Dead Man's Grip (38 page)

He was, she realized, her only chance.

Pat Lanigan, standing by his car and smoking his cigar, heard an automobile engine fire up, then saw the gates opening. Was the crazy English woman coming out already? She’d only been there five minutes. He glanced at his watch again, double-checking.

It was a positive, he thought, that at least she
was
coming out. Although if she had only lasted in there for five minutes, then for sure it had not gone well. Maybe she’d had some sense knocked into her reckless little head.

Then, to his surprise, instead of seeing the limousine, he saw a Porsche Cayenne, with the silhouette of a woman at the wheel, come at a reckless speed through the gates, then accelerate past him like a bat out of hell.

He turned, clocked the licence plate and watched the tail lights disappear round a bend in the lane. This did not feel good. He glanced down at the display of his phone. There was no text, no missed call. He didn’t like this at all.

He flicked through his stored numbers and dialled the Suffolk County Police duty office, explained who he was and asked them to put an alert out for the Cayenne. He wanted to know where it was headed.

Fernanda Revere braked to a halt at the T-junction by the gas station, pulled a cigarette pack out of her purse, shook out a Marlboro Light and jammed it between her lips. Then she stabbed the cigar lighter, made a left and accelerated down the highway. Everything was a blur in her drunken fury. She overtook a slow-moving cab, her speed increasing: 70… 80… 90. She flashed past a whole line of tail lights, lit her cigarette and tried to replace the lighter, but it fell into the footwell.

She was shaking with rage. The road snaked away into the distance. Steering with one hand, smoke from the cigarette curling into her eyes, she rummaged in her purse and pulled out her diamanté-encrusted Vertu phone, then squinted through the smoke at the display. It was a blur. She brought it closer to her face, scrolled to her brother’s number and hit the dial button.

She overtook a tractor-trailer, still steering with one hand. Had to get away. Just had to get away from the bitch polluting her home. After six rings, it went to voicemail.

‘Where the fuck are you, Ricky?’ she shouted. ‘What the fuck’s going on? The English bitch came to the house. She’s there now. Do you hear me? The bitch who killed Tony is in my house. Why isn’t she dead? I paid you this money, so why isn’t she dead? What’s going on here? You gotta deal with this, Ricky. Call me. Goddamn call me!’

She ended the call and tossed the phone down beside her on the passenger seat. She did not know where she was heading. Just away from the house and into the rushing darkness. The further the better. Lou could get rid of the bitch. She’d go back when Lou phoned her, when he told her the bitch was gone, out of their home, out of their lives.

She overtook another car. The night was hurtling past. Oncoming lights were a brief, blurred flash, then gone.

Tony was gone. Dead. He’d nearly died as a baby. That first year of his life he’d been in hospital on a ventilator for most of the time. Much of it inside a perspex isolation dome. She’d sat there day and night, while Lou had been working or kissing her father’s ass or out on the golf course. Tony’d come through that, but he was always a sickly child, too, a chronic asthmatic. At the age of eight he’d spent the best part of a year bedridden with a lung virus. She’d spoonfed him. Mopped his brow. Got him through it. Nurtured him until slowly he’d grown stronger. By the time he reached his teens he was just like any other kid. Then, last year, he’d fallen for that stupid English girl.

She’d begged Lou to stop him going, but had he? Never. All he’d done was give her a whole bunch of crap about letting kids live their own lives. Maybe some kids would be fine in a foreign land. But Tony had been dependent on her. He needed her. And this proved it.

Three scumbags had taken his life away. Some asshole in a van. Some asshole in a truck. And this drunken bitch who had the nerve to come to their home with her whiny little voice.
I’d just appreciate the opportunity to talk to you and Mrs Revere and explain what happened.

Yeah, well, I’ll tell you what happened, Mrs Whining Bitch. You got drunk and you killed my son, that’s what happened. Any part of that you don’t understand?

The speedometer needle was hovering on 110mph. Or maybe it was 120, she could barely see it. A light began flashing on the passenger seat. Her phone was ringing, she realized. She grabbed it and held it up in front of her. The name was blurry but she could just about read it. Her brother.

She answered it, hurtling past another car, still steering with one hand into a tight left curve. The cigarette between her lips was burned right down to the butt and tears were streaming from her eyes and on to her cheeks.

‘Ricky, I thought you were dealing with this?’ she said. ‘How do you let this stupid bitch come to the house? How?’

‘Listen, it’s all cool!’

‘Cool? She came to my house – that’s cool? You wanna tell me what’s cool about that?’

‘We have a plan!’

She steered the car through the curve, then there was another curve to the right, even sharper. She was going into it too fast, she realized. She stamped on the brake pedal and suddenly the car began snaking left, then right, then even more violently left again.

‘Shit.’

She dropped the phone. The cigarette butt fell between her legs. There were bright lights coming in the opposite direction, getting brighter and more dazzling by the second. She heard the blare of a horn. She jerked the wheel. The Cayenne began a lumbering pirouette. The steering wheel suddenly turned with such force it tore free of her hands, spinning like it had taken on a mind of its own.

The lights got brighter. The horn was blaring, deafening her. The lights were straight at her eye level. Blinding her. She was spinning too now, like the wheel. Backwards for a second. Then sideways again. Sucking those blinding lights towards her as if she were a magnet.

Closer.

The horn even louder, shaking her eardrums.

Lights burning into her retinas.

Then a jarring impact. A clanging metallic boom like two giant oil drums swinging into each other.

In the silence that followed, Ricky’s voice came through her phone. ‘Hey, babe? Fernanda? Sis? Babe? Listen, you OK? Babe? Babe? Listen, we’re cool. Listen, babe!’

But she could no longer hear him.

‘You’ve really upset my wife,’ Lou Revere said. ‘She’s pretty distressed already and so am I. I don’t know what you thought you’d achieve by coming, but we don’t want you here. You’re not welcome in our house.’ He stabbed his cigar at her. ‘I’m gonna show you out.’

‘Please just give me a chance,’ Carly said, her desperation making her sound on the verge of tears.

‘You had your chance, lady, when you were deciding whether to get into your automobile drunk or not. That’s more chance than my son had.’

‘It wasn’t like that, Mr Revere. Please believe me. It wasn’t like that.’

He stopped and for a moment Carly thought he was going to relent. Then he stabbed his cigar in even greater fury. ‘Sure it wasn’t like that, lady. We’ve had the toxicology report on our son from your police. He had nothing in him. Not one drop of alcohol, not one trace of any drug.’ He lowered his head like a bull about to charge. ‘How was your toxicology report? Huh? You wanna tell me how your toxicology report read? Tell me. I’m listening. You got my full attention.’

They faced each other in silence. Carly was trying desperately to find a way through to him. But he scared her. It was as if beneath his skin there was something venomous and feral. Outwardly he might be playing the role of a grieving father, but there was something truly chilling about him. She had met difficult people in her time, she’d had to deal with deep dislike, but she had never encountered anyone like Lou Revere. It felt as if she was in the presence of total, inhuman evil.

‘I’m listening,’ he repeated. ‘I’m not hearing anything, but I’m listening.’

‘I think maybe I should come back tomorrow,’ she replied. ‘Can I do that?’

He took another step towards her, quivering. ‘You come back,’ he said. ‘You come back – if you dare come within one hundred miles of my home, I’ll tear you apart with these.’ He held up his trembling hands. ‘You understand what I’m saying?’

Carly nodded, her mouth dry.

He pointed. ‘That’s the way out.’

Moments after she stepped out into the night, the front door slammed behind her.

It seemed only moments after he had fallen asleep that Roy Grace was woken by the sound of his phone ringing and vibrating.

He rolled over, reaching out for the flashing display in the darkness. The clock beside it said 1.37 a.m.

‘It’s OK. I’m awake,’ said Cleo, a tad grumpily.

He switched on his bedside light, grabbed the phone and hit the green button. ‘Yurrr?’

It was Duncan Crocker. ‘You awake, boss?’

It was a dumb question, Grace thought. Did Detective Sergeant Crocker know many people who were capable of answering a phone in their sleep? He slid out of bed and tripped over Humphrey, who responded with a startled yelp. He dropped the phone and grabbed the side of the bed, just managing to stop himself falling flat on his face on the floor. He retrieved the phone.

‘Hang on, Duncan.’

Wearing only the T-shirt he’d been sleeping in, he padded out of the room, accompanied by the dog, which jumped up excitedly, its sharp claws digging painfully into his leg.

‘Down, boy!’ he hissed, closing the door behind him.

Humphrey raced down the staircase, barking, then ran back up and launched himself at Grace’s crotch.

Crocking the phone under his ear and protecting himself with his hands, he said, ‘Be with you in a sec, Duncan. Down! Humphrey, off, off!’

He went downstairs, followed by a madly barking Humphrey, switched the lights on, moved a copy of
Sussex Life
that was open at the property pages – Cleo had suddenly gone into house-hunting mode – and sat on a sofa. Humphrey jumped on to the cushion beside him. Stroking him, trying to keep the dog quiet, Grace said, ‘Sorry about that. What’s up?’

‘You asked me to let you know as soon as we found the lorry, boss.’

‘You’ve found it? You’re still at work?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thanks for staying so late. So, tell me?’

‘Just had a call from Thames Valley Road Policing Unit. It’s in a parking area at Newport Pagnell Services on the M1.’

‘How did they find it?’ Grace was doing his best to think clearly through his tiredness.

‘It was logged by an ANPR camera as it entered Bucks on the M1 on Tuesday night, boss. There were no further logs, so we asked the local police to check likely pullins.’

‘Good stuff. What CCTV do they have at the service station?’

‘They’ve got cameras on the private vehicle and truckers’ entrances.’

‘OK, we need those, to see if Ferguson went inside. How long are you planning on staying up?’

‘As long as you need me.’

‘Ask them for copies of the videos from the time the ANPR clocked him to now and get them down to us as quickly as possible. If it helps them, we can send someone up there.’

‘Will do.’

Grace stroked the dog again. He knew he wasn’t thinking as clearly as he needed to at this moment.

‘Sorry, one other important thing – Ferguson’s lorry. I want it protected as a crime scene. Get on to Thames Valley Police to secure it. They need to cordon off a good twenty-foot radius around it. If the driver was attacked, it’s likely to have happened close to the vehicle. We need a search team on to it at first light. What’s the weather up there at the moment?’

‘Dry, light wind – it’s been the same since Tuesday night. Forecast the same for the morning.’

That was a relief to Grace. Rain could wash away forensic evidence very rapidly.

‘I’ll sort out the search team, Duncan. If you deal with the CCTV, please. Then go home and get some sleep. You’ve done well.’

‘Thanks, boss.’

Grace let Humphrey out on to the patio and watched him pee. Then he went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Upstairs he heard the sound of the loo flushing and wondered, for a moment, if Cleo was going to come down and join him. But instead he heard the bedroom door slam – a little too loudly.

Sandy used to slam the bedroom door when she was angry about a late-night phone call that had disturbed her. Cleo was a lot more tolerant, but he could sense her pregnancy getting to her. It was getting to both of them. Most of the time it was a shared joy, or a shared anxiety, but just occasionally it seemed like a growing wedge between them and she had been in a really grumpy mood last night.

He made a phone call, apologetically waking Crime Scene Manager Tracy Stocker and bringing her up to speed. He asked her to send a SOCO team up to Newport Pagnell – about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Brighton – to be there ready to start at dawn. At the same time, in light of the latest development, he discussed the joint strategy she would need with the POLSA – the Police Search Advisor – and search team.

Then he spooned instant coffee into a mug, poured boiling water on to it, stirred it and carried it out into the living room. He felt chilly, but he could not be bothered to put on any more clothes.

He sat down on the sofa with his laptop, bleary-eyed, stirring the coffee again and staring at the laptop as it powered up. Humphrey found a chew and started a life or death tussle with it on the floor. Grace smiled at him, envying him his uncomplicated life. Maybe if he got the chance to choose, when he died he’d come back as a dog. So long as he got to pick his owners.

He Googled
Newport Pagnell Services. M
oments later he had a full listing of what was there, but that did not help him. He opened Google Earth and again he entered
Newport Pagnell Services
.