Safe House (8 page)

A crushed pair of sunglasses with mirrored lenses.

Part Two

Chapter Nine

The boat was rolling and yawing, waves punching the hull, pitching the trawler high into the air, holding it aloft, then sending it plunging back down. Menser moaned and clutched his bald head. He wasn’t a good sailor. Never had been. So he needed the medication. A double dose. But the idea of adding anything at all to his churning stomach contents was almost more than he could bear.

So he compromised. Took the pills. Passed on the water. And hoped like crazy it would help.

The cabin lurched to the right. Menser peered out through the drenched window glass at the jagged horizon. It was meant to make things better. It just made them worse.

He heard footfall – the clang of metal treads. It was Clarke, climbing the ladder that connected the wheelhouse to the warren of rooms below deck. He’d changed clothes, at last. Ditched the paramedic costume and put on cargo trousers and a fleece jacket, like he was off on a hike.

‘
Whoa there!
’

Clarke thought he was hilarious. Swaying from one foot to the other, arms spread, acting as if he was being thrown around by the movement of the waves. His cheeks bulged. He covered his mouth and made a retching noise.

‘Give it a rest,’ Menser told him.

Clarke had been working the routine, riffing off variations of it, since they’d first left Peel marina, on the west coast of the island. It had grown old very fast.

‘I’m sorry, but this is priceless.’ Clarke dropped his hands on to his thighs and stared at Menser like he was an animal in a zoo. ‘IQ.
The
IQ. Outfoxed by Mother Nature. Undone by a dicey tum.’ He grinned like a lunatic. Started the swaying again. ‘Why didn’t you take your tablets before we set off, eh? Egghead like you. Would’ve thought you’d have known to do that.’

The intellect thing had followed Menser throughout his career. A consequence of his premature baldness and, yes, his surname. One time, early on, Menser had told the dumb bastard who was ribbing him that his name was spelt with an
er
on the end, not an
a
. It just made it worse. As if having the capacity to think for himself was a bad thing. Which it wasn’t. Menser knew that now. It was what had kept him in the job all these years. Made him useful. A capable employee. But it had also trapped him. Because he’d been expected to babysit a long list of idiots. Like the moron working the drunken sailor routine in front of him right now.

Menser glanced down at his wrists. The elasticised bracelets he was wearing were fitted with plastic buds that were meant to compress his pulse points. And do what exactly? He didn’t know. Hokum, probably. Some kind of placebo effect.

Islands. They were a pain in the backside. Difficult to fly out of without leaving a paper trail or being monitored in some way. That was why they’d gone with the boat. That was why he’d been paired with Clarke. He had some kind of naval background, apparently. Could even be he was ex-SBS.

‘How’s it looking down there?’ Menser asked.

‘No problem. Big guy’s still out of it. The girl looks pissed off. Says her wrist’s broken.’

‘And is it?’

‘Seems more like a sprain. I offered to take a look. Wasn’t having it.’

‘Why not?’

‘I might have suggested it’d help if she took her shirt off first.’

Menser shut his eyes and clamped his hand over his hairless scalp. This is what he had to deal with. What he was expected to manage.
Co-operation
– it was the key element in any hostage situation. Right now, the girl would barely talk. Wouldn’t eat. Refused to drink. That was normal. A standard reaction. Changing it took trust. Or fear. In Menser’s experience, trust worked better. It took longer – it was something you had to earn – but it could result in a useful bond. The one thing you didn’t want to build was hate. Make them hate you, and their resistance would grow. Make them despise you enough, and they’d stay silent just to spite you. Reach that stage and it didn’t matter what you did. Menser had seen all kinds of torture. Different varieties of pain. Some obvious. Some ingenious. The results, without exception, were unsatisfactory. Either the hostage died without saying anything, or the captor had to back down.

So it was better to be pleasant. Build their trust.

And then dispose of them.

It was something he could have told Clarke. A theory he could have explained. But Clarke wasn’t the type to listen. Take that ridiculous patch of facial hair below his lip. Menser had told him to lose it. Warned him it was memorable. And what happened? The bumfluff remained.

Same thing when they’d snatched the girl. He’d told Clarke not to speak to the biker, but Clarke had gone ahead and done it anyway. He’d claimed the guy was concussed – like the green jumpsuit had convinced him he was a genuine medic – but Menser didn’t like it. Taking chances was something you did if you wanted to get caught. And Menser didn’t. Not ever. Especially not now.

He put his hand to his gut. He was going to have to get past the sickness. Go below deck and repair whatever damage Clarke had caused. Maybe he could turn it to his advantage. Make the girl see that he was the one she could deal with. A rational mind. A reasonable guy.

Someone she could trust.

Chapter Ten

Lena stared blankly at the figure in the doorway. Deep inside her gut, she experienced a flutter of relief. It was the older man. The one with no hair. He was clinging to the doorframe because the boat was tipping and swirling around. In his spare hand he carried a plastic mug. Steam was rising from it.

‘I brought you some tea,’ he said, and extended the mug towards her, spilling hot liquid over his knuckles as the boat pitched suddenly to the right.

She had to fight back a smile.
Tea
. Of course. This was what the English always offered you. It didn’t matter that they’d imprisoned you in a ship’s cabin in the middle of a storm. It made no difference that you’d been drugged and abducted against your will.

She wanted to decline. Or even better, ignore him. But she was thirsty. Her mouth was dry and she was suffering from a headache that wouldn’t go away. It had been with her since she’d first come around to find herself in this . . .
cell
, she supposed she should call it.

The room had metal walls, painted white, and no window. There was a grubby linoleum floor, a metal toilet, a metal sink and two bunk beds with rusted frames. The door the man had come in by was metal, too. It had riveted panels and a sturdy lock. She’d tried opening it already. Many times. But the door had been bolted on the outside.

‘Either you want it, or you don’t,’ the man said. ‘But if I was you, I’d take it. You keep refusing and we might forget to come down here altogether.’

Her thirst was too much. Her headache too urgent.

Lena unfurled her right hand, the one that wasn’t inflamed and throbbing. The man approached and placed the mug in her palm. It wasn’t so bad when she finally took a sip. The tea had plenty of sugar in it. She could feel the sucrose zinging through her system, like a tiny spark of energy.

The cabin tipped and rocked. The door swung backwards and the man grabbed for it. He closed his eyes and swallowed thickly.

‘Mind if I sit down?’

He stumbled across and collapsed on to the bunk that faced her own. The veins pulsed in his temples. His ears and his scalp were flushed red. Lena could see that he was wearing a pair of pale-blue wristbands.

‘We need to talk,’ the man said, and spread his clammy fingers, as if he was prepared to be entirely open with her.

Lena didn’t reply.

‘About the cottage,’ the man continued. ‘About what you’ve been doing up there. And about Melanie Fleming. Her, in particular.’

Lena said nothing. She sipped her tea. Nursed her wrist in her lap.

The man smiled glumly. Shook his bald head. ‘You know what concerns me? What concerns me is that you’re not concerned. Now, if it was me, and I was in your position, I’d be terrified.’

The man waited a beat. Exhaled sharply.

‘Look, if you talk to me, I can help you. Maybe between us we can think of a way to make some of this go away.’

Lena slumped against the wall of the cabin.

‘Listen, you know the police have been looking for you, right? Maybe not publicly. Not in a major way, at least. But in a discreet, persistent way. So don’t think for a minute they won’t jump at the chance to take you into custody. That’s where we’re heading, get it? That’s where we’re taking you right now. We have people waiting. It’s all set up.’

Lena drank some more of the tea and closed her eyes to think. When she opened them again, the man was still there. He was crouched forwards, his elbows resting on his spread thighs, his palms pressed together, as if in prayer. He waited for a rolling swell to pass under them before speaking again.

‘Look, if you’re sitting there thinking there’s some kind of problem with the evidence, you’re wrong. The police have your fingerprints on a syringe and a glass vial they found in your underwear drawer. The vial contains cyanide. And the syringe has traces of the victim’s blood.’ The man tightened his hands into fists. He clenched hard, like he was squeezing lemons. ‘Then there’s the vodka. They tested it and found it was laced with a sedative. Same sedative as was in the bloodstream of the victim. They also found a cash receipt for the off-licence closest to your apartment. The receipt was for vodka. Same brand. Same volume. Time of purchase syncs with the estimated time of death.’ He sucked a fast breath in through his teeth. ‘Now, I’ll be honest with you. There’s a problem with the CCTV in the shop. But the guy behind the counter remembers a blonde buying the vodka. So the police showed him a headshot and he gave a statement that you’re the blonde he remembers.’

Out of nowhere, a huge
boom
and the cabin plunged wildly. The man’s bunk fell away and Lena was pitched up until she was towering above him. Tea sloshed around in her mug and her buttocks slipped on the scratchy blanket she’d spread beneath her. She braced her feet on the frame of the man’s bunk as he smacked into the wall and flailed for a handhold. The cabin door slammed closed. All around them, the stiff metal structure creaked and groaned and trembled. Then, all too slowly, the ship heaved itself back on to its axis and the door swung open.

The man glanced at the doorway. He wiped his mouth with a trembling hand. ‘Maybe you’re planning to tell them you didn’t have a motive,’ he said, after a pause. ‘But you should know they don’t care very much about motives when they have hard evidence. And just think about who the dead guy was. Think of the ways he could have betrayed you. The threats he could have posed to you. And then there’s the kicker.’ The man pointed his finger at her. ‘You ran and you hid. For two whole months.’

Lena felt no urge to protest her innocence. If the man really was in a position to help her – if he held a role with that level of power and influence – he would already know the truth. And if he knew the truth, then he wasn’t on her side. She couldn’t reveal anything to him. Not even how terrified she was. It was safer to act as if she didn’t care.

‘Oh, and one more thing,’ the man said. ‘Don’t be sitting there thinking that Melanie Fleming is going to come good for you. She’s not. You can trust me on that. So you really should be worried. And if you’re not, the best thing you can do right now is tell me why.’

Lena swallowed the last of her tea and set the mug down by her side, wedged in between the mattress and the metal bunk frame. She rested her fingers on her swollen wrist and stared hard at the man. Stared through him, really. He’d given her plenty of information. Some of it confirmed what she already suspected. Some of it was new. But there was one thing she was absolutely sure of – the man had no idea about the secret she and Melanie had shared. He had no awareness of the chance, however slim, that she was clinging on to. It all came down to the plumber. Everything depended on how observant he might have been.

Chapter Eleven

I returned to the cottage with Rocky. The broken sunglasses were tucked inside my sling and I was clenching the mobile phone in my hand. The casing of the mobile was damp and coated in mud and pine needles. I was afraid it would buzz again before I got to Rebecca and I didn’t know how to react if it did.

I was sure the sunglasses and the phone belonged to Mr Shades. The sunglasses were distinctive enough for me to remember and the phone looked a lot like the one I’d seen him with. It had a colour screen and a full Qwerty keypad. Laura had owned a phone just like it.

I was at the edge of the garden by now. Rocky had streaked ahead of me and around the front of the cottage, but I waded through the undergrowth towards the kitchen windows. I pressed my face to the dirt-streaked glass. Rebecca was standing on a chair, reaching up to the light-fitting in the middle of the ceiling. She had a pocket knife in her hand. She stretched high, rising up on her toes inside the blue plastic overshoes, the hem of her T-shirt hitching up. I waited until she’d pulled the knife clear and regained her balance before knocking.

She swung around sharply, then placed a gloved hand over her chest when she saw it was me. She stepped down from the chair and opened the kitchen door, and I explained about the sunglasses and the phone. Rebecca took them from me and turned them in her hands, her lips twisted in thought.

‘Why didn’t you come and get me?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t want to forget where they were.’

‘You touched these with your bare hands.’

It was a statement, not a question. I felt myself shrink.

She shook her head, then pressed a button with her gloved thumb, cycling through the lighted display. ‘The only thing stored on this phone are the missed calls. All of them came from a withheld number.’ She hummed. Smiled flatly. ‘Someone’s very keen to get in touch with the owner of this phone.’