The Burning (44 page)

‘If you’re hiding her, Jenny, you’re being very irresponsible. You can’t even look after yourself, let alone her as well. Forget about me, think about her safety.
Haven’t enough people died already?’

‘Who exactly do you think is going to kill her? Let’s see – what about Philip Ashton? Does he know?’

‘Stop it, Jenny. You’re being stupid.’

‘As a matter of interest, how do you pronounce Wheelock – is it “we” or “wheel”

‘We.’

‘Wheelock. It’s not a bad name, more distinctive than Ryan.’

‘I meant it,’ Ryan said. He almost sounded sincere.

‘Nice try, but a little too late. See you on Monday.’

A full day of warmer air had largely dissolved the snow that had smothered the hedgerows and verges in the bottom of the valley, but as Jenny turned left and climbed the steep
lane to Melin Bach, the signs of thaw were fewer and the temperature gauge on the Land Rover dipped back below zero. The overhanging trees, still stooped and weighed down with icicles formed during
the melt, seemed to claw at her as she wove her way up, reminding her that there was a long way to go before she would see bright skies again.

The police car parked in the lane outside the house was a welcome sight. She flashed her headlights as she approached, and the driver signalled back. She would make sure to offer him a warm
drink as soon as she had got her laptop and the hard drive safely inside. She pulled onto the old cart track at the side of the house and hoisted her laptop bag from the passenger seat. She was
wearing the wrong shoes for the dash across the slush to the front door, but getting her feet wet now wouldn’t hurt. In a few minutes she’d be under a warm shower for the first time in
thirty-six hours. She couldn’t wait.

The nervous energy that had sustained her throughout the day bled out of her limbs as she crossed the threshold and entered the welcome sanctuary of the cottage. She sloughed off her coat,
dumped her bag in her study and went through to the kitchen in search of something to keep her going while she decided what she might cook for dinner. It felt like days since she had eaten
properly. She was halfway through an apple and coming round to the idea of lasagne when there was a tap at the back door. She hoped it was the shy young constable wanting to use the bathroom and
not his older colleague, who never lost an opportunity to regale her with the soap opera of his troubled marriage.

‘Hold on.’ She swallowed her mouthful and unbolted the stable door, preparing to be friendly but brisk.

The first thing Jenny saw was the ends of the two shiny, sawn-off barrels pointed straight at her chest. She took a step back and froze as she took in the figure casually holding the shotgun in
front of him. He was mid-height, dressed in a black, waist-length anorak and had the brim of a black baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes. She recognized him at once: the telephone engineer,
Lafferty.

‘Hello again,’ he said with a smile that, if it hadn’t been offered from behind a shotgun, would have been pleasantly friendly. He poked his head inside the door and glanced
left and right. ‘Why don’t you take a seat over there.’ He nodded towards the kitchen table.

Jenny did as he asked, her legs turning to jelly. Her heart was pounding so fast she could barely catch her breath. Her vision faded at the margins.

Lafferty stepped inside and swung the door shut with his elbow. Keeping the gun on her, he drew the blind fully down over the window behind the sink. Jenny noticed that his boots and ankles were
covered in wet snow and that he was wearing disposable latex gloves.

‘Nice and snug in here,’ Lafferty said, and leaned back against the rail along the front of the range, warming himself while he kept the shotgun cocked under his arm, a finger
lightly touching the dual triggers.

Jenny focused all her effort on trying not to scream or faint. The two barrels hovered less than eighteen inches from her head.

‘Sorry to spring a visit on you, but things have been getting a little bit tighter than I’d hoped. You’ve been busy; managed to catch me on film. I tried to think of
everything, but it all gets so complicated. The best laid plans and all that.’

From the corner of her eye Jenny saw Lafferty bring up his arm and wipe the back of his hand across his mouth. He smacked his lips and swallowed, the tension of the moment making him produce too
much saliva.

‘I didn’t set out to involve you in any of this, you understand, but no one thought you’d be poking around so much. Not even the police. Then I looked you up and, of course,
the alarm bells started to ring. You’re quite a terrier, aren’t you? You never give up.’

Jenny managed to find her voice. ‘What do you want?’

‘What have you told the police?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Why should I believe that?’

‘It’s not in my interests. I haven’t been able to trust them.’

‘Is that so?’ He shook his head gently from side to side, as if finding it hard to believe her. ‘What’s going to happen now, Mrs Cooper – do you mind if I call you
Jenny? – is you’re going to tell me what you know, so that we can work out where we stand.’ He moved the barrels a little closer to her head. ‘Off you go.’

She was too frightened to play games. At that moment, she would have done anything to get that gun away from her. ‘I know who Kelly is. Her real name’s Malia Sanders. She was a
witness in a murder trial seventeen years ago. Two young girls were killed. She was placed on witness protection, moved to London, then to Gloucestershire . . .’ She paused as the very
obvious last piece of the puzzle snapped into place.

‘Go on.’

‘You’re Liam Doyle, aren’t you?’

‘Very good.’ He smiled, showing rows of even teeth. ‘That was my name. They gave me a new one when they let me go: Patrick Gaddon. I’ve tried to get used to it, but
somehow it’s not me. I liked Cal Lafferty – it was my grandfather’s name – but I guess that’s no good to me now, either. Much more of this, I won’t know who I
am.’ The smile left his face. ‘How’d you find out?’

Jenny stalled, tempted to lie. He sensed it in her and touched the cold metal of the gun against her temple, making her stomach spasm. She could only think of him as Doyle the murderer.

‘Tell me,’ he demanded.

‘A man called Daniel Burden, he worked at the passport office—’

‘I know who he is,’ Doyle interrupted. ‘He was dead before Christmas. You must have found something I didn’t. What?’ He pressed the barrel of the shotgun into the
side of Jenny’s head. ‘It’s no time to go quiet on me, Jenny. You wouldn’t want me to start getting ugly, would you?’

‘There was a hard drive buried in the wall at his flat. He had software – the kind that trawls the internet for faces. He’d been researching Kelly’s past.’

‘Her name’s
Malia
.’

‘Sorry. Yes, Malia.’

‘He was a devious little bastard. Still, it’s thanks to him we found each other again. When he didn’t get any change out of her, he came looking for me. I promised him a
hundred grand if he told me where I could find her. Told him I’d inherited property. Dumb fucker.’ He laughed. ‘Greed makes people stupid, doesn’t it? Prison’s full of
them. Clever guys who could’ve been living like pigs in shit if they’d only known when to stop.’

An image of Burden’s hanging body flashed before Jenny’s eyes, the overturned chair on the floor next to it. Now she saw Doyle with his gun trained on him, making him climb onto the
chair and tie the rope. She had no doubt he’d killed Nicky too; clubbed the dog with the butt of that gun and strolled into her bedroom with a length of twine. He was the figure she must have
seen outside the burning house when she came round from her drunken stupor. It was Doyle who had slaughtered Ed and the girls, then taken shots at Nicky as she ran off into the night.

Jenny felt something in Doyle’s demeanour shift, as if his curiosity had suddenly become exhausted and his attention had switched focus. He snatched the phone from its cradle on the
counter and placed it in her trembling hands.

‘I’m going to need you to pull yourself together, Jenny. I know DI Ryan’s looking for Kelly, so you’re going to call him and tell him that she’s let you know
she’s safe and sound and’ll be at court on Monday. If he asks you any questions, just tell him he’ll have to save them for next week.’

‘What if he asks about you?’

‘Unless you intend to tell me different, he knows nothing about me. And I aim to keep it that way. Have you got his number?’

‘On my mobile.’ She reached for her jacket pocket.

‘Uh-huh.’ Doyle reached his hand in and brought out the phone. ‘Where do I find it?’

‘In my contacts.’

She watched him clumsily navigating around the phone, stabbing at the screen with his thumb. His awkwardness with it suggested he hadn’t been out of prison long. ‘This it?’ He
held it in front of her face.

She nodded and dialled Ryan’s number into the landline. Doyle switched her mobile off and put it in his coat pocket.

‘Put it on speaker so I can hear.’ Doyle stepped back a pace and angled the gun towards the floor, taking the pressure off her while she made the call.

Ryan answered on the second ring. Jenny could hear at once that he was travelling in his car.

He had seen her number and got in first. ‘Jenny, I need to speak to you—’

‘I’ve something to tell you,’ Jenny said, talking over him. Her heart was beating at more than twice its normal speed, making it almost impossible to speak calmly. She forced
herself on. ‘I know where Kelly is and I’ll be keeping her safe until she comes to court on Monday.’

‘You’ve got her with
you
?’

‘It doesn’t matter where she is, and I’m certainly not prepared to let you speak to her before she testifies. I’d ask you to respect my wishes and leave her to grieve in
peace.’

‘Jenny, no matter what’s passed between us, I am good at my job and nothing I have done contributed to what Ed Morgan did. I’m prepared to accept that it’s possible he
found out about her past, but I swear to you, I did everything to protect her.’

‘I’ve said all I have to say.’

‘You can tell me to my face. I’m on my way over.’

Doyle leant forward, pushing Jenny roughly out of the way and pressed the red button to end the call.

‘What does he mean, “what’s passed between us”?’ Doyle asked, levelling the gun back at her.

‘He tried to seduce me,’ Jenny said, her humiliation complete.

‘Don’t tell me you turned him down, Jenny – a good-looking guy like that? He tried it with Malia, too. Poor fella must be wondering what’s wrong with him.’ Doyle
leered at her from under the brim of his cap. ‘I’ve often wondered what it’d be like with an older woman. What do you say?’

Jenny felt her entire body go numb. Doyle’s stubbled face cracked into a smile. ‘Joking. I’m attached. Besides, time’s a bit short if you’re expecting
visitors.’ He nudged the barrel of the gun under her shoulder. ‘Get up.’

Jenny obeyed.

‘This is what happens next. We’re going to go to your car and you’re going to drive us away, nice and gently, so that policeman outside doesn’t get excited. Where are
your keys?’

‘In my coat. It’s in the hall.’

Doyle opened the kitchen door a touch and looked through to the living room. Jenny hadn’t yet drawn the curtains and if the constable in the car outside had glanced to his right, he would
have a clear line of vision into the house. ‘All right. Go and fetch it.’

Jenny moved towards the door.

‘Be good,’ Doyle said casually as she stepped past.

Jenny crossed the sitting room, opened the door to the front hall and reached her coat from the peg. Her eyes moved instinctively to the front door: the big brass key was in the deadlock and
both heavy bolts pulled shut. There was no escape. She turned back to the kitchen, pulling on her coat. Glancing to the window, she saw a light on in the police car outside. She could see the young
constable quite clearly: he was turning the pages of a magazine.

Keeping the gun trained on her, Doyle moved to the back door and opened it. ‘After you. You’ll get in the front, I’ll hop in the back. I want you to back out onto the road and
turn left up the hill.’

Jenny stepped outside into the frigid night and followed the frozen path that led along the back of the house and behind a hedge that would shield them entirely from the constable’s view.
She prayed he wouldn’t choose that moment to leave his car and patrol the house, in no doubt that Doyle would shoot him dead.

She walked quickly to the car, Doyle no more than two paces behind her. She popped the locks and slid into the driver’s seat. Doyle climbed in behind her, ducking down.

‘Go.’

Jenny started the engine and forced her foot down on the clutch. The car moved off jerkily as she backed into the lane, its rear bumper coming to within several feet of the police car. As she
crunched the lever into first she glanced in her mirror and saw the driver’s door open and the constable start to climb out. She jammed her foot on the throttle, almost stalling as she pulled
away.

Doyle cursed loudly as he sat up and poked the gun between the two front seats. ‘The fuck was that?’

‘I’m sorry. I’m not used to driving with one of those in my back.’ The car lurched again as Jenny shifted into third.

‘You won’t have to for long,’ Doyle said. ‘In a little while you’ll see a blue VW parked at the side of the road. There’s a track just beyond it. I want you
to pull into it.’

Jenny drove in silence, wondering what came next. Doyle had wanted her to stall Ryan and keep the police from looking for Kelly over the weekend, which made her think he was trying to buy her
some time to slip away.

She chanced her arm. ‘Are you and Malia planning on starting a new life together?’

‘It’s already started,’ Doyle said, ‘just like I always promised her. She never wanted to turn against me. It was me who told her to save herself. I knew our day would
come.’

‘How are you going to get away without being found?’ It was a bold question, but she was beginning to feel that she didn’t have a lot to lose.