going to park outside, was he?
Goodhew used his torch again to light his way across the flat, aware of the risk that someone outside might see the light dancing on the walls.
The narrow beam caught something shiny on the landing. He knelt down beside it, directing the torchlight down the stairs. Bryn had tripped over a side table, then sent it crashing down to the hall below.
And, before it had fallen, it had been home to a small pile of junk mail: brochures for holiday parks, lawnmowers and orthopaedic mattresses, still in their cellophane envelopes. There were four of them altogether, inconspicuous and easily overlooked. But none read ‘L. Spence’; they were each addressed to other people.
The first two names he recognized: ‘V. Nugent’ and ‘J. Moran’. The other two were new to him: ‘Miss H. Sellars’ and ‘W. Thompson-Stark’.
They’d all been carefully opened, cut open with nail scissors by the look of the neat seams.
He rescued the table from the foot of the stairs, leaving it propped up against the landing wall to hide its newly broken leg. He scribbled the four names and addresses on a scrap of paper, replaced the brochures, then left to vanish into the night.
Suddenly he had much to do.
THIRTY-THREE
Victoria scuttled from Lorna’s flat on to the street. She ran, clattering along the pavement as fast as her spiked heels could carry her. Everyone thought she was tough but her brittle coat of bravado had just chipped and shattered.
Yes, she’d played the scene out pretty much as she planned, but Bryn wasn’t the pushover she’d expected him to be. Instead of recoiling at her big finale, he’d become infused with rage, the room had filled with it. She suddenly wondered if she’d been terribly wrong about him. She hadn’t finished their encounter with an arrogant flounce out of the door, instead she’d bolted.
Now she didn’t care if anyone saw her, since the only thing on her mind was fear of being caught. Fear of Bryn.
She clutched the small handbag containing her phone, keys, money and cigarettes, none of which she could afford to lose. She darted through a back alley and was out of sight of Lorna’s flat before the door reopened. Ahead of her was a dark tunnel of unlit back fences and high gates, but at the end she knew she’d find a narrow gap taking her out on to the footpath running alongside the Cam.
She was furious with herself, having