with Lisa.
âIt must have been awful for you . . . the fire, I mean,â I said, trying to sound suitably sympathetic. âDid you lose everything? All your precious belongings?â It was a pretty crass question, but the sort I thought a nosy stranger might ask. I didnât want to put Lisa on her guard.
âPretty much,â Lisa said shortly, piling Brendaâs plate and cup and saucer together.
âYou know I donât think I could bear to stay here, where it happened, if I were in your shoes,â I went on. âDo you still live upstairs, in the flat?â
âNo, we donât,â Lisa said in the same short tone. âAnd anyway, thereâs no danger of it happening again. Brian Jennings is behind bars, where he belongs.â She looked pointedly at my empty cup. âCan I get you another coffee?â
âNo, Iâm OK thanks.â I didnât want to risk her going off and leaving her young assistant to serve me. âSo you think the police definitely got the right man?â I persisted.
âWell of course they did!â It was almost a snap.
I risked it. âHis sister doesnât think so.â
Lisa snorted. âShe wouldnât, would she?â
âI suppose not . . . but . . .â
âBrian Jennings was obsessed with Dawn,â Lisa said vehemently. âEverybody knew that. The nights we looked out of the window and saw him, just standing there, staring up. If Dawn went out, he followed her. She was frightened to death of him. She reported him to the police, but they never did anything about it.â
âBut itâs what put them on to him, I suppose.â
âI suppose.â
âIt must have been really scary for you, too, before they caught him,â I said. âYou must have wondered . . .â
âWondered what?â Her tone was slightly aggressive now.
âWell . . . it might have been
you
the fire raiser was targeting . . . not Dawn . . .â
âDonât be ridiculous!â Lisa snapped. âWhy would anyone target me?â
âYou didnât think somebody might have had it in for you?â
âIt never crossed my mind. Dawn was the honeypot. When she was around, she was always the one who was the centre of attention.â There was something that might almost have been resentment in Lisaâs voice now.
âBut sheâs not around any more?â I said tentatively.
âNo, sheâs not.â Lisa was whisking away a few odd crumbs from the table where Brenda had been sitting, using an old-fashioned wooden crumb brush and tray.
âWhere is she now, then?â
âI havenât the faintest idea. Weâre not in touch.â Lisa stopped what she was doing and fixed me with a baleful look. âLook, I donât know what your interest in all this is, but itâs pretty morbid. So if thereâs nothing else you want . . .â
âNo, thereâs nothing else.â And nothing else I was going to learn today, either, I thought. Unless I owned up to the real reason I was asking questions, and possibly not then. But I wasnât ready to come clean yet in any case. I wanted to be able to sniff around a bit more first without people clamming up on me.
âIâll get your bill,â Lisa said, fetching the same pad sheâd written out Brendaâs bill on. But instead of waiting for me to get out my purse, she carried the used china into the kitchen beyond the curtain, and it was the little waitress who came to take my money.
I didnât see Lisa again. Iâd upset her, I knew. But it was more than just that. I was left with a vague but persistent feeling that there was something she had not wanted to tell me.
It took me a good ten minutes to walk down the High Street to the town square where Compton Properties had their office, twice as long as if I hadnât been on crutches. But in any case, I wasnât hurrying. I was busy
Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton