Safe

by Jane Adams

  Still in her underwear, socks and T-shirt, she crawled into bed, convinced she would never get to sleep. But ten minutes later, when Harry looked in on her, she was totally gone. Harry knew that he’d have to sleep too and had set booby traps around the house. Nothing sophisticated, just stuff that would make noise and people would trip over if they tried to come through the doors or windows. He had placed weapons strategically around the cottage and had taken his own particular favourite, an ageing Smith and Wesson J-Frame, and placed it on the bedside cabinet, just as Lauren had done with hers.

  Settling into bed, he spoke quietly to his dead wife. “It’s a right pickle we’ve landed ourselves in, Jeanie. I might be seeing you sooner than we thought.”

  Chapter 13

  A dozen miles from Kyle Sykes’s house lived a man called Joe Messenger. He and Harry had come up through the ranks together and were of a similar age, though not particularly the same disposition, Messenger always being on a shorter fuse. But he and Harry had been close at one time. Sykes knew this. If anybody knew anything, it would be Joe.

  Joe was not expecting the knock on the door and had certainly not expected his boss to come visiting.

  “Mr Sykes. I mean, come in. What can I do for you?”

  Sykes and his two enforcers practically filled the living room of the little terraced house. Joe’s wife came in. She’d been getting ready for bed and was in her dressing gown. She halted in the doorway, eyes wide.

  “You go on up to bed, love,” Joe said, trying to keep his voice steady. Sykes coming here meant trouble. Big trouble.

  “Yes, you do that. I just want to ask Joe here a couple of questions.” Sykes took a seat and gestured for Joe to do the same. Joe was relieved to see his wife sidle out of the door and to hear her feet on the stairs.

  “Where’s Harry gone?”

  Joe was genuinely surprised. “I didn’t know he’d gone anywhere.”

  “Well, he has, and I want to know where.”

  Joe shook his head. “I’ve not seen Harry in weeks. I called him the other day, we arranged to go for a pint next Friday, but that’s the most communication I’ve had with him in a long time. Harry’s taking his retirement very seriously.”

  “Not seriously enough.” Sykes leaned forward in his chair. “I’m a reasonable man, Joe, and a good employer. You can’t argue with that.”

  “I would never argue. You know that.” Joe felt the blood drain from his cheeks and was trying to control the tremor in his right hand. He’d rarely been this physically close to Sykes. His orders generally came down the line via two or three others. Joe just carried them out when they got to him. Joe was a foot soldier, that was all. Harry had been a lot more.

  “So,” Sykes said. “We look at this from another angle. I’m prepared to believe you don’t know Harry’s gone off, but I’m not prepared to believe you couldn’t guess where he might have gone to.”

  For a moment, Joe’s mind was a complete and utter blank. He couldn’t think of a single place. He couldn’t think of a single reason why Harry might have gone, except that he’d obviously crossed his boss in some way. Joe would never have reckoned Harry as being that stupid.

  “I don’t know where he’d go. Harry never went anywhere. Not without your say so.”

  “And what about when his wife passed on? He went away then.”

  He did, didn’t he? Joe thought. But buggered if I can remember where. Harry had gone missing for over three weeks, the longest time he’d ever been out of touch. When he’d come back, he’d been vague, as though he hadn’t really noticed where he’d ended up or how he’d got there. Joe racked his memory for any clue.

  “North. He went north. I think he went to that island place with the causeway. Lindisfarne. He said something about monks and Vikings. And then he stopped off in York, or near York. I’m sure that’s what he said.” Joe looked expectantly at Kyle Sykes, looking for some sign of approval, fearing the opposite.

  “North. That’s the best you can do?” But the Lindisfarne connection rang a bell in Sykes’s mind. Harry had mentioned something about it, but he couldn’t recall the context.

  “He said he found a holiday cottage. Right on the coast. Up there somewhere, I’m sure it was. He reckoned there was nobody staying there on account of it being winter.” Joe dredged his brain again and found another tiny fragment of information. Somewhere Joe recalled Harry saying he’d had the best sausage cob he’d ever eaten, something of the sort. Something really random. What the fuck was it?

  “There was a pub. He said there was a pub somewhere nearby. Reckoned he had lunch there and that’s how he found out the cottage was empty. The Red Lion, that was it,” Joe had never been more relieved to remember anything in his entire life. “I don’t know no more. I’d tell you if I did.”

  It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

  Sykes got to his feet. Joe was about to rise, but Kyle pressed him back down into his chair, his fingers claw-like on Joe’s shoulder. Sykes tightened his grip, pressing his steely fingers into muscle. Joe gasped.

  “You remember anything else, you be sure to tell me. We don’t want to be upsetting that wife of yours now, do we?”

  Joe shook his head. Moments later, Kyle and his entourage were gone. Joe didn’t move until he heard the car drive away and then he went and closed the front door, which in characteristic fashion, Sykes had left wide open. He turned the key and shut the bolts top and bottom, knowing that if Kyle Sykes wanted to get into his house, no bolts in the world would stop him. His wife came to the top of the stairs and called down.

  “Joe?”

  “It’s all right, love, they’ve gone now.” He rubbed his shoulder. His arm was numb. But the mood he sensed Kyle Sykes had been in, he knew this could have been a whole lot worse. Joe wondered what the hell Harry had done and what would happen when Sykes caught up with him.

  Chapter 14

  Nine o’clock in the morning found Toby Clarke back in the mortuary.

  “I wanted you to see them fresh,” Si told him. “We’ve got identification on two, but I’m hoping you can help me with the third.” He unzipped the first of the body bags and stepped back so that Clarke could get close. “Roughly the same injuries on all three. Approximate time of death, some time between midnight and six this morning, I would say. The first of the bodies was found at eight, a woman walking her dog.”

  Clarke nodded. “Our lot turned up, found two more close by.” The three bodies had been dumped on waste ground, a brownfield site earmarked for redevelopment close to the canal. The dog walker was still being interviewed. She’d been badly shaken up, but Clarke, who had met her very briefly, had been left with the impression that she was more angry than upset. She was elderly, neatly turned out in a tweed skirt, quilted jacket and sensible shoes, and said that she walked the same route nearly every day. She had seemed more annoyed by the person who spoiled her walk than she was scared about finding a dead body.

  Clarke studied the wounds on the first body and then went to look at the other two. Two white males, one black, all with livid gashes that had opened flesh and muscle, and in one case, dragged out entrails and sliced into them deeply as well.

  “I’m willing to bet you can guess at the weapon,” Si commented. “Though it’s been a while.”

  “It has,” Clarke agreed. “Five years, six?”

  “About that.”

  The first time Clarke had observed this kind of injury, he hadn’t understood what had caused them or how a single weapon could cause these kinds of entry, internal and exit wounds. But he knew now.

  “A docker’s hook,” he said. One that had been sharpened at the point and then sharpened along the inner edge. The last one he’d seen had been attached to a T-bar handle. It was a formidable weapon that could be swung to impale, and, when pulled, it sliced through whatever had been impaled. The injuries were deep, gaping. Shocking.

  The two white men seemed to have been attacked mostly on the body, while the b
lack guy had had one side of his face practically torn off. The hook had impaled the sinuses and then been dragged through the face. His shoulders and belly were also deeply cut. They were not wounds that anyone could have survived for long. He was, Clarke reflected, also one of the few exceptions to Kyle Sykes’s usual preference for white-only employees — an exception due in no small part to the intervention of Harry Prentice.

  “What do you think — punishment or torture?” Si asked.

  “Either or both. But it’s something of a coincidence that they all work for Kyle Sykes and even more of a coincidence that they were all known to be close to Harry Prentice, at one time or another.”

  He pointed at the older of the two white men. “Phil Stern, one of the best wheelmen in the business. Could drive any damn thing. The younger one’s his son, Davy. The third, he’s a bit of a newcomer, but before Harry Prentice retired, Harry was . . . How would you explain it . . . ? I suppose you could describe Harry as his mentor or sponsor, or whatever. Harry certainly got him the job. His name is Kristy Young but the strange thing is, he was strictly white-collar. He was brought in for his computer skills. He was a hacker, IT expert. Harry found him, apparently.”

  “So, are we saying this has to do with Charlie Perrin’s death, or Harry Prentice disappearing, or what?”

  “I have no doubt all of those things are linked,” Clarke said sourly. “Thanks, Si, anything unexpected turns up, let me know.”

  He left and went to brief his boss, wondering exactly how all of this fitted together. These were Kyle Sykes’s men, but he doubted the Perrins had anything to do with the killing of them. After all, Sykes was the man with the hook.

  Chapter 15

  Harry and Lauren were up early. Surprisingly, they’d both slept well and as they ate breakfast, they discussed what they would do with their day.

  “As soon as it’s light, we’ll go and survey the area,” Harry said. “Make sure that we’re totally familiar with every part of the beach and the land going back to the road. It looks kind of marshy back there, and I noticed a few cows when we were driving up. That means someone’s likely to come and check on them from time to time, so we need to keep our eyes peeled.”

  Lauren was immediately anxious. “What if they see us?”

  “We’re on holiday, remember. Birdwatching. And before you tell me I don’t know a sparrow from a hawk, there’s a book about local birds on the shelf behind the telly. I spotted it this morning.”

  She laughed. “OK, Harry. Best read it then, before someone tests us.”

  Usually the first thing Lauren did in the morning was check her emails and social media. She wasn’t particularly friendly with anybody, but she liked to know what was going on and she belonged to a couple of WhatsApp groups linked to the extracurricular activities they all did. The other girls all went out together but Lauren rarely joined them — her dad didn’t exactly approve. Watching from the sidelines in a virtual sort of way was about as close as she got to a social life, but she found herself missing even that now.

  “Harry, do you think it’s safe to look at the internet on my phone? I wanted to see what was on the news.”

  “I suppose if you just go to the main news websites, it would do no harm. But the phones are pay as you go, I don’t know how much credit it would use and it might be a while before we can top up.”

  “We could do that online . . .” Lauren began. Then she stopped. “No, we can’t, that would mean using a credit or debit card, and we can’t do that.”

  “We’re in a cash economy now, pet. And that only when we have to. OK, go on, take a quick look at the local news, let’s see what’s going on back home.”

  Lauren shuffled her chair over beside his so they could both look at the phone. It was a cheap and basic smartphone, but it could still connect to the internet. Harry had swapped out the SIM card that had come with it on a just-in-case basis. Lauren navigated to the local news sites, back from where had been home. It didn’t take long to find what they were looking for. Charlie Perrin’s death had been reported as a tragic accident and she read the details with a growing sense of unreality. “Do you think the police will believe this? Why are they lying about it?”

  “The families are saving face,” Harry said. “It wouldn’t do much for Charlie Perrin’s reputation if it came out he’d been shot to death by a seventeen-year-old girl.”

  She could feel him observing her as she took that in. She took a deep breath. “But do you think the police will believe it?”

  “They’ll know something’s fishy, but I think they’re the least of our worries right now.”

  She scrolled down, finding a report of the house fire at Harry’s place. They read it together and Harry thought she looked more shocked by this than she had by the item on Charlie Perrin.

  “He did it, didn’t he? My dad.”

  “I expect he did,” Harry said. He took the phone from her and logged off the internet and then checked her credit. “Leave it, we’ve got the here and now to deal with, not the there and then.”

  She nodded and went off to get herself ready for the morning’s trek. She paused just outside the kitchen door and looked back. Harry had picked up his own phone and she guessed he had gone back to the news site that they’d just shut down. She’d only glimpsed the headline but immediately it had set off an alarm bell in her mind. She guessed he had spotted it too and had not wanted to scare her even more. It was brief and fragmentary but made abundantly clear that three bodies had been found on wasteland, close to the canal. In the pit of her stomach, Lauren knew that they were something to do with her and Harry running away.

  She fetched her coat and was careful to make a noise as she came back into the kitchen. She pretended not to see as he blacked the screen and put the phone in his pocket. But he couldn’t hide the renewed level of anxiety on his face.

  Outside was bitterly cold. Lauren was grateful for her coat and for the bobble hat and matching gloves that they’d picked up at one of the garages when they’d stopped for petrol. Her pockets were weighed down: gun, phone, cash. Harry made her recite the phone number he’d given her, just to make sure she knew it by heart. But he would not be drawn on whose number it might be.

  They turned right and walked along the beach in the direction that Harry had come the first day he had found this cottage. Back towards what he called civilization. Tramping along on sand and shingle in trainers that, despite two pairs of socks, still let in the cold and damp, the walk seemed interminable to Lauren. Harry seemed to have eyes everywhere, watching the gulls, looking out at the fishing boats, trying to predict the weather. Lauren laughed at him. Harry was a city boy — she doubted if either of them would recognize that a storm was imminent until it actually started to rain on them.

  Harry paused, touched her arm and pointed. “You see up there, the low bit of the cliff and a few steps in the rock?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, up there is a pub and the car park, a few caravans. You know, like I told you. This is the nearest way back into the rest of the world, unless you take the car from the cottage and drive back the way we came. And you only do that if you’re sure no one is going to be able to follow you. Quickest way to make sure they can’t follow is to shoot the tyres out. You make sure your engine’s running first, so you’re ready for a getaway, you got me?”

  “I get you.”

  “Now we head back,” Harry told her. “And we keep our eyes open every step of the way, just in case.”

  “Who are we likely to meet? Who’d be stupid enough to be out in this wind?” She felt like her face had been blasted raw by the chill of the wind off the sea and the sand it had blown into her eyes.

  “Dog walkers, kite flyers, I suppose.”

  She laughed. “Try and fly a kite in this and you’d be dragged out to sea. What’s past the cottage in the other direction, Harry?”

  “Beach for about a mile and then a steep cliff. It juts out into the sea and blocks your exit, s
o don’t go that way. If you need to run, this way is the one.” He turned away from the sea and began to head inland, up towards the line of dunes that separated the beach from fields and then road. The sand was looser here and the wind free to pelt it in her face with even more ferocity. She pulled her scarf over her mouth and nose and hauled her hat down to her eyebrows. “God’s sake, Harry, it was bad enough near the sea. I can barely walk in this.”

  Harry said nothing but led her right into the heart of the dunes. “Look,” he said finally. “Look around you, what do you see?”

  She was puzzled. “Just sand dunes. Oh, look, more sand dunes. And tussocky grass stuff.”

  “Now look behind you.”

  “Footprints,” she said. “We have to get round that one, Harry. Even in this wind, with all the sand shifting you can still see the footprints.”

  “Think about it.”

  She could hear the impatience in his voice, understood that he was trying to tell her something important and she just wasn’t getting it. But she was cold and tired and exasperated and the only thing stopping her yelling at him was her trust that if Harry thought this was important, then it probably was.

  He was obviously waiting for a response.

  “I don’t walk on the sand,” she said finally. “I walk on the grassy stuff.”

  “Give it a go.”

  Lauren glared at him, caught between amusement and total irritation, but then she nodded. “OK, let’s go grass hopping.”

  They made it into a game. It was harder than it looked. Sometimes the tussocks gave way beneath their feet, at others they were really quite slippery or spaced wide apart. But by the time they were halfway back to the cottage, both were getting the hang of it. Lauren looked back. “No footprints,” she said.