A Dish Served Cold Page 4

  “Who was that?” Roger asked as he downed the last of his wine and refilled his glass from the near-empty bottle on the table.

  “Someone called Marilyn,” Karen answered. “Wanted Pam.”

  “Why did you say she was in France?” asked Roger.

  Karen shrugged. “Well, she might be. She might be anywhere.”

  “Well she isn’t, in France anyway,” Roger growled. “She hasn’t got a passport, so she can’t have gone abroad.”

  “Well, wherever she is, good riddance, I say,” Karen said as she tipped the last of the wine into her glass. “You don’t need her, Dad. You’re far better off without her. All you have to do is find someone to do your office work and someone to come in a couple of times a week to clean the house.”

  “That Marilyn woman’s rung before,” Roger grumbled. “I’m getting tired of her ringing.”

  “So, you have to admit that Pam’s left. That’s no big deal. You can say you chucked her out…whatever, you know.” Karen thought for a moment and then asked, “Has she drawn on your bank account? You do have a joint account, don’t you?”

  “Only for the housekeeping.”

  “Well, has she drawn money from it?”

  Roger shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “She may have.” He doubted it with the amount of money she taken from his safe. That much should keep her going for some time, but there was no way he was going to tell Karen how much had gone.

  “If she has, it should be on your statement where she was when she did it. That’ll help you find her…if you really want to. I’d close the account and let her stew in her own juice if it was me.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Roger said, “but I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Might make things difficult if it comes to a divorce.”

  “When it does,” Karen corrected him. “Have you changed the lock on the front door?” she asked suddenly, and when Roger shook his head she went on, “I would. You don’t want her creeping back in and nicking anything else, do you?”

  They finished their wine and Karen said, “Well, I’m off, Dad. Got a date with Malcolm.” She laughed. “Dreadful name, but lovely bloke. Knows what he’s about.” She reached over and gave her father a peck on the cheek. “See you tomorrow. And don’t give Pam another thought, she isn’t worth it. You’re well rid.”

  She roared off on her motor bike to keep her date with Malcolm, and Roger opened another bottle of wine. He was worried, not about Pam’s safety, or even her whereabouts, but he was worried about what she knew about his business. When he’d got home from dealing with Gord, he checked all the documents that he also kept in the safe. As far as he could tell there was nothing missing, but these days there was other stuff which could prove awkward, stuff that Pam had kept on the computer, stuff that he couldn’t access himself. He had changed the combination to the safe so that she couldn’t get into it again, and Karen’s suggestion that he change the lock on the house was a good one. He’d follow that up in the next few days, but it was the computer that worried him. He could do nothing about the computer without someone’s help, and he wasn’t sure he wanted even Karen ferreting around in his business files. Roger could ask her to wipe the hard drive, he supposed, and thus obliterate all the files stored, but there were only three sensitive ones, and it would be a real pain to lose the rest as well. He wasn’t sure whether Pam even realised their significance. All she did was type what he told her and file it where he said. He might destroy everything unnecessarily and he really needed those files if he wasn’t going to lose a lot of money. One contained records of items he’d been asked to acquire and by whom, and though it was coded it wouldn’t be difficult to work it out. Another held his more private financial dealings, many of which would be of great interest to the Inland Revenue. The most important file of all held the details of everyone with whom he had ever done business; and some of those details were valuable in themselves, as insurance policies. The other records stored there were of no real importance.

  When he had finished the second bottle of wine, he dragged himself up to the bedroom and slumped fully dressed across the bed. By the time he awoke in the morning, the sun was high in the sky, and the telephone was shrieking in his ear. He was late at the shop and his special customer had arrived to collect his paintings. Unshaven and un-breakfasted, Roger left the house minutes later...at the double.

  Karen had got up much earlier, despite a late and active night spent with Malcolm. She had had an idea that would put a spoke in her stepmother’s wheel. She would cancel Pam’s debit card at the bank. Report it stolen, so that if Pam tried to use it again it would be swallowed up by the cash machine and she wouldn’t be able to get at any more of Roger’s money. She decided the best way to do this was over the phone. She could impersonate Pam and provided she had the account number there would be no reason for them not to believe her. She spent some time shopping and then went round to her father’s house, passing his shop on the way to be sure he was there. She saw him through the window, talking to a customer, so she rode on over to 12 Cardiff Road and let herself in. It didn’t take her long to find her stepmother’s bank statements neatly filed in her bureau, and she was soon on the phone to the bank.

  “Hallo, this is Pamela Smith here. I want to report that my debit card’s been stolen.”

  The bank clerk the other end took down the details and then said, “Are you at home, Mrs Smith?”

  Karen replied that she was.

  “I’ll call you back in a moment or two. This is just for security, you understand.”

  “Yes, that’s fine,” Karen said, relieved that she had made the call from Pam’s home number. But then it struck her, they might ask a security question.

  It’s usually your mother’s maiden name, Karen thought. What the hell was Pam’s mother’s maiden name? She thought frantically. Have I ever known what it was? Pam’s mother died before she married Dad. Then she remembered that Pam had always laughed because her mother had had a double-barrelled maiden name and thought that Ford was a pretty poor exchange. What on earth was that name? She was still racking her brains when the phone rang again. Even as she picked up the receiver the answer came to her, Porter-Jackson. That was it. Porter-Jackson. It was Pam’s password for the computer, and Karen had discovered it long ago.

  “Mrs Smith?”

  “Yes,” Karen replied.

  “This is the Nat West again.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “We are just checking on the details of the card you’ve lost.”

  “Had stolen,” corrected Karen. “My purse was nicked.”

  “Have you reported this to the police?”

  “Yes, of course,” snapped Karen, wishing that she hadn’t had to go into all this. “Look all I want you to do is to cancel the card, right. So that the bastard who took it can’t get at my money.”

  “Yes, I quite understand, Mrs Smith,” came the voice soothingly from the other end. “We just need to run a security check. Could you just give me your mother’s maiden name?”

  “Porter-Jackson,” replied Karen, without missing a beat.

  The deed was done. The card was stopped, and a replacement promised. But it’ll be sent here to Cardiff Road, Karen thought with glee, so Our Pammy won’t get her hands on it.

  Roger finished seeing his special customer and came home to place the bundle of cash he had received into the safe. Gord would be paid off tomorrow, and perhaps it might be Charleigh who came for the money. She had still not been back to the shop since the night Pam had left and Roger was certain now that Gord had known about them and put a stop to things. It surprised him that the huge man still did business with him, but as they were both making money it was perhaps their greed that kept them in uneasy partnership.

  As Roger let himself in with his latch key, he thought of what Karen had said last night, and agreed. He should indeed change the lock on the front door, and when he had deposited the money in the safe, he looked up locksmiths in the
yellow pages and reached for the phone. As his hand touched the receiver the phone rang and he picked it up.

  “Hallo?”

  “Is that Roger?” asked a woman’s voice.

  “Yes. Who’s that?”

  “Marilyn, Marilyn Ross. I was wondering, is Pam there?”

  “No, she’s not,” Roger replied brusquely. “Pam doesn’t live here anymore.”

  “What…?” began Marilyn, but Roger cut her off.

  “Bloody busybody,” he muttered, and dialled the locksmith’s number.

  Chapter 5

  Living with Sylvia was wonderfully soothing and Pam slept for much of the first few days. It was as if she hadn’t slept for years. Each night she went up to a bedroom whose deep-set windows looked out over an orchard to pasture and woodland beyond. Open countryside was bathed in moonlight so that the trees stood stark and black in the pale light, and shadows gathered in the dark corners of the garden. Wonderfully serene and peaceful, it was a far cry from suburban Bristol, the house in Cardiff Road, with its untidy square of garden backing on to an alley and the house in the next street, all suffused with a dull sodium glow. Gone was the intrusion of the city, the roar of the traffic punctuated by the blast of a horn or the wail of a siren, the clank of a passing train or people shouting when the pubs turned out. Here there was no sound at all. Silence stole in at evening with the coming darkness, settling gently like a comforter over a sleeping child, and Pam slept like that child, feeling safe for the first time for years.

  Each morning Sylvia left for work as head of the history department at Crosshills Comprehensive in Belcaster, leaving Pam to get up when she felt like it and potter round during the day at her own pace. With no one to watch what she did, no one to disapprove or comment, Pam felt a lightness she had never known before. It was as if she had suddenly discarded a huge burden that she hadn’t even realised that she was carrying. She sat and read the paper, she walked into the village, she fed the ducks on the pond, she slept for an hour in the afternoon. Nobody criticised, nobody accused her of wasting time and slowly the tightly coiled spring inside her eased and she began to relax.

  She was still nervous that Roger might be looking for her as he had threatened. She kept her mobile switched off so that she shouldn’t answer the phone to him by mistake; the shrill of Sylvia’s telephone still made her jump, and she never answered that either.

  She was so grateful for her safe haven that Pam soon took over cooking the supper, so that Sylvia had nothing to do but to open a bottle of wine when she came in and they settled down to a quiet evening. Sylvia had not asked questions, she simply waited for Pam to tell her what had happened and why she had come, and gradually over the days Pam did tell her. Bit by bit the story of her disastrous marriage came out, and Sylvia listened in horror to what Pam’s life had become.

  “I can’t think how you came to marry him in the first place!” she cried indignantly.

  Pam sighed. “Nor can I, now,” she agreed. “But at the time, well, when Mum died, there I was. I’d looked after her ever since I left school, remember. I’d never trained for anything, hadn’t any qualifications. I’d certainly never had a boyfriend. I’d never had the chance to get out and meet anyone. Mum couldn’t be left, you know. “ She gave a reluctant laugh at Sylvia’s sceptical expression and went on, “Anyway, when Mum died and I met Roger, it all seemed perfect. He was so kind and attentive. No one had ever paid attention to me in that way before, and he can be very charming when he sets his mind to it.”

  “And he did set his mind to it,” Sylvia remarked.

  Pam sighed ruefully. “Yes. He made me feel special. He took me to places I’d never have dreamed of going, nice restaurants, to a concert in the Colston Hall, even up to London to see a show…Cats. I thought it was wonderful, and well, when he asked me to marry him, I couldn’t believe my luck.”

  “So what went wrong?” prompted Sylvia, leaning forward to top up Pam’s wine glass.

  “What had been wrong all along, though of course I didn’t know it at the time. He married me for the wrong reasons. He didn’t love me, I don’t think he even liked me very much as I look back, but he wanted a housekeeper, someone who would run his home efficiently and look after his daughter, Karen.”

  “Where was her mother?” asked Sylvia, intrigued.

  “Gone,” said Pam. “Left him. He would never discuss it, always said it was too painful and he was trying to put all that behind him.”

  “Why didn’t she take her daughter as well?” wondered Sylvia. “I can’t imagine any mother leaving her child and simply disappearing.”

  “No, I always thought that strange too, but may be it was the only way she could get away from him, and if he treated her like he treated me, maybe she thought it was worth the price. He can be terrifying at times.” Pam looked across at her friend. “He threatened to kill me once.”

  “Kill you!” ejaculated Sylvia. “Did you go to the police?”

  Pam shook her head. “No, it wasn’t worth it. He’d come in drunk after an evening with the boys. I hadn’t saved him any supper. Something like that.”

  “And he threatened to kill you?”

  “He didn’t mean it,” Pam assured her, “though I was scared at the time, I can tell you.”

  “What did you do?” demanded Sylvia. “Why didn’t you walk out there and then? I would have.”

  Pam shook her head. “No, you wouldn’t…at least I suppose you might have because you’re different from me, but to me it wasn’t worth walking out…I’d have had to come back sooner or later and things would have been even worse. No, I locked myself in the office…it’s the third bedroom really…and waited for him to sober up.”

  “Didn’t you tell anyone?” Sylvia was incredulous. “I mean I can see, maybe, why you didn’t go to the police, perhaps, but you should have told someone, a friend?”

  “It’s not that easy you know,” Pam said awkwardly, “admitting you’re frightened of your husband. I didn’t tell anyone, but I’m pretty sure our next door neighbour, Margaret, overheard the row. It was a summer evening and the windows were open. I didn’t realise at the time, but she came round the next morning and asked if I was OK. I said I was, and she said, ‘Are you sure? It all sounded pretty violent last night?’

  “I said that I was fine, but she clearly didn’t believe me and said if I ever needed to talk to anyone not to hesitate to go round. I thanked her but wouldn’t say any more and she went away. I avoided her after that. To be honest, I didn’t trust her not to gossip and the last thing I wanted to do was to discuss my life with Roger.”

  “You’re doing that now,” Sylvia pointed out gently.

  “Yes, I am,” Pam agreed, “but I’m not living it at the same time!” She smiled across at Sylvia. “Anyway, I don’t mind talking to you; you’re not going to discuss me with all your friends…are you?”

  “No, of course I’m not,” Sylvia said. She could see that it was time to change the subject and she poured more wine before telling Pam about a problem parent at school.

  “So when did it start to go wrong,” Sylvia asked on a different evening.

  “Almost as soon as we got home from our honeymoon. It was only a short one as he didn’t want to leave Karen for too long. She was just five then, and she’d already lost one parent. I quite understood, and anyway I was looking forward to having a daughter to love and look after.”

  “But it didn’t work out like that?”

  “No. Roger was very set in his ways and he used to get furious with me if I didn’t do everything exactly as he liked it. If I made any changes to the routine of the house, or the way things were arranged he’d hit the roof and it wasn’t long before he was calling me ‘stupid cow’, ‘silly bitch’ or ‘cretin’.” Pam gave a rueful smile, “Karen soon latched on to that one in particular and when she called me ‘cretin’ he just laughed.”

  “I’d have walked out then,” Sylvia retorted.

  “It was too late,” sighed
Pam. “We were a year or so into our marriage, and I’d no money and nowhere to go.”

  “But surely your mother left you some money?”

  Pam shook her head. “All I had when she died was the house, which, of course, we didn’t need, and my grandmother’s pearls. Roger already had a perfectly good house, so he sold Mum’s and invested the money for me.”

  “So at least you’ve got that.”

  “No I haven’t, or at least I don’t think so. I haven’t dared ask recently, but I’ve never had any dividends or interest, like you get from investments. I think he put the money into his business when it was going through a bad patch.”

  “What is his business?” asked Sylvia

  “He’s got an antiques shop, at least he calls it antiques, I’d call it a second hand store…but not in his hearing of course!” They both laughed at this, but thinking about it afterwards Sylvia thought it was no laughing matter and that something was going to have to be done to sort out Roger and his financial juggling.

  “Do you think he is looking for you?” she asked Pam the next evening.

  Pam shrugged. “I don’t know. He said he’d find me and I’d regret it, but he was angry then. I don’t know if he really cares that I’ve gone. I doubt if he’ll bother. His pride will be hurt of course so he might try to find me, I suppose, to make me go home again, just to prove he can.”

  “Well, he can’t,” Sylvia told her stoutly. “There is absolutely no way you are going back to that monster.”

  Pam smiled ruefully. “No, I know,” she said, “but I do have to get things sorted out, financially, you know. I want a divorce, but the settlement has to give me enough to live on for a bit while I find somewhere to live, get a job, that sort of thing.”

  “Can’t you use your credit card, or draw money from the bank?” suggested Sylvia. “I mean they must still honour your cheques or debit card.”

  “I haven’t got a credit card,” Pam admitted, “and I don’t want to use my debit because it will show on the bank statement where I used it.”