It wasn't really the sort of day when you wanted to be stuck in a haulage yard. Sunlight shone through the windows of the little office, illuminating the computer screens, flashing brightly on the filing cabinets, reflecting in the wet brown residue slowly cooling in Sean Reynolds' plastic cup. He reached out for it, morose, but when he swallowed the final mouthful of his coffee it was cold, and he grimaced. He contemplated making a loud noise of disgust, but didn't think that he would be terribly popular if he did. Not that that was really any reason for keeping quiet.
"What are you doing?" He asked the question to the room's sole other occupant, who was seated at his desk opposite. Chris Tate, founder and co-manager of the company, was typing something on a brand new laptop, which Sean was quite positive was a different one to the similarly new model Chris had been using the week before. He glanced up.
"Working." Apparently - and not surprisingly - the bright sunlight and considerable heat was having no effect on Sean's partner. The easy-going Liverpudlian scowled. Exactly why he had elected to go into business with the world's most dedicated man was quite beyond him. Why couldn't he have chosen a layabout? Admittedly the company would probably have folded long before now, but at least he would have had somebody to talk to. Chris was apparently only capable of normal conversation during one day in every ten, and even then he was as likely to bite heads off as he was to actually talk - at least that was the way that Sean saw it. He wasn't really alone in the opinion either. Those few people who saw a side to Chris Tate beyond the spiteful image he chose to project to the world were few and far between - and even then the nice and thoughtful image they saw instead tended to fluctuate rapidly. Sean Reynolds, by his own admission, was short-tempered. Chris Tate was violently explosive. It made for an interesting business arrangement, at least - albeit one where the partners spent much of their time fighting amongst themselves, and hardly any time at all getting any work done. Not that that seemed to stop the business from booming.
"Are you working on anything in particular?" Sean spoke through clenched teeth, reminding himself for at least the third time that day that there was no sense in letting Chris wind him up. There was a long pause before the eventual answer.
"Looking at some estimates. A few business proposals that Richie has come up with." He was frowning at the screen, clearly still getting used to the idea of a practically paperless company. "Tate Technologies is on the up."
"Of course it is." Sean was never quite sure whether to be jealous of Chris's other business interests, or whether just to take them all with a pinch of salt. Surely if he was that good at managing companies he would have got a lot further by now than he actually had? Privately, Sean was rather looking forward to the chance of a good laugh when this latest venture went sour. "Don't you think you should be doing something that's rather more relevant to this office?"
"Such as?" The expressive eyes, today fixed in a favourite expression of inflated superiority, regarded him over the top of the small computer screen. "Things are slow at the moment. The paperwork can take care of itself, everything else is on schedule."
"And we have a director's meeting in half an hour. Our first proper meeting since Laura left. Zo‘ has a much bigger stake in the company now, and I don't know that I want to think about--"
"Don't you worry about Zo‘." As ever, Chris's voice and stance shone with confidence. "She won't do anything to rock the boat. She hasn't got it in her. She'll listen to us, and she'll do what I want her to; just like she always does."
"Yeah, sure." Chris seemed to have an unshakeable belief in his ability to influence his sister's thinking, but in Sean's experience that belief was somewhat unfounded. Certainly Chris did have a way with Zo‘, and she had been known to allow herself to be persuaded against her better judgement on one or two occasions - but she had much more of a mind of her own than Chris ever seemed inclined to credit her with, and was increasingly unwilling to sit back and let her brother run things without her. Something had changed during the months of Chris's captivity, and Sean had seen it come over Zo‘ with the detached air of the outsider. Perhaps Chris didn't see it, or didn't want to. Either way, Sean had the distinct feeling that a Zo‘ with an increased stake in Tate Haulage was a Zo‘ to be taken very seriously indeed. Chris, however, rarely seemed to take anything seriously; especially when Zo‘ was involved. Nothing would convince him that he was less than infallible.
"Maybe we should knock off early. Keep the meeting short and call it a day." Sean still could not help the longing looks at the world beyond the office windows. It was Angie's day off today, and she would be sitting out in the sun-drenched garden, enjoying herself in the peace and quiet. He wanted to be with her, to share an hour or two with his wife before their daughter came home from school. It still seemed strange to see Ollie coming home, and knowing that Marc wasn't. It was still hard to accept that he was spending his days working now, instead of enjoying his first few weeks at the Sixth Form.
"This is an important meeting, Sean." There was an edge of disapproval to that measured voice; the suggestion that Sean was a shirker, and that Chris did not appreciate such an attitude. "What's wrong? Finding it hard to concentrate?" Sean glared, but did not rise to the bait. It wouldn't get him very far, after all.
"I'd have thought that you'd want to be home to meet Joseph when he gets back from school." It was a clever card to play, and inwardly he congratulated himself for remembering it. Chris frowned.
"He has a nanny." He said it as though nothing else mattered, which surprised Sean momentarily. Chris thought the world of his son - but then again, he thought the world of his business as well. Perhaps it was hard to choose between the two. Maybe it would be nice to be that dedicated... But then again, very likely it would not.
"Yeah. Course he does." He sighed extravagantly, and toyed with the papers on his desk. So much paperwork. Admittedly their new receptionist was very much better organised that Kelly Glover had ever been, but that didn't stop the forms and files from mounting up every so often. Official slips that needed signing; health and safety leaflets that needed distributing amongst the staff - all things that he had treated lightly in the past, but couldn't afford to these days. Not after the accident. Good intentions didn't make any of it less boring though, which was why he was now more in the mood for conversation, no matter how one sided.
"Doing anything tonight?"
"What?" Chris glanced up at him again, obviously on the brink of an explosion of some kind. "Sean, I have no desire to share my private life with you. If you can't find anything to do, go and help the drivers. Perhaps they can show you how to type your reports up properly. In the meantime, I'm busy." He smirked at the glower he received in reply. "Something wrong? Don't tell me there's a problem in the Reynolds household? And I thought domestic life was always so smooth and uneventful for you." This time Sean's expression went rather beyond a mere glower, and Chris's smile became a little broader. In a tiny village like Emmerdale, where everybody seemed to know everything about everybody else, problems such as those experienced by the Reynolds family became public knowledge very quickly. Chris knew even more than most about the goings-on within the turbulent little family, for he had watched at close hand as Sean had been wrung more than once through the emotional grinder. He had even been supportive once or twice - downright helpful on more than one occasion, which Sean actually found rather disconcerting. The problem was that the supportive, understanding Chris didn't show himself nearly as often as the infuriating, devious version; and the two personalities seemed able to switch places at the drop of a hat.
"Go back to your typing, Chris." As a rejoinder it was woefully insubstantial, and earned Sean yet another self-satisfied little grin from his business partner. By the glitter in the other man's eyes, it looked as though the sarcastic tongue was being readied for another swipe, but the sudden sound of the office door being pulled open made Chris forget whatever he had been about to say. Sean wondered if he should be grateful, but the determined look on the face of Zo‘ Tate made him wonder if he might have preferred to grapple with snide insults for a while longer, rather than immerse himself in a meeting that was apt to get nasty. For some reason Chris and Zo‘ seemed unable to discuss business for long without reaching a stage when both of them seemed about to explode. Sean couldn't help wondering what it must have been like in their house when they were both growing up. It would probably have put his own problems, with a wayward daughter and a quick-tempered wife, to shame. Their mother must have been a saint.
"Right." Zo‘ was leaning purposefully against the director's table before Sean and Chris had even reached it. There was a sharp, majority shareholder's glint in her eyes that Sean Reynolds for one was sure they were all going to have to get used to. "Let's get down to business shall we?" Her two colleagues exchanged a slightly apprehensive look that for a brief moment united them, like children in school faced with an overbearing teacher. Sean almost smiled, and for a second so did Chris.
"I was thinking--" Reynolds began, taking his seat moments before Zo‘ did the same thing. She shot him a sharp glance that told him, without words, that her business was going to be the first item discussed. Chris raised an eyebrow, his own expression telling the world that he was going to enjoy taking his little sister down a peg or two. Clearly Zo‘ had other ideas, and Sean almost groaned aloud. Somehow he got the feeling that after this little encounter they were all going to be in serious need of some major recreation.
Charity Dingle got home early, after a shopping trip made rather more interesting by her increasing good fortunes. Her money worries were almost over these days. Eric Pollard was still rather less than generous of course, and some of her clients still tried to avoid paying the full fee when it came to the moment of truth - but she was still doing very well for herself. Falling in with Chris Tate had been the greatest bit of luck in her short life, at least as far as she could see. For the first time she had found a man who genuinely seemed to care for her - or acted like he did at least - and had the money to match the manners. She could practically name her price, and often as not do little enough to earn it. More than once now she had been called upon simply to go out to dinner, or to sit in the living room talking. There was expensive wine and brandy, good food, and a huge house that she could swan around in, pretending that she owned the place. She even got a chauffeur-driven car to take her to the house in the first place - if a 4x4 driven by one of her Uncle Zac's drinking mates really counted as a chauffeur-driven car. Not quite in the same league as Lady Tara Thornfield perhaps - but then Lady Tara Thornfield didn't exactly fall into the same category as Charity Dingle. It would be difficult to say which of the two women was the more likely to be relieved by that - but Charity rather felt that she might lay claim to the title. All that she had seen of Tara so far had been at a distance, poking her nose into things and acting like some cut-price queen. She looked down on the inhabitants of the village, acted as though she could hardly bear the sight of them, and then complained when none of them wanted anything to do with her. If that was what it took to get a real chauffeur-driven car, Charity was happy sticking to Terry Woods and the 4x4. At least it was better than her uncle's bashed about van.
The Dingle house was deserted, which was unusual for that time of day. Lisa might be doing anything - looking for work for her fledgling home-decorating business perhaps. Cain... well Cain could be just about anywhere, but was most probably still sleeping off the night before. He might be in Leeds, he might be round at a friends house - no matter how impossible it might be to believe that a man like Cain could have any friends - or he might be sprawled under a hedge somewhere, still clinging to his last can of beer. Charity didn't care. Her cousin Cain was a bully, who had never made any secret of the fact that he fancied her, and wanted her for himself. Perhaps he thought that her job as a prostitute made her easy pickings, or perhaps he was just as objectionable with all of the women that he fancied. Happily, Charity had not had much occasion to witness his pick-up technique. She felt sorry for anybody who might happen to be at the wrong end of it though. Cain was hardly any less violent towards women than he was towards men, and coward though he might be, he was certainly still nonetheless a violent man. Charity wasn't entirely sure whether or not she was scared of him, but she certainly did her level best to stay out of his way. With a bit of luck he would get the message eventually, although she doubted it. And if he ever decided to do something about her relationship with Chris... She shook her head as she climbed out of her little red sports car, slamming the door shut with enough force to suggest that she was imagining Cain's head caught against the jamb. He couldn't interfere there. Not until she had decided quite how she felt about Chris, anyway; and decided where she wanted to take the relationship next.
"Anyone home?" The door was unlocked, which didn't necessarily mean to say that the house wasn't empty. For someone who had so much experience of taking advantage of other people's lax security, Zac seemed disturbingly capable of forgetting to lock his own front door. Maybe he thought that living next door to a police officer made him immune to crime. Charity smiled. She doubted it. Zac's opinions of the policing capabilities of their next door neighbour were not difficult to see. Not that Sergeant Reynolds had done much to change his opinion. Charity had heard all kinds of stories since moving to Emmerdale, and a number of them seemed to involve the local police being incapable of spotting major crime. It was as though criminals became invisible as soon as they moved into the area, or as if their criminal intentions suddenly became impossible to spot. That probably explained how Cain himself was still walking around a free man.
Charity closed the door behind her, ignoring the sprawl of baby toys that displayed the living room's family identity in such crystal-clear terms. Her mind was on a hot bath and a change of clothes, and then maybe a glass of wine before lunch. Zac's home-made wine wasn't exactly in the same league as the expensive stuff she got at Chris's place, but she was willing to bet that it was a whole lot cheaper. She was rather hoping that she would be getting a call from Chris at some point during the day, with one of his usual cursory summonses. Odd to look forward to an appointment with a client, but then most clients weren't good-looking millionaires with wide open wallets.
"Uncle Zac?" She gave it one last try before deciding to lay claim to the bathroom. After all, it wouldn't be the first time that she had run herself a nice bath, only to be forced out at the last minute by her uncle, returning cold and wet from a poaching trip, or staggering in from the pig pen covered in mud. He seemed to have a strange ability to slip over in the mud. Charity couldn't remember Butch ever falling over like that with the pigs, but then she hadn't known him very well. She couldn't remember the last time that she had seen him alive, for that matter. Certainly not at Mandy and Paddy's recent wedding; nor at little Belle's Christening.
"Charity." The voice was friendly, almost welcoming - but it was not her Uncle Zac's. It came from the bottom of the stairs, where a figure sat, hands busy in the rolling of a thick, yellow-grey cigarette. He glanced up at her, and she was treated to an image of a snarling smile, lined with thin lips and taut, discoloured skin. It took her a moment to recognise the face, especially with the new haircut, and the lack of gold embellishments. As a long-haired young man, heavily into body piercings and leather, Tony Simpson had been a bit of a joke in Charity's recent past. He was one of the would-be tough guys who liked to try and run her life, muscling in on her turf and acting as if the city was theirs. Simpson was one of the less threatening ones, who hung around with the hard men in the hope that some of their bravado might rub off. By the looks of him now, barely six months later, some of it finally had. He sported a virtual skinhead cut, the piercings were all gone, and in place of the leather of old he now wore a pinstriped suit. It looked as though it might have been expensive, although to Charity's reasonably practised eye it looked rather more like a cheap knock-off of a high street design, sold at a market stall perhaps, or just fallen from the back of some lorry. Torn from the back of a lorry, more likely, with a little help from some men in balaclavas.
"Tony." Already trying to decide if she had time enough to make it back to her car before he reached her, Charity smiled back at him, hands sunk into her pockets in what looked like a casual gesture, but was really a search for something that might do as a potential weapon. "What brings you here?"
"You." He kept his voice even, but he was watching her with hawk-like eyes. "I had heard you were coming over here for a funeral, but that was months ago."
"My cousin." She looked at the ground, trying to appear suitably downcast. "My uncle was heartbroken. I decided to stay here for a bit, you know - try to help him get on with life again. It hasn't been easy."
"Uh huh. You were planning to come back then." He didn't voice it as a question. Clearly he suspected what the answer was going to be - and was already certain that it was a lie. Charity had no intention of returning to the city she had so recently left. Why would she want to, when life was so much better in Emmerdale - in so very many ways.
"Of course I was planning to come back." She smiled sweetly, one of her favourite smiles for use on her punters. "Why wouldn't I? Business was much better in the city. There just aren't the same job opportunities around here."
"I'll bet." He rose to his feet, reminding her of just how tall he was. "Thing is, Charity, that there are people in the city who don't like to think of you living all the way out here with no one to keep an eye on you, like. It can be pretty rough working your sort of game... if you get my drift."
"I'm okay, Tony." She offered him another smile, less friendly this time, but just as bright and breezy. "Nobody is going to hurt a Dingle. Around here my family is like the Mafia. Everybody knows the Dingle name."
"That's not the only kind of looking after you should be worried about. You know what I'm getting at Charity. People get nervous, especially when they hear that you're living next door to a copper these days. And when people get nervous, they sometimes do some pretty drastic things." The smile faded from Charity's face, to be reborn, in rather more oily fashion, upon the face of her guest. "You do understand?"
"Yes." Her voice dripped with sarcasm, although it was a sarcasm that was tinged with restraint. "I understand. Listen, Tony - how many times do I have to tell you this? I didn't see anything that night. Honestly. I don't know what you think I saw, but--"
"Forget the games, Charity. You were there, and even if you didn't see anything, you know enough to put two and two together. You're not stupid."
"Thanks." She turned away, staring across the living room, with its battered sofa and assorted toys and baby clothes. The last thing that she wanted to do was to leave the first friendly family home she had ever lived in, just for the sake of staying on the good side of a bunch of would-be big time crooks who thought that they owned her. Tony put his hand on her shoulder, the gesture possessive. She felt her skin crawl, but didn't quite dare to pull away.
"Good girl." His voice had turned to syrup, which was always a sign of an approaching proposition. She forced another smile onto her face, and slid gently out of his grip.
"It's getting late. My family will be coming home soon." She said it pointedly, as though it would be better for him to be long gone by then. He hesitated, hand still hovering in mid air, in the process of reaching out once again for her shoulder. He shrugged.
"Okay." Slowly the hand returned to his side. "Fair enough. We'll talk again. Tonight?"
"No." She hesitated, searching for the best excuse. "I'm seeing somebody tonight."
"Business?"
"Er..." She frowned. As far as she knew she wasn't actually seeing anybody tonight - she was just hoping that she might, or that Tony would believe that she was. "Sort of. Perhaps."
"Take care of yourself." He sounded as though he meant it, but she knew that he didn't. Tony Simpson would consider his life to be a whole lot easier if Charity wasn't careful, and if something bad did happen to her. That would suit him just fine.
"I always take care of myself." She was willing him to the door, and, eventually, he began to head there. He hesitated on the threshold, hand stroking her arm.
"I'm sure that you do." This time his smile was so lascivious, so repulsive, that she felt almost physically sick. Instead of slapping him, as she very much wanted to do, she forced out her last and most unconvincing smile of the interview, and carefully manipulated his repugnant form through the doorway. He was beginning to loom, as though preparing to kiss her goodbye, but she slipped back inside the door, and pulled it shut behind her. As an extra precaution she locked the door as well, then hurried away up the stairs. Suddenly she felt that she needed a bath more than ever.
Down below her, Tony Simpson was showing no immediate sign of heading away from the Dingle family home. Instead he was standing in the muddy drive beside the pig pen, dialling a number on his mobile phone. A pig snorted at him, and he dodged aside rather quickly, keeping his balance more by luck than by judgement. His feet squelched in the mud, threatening to flood his expensive leather shoes. They were fine for walking the city streets, but he was beginning to realise that he should probably have changed before embarking on a trip to the countryside, especially in surroundings such as these.
"Hello? Boss?" He spoke loudly into the phone, as though the distance between himself and the man at the other end of the call would somehow make a difference to his audibility. "I've seen her." He listened for a bit, looking up at one of the upstairs windows. Charity had just walked into vision, moving past the glass as she pulled off her jacket. Tony smiled.
"Huh?" He had not been listening as well as he should have been, and had to ask his boss to repeat something. The response came at a painful volume, and he winced. "Yeah, I told her, boss. She's still saying that she doesn't know anything. Maybe..." He trailed off. "Yeah, I know. I'm not going to give up.... Yeah..." He nodded, slowly and thoughtfully, his eyes still on the window above him. Charity had gone from view, but he was still hopeful of another glimpse. After a second the curtains were drawn, firmly and purposefully, and something seemed to draw itself across Tony's mind at the same time. His expression became harder and more certain. "Yeah, I know boss. Don't worry." Once again he nodded, but this time there was nothing slow or thoughtful about it. This time it was a hard nod, with more than a touch of ferocity. "I'm heading back tomorrow night, and I'm bringing her with me." He eyes narrowed, and the same, unpleasant smile he had used on Charity came back onto his face. "Whatever it takes."