Respect (Mandasue Heller) (36 page)

‘I haven’t got it,’ Bill said, desperately trying to appear calm. She’d been confronted by disgruntled spouses in the past and had always managed to talk them down. But she sensed that it wasn’t going to be so easy this time, because Rob Knight wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of luring her to this remote location if he just wanted to talk.

‘So where
is
it?’ Rob yelled, lashing her across the face with the back of his fist.

Bill cried out in pain, and tears spilled from her eyes as blood began to trickle from her nose. ‘I deleted it,’ she lied, grimacing as another, sharper pain rippled through her chest.

‘I don’t believe you.’ Rob seized her by the hair. ‘It’s too convenient. Last chance – where
is
it?’

‘I haven’t got it,’ Bill repeated, her breath ragged now as she clutched a hand to her breast. ‘But
some
one has,’ she added, looking him in the eye. ‘And if you kill me, the police investigation will inevitably involve them accessing my files. And how …’ She paused and took a pained breath, before continuing through gritted teeth, ‘How long do you suppose it will be before they get round to questioning you?’

‘Who’s got it?’ Rob demanded.

‘I’m not telling you,’ Bill said bravely. ‘And nothing you say or do will make—’ The rest of the sentence was left hanging as another agonising pain tore through her body and her teeth clamped together.

Rob watched as her eyes rolled and spittle formed bubbles at the corners of her mouth. He let go of her hair when she started to convulse, and moved back as she slid to the floor. Her legs jerked a few times, and then, releasing a sound that reminded him of a deflating bicycle tyre, she was still, her unseeing eyes staring into the darkness above his head.

‘
Shit!
’ Adam ran over and looked down at her. ‘We were supposed to do her in
after
we got it, not before, you idiot.’

Rob pushed himself back up to his feet and, raking his fingers through his hair, backed away from the body. ‘I didn’t do anything. I think she’s had a fucking heart attack.’

A glow of light coming from inside the car caught his eye just then, and he snapped his head around. When he saw that it was coming from a mobile phone lying on the passenger seat he yanked the door open and snatched it up.

‘Voicemail,’ he said when he saw the message on the screen. ‘Probably one of her colleagues checking up on her. We’d best get out of here before they come looking for her.’

Adam nodded and leaned inside the car. He saw the laptop lying on the back seat and grabbed it, then did a quick search under the seats and in the glove compartment.

‘Here, take this,’ Rob said, walking back around the car holding the jerrycan he’d just found in the boot. ‘Doesn’t feel like there’s much in it, but it should be enough to get it going. Wait till I get her behind the wheel and put some on her,’ he added, squatting behind the body and shoving his hands under her limp arms. ‘Then douse the seats and shit.’

‘What’s that?’ Adam asked when something fell from the woman’s pocket as Rob hauled her up off the ground.

‘How should I know?’ Rob snapped, panting as he heaved the body towards the door. ‘You could have helped. She weighs a fucking ton.’

Adam reached for the fallen item and turned it over in his hand. ‘Looks like one of those video recorders they sell at Bowlers,’ he said. ‘The ones that are disguised to look like mobile phones. Bloody cheap one, though; wouldn’t fool me for a minute.’

‘Probably the one they use for surveillance,’ Rob said, exhaling loudly after shoving the woman’s body into the driver’s seat and wiping his hands on his trousers. ‘With any luck, the film might still be on it.’

Adam slid the phone into his pocket. Then, taking the lid off the petrol can, he doused the body before shaking the rest out haphazardly around the interior of the car. He threw the can inside when he was done and stepped back as Rob sparked his lighter and touched the flame to the woman’s skirt before kicking the door shut.

They waited a couple of minutes to make sure she was properly alight, then turned and ran back through the field from which they had come, at the far side of which was the secluded lane where Rob had parked his car.

Back at the unit, Rob poured two glasses of Scotch and handed one to Adam. Then, lighting a cigarette, he paced the office floor while Adam opened the PI’s laptop and switched it on.

‘Well?’ he asked after Adam had tapped away at the keys for a while.

‘Patience,’ his friend said quietly, a deep frown creasing his brow. ‘As I thought, it’s password-protected and encrypted, so it may take a while. Here, check this while you’re waiting.’ He took the videophone out of his pocket and tossed it to Rob.

Rob turned it over in his hand. ‘How the fuck do you switch it on?’

‘Same as you’d switch on a real mobile.’

Rob found the button and pressed it. The screen lit up, but his relief was short-lived when he discovered that it was empty.

‘She probably downloaded the footage as soon as she’d finished a job,’ Adam mused. ‘They’ve got way more memory than a phone, but not enough to store a whole heap of shit
and
film new stuff. But that’s good, because it means the only copy must be on here. Unless,’ he added grimly, ‘the company has a bank of computers which all receive the same data.’

‘Fucking hope not,’ Rob said worriedly. ‘If they have, we’re screwed.’

‘Speaking optimistically,’ said Adam, his focus back on the laptop, ‘I’d hazard a guess that it was a one-woman operation. No respectable agency would hire an old boot like her. She had to have been a lone wolf.’

‘She said someone else had the footage,’ Rob reminded him.

‘Probably bluffing.’

‘What about the voicemail? There must be at least one other person working with her.’

‘Not necessarily. Could have been her hubby wondering why she wasn’t home yet. But there’s only one way to find out.’

Rob pulled the mobile out of his pocket and listened to the voicemail.

‘
Bill, it’s Chantelle
,’ a girl’s voice machine-gunned down his ear. ‘
I know you’re still annoyed with me, but I’ve just been watching the news and they showed some pictures of missing women. I know it sounds crazy, but I’m sure I’ve seen two of them with Rob; one last night, and the other on the first job. Please call me back when you get this
.’

‘What the
fuck …
’ Rob pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it in disbelief.

‘What’s up, bud?’ Adam looked up as he slotted a password-retrieval disc into the laptop’s CD drive.

‘No, that can’t be right.’ Rob shook his head. Then, looking at his friend, he said, ‘It sounded exactly like Julia – that girl I’ve been seeing.’

‘Really?’ Adam frowned. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Course I’m not fucking sure,’ Rob snapped. ‘I said it
sounds
like her.’

‘Play it again, on loudspeaker,’ Adam said, reaching for a pen. As the message began to play, he wrote down the number of the sender and pushed it across the desk. ‘Check it against Julia’s.’

Rob pulled his own phone out of his pocket and compared the numbers. ‘It fucking
is
her,’ he said, the blood draining from his face when he saw that they matched. ‘Only her name’s not Julia, it’s Chantelle.
Bitch!
’ He spat the word out. ‘I’ve been seeing her for
months
; treated her like a fucking princess, and all the time she’s been
spying
on me. Christ, she reeled me right in with that sweet and innocent act. And here’s the best bit,’ he added indignantly. ‘When I first saw her I was planning on bringing her into the ring. But I liked her, so I changed my fucking mind.’

‘Oh, my,’ Adam murmured. ‘Seems the player has been well and truly played.’

‘Yeah, very funny,’ Rob said angrily. ‘Now what the fuck are we supposed to do? You heard her – she saw those tarts on the news. And how would she have recognised them if she hadn’t seen them? I thought she sounded weird when she rang me at the club last night. She must have been outside, waiting to catch me out.’

‘All right, calm down,’ Adam said, reaching for his drink. He took a swig and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘Right, if it
was
her, then she must have filmed you on her phone, because the quality of those last shots is terrible compared with the earlier ones. Chances are she’ll still have it, so we need to get it off her.’

‘How?’ Rob demanded. ‘I never even got her fucking address. What an idiot!’ he hissed, slapping his forehead with his hand. ‘I thought I was being clever, keeping things casual, but I played right into her hands.’

‘Ring her,’ said Adam. ‘Arrange to meet her.’

‘She’s not going to take my calls now she thinks I’m involved with those girls going missing,’ Rob reminded him. ‘And she definitely won’t meet me – she’s not that stupid.’

‘Okay, well, she’s waiting for the investigator to call her back,’ Adam said thoughtfully. ‘Call her on
that
phone.’

‘What, and pretend to be a woman?’ Rob gave him a
get real
look.

‘Text her, then,’ said Adam. ‘Tell her you can’t talk because you’re still working, then ask her what’s going on.’

Chantelle jumped when her phone’s text alert suddenly beeped, and when she saw Bill’s name on the screen she snatched it up.

Just got your message, but can’t talk yet, still busy
, the text read.
What’s happened?

I saw some girls on the news
, Chantelle replied, repeating what she’d already said in the voicemail.
They’ve been reported missing, and the police think they’re connected to a few more cases. One looked like the girl Rob was with last night, and another like the first girl I saw him with. What should we do?

Nothing!
Bill’s answer came through quickly.
I’ll look into it, and if I think you’re right I’ll call the police. Probably turn out to be nothing, but I’ll need your phone in case they want to see the film. You have still got it, haven’t you?

Yeah, was going to delete it, but forgot. Where do you want to meet? Chorlton Road or office?

Chorlton Road. And don’t tell anybody anything.

I won’t. I know I was stupid about the whole Rob thing, but it’ll never happen again, I promise. You can trust me.

Hope so. See you in
20.

Chantelle was glad that Bill had taken her seriously, although she was already starting to doubt that the girls she’d seen on TV could be the ones she’d seen with Rob because it just seemed too far-fetched. Even if they were, she seriously doubted that Rob had anything to do with their disappearance. As much as it hurt to know that he’d used her, he had always been an absolute gentleman so there was no way he could be involved in something like that. More likely he’d met them and charmed his way into their knickers – just as he had with her. They probably weren’t even missing but had just decided not to bother taking the jobs they had come over for, choosing instead to let rich men like Rob pay their way.

Annoyed with herself for letting her imagination run away with her, Chantelle went out into the hall and pulled her boots on. Then, tapping on Leon’s door, she popped her head around and gave him a guilty smile when she saw him lying on his bed with his arms behind his head.

‘Sorry for chasing you out before,’ she apologised. ‘I’ve been in a weird mood all day, but I’m going for a walk to shake myself out of it. Will you be all right while I’m gone? Shouldn’t be too long.’

‘Yeah, I’m cool,’ Leon grunted, adding under his breath, ‘So long as you’ve cheered up when you get back. Can’t be doing with all these girly mood swings.’

Amused that he was putting her moodiness down to hormones, Chantelle let herself out of the flat and walked quickly down the stairs.

She had almost reached the end of the road and was about to cross over to the corner where Bill always picked her up. When she saw an all-too-familiar car sitting directly opposite, she stopped in her tracks. Oh, no, what was he doing here? Had he been trying to call her to let her know that he wanted to meet up, and she hadn’t heard it because she was walking?

Chantelle slid her phone out of her pocket to check, and was confused when she saw that there were no missed calls or texts. She’d told Rob that she lived behind the shops he was facing, but he surely couldn’t just be sitting there on the off chance that she might walk past?

Unless Yvette had kicked him out and he’d left his phone behind and hadn’t been able to call her?

In which case, had he come to tell her that he was now free to be with her, or had he somehow found out that she was behind the photographs being sent to his wife?

Rob suddenly turned his head and looked straight at her, the hairs on the back of Chantelle’s neck stood on end when she saw the rage in his eyes. And when his headlights immediately came on and she heard the roar of his engine as he pressed his foot to the floor, her instincts screamed at her to run – and, remembering Bill’s warning never to ignore her instincts, she turned and fled back the way she’d come.

Terrified when she realised he was really close behind, Chantelle detoured down an alley between the houses she was passing and raced through the backstreets. In her panic, she dived down another alley, but this one was blocked off at the other end. It was too late to go back out into the open, so she forced her way through a half-open back gate into a pitch-dark yard and squatted down in the shadows.

A couple of minutes later she heard footsteps walking past slowly and bit down on her hand when she heard Rob calling softly, ‘Julia …? Where are you?’

The footsteps faded as he walked to the other end of the alley, but then became louder again as he came back. They stopped a short distance away from the yard and Chantelle squeezed her eyes shut and prayed that he would think he’d lost her and go. When his phone suddenly started to ring, she held her breath and cocked her head to listen.

‘Yeah, I saw her, but she did a runner,’ he said quietly. ‘She can’t have got far, though, ’cos I was right behind her.’ He paused now, obviously listening to what his caller was saying. Then, sounding jubilant, he said, ‘Oh, you fucking genius!’