He gave me a long, considering stare, running his thumb along his jaw in the unconscious gesture I’d already become familiar with. “She once told me that it wasn’t hard to work out who the mole was if you looked at the horoscopes. She said there weren’t that many people connected with Northerners who had the right combination of features in their charts. If you excluded people who
“Did she mention anybody’s name to you?”
He shook his head. “Not then. She said she didn’t seem to have much choice about passing me other people’s secrets but that she wasn’t going to ruin somebody when she had no evidence except her own instinct. But then later …” His voice tailed off.
“What happened, Freddie?” I asked urgently.
“Turpin was in make-up one day and somebody said something about one of the stories in the paper and was it true he was going to get rid of the caterers because they were the moles. Turpin said he wasn’t convinced that would solve the problem. I turned round and he was staring at me. I thought maybe he suspected me. So I went round to Dorothea’s house and told her. I said she’d probably be glad if Turpin did find out, because then she’d be off the hook and wouldn’t have to break her precious client confidences any more.”
“She wasn’t though, was she?” I said gently.
He shook his head and cleared his throat. “No. She said she wouldn’t let Turpin destroy my career. She said she was as certain as she could be that he was the storyline mole and she was going to confront him.”
“She was going to expose him?” I couldn’t believe Freddie was only revealing this now.
“No, she wasn’t like that. I told you, she was obsessed with trying to do her best for me, supposedly to make up for all the bad years. No, she said she’d do a deal with Turpin. If he stopped hunting the mole, she’d keep quiet about her suspicions of him.”
“But she didn’t have any evidence apart from an astrological chart,” I protested.
“She said that if she was right, there had to be evidence. All it needed was for someone to look in the right place and Turpin would realize that once she’d pointed the finger, he’d be in trouble. So he’d have to back off and leave me alone. Except of course she wasn’t going to come out and say it was me, not in so many words. She was just going to tell him that she was acting on behalf of the mole.”
“When was this?” I asked, trying to keep my voice nonchalant.
Freddie shrugged. “A couple, three weeks ago? She told me afterwards he’d agreed to the deal. That he’d seen the sense of what she was saying. You don’t think that had anything to do with why she was killed, do you?”
“You don’t?” I asked incredulously.
“I told you, it was weeks ago.”
I couldn’t get my head round his naiveté. Then I realized he wasn’t so much naive as self-obsessed. “There’s a lot at stake,” I pointed out. “You know yourself you’d never work in TV again if I told NPTV what you’ve been doing. And there are a lot of people involved with Northerners who have a lot more to lose than you do. If somebody thought Dorothea was a threat …”
Freddie stared at the floor. “It wasn’t like she was blackmailing him. She was too straight for that.”
“She let you blackmail her,” I pointed out.
“That was different. That was guilt.”
“Looks like it killed her, Freddie.”
I got up and put a hand on his arm. He pulled away. “Don’t touch me! It’s meaningless to you. You never knew my mother.”
There was nothing more to say. I’d got what I came for and Freddie Littlewood was determined to need nobody’s sympathy for the death of a mother he’d barely come to know. I walked back to the car, glad I wasn’t living inside his skin.
I’d barely closed the door when my moby rang. “Hello?”
“Hey, Kate, I’m out!” Dennis’s voice was elated.
“Free and clear?” I could hardly believe it.
“Police bail pending results from the lab. Ruth says you played a blinder! Where are you? Can I buy you some bubbly?”
If anyone deserved champagne, it was the long-suffering Debbie. But female solidarity only stretches so far, and I needed Dennis more than she did. I was glad I hadn’t done as Ruth suggested and submitted a bill, because tonight I needed payment in kind. “Never mind the bubbly,” I said. “I need a favor. Where are you?”
“I’m in the lobby bar at the Ramada,” he announced. “And I’ve already got the bottle in front of me.”
“Take it easy. I’ll be there in half an hour.” I needed to make a
If you walk out of Strangeways Prison up towards town, the Ramada Hotel is probably the first civilized place to buy a drink. It’s certainly the first where you can buy a decent bottle of champagne. Following the IRA bomb, its façade reminded me of those mechanical bingo cards you get on seaside sideshow stalls where you pull a shutter across the illuminated number after the caller shouts it out. So many of the Ramada windows were boarded up, it looked like they’d won the china tea service. I found Dennis on a bar stool, a bottle of Dom Perignon in front of him. I wondered how many “Under a Pound” customers it had taken to pay for that.
He jumped off the stool when he saw me, pulling me into a hug with one arm and handing me a glass of champagne with the other. “My favorite woman!” he crowed, toasting me with the drink he retrieved from the bar.
“Shame we’re both spoken for,” I said, clinking my crystal against his.
“Thanks for sorting it,” he said, more serious now.
“I knew it wasn’t down to you.”
“Thanks. This favor … we need a bit of privacy?”
I gestured towards a vacant table over in the corner. “That’ll do.” I led the way while Dennis followed, a muscular arm embracing the ice bucket where the remains of the champagne lurked. Once we were both settled, I outlined my plan.
“We know where he lives?” Dennis asked.
“There’s only one in the phone book. Out the far side of Bolton. Lostock.”
He nodded. “Sounds like the right area.”
“Why? What’s it like?”
“It’s where Bolton folk go when they’ve done what passes for making it. More money than imagination.”
“That makes sense. I looked it up on the A-Z. There’s only houses on one side of the road. The other side’s got a golf course.”
“You reckon he’ll be home?”
I finished my champagne. “Only one way to find out.” I pointed to his mobile.
“Too early for that,” Dennis said dismissively. Then he outlined his plan.
An hour later, I was lying on my stomach in a snowdrift. I never knew feet could be that cold and still work. The only way I could tell my nose was running was when the drips splashed on the snow in front of me. In spite of wearing every warm and waterproof garment I possessed, I was cold enough to sink the Titanic. This was our second stakeout position. The front of the house had proved useless for Dennis’s purposes and now we were lying inside the fence surrounding an old people’s home, staring down at the back garden of our target. “Is it time yet?” I whimpered pathetically.
Dennis was angled along the top of the drift, a pair of lightweight black rubber binoculars pressed to his eyes. “Looks like we got lucky,” he said.
“Do tell me how.”
“He’s not bothered to pull the curtains in the kitchen. I’ve got a direct line of sight to the keypad that controls the burglar alarm. If he sets that when he goes out, I’ll be able to see what number he taps in.”
“Does that mean we’re going to do it now?” I said plaintively.
“You go back round the front. I’ll give you five minutes before I make the call. Soon as he leaves, you shoot up the drive and start working on the front-door lock. I’ll get to you fast as I can.” He turned and waved a dismissive hand at me. “On your bike, then. And remember, we’re dressed for the dark, not the snow. Keep in the shadows.”