by Agatha Frost
“They’re meeting someone.” Julia pushed the phone close to her ear, but they seemed to have stopped talking. “A woman. And I think they’re planning to rob my dad’s shop too, but they’re waiting until things cool down.”
“Things will cool down, all right,” Alfie replied. “Just wait until they’re locked up behind bars for everything they’ve done.”
Julia signalled for Alfie to be quiet when they began talking again.
“Let’s get some of this unloaded before she gets here,” Dale said. “You’re going to have to hide when she does. If she finds out you’re connected, it’ll blow your cover.”
“Give it a break, Uncle Dale,” Leon said. “I’ve got us this far, haven’t I?”
“Uncle Dale,” Julia repeated to Alfie. “Leon is Dale’s nephew.”
“Why would Dale want to rob the manor?” Alfie asked. “He always seemed like such a normal bloke.”
“If he’s anything like the other people I spoke to, I’m going to guess my father stopped paying him.” Julia strained her ears, but it sounded like they were inside the van, and it was too echoey to hear. “My dad mentioned Dale worked as the groundskeeper for fifteen years, so I think this is his way of getting his own back.”
“That means he had fifteen years of knowledge to work with,” Alfie said. “Even if he spent most of his time outside, he probably went into the manor enough to see and catalogue all the valuables. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s been planning this escape plan for years.”
“I wonder if hitting Samantha with that van was part of his plan,” Julia said, her gut twisting. “I hope they’re arrogant enough to bring it up. For Samantha’s sake, I don’t want there to be a question of doubt in court.”
“Did you know her well?”
“Not at all,” Julia admitted. “She was just an ordinary girl from Fern Moore trying to make her way in life, and now she’ll never get the chance to because of their greed.”
“Don’t worry.” Alfie rested a hand on Julia’s shoulder. “We’ve already got them.”
They spent the next ten minutes listening closely while shifting weight from leg to leg and subtly squeaking in their leather. Dale and Leon barely talked while they unloaded the contents of the van into the storage unit, and when they did, it was only to talk about their stolen goods. Julia yawned, wondering how long they would have to wait before the men mentioned Samantha.
Headlights appeared from the darkness of another adjoining alley. Julia returned to peeking over the edge. She watched as the headlights grew closer and closer before coming to a stop at the mouth of the alley running behind the row of shops. The engine turned off, followed quickly by the lights. Even in the darkness of the alley, the hot-pink exterior of the Range Rover glowed like a neon light.
“No,” Julia gasped.
Julia’s throat tightened as she watched Katie climb down from the fuchsia tank. Julia and Alfie glanced at each other before fixing their eyes on Katie as she walked down the alley and into the listening range of the concealed phone.
“She’s here,” Dale said. “Get in the van and don’t come out until I give you a signal.”
Julia heard Leon jump up in the van; it wobbled slightly in front of her. Katie made her way down the side of the van. Julia held her breath when the sound of Katie’s heels came dangerously close to the phone’s microphone.
“Katie,” she heard Dale say. “Nice to see you.”
“I wish I could say the same,” Katie replied, her voice wobbly. “You haven’t been answering my calls. I even went to your cottage, but you’re never in.”
“I’ve been busy,” Dale called back, an air of arrogance in his voice. “It’s hard work shifting antiques on the black market, I should know, I’ve been doing it for long enough. I told you to sit back and be patient.”
“Have you sold anything yet?”
“What do you take me for?” Dale scoffed. “‘Course I have.”
“Then I need my cut from what you’ve sold so far,” Katie pleaded. “We’re really struggling. My dad died this morning.”
“I heard.” Julia noticed a hint of reluctance in Dale’s voice. “I was sorry to hear that. He was a good man to me when he was able to be, unlike that husband of yours. Look, it’s not my fault you’re struggling. I’m not giving you a penny.”
“We had a deal!”
“Yes, we did!” Dale cried back. “And you’ve already messed up your end. We agreed we’d give each other an equal cut of whatever I could get for these antiques and the insurance money. You took the insurance money off the table without telling me, so this is all my cut or else this whole job wasn’t worth my time.”
Julia stared at the back of Katie’s blonde head, scarcely able to believe what she was hearing. If her ankles hadn’t already hurt so much from the crouching, she might have pinched herself to check she wasn’t dreaming.
“I didn’t know about the insurance,” Katie said quietly. “I swear, I didn’t find out until it was too late.”
“Not my problem.”
“This was supposed to fix everything,” Katie cried. “You promised you’d help me fix everything! This isn’t what we agreed.”
“You’re right, it isn’t,” Dale replied. “But what are you going to do about it?”
“I could go to the police!”
“And drag yourself down with me?” Dale laughed bitterly. “You’re not the only one in this, remember. My associate who helped carry out the robbery needs his cut too. If you get the police involved, we’ll make sure to bring you down with us.”
“I was trying to fix things.”
“By committing insurance fraud?”
“There is no insurance.”
“Conspiracy to commit fraud still has a hefty sentence.” Julia watched Dale take a step closer to Katie. “How old is that baby of yours? One? Two? I wonder if he’d still remember his mummy if she spent a couple of years behind bars.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would.” Dale sounded like he was smiling. “Don’t test me, woman. You’re in no position to make threats. Now clear off before I call your husband and tell him his silly little wife staged the whole thing.”
Katie faltered on the spot before turning around and running to her car, clearly in tears. On the phone, she heard the metal door slide up. Leon jumped out.
“We won’t be hearing from her again,” Dale said.
“What if she tells Brian?”
“She won’t.”
“Did you know there was no insurance?”
“‘Course I did.” The smirk in Dale’s voice came through loud and clear. “Wasn’t even hard to find out either. That woman really is dumber than she looks.”
Julia stared silently at the phone as the conversation returned to the work of clearing out the van. What she had just seen and heard had shocked her, probably more than she had ever been shocked by anything.
“Julia, what are you thinking?” Alfie probed.
“I – I don’t know what to say,” Julia said as she watched Katie slowly reverse back into the darkness of the alley. “Do you know any fast shortcuts to Peridale Manor?”
15
Julia clung to Alfie as they sped through the dark, but somehow, her mind raced even faster than the bike. So fast, in fact, she forgot to be afraid of clinging on for her life, and she actually enjoyed the adrenaline rush as her mind fired on all cylinders.
“We’re almost there,” she heard Alfie call into the wind. “I think we’ve beaten her. I haven’t seen her car yet.”
Neither had Julia, but she hadn’t been looking. No matter who reached Peridale Manor first, nothing would stop her from telling her father the truth.
The manor came into view, and just as they had done on the night of the storm, dark clouds blacked out the last shred of grey on the horizon. The earlier chill pushed the weather into being unusually cold for late April.
Alfie ground to a halt in front of the manor. She was relieved to s
ee Katie’s pink Range Rover wasn’t there, but less than pleased that the only car parked outside looked eerily like DI Christie’s.
Once they were off the bike and free of their helmets, Julia burst into the manor, interrupting what appeared to be DI Christie either just arriving or about to leave.
“Julia!” Christie cried. “You look … different.”
Julia looked down at the black and red leathers; her outfit was the last thing on her mind. She wanted to blurt out everything she had just seen, but with DI Christie there, she couldn’t. She needed to hear Katie out first.
“Motorbike,” Alfie explained as he quickly followed her in. “We rode over here.”
“Is that wise in your condition, dear?” Brian said from behind Christie by his study door.
“Alfie’s a really safe driver,” Julia said. “I trust him.”
“Well, either way, it certainly suits you,” Christie said with a chuckle as he walked past her and towards the door. “Barker’s a lucky man. I passed him on my way up here. He was in a taxi.”
“How long ago?” Julia’s heart sank.
“About twenty minutes ago,” Christie said as he checked his watch. “Speaking of which, I need to get going. The wife is off to her weekly Zumba class tonight, so it’s the one night of the week I get to watch whatever I want on telly without her chewing my ear off.”
Julia waited until she heard Christie’s engine start to walk up to her father.
“What did he want?” Julia asked quickly.
“He thinks they’re closing in on a gang who have been hitting houses like this all over the Cotswolds,” Brian said with an unsure smile. “I suppose that’s good news. Maybe there’s hope after all.”
“Dad, it’s not a gang,” Julia said, her heart pounding. “I went to see the gardener at the cottage you told me about. I wanted to finish the list, but I stumbled upon the truth when I was there. It was your old groundskeeper, Dad. Dale Michaels robbed you.”
“Dale?” Brian muttered, his brows tensing. “Are you sure? He worked here for fifteen years!”
“Exactly,” Alfie said. “Fifteen years to figure out where you kept the valuables.”
“It’s not just Dale,” Julia said, feeling all the cowardice of starting with the easier reveal. “It was Leon, too. He’s Dale’s nephew.”
“Dale and Leon?” Brian shook his head as he let out a sceptical laugh. “You can’t be serious, Julia! Dale, I might have believed, but Leon too? He’s a good lad. He’s been working with me for at least two months.”
“When did you say Dale Michaels quit?”
“Two months ago.” Brian’s eyes widened. “Oh! How do you know all this, Julia?”
“Because when we went to see Dale, Leon showed up in your van and we watched them load the antiques they stole from here into it.” She paused. “Then we followed them to a storage unit at least ten miles away in some random housing estate. It looks like they’ve been shuttling everything across bit by bit for a few days because the unit was already full when they got there.”
“And we got it all on Julia’s phone too,” Alfie said, tapping his pocket, which contained the phone he had sneakily recovered before they left the alley. “They admitted to the robbery. In fact, they said they were biding their time before they hit your shop.”
“My shop too?”
“I think this is Dale’s way of getting revenge,” Julia said, her mouth dry. “Am I right in presuming you stopped paying him?”
Brian gulped hard and nodded.
“After fifteen years, I think he was insulted,” Julia continued. “So, I think he concocted this plan and planted his antiques-minded nephew in your shop so he could keep track of you. He needed to know when he could hit the manor. But they didn’t need to because…”
Julia’s voice trailed off as she heard the familiar grumble of Katie’s Range Rover reach the top of the lane. Attempting to swallow felt like forcing down sand.
“Katie turned up at the lockup,” Julia blurted out, forcing her dad’s eyes to meet hers as they listened to Katie slam her car door. “She was in on it, Dad. You didn’t just have one inside person on the job, you had three.”
Brian squinted down at Julia as though she had just spoken Chinese. The front door opened, and Katie burst in, her face as red and raw as it had been the morning after Vincent’s death.
“Brian, it was me!” Katie cried, tears already streaming down her cheeks. “I was behind the burglary!”
“I know.”
“What?” Katie cried. “How did you know?”
“Because I just told him,” Julia said, barely able to look Katie in the eyes. “You weren’t the only one at that lockup.”
Katie’s mouth gaped as she looked from Brian to Julia.
“I’ve known about the money troubles for months,” Katie said, grabbing Brian’s hands in hers. “Dale came to me and asked why he wasn’t being paid on time. I went snooping in the study, and I found all the bills you’d been hiding. I told Dale, and he said he would have to quit, but that he had a way he could fix things so we’d both get the money we needed. He made it sound so simple!”
“So, you just went along with things?” Brian asked, pulling away from Katie.
“No.” Katie shook her head, pulling him back. “At first, I told him I didn’t want to. But then Dad had another stroke, and I knew the money was running out. I was in denial about how bad things were until one of the nurses mentioned they were told to stop coming if the hospital bills weren’t paid. I went to Dale, and he said he’d plan it. I just needed to make sure we were both out the house on Friday night. I slipped a couple of sleeping pills into Hilary’s tea, and I knew my dad was too weak to do anything.”
“You put Julia in the middle of it!” Alfie said, stepping forward. “She could have died.”
“He said nobody would get hurt!” Katie cried, looking desperately between the three of them. “He said it would be a simple, routine job. He didn’t say anything about a gun! When I heard what he’d done, I wanted to throw up. I’m so sorry, Julia. I asked you to babysit because I trusted you to look after Vinnie more than anyone in the world.”
The memory of Katie saying something similar right before they left on the night of the burglary flitted through Julia’s mind.
“You’ve been so angry with me since this happened,” Brian said, his eyes dropping to the ground. “You made me feel like this was all my fault.”
“Because the insurance was supposed to save us!” Katie pulled Brian closer. “The plan was to claim everything on the insurance and sell everything else on the black market. Dale and I were going to split the money right down the middle and then go our separate ways. I was trying to clear our debts. I thought I was doing the right thing!”
Katie broke down sobbing and fell right into Brian’s arms. He caught her and clung to her as she cried the pain of her long day against his chest.
“I’m going to go to prison,” Katie wailed. “And we’re still going to lose everything!”
“You’re not going to prison,” Brian said firmly. “I won’t let that happen.”
Katie pulled away and roughly wiped her damp cheeks. She turned to Julia and fell onto her, pulling her into a hug with more tears.
“I’m so sorry for putting you through that!” Katie wailed into her ear. “He promised me it wouldn’t turn into anything nasty. He promised!”
“I don’t think Dale Michaels is a man who keeps his promises,” Julia said, holding Katie out at arm’s length. “When you left, he gloated that he knew the manor didn’t have any insurance and he never intended to give you anything. It seems you weren’t the only one who went snooping.”
“What does that mean?” Katie asked as she caught her breath.
“It means he stitched you up to make the robbery easier,” Alfie explained, “but this was his plan all along.”
“We need to put an end to this,” Brian stated as he grabbed his jacket off the coat stand. “Could the
y still be at the lockup?”
“It’s worth a shot,” Alfie said. “They didn’t look like they were anywhere near finished when we left.”
“Then let’s go,” Brian said as he marched for the front door. “This ends tonight.”
Julia had assumed that driving Katie’s Range Rover would feel like driving a tank, but she had been wrong to assume she wouldn’t enjoy it compared to her tiny vintage car. She had never understood the appeal of giant vehicles, but the power trip it gave her as they drove high above the ground through the winding country lanes towards the isolated housing estate was heady.
“It’s just up there,” Alfie remarked. “If you turn left down there, it will take us down the same alley Katie used.”
Julia was glad Alfie was long because nothing at all looked familiar. She supposed it might’ve had something to do with the amount of time she had spent clinging to Alfie with her eyes squeezed shut. She did as instructed, feeling like she was driving a transit van through the tight alley. She glanced at Katie and Brian, who were cuddling in the back, each looking as exhausted as the other; they had jumped at Julia’s offer to drive.
“Turn the lights off and stop here,” Alfie ordered when they were halfway down the alley, his hand already on the door handle. “I’ll go up ahead and see if they’re still there. Wait for my signal.”
Julia turned the beaming headlights off before grinding to a halt. Alfie jumped out, closing the door soundlessly behind himself. He ran up ahead and turned the corner in the direction of the van and the storage units.
“I really am sorry for putting you through all of this,” Katie said, catching Julia’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. “If I’d have known he had—”
“It’s okay, Katie,” Julia said with a smile. “I forgive you. You trusted a man you’ve known for fifteen years, and I believe that you thought you were doing the right thing to save your family.”
“I really was,” Katie said, wiping her eyes. “I just wanted everything to be like it was, but I know that’s not going to happen now.”
