In the Still of the Night

She shook her head, but he went to look out of the high window at the back of the long sitting room which ran through the whole ground floor of the Edwardian house. It was obvious to Sean that this had once been two rooms, but at some stage in the past the wall between the rooms had been removed. Long ago, judging by the décor, which was old-fashioned, in Sean’s eyes.

He stared down at the dusk-filled garden. Lawn- and shrub-filled, with a couple of apple trees, it was surrouned by a ten-foot-high brick wall without a gate in it. They would never get over that.

‘OK,’ Sean said. ‘Then we’ll have to go through the front. Brace yourself. We must go now, before there’s a whole crowd of them. Put your coat back on and we’ll go.’

Annie was in no state to move fast enough to satisfy him, but she was limply obedient. Harriet got her coat back on her, they turned out the fire and the lights, and then, with Sean on one side and Harriet on the other, Annie was rushed out of her front door and down the path, with a barrage of questions fired at her by Jamie Bellew, while his photographer’s flashbulbs exploded, blinding her.

They had almost reached the car when several other reporters drove up and began harrying them.

Annie felt like someone in a nightmare; hands reached to grab her, pull at her, faces loomed towards her, eyes stared, raised voices deafened her. She heard but couldn’t even think about what she was asked.

‘How do you feel about Derek Fenn’s murder? Is it true that he was naked when they found him?’

‘Were you with him last night, Annie? Were you there when he was killed? Do you know who killed him?’

‘There is a rumour that he was a closet gay … could it be true, Annie?’

‘You weren’t on the set today, were you? And neither was Derek – were the two of you together? There’s a rumour that you were having an affair with him. Is it true?’

‘You’ve known Derek for years, haven’t you, Annie? How intimate were you? Is there any truth in these whispers … that you had his child when you were still at school?’

She moved through it all like a sleepwalker, looking at none of the reporters, answering none of their questions.

Sean pushed her into the back of his car, Harriet climbed in with her, and Sean ran round to get behind the wheel, bodily throwing out a photographer who was already half into the car at the front, aiming his lense straight into Annie’s white face with those deep, dark holes for eyes.

Sean slammed the door and locked the car, started the engine. On all sides the press bayed, hammering on windows, shouting more questions, taking more pictures.

Annie was too dazed even to hide her face. She just sat there in total shock. Harriet looked anxiously at her. What effect was all this going to have on her? The whole series depended on Annie; they couldn’t afford to have her off for any length of time or the series would grind to a halt.

Only as they drove round the corner of the road with the press running like lemmings to their cars to follow, did she think to ask Sean, ‘Where are we going to take her?’

‘My place,’ said Sean. ‘If we take her to your flat they’ll soon find her again – they all know where you live. They don’t know where I live yet, I only moved there a couple of weeks ago and, even better, it’s an isolated spot, for London. I don’t have many neighbours.’

Harriet was curious. He’d never mentioned having a new flat; she had thought him very happy with his old place. ‘Where on earth have you moved to?’

‘Wait and see!’

He drove round another corner, turned down a narrow alley and out into a side-road, then took another sharp left turn. By then they had lost the posse of cars on their tail.

It was ten minutes before Harriet realised they were heading into London’s dockland, along the ancient route once known as Ratcliffe Highway, skimming the north bank of the River Thames above the warren of warehouses and tenement buildings where the poorest denizens of London’s sewer streets had lived for generations, usually the newest immigrants, arriving penniless and desperate for somewhere to live. Each new wave of arrivals took the place of those who had moved on and out into better areas.

Since the Second World War, though, the London docks themselves had withered and died; no ships moored in the port, warehouses were abandoned, empty and decaying. The latest immigrants came by air, but still found their way here, to the slums of London.

But developers had moved in over the past few years. The area was changing. Sean’s new flat was on the very top floor of an old warehouse right on the river edge – workmen were still busy converting the rest of it into offices and shops but Sean had managed to acquire the penthouse flat for a song because he knew the developer, he told Harriet.

‘When I was still in the force, I caught his daughter selling drugs. She was more sinned against than sinning, a rather lonely, sad little girl whose mother had died when she was fourteen. Her Dad was always too busy to have time for her. He stuck her in an expensive private school and forgot about her. She met a smooth-talking bastard who seduced her and then used her to sell his drugs at parties.’

Annie stirred, suddenly tuning in to what he was saying, and winced. ‘Poor kid … men can be vile, can’t they?’

She was thinking of Roger Keats and the way he had ruined her life, and Sean knew it, looking at her in his driving mirror and seeing the misery in her face.

‘Some men can be,’ he grimly agreed. ‘Don’t tar us all with the same brush, Annie.’

A smile flickered over her mouth and her eyes turned dreamy. Sean was learning to recognise her expressions – she’s thinking of him now, he thought, his teeth meeting. She always looks like that when she thinks of him.

‘What happened to this little girl?’ Harriet asked, more interested in the story he was telling.

Sean shrugged. ‘I managed to persuade her to testify against her lover. When the case came to court she was put on probation. I’d made a deal with her and her father. She agreed to go to a clinic and get help, be weaned off her drugs. Of course, threats were made by the rat who’d been running her. He might be in prison but he had friends outside and she’d be sorry, that kind of thing – but I made it clear to him that if she was ever so much as touched I’d make it my business to see he didn’t live to boast about it.’ Sean smiled drily. ‘He took one look at my expression, and he believed me.’