I try to pay for the drinks, but Jack won’t let me. He orders a couple of packets of crisps as well, and I open them, my stomach rumbling. ‘Do you know anything else about Clive? Or Deirdre?’ I ask.
‘I’m afraid not. Before that I always thought he was all right,’ says Stuart. ‘He’d come in from time to time, have a drink by himself. I didn’t take him for a drug-dealer, but you just never know what goes on behind closed doors, do you?’ He blows air out of his mouth. It makes a whistling noise. ‘His mother, Deirdre, seemed like a sweet old thing. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Can’t see why anybody would want her dead.’
Jack sips his pint thoughtfully while I take the opportunity to shove a crisp into my mouth. ‘Do you think it’s weird that a woman killed them?’
Stuart shrugs. ‘Women kill too – although it was particularly violent. A gun. I don’t know.’
‘But it’s quite unusual for a woman to break into someone’s home and shoot two random people, isn’t it?’ he presses.
‘Unless it wasn’t random,’ says Stuart, his eyebrows wriggling up and down as though they have a life of their own. ‘But I’ve never met this Heather Underwood,’ he adds, wiping away non-existent stains on the bar with the same cloth he used to clean his glass. ‘She never came in here, although her husband has a couple of times.’
‘Adam?’ I ask, surprised. I would have thought his local would be The Horseshoe in the high street. It’s much nearer to where they live.
He nods, his hands making large, circular movements as he sweeps the cloth back and forth along themahogany. Can’t the man stay still for two seconds? ‘Yep. Nice bloke. Keeps himself to himself. Actually,’ he pauses mid-swipe, ‘I’ve seen him talking to Clive.’
I’m so shocked I almost choke on my crisps. ‘What? When?’
His caterpillar eyebrows knit together as he remembers. ‘A while back now. Probably a month ago. Before I barred Clive anyway. Yes, they met up a few times and they always sat over there.’ He points to a table in the far corner, by a fireplace. ‘It looked a bit hush-hush, to be honest.’ He taps his nose. ‘A few times I wondered what they were concocting. But I recognized Adam because he used to go to the shooting range, where I’m a member.’
‘Do you recall anything else?’ asks Jack, when it’s obvious I’m unable to speak. I’m reeling. Adam hasn’t once mentioned any connection to the Wilsons. In fact, I remember him categorically denying any prior knowledge of them.
‘No. Sorry. I only saw them together a few times. Adam never came in again. And then not long after that I caught Clive trying to deal drugs and, well, that was the end of that.’ He lifts his shoulders into a half-hearted shrug.
‘And how long ago was all this?’
He frowns, remembering. ‘The drugs thing happened a week or so before he died, so … yes, before that.’
I push my business card towards him, asking him to call me if he remembers anything else. Then Jack and I take our drinks and crisps and go to sit at a quiet table.
Adam knew Clive. Does that mean Heather did too? And, if so, what were they involved in?
We’re walking up Park Street towards the newsroom when I see it. The headline jumps out at me from the stand outside the newsagent’s. TRAGIC SISTER’S EX REVEALS SEASIDE SHOOTER’S VIOLENT PAST. The bloodyDaily News. Again.
Jack, who has only just noticed I’ve stopped, retraces his steps to join me. He’s eating a Brie baguette from a paper bag. ‘Shit,’ he says, through a mouthful of food, his eyes scanning the article over my shoulder.
‘I was friends with Heather when this happened. It’s not as bad as it sounds.’
It had been the night we’d gone back to the fair to find Flora. It wasn’t long before she went missing. We’d bumped into Dylan on the Waltzers and he said Flora had already left. But on the way home we found her slumped in the field, absolutely off her head on God knew what. Looking back now she was experiencing a bad trip. She must have taken some kind of hallucinogenic. But in 1994 we were just kids and knew nothing about drugs. We’d managed to help her home and avoid Margot finding out, mainly because Leo had come to the rescue, helping us put Flora to bed. I’d stayed over that night and we’d taken it in turns to watch Flora, to make sure she didn’t choke on vomit or do anything stupid. As far as I’m aware, Margot never had a clue, but when Dylan turned up the next evening to see Flora, Heather went absolutely ballistic, striking him with her riding crop – although I wasn’t there, she told me about it later. And I didn’t blame her.
It was only a few days afterwards that Flora went missing for good.
And all these years later I’m still not convinced that Dylan had had nothing to do with it. He had an alibi in his mum’s boyfriend, apparently, but that doesn’t mean anything. His alibi could have been lying too.
I’ve often wondered if maybe Dylan accidentally gave her a drug overdose, then had help in covering it up; maybe he thought he could convince everyone she’d simply run away. Until it was obvious that she hadn’t: no money had left her account, her passport was still at home and none of her clothes or belongings had been taken. And we all knew that Flora wouldn’t have left her family. She was close to them.
I’ve tried to hunt down Dylan Bird since this all happened but I couldn’t turn up an address for him. ‘How did fucking Harriet Hill find him?’ I spit, stabbing at the paper with my finger. ‘Shit, Ted’s going to go mental. He’s still pissed off that they got the Sheila story.’
Jack swallows his sandwich. ‘Yes, but we’ve got this drugs thing. That’s good. TheNewsdon’t have that. And you’ve got the interview with Heather’s uncle later.’
I groan, knowing that won’t be enough for Ted.
‘And they printed the Margot exclusive today. Nobody else has got that either. Jess,’ he places a hand on my shoulder, ‘don’t sweat it.’
‘She must have bloody good contacts. Better than me.’
There’s nothing Jack can say to that. Harriet Hill not only works for a more successful newspaper but it’s a daily and has a wider circulation. She’s been there for years and probably has hundreds of contacts in all the right places. Whereas I – a recently disgraced national news reporter – am still finding my way.
Jack takes my arm and leads me along the street. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘It won’t be that bad.’
