The Overlooker by Fay Sampson Page B

age.’
    â€˜It’ll be lonely for her when he goes. I think she needs someone to look after.’
    There was no else around in the car park. Nick breathed a sigh of relaxation.
    He drove out of the mill entrance on to the valley road. His stomach lurched sharply. There was a blue Honda parked outside under the trees.
    Someone
had
followed them to the mill.
    His mind flew back to their tour of the galleries. He checked again the people he could remember. He had lost sight of the man with the moustache after the water wheel. Who else had there been? That family with the boy and girl? Hardly. The pair of Japanese tourists with cameras flashing? Could there have been someone else prowling through the mill behind them? Someone unnoticed among the display cases and the tall machinery? Who else might have tracked them here and heard them talking about their movements for the rest of the day?
    He must stop scaring himself. How many blue cars were there, for goodness’ sake? This one need not have been anything to do with the car that had followed them down the dale. And even if it had, it could be just another innocent tourist, come by the same road to visit Belldale Mill.
    He watched his mirror carefully as he drove back to town. Only once did he think he caught a glimpse of the blue car following. Then he lost it. It must, after all, have been his imagination.

EIGHT
    M idday dinner was nearly ready when they got back to High Bank. Thelma looked flushed from hurrying back from work to cook for them, but refused Suzie’s help. She set Millie to laying the table.
    Nick retired outside, to sit on the bench in the sunshine. There was a slight haze in the valley below, where once it would have been dark with smoke. Riding above it, Skygill Hill stood clear and bright. Nick’s legs longed to be climbing it. It would be good to shed the worries of the last twenty-four hours and feel only the light burden of a knapsack.
    Had he done the right thing, going to the police? The more he thought about it, the more clearly he realized that they were unlikely to catch the ringleaders of a vice ring straight away – if ever. He was increasingly sure it had not been the plump Mr Harrison who had rung him. The voice had been harder, colder.
    And had he done the right thing by not warning Millie to be on her guard? He stirred the gravel at his feet. He and Suzie had not wanted to frighten her. They would make sure that Millie stayed with them, wherever they went.
    Yet how could he protect his family, if he didn’t know what form the threat might take?
    Almost without intending it, he found he had his phone in his hand. It had begun to exercise a horrid fascination over him. On the way home, there had been two more text alerts. He had ignored them. He knew that he was waiting for it to ring. It was the menace in that voice he dreaded.
    The silver mobile lay in his hand, silent. He could no longer resist the impulse to open it up.
    Yes. Two new text messages. Why was he suddenly reluctant to read them?
    But he must.
    The first was also work related. That could wait until he got back.
    There was no number for the caller on the second. The shock took hold of him as he saw the capital letters.
    BAD MOVE.
    He sat staring down at it. He felt momentarily paralyzed.
    It was true. His worst fear. Whoever had warned him not to approach the police knew that he had. He glanced round in alarm. Was someone watching him, even now? It had seemed so peaceful, sitting here in the autumn sun, on his own. Could anyone know he was here at High Bank, at Thelma’s? And had they been followed to the police station? Or had the information come from inside the police? Whatever the answer, someone knew. Someone whose voice had made him feel it was not an idle threat.
    Should he take his family home now? Drive back south as fast as he could?
    It wouldn’t help. But Inspector Heap had made it very clear that anyone who already knew that much