Gone to Ground (26 page)

Maybe not so amazing, Lesley thought, on reflection, more a testimony to the fact the film was little known and rarely seen.

Stella's father, Adam, was referred to as a retired businessman who had made his money from property and manufacturing. The pair, the reports agreed, had been visiting Stella's niece, Lily Prince, who lived with her husband, Howard, in the Cambridgeshire fens. For reasons that were still unclear, the car in which they had been traveling had gone off the road crossing the Great Fen and plunged into a drainage ditch running close alongside. The water level was such that the car had become quickly submerged and, possibly rendered unconscious in their fall, both Stella and Adam had drowned.

At a later date, the coroner returned a verdict of death by misadventure.

Not being able to sign out a radio car meant using the old Peugeot Lesley kept parked on a piece of wasteland facing the bricked-up remnants of the old city wall, just a few minutes walk from where she lived. Nothing inside worth stealing, the radio long gone, it had only been broken into twice in recent months, the last occasion damaging the offside handle beyond repair. She was half hoping someone would take it for a joyride and leave it somewhere smashed and abandoned, so that she could claim what little it was worth back on the insurance, but of course nobody did.

At the garage off the roundabout she checked the air in the tires and filled up with petrol. In that vehicle, any journey much farther than a trip to the supermarket had a certain element of risk attached. She didn't exactly keep spare blankets and a Thermos of coffee on the backseat, but maybe she should.

Beyond Grantham, the land leveled out into that flat terrain of marsh and fen where Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire merged and hills were a thing of the imagination only. She'd printed out directions from multimap.com on her computer and still it took her three attempts before she found the road, a narrow, raised strip that carried her between two slabs of dark earth, a deep drainage ditch running all the way along on the left-hand side. Lesley kept her hands steady on the wheel. It would only need a moment's lack of concentration for her to be off and down.

She passed the low buildings of a farm and then a small collection of ramshackle caravans marooned in a half-acre of mud, before the road veered right toward a sketchy line of poplar trees through which she could just see the house she was looking for.

Behind the trees, there was a low wall with tiled coping and a thick, spiny hedge; windows but no obvious door.

Lesley pulled her car off the road and parked.

Around the corner of the hedge, a graveled path turned inward toward a five-bar gate which gave access to the rear of the house. Attached to the post at the side of the gate was a metal plate with the word
press;
Lesley did so and after a few seconds' pause, the gate swung slowly open and she walked through.

The path took her between two sets of barns and into a courtyard, in which several vehicles were parked: a mud-spattered Range Rover, a rather elderly but well-groomed Jaguar and a small Vauxhall sedan. A blackbird paused from tugging at something in the earth as she walked past.

The house itself was L-shaped and far larger than it appeared from the road; ivy trailed across two sides of its cream walls. The windows on one side were square, on the other, long and narrow. There was a choice of doors, three in total, all painted a dark brownish-red. Close to one of them a bicycle with a wicker basket hanging from its handlebars leaned against the wall, and that was the one she chose.

There was no bell that she could see, so she knocked instead. Looking up, she saw she was staring into the lens of a small camera, positioned just above the top corner of the door.

Automatically, she pushed a hand up through her hair.

Nothing happened.

She put her ear against the door and listened. A sound came faintly from inside, the low electric whine of a vacuum cleaner.

She knocked again, louder.

The woman who eventually opened the door was in her middle years, gray hair pinned close to her head and caught up at the back in a bun; a floral pinafore tied over her loose dark trousers and pale top.

"Mr. Prince," Lesley said. "Is he at home?"

"You are selling something?" the woman asked. "We do not buy at the door." Lesley had expected an accent that was local, but this was Eastern European. Polish? Czech? Hungarian?

"No, I just wanted a word with Mr. Prince."

"Not selling?"

Lesley showed her card. "I'm from the BBC. Radio. I wanted to speak to Mr. Prince."

"Radio?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Prince not here." Already, the woman's hand was firm against the door, pushing it closed.

"You don't know when he might be home?"

A quick shake of the head.

"Mrs. Prince, then? Is she here? Perhaps I could talk to her?"

"Mrs. Prince not home either."

The door closed further. Lesley pushed the card into the woman's hand. "Please take that. Tell Mr. Prince I called. Ask him would he be good enough to phone me."

The door shut with a satisfying thunk. Solid wood. No space for drafts. Halfway back across the courtyard, Lesley swung her head around and saw, at one of the upstairs windows, the head and shoulders of a woman staring down. Not the same woman at all. Dark hair framing a pale, narrow face. A hand pressed against the glass. Lesley looked away and when she turned again, the woman had gone.

Back in the car, Lesley sat for several moments, uncertain what to do; then she started the engine, drove a short way back along the narrow road, switched off the engine, and sat watching the house. For the first time in a while, she wished her car radio had not been stolen, or that she had brought a book, perhaps, to read. Time passed slowly, fifteen minutes, thirty, forty-five. No one approached the house nor left. Nothing moved on the horizon nor changed in the sky.

By the time Lesley got home that night it was late: with some reluctance she'd responded to a text message from some colleagues and agreed to meet them for a quick drink after work and, not unpleasantly, one glass had become another, till finally four of them had bundled into the Pizza Express on Goose Gate for supper and had shared another bottle of wine. Feeling the slightest of headaches coming on, Lesley reminded herself to drink plenty of water before going to bed. At her front door, the key fumbled from her hand, and bending too quickly was not a good idea at all. For a moment, she steadied herself against the wall.

The overhead light inside the flat was so bright it made her flinch and quickly she turned it back off, crossing the room and switching on the lamp at her desk instead. Instantly, a chill claimed her arms and the backs of her legs.

Her breath stopped.

Someone had been in the room, the flat. She didn't know how, but she sensed it. She knew. Every part of her, right to her finger ends seemed to be alive and yet numb. For what was little more than seconds but seemed far longer, she was unable to move.

Then, when she could, she checked the other rooms.

Nothing was out of place; nothing, seemingly, had been moved.

Back in the main room she checked her desk, the filing cabinet, the drawers. There was no sign of the lock being forced; the windows were still fastened firm. You're imagining it, she told herself. Too long spent listening to James Crawford's tales of being turned over by Special Branch.

Relax.

But she couldn't relax.

She heated milk in the small saucepan and made a cup of Milo, which she drank while she was getting undressed and ready for bed.

Though now she felt sober as a nun, she nevertheless drank a full glass of cold water after cleaning her teeth. In bed she tried to read, but couldn't concentrate. Even when the sounds of traffic had died down and the numbers on their way back from the Pitcher and Piano and the Hoop and Toy and the other pubs and clubs along High Pavement had slowed to the occasional one or two, she lay there, eyes open, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep.

52.

EXT. SWIMMING POOL. NIGHT.

Small floodlights illuminate the pool at the rear of the house. PHILIP turns at the far end of the pool and swims toward us vigorously.

As he pulls himself from the water, RUBY, wearing a white toweling robe, steps forward and hands him a towel.

PHILIP's body glistens.

PHILIP
Where's Alma?

RUBY
Do you care?

Taking another step toward him, his arms go round her and they kiss passionately.

RUBY's toweling robe slides to the tiled floor at her feet.

BITS AND PIECES. DRIBS AND DRABS. ONE STEP UP, TWO steps back. Nothing was coming together the way it should. Will was tetchy. He snapped at Lorraine, barked at Jake, the house pitched on tenterhooks, waiting for him to explode. The business of Lorraine's going back to work hung between them, unresolved.

Last thing at night, Will stood alone by the blackened glass, staring out; morning, he was up before first light, a splash of cold water in his face, before pulling on his running shoes as he stepped out into the dark.

Despite renewed efforts, still no weapon from the attack on the two Cambridge students had been found; not only that, no mobile phone generated images had yet appeared on the Web. Neither Helen, nor the architecture student, had been able to make a positive identification from the photographs Chris Parsons had provided. Young faces with short-cropped hair, tattoos, and a taunting, impoverished stare.

And when Milne and Slater had gone back around Stephen Bryan's neighbourhood, there were enough vague recollections of being canvassed by someone from one of the energy companies to suggest that this was the identity of the man Fenwick had confronted outside Bryan's house. Both Eastern Electricity and British Gas confirmed that they had representatives in the area at and around the dates concerned.

Home from his run, Will hammered the heel of his bunched-up hand against the wall. Dark with sweat, his running vest stuck clammily to his back. There was a pain behind his left knee, deep in the joint.

Lorraine was just coming out of the bathroom as he climbed the stairs, her hair tied back, rubbing moisturizer into her hands. "Will, I know this isn't a good time..."

"No, it's not."

"This job, we do need to talk."

"Not now."

"Will..."

"Not fucking now!"

Pushing past her, he went into the bathroom and slammed the door shut. In the bedroom, Susie started to cry. Will closed his eyes, ran water from the tap.

When he went back downstairs, less than twenty minutes later, dressed, Lorraine was sitting at the table with a mug of tea, the baby at her breast. Jake ducked his head when his father entered the room and shoveled Rice Krispies up toward his mouth.

"I'm sorry," Will said. Leaning down toward Lorraine, he kissed her on the neck.

"It's okay," she said, reaching up a hand toward his. "I understand." More sympathy, Will knew, than he deserved.

He kissed her again, on the top of her head, leaving his face there for a moment against the smell and silk of her hair.

"Dad," Jake said, uncertain. "After school, can we play football?"

"Absolutely."

"You promise?"

"Soon as I get home."

"What if it's dark?"

"We'll switch on all the lights. Floodlit. Just like Old Traf-ford. Highbury. Man U versus the Arsenal."

"I wanna be Man U."

"It's a deal. Now finish those up, there's a good lad."

Lorraine followed him to the door. "This job," she said, "I can't keep them hanging on much longer."

"I know. We'll talk about it tonight, okay? After the big match. I promise."

A kiss and he was gone.

The radio was full of riot and dissent: riots in Sri Lanka, riots in Nepal. Terrorist bombs at an Egyptian resort. Closer to home, the Health Minister had been booed off the platform at a conference of nurses, and the Deputy Prime Minister had been caught with his nose in the sexual trough; a fourteen-year-old kid had been stabbed to death in a racially motivated attack in Kent; high-ranking police officers were expressing their discontent at the fact that due to a series of administrative cock-ups, hundreds of convicted foreign prisoners, instead of being deported, had been allowed to drift anonymously back into the community instead. Catch the bastards once, Will thought, then catch them again.

He switched to Radio Two in time to hear some callow-voiced girl singer bleed the guts out of "Just One of Those Things." Cole Porter, for God's sake! Will's father had loved Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Gershwin. His LPs were in the attic somewhere now, unplayed. Sinatra. Ella. Peggy Lee. "The Folks Who Live on the Hill."

All nonsense, of course. Love and marriage yoked together like a horse and carriage. Old-fashioned, romantic nonsense. At the next junction, he swung the car around and headed back in the opposite direction. Lorraine was just leaving the house, Susie in the buggy, Jake kicking pebbles out into the road.

"What have you forgotten?" Lorraine asked, as he got out of the car.

"Nothing."

"Then what...?"

"The job. You should take it."

"But you said..."

"Gall them today, this morning. Take it."

"You're sure?"

"Go on. I'll look after the kids a minute. Do it now."

"All right, I will." No disguising the brightness in her eyes.

Among all the spam that had made its way, unfiltered, onto Will's office computer, there was an e-mail Chris Parsons had sent to both Rastrick and himself. Parsons had finally succeeded in tracking down a site showing images that could well have come from the Cambridge attack.

When Will at last managed to open the attachment he found getting on for two dozen photographs, mostly in short sequences of three or four, as if taken in quick succession. A hooded figure close to the camera, his face distorted; a blur of flailing arms and fists; some kind of bat or club raised high, then swinging down toward a figure crouching low, arms raised protectively overhead.