Safe House (30 page)

I clasped a hand to the wound on my head. Squeezed very gently. As if maybe I could ease the parted skin back together again. Like perhaps if I fixed my head my brain would be capable of fitting together all the information I was hearing.

The van pitched left and I stuck my bloodied hand out to stop myself from tumbling over. ‘I already told you,’ I said. ‘She died in that crash.’

‘She might have, I agree. But think about it. This island of yours is a small place. It’s your sister’s home. She grew up here. It’s insular, by its very nature. By its geography. It’s the kind of place that looks after its own. Where favours can be called in. Where people can be trusted and secrets can be kept. Your father has some influence here, agreed? And his daughter was in trouble.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense. Dad hired you to look into Laura’s death.’

‘No. Your mum hired me.’

‘Because Laura asked her to. She told mum to contact you if anything happened to her.’

‘Yes, but maybe not why you think. Maybe Laura wanted me hired because she knew I’d ask questions. I’d dig around in the mess she’d got herself in. I’d remember the way she’d quizzed me about how someone might vanish, and maybe I’d start to wonder if she was still alive. My involvement might even give your sister a chance to come out from hiding. Assuming I found something that could help her.’

‘And have you found anything like that?’

‘No. But you just did. In that locker.’

I thought about my holdall. The way it had been snatched from me.

‘What did you find?’ Rebecca asked.

‘A computer memory stick. It had Laura’s handwriting on the outside.’

‘And what was on the memory stick?’

‘I don’t know. I was planning to drive home and take a look. Next thing I knew, they were using my head for a battering ram.’

Rebecca didn’t say anything to that. She was contemplating the stained remains of the antiseptic wipe I’d given her. It looked almost as bad as her T-shirt. I dreaded to think how much blood she’d lost.

Better to think about what she’d told me about Laura instead.

‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘That’s why you agreed to work for my parents for free. You sensed that Laura had come to you for help, and you didn’t give it to her. You feel guilty.’

‘Does it matter? Isn’t it enough that I’m motivated?’

I didn’t say anything to that. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps it didn’t make any difference at all.

‘I’m sorry I told them about the locker,’ she said.

‘Doesn’t look like they gave you a lot of choice. And if they were watching my place, like you said, they would have followed me to the sports centre anyway. Speaking of which, someone else did.’

Rebecca looked up from the bloodied wipe. ‘Who?’

‘I don’t know. But he said he worked for the security services.’

‘Someone from the inside,’ she said, and nodded to herself. ‘The threat your sister was worried about.’

‘I still don’t believe Laura’s alive,’ I told her. ‘What you’re suggesting would involve too many people. One of them would say something.’

‘Not necessarily. Who are we talking about here? A coroner? A funeral director? Someone in the police? Like Shimmin, for instance. You said yourself he wasn’t willing to look into what happened with Lena up at the cottage. This could be why.’

‘You’re suggesting he helped Laura to disappear?’

She nodded. ‘But I think it was your dad who approached him.’

I thought about that. About how Dad had wanted to stay in my room at the hospital when Shimmin and Teare had arrived to speak with me. About how Teare had said that Shimmin had insisted on coming to the hospital with her, and how he’d interrupted her line of questioning. About how Shimmin had come to my home to speak to me following Teare’s death, and how I’d seen him deep in conversation with Dad before I drove to the sports centre.

‘There’s something I haven’t told you yet,’ I said to Rebecca. ‘Teare was attacked after we left last night. She’s dead.’

Chapter Forty-five

It was becoming hot inside the van. The midday sunshine was heating the metal and the interior was warming like an oven. Our air was getting stale. Rebecca was already having a hard time breathing and my bruised ribs didn’t make life any easier for me.

‘How do you know about Teare?’ Rebecca asked, in her breathless, stumbling rhythm.

‘Shimmin,’ I said. ‘He came to see me this morning. He knew we’d been to talk to her last night.’

‘Is he treating you as a suspect?’

‘No.’

‘What about me?’

‘I don’t think so. But he planned to speak to you.’

Rebecca absorbed the information in a quiet way. She didn’t seem altogether shocked. Maybe experience had hardened her to bad news. Maybe nothing surprised her any more.

‘Did he tell you how Teare died?’ she asked.

‘Looks like she was attacked in her home. Shimmin found her at the bottom of her stairs, like she’d tried to break free. And he found a man there, too. Also dead. Shimmin showed me a photograph. I recognised him.’

‘Who was he?’

‘The paramedic. The one who talked to me after my bike accident. The one who took Lena.’

‘Someone’s cleaning house,’ Rebecca said.

‘They’re making a hell of a mess while they’re at it.’

‘No choice. They’re getting desperate.’

‘About what?’

‘Whatever’s on that memory stick.’

The van braked hard and slowed, swinging to the right. It accelerated at a cautious pace, then maintained a low cruising speed. The tyres hummed and chattered and danced. I could hear the scrape of loose grit, the hollow
whump
of a wheel striking a pothole, the
rat-tat-tat
of a cattle grid. Then more braking, a left turn, and the van came to a halt.

I listened hard, but I couldn’t hear anything over the noise of the idling engine. Rebecca cocked her ear against the cargo doors.

Footsteps. Moving away from the van. I tried the sliding door by my side. Still locked. The footsteps continued, followed by the distant sound of a door closing. Not our van. There had to be a second vehicle. Then engine noise ahead of us, followed by the creak of our brakes loosening off and the purr of the van edging forwards.

Rebecca read my face and picked up on the question in my eyes.

‘Last night they were in a Land Rover Discovery with tinted windows. Anderson is driving us, so that puts Lukas in the Land Rover.’

The van lurched and pitched and rocked. Loose stones snapped and popped beneath our tyres. My tools and spare components rattled and jingled in their cubby-holes and plastic tubs. I dropped to my knees and hooked my arm around a timber upright. Rebecca’s head bounced off the rear cargo doors.

‘We’re nearly there,’ she said, the vibrations distorting her voice.

‘Where?’

‘Somewhere remote. Somewhere we won’t be disturbed.’

The van listed hard to the left. Then righted itself. Like it had passed through a deep rut.

‘But Anderson doesn’t know the island,’ I said.

‘The kind of place they’re looking for isn’t hard to find. You just keep driving until the roads get small.’

‘So we could be anywhere.’

‘We could be. But if Lukas is leading the way, my guess is we’re going somewhere he’s familiar with. Somewhere we’re familiar with, too.’

I finally caught up to her. ‘The cottage,’ I said.

‘They know it’s remote. It’s not overlooked. Nobody will hear anything.’

I didn’t like what Rebecca was saying, but I couldn’t fault her logic. And I knew what it felt like to drive up the muddy track through the woods in my van. The lurching and the pitching and the rocking. The bouncing and the swaying and the rolling and the juddering.

‘So what do we do?’ I asked.

‘We arm ourselves. What tools have you got in here?’

I had plenty of tools, many of them capable of wounding grievously. I had claw hammers and ball-peen hammers and rubber mallets. I had adjustable wrenches and heavy-duty spanners. I had tube benders, razor-sharp bandsaws and tin shears. I had callipers and vices and clamps. I had pliers and screwdrivers and a wide variety of knives and cutting tools. I had electric drills. I had a blowtorch.

I hauled myself to my feet and grabbed what I could as the van bucked and rolled beneath me. I passed Rebecca a nail gun and a knife with a retractable blade. I chose an adjustable wrench for myself, slipping it beneath my jumper and sliding it inside my sling, pressed flat against my chest. I hefted an electric drill in my right hand, then switched it for a rubber mallet. The mallet felt good at the end of my arm. The handle was maybe a foot in length, allowing for a fast swing and even better momentum. The rubber head was dry and cracked and very solid. Ideal for thumping aged copper piping into compliance. Excellent for attacking a temple, or an elbow joint, or a knee cap.

The van climbed a steep incline. Then the ground flattened out and we gathered speed and the wheels chattered and pummelled and thudded.

The van slowed to a halt, then reversed in a sweeping arc. It reversed very fast. Then there was a sudden hard impact at the back – a sharp metal
clang
and the dry
crack
of splintered light clusters. I was thrown to the floor. Rebecca ducked forwards, protecting her head. The rear cargo doors shook and shivered and trembled.

The engine died. The van settled in position. I could hear the whine of the Land Rover’s power steering, the scrub and scrabble of its tyres on mud and stone. Then all was quiet. A car door opened and closed. Footsteps approached the van.

A fist thumped into the metal bulkhead that separated the cab from the loading bay.

‘Listen up,’ Anderson yelled. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to pop the central locking and you’re going to slide open the side door. But before you do, you’re going to drop whatever weapons you’ve picked up back there. My colleague is holding a Beretta M9 semi-automatic pistol. If he sees you with anything in your hands, and I mean anything at all, he’s going to pull the trigger and keep pulling. Understand?’

We didn’t say anything. We were too busy looking at one another.

‘Drop whatever you have,’ Anderson shouted. ‘Don’t make him shoot.’

I considered the rubber mallet in my hand, then shrugged and tossed it away. Rebecca looked longingly at the nail gun before setting it aside. She kept hold of the craft knife, tucking it under the sleeve of her leather jacket. The knife was small. Compact. The blade was housed inside a hard plastic case.

I watched her cup her hand and practise dropping the knife into her palm. Saw her thumb rest on the ridged metal lever that extended the blade. She seemed happy with the move. Content with her handling. She poked the knife up under her cuff and scrambled to her feet.

‘Ready?’ Anderson yelled.

‘We won’t try anything,’ I called back.

Rebecca took a couple of strides towards me. I could hear her breathing. Slow and nasal and phlegmy. There was a moment of silence, followed by a series of rapid mechanical clunks as the door locks retracted. I pointed the torch beam at the latch on the side door. Once I had its location fixed in my mind, I dropped the torch on to the dust sheets near my feet and reached out and opened the door.

Daylight flooded the interior of the van. I blinked and shielded my eyes with my hand. We were parked in the small clearing in the woods in front of the cottage. The cottage and the overgrown garden were off to our left. I stuck my head outside. The rear of the van was pressing right up against the garage door. The fluted metal panels had creased and buckled where the van had been reversed into them. A black Land Rover Discovery was parked to our right, its nose pointed away from us in the direction of the dense tree cover.

The man called Lukas was standing ten paces away, his back to the treeline and the cooling Discovery, his legs parted, right foot slightly in front of the left, both arms raised level with his chin. He had a dirty big gun grasped in his hands. His right hand was curled around the butt, index finger hooked around the trigger. His left hand supported his right wrist.

It struck me as a competent pose, but he was having difficulty maintaining it. I don’t know a whole lot about guns – I’ve never held one myself, let alone fired one – but any idiot could see the pistol was heavy. Lukas wasn’t muscular and his arms were wavering, describing small, imperfect circles with the muzzle of the gun. He wet his lip. Rotated his head so that his lank hair brushed his shoulders. I wondered how soon he’d need to lower the gun and give his arms a rest. I asked myself how long I could stand there without moving.

Not long.

The driver’s door opened and closed and Anderson hustled around the front of the van. He had a baseball bat propped on his shoulder. The bat was as long as my arm, made of pale blond wood and lacquered to a high-gloss finish. It looked solid. Hard. Uncompromising.

Anderson’s face looked the same way.

He stopped maybe five paces from the sliding door. He was wearing pressed tan chinos over brown loafers. A navy polo shirt was buttoned to his chin and tucked into the waistband of the chinos. His biceps swelled against the cuffs of the shirt. He looked like he was dressed for an office barbecue.

Anderson checked on Lukas, contenting himself with the cover he was being afforded. I recognised the clothes Lukas had on. The old blue sweater and jeans were from the back of my van. One leg of the jeans was stained more than I remembered. It was dyed a dark, rusty red, and the material seemed to be clinging to his thigh.

Anderson beckoned me out of the van with a
gimme
gesture with the curled fingers of his spare hand. I stepped out on to compacted mud. Anderson pulled the baseball bat down from his shoulder and used the rounded end to lift my free arm in the air. He poked the bat between my thighs until I widened my stance.

‘You understand I have to check you,’ he said. ‘Make sure you’ve complied with my instructions. It’s a dangerous time, right?’

I didn’t say anything.

‘Not dangerous for me. I’m good. I have my friend here with a Beretta in his hand. I have my bat. But it’s dangerous for you. Make no mistake. Dangerous if you decided to ignore my advice. If maybe you thought you’d arm yourself and take a swing at me when you got the chance.’