Keep Me Alive (18 page)

‘It never occurred to me to suggest otherwise. Has someone else said you were?’ she said, remembering Andrew Stane’s idea that Caro could have been projecting some emotional damage of her own on to Kim. What had happened to this man to make him so keen on punishing Dan Crossman?

Pete’s shoulders lifted up round his ears. ‘Of course. These days you can’t show any interest in little children without being called a paedophile yourself, or a victim of abuse. I hate the bastards who mess about with little children, just like I hate the other ones who beat up old ladies for their electric money. There’s no difference. And I hate seeing the bastards that hurt them get away with it just because they’ve got clever lawyers.’

‘I’m a lawyer.’

‘I know.’ At last he smiled and showed her a glimpse of the eager boy Caro liked so much. ‘But you’ve never defended bastards like that. I checked.’

‘Did you indeed? Still, I don’t see what I can do to help you.’

The smile wavered, then returned. He came back to sit beside her on the bench, laying both his hands palm upwards on his right knee. ‘The people I checked with say you can tell what’s going on in someone’s head just by looking at them.’ He waited for a comment.

‘Then they’re flattering me, whoever they are. It’s not true.’

If it were, she thought, I’d know what Will’s doing now, and why. And why he hates Grant-Furbisher so much. Could that be projection too?

No, she told herself, wondering why she’d never seen the obvious truth before. It’s not projection in Will’s case. It’s substitution. He must see Grant-Furbisher as doing to him what his father did. Both of them made him feel like an irresponsible, greedy failure. He can’t dump enough hatred on his father now that he’s dead, so Grant-Furbisher’s getting a double dose.

‘It
must
be true,’ Pete said, looking so disappointed that Trish tried to comfort him.

‘Sometimes experience gives me a clue about what’s behind the mask someone’s wearing, but that’s all it is. A clue. And I’ve done all I can with Kim.’

‘It’s not her I’m thinking of. I want you to see Crossman. I want you to find out what he’s been doing, because it’s not just making Kim stand naked on a box. I know that much.’

‘Oh, Pete,’ she said, touching his supplicant’s hands with one of her own. ‘I can’t do that.’

‘You could. Not officially or anything. But I know the pub where he drinks. The Black Eagle, near Vauxhall Station. Even though it’s mainly ex-army men that go there, it’s a public place,
and it’s only a short walk from here. I could take you, just going for a drink see, and you could have a look at him. Watch what he does and how he interacts with people, and see if you can see anything.’

‘It doesn’t work like that.’

Disappointment smeared itself across his face again. ‘Please. I know there’s more been going on. Just come and have a pint with me there and look at him. You could do that, couldn’t you? For Kim. And for Inspector Lyalt? Before she was taken ill she was just as keen as me to get him sent down for what he’s been doing. She’d want you to come with me.’

Trish didn’t think Caro would want anything of the sort, but on the other hand she thought she might do it. She’d never seen Crossman and she was curious about him.

The smell was terrible. But it was not the smell of any muck heap Will had ever known. There was a rank sweetness to it and an acrid edge as well. This was putrefying flesh just as he’d expected once he’d tied together Jamie Maxden’s film and Mandy’s stories of a secret source for meat coming into Ivyleaf Packaging from abroad.

It wouldn’t be dark for ages, and Will didn’t want to risk encountering anyone who worked here. Scouting around, giving the buildings a wide berth, he saw a kind of coppice to the east of the farm. He made his way there, stepping sideways as a watchdog caught his scent down in the farm and started barking its head off.

Surprised that any animal could smell anything above the stink of rotting meat, Will dropped his head and sprinted for the copse, keeping as low to the ground as possible. He could vaguely hear men’s voices, but not what they said. There was an interrogatory shout, then a mumble. He thought they must be speaking English because the intonation was so familiar, but he wouldn’t have sworn to it.

The copse wasn’t big, but it would give him enough shelter. His combat trousers and sweatshirt, both dull olive green, would blend nicely with the local scenery. The worst problem was going to be boredom. He didn’t smoke and, anyway, it would have revealed his hiding place. He hadn’t brought a book because
books bored him even more than doing nothing. He would just have to lie up here and dream of being back in Mandy’s bed, or handing over to Trish all the information she could possibly need to make her believe what he now knew was going on.

He could just imagine her, standing there with her eagle’s nose and her sparky black eyes, a little wary and disdainful at first, as she so often was, then melting into astonishment at his achievement, and admiration, and …

Will told himself to stop being such a fool. His idiotic imagination had suddenly rolled Trish up with Mandy. However much he admired Trish, relied on her good opinion and her professional skills, he didn’t fancy her. She wasn’t his type at all. Far too long and thin, and much too clever. Although there was something about the way her lips could curve when she smiled, and the way her black eyes turned soft instead of glittering when she was trying to comfort people. Still, she would never curl round him like an affectionate hedgehog, protecting both of them with her own vulnerable back, or giggle as he made love to her and tell him that he was the best she’d ever had and she was going to give him the best time he’d ever had. Women like Trish didn’t do that sort of thing.

 

The hours dragged themselves out in a mixture of memory and fear. The bumps in the ground grew harder and harder. As the sun dropped over the horizon, Will began to feel cold. Why on earth hadn’t he had the wit to bring something thicker than a sweatshirt?

The day eventually gave way to grey dusk, then real darkness. Tonight the moon was only the faintest sickle and wouldn’t betray anyone, but there were still the dogs with their supersensitive noses. Will inched forwards towards the edge of the trees, trying to work out which way the newly gusty wind was blowing so that he could check whether it would carry his scent down to the farm buildings or away from them.

Before he could get very far, he caught the sound of an engine on the wind. It became louder and louder, but it wasn’t until it was almost on top of him that he let himself believe it was the aeroplane. Other sounds, of men running, panting like the ones in the video, and dogs snuffling and pulling against their chains, sent Will squirming back into the coppice.

Lights sprang up like flowers in the grass ahead of him. Unlike flowers, they were in two straight lines with another joining them together at the top. An unmistakable runway. Will couldn’t believe his luck. Jamie had said in his email that the flights happened once a week, and today was exactly ten weeks since he had sent it, but there’d been nothing except Will’s own investigations to suggest that the flights from Kent landed up here, just outside Sainte Marie-le-Vair. And he had cocked up far too often to have much faith in his own deductive powers. Or anything else.

Then it hit him, like an ice pick between the eyes. He hadn’t got it right. Unlike Jamie, he did not have any means of recording what was happening. There would be no evidence of this flight, nothing to persuade anyone, except his own words, and he’d seen how highly those were valued.

Why the hell hadn’t he asked Trish to come with him? A barrister of her standing would have been able to support him and make people listen to him, even without actual evidence. No one would push her away, as the authorities had done whenever he’d tried to alert them to the food scandals he knew lay behind supermarket profits all over England. No one would tell a lawyer like Trish that she was an over-emotional fantasist and had no judgement and brought all her troubles on herself.

Will wished he could see more from the sparse lights of the makeshift runway. He thought there were several men and at least four big dogs. There were mutterings in English, but some in another language, too. Not French, unless it was a strange dialect he’d never heard. It sounded too guttural.

The plane took another sweep over the field. Another light, held at about waist height flashed three times, then after a pause, three times more. Two minutes later, the plane was down and the voices were much more urgent and a good bit louder. Will inched forwards to see better, crinkling up his eyes and craning his neck.

Some time later, he heard it: unmistakable footsteps coming towards him across the dry grass. One of them must have seen him. He was about to get up and run. Then he swore silently to himself. All that would do was ensure that he was seen and caught and probably killed, like Jamie. Keeping still was the only possible way of protecting himself. It might not work. But the alternative definitely wouldn’t.

The man stopped only feet away from him. His breathing was short and sharp, like someone facing danger. The snuffling grumble of one of the dogs was close by too. Will could just see the man as a slightly darker blodge against the darkness of the backdrop, with two small points of glitter where his eyes must be. They disappeared and the blodge shifted and twisted.

Eyes, Will thought. That must be what gave me away.

He should have shut them. But he couldn’t bear to have no warning of whatever was going to happen to him. The man took a few more steps forward. Will ducked his head towards the ground and nearly screamed as his face landed in a nettle patch. His skin burned as the poison bit into it. Shifting sideways as quietly as possible, he kept his eyes down to stop them from sparkling. The other man’s sharp, shallow breathing showed he knew he wasn’t alone.

‘Keep those fucking Dobermanns out of my way,’ he shouted over his shoulder, in such unmistakably middle-class English that Will nearly rolled back into the nettles.

‘I need a slash and I don’t want them chewing my plonker,’ the man went on, using slang Will hadn’t heard since school.

The man unbuttoned his trousers and Will put a hand over
his head. But the man aimed in the opposite direction. As the stream dwindled, he said quietly in clumsy, British-accented French,
‘Restez la. Ne bouge pas. Ne parle pas. Compris?
’

Will’s mouth was dry and his throat felt tighter than a hangman’s noose. Who was this Englishman? He produced a hoarse, muttered
‘Oui’,
thanking God the man thought he was French.

He shook himself and buttoned his fly, before trampling noisily away and leaving Will with about a million questions crashing about in his head. There was only one that mattered. Why on earth had he been protected?

There were clanking noises whenever the wind dropped, and other sounds, too, human and furtive. Something heavy was being dragged over hard surfaces.

At last the plane took off again and the lights were put out. Several journeys were made on foot to and from the field. Those sounds told Will that whoever was making them was carrying heavy weights. He was sure this was the equivalent of the journeys made to and from the plane in Jamie Maxden’s video. When they stopped, he was going to have to find enough courage to go down the fields after them and find out exactly what they were doing in their stinking dog-protected buildings.

He tried to tell himself that he’d done enough to convince Trish at least. His nettle-savaged face still stung. He had bruises all over his stiff body from lying on the ground for so many hours. But there was too much he still didn’t understand. He didn’t even know for sure whether tonight’s plane was the same one Jamie had filmed. Maybe when he watched Jamie’s video again he’d be able to get everything he needed.

And maybe you won’t, stupid, he told himself in his father’s voice. No, he had to go down to the farm.

One of the dogs howled in the darkness, then fell silent. Someone must have thrown it some meat. Would the food be
enough to keep the animals so sated they’d miss a stranger creeping around them?

No, of course it won’t, stupid. It was his father’s voice in his head again. They’re guard dogs.

Will pushed himself to his feet, shaking his arms and lifting one shoulder after the other, before wagging his head from side to side to ease the aches. At least he could pee now.

Even that was only a distraction. He had to go down to the buildings and deal with whatever happened to him there. If he flunked this, he might as well give up everything for ever.

 

The Black Eagle was as full of men as the pub in Smithfield, but the atmosphere was entirely different. The meat porters had been a cheerful lot, hungry and bustling. These men were tense and still. An acrid haze of cold cigarette smoke hung over their heads. One or two women sat among the drinkers, but they were mostly grey haired and looked as held-in as the men. Some lively sounds banged around at the far end of the building, where Trish could see glimpses of green baize and pool balls. In the main bar the crowd was quiet.

‘What’ll you have?’ Pete Hartland asked.

Trish had no wish for beer, but it wasn’t hard to see that a request for wine in a place like this would make the two of them stand out even more clearly than her haircut and tidy black suit. Already there had been some aggressively curious glares. She wished she still had her old gelled spikes; at least they hadn’t marked her out as anything but an eccentric.

‘Scotch, please,’ she said, discreetly pulling a ten-pound note out of the top pocket of her jacket and offering it to him. She couldn’t make a young constable pay for such an expensive drink for her.

‘OK.’ He looked surprised but took the cash and shouldered his way through the crowd at the bar.

Trish looked behind her and saw two thickset men with very
short hair get up from a microscopic table. She shot between the crowd and perched on one empty stool, ignoring the waves of fury she could feel at her back. If she sat still, she thought, and didn’t make any noise or thrust her femaleness at any of them, they might forget she was here. Pete would just have to find her. The last thing she was going to do was wave at him or call his name.

It took a while, but that could have been because the crowd at the bar held back his order. He’d brought her a double and himself a pint in the kind of straight glass with a bicep-like bulge at the top that had long ago replaced the old-fashioned dimpled tankards she’d liked as a child.

‘Cheers,’ he said, raising the glass but keeping his wrist between her and the drink as though she might grab it.

She nodded and wet her lips with the whisky. It was raw and burned her tongue as she licked them.

‘Is he here?’

‘Yeah. Two tables over to the right, back to the wall. Always sits like that. He’s the one with the red polo shirt.’ Hartland flicked open a packet of cigarettes and shook one forward to offer to her.

‘No thanks.’

He struck a match and she looked casually away, as though protecting her eyes from the spark or the smoke. Daniel Crossman wasn’t hard to identify. There was only one red shirt. He wasn’t looking in her direction so it seemed safe to study him.

Above the open shirt collar was a face no different from any of the others in the pub: watchful and lined about the eyes and mouth. He must have been in his early forties. From what she could see through the fug, his eyes were grey, his lips were thin and dry, and he carried his shoulders high and tight. He looked as though he had just sat down for a moment and was ready to spring into action any second, and yet there were three pint
glasses in front of him, messy with foam. One had an inch or two of beer in the bottom.

There was no one on the stool opposite him, and neither of the drinkers beside him looked at him or spoke.

One of the barmen was collecting glasses, going from table to table with orderly efficiency. Trish watched Crossman watching him, picking up whole bunches of glasses between the fingers and thumb of one hand and lifting them on to the tray he held on the other. The tray was full before he reached Crossman’s table, so he turned away. Trish saw Crossman’s gaze following him resentfully. He pushed his empty glasses to one side, before wiping his hand on a very white handkerchief. Then he stood, uncoiling his body with neat control.

He was wearing the ubiquitous jeans, but they were much cleaner than Trish thought anyone’s jeans had a right to be, and ironed into savage creases. He stepped out through a narrow gap between the tables and walked straight over to her.

‘What are you looking at?’ he said, bending down to speak straight into Trish’s ear. The buzz and clatter of the rest of the pub receded. She could feel his. breath on her ear.

‘Hey!’ Pete said. ‘What d’you think you’re doing?’

‘And you, keep your sodding mouth shut.’ He turned back to Trish. ‘I asked you a question.’

She gathered her wits and said carefully. ‘I was looking at the barman and wondering how he balanced that heavy tray, even when he had to bend down for the glasses.’