The Red Herring by Sally Spencer

you know.’
    â€˜I told you, I’m not the least bit interested in doing you for serving drinks after time.’
    â€˜There must have been around a dozen customers,’ the landlord admitted. ‘Most of them were regulars.’
    â€˜But the pub had been fuller when she arrived?’
    â€˜That’s right. We’d had a busy evenin’.’
    â€˜How did the redheaded woman and her American friend seem to be getting along?’
    An awkward expression came to the landlord’s face. ‘I . . . er . . . can’t say I really noticed.’
    Paniatowski grinned again. ‘Pull the other leg – it’s got bells on.’
    â€˜Pardon?’
    â€˜You noticed the two cars arrive. You noticed the way the Yank was dressed. You can remember roughly what time the man left. You’re a nosy bugger, Mr Yarwood––’
    â€˜I––’
    â€˜â€“–and there’s absolutely no need to be ashamed of it, because that’s part of your job, just as it’s part of mine.’
    â€˜Yes, I suppose we are both paid to be nosy.’
    â€˜So how
were
they getting on?’
    â€˜The Yank was tryin’ to act normal, but he kept lookin’ a bit like I do when I’ve forgotten my weddin’ anniversary again.’
    â€˜Guilty-looking?’
    â€˜Enough to leave a jury in no doubt.’
    â€˜And what about the woman?’
    â€˜If
he
looked like me, then
she
looked like my missus.’
    â€˜How do you mean?’
    â€˜Hurt – an’ bloody determined that she wasn’t goin’ to be the only one to suffer.’
    â€˜Did the redhead talk to anybody else?’
    â€˜She did, as a matter of that.’
    â€˜Who?’
    â€˜There were these two fellers sittin’ in the corner. One of them was wearin’ a green corduroy jacket, I remember, an’ the other had on a pair of glasses with very heavy frames. She went across an’ had a quick word with them.’
    â€˜So you think she knew them?’
    â€˜I’m sure of it.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜Because they all looked very uncomfortable – as if they’d much rather not have run into one another.’
    â€˜Is there anything else you could tell me about these two men?’ Paniatowski asked.
    â€˜As a matter of fact, there is,’ the landlord told her. ‘I don’t know what the man in the heavy glasses was drivin’, but the one in the green corduroy jacket had an Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire – an’ you don’t see many of them in Lancashire, do you?’
    â€˜No,’ Paniatowski said thoughtfully. ‘No, you don’t.’

Ten
    T he other kids seemed to be totally unaware that anything was wrong, Helen Dunn thought. But then, why
would
they be aware? They had their friends to distract them during the lunch break. So only she – the outsider, the one with so little else to occupy her mind – had noticed that the teachers were not their normal selves. That when they crossed the playground, they kept looking over their shoulders as if expecting an ambush. That when they spoke to each other, it was in the hushed whispers of conspirators. Yes, something had definitely happened – something dramatic – but she had no idea what it could be.
    She walked to the edge of the playground. The Corporation Park lay just the other side of the street, and by raising her hands to the sides of her head, she could restrict her range of vision to the nearest clump of trees and imagine that she was in the country.
    She loved the countryside, though she had had very little personal experience of it. When she’d been growing up, in a succession of camps with military – soulless – playing fields, she had devoured storybooks about children living on farms. As she’d heard the planes take off overhead, she had been listening, in her mind, to the hoot of the owls in places called Foggy Bottom