Timlin Paint it Black

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-84344-686-6
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 11, 256 Seiten

Reihe: A Nick Sharman Novel

Nick Sharman - at last - is living a life of married bliss with his new partner (and ex-stripper) Dawn. The bad boy has settled down, and the booze and the drugs and the guns are but a happy memory - unlike his ex-wife Laura, now married to respectability. Laura's quite capable of shattering the idyll, but this time it's serious - their fifteen-year-old daughter Judith, the real love of Sharman's life, has gone missing. The police are looking, but have no leads. Laura fears the worst. Sharman still has his own skills. But Laura's call catapults him back into a world he should have left behind. And when he decides to right some wrongs in his own way, domestic bliss becomes a thing of the past - and Sharman, once again, finds himself playing for keeps.

In over twenty years as an author, Mark Timlin has written some thirty novels under many different names, including best selling books as Lee Martin, innumerable short stories, an anthology and numerous articles on diverse subjects for various newspapers and magazines.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Timlin, Mark

Leseproben

Laura came back with my coffee. I drank it and smoked a cigarette. In the time it took me to smoke that one, she lit four and stubbed them out again. I felt sorry for her, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to communicate that, so I just shut up.

When my coffee was done, Todd offered me a lift to the McGann residence. I accepted.

All three of us walked out to the blue Sierra. I told Laura I’d be back soon. Todd told her he’d be in touch if he heard anything, but that she could call him at any time. I thought that was decent of him. He and I got into the motor. He started it and we pulled away leaving Laura standing in the driveway looking like a little girl whose puppy just died. I knew how she felt.

Todd steered the car down some increasingly mean streets until he pulled up outside a semi-detached house in a row of identical semis with that certain air of neglect that tells you they’re council houses where the tenants haven’t taken up the right-to-buy option.

‘Twenty-two,’ he said, nodding in the direction of the most dilapidated house in the street. ‘That’s Maggie’s place.’

The front fence, this side of the square of mud that an optimist might call a front garden, was bowed with the weight of the three young children leaning against it. The front gate was missing, and a rusty tricycle sat on the narrow concrete path that led to the front door.

‘Want me to come in?’ asked Todd.

‘No,’ I replied.

‘Probably best,’ he said. ‘We’ve never been popular in that house. Shall I wait?’

‘No thanks. I’ll find my own way back. It’s not far.’

‘Good luck then.’

‘Cheers,’ I said. ‘I expect we’ll talk again.’

‘Expect so,’ he replied, and I got out of the car and waited as he put it into gear and drove off.

The three kids looked at me and I looked back.

‘You live here?’ I asked.

No response.

I shrugged, and walked through the gap where the gate should have been and up the path, avoiding the tricycle, and on to the porch.

There was no bell, so I knocked hard on the paint-stained translucent square of glass set into the door.

A dog barked somewhere in the house.

I looked back at the kids who had turned and were regarding me steadily, as you might someone who’s just stepped out of an alien spaceship.

I turned round and knocked again. The dog barked once more and I heard a woman call out to it, then a figure appeared behind the glass and the door opened.

The woman who answered my knock was small, barely five foot tall I guessed, and pretty much the same wide. She was about thirty-five with long brown hair, and she wore a tight jumper and jeans that didn’t suit her figure. Her face was bare of make-up and showed signs of recent tears. In one hand she held a cigarette, in the other a chocolate biscuit.

‘Mrs McGann?’ I said.

‘Aye.’

‘My name’s Sharman, Nick Sharman. I’m–’

‘Judith’s daddy,’ she said, and her face split into a grin, which lit it from within, and for a moment I saw the attractive young girl she must once have been. ‘I’ve heard all about you. Come on in.’

She held open the door and I walked into the hall. If I’d expected the interior of the house to match the exterior, I was wrong. It was spotless. And although the carpet may have been a bit thin in parts, it was obviously regularly hoovered.

‘Come on through, we’re in the kitchen,’ she said.

I followed her down the corridor into a fair-sized kitchen which was as clean as the hall. In one corner was a dog basket filled with a pooch who was as fat as his mistress. He looked up at me through the one eye that wasn’t hidden by a greying fringe, growled softly, then decided I wasn’t worth worrying about, closed the eye, yawned and went to sleep. At the huge kitchen table that dominated the centre of the room sat a girl of about fifteen, with a cup of tea in front of her and a chocolate biscuit of her own, which she popped into her mouth as I entered.

‘This is Clare,’ introduced Margaret McGann. ‘One of Paula’s pals. She’s come round to keep me company. This is Mr Sharman, Judith’s daddy.’

‘Nick,’ I said.

‘Nick,’ echoed Paula’s mother. ‘Sit down, will you.’

I did as she said and she sat opposite me. ‘Are you all right, Mrs McGann?’ I asked.

‘Call me Margaret,’ she said.

I nodded. ‘Margaret,’ I said.

‘As well as I can be with what’s happened. When I get hold of Paula I’ll tan her backside, big as she is.’

I turned to Clare. ‘Do you know Judith well?’

She shrugged. ‘Fairly.’

‘Do you know where they are?’

She shook her head, then said, ‘I’d better be off, Mrs McGann, I should be at school as it is. But I was worried about you.’

‘You’re a good girl, Clare,’ said Margaret. ‘Better than my own. Be off with you now, you don’t want to be getting into trouble with the headmaster.’

Clare smiled at her, then me, got up and went through the kitchen door into the back garden and round the side of the house.

‘School,’ said Margaret McGann bitterly. ‘What a waste of time.’

‘I don’t think Judith’s mother would agree with you on that.’

Margaret McGann looked up at me through the fall of her hair. ‘Oh, your Judith’s different. She goes to a good school. The girls round here go to a dump of a comprehensive that’s rotten with asbestos and should have been pulled down years ago. The teachers haven’t got a clue and hardly ever last longer than a term. There’s drugs sold like sweeties, and if the girls get to be sixteen without getting pregnant it’s a miracle.’

And I thought I was cynical.

Margaret McGann offered me a cup of tea from the huge enamel pot that sat on the top of the stove. I accepted gratefully. It was strong and sweet, just the way I like it.

‘So where do you think they are, Margaret?’ I asked, when she placed the thick, white china mug in front of me and accepted a cigarette from my packet. ‘Our daughters.’

‘God knows, Nick,’ she said. ‘If I had a clue I’d tell you. Judith’s always on about her daddy the private detective. She’s got a scrap book full of clippings about you.’

I didn’t know that.

‘I thought it wouldn’t be long before you turned up to try and find her,’ she went on.

‘That’s why I’m here,’ I said. ‘I thought I might be able to help.’

‘You trust the coppers about as much as I do, is that what you mean?’

I pulled a wry face. This woman was no fool. ‘That’s about it,’ I agreed. ‘But I could use some help myself. I don’t really know where to start. Not up here.’

She stubbed out her cigarette in a ‘Glasgow Smiles Better’ ashtray. ‘I don’t know where they are, Nick, as God is my judge. If I did, do you think I’d be sitting here greetin’ into my tea?’

I think she meant crying.

‘I didn’t even know what to tell the police. They must think I’m a shocking mother. Not that they think much of any of us round here. And my Gordon – my husband. If you could call him that. He was always in and out of the station. Drunk. Not that the kids have ever been in trouble. Not up until now that is.’ And her face dissolved into tears again. ‘What kind of mother doesn’t know where her daughter is?’ she said through sobs.

I left my chair, went to where she was sitting, knelt down and put my arms round her shoulders.

‘Exactly the same as Judith’s mother. She’s as much in the dark as you are. She thought Judith might be with me.’

‘In London?’

‘That’s right. My wife’s down there at home now, just in case Judith gets in touch.’

She dried her eyes on the tea towel I handed her and I went and sat back down again.

‘I heard all about your wedding. Judith was excited,’ said Margaret McGann.

‘I know. So was I.’

‘That’s good.’

All this was very nice, but it wasn’t going to get baby a new bonnet.

‘Does Paula have a boyfriend?’ I asked.

‘No one special. She knocks about with the lads from the estate, but she wants someone better. Not that I blame her, mind. If I’d’ve had any sense I would have got someone better myself, and not ended up here bringing up four bairns on my own.’

Then I asked the question that I didn’t want to ask. ‘What about Judith?’

Margaret McGann looked at me and laughed. ‘Lord no. Judith was an innocent, Nick. Compared with my girl anyway. No. She has more sense. She wants a career. To move south and catch a boy with some brains himself. The lot round here are as thick as planks. The ones from the estate the ones from the posh end.’

I had to smile at the way she described Laura and Louis’s neck of the woods.

‘Do you mind if I have a look at Paula’s room?’ I asked.

‘Paula’s and young Maggie’s you mean,’ she said. ‘They share.’

‘Whatever.’

‘Course you can. It’s upstairs. I’ll show you.’

Which she did. It seemed to be a typical teenager’s bedroom. Untidy. With clothes, tapes, magazines and school books everywhere. And posters of current pop stars on the walls.

‘The police have been through the place twice already,’ said Margaret McGann. ‘They found nothing.’

Nor did I.

We went back downstairs and Margaret McGann made me another cup of tea, we smoked two cigarettes each and I left. I walked back past the three kids who were still leaning against the fence, who studied me again like the strange species I...