Safe House (37 page)

‘The younger one was my fake paramedic.’

‘And the older one?’

‘The older one is the guy who tackled me in the sports centre. The one who claimed to work for the security services.’

‘So no surprise that he wanted you to hand him the memory stick.’

‘None at all.’

‘They worked as a team.’ Rebecca seemed oddly disconnected. Almost robotic. I guess it didn’t help that she was still talking in a pained, halting tempo, gasping air wetly through her mouth, her busted nose making her sound badly congested. ‘They worked together to kill Alex Tyler and fit Lena up for his murder. Then they worked together to snatch Lena from this cottage.’

‘And?’

‘It’s a pattern. And now the young one is dead. But it stands to reason that your man from the sports centre would have been involved in the mess at Teare’s house.’

Rebecca turned to me. I searched for her eyes behind the swelling and the bruising. Her liquid brown irises seemed to pulsate.

‘And Laura?’ I asked, straining to kill the quaver in my voice.

‘It looked to me as if she left the room before those men came in.’

It had looked the same way to me. ‘You think they were waiting until she was gone?’

‘Either that, or she signalled for them to go in.’

I tried not to flinch. I wasn’t entirely successful.

‘It’s a possibility.’ Rebecca shrugged. ‘And we can’t ignore it completely. But,’ she added, tapping the laptop screen with her fingernail, ‘this video file suggests otherwise.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Those men didn’t know they were being filmed. If they had, their first move would have been to disable the camera. And they wouldn’t have removed their masks.’

‘So?’

‘So Laura
did
know. She was able to record and download the camera feed. And if she knew about it, and they didn’t, I don’t think they were working as a unit.’ Rebecca paused. Regained her breath and turned her mouth down at the corners. ‘You realise that if those two men really were acting on behalf of the security services, then Alex Tyler was killed by British Intelligence.’

‘Laura’s employer.’

‘Yes, but remember why she wanted my help? I’m
outside
the organisation. The threat she was worried about was coming from
inside
. And she got this video file to you. She did it for a reason.’

‘Then she’s a whistleblower?’

‘No.’ Rebecca shook her head. ‘This file would be with the press if that was the case. I think Laura was trying to find her own solution. She was buying time by hiding Lena here, but she needed freedom to work. So she faked her own death and she got the two of us involved.’

I tried to let Rebecca’s words sink in, but they wouldn’t settle. What she was suggesting seemed impossible to me. Difficult to believe in. Even harder to hope for.

‘There’s one more thing,’ she said. ‘There was a sedative in the vodka. You saw that, right?’

‘It was hard to miss.’

‘And the younger guy used a syringe to inject Alex with the poison that killed him. He seemed comfortable with the move. As if it was something he’d done before.’

‘OK.’

‘And if it was something he’d done before, it’s something he could have done again.’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘Your crash. You said he was the guy who approached you as a paramedic. He talked to you, and then you lost consciousness.’

‘Because I’d banged my head.’

‘Maybe. It’s highly likely, I don’t deny that. But isn’t it also possible that he could have stuck you with a needle?’ She swallowed thickly, raising her hand for my patience until she’d cleared her airways and composed herself. ‘You were unconscious for a long time. But from what your dad told me, the doctors who treated you in the hospital didn’t find any real swelling to your brain. You were discharged about as quickly as you could have been.’ She gripped my chin and turned my head to one side. Grimaced as she saw the bloody gash at the top of my skull. ‘And now you’ve taken a big hit only a few days later, but you’re coping OK.’

I cast my mind back to the crash itself. I’d definitely banged my head, because my helmet had been badly damaged. But I could also remember how the paramedic had crouched down next to me. He’d squeezed my gloved hand. And then . . .
something snagged against the skin of my wrist.
Had that something been the point of a syringe?

‘But surely my doctors would have noticed?’

‘Not necessarily.’ Rebecca shook her head. ‘You presented with all the signs of a bad brain injury. They treated you that way once you reached ICU. And even if they carried out a tox screen, if the guy had used a drug routinely administered in A&E, it could have been overlooked. I’m thinking of a long-acting benzodiazepine such as diazepam. Given in the right dosage, it could knock you out for hours. You’d present with all the symptoms they’d be anticipating. And meantime, the guys who took Lena would know for sure that you’d be out long enough for them to get her off this rock before any kind of alarm was raised.’

‘You really think so?’

‘Hey, I learned a long time ago not to rule anything out. Speaking of which.’ Rebecca lifted the poster for the missing dog from my lap. She scanned the printed information. Laughed faintly.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Do you recognise this number?’

I looked at the telephone number she was pointing to at the bottom of the poster. It wasn’t familiar to me. I told her as much.

‘I think you should dial it,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Because I think Laura might answer.’

My heart stopped.

I felt a lump in my throat. A dryness in my mouth.

‘Would you like me to do it?’ Rebecca asked.

I shook my head as I fumbled with my mobile. My hands were hamfisted. I jabbed at the keypad with clumsy fingers. Raised the phone to my ear.

It rang. Then it rang some more. It kept ringing for close to a minute before it was answered.

‘Hello,’ said a voice I recognised.

It wasn’t Laura.

It was much, much worse than that.

Chapter Fifty-four

I didn’t talk with Rebecca during the drive. There wasn’t much to be said. My mind was racing, but my thoughts were scrambled and incoherent. I jumped from one concern to the next. One worry to another. Pretty soon, my fears began to cancel each other out, leaving me in a state of uneasy calm, like listening to white noise for so long that it becomes possible to mistake it for silence.

The mid-afternoon suburban streets of Onchan seemed strangely unfamiliar to me. Mothers pushed babies in strollers. Pensioners queued for double-decker buses. People mowed lawns, or washed cars, or perused newspapers in sun-bathed conservatories. It was like driving through a film set. An unreal world on the other side of the windscreen. One where no one would believe that there was a man gagged and bound in the back of my van, and where nobody would understand what it was like to feel the pulse fade from the neck of a man who’d had designs on killing you.

My parents’ care home looked just as it always has. Solid. Unremarkable. Calm.

We parked in the gravel yard outside my front door. There was an unfamiliar car parked there. A blue Vauxhall Insignia. It looked fairly new. A recent purchase. But it could have used a wash. There was dirt on the paintwork. Dust and grime on the windows.

Rebecca squirmed forwards in her seat. Under cover of the dashboard, she inspected the Beretta. She dropped the magazine out and counted the number of rounds that were left. Once she was satisfied, she reassembled the pistol, applied the safety and returned it to the small of her back, covering the bulge with her leather jacket.

‘Ready?’

‘Nope.’

She smiled, then winced. I could see that the pain from her facial injuries was very bad. Probably the skin was tightening as it healed.

I closed my hand around the purple memory stick. Squeezed hard.

‘We should go in,’ Rebecca said. ‘Time’s nearly up.’

I dropped out of the cab and approached my front door, glancing inside the Vauxhall on my way, but not seeing anything of importance. I fitted my key in the lock and passed on through. Just like normal. Just like coming home on any other day.

Except for the way my heart was punching against my chest. The way my scalp was itching and my palms were sweating.

I climbed the stairs. Fourteen of them. My legs shook like I was scaling a mountain.

Rebecca climbed behind me. I could feel her presence close by.

I turned at the top of the stairs and that was when I finally saw them. It took everything I had not to drop to my knees.

Dad was perched on one of my straight-backed dining chairs in the middle of the room. He was sitting on his hands, palms down, with his feet close together and his face bowed so that his chin brushed his chest.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, in a dry voice.

‘It’s OK,’ I told him.

It wasn’t true. Things were a very long way from OK.

Dad’s head was bowed because he had a pistol pressed against the back of his skull. The pistol was being held by the man with the cue-ball head who’d confronted me in the sports centre.

The man’s temple was yellowed and grazed from where I’d struck him with my knee. His eyes were bloodshot, puffy and weeping, and his nostrils were red, like he was recovering from a bad cold. The after-effects of the chemical spray I’d blasted him with.

He was holding the pistol in his left hand. His right hand was hanging down by his side, bent at a sickening angle on the end of his arm. I remembered the sensation of stamping on his elbow and driving his wrist into the ground. The nauseating
crack
. He didn’t seem preoccupied by the injury. He was focused on the task he was engaged in.

There was a mobile phone on the floor by Dad’s feet. It was a cheap pay-as-you-go model. I was pretty sure it was the phone he’d answered my call on. It certainly wasn’t his own.

He hadn’t said much when he’d answered. Just a strained ‘Hello’ before the phone was snatched from him and another voice came on the line. Issuing an ultimatum. Telling me to return home with Rebecca in no more than thirty minutes, and to make sure I brought whatever Laura had left for me in the sports centre. He made it very clear that I shouldn’t call the police or attempt to contact anyone else. He told me Dad’s life depended on it.

He hadn’t sounded like he was bluffing. Now I knew for sure that he wasn’t.

‘Did you bring it?’ the man asked.

I unfurled my fingers. Showed him the memory stick.

‘That’s all?’

I nodded.

‘Nothing else?’

I shook my head.

‘Then why the holdall?’

I swallowed, but my voice was still croaky when I spoke. ‘I didn’t know what I might find. I thought it might be something big.’

He stared at me as he mulled over my answer. He took his time, as if there were hidden angles he wanted to consider, whole dimensions I hadn’t thought of.

‘What’s on that thing?’ he asked.

Rebecca took a step to my side. ‘We don’t know,’ she said. ‘And to be honest, we really don’t care.’

The man considered her response. His eyes narrowed and he pushed the gun harder against the back of Dad’s head. The muzzle twisted his unruly grey hair, like he was aiming to open Dad’s skull with a corkscrew motion.

‘What happened to your face?’ he asked Rebecca.

‘Erik Zeeger’s people,’ she said. ‘We ran into them outside the sports centre. They wanted the memory stick, too.’

‘I don’t believe you.’ His words were steady. Unhurried. ‘You wouldn’t be here if that was true.’

‘We got lucky.’

Dad’s eyes widened with alarm as he saw Rebecca’s injuries for the first time. He probably thought her definition of ‘lucky’ was badly misplaced.

The man with the gun nodded towards the memory stick. ‘You make a copy of that?’

‘No.’

‘You plan to speculate about what’s on it? You plan to go to the police or the press?’

‘We just want this whole situation to be over. We don’t want anyone else to get hurt.’

‘That’s good. Because it wouldn’t get you anywhere, anyway. I disappear after this. You never see or hear from me again. But the people I work for are powerful people. Highly capable people. They can hurt you, your family, in ways you can’t even begin to imagine. And then there’s your sister. Her memory. You don’t want that sullied, correct?’

Her memory
.

I no longer felt any need to question if Laura really was dead. She had to be. I knew that now. I knew Laura. I knew the good in her. And despite what Rebecca had suggested, there was no way she would have stayed in the background while this mess played out around us. Once it was clear her family were in jeopardy, she would have stepped out of the shadows.

I caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of my eye. Rebecca had inched away from me. Not by much, but by enough to give her a little more room. I didn’t like it. I didn’t appreciate what I guessed she was trying to do.

I thought about the Beretta nestled in the crook of her back. I thought about how she’d need to whip her hand behind her, hitch up her jacket, grab for the gun, straighten her arm, adjust her grip, line up a shot, pull the trigger. She was probably a good shot. Maybe better than good. She’d proved to me many times already how skilled she was. But the bald man had his pistol pressed against Dad’s head. He had his finger on the trigger. And while the way he’d reached inside his jacket back at the sports centre had suggested he was naturally right-handed, I was pretty sure his left hand would do. There was no way Rebecca could get a shot off in time. And even if she did, there was a real danger she’d hit Dad.

I stared at her. Willing her not to try anything.

The man tracked my gaze.

‘Whatever you’re cooking up,’ he said, ‘I’d advise you to forget it.’ He jabbed his pistol forwards, jamming Dad’s head down towards his lap. ‘Put your hands up,’ he barked.

I complied right away, raising my right hand in the air. I couldn’t do anything about my left, except keep it still.

Rebecca hesitated.