Page 44 of First Blood

What he needed right now was one of those nosey neighbours that knew everything about everyone.

He tapped on the door of number 81. No answer but he could hear a radio playing inside.

He tapped again louder and checked his watch. He hadn’t got long before heading off to the morgue for the identification of Luke Fenton.

‘Hold your horses, I’m coming,’ called a shrill woman’s voice. The door was opened by an elderly lady using a walking frame. Her hair was a shock of white which didn’t look as though it had seen a comb in days.

She looked him up and down. ‘Don’t want no windows.’

Dawson knew he could suggest that she ring the station and verify his identity but he suspected she would rather slam the door in his face.

‘I’m not selling windows but could I ask you a question or two Mrs…’

‘I ay giving yer my name. You’ll have my bank account emptied before I’ve got back to my soup.’

Given his current financial situation she probably wasn’t far wrong.

‘I’m trying to find out a bit of information on the young guy from down the road. Luke Fenton from number 81.’

She popped her head out the door as if to remind herself of the occupants of the street.

‘You mean grumpy git?’

Dawson couldn’t help but smile. From what he’d learned the woman was bang on.

‘Yeah, that’s the one. You know him well?’

She shook her head. ‘Never speaks or waves to me in the window. You know when we had all that snow, plenty folks come to see if I needed anything but not him. Never offered anybody anything. Miserable so and so…’

‘Do you know if?…’

‘And his lady friend was just as bad.’

Dawson was realising that sometimes it was best to just keep quiet. He’d been asking the same questions all morning with no result.

‘Always had her head down when she walked past, dragging that little kiddie of hers. Pretty little thing. Don’t know what the mother saw in him, though. I mean, she was no looker herself and that birthmark over her left eye didn’t help. Maybe she was grateful to any man that’d take her on with a kiddy and that splodge on her face.’

Dawson knew he could be politically incorrect at times but this woman couldn’t care less.

‘I thought she’d seen sense. Disappeared for a few months but then the stupid cow came back again.’

Dawson frowned remembering what the boss had said about this guy being into kids. Had the mother known and left him and if so, why the hell had she come back?

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Redland Hall was located two miles out of Stratford-upon-Avon.

‘You do recall Sergeant Greene advising us to stay away?’ Bryant asked.

‘Aww come on, it’d be rude not to take a bit of a peek. I mean it’s not like we’re going in or anything. It’s practically on our way back.’

‘It actually isn’t,’ Bryant said, turning off the main road onto a tree-lined driveway. ‘You know, I never even knew this was here.’

‘You wouldn’t, it’s never properly been open to the public,’ she replied. ‘It was used in the Nineties for some courses and stuff by the previous owners, to inject some cash, but it didn’t work. Owners moved into a small cottage in Evesham and left the property to the National Trust, who inherited it two years ago and don’t know what to do with it.’

She’d been reading about the place since they’d left the station.

‘Bloody hell,’ Bryant said as the building came into view.