Fakes and Lies

by Jane A. Adams

  The living room door was open and he saw someone run down the hallway so his next petrol bomb flew straight through the door and into the hall after them. He was satisfied to hear another scream and then the front door opening. Moments later a car, engine revving loudly, pulled away.

  A pity, Binnie thought. He should have waited until they were asleep. You can’t win them all. He had fun disposing of the rest of his missiles and then went back and sat on the stile to watch the place burn.

  Bev called for backup while her colleague drove as fast as he could down the lane. There was no telling how many people were involved, and there was nothing they could do about the house. All they could do was call their colleagues in the fire brigade.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ Bev swore. ‘It’s as well the mother didn’t come back with us.’

  The main village was at the bottom of the hill and they pulled into the pub yard. By now the whole hilltop seemed to be ablaze. As Bev got out, she glanced at the back seat and the two bags that lay there. Everything the Price family now owned was in those bags.

  It took perhaps twenty minutes for the fire brigade to arrive, but it felt like for ever. They didn’t need to ask where the fire was; the orange glow at the top of the hill could probably be seen from miles around. Vin had arrived with the other patrol cars and his first concern was to make sure that Bev and her colleague were all right.

  ‘What the hell happened?’

  ‘Craig had gone into the annexe to get the things for the girl. I’d gone upstairs, into the parents’ room. All of a sudden there was this crash and a massive orange glow outside the annexe window. I didn’t understand what it was at first. Then I saw this man in the garden. He threw something at the patio window – I think he hoped it would break, so I’m assuming it was a brick? Meantime Craig is yelling, comes back into the house shouting about petrol bombs. Fortunately there’s a door through to the annexe from the main house, otherwise I don’t know how he’d have got out, not with that lunatic in the garden. Anyway, I grabbed the bag and ran down the stairs and then there was a crash like you wouldn’t believe, and the window goes. I don’t know how he broke it but he did, and then he’s chucking petrol bombs inside, into the living room. He sent another one flying in as I ran past the door, and then there’s one coming after me in the hall. Craig’s already gone through the kitchen into the hallway and is waiting by the door. I’m not kidding, boss, we just took to our heels and ran. There was nothing we could have done. I’m so sorry for the family. But I got the feeling that even if both of us had tackled him we’d have been the ones to come off worse. He didn’t bloody care. He wanted to kill someone and I don’t think he was bothered who.’

  ‘There was nothing you could have done, either of you. Main thing is you’re safe and they’re safe. It seems Sian was right about her parents being in danger. He carried out his threat.’

  ‘Doesn’t bode well for the other girl, does it?’ Craig said. He looked shaken and also angry. It wasn’t in his nature to run away but they hadn’t been left with much option.

  ‘You’ve seen the pictures of Kevin Binns; you think you can be definite it was him?’

  ‘No doubt in my mind,’ Craig said. ‘I got a good look at him as I came back into the house. There was enough light from the fire. It was definitely him.’

  Bev nodded her agreement. ‘I looked out of the upstairs window. He just looked back up at me. I think he thought I was the mother, but I don’t think he was really that bothered. He’d come well equipped, that was for sure. From what I could see he had a crate at his feet, packed with petrol bombs.’

  ‘Get back, make a statement,’ Vin told them. ‘Put the bags in my car and I’ll let the family know what’s been going on. There’s nothing more you can do here, either of you. And it wasn’t your fault. Understand that.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  Naomi had come to sit beside Patrick for an hour or so to give Harry time to go home and shower and change his clothes. He’d barely left the hospital, deserting Patrick’s room only when the doctors told him they needed him out of the way. Mari had taken her turn, as had Patrick’s mother and stepfather, but Harry had seemed unable to leave his son for more than a short time.

  Finally exhaustion had won and Naomi, with Patrick’s mother, had persuaded him that he needed to go home for a break. After a lot of convincing, they had managed to take him to a local pizza restaurant. Then they had driven him home so that he could change and, Naomi hoped, get some sleep before he returned. Beth, Patrick’s mother, and his stepdad were both suffering severely from jetlag and had said that they needed to get out of the hospital for a while. Mari had promised to come back first thing in the morning, and Naomi told Harry she would stay.

  To her surprise she had won that argument and now, at two o’clock in the morning, she was sitting beside Patrick, listening to machines that beat and whirled and whistled and soft footsteps crossing back and forth between beds and desk as the nurses checked vital signs.

  She was reminded of her own time in hospital and how it felt at night, cut off from the world, so very quiet.

  The nurses had left her alone, just given her a buzzer to press in case she needed to go to the loo or wanted a coffee or anything. No one wanted to risk her stumbling into a bed or some vital bit of equipment if she tried to wander round the ward on her own.

  Harry had been reading to Patrick but, obviously, she couldn’t do that. Patrick was in a little side room, not completely closed off from the ward but a little bit apart. She could hear others talking to their sick loved ones. A mother talking about a birthday party that her child must get well for. Strictly speaking, the ICU had visiting hours, but as far as Naomi could tell no one enforced these so long as there was only one visitor or, at the most, two, and they didn’t get in the way.

  Naomi wasn’t sure what she should talk about, but she wanted to talk to Patrick about something and so she told him about his painting. ‘Someone stole it; they mistook it for one of Freddie’s. I guess you’ll take that as a compliment because I know how much you admired his work. This was from Bob’s studio, and from what I understand, Annie chased them off with a shotgun. You can just imagine that, can’t you? Annie with her hair flying all over the place and a shotgun blazing. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bob paints that one day.

  ‘There’s no news on Bee, yet, but the other girl, Sian Price … of course, you wouldn’t know about her. She was at Bob’s studio, she was with the man who stole your painting. The same person who pushed you off the balcony and who took Bee away, and she says that … this Sian says that Bee was all right the last time she saw her. That she’s very scared, and terribly upset about what happened to you. But they’ll find her. I’m sure they will. They are getting lots of leads now.’

  She paused. She wasn’t sure this was what she was supposed to be telling a sick person, even one in a coma who probably couldn’t hear her, but she knew that if their places were changed, it was the sort of thing she’d want to know about. That progress was being made and everybody was doing their best to put it right, what had happened. ‘Bob says, when you get out, and you get back to working for him, he’ll help you start again. He said to tell you that the gesso recipe will be better next time. He found a variation that he thinks might be easier to handle. And he’s got a whole load of new pigments for you to grind up that will be keeping you busy. I’m not really sure what he was on about, but he said he promised to get you some real lapis lazuli to make real ultramarine. He said that’s still the best blue and, in his words, it’s a beast to grind. He reckons if you go too far with it, it just goes grey. If you get it right you get that gorgeous blue – but you know all about that, don’t you?’

  She reached out and fumbled for Patrick’s hand. Only the fingers were exposed; the rest was wrapped in tape, holding a cannula in place.

  ‘You’ve not met Alfie yet. He’s a private investigator, but not like the Sam Spade kind. Alfie is very sophisticated and I’ve been doing some re
search for him. I’m learning all about shell companies and specialist search engines. I’m using all the technology you helped me install and he says I can do some proper, paid work for him. I’m looking forward to that.’

  She squeezed Patrick’s fingers gently. ‘We are all here for you. You better wake up soon. All your friends at uni have been asking after you and want to know when they can visit. You’re amazingly popular, you know, for someone as shy as you are.’

  One of the nurses came over and asked if she wanted some tea and Naomi told him, yes please, she did. ‘You think he can hear me – I mean, really?’

  ‘We think so, and it’s best to behave as though people can, don’t you think?’

  Yes, Naomi thought.

  Vin had arrived at the safe house. It was four in the morning but the lights were still on. One look at Vin’s face told Tracey something else had happened.

  ‘He was at the house, wasn’t he?’

  Vin set the bags down in the hall and followed Tracey through to the kitchen. There were two officers in the house, a small detached bungalow at the end of a cul-de-sac on a quiet estate. It was not what most people thought of as a safe house – surrounded by a high hedge and with children playing in the street in the daytime, and people coming and going – but it was surprisingly anonymous. The owners specialized in short-term lets, people between homes who needed something that wasn’t a hotel for a few weeks, while their own house sold or their new house was got ready.

  And that was exactly what they did, except that this property also served occasionally as a safe house. The owners were ex-police, so it was a good solution all round.

  ‘I’ve got some really bad news,’ Vin said. He sat down heavily. He’d been awake for a full twenty-four hours or more now, and was really feeling the strain.

  Slowly and carefully he told them what had happened to their house. That the officers had only just escaped with their lives.

  Sian’s face was white. ‘He said he’d kill you,’ she said softly. ‘Now do you believe me?’

  Her mother took her hand and patted it but she wasn’t paying Sian much attention at that point. Instead she was staring in horror at her husband.

  ‘My God,’ was all he said.

  ‘But the officers are all right?’ Tracey wanted to know.

  ‘Shaken up, but they’re fine. Mrs Price, I’m really sorry about this. No one could have predicted—’

  ‘No, of course they couldn’t. That boy is mad, always was. I kept telling you to stay away from him, but would you? No. He was always exciting, he was always just a little wild, he was always—’

  ‘Mum, I’m sorry. I didn’t know just how … I didn’t know just how bad it was. He was. When we were younger he was just fun.’

  ‘Other people didn’t see him as fun. You, you were protected for some reason. No one dared to upset Sian because of what Binnie might do to them. What do you think happened to those people that bullied you at school? They were just kids, stupid kids.’

  ‘And I was just a kid being bullied!’ Sian bit back.

  ‘And we were doing all we could to sort that out.’

  ‘And it made no difference, Mum. Day after day, day after day, they just went on and on at me. I came home with a black eye and you didn’t care.’

  Tracey looked horrified. ‘You told me you’d fallen over playing hockey.’

  ‘And you didn’t ask me any questions. You just accepted that, because it was easier, I suppose.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I have believed you?’ Tracey argued.

  ‘Binnie said he’d talk to them, and he did, and they stopped bullying me.’

  ‘Binnie beat one of them up, put him in hospital with a punctured lung. No one knew it had been Binnie for a long time afterwards because the boy was too scared to say. He lied too, said he had fallen, and the girl – who do you think broke her arm?’

  ‘You don’t know that! You never said anything about it before.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know it at the time. Not for sure anyway. But there were rumours, always rumours.’

  ‘So, if it was just rumours?’ Sian broke off. ‘Why am I defending him? I know what he can do. I know it now.’

  ‘You always thought of him as some kind of big brother,’ her mother said. ‘Someone it was fun to hang around with because he looked out for you and because you got up to stupid things with him. And I should have put a stop to it a long time ago.’

  ‘So why didn’t you?’

  Tracey’s mouth tightened into a fixed line and Vin could see that she was close to tears. ‘Because sometimes’, he said, ‘it’s easier not to challenge. Especially when you know what happens to those people who do. Bullies continue to be bullies because nobody can stand up to them, and sometimes too they become bullies because somebody did stand up to them, someone even more violent.’

  ‘Binnie didn’t need anybody else.’ Tracey sounded so bleak. ‘The thing is, he seemed to care about Sian, to protect her. And she seemed to modify his behaviour too, calm him down. When she went away to university, I thought that would be it. Binnie wasn’t around so much any more and I hoped their relationship would just fizzle out naturally. If she hadn’t come back home, it probably would have. And Binnie paid no attention to either me or your dad; we were just incidental. I was quite pleased about that. He’s not somebody you want to have pay attention to you.

  ‘But I knew what it was doing to his mother. As Binnie got older he got worse and she was terrified of him. I kept telling her, you should go, just leave, and she kept telling me that she couldn’t, that she dared not. At first I thought she was just exaggerating. I knew Binnie was bad, but I’d no idea how bad, and then one day she confided in me about his little brother. I knew there were rumours, but he was just a kid, and I thought that was all they were, just rumours. His dad had left, and when he came back for the younger boy’s funeral his mum begged, begged him to stay. Or asked him to take Binnie away from her; she thought a man might be able to handle him better. But the dad just walked. He didn’t want to know, he knew what his son was.’

  ‘He might just have wanted to start afresh,’ Sian’s father said. ‘I’m afraid a lot of fathers leave the marriage and never see the children again and it’s not always the wife’s fault.’

  Tracey shook her head vehemently. ‘She knew Binnie had killed her little boy. She just knew it.’

  Vin shifted restlessly. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘this is in the past, and for the moment nothing can be proved. We have to deal with the present. And the most important thing is keeping all of you safe, and finding Beatrix Jones. Sian, can you remember anything else that might help us?’

  ‘I’ve told you everything I can think of.’

  Vin nodded. She looked as exhausted as he felt, and he didn’t think anybody could go much further without getting some sleep.

  ‘OK. I’m really sorry to have been the bearer of more bad news and I think the best thing we can all do now is get some rest and I’ll come back tomorrow. Sian, you have my number if you think of anything in the meantime.’

  She nodded and Vin left them to their arguments and their grief.

  THIRTY

  On the Wednesday morning the warehouse was surrendered back to its owners and the police cordon taken away, apart from the one at the foot of the stairs leading to the studio. That area was still technically a crime scene.

  Vin Dattani and Karen Morgan, about to head out to view what was left of the Price house, called in at the warehouse to talk to Mark Brookes and his sons.

  Danny, the elder son, was on his own but he expected his dad later. Father and younger brother were off picking up a machine.

  ‘Any news about Bee?’ he asked. ‘Or the poor lad that was thrown downstairs?’

  ‘Nothing about Bee, as yet. But the boy is still critical.’

  ‘Danny,’ Karen said, ‘could you spare a minute to take a look at some pictures? See if you recognize anyone?’

  ‘Sure. You want a cup of tea or somet
hing?’

  Both officers declined. Danny leaned against one of the workbenches and flicked through the photographs. ‘Only this one,’ he said. ‘I ran into him wandering round here one day. Said he was looking for Freddie so I called Freddie down and they both went up to the studio. That was, ooh, probably a month before Freddie died. Then he came round again – about ten days ago, this would be. Said he’d left something in Freddie’s studio and wanted to collect it, so I told him no. He was quite insistent, said it was his and that he’d left it with Freddie, but I told him he needed to get in touch with Freddie’s solicitor.’ Danny frowned. ‘You know, I mentioned it to Bee, but he didn’t leave a name. Bee just said that if it was something important then he’d probably get in touch again. She said her dad often did work for other people, maybe it was a picture he was restoring or something.’

  ‘Did he happen to mention anything else? What it was he had left in Freddie’s studio?’

  Danny screwed up his eyes, as though trying to think really hard. ‘A picture of the Madonna and child,’ he said triumphantly. ‘He said it was something he’d commissioned.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Vin said. ‘That’s helpful.’

  ‘There’s going to be a patrol car round at the end of the road for the next few days. You see anything suspicious and you dial the nines, OK?’ Karen said. She sorted through the photographs, took out one of Binnie and gave it to Danny. ‘You see him, you call the police at once. Don’t approach him, don’t engage with him, and I suggest if you’re working here on your own – or even if you’re not – you lock the doors.’

  Danny looked sceptical but he nodded. ‘I hope you find her soon, she’s a lovely lass.’

  ‘I hope so too,’ Karen said.

  ‘Did you have much reason to go up to Freddie’s studio?’ asked Vin.

  ‘Umm, most days, I suppose. His post got delivered to the front office here, so one or other of us would take that up. He’d often wander down for a cup of coffee or one of us would go up there to say hello, see what he was up to. He was a bloody genius, that man. Funny too. We all liked him a lot, couldn’t believe it when he just dropped down dead like that. But he smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish. My brother smokes, too, so they’d often stand outside and have a fag. He was a nice man.’