‘It means I’ve been outplayed.’
21
‘OUTPLAYED? ARE YOU a gambler or something?’
The card lay on the table between them, face up in the clear plastic. Calvin Redfern had explained that the bag was used for protecting items that might be needed as evidence in a court of law. Laura wanted to turn it over so she no longer had to look at the Joker’s foolish grin, but she didn’t dare.
‘It means I’ve been outmanoeuvred,’ Calvin Redfern said. ‘The Joker is the calling card of the gang. They leave it when they’ve committed a crime they think they’ve got away with. It’s their way of laughing at the police. Me in particular. When I left Scotland almost a year ago, I told no one where I was going. As I explained to you, I simply fled, with no thought of where I might end up. I believed I’d put my past behind me. But the Straight A’s never forgive or forget. They’ve followed me here to seek revenge. The only reason they’d have delivered a card to my doorstep is if they’ve either committed a crime in St Ives or are about to get their own back on me in some way. Or both.’
He began pacing the kitchen. ‘What’s taking the pizza man so long?’
Lottie and Skye, warming themselves in front of the Aga, turned their heads to watch him.
He returned to the table. ‘Laura, there’s something I haven’t exactly been honest about. I told you I was done with trying to bring the Straight A’s to justice, and for a long time that was true. But the week before you came to live in St Ives, I spotted a gang member I once jailed climbing into a car parked outside the Sea Wind holiday apartments.’
‘Opposite the North Star?’
He stared at her in surprise. ‘Yes, but that’s purely a coincidence. In any event, I was so committed to burying the past that I walked away without so much as noting down his number plate. As a police officer, you learn to accept that even criminals take holidays. But I soon found that my old obsession had returned to haunt me. I became convinced the Straight A gang was operating in or around St Ives, perhaps in the illegal fishing industry. Ever since then I’ve spent hours - sometimes whole nights - combing every inch of the town and surrounding coastline in a bid to find what they were up to. I’ve found nothing. Not a trace of them.’
He banged his fist on the table. ‘And now this.’
‘Maybe it’s like you said. The answer is right under your nose. Perhaps while you were trying to spy on them, they were spying on you.’
‘Go on.’
She looked hard at the table. ‘Okay, now I have something to admit to you. I followed you the other night. It was wrong of me, I know, but you were being so mysterious, I had to find out what you were doing. I saw you nearly punch that reporter.’
Calvin Redfern groaned. ‘Oh, Laura, I’m sorry you had to witness that. No wonder you thought me a brute. For the record, that man has written some of the worst lies ever committed to print about me. Personally, I’ve never cared, but when he started bringing Jacqueline into it I saw red.’
‘It doesn’t matter. But I wasn’t the only one following you that night. Mrs Webb was there too.’
He stared at her. ‘Mrs Webb? Are you absolutely sure?’
She nodded. ‘Recently, she’s started asking me loads of questions about where you go and who you see. And once I found her going through your papers.’
Unexpectedly, he laughed. ‘Mrs Webb? Of course. How could I have been so blind? How could I overlook something so obvious? Who better to spy on me than my own housekeeper. What fooled me is that most of the women members of the Straight A gang are as glamorous as characters from a James Bond film. Mrs Webb, as you know, is the opposite. But maybe she was the only one prepared to cook and clean.’
He smiled. ‘I must have frustrated the life out of her. Over the past year I’ve walked dozens of miles in freezing weather, apparently without purpose, and the only information that could have been useful to them I keep on a memory stick in my wallet. No wonder she detested her job.’
Then he grew serious. ‘Laura, I’m not upset with you for following me, but you need to know that the Straight A’s are among the must cunning criminals in the business. The Joker on our step is a sign that they’re up to something terrible. Has anything out of the ordinary happened recently?’
Laura considered telling him about the messages in the bottle, but decided against it. She’d only get a lecture on the risks of replying to notes from strangers. Then she remembered something. ‘Yes, Tariq has disappeared.’
Her uncle groaned. ‘Not that again. Laura, we have more urgent things to worry about.’
‘I know, but you see right after Tariq ran away from Mrs Mukhtar this morning, something weird happened.’
‘What was that?’
‘I thought I heard him call my name when I was crossing the road to school, but when I turned around he wasn’t there. There was only a man getting into a black car. I saw the first three letters of the license plate. They were . . .’
Laura leapt to her feet. ‘JKR - Joker! Oh, uncle Calvin, the Straight A’s have kidnapped him, haven’t they? He probably tried to shout to me as they grabbed him. We have to save him.’
Calvin Redfern straightened up. All at once he was no longer her uncle but the detective he’d once been, radiating strength and authority. ‘Laura, we’re going to do our best to help Tariq, but I need you to think clearly and not panic. There’s no earthly reason why the Straight A’s would snatch your friend, but we can’t rule anything out. Did you get a good look at this man? Can you describe him?’
Laura recalled a short, bald man built like a wrestler. As far as she could remember, he’d been wearing a brown suit.
‘The Monk,’ her uncle said. ‘That’s his nickname but, trust me, he’s the opposite. He’s one of the Straight A’s’ henchmen, the one they call in when they need both muscle and brains in an operation. If the gang has kidnapped Tariq, this could get tricky. But try to remember that you only think you heard him call your name. You could be mistaken.’
‘I’m not,’ Laura said stubbornly. ‘It was him, I’m sure it was.’
‘Can you recall any details about Tariq that might help us trace him? What do you know about him?’
‘Only that he is supposedly the son of Mrs Mukhtar’s sister who died in India, doesn’t speak English and was worked half to death in their store. Mrs Crabtree is positive it was Tariq who was making the expensive tapestries they had hanging behind the counter.’
‘Is she now?’ said Calvin Redfern thoughtfully, but for once he didn’t dismiss their neighbour’s comments. ‘Laura, what made you suspect that Tariq might not be the Mukhtars’ son? Does he speak the same language as them? Does he speak Hindi?’
‘I suppose so. He didn’t say much to them, but he could understand them.’
‘I’ve spent some time in South East Asia and know a little of the languages. Do you remember any specific words?’
Laura was getting impatient with all the questions. While they sat chatting, the Mukhtars and this Monk person might be spiriting Tariq further and further away. ‘I don’t think so. Oh, hold on. I wrote down a word once. I think it means thank you.’ She ran up to her bedroom and returned with the scrap of paper on which she’d written: ‘Doonobad.’
‘Doonobad’, read her uncle. ‘I think you might mean “Dhannobad” . It does indeed mean thank you, but in Bengali, not Hindi. If Mrs Crabtree’s right about him making the tapestries, it might mean that he’s been brought here from Bangladesh as some sort of cheap labour. I haven’t a clue what this has to do with the Straight A’s - maybe nothing - but I do know we need to find Tariq urgently.’
He put a lead on Lottie. ‘Laura, our phone might be tapped so I’m going to go speak to the police in person. I’d take you with me but if the Straight A’s are prowling round the neighbourhood, you’ll be much safer here. Under no circumstances are you to open the door while I’m gone. Stay in your room and keep Skye by your side.’
‘What about the pizza?’ ask
ed Laura. ‘Am I allowed to open the door to the delivery man?’
But Calvin Redfern was already on his way out and didn’t hear her. The door slammed shut and he and Lottie were gone.
Ten minutes later, Laura was sitting cross-legged on her bed tucking into a vegetarian pizza with hot strands of melted cheese. As soon as she smelled its doughy aroma, she realised she was starving. Between bites, she shared bits with Skye.
The pizza had come almost the minute her uncle left the house. In his rush to get out and make his phone calls, he’d forgotten to leave any cash. Not only was Laura’s pocket money a pound too short to pay the bill, it didn’t allow for a tip for the delivery boy, a scruffy student with greasy hair. She’d tried calling her uncle on his mobile but it went straight to voicemail.
‘I only do this job for the tips,’ the boy had told Laura angrily. ‘And there’s no way that I’m paying a pound towards your pizza out of my pitiful wages.’
Laura had apologised while clinging with all her strength to the collar of the husky, who’d been determined to eat the student whole. ‘I’m sorry. We’ve been having a crisis. If you come back in half an hour, my uncle will make it up to you with an extra generous tip.’
She’d invented the last part and hoped it was true. If her uncle was late or didn’t have any money on him, the pizza boy would blow his top.
Upstairs in her room, Laura worked her way through her third slice of pizza and tried not to worry about Calvin Redfern. He’d already been gone for nearly twenty-five minutes. While she waited, she wracked her brains for any detail that might help him find Tariq. Her eye fell on the tiger tapestry. It was the work of a highly skilled craftsman. Could her friend (she could no longer think of him as her ex-friend) really have done it?
She picked it up. It was fraying at two edges, as if it was unfinished or had been cut from the corner of a larger tapestry. She tugged at a yellow thread and it came loose. The lamplight turned it to spun gold. Something stirred in her memory.
She unzipped the side pocket of her school bag and felt inside it for the gold thread and crumpled sheet of blank parchment she’d found in the bottle early that morning. Even without a microscope, it was obvious the two threads were the same.
Tariq.
No, it was impossible. It couldn’t be. It was inconceivable that Tariq, a painfully shy boy who could barely speak a word of English, could overnight have learned enough to write notes in handwriting worthy of a calligrapher and leave them in bottles. How could he have ensured it would be Laura who would find them? Or was he desperate enough to appeal to any passing stranger?
The first three notes were concealed within the pages of The Castle in the Clouds. Laura laid them out on the bed.
CAN I TRUST YOU?
PROVE IT (That was the message that had been written on the sand, but she’d jotted it on a piece of paper to keep a record of it.)
BECAUSE IF I TRUST THE WRONG PERSON I COULD DIE
The fourth note was blank. But in the unlikely event that Tariq was the message writer, he would not have left a roll of blank parchment paper, elaborated tied with a silk thread, for no reason. Laura picked up the note and sniffed it. It smelled faintly of citrus. On impulse, she held it to the lightbulb on her bedside lamp. She knew from a plot twist in one of her Matt Walker books that invisible ink made from lemon juice or cornflower could be made visible by heat.
A corner of the parchment turned brown and began to smoke. Laura snatched it away and blew on it hard. Just visible was a scrawl of pale beige handwriting. The note was addressed to her.
Dear Laura,
By the time you read this it will be too late for me, but if you take this letter to your uncle I hope and pray it will not be too late for justice. This is all I know. If he is as smart as they say he is, he will figure it out.
20 Units
Dead Man’s Cove
LAT
I’m sorry for everything. You are the best person I ever knew.
Your true friend,
Tariq
So it was him after all. He’d concealed his knowledge of English, even from her, until the very end, because he’d somehow known it could as easily destroy him as save him.
The doorbell rang. Skye leapt off the bed and barked ferociously. The pizza boy had returned for his money. Laura debated whether to ignore the bell. He’d only rant and rave about his tip and the missing cash. The doorbell rang again, this time more insistently.
‘Oh, no you don’t,’ Laura said to Skye, who was scratching at the door. ‘You’ll only try to eat him again. You stay here. I’ll attempt to pacify him.’
She shut the husky, still barking, in her room, and ran downstairs. Remembering her promise to her uncle, she checked through the letterbox slot that it was definitely the delivery boy. He had his back to her, but she could see his red-and-blue Pizza Perfect uniform.
Laura hauled open the door. ‘I’m really sorry, but — ’
That was as far as she got. Beneath the Pizza Perfect hat was the gaunt grey face of the jogger who’d passed her on the Island path that morning. He was holding something white in his hand.
‘Laura Marlin?’ he enquired, and then the world went black.
22
‘LAURA! OH, LAURA, please wake up.’
Laura opened her eyes. The room was shrouded in a pea-soup fog and it stayed that way when she blinked. She shut them again. When she woke some time later, the mist had cleared, but she was in a rocking chair. At least, that’s what it felt like. She had a splitting headache and her skin burned as if it had been rubbed with fresh chillies. A blurred brown figure lurched towards her and she flinched in terror. Then, mercifully, darkness descended again.
After a second, or perhaps it was an hour, a familiar voice said, ‘Laura, I’m begging you to wake up. If you don’t, we’re dead for sure.’
Laura’s eyes flew open. ‘Tariq! I thought you’d been kidnapped.’
He gave a laugh that was somewhere between relief and a sob. ‘I have been, stupid. So have you.’
The fuzzy edges around his thin, kind face and shining black hair dissolved. The room came into view. Only it wasn’t a room, but the cramped, airless cabin of a boat. A powerful swell rocked the grubby mattress on which Laura was lying, adding to her discomfort. Her ankles were taped together and her wrists bound with a blue nylon rope. Her skin burned with a slow, tormenting fire and she would have done anything for a drink. She tried to make sense of her surroundings. The last thing she remembered was answering the door to the pizza boy.
Tariq was roped to a chair, but he was craning forward as far as his bonds would allow, his amber eyes wide with concern.
‘Where are we?’ she asked.
‘Your guess is as good as mine - I was blindfolded when they brought me here. From what I’ve overheard, we’re on a boat moored near Zennor, just off the coast of Cornwall. We’re waiting for something. A delivery.’
It was a shock to hear him speak English, especially in such a clear, educated way. A lilt in his speech was the only trace of an accent. Temporarily forgetting they were in a life-threatening situation, Laura wriggled upright and glared at him. ‘You lied to me, Tariq. Well, I suppose it’s not called lying when you never say anything, but the whole time we were friends you pretended you couldn’t speak English. Now I feel like an idiot.’
Beneath his dark skin, he flushed crimson. He squirmed in his chair and looked so ashamed that Laura immediately felt awful.
‘Sorry, Tariq, I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘No, it is I who is sorry,’ he said. ‘You will never know how much I hate myself for what I have done. I’m sorry for hurting you, for the notes in the bottle, and most of all for deceiving you. It is because of me that you are here. If they harm you, I will never forgive myself. My only excuse is that, for me, the North Star was a living hell. Some days I felt that I might die of loneliness if the work didn’t kill me first. Then you walked in - the kindest person I have ever known - and t
he sun shone for me for the first time since my father died. I knew that, for your safety, I should have nothing to do with you, but I couldn’t help myself.’
‘But you told Mr Mukhtar to say to me that I was boring and my stories were boring and you never wanted to see me again. You laughed at me.’
Tariq burst out: ‘That’s because he threatened to kill us both if I didn’t find a way to get rid of you. He told me that slaves couldn’t have friends, only owners. He said they were like pets or furniture. He told me, “Once a slave, always a slave.”’
‘I think,’ Laura said, ‘you’d better start at the beginning.’
It had all started innocently enough in Bangladesh, a densely populated country on the Indian subcontinent prone to watery natural disasters. Tariq’s grandfather, a teacher’s son, borrowed seventy-five cents from a quarry owner to pay the bride-price of Tariq’s grandmother. They were very much in love and he was afraid another would marry her if he hesitated.
Laura Marlin Mysteries 1: Dead Man's Cove eBook Page 13
