Chapter 1
The drop in temperature inside his cab was probably his imagination working overtime in response to the sudden snowfall but he reached over to tweak up the heating all the same.
‘You warm enough back there?’ he called over his shoulder to his passenger.
‘Yes, thank you,’ she replied.
Miss Elizabeth Dudley, whom he was chauffeuring from Reading to Durham.
Her voice matched the rest of her: ladylike, cultured, honeyed.
She was probably the most beautiful fare he’d had in the back of his cab, and that was saying something as he’d picked up a lot of actresses from theatres in the West End.
His eyes flicked up to the rear-view mirror to see her looking out of the window to her side, weighing up this sudden change in weather.
Then her mobile phone claimed her attention: no daft ringtone, just a classic brrr-brrr.
She pulled it out of her bag, answered it.
‘Hi,’ she said. Even with just that short word, the recipient of it must have felt she really wanted to speak to them, Vincent mused.
He thought she looked like an Elizabeth.
His mum had been an Elizabeth, and his gran, and so he was predisposed to the name being synonymous with lovely women.
She leaned forward to ask him: ‘Excuse me, how far are we away from Topston?’
‘About two hours, with holiday traffic,’ Vincent answered.
He didn’t say, and the weather, because he presumed this was just a rogue flurry or the weathermen would have said otherwise.
Metcheck had given the forecast as cloudy, rain changing to sleet mid-afternoon, and a constant one centigrade temperature, though on his dashboard it was showing as minus six outside.
It wouldn’t hold them up, he was sure of it, just a temporary pocket of cold front.
He hoped it wouldn’t, anyway, for he had to drive back in it as soon as he’d dropped her off on the outskirts of Durham.
Topston Manor, one of those piles that made footballers’ houses in Alderley Edge look like gate lodges.
His old mum, ever the pragmatist, would have looked at the pictures of it and said, ‘How much would the window-cleaning bill be for that every month?’ God bless her, wherever she was.
Looking down at him, no doubt, still worrying about him, still loving him.
‘About two hours,’ Elizabeth repeated down the phone.
There was a lull while whoever was on the other end of the phone spoke again.
‘Well, it is—’ Elizabeth attempted to answer but it seems she was interrupted. Another long lull.
‘I know you told me to come up before but I couldn’t. I had things I needed to do . . . I know it’s important I . . . yes, I understand that . . . Gregory, please let me speak, I—’
‘Gregory’ wasn’t letting her get a word in. Vincent gathered he wasn’t a happy bunny. He visualised someone that made Darth Vader look like the Dalai Lama.
Vincent’s foot pressed gently on the brake. The snowflakes were getting fatter and faster and they’d already started to settle on the road. He turned on the blower because the windscreen was misting up and reducing visibility.
‘Gregory, can you just listen to me for a moment, what’s the weather like there because here the snow is really bad . . . Oh, you don’t have any?’
’Well, that was good, thought Vincent, eavesdropping. Just a localised storm, in that case. It would make its presence known and then melt quickly away, with any luck.
‘Yes, I’m sure we’ll be there well before seven . . . but I can’t help the weather can— Gregory . . . ? Hello, are you still there?’
Gregory clearly wasn’t. Elizabeth rang him back but it went to answerphone and she was forced to leave a message.
‘Hi, Gregory, it’s me. I’m not sure if we got cut off or you’d finished saying what you had to. I’ll keep you posted on where we are. See you soon . . . Bye.’
Vincent slowed the car down even further. The wiper blades were operating at full pelt and the snowflakes were as big as pennies. The cars in front of him all had iced roofs and had it gone suddenly darker or was he getting snow-blind?
‘I’m supposed to be at a party at seven,’ said Elizabeth, her words riding on a long drawn-out sigh.
Vincent’s eyes snatched up the time on the dashboard clock: five to three. ‘I’m sure you will be,’ he replied. He wondered if at any point in the conversation Shouty Gregory had told her to be careful and get there when she could – and safely.