Night Vision (19 page)

On the wall above the fireplace was a very beautiful mirror. Heavy and clearly old and with what Alec recognized as a pewter repoussé frame, Alec felt it was oddly familiar. He stared at it for a moment, taking in the flowers and bees, and then it hit him. The photo frame Jamie had sent them was a miniature version of this.

Had she been trying to tell them something? Was there, after all, something hidden in the frame? Alec would have sworn not. Like all repoussé pieces, the back was hollow, showing the pattern of indentations that made up the external pattern in relief. There had been no space in which to hide anything. He frowned, remembering that it was now at Harry's place. He would have to ask them to take another look.

He beckoned to one of the SOCO team. ‘Give me a hand to take this down?'

The mirror was heavy. They laid it face down on the floor, and Alec examined the back. Old paper sealed it, covering both mirror and the inside edge of the frame. There didn't seem to be any disturbance to the original manufacture.

A stained label bore the name of a gallery in Paris and also what he took to be a maker's name. Phillipe Gerard. It meant nothing to Alec. He ran his hands around the edges of the paper seal. It lifted easily from one edge, but he soon realized this was only where the glue had hardened and fragmented. He peeled it away and looked at the back of the mirror beneath. Some of the silvering had begun to chip and crack and peel away, but other than that there was nothing to see.

He propped the mirror against the sofa and went back upstairs.

‘Anything?' he asked hopefully.

A uniform and a CSI both looked up and shook heads. ‘Not so far.'

‘Hopefully, there'll be something on the computer.'

‘Nope. He uses a removable hard drive.' She indicated an empty space in the front of the machine. ‘He's taken it with him. Tell you what, though, he can come and clean for me anytime. There's barely a cat hair or a fingerprint.'

He was wasting his time here, Alec thought. He went next door to where a young female officer was interviewing the cat-loving neighbour.

‘This is Fergie,' he was told. A rather handsome tortoiseshell sat on the woman's lap in pride of place. Three other rather put-out-looking felines piled beside her on the settee. They looked pointedly at Alec, as though it was all his fault.

‘Tell me about your neighbour,' Alec said. ‘How did you get along with him?'

She looked surprised. ‘Oh, he's a lovely man. No trouble at all. No noise, and he does his garden. I wasn't sure about him when he moved in, you know –' she leaned forward confidentially, her tight permed grey hair bouncing slightly as she did so – ‘him being a single man and all, but he's been fine. I said he ought to have a cat, you know, some company for him, and he said all right, if I could advise him on that, and so I asked around and I got Fergie for him. Poor thing, his lady died, you know, and he was looking for someone new to be with and Mr Penbury was just perfect. And of course he comes over here and plays with my lovelies, don't you, Fergie?'

Alec left. So that accounted for the oddly named cat and the outrageously red accoutrements of cat ownership.

What more could he do here?

Nothing, he decided.

He called Eddison and told him he was making his way to the incident room. Called Harry and asked if he and Patrick would take another look at the photo frame and the rest of Jamie's stuff. Gave his love again to Naomi and got back in his car. Reset his satnav. Drove north and west this time, listening to the news.

TWENTY

C
lara Thompson opened her front door and wished she hadn't. The man outside was not particularly tall, neither was he especially muscular, but once he had taken hold of her there was nothing she could do to escape, no matter how hard she struggled or how she spit and fought.

She screamed and cursed at him, hoping the neighbours would hear, but knowing almost for certain that there was no one in next door. They'd all be at work on a Wednesday. The man must have known that too; he held on to her very tightly, fastened her hands behind her back with something she vaguely recognized as a cable tie and then fastened that to another looped through the back of a kitchen chair. She kicked out as he grabbed her feet, but he caught them then tied them securely to the legs of the chair, but he didn't bother to try and shut her up. His movements were neat and efficient, almost casual. Clara had been afraid before. Afraid when those thugs had beaten Paul for information he didn't have. Afraid when the police had come. Afraid every day for her children. But that was nothing to what she felt now.

He's going to kill me, she thought. He'd made no attempt to hide his face. He didn't care that she might recognize him again.

He left her in the kitchen. He'd taken a small device from his pocket, and now he walked back down the hall, listening to the small hum it made and watching a tiny screen.

Since there was nothing to be gained by screaming, Clara shut up and watched and tried to work out how she could escape. The ties cut into her wrists when she tried to move them, and she was now so tense she could hardly breathe.

She watched as the man bent down to look beneath her telephone table and take something that had been concealed there. She watched as he went upstairs, strained to hear him moving about and struggled against her bonds so hard she could feel her hands begin to bleed.

He came back down, and she watched again as he went into the front room and then the big room in the extension. In all that time he never made a sound, never uttered a word.

Then he came back into the kitchen and laid what he had found on the table. Curious, in spite of her terror, Clara leaned forward and looked. ‘What the hell are they?'

Tiny round disks, each with a little pin wire extending on one side.

The man did not reply, but glanced around the room. He noticed the tenderizing mallet in the rack hanging beside the knives and ladles and slotted spoons, and for a moment Clara thought he was going to use it on her. She screamed again and then once more as he brought the mallet down on the small black objects resting on the table, crushing them like insects.

‘Off-the-shelf product,' he said. ‘You can get them on the Internet or in half a dozen real world shops up and down the country. They work, but their range is short. I doubt if there's anyone out there still listening, and if they are, I doubt very much that they are concerned with your welfare, Clara. Certainly, no one came running when they heard you scream, did they?'

‘What?' The information coalesced in Clara's mind. ‘Someone bugged my house? Oh, my God, when? Who, and who the hell are you?'

He dealt with the final question first. ‘Many people would consider me their worst nightmare,' he said. ‘But for you, Clara, I'll only be a very bad dream. I've no wish to hurt you, but that doesn't mean I won't, not if you don't tell me what I need to know.'

She stared at him, stunned.

‘As to who planted these, well,
you
can tell me that. Who has been here? What did they want to know, and when did they come?'

‘Why should I tell you?'

‘Because I'll hurt you if you don't. It's what I do, one of the things I have a talent for. Clara, I've no grudge against you, no reason to want you dead or even severely maimed, so I will promise to do no lasting harm. But I will hurt you all the same, so how about we make this easy?'

He gave her time to think. Like Munroe, he, too, knew the value of silence. Of non-action.

‘I don't know who they were,' she said. ‘Some thugs came here and beat Paul. They wanted to know about Neil, what he'd told us about that journalist.'

‘Jamie Dale?'

‘Yes, her.'

‘And what had he told you?'

She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Paul wasn't even here when Neil called. He was working late that night. Neil just wanted me to phone her and pass a message on. It wasn't even a message. Just to call her.'

‘And it was about? She was to contact him about what?'

That rapid head-shake again. She was twisting her hands against the ties, and the plastic dug into her wrists. He could see the blood dripping to the floor, but she seemed unaware.

‘About what?' he prompted.

‘It was just one word. A one-word message.'

She thought that must be too simple an answer, he could see that. She thought it wasn't a big enough secret to warrant all this death, all this trouble. She thought he wouldn't believe her when she told him how simple it was.

‘And the word?'

‘Gregory. Just a name. Just Gregory.'

He nodded and could see the relief in her eyes that he seemed satisfied. It would be easy now; she wouldn't fight him any more. ‘Who else came here?'

‘Just the police.'

‘The police?'

‘Yes. To tell me Neil was dead, and then they came back. One of the original policemen came back, and another one, a different one.'

‘Their names were?'

She shook her head. She was trying to remember. ‘They left a card,' she said. ‘One was called Munroe, and the other left a card.'

‘You still have it?'

‘Yes, in the big room. On the bookshelf. Behind the television. I was going to throw it away but—'

He went through and found it. One glance at the name confirmed who had been responsible for the listening devices. Though it wasn't like Charlie Eddison to buy off the shelf. He must have been in a hurry.

He returned to the kitchen and took a pair of cutters from his pocket. She flinched when he touched her, convinced this was going to be the promised pain. He released her hands, but not her feet.

‘Tell me, did you call anyone after they had gone? Straight after they had gone?'

He saw the look of horror in her eyes. She stared at the remnants of the bugs still on the table. ‘I called my husband,' she whispered. ‘I called Paul.'

He nodded. He had expected that. ‘And how long were you on the phone to him?'

‘Less than a minute. He hung up on me. He said I was stupid to be calling him.'

She bit at her lower lip. He could see little flecks of dry skin and small red weals where others had been chewed off.

‘Have you called him since?'

An emphatic no. She had not. ‘They were listening in, is that what you're telling me? They listened to my call. They'll know where Paul is, where the kids are.'

‘If you didn't stay on for longer than you told me, then no. Not from that. The danger is that they may try and contact him again.'

‘His phone's been off since!'

‘So you
did
try?'

A rapid rush of blood to her cheeks as she was caught in the half lie, followed swiftly by an equally rapid draining of colour as she realized what she might have done. ‘You hear about it in films, don't you? People being traced by their mobile phones. Oh God, he didn't even tell me where they'd gone. He didn't want me to know in case those thugs came back and—'

‘Clara, listen to me. Paul and your children, they will
not
be safe. They never were.'

‘What do you mean? He didn't tell me anything! Paul didn't tell me where they were!'

He sighed. How best to explain this? Few people were actually good at disappearing. They always left a trail, they always left too many links in the chain.

‘Clara, Paul isn't me, he isn't even you. If you'd wanted to give your kids the best chance, then
you
should have taken them, far away from here. You'd likely have done a far better job. He'll have gone somewhere he feels safe, somewhere he knows. Somewhere familiar, Clara, and it won't take much working out where that is. Not for you, not for me, not for them.'

‘How do I know you aren't
them
too?'

He decided to forgive her for the grammatical error. ‘Some other time I might well be, but not just now. For a little time our interests run side by side. And you can trust me.'

‘Trust you?' She laughed harshly. ‘I don't think so.' She paused, considering, her eyes wide and her mouth tight. ‘And if that changes?'

‘If that changes you will never know.'

‘Why?' But she knew the answer.

He leant close, deciding he would say it anyway. ‘Because, Clara, you and yours would already be dead.'

Leaving her in the kitchen he went back to examine the house room by room. He could hear her sobbing. It occurred to him that now she had her hands free she might try and prepare herself for when he returned, get a knife from the rack, or the mallet from the table. He had left her feet tied to the chair, but it was possible she'd have freed herself by the time he returned.

He thought it unlikely though. He'd filled her mind with doubt, with renewed fears, and for a while she would be numb, inactive until the shock diminished.

The little girls obviously shared a room. Large, square and airy and decorated in pink and a rather acid green, as though they both been allowed to choose a colour. Green and pink also on the beds. Books, boxes of toys, a small desk on which drawings and pencils had been spread. He opened the wardrobe door and tried to guess what had been taken. The hangers had been spaced across the rail as though to give an impression of fullness, when in fact half the clothes were missing. He opened drawers and found their sparseness similarly disguised. Clara had thought this through as best she could. He was right – she should have been the one to take the children. Fierce mothers were always a dangerous animal.

The master bedroom was tidy, clean, undistinguished. Pale lavender on the walls, and cream everywhere else apart from a splash of colour in the duvet. Family photos by the bed. The four of them in happier times, and the little girls. He took the picture of the children and put it in his pocket. The larger photo had clearly previously been hanging on the wall – a loop of string had been threaded through the little metal hook on the back of the cheap frame – but it now stood on the bedside cabinet, supported by the strut.