Safe

by Jane Adams

  * * *

  Clarke had barely closed the door when Henderson turned on him. “What the fuck do you mean, turning up like this? You’ve been off the radar for thirteen hours and yet you waltz in here as though nothing’s happened.”

  Clarke leaned back against the door. “Billy Hunter,” Clarke said. “Gambling debts. Ring any bells?”

  Henderson began to bluster but even Clarke could see he didn’t have the heart for it. “That has nothing to do with anything that happened here. I settled those debts.”

  “With what?”

  “Fuck you, Clarke. I paid them fair and square.”

  “The Perrins don’t do fair and square. You know that. You’ve handed them your head on a plate. Gus Perrin won’t back off, even if you have paid the money back.” Another thought occurred to Clarke. Something about Henderson’s wording rang alarm bells. “You borrowed from them?”

  Henderson went red, then pale. “Frankland was my friend and my long-term colleague. If you think . . .”

  “I think you’re compromised,” Clarke told him. “You’ve opened yourself up to pressure from the Perrins. I know for a fact that you went to Billy Hunter’s house in company with Freddie Benson, because you were seen. How can anyone know what you might have told—”

  Henderson began to protest. Clarke raised his hands. “OK, I don’t doubt that you never meant to tell them anything. You know as well as I do the harm of wrong words in the wrong place. You knew there was a UC in the Perrins’s organization.”

  “I didn’t know who. Only Frankland knew who it was.”

  “And you never dropped even the slightest hint, you never had pressure put on you to reveal even the slightest bit of information, I suppose? The Perrins just patted you on the back and told you to go on your way? You gambled in their casinos, you lost money hand over fist, then borrowed more to pay it back. Who do you think you borrowed it from?”

  Henderson closed his eyes. “Not the Perrins.”

  “Who, then? Please say it was a bank or you put it on your credit card. Or are they maxed out, too?”

  Henderson closed his eyes. Behind Clarke, the door was shoved open. Clarke moved aside. Superintendent Eric Craig stood in the doorway looking at the two men. Henderson opened his eyes but Clarke ignored the newcomer. Suddenly he knew what else his boss was hiding. “You borrowed the money from Kyle Sykes, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t know that’s who I was dealing with. I didn’t . . .”

  “What’s going on here?” Craig wanted to know. His tone was calm, but Clarke could see that he was anything but. He realized, slightly belatedly, that their voices must’ve carried all the way down the corridor, back to the briefing room. Only thin partition walls separated Henderson’s office from their colleagues. Frankly, Clarke didn’t care.

  “Ask him,” Clarke said and walked out of Henderson’s office.

  * * *

  Petra had continued on the motorway for a little over an hour and then taken a slip road and an A-road through a small town and a few small villages. Finally, she pulled into a layby to consult a map. She and Lauren had then discussed where to go to next. Lauren favoured somewhere busy, one of the chain hotels like the one she’d just left. At least they could disappear into the background there. The fact that her picture was all over the place was worrying her immensely.

  Petra had been inclined to agree but she, too, was concerned. “Look,” she said. “I’m bloody knackered. Let’s find somewhere to stay for today and probably tonight as well, then we’ll leave early in the morning. Clarke might have got back to us by then, told us what the state of play is and then we can make a more informed decision.”

  They headed for the next decent-sized town, and then changed their minds again when they found a motorway services that also had a motel. Lauren waited in the car while Petra booked them in. Petra saw Lauren into the twin room, then went off to find them both some breakfast. When she came back a little later with a selection of fast food, she found Lauren skimming through her phone looking at the news sites.

  “Free Wi-Fi,” Lauren said. “So I don’t have to think about running out of credit.”

  “Find anything interesting?”

  “Well, my dad has really gone to town on this publicity stuff. You’d think he actually liked me from the sound of it. I just wonder who suggested it to him — it’s not the kind of thing he’d have thought about himself.”

  No, Petra thought, it wasn’t the kind of thing Kyle Sykes would have come up with. Unlike the Perrins. Gus employed a web designer, and a couple of freelance bods to keep things up to date. Gus Perrin’s public business profile was slick and corporate. He even had a Twitter account.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Lauren said, putting her phone down and opening a paper-wrapped burger. “God, I’ve eaten so much junk food this last week. Anyway, I’ve been thinking, what about asking those friends of yours? The one you borrowed the car and the dogs from.”

  Petra shook her head. “I don’t want to involve anybody else if we can help it.”

  “I didn’t mean involve them in anything dangerous; I mean maybe swap cars, that sort of stuff. If anybody figures out what you’re driving, and if you’re right about my dad having police informants, or even the Perrins having police informants, then all they’d have to do is look at the ANPR cameras. We’ve done a lot of miles on the motorway.”

  She’s right, Petra thought. Nobody should be able to connect the little car she was driving at the moment to either Petra Merrow or Pat, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. And she knew the Perrins had access to the ANPR network — though not exactly how.

  “I’ll give it some thought,” she said. Involving those particular friends brought a whole load of complications with it. But if she had to . . .

  “So, what does the news say?” she asked Lauren again.

  “There’s an interview on one of the news sites with Kristy Young’s mother. She cried almost all the way through it, said he’d been a good boy, that he’d just fallen in with a bad crowd but that he had had a good job.” Lauren scoffed. “A good job employed by my father. Except, as he always tells everybody, he doesn’t employ anybody. They’re all ‘freelancers’. So Kristy actually worked for an agency that my dad owns.”

  “That your dad owns?”

  “That a shell company my dad’s involved with — owns,” Lauren clarified. “God, it’s so complicated, I’ve written as much of it down as I can remember, but now I don’t know what to do with it.”

  “Written it down? Can I see?”

  For the first time, Lauren looked at her with something like suspicion in her eyes. “How did you actually get to know Harry?” she said. “You still haven’t told me that.”

  No, I haven’t, have I? Petra thought. She took another bite of her own burger, aware that Lauren was watching her closely.

  “It’s not that difficult a question,” Lauren told her. “So stop playing for time and just give me an answer. I’m only trusting you because Harry said I should. Because Harry thought you were worth his while trusting, and there aren’t many people Harry thought that about.”

  “No, I don’t suppose there were. OK, so a few years ago, just after Jean died, Harry went off for a bit. You know that. What you don’t know is that Harry contacted someone. A colleague of mine, and said he wanted out. Harry had had enough. And then I think he wished he’d made the move sooner.”

  “Harry would never have left me.” Lauren looked stricken for a moment. “Oh my God, he didn’t leave me, did he? He hung around because of me. Was it because of me?”

  Petra hesitated. “Mostly,” she said gently. She watched the emotions flit across the girl’s face. “Harry and Jean loved you very much. They were terribly worried about what the future held for you, I know that. Harry had seen too many good people taken down by your father’s ambition. After your mother was . . . murdered . . . Harry realized just how crazy Kyle Sykes was. I think that was a real wake-up call for him.
Then Jean died, and I think he felt he had very little left to lose. He agreed, under some duress, you have to understand, to quietly pass bits and pieces of information our way.”

  Lauren’s eyes widened, but Petra had the impression that she had just confirmed what the girl had already suspected. She watched as Lauren consciously squared her shoulders, bracing herself as though for another blow.

  “And were you involved in this, this coercion, this decision-making? Did you put pressure on Harry? Didn’t you know what risks he was taking? That your lot lost two undercovers who my father knew about? I heard him boasting about it, how he found out and how they disposed of the rubbish.”

  Interesting, Petra thought. “And have you written about that in your notebook?” she asked.

  Again, the slight look of suspicion crossed Lauren’s face. “You know what, I’m not sure if I can trust you with whatever is in my notebook, or what’s in my head, or anything else. Yes, you’ve proved yourself so far, but maybe you’re also doing this because it’s a way of getting advancement, or because you’ve got some kind of moral notion of the right thing to do, or because it’s your job, and I know you think that Harry made a lot of bad decisions, but you know what? He made them for all the right reasons. He wasn’t doing it because it was a job, or because somebody told him to, or even because somebody paid him.” She looked closely at Petra, and then added, “I suppose you lot did pay. I suppose he was trying to serve two masters. Poor old Harry, you lot just used him the same as my father always used him. But you know what, Harry did what he did because he loved me, because he cared, because he was a good man at heart. I’m not sure if you’re a good person, I haven’t decided that yet.”

  “That’s OK,” Petra said, “because just lately, I’m not sure either. But the way I see it, we’re both in trouble. We don’t want your dad or any of the Perrins catching up with us and right now, I’m not sure who to trust inside the police, either. Somebody told somebody about Frankland, that despite the fact that he was supposed to be retired, he was still running at least one undercover operation. For all I know, I might not have been the only one. Now Frankland is dead and as it happens, he was also a friend of mine. Someone I valued. Look, you’ve got a right to be pissed off and you’ve got a right to be mistrustful and you’ve got a right to be angry and all of the other things you’re feeling at the moment. But the way I figure it is, so do I. So let’s stop talking about motives and let’s stop talking about who can be trusted, because right now, you and I have to work together if we’re going to get through this alive. Agreed?”

  Petra could see the girl considering this carefully. She found herself wondering if Lauren had ever done anything spontaneous in her entire life until she had killed Charlie Perrin. She guessed that Lauren had spent her life standing on the sidelines, weighing the odds before making any decision. She found herself warming to the girl.

  “OK,” Lauren said. “But if we’re going to get out of this, we need information. We need the full picture. So you and I, we’re going to talk, and we’re going to pool our resources. I’ll tell you what I know and you tell me what you know and we’ll see if we can figure out how far my dad’s web spreads. Who might help us and who will give us away in a heartbeat.” She reached for a cardboard carton of chips. They were pretty cold now, but they were salty and well-seasoned so she didn’t really care.

  It was Petra’s turn to consider. Finally, she nodded. “Toby Clarke,” she said. “I know absolutely nothing about him that makes me doubt his word, or his honesty. I think he’ll do his best but what I don’t know is what pressure can be brought to bear on him from above. You and I right now, we’re kind of freelance, but Toby’s got to obey the rules.”

  Lauren laughed at that. “Freelance what?” she asked. “Freelance fugitives? Not much of a job description, is it?”

  Chapter 42

  Billy Hunter had rarely been invited into his boss’s inner sanctum, the little room at the back that the family always referred to as “the snug”. His companions had been left waiting for him in a large living room and the atmosphere was not good, Billy thought. Definitely not good.

  He was alone with his boss and his boss’s son. Billy had always thought of John as something of an administrator. The Perrins hired in all the bodies they needed for the rough stuff, but looking at John now, standing stony-faced next to his father, Billy was not so sure the Perrins needed anyone else. In his day, Gus Perrin would have taken care of employees who displeased him with his own bare hands. Wheelchair-bound as he was, Billy knew that his upper body strength was still as impressive as it had ever been.

  “You’ve got to believe me, I knew nothing about this. She had me fooled, all down the line, she had me fooled.” He paused, a moment of regret seeping through. “Are we sure about this? I mean I know she’s gone off somewhere, but maybe she’s gone off taking pictures. Are we sure about this?”

  “Sure as can be,” Perrin said. His tone was casual. They might have been discussing the weather or what bet to place. Both Billy and Perrin liked the horses and had spent time together perusing the odds. Billy had been sure that his employer actually liked him, but now none of that mattered.

  “So how did you find out? When did you find out?” It must have been a recent discovery, Billy thought, otherwise they’d never have sent him and the others up north on that wild goose chase after the Sykes girl. He noticed that Kyle Sykes had been left sitting in Perrin’s living room looking very uncomfortable. It occurred to Billy that Kyle Sykes was probably in as much trouble as he was. Sykes’s own men had been nowhere in evidence.

  “A little birdie dropped the name Freddie in our direction. Trying to keep himself out of trouble, he was. We pressured him for some more information, finally got it yesterday. Our little bird couldn’t make a payment, so we traded. He let on that they’d got someone inside our business. Said he knew the name of the cop who was still handling the undercover.”

  Perrin leaned forward in his chair. There was nothing casual about him now.

  “But you had her checked out.” Billy had taken an anxious step backwards. “Pat was clean, you said, so you said . . .”

  “Seems I was wrong,” Perrin said. “And you know how I hate to be proved wrong. Three sodding years, Billy. Three sodding years she’s been sharing your bed and God knows what pillow talk. Who the fuck knows what you’ve told her in all that time.”

  “Nothing! I’ve told her nothing. I told to keep her nose out. She took pictures, that was all. I know how to keep business separate, Gus. You always tell us that. Business and pleasure got to be kept separate.”

  Billy was thinking furiously. What little bird? Who had been talking to Freddie? Then he suddenly realized, remembering the visit to his house Pat had asked him about. Freddie Benson’s late-night visit with that cop. “Henderson. Henderson told Freddie. You trust fucking Henderson?”

  “No, we trust what the fucking handler told us by the time Freddie and our boys had finished with him.” Perrin chuckled. It was not an encouraging kind of laugh. Billy quailed. “Apparently, he was a tough old bird, took a long time for them to get anything out of him, but he finally let slip that the undercover was a woman. Which narrowed down our options nicely.”

  Billy seized on the one small fragment of information that gave him some hope. “Then you don’t know it was Pat, it could have been any number of women.”

  “It was Pat,” Perrin said, with a cold finality that weakened Billy’s legs and had his bowels turning over.

  “Gus. Boss.” He looked over at John, hoping for an ally there. The door behind Billy opened. Two men walked in and seized him by the arms. John took a gun from his father’s desk drawer.

  “Make it quick,” Gus told him. “Billy might be a fool, but he’s been a good boy. However, when we catch up with that bitch . . .”

  “Gus, please—”

  He’d seen men plead with Gus before, and the good it did them. But something primal had taken over and to his sh
ame, he just couldn’t stop himself.

  They marched him out into the corridor and down towards the kitchen, out through the back door and into the gardens beyond.

  Chapter 43

  Frankland’s house was cordoned off and a small knot of journalists stood at the end of the road. They parted reluctantly as Clarke’s car nosed its way through. A reporter from one of the regionals recognized him and he heard a shouted question. He parked in front of the scientific support van and made his way into the house, pausing only to sign himself in and ask the constable on duty who was the officer in charge. He was told that DC Denise Allwood was managing the scene and that she was upstairs. She must’ve left just before I went to confront Henderson, Clarke thought. He imagined she’d be expecting him to arrive with his tail between his legs, having been reprimanded for his attitude in the briefing room. But Clarke had forgotten that gossip travels faster than pizza delivery and when she met him at the top of the stairs, it was pretty obvious that she’d been brought up to speed on his confrontation with Henderson and probably on the arrival of the superintendent.

  “What the hell is going on?” Allwood wanted to know. “I mean—”

  “Truthfully? I don’t fucking know,” Clarke told her. “What do we have here? He was found due to an anonymous tip-off, is that right?”

  Denise sighed but nodded, and they both took refuge in the minutiae and discipline of process. “I’m guessing you know who made that phone call,” she said. “But yes, anonymous phone call came at 11.25 p.m. First officer attending arrived ten minutes after that, found the patio door open and came inside. The call came from a burner phone, which has now presumably been disposed of, or at least, the SIM changed. Though you probably know about that, too.”

  Clarke held up a hand to stop her. “And then what?”

  She cast him a sour, impatient look but continued. “The woman who made the call told us exactly what to expect in terms of where to find the body. First officer on scene came up and looked, went back down, puked in the garden. His colleague came up and looked and—”