out of the car park. Strictly speaking, of course, it wasn’t Crystal Holroyd that Jackson was following out of the car park, it was the silver BMW that was slinking slowly out behind her.
Initially, he had suspected Crystal Holroyd of paranoia as the claim she had made over her mint tea had seemed a tad dramatic (‘I’m being followed’), but, lo and behold, it turned out that she was right.
Their little three-car convoy snaked its way out of town and along the A174, Jackson bringing up the rear. He was good at discreet surveillance – he should be, he’d done enough of it in his time. He had taken a photograph of the BMW’s number plate, another application to the DVLA.
Ahead, Jackson could see the Evoque indicating right. He had put High Haven into his GPS so he was pretty sure this was Crystal heading for home. The silver BMW had obviously escorted her as far as it wanted to, or needed to, and now sailed on past the turning with Jackson following it.
Was it a private detective, like himself, behind those blacked-out windows? A private detective who had just witnessed his quarry having a clandestine meeting with a strange man in a café who was now following him. Had they been photographed together? It wouldn’t look good if, despite her doubt, it turned out that it was the suspicious husband who was having her followed. That photo could well have been a message from him – a threat that he would go after custody of his child, for example. Or perhaps he was the kind who decided to punish an errant wife by killing the kids. Jackson had dealt with one of those once – a guy had driven his two-door hatchback into a river with his two little girls strapped in the back. Even thinking about it now years later made him feel sick.
And no matter that it was entirely innocent, had he inadvertently made himself look like the man Crystal Holroyd was having an affair with? Or – and this was a complicated thought for the little grey cells to take on board – had Crystal Holroyd herself made Jackson look like the man she was having an affair with? Why would she do that? In order to dangle a big fat red herring in front of someone? He was over-thinking it, wasn’t he?
A couple of miles further along and they hit roadworks being policed by temporary traffic lights. The BMW roared through on amber, Jackson got stuck on (an unnecessarily long) red. Conceding that the pursuit was over, he did a U-turn when the lights changed and headed back. He checked his watch – still a couple of hours to go before his rendezvous with Ewan. Plenty of time.
As he neared the turn-off for High Haven again, he caught sight of the Evoque, this time pulling out on to the main road. It was being driven fast, very fast, as if there were a getaway driver at the wheel rather than a woman who defined herself as a housewife and a mother. The Evoque was not a car Jackson would have chosen himself. It was designed to be a woman’s car, albeit a well-off woman. Still, he admitted reluctantly, it had pretty good technical and performance specs. Some of the models – this one, apparently – could do 0 to 60 in just under seven seconds. You had to give it credit for that, and besides, a man driving a mid-range Toyota wasn’t really in a position to judge.
Where was Crystal Holroyd going in such a hurry? Had she pretended to go back along the road to High Haven in order to shake off the silver BMW? Or to shake off a mid-range Toyota? But that would make no sense at all. The woman was a puzzle all right, he thought. She was already almost out of sight when he put his foot on the accelerator and set off in pursuit of her. The little grey cells were taken by surprise and had to run in an attempt to keep up.
Transylvanian Families
Crystal settled Candy in front of Peppa Pig when they got back home. There was a TV in the kitchen, so she could keep an eye on her from the conservatory where she was smoking an urgent cigarette. Not that Candy was about to go anywhere, Peppa was like heroin to her. Candy was still in disguise as Snow White, but Crystal had kicked off