by Knight, Ali
‘You’re on.’ For the next ten minutes Georgie listened to a random collection of noises, none of them similar to the one they were searching for. She failed to identify a cup rolling on a table, a food mixer slowing down, sheaves of paper being fed into a photocopier, a telex machine and someone sitting in a saggy sofa. She got a bath emptying and someone typing, but thought a coffee percolator was someone weeing. By the end of Joel’s experiment they were both laughing. ‘God, I was rubbish.’
‘It’s much harder than most people realise to pinpoint a noise.’ Joel leaned back and let out a groan. ‘This is very frustrating. I can’t place it. Leave it with me and I’ll keep thinking, maybe I can turn up something.’
‘What can you tell me about his voice?’ Georgie asked.
Joel made a pained face. ‘Not really my area. It’s high because he’s disguising it and the message is short, that makes it much harder. The police have experts who can decipher huge amounts from a voice, but I do background sounds. Sorry I can’t help you further.’
Georgie nodded. ‘It’s OK. By the way, does 1824 mean anything to you?’
He shrugged. ‘Something to do with Beethoven?’
‘That’s 1812.’ She said it before she realised that he was having a laugh with her.
‘Remember, this kind of thing can begin to send you mad. You’ll be waking up in the night, dreaming of 1824. If I come up with anything I’ll give you a ring.’
‘You do that,’ she said and got up to go.
‘Wait a sec, have a listen to this.’ He pulled a CD from his library and inserted it and pressed play. She heard the sound of liquid being poured into a glass, the hiss of fizz, the chunk of ice and the glass being scraped across a bar. ‘Fancy one?’
Georgie smiled. ‘That’s very kind, but I’d better not.’
Joel shrugged his shoulders. ‘It was worth a try.’
Georgie nodded. Joel Flannigan was a nice guy.
48
Ricky held Kelly’s arm as he got her out of the lift and into his car. He tied her hands together with cable ties, did the same with her ankles and fastened the seat belt. He was calm and quite gentle, which made it worse, because she knew he was going to kill her. No other outcome was possible. He didn’t seem bothered about the CCTV and that worried her too. He wasn’t even trying to hide what he was doing. He started the car and exited the garage, stopped at the red light, and then turned right on to the Euston Road and began to drive west.
Ricky occasionally glanced at her as he drove. Eventually he began to talk. ‘I’ve only got one question for you, why did you do it?’
She began to shout at him. ‘You had no alibi. You had motive. I saw you kill that man. The police thought you were such a threat to me that I had to change my identity and leave my home town, go into witness protection. They were right. Eight years later, you’ve tracked me down, tied me up and you want me to believe that you’re not a violent psychopath – I’m supposed to believe that you didn’t do it.’
He said nothing, following signs for the M3 motorway. He drove at no more than seventy-five mph the whole way to the south coast. Now they were parked in a lay-by on a rise overlooking Southampton. Southampton Water was like a black smudge across a mediocre watercolour below them.
‘It’s interesting how the other facts back up what you saw,’ he continued. ‘You’ve used them to convince yourself you saw me.’
‘Oh, please.’
‘I got a phone call that day, on the phone in the warehouse. I was supposed to meet a guy who wanted some stuff doing. That meeting happened at just the time you were walking by the front doors, looking into a dark interior. Were you already fucking him then?’
‘Who?’
‘You’re not dumb so don’t act it. Your husband, Malamatos.’
Kelly frowned. ‘I didn’t meet him till years later. That day I was bringing my first husband, Michael, a sandwich.’
‘Did you often do that? Hurry on down to his work with lunch?’
‘Sometimes.’ She paused. ‘Well, once before.’ She paused again. ‘He asked me to come that day.’
‘Who did Michael work for?’
‘The docks.’
‘Who else?’
‘How dare you speak ill of the dead.’
‘Who else?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You sure, Kelsey? Think about it. Because him calling for you to bring the sandwich put you in the right spot at the right time to see me.’
‘This is bullshit.’
‘The star witness at my trial, a beautiful young mother, a promising singing career but nothing too immoral – catnip, you were.’
She sat up straight and looked at him.
‘Once upon a time I was the go-to guy. But I was taken out. You know what happens when there’s a vacuum? Something always rushes in to fill it. Your husband has an interest here at the docks. He bought part of an operating company six years ago.’
She was having none of it. ‘You expect me to feel sorry for you? You’re a violent crook who’s kidnapped the woman you threatened because she told the police what she’d seen. I’m supposed to sit here, tied up and understand you? Just get this all over with and let me go join my dead husband and kid!’
There was only one way this could end. If he let her go he would be headed back to jail before two hours were out, police crashing through his door, witness protection officers surrounding her house. The thought of Sylvie bringing up her children flashed before her as she tried futilely to yank her wrists apart.
‘You see the streetlights on the square down there?’ He pointed out of the window. ‘I first went joyriding round those streets when I was twelve. I glassed a man in the Crown when I was seventeen. He needed thirty-seven stitches. You know now? I can’t even remember what the argument was about. I can’t remember, but he still has those scars. He looks at them every day. I deserved to go to jail for all those things I did when I was young, for all the people I cheated and the violence I inflicted. I served my time in prison, just not for the right crime.’
She got angry. ‘Lucky you. I haven’t been able to come back here for eight years. I did the right thing and you ruined my life.’
He shook his head. ‘I want to show you something.’ He drove into the town, past old landmarks that whispered to her, the turning up to her old school, the sign to the hospital where Amber had been born, down to the streets near the dock and then out again further inland where the terraces gave way to cul-de-sacs and thirties’ housing. He parked.
‘You make a sound now and I will kill you.’
He pulled a penknife from the glove box and cut her ankle ties. He came round and opened the car door, took her arm and walked her along the pavement to an alley between two houses. It was dark here; she heard him scrabbling around and moving what looked like an old milk crate. He made her stand on it and from up there she could see into the garden and kitchen window of a neatly kept thirties’ house. A woman with blonde curls was sitting in a chair, the flickering light of a TV bouncing off her face. She had three dogs round her, two lying on the rug on the floor and one in her lap. She was playing with its ears, nuzzling into him now and then, while chatting on a mobile clamped to her ear.
Ricky stood up on the milk crate next to Kelly.
‘That’s Dawn. My Dawn. I love Dawn as much as you love your children. You say I deserved to go to jail, and I did, but not for something I didn’t do. Not for murder.’ He grabbed her neck tightly, forcing her face towards the window. ‘Look at that woman. She stood by me, all the years I was inside, she believed in me, and she waited. She never missed a prison visit – she used to bring cakes she’d made in for the screws. They’d make a show of not accepting it, against the rules it was, but I’d see them sharing it out later. Always managed a smile for me all those years she must have been hurting, all those years that were draining from her life, a life put on hold for me. Look at her!’ She could feel the hard top of the fence pushing into her
cheek as he gripped her tightly. ‘Look at her. What does that woman look like she wants? What is that woman in mourning for?’
Dawn had put her mobile down on top of a book now; she was beginning to stand, picking up the dog on her lap and talking to it as she gave it a hug and put it on the floor. She stretched and turned lazily to the back window, the frown lines deep between her eyebrows, the tired lines round the eyes catching the dancing TV light. ‘That woman wants a baby. She’s forty-two. She’s never going to get her baby. She’s the victim of what happened that day, just as much as you are.’
They both looked back through the window at Dawn, staring now into the middle distance, twisting a lock of hair round a finger, sadness at permanent rest on her features.
‘It was critical to the case that you saw me. Someone organised for you to see me. Who was it?’ He yanked her head round, so their faces were inches from each other.
‘I don’t know. You must have friends at the docks, you must be able to find out that way.’
‘That’s just it. The only names I’ve heard are your husbands’. Your dead husband and your new one.’
He took his hand off her neck and she breathed in the cold air so quickly it burned her throat. She staggered forward off the crate. ‘That can’t be. They didn’t know each other.’
‘How did you meet Christos?’
‘I met him in a restaurant.’
‘How sweetly run-of-the-mill. You both sat down at the same table? Reached for the sugar at the same time?’
‘I served him. You’d managed to turn me into a fugitive from my own life, remember? I was working a dead-end job.’
Ricky barked out an approximation of a laugh. ‘You hear a lot of tales inside. It’s the one thing you can still do inside, talk. It confirms what you already know – life is about what you’ve got to trade, whether you’re conscious of it or not. You were young, a pretty face, a nice singer. But you had somebody else’s kid, no money, no connections and a bucketful of grief. It doesn’t add up, Kelsey. It’s not a trade. And a man like Christos, he trades. It’s in his blood. It’s what he does. He makes deals. So you need to ask yourself, what’s the deal here?’
‘He loved me. That was the deal. After everything I’d been through I deserved a bit of that.’
‘Did you get it? Well, did you? Not many mothers I know walk around their home with a gun in their pocket. What happened to your ceiling? If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that love is blind, greed is eternal.’
‘So you’re telling me you think Christos sought me out for money? I don’t have any. And anyway, how did he find me? I was in the witness protection scheme – it’s impossible—’
Ricky laughed and she saw the absurdity of what she was saying, standing in a Southampton alley, the prisoner of the man she had put in jail. ‘Talk at the docks was that the rot went all the way to the top. You think your whereabouts couldn’t be bought by a rich and powerful man? You would have been easy to find.’ He put his hand on her arm and steered her back towards the car. ‘He might have done it to keep you close. After all, you saw something you didn’t. One day you might have woken up and realised that.’ He started the engine and pulled away.
She shook her head, put her hands on top of her spinning head, shutting out his persistent quiet voice, but what he was saying was making things jump about in her mind, making connections that she’d never considered before, her mind staring down dark paths that led in directions she didn’t want to see.
‘Grief can make you blind. It makes you desperate for a haven, a place that shuts out some of the horrors. You need to think about whether he exploited that in you. I’m just asking you to think about it.’
They pulled up near a level crossing outside the city. A small rail station, one of the hundreds dotted across Hampshire that sucked commuters towards the riches of the capital. He turned to her as they sat in the dark car park, a fox the only wildlife to be seen. She was unbound now, sitting next to him like they were acquaintances.
They sat in silence watching the night stalker for a few moments.
‘You’re going to let me go.’ They looked at each other, the fox running into the darkness by some bushes. ‘You’re prepared to take such a risk?’ She couldn’t keep the awe hidden. ‘I could have you instantly put back in jail. Dawn would be alone again.’
He didn’t answer for a long time. ‘I would be lying if I said I hadn’t found tonight surprising. I thought you would be harder. Meaner. I spent most of my life surrounded by bullshitters and cheats. I can tell when someone is lying. You really thought you saw me that day.’ He nodded to himself. ‘That’s clever. That’s the only way it would have worked.’ He handed her back the empty gun. ‘Be careful with that. It’s dangerous. Not something to have round kids.’
The tears rolled in two streaks down her cheeks. ‘I changed my name, my career, my home, because of a fear of what you would do … I don’t know what to do now, I can’t—’
‘Go and see your mother.’
She started crying harder then, watching the fox return and dart in between the car headlight beams. ‘And what are you going to do?’
‘Good question. Probably nothing. Revenge doesn’t help. But I want to know. We all want to know. Someone went to a lot of trouble.’ He paused. ‘Your husband Michael and your daughter died three months before the trial.’
She gulped in a lungful of air, staring at him. ‘It was an accident.’ She was pleading with him now, tears in her eyes. ‘Please, I was right there, it was an accident.’ She heard the clanking of the great metal chains of the Poole harbour ferry, ringing out their death knell. ‘Not that. Don’t try to change that.’
He made a clucking sound with his tongue on his teeth but he let it go.
From a place entirely different in her mind came a thought. ‘The phone call you got at the warehouse that day. What was that about?’
‘A guy wanted some stuff shifting.’
‘What stuff?’
‘Firearms. Shotguns, semi-automatics. Going up to Gunchester.’ He rolled his eyes at her blank look. ‘Manchester.’
She felt the cold metal in her lap. ‘Did you see the guns?’
He shook his head. ‘They were hidden, he said.’
‘What were they hidden in?’
‘He didn’t say. He was very proud of the system he had. Said he could smuggle anything with it of almost any size. He mentioned this system a few times.’
‘Who was he?’
‘I don’t know. I’m no fool, I smelled a rat but I was intrigued, so we arranged to meet somewhere quiet. The route there was empty – no CCTV, no one around. That was clever. No one to see me and corroborate my version of events. He never turned up. Docks are teeming with people, but only in small areas. They give the impression of being busy but there are large pockets that are empty for weeks at a time. But of course I hadn’t realised he had wanted me out of the way all along.’
‘So you never saw him?’
He shook his head. ‘But he was probably tall. Like me.’ He turned to her. ‘He needed to look like me, after all.’
They both stared out of the windscreen into the night. Autumn leaves blew across the strobes of the car lights, orange flares in the light.
‘I don’t have the answers you want. I don’t have the answers I need myself.’ She wondered if grief for her lost family had blinded her to things she should have seen, to connections she should have made. She needed air, she couldn’t breathe. She dragged at the car lock on the door and half fell out into the cold night.
He leaned across the seat and called after her. ‘Have you got any money to get home?’ He sounded like a father dropping his student daughter at the station after a visit home. He handed over a twenty from his pocket. ‘If you need anything, Dawn’s in the phone book. You can call me.’
He put the car in gear and did a wide circle of the empty car park before driving away. She stood for a moment then swayed and fell like a dead weight t
o the tarmac, sobbing her eyes out.
49
Kelly got home well after midnight and ran to her children. They were curled up asleep in the TV room because of the water damage in their bedroom. Christos wasn’t home. She kept shivering and realised it was delayed shock, her emotions rollercoastering between euphoria at still being able to stoop over her children in the dark, and an overpowering emptiness. Ricky had let her go, had shown that he wasn’t a danger to her, but his threat had been one of the pillars on which her new life had been constructed, and with it removed there was nothing to fill the void. She had snatched up the phone to call the witness protection officers several times on the train home, but had cut the calls before they were connected. They could be in a new place, with new identities, in just twelve hours, but Christos would still be with her. And what if what Ricky had said was true?
Kelly tried to put it together. Was it possible she had been duped? Duped into testifying to something that wasn’t true? That the wrong man went to jail for all those years? That she had been a tool used by others for their own ends? But if he was telling the truth, then maybe Christos was involved. Maybe Christos had not met her by accident. The thought stunned her. That he had met her to keep her close, had married her for motives other than love showed he was prepared to play for very high stakes indeed. She thought back to the night she had asked for a divorce. To the violence he had inflicted. A clearer message that he would make her stay at all costs could not have been given. A husband who could do that would think nothing of sending an innocent man to jail.
She closed the children’s door and opened Medea’s. Her mother-in-law was snoring gently. She shut Medea’s door and headed upstairs, searching the dark cupboards beyond the kitchen, the place where dried-up superglue and unused cricket bats live out their decades. Christos had come in here before firing at the ceiling. She found the box of bullets on a shelf so high up she needed a chair to reach to the back of it.
