Lost Hours

by Alex Walters

  She wasn’t sure she was even thinking clearly. Perhaps she was still just in shock at Justin’s death. She knew she hadn’t fully processed what had happened. She’d simply found a way to deal with the event and its implications, and, as always, that had involved throwing herself back into her work, just pressing on with everything. She couldn’t afford not to, after all. If Peter was to be believed – and, for her, that was becoming an increasingly big if – they were facing one of the biggest opportunities they’d ever had. If that were true, she couldn’t afford to take her eye off the ball.

  At the same time, faced with the shocking fact of Justin’s death and what it might mean, she was closing in on herself, falling back on her own resources. Perhaps her faith in Peter had suffered some further collateral damage as a result of that. She had to be that bit more cautious, less willing to rely on others. Whatever the reasons, all she knew was that, at least for the moment, she was feeling uneasy in Peter’s presence and she didn’t want him here.

  Instead she was sitting here all alone, staring into the darkness. She had turned out all the garden lights, telling herself it was because she wanted to be able to appreciate the night better, see the scattered lights out across the moors, the thickening pattern of stars above her, enjoy the heady scents of the night without being bothered by the moths and other insects drawn by the lights. All of that was no doubt true. But it was also true that in the darkness she felt less exposed, less of a target.

  Was she really under threat? She couldn’t discount what had happened to Justin, but she still harboured doubts about the real significance of that. She knew what Justin’s life had been like away from here. She knew because of all the times it had been thrust in her face and all the times she’d had to drag him out of the shit. She knew so much, and she’d never wanted to know any more. All she knew was that it was more complicated than she’d indicated to the police. As far as she was concerned, that had been his business. She wondered whether she should have said more to the police, but she couldn’t really see what good it would do to wash all that filthy linen in public. She’d never shared the truth even with Peter Hardy, and it was a can of worms she had no desire to open now. If the motive for Justin’s death really did lie there somewhere, she could only hope that was the end of it.

  But then there was tonight’s call. It occurred to her now that that might have been what had prompted her growing unease about Peter. There’d been something about his manner when she’d first found him holding the phone in the kitchen. She hadn’t fully recognised it at the time but she now felt convinced he wasn’t being entirely straight with her.

  That might mean anything, of course. He was the only one who’d heard the threat, and she and the police had taken his word about what had been said. Perhaps the wording of the threat had been even more brutal than he’d indicated and he’d been looking to shield her. Or, conversely and more likely, it could be that he’d exaggerated what had been said for his own ends.

  She’d recognised for a long time now that Peter was keen to inveigle his way further into her life. That was unsurprising, and in some ways she couldn’t really blame him. She’d allowed him to get closer to her than anyone since she’d split up with Ronnie all those years ago. If she hadn’t exactly led Peter on, she certainly hadn’t discouraged him. There’d even been brief moments when she’d almost begun to think she might actually want a deeper, more lasting relationship with him.

  Particularly in the days since Justin’s death, he’d clearly been angling to spend more time here. Again, that had partly been her own fault. In the first couple of days, when she was still feeling shaken by what had happened, she’d been only too happy to have him around. He’d been a reassuring presence, physically and emotionally, and she’d encouraged him to stay.

  Had he exaggerated tonight’s threat in the hope of giving himself a reason to spend even more time in her company? It was quite possible. Whatever else Peter might be up to and even if her other doubts were unjustified, she had no doubt he could be a devious bugger when it suited him. She’d seen it often enough in the way he’d behaved on business matters. He’d discouraged her from going into the office since Justin’s death, pointing out that she could work just as effectively from here without subjecting herself to further unnecessary stress. She wondered now whether that was another way for Peter to try to increase his influence over her and the business.

  Maybe tonight’s call had simply been some attention-seeking idiot who’d got hold of her phone number to make a generic threat and it had been Peter who’d added all the detail about Justin’s death? Or perhaps there hadn’t been a threat at all, and the whole thing had just been some elaborate charade.

  The darkness had deepened around her while she’d been sitting here, and the sky was heavy with stars, the pale streak of the Milky Way visible despite the faint haze of light from Sheffield over the north-eastern horizon. The hills and moors ahead were dotted with lights from the villages across the landscape, and the night remained eerily silent.

  She knew she was in danger of slipping into increasing paranoia, and she told herself to get a grip. But the reality was that she couldn’t trust anyone. She could trust only her own instincts. If Peter was right and these opportunities proved to be as big as he was claiming, then she’d know where she stood with him. If not – well, then she’d still know. Either way, she was taking a calculated risk in making this next step.

  Peter had made all the running. He was the one with the contacts, and at the start she’d been happy to keep it that way. If this went belly-up, she wanted to be able just to walk away. Even so, that would only work up to a point. At some stage, she did want to see the whites of their eyes.

  At the start, Peter had insisted the investment was there if they wanted to take advantage of it. But his contacts had made it clear it wouldn’t be there for ever. Sure, they rated her and wanted to do business with her. But if she didn’t make a decision, they’d cut their losses and move on. Find some other partner who’d be prepared to play ball.

  So in the end she’d closed her eyes and taken that first step into the water. Agreed to accept the first chunk of the money and take the risk. If this was everything Peter claimed, she knew they’d be operating at a different level, and that the competition here would be more intense. She could be ruthless, but these people were real professionals who she suspected would stop at nothing.

  If it all worked out as Peter was promising, she’d have no choice but to place even greater trust in the team she’d built around herself, so she had to proceed with care. She’d already eased out a couple of senior managers who’d given her cause for concern in terms of both their competence and their loyalty. The core team, headed by Peter, was growing smaller and more select, but its contribution would be critical. But she needed to be wary. In the end, the only person she could really trust was herself.

  Sitting there in the dark, she realised that for a few moments now she’d been half-conscious of some change in the feel of the night. She couldn’t immediately pinpoint what it might be. It was almost as if there’d been a shift in the quality of the silence. Since the sun had set, the evening had grown increasingly quiet, the last of the day’s birdsong fading, the breeze dropping almost to complete stillness, the trees and bushes silent and motionless.

  The night remained virtually silent, but she was aware now of something at the very limits of her hearing. It took her a few more seconds of straining her ears to work out what it was. The very distant sound of a car.

  The question was how distant? One of the benefits of this location was that it was almost impossible to hear any passing traffic. There were a couple of single-track roads that passed within a mile or so of the grounds, but some quirk of the surrounding topography deflected any significant traffic noise even from those roads. It was unusual to hear anything at all unless a car was directly approaching the house from the front.

  The sound was growing louder. Uneasy now, she re-entered
the house and continued down the hallway to the front door.

  This was not the smartest move, she kept telling herself. If she was genuinely worried, it was time to call the police. If she wasn’t, she should stay at the rear of the house and ignore the approaching car. What she shouldn’t do, in either case, was leave the relative safety of the building.

  But she couldn’t help herself. Her unease was matched only by her curiosity. If there was anything to concern her, she’d lock herself back inside and call the police. She reached the front door and peered out through the spyhole. She could see and hear nothing in the darkness.

  Screwing up her courage, she opened the door, still on the heavy chain, and looked out into the darkness. Even in the few minutes since she’d left the garden, the car had grown significantly louder, and she had no doubt now that it was on the narrow road leading down to the main gates. The gates themselves were still firmly shut and locked, and there was no immediate risk of the vehicle entering unless she allowed it. She could check the identity of the car and its occupants on the CCTV screen positioned in the alcove by the front door.

  She wasn’t even sure why she was concerned. Most likely, it was just one of the police patrols that she’d been told would periodically check out the front of the house. She hadn’t really been sure what the point of this was, but it seemed to be the maximum additional protection the police had been able to offer.

  After another moment, she saw the flash of headlights as the car rounded the final bend before reaching the gates. It pulled into the short driveway beyond the gates and she heard the engine stop.

  She half-expected then that the driver would either press the intercom button on the gates or, if it was someone who knew her, call her mobile. But nothing happened. She closed the door and moved to check out the CCTV screen. The live feed was slightly grainy and the car headlights had been positioned to point directly towards it, so it was difficult to make out what was happening.

  The car had been positioned so that she was unable to make out its registration or any detail about the car itself. She could see that there was some movement around the vehicle, with at least two people moving around in the glare of the security cameras. They appeared to be engaged in some activity rather than trying to gain access, but it was impossible to see what they were doing.

  After another couple of minutes, the two figures climbed back into the car and it reversed away from the gates. She stared at the screen, trying to make out the car registration, but failed to catch it before the car turned to pull away. If necessary, she told herself, it might be possible to capture the registration later from the recorded footage.

  The rear lights receded out of camera shot and the image returned to its usual stillness. She cautiously reopened the front door, hearing the sound of the car engine speeding away from the house. What the hell had that all been about? If it had been the police, surely they would just have approached the gates, perhaps stopped for a moment, and then turned round. There would have been no reason for them to leave the car.

  The smart thing to do now, she told herself, would be to call the police and get them to come and check out the front gates. Perhaps the car’s occupants had committed some act of vandalism or left some graffiti daubed on the surrounding walls. Perhaps some idiot had decided to follow up what had been done to the car in Matlock.

  It was more than possible. She’d never deluded herself that she’d win any kind of popularity competition among those who’d been affected by some of her business activities. Even so, she felt an additional sense of unease about what had just happened. It had felt too quick, too pre-planned, too professional, just to be some hot-headed ex-employees seeking revenge.

  Whatever it was, she needed to see the results before she called the police out. It was always possible that something had been done or left that was intended to cause her embarrassment. Even though she knew she was being reckless, she opened the front door and stepped out into the night.

  As she made her way cautiously up the driveway, the security lights on the front of the house came on, startling her and silhouetting her figure in a way that she knew would provide a perfect target. At almost the same moment, the security lights on the gates, which had been triggered by the arrival of the car, were extinguished, so that she could see nothing beyond the cars but darkness.

  By the time she reached the gates, her heart was pounding. Once or twice, she’d almost turned round and returned to the house, but had forced herself to continue, still not quite knowing why she was doing so. The sound of the car had long disappeared into the distance and the night had returned to its former warm stillness.

  The house security lights were behind her now, and the area beyond the gates was lost in shadow. Stupidly, she hadn’t thought to bring a proper torch, but at least she had her phone. She switched on its feeble torch and shone it through the bars of the gates.

  Afterwards she was left with a sense that she’d known all along what she was going to find. That was impossible, of course. It had been the last thing on her mind as she’d made her way nervously up the driveway. Otherwise, she surely would have obeyed the instinct telling her to return to the house.

  But it was true that, somehow, it didn’t come as a surprise.

  She played the torch beam across it, half-hoping that her eyes might somehow be playing tricks. Even so, she knew exactly what she was seeing.

  A human body, lying face up on the gravel outside the gates. She forced herself to hold the torch beam steady, wanting to see whether she recognised him.

  It was a white male, middle-aged, lying face down, his head twisted towards her. She moved cautiously forward, already suspecting she knew the identity of the man lying outside the gates. For a moment, as she struggled to hold the torch steady, she remained unsure. One side of the man’s head had been crushed by a heavy blow to the temple, and blood was already thickly congealed across his face, half-concealing his features. Whoever he was, there was no doubt he was dead.

  Then, as she took another step forward, she no longer had any doubt. She knew who was lying in front of her. And she realised now that he had been killed in exactly the same manner as Justin.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Shit,’ Sheena said. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Sheena, how long have you known me? Do you think I’m the type to make that kind of joke at this time of night?’ Annie was pulling on her clothes and searching round for the various items – phone, keys, warrant card – she needed to take with her.

  It was always the way, she thought. For once, she and Sheena had both been feeling tired and had decided to resist the temptation to work late. They’d been in bed for approximately ten minutes when Annie’s phone had buzzed on the bedside table.

  ‘They’re sure it’s him?’

  ‘He’s not been formally identified, obviously, but one of the officers who was first on the scene checked in his pockets for ID. Poor lad will probably get a bollocking from the CSIs for disturbing the body.’

  ‘Poor bloody Keith Chalmers. It’s only a few hours since I was with him,’ Sheena said. ‘Why the hell would anyone want to hurt him?’

  ‘It seems like an extreme response to an industrial dispute. But these days who knows?’

  ‘It’s not even as if Keith was the provocative type. It didn’t pay to underestimate him, but he always made a point of being the voice of reason.’

  ‘Just goes to show where that gets you,’ Annie said. She came to sit on the bed for a moment and placed a hand on Sheena’s cheek. ‘Christ, it must be a shock for you too. You must have been the last person to see him alive.’

  Sheena offered a grimace in the dimly lit room. ‘Apart from whoever killed him, you mean? Unless you’re putting me in the frame for that. If you are, Trev in the pub will give me an alibi. Keith was definitely still alive when he left me.’

  Annie was conscious they were both adopting this facetious tone as a mechanism for coping with the shock of the news. She
didn’t know Chalmers at all, and as far as she was aware Sheena had known him only as a professional contact. Nevertheless, it had been one of those moments that brought the reality of Annie’s work a little too close to home. It was also beginning to occur to her that this would be setting off yet more alarm bells for Stuart Jennings. ‘Okay, if Trev gives you an alibi that’s good enough for me. I’ve never met a dishonest publican.’

  Sheena pulled herself upright in bed as Annie stood and continued gathering her things. ‘Actually, that’s a point. Trev, I mean. There was something he said to me just before I left the pub. It was just the usual banter with Trev, you know. But he asked me whether Keith had been all right.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Whether there’d been some issue with him, I suppose. Because he reckoned Keith had seemed worried and looked in a hurry to get to his car. “Like he had a rocket up his arse,” in Trev’s immortal words.’

  ‘How’d he seemed to you?’

  ‘I’m not sure, to be honest. At the time he didn’t strike me as being much different from usual. He was always the slightly neurotic type. I was focusing more on why he was so keen to meet up with me. I thought at first he might be trying to tap me up for inside information about Michelle Wentworth. Then I realised he was looking for me to pass on the information about Wentworth’s business.’

  ‘Interesting that he was so keen to pass that on,’ Annie said.

  ‘Maybe. But that was Keith. Always playing all the angles. He might have just thought it was worth putting pressure on Wentworth from another direction. That makes him sound callous, given what had happened to her son. But if he really thought there was something dodgy about Wentworth’s business, he’d probably seen that as a legitimate weapon to wield on their behalf. I’m just trying to think about his manner. Maybe this is just with the benefit of hindsight, but I suppose he did seem more intense than usual. As if he was keen to ensure he got his message across.’ She paused. ‘I might just be imagining that. It’s amazing how the memory plays tricks even just after a few hours.’