The Power of One (17 page)

Lydia pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table. It was the one thing at odds with the chrome and black, sleek and shiny kitchen. It, and the four chairs tucked beneath it, were old and rather tatty. The red Formica table was the same sort Lydia recalled from cafes of her childhood. The chairs had been re-covered, but had fifties greasy spoon written all over them.

Joy noticed her examination.

‘It was from Granddad's place,' she said. She pulled out a chair and plonked herself down. ‘My grandparents owned a little chemist shop. They've retired but it's still going. Dad got a couple and their son in to run it like it had always been. In Granddad and Grandma's day, they had this bit of a space at the front of the pharmacy, with seats so people could sit down while they waited for their medicines. Grandma started making tea for people and selling cakes and biscuits and it got to be a place people came to gossip or just to be with someone. You know? The old people really liked it and Dad grew up coming home from school and helping out at the shop.

‘He grew up poor, so did Mum. So did everyone round where they used to live but the little chemist's was a place people came to for a cheap cuppa and a bit of company and, when Gramps retired, Mum had the table and chairs brought here.' Joy laughed. ‘She's just as sentimental as Dad was, you know?'

She got up to make the tea.

‘You must miss your dad,' Lydia said.

Joy nodded. ‘Dad was a Jack the Lad, always in trouble in his teens. Dad was a thief, no getting away from that. He was other things too, but as time went on he got into more legitimate stuff and now, I guess, we're almost respectable. Even Gran says she can own him again. But he was a great father and I've been really lucky. Mum is … well, Mum. I'd never get her to decorate any house of mine, but they both brought me up like I was their princess and my brothers were princes. We miss Dad a lot. Hell of a lot, but we've got one another and that's …' She broke off, smiling a little mistily. ‘Were you close to your brother-in-law?'

Lydia laughed. ‘Once, I thought we were very close. We dated for about six months. We were both about your age, I guess. I liked him a lot and for a while I thought he really liked me. Loved me, even. Then I realised he wasn't capable of that.'

‘How come?'

Lydia shrugged. ‘Paul could seem perfect. He was kind, considerate, gentle, but it was all like he had learnt how to be those things by watching other people. He didn't feel it, if you know what I mean. We eventually had this long talk and he admitted that he liked me, but he couldn't seem to go further than that. He didn't know how. It was like … Paul was the most fantastic solver of puzzles and player of games. That was how he lived his life; kind of second-hand through other people and through his puzzles and his games. He was fine if he could treat life like a puzzle or like a really complicated game. Could identify the rules and kind of react according to the rules, but he couldn't improvise. You know how much we improvise in our daily lives.'

Joy laughed. ‘I never really thought about it, but I suppose, talking for myself, maybe ninety-nine per cent. I was never much good at rules. So … how can I put this. You fell out with one brother and in with the other?'

Lydia groaned. ‘Oh, that sounds
soo
bad. No. I broke up with Paul and didn't see either of them again until after University. Then Edward and I bumped into one another and we got talking and one thing led to another and … Paul was best man at our wedding.'

‘And Edward understands how to improvise,' Joy said with a cheeky smile.

‘Oh, yes. You may not think he's the improvising type, but I've never regretted getting married. Never regretted helping him to set up the business. Or of bringing Paul on board. It worked well. I just wish he had confided in us.'

‘Maybe he thought that wasn't in the rules?' Joy suggested.

Lydia nodded. ‘Maybe so,' she agreed.

Abe Jackson had lived by his instincts and his training for more years than he cared to remember. It was instinct that warned him, training that helped him to make his escape.

Abe would say that every place had its own soundscape. Every location could be identified not only by the way it looked but the way it sounded and the way it felt. He could stand outside of a house and know if someone was inside. Could sense the subtle changes generated when even the most skilled of searchers had examined a room. Could hear the smallest changes in the soundscape once he'd grown familiar with any location. Abe never claimed supernatural abilities; he just figured his skills were based on sharpened instincts, careful observation and the desire to stay alive.

New recruits would smirk and inwardly snigger at Abe Jackson's claims. Those that remained with him for any time would soon correct the doubters. Abe
knew
these things and, perhaps by some strange osmosis, those he trained also acquired such capacities. They watched, they listened, maybe they laughed at first, but then they learnt to copy, to identify, eventually to trust.

Abe was not there when they came for him. Tonight he had watched some detective thing on television, guessing from the second scene who the killer was; still vague at the end as to why he had done the deed. He had wandered down to a local pub for a late dinner, eaten alone, then come back to the hotel at closing time. He paused, more from habit than expectation of trouble, at the corner of the street before turning down towards the hotel. And he had known that something was wrong.

He crossed the road so that he could look down towards the hotel without turning the corner. At this time of night, he had noted that the stretch in front of the hotel tended to be almost empty. Guests would wander back for the night. Taxis occasionally pull up in front of the three steps. For three cars to be parked in the street; that was different. Parked, but not empty.

For a couple to sit for a few minutes before one or both getting out, now that was a normal enough thing, but for three cars to be occupied, one by a pair of men, one by a woman, one by three people; that was unusual. Abe stood in the shadow of a doorway and he watched. Two figures loitered just inside the lobby and another chatted idly to the evening receptionist.

Overkill, he thought. He must have more of a reputation than he thought.

Abe turned and walked back the way he had come, grateful for the training that had long ago taught him the value of planning an escape, even from the most benign locations. His car was parked two streets away and his emergency pack already in the boot. Abe Jackson glanced around, then waited for five full minutes to check there was no one near his car, then he got inside and drove away.

At the hotel, Superintendent Aims and his team waited.

S
he needed the laptop to get the rest of the narrative. Paul had promised he would give her the key for safe keeping. He had told her what book he would leave it in, told her too that if anything happened to him he was leaving that particular volume to his sister-in-law, Lydia. She had tried not to mind, but despite her probing and teasing he had never promised her anything. Never given her anything that was personal either.

Taking the book from Paul's flat had not provided her with the information that she needed but she had it now, delivered almost incidentally. Now, if she had the laptop, she could find the file, know something more of the story.

She had parked about a half-mile from the de Freitas's house, noting as she drove by that a police car was parked outside with two officers inside. When she crossed the lawn at the rear of the house, it was possible to see that the car had gone. Creeping around the side of the house, she saw that one man had been left on patrol. Was he there all night or just to take a look around?

She hid among the trees and he wandered, checking doors and shining a light through the windows, watched him as he made his way back to the front. Dawn was showing itself in a lightening of the sky and a faint pink glow on the horizon. She was due in for the early shift. Time was not on her side.

The policeman's voice carried clearly on the still air.

‘A bloody hour. You must be kidding. Can't someone else come and fetch me?'

She heard the faint cracked voice on the other end of the phone but could not make out the words. From the one-sided conversation she gathered that his partner had been diverted to a domestic, leaving him stranded at the house on the hill. She was faintly surprised seeing that the de Freitas's were absent, that he was even there, but she supposed that the police were used to checking on properties they knew were empty. Inconvenient for her, though.

Satisfied that he was unlikely to inspect the rear again, she crept back to the kitchen door. A spare key was kept beneath a plant pot full of herbs, there for the housekeeper in case she arrived when the owners weren't there. Frantham, she thought, was still one of those places where people rarely thought to lock their doors, at least, outside of the tourist season. Praying that no one had slid the bolt inside, she slid the key in the lock and turned it slowly, flinching at the sound of the sneck sliding back.

She held her breath, waited to be heard. Nothing. Just the dawn chorus starting in the line of trees that edged the de Freitas's land and the faint sound of an early car passing on the road.

She opened the door just far enough and slipped inside.

Paul's room. Top of the stairs, second door on the right, facing out over the garden. The hall was the danger point. The police officer might turn and see her through the glass panel in the door. She could see him as she emerged from the short corridor between the kitchen and the hall. He had his back to the door, was clearly bored, shuffling from foot to foot. Knowing that she'd lose her nerve if she hesitated, she scurried across the hall and took shelter on the stairs, glanced back at the front door and breathed relief that the officer had not moved. Then ran swiftly up to Paul de Freitas's room, dived inside and closed the door quietly behind her. The room was dimly lit, not enough of the dawn light yet permeating to allow her to see as clearly as she needed. Nervously, she took her keys from her pocket and gripped the tiny penlight she had attached, thankful that at least she knew where to look. She opened the wardrobe door, withdrew the deck shoes sitting on the wardrobe floor, and pulled out the insole from the left and then the right.

There.

Hidden beneath was a news clipping announcing the funeral of Arthur Payne. Born 1923 and a phone number that, despite what the advert said, was not that of Paul de Freitas. She replaced the shoes, stuffed keys and torch and clipping back into her jacket pocket and shut the wardrobe doors, relieved that she now had the note Paul was supposed to have left inside the book. Irritated too that he should, at his age, see fit to play such childish games.

She fancied she could hear his laughter and his voice. ‘Half in the book, half in my laptop case, maybe. I haven't decided yet. I'll put the full version in my shoe. The light-blue ones I don't wear.' Then more seriously, ‘If anything happens, this is who you call, you understand that, don't you. I made a promise and I have to deliver on it. If I can't … if for any reason I can't …'

She closed her eyes to stop the tears from falling, told herself she was nothing but a fool, then silently, she got to her feet and crept back down the stairs and out of the house.

Half an hour later she was at work, signing in at reception.

‘Hi, Lyndsey, you're early, even for you.'

She shrugged. ‘I was awake, I thought I'd make an early start.'

She passed out of the reception area and made her way to her office, the adrenaline that had carried her through now draining, leaving her trembling. Once safe in her office, she took out her mobile and dialled the number quoted in the advert, hoping as it had no other code, that this was a local call.

‘Do you have it?'

‘Not yet, but I know how to get it now. The police have the computer …'

‘Not now, they don't.'

‘But they'll have copies of the drive. Look, I know what to look for, but only Paul had the complete key.'

There was no reply from the man on the phone.

‘Did you hear me?'

There was only silence. She dropped her phone back into her bag and stood uncertain in the middle of the room. What now? She had expected something more. Something definite.

Dial the number, Paul had said. They'll know what to do. Well, Lyndsey thought bitterly, if they did, whoever they were, they didn't seem about to let her know.

M
ac walked to work. It took ten minutes if he hurried and fifteen if, as usual, he dawdled, pausing often to look out to sea and enjoy the leisurely start to his day.

Life in Frantham was very different from his life before, still in a seaside town but in a much busier area and with a much larger team. When he had first arrived, he had been bored and unsettled, thought himself unable to adjust to the quiet and the intimacy of the small community. Life since then had, in reality, been anything but quiet and Mac had found himself challenged by events and, as he walked in today, he was very aware that this case and what had started out as a murder inquiry, had become unbelievably complex.

Once out of Frantham Old Town the path took him on to the wooden walkway leading around the cliff and above the ocean and as the new town of Frantham came into view, Mac saw a familiar figure leaning against the railing. Hale.

The temptation to turn back was momentarily overwhelming, but then Hale looked in his direction and the impulse had to be put aside.

‘You lied to me,' Mac said conversationally taking his place on the rail beside Hale. He glanced further down the walkway but they seemed to be alone.

‘No friends,' Hale said. ‘No associates. Just the two of us.'

‘But you still lied to me. Who the hell are you?'