Safe House

by Chris Ewan

  ‘Where did she call you from?’

  ‘Here,’ Erik said. ‘This island. She told us that she had found somewhere to hide Lena. But she would need our help. We were to send two men to protect Lena when she was not there. When she was trying to find out who was attacking us.’

  ‘So you sent Pieter and Lukas.’

  Erik nodded in a half-hearted way. His skin had tightened across his face. It had taken on a waxy texture.

  ‘Why not Anderson?’

  ‘Because Anderson was more useful to me looking into what was happening. Trying to identify who was behind this plot to hurt us.’

  ‘He wasn’t working with Laura,’ Rebecca said. ‘No way would she risk that.’

  ‘It was a parallel investigation.’

  ‘It was a mistake,’ Rebecca told him. ‘I bet that’s how they found out where Laura had hidden your daughter. I bet he screwed up. Pushed too far, or too fast, somewhere along the line. He wasn’t nearly as good as you thought he was. I wouldn’t be here if that was the case.’

  ‘This is just speculation.’

  Rebecca threw up her hand. ‘Why didn’t you just pay? Twenty million euros. And you’re what, a billionaire? It seems to me that paying them would have been a pretty affordable way to keep your daughter out of prison.’

  ‘I could not pay them. If I did, they would come back for more.’

  ‘I doubt it. There weren’t many people behind this thing. Three, maybe four. Two of them we know about already. They’re the two who snatched Lena. And twenty million split three or four ways? That’d be more than enough for a comfortable retirement. They’d have no reason to come after you ever again. And that’s not all. If you’d paid, Laura could have left this whole thing alone and got far away. She’d have made it, too.’

  Erik glared at Rebecca. Then he turned slowly from her and fixed his attention on me. ‘Your sister wanted to help us. She saw that what was happening was wrong.’

  I could believe that about Laura. She’d always had a strong sense of justice. Even when we were kids. She hated it if I cheated in a game we were playing. It had always been just about the surest way I knew to make her mad.

  The one thing I still didn’t understand was why she hadn’t given Erik a copy of the memory stick long ago. My guess was that she was afraid the whole thing might be blamed on her. That Erik would be prepared to clear Lena’s name at all costs. I guessed that was the reason she’d planned to fake her own death. Perhaps once she was secure in her new identity, she would have allowed the footage to be passed over.

  Was I missing something else? I didn’t know, and I couldn’t think of any way to find out for sure. Whatever Laura’s reasons might have been, I couldn’t see how any of them could still apply. She was gone now. Untouchable. And so were at least two of the men who’d been part of the conspiracy. But Lena was still in danger. The risk to her had been multiplied many times over.

  I closed my fist around the memory stick. Gave it a final goodbye clinch. Then I stepped forwards and passed it to Erik.

  ‘Take it,’ I said. ‘Use it to get your daughter back. Do whatever you need to. The password is Chester.’ I spelled it for him, just to be clear.

  Erik nodded solemnly. I got the impression he wanted to say something, but the right words wouldn’t come.

  Shimmin shuffled his feet at my side. He checked his watch. Jabbed a finger towards Erik.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ve observed. And now I’m finished observing. And you’re finished on the Isle of Man. I want you to pack your things, Mr Zeeger. I want you and your boy in the bathroom to be off my island before the end of the day. And I don’t want you coming back. Not with more thugs. Not with more questions. Not ever. Understand?’

  ‘And Anderson?’ Erik asked.

  ‘Forget about Anderson. Forget you ever knew him.’

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  I got back to my place to find Mum and Dad huddled around the supine corpse in my kitchen. Dad was holding the man’s slackened body up by his shoulders and Mum was wrapping a bandage around his head. She was wearing yellow rubber household gloves and pinching a safety pin between her lips. She mumbled a greeting to me around the pin, then used it to seal the bandage in place like she was administering first aid. The dressing was all bulked out. Another dressing was coiled around the man’s left shoulder, where the first bullet had hit.

  Next to them was a plastic shopping bag. The man’s belongings and the Beretta had been packed inside. The bag was resting against a bucket of soapy water with a stiff-bristled brush floating in it. It dawned on me that Mum was planning to scrub the bloodstains from the walls and floors once we were gone. I didn’t know what to say. I’d never expected to find my parents in my home, working together to clean up after a violent shooting.

  ‘Hello, love,’ Mum said. ‘How did you get on with the Dutch gentleman?’

  ‘Fine,’ I mumbled. ‘I think.’

  ‘Take this, will you, son?’ Dad passed me the shopping bag, then adjusted his grip under the man’s armpits. ‘Is your van open?’ he asked.

  I nodded, a little woozily.

  ‘Mick still with you?’

  ‘Yes, and he wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Fine,’ Dad said. ‘Ask him to come and give me a hand lifting this guy downstairs, will you? I’ll ride with him in the car. We’ll follow you and Rebecca.’

  *

  Rebecca drove my van with exaggerated care, taking it slow and steady. She didn’t want to attract unnecessary attention when we had a dead man sliding around in the back.

  I was slumped against the passenger door, my head propped against the window. Traffic was light. The school run had finished half an hour ago. It was over an hour until the first office workers would conclude their day.

  We were driving towards a bank of dark rain clouds sweeping in from the west of the island. The air was cooling and a stiff breeze was picking up, ruffling the red-and-white tarpaulin that had been wrapped around the heavy straw bales positioned along Peel Road in preparation for the TT. I glanced in the side mirror and caught a glimpse of the dead man’s blue Vauxhall Insignia. It was impossible to tell how Dad was going to react to what Shimmin had to tell him. Even harder to know how Rebecca was going to respond to the questions I needed to ask.

  ‘We have to talk,’ I said.

  Rebecca looked across at me. Above the dressing on her nose, the swelling around her eyes was beginning to dry. The blackened skin had started to crack. It looked more painful than ever.

  ‘Sounds serious.’

  Rebecca was relaxed. Composed. Like this was just an average day for her. An ordinary journey with an unremarkable cargo.

  Which is exactly what was bothering me.

  ‘You killed two men today.’

  She pursed her lips. The top one was split. It was rimed in dried blood. ‘And you think I should be more upset?’

  ‘That’s part of it.’

  She spread her fingers on the steering wheel. ‘It was them or us, Rob. When it comes down to it, I think I made the right decision.’

  I shook my head. ‘That’s not entirely true.’

  ‘You would have preferred it the other way around?’

  ‘Of course not. But it wasn’t like you say. Take Anderson. You broke his jaw with the first swing of that wrench. He was going down. But you swung back and thumped him a second time. And it was the second strike that killed him.’

  ‘That’s hindsight talking. I reacted on instinct. On adrenalin. And you’re ignoring Lukas. If I hadn’t hit Anderson the second time, he might not have flaked.’

  I kept my eyes fixed on the road. A biker overtook us. He was going fast, but nowhere near racing speeds. There’d been times when I’d blitzed along this stretch of road so quick that the overhanging trees had merged into one long tunnel.

  ‘That’s what I told myself,’ I said to Rebecca. ‘That’s how I justified it in my own mind. And maybe, as a one-off, I could have believed it.’
I jerked my thumb over my shoulder, towards the rear of the van. ‘But then there was this guy, too.’

  ‘He was going to take your dad hostage. He had a gun.’

  ‘He did. You’re right. But your first shot punched through his shoulder. The shoulder of his gun arm. That bullet would have caused lots of damage. Look at me. I barely fractured my scapula and my arm was next to useless even before Anderson whacked me. You knew what you were doing. You picked that shot. You picked it because you knew it would disable him.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So it did. It disabled his left arm completely. He was a right-handed guy, but I’d already done something bad to his wrist. He was holding his gun in his left hand because of it. And when you shot him, he dropped his gun.’

  ‘The way you tell it, I did a lot of thinking, in not very much time.’

  ‘You did,’ I said. ‘You’re good. Very good. I think you saw all that and more. You would have known that when he let go of his gun that was it for him. A busted right hand. A busted left shoulder. The threat was over. It was finished.’

  Rebecca said nothing. She was indicating for the junction up ahead. The lights were green. She swooped left. Settled into the rhythm of the new road, climbing the gentle gradient towards Foxdale.

  ‘The threat was over,’ I said again, ‘but you shot him in the back of the head. You chose your aim as carefully as you did the first time around. You made a choice. A second bullet. Just like the second swing of that wrench. You wanted them dead. Both of them. And I want to know why.’

  Rebecca tipped her head from side to side, as if she was weighing my words. ‘If your sister could have taken that second shot, do you think she’d have backed off?’

  ‘Don’t say that. Don’t pretend you did it for Laura.’

  ‘You’re angry now?’

  ‘Getting there.’ And I was. I was fed up with having to battle to discover the truth. With only knowing fragments of the story. I’d found out more than I might have expected to learn about Laura. But now I wanted to know it all. Every angle. I didn’t want there to be any dirty little secrets left lurking around.

  Rebecca released a short, sharp breath. ‘Alex Tyler,’ she said, as if that was all the answer I needed.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He’s my client.’

  I stared at her. At her bruised and disfigured face.

  She didn’t look back at me. Didn’t meet my gaze.

  ‘Was my client, I suppose I should say. Had been for a couple of years.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Rebecca eased down on the brakes, slowing the van and turning on to the road that would take us up on to the hills. Past scrubland. Past woodland. Alongside the sloping expanse of spiky yellow gorse that lay ahead.

  ‘Alex was from a wealthy family. Not in the same league as Erik Zeeger, but comfortably rich. His father was in pharmaceuticals and he liked to indulge Alex. That’s how he could afford to be such an idealist. No time for a day job when you’re busy saving the world.’

  ‘And he hired you? Why?’

  ‘Obvious reasons.’ She shrugged. ‘He was in a vulnerable position. Making trouble for a lot of powerful companies. Criticising governments. Working to keep the more radical elements of his organisation in check. Plus, he was dating Lena Zeeger, and he was aware that her father and some of the members of his own campaign group didn’t exactly approve.’

  ‘But why you? Why not the police?’

  ‘Alex didn’t trust the police. The way he saw it, they’re a government agency. And he needed his threats monitored on a constant basis. Needed close protection every once in a while.’

  Close protection. The role my sister had performed for Lena.

  I finally understood how it all linked together.

  ‘You were investigating his death,’ I said. ‘And you knew about my sister’s involvement. That’s why you were prepared to help my parents when Mum called you.’

  Rebecca snatched a look at me. Gauging my mood. ‘Alex called me when your sister was assigned to watch over Lena. He was worried. I vouched for her. Said she was reliable. Honest.’

  ‘But then he was killed.’

  Rebecca nodded. ‘And there was no mention of your sister being involved. Only Lena. The finger was being pointed at her. I knew there was something up with that. And then when I heard your sister was dead, too . . .’

  Her words trailed off, leaving me to follow my own thoughts. So that was why Rebecca had been so willing to believe me right from the beginning. It explained why she’d bought into my story about Lena’s abduction. She must have suspected who the blonde girl was all along, and she’d have known to look for signs that the security services were involved. It also explained why she’d been so quick to question the idea that Laura had killed herself. To Rebecca’s mind, either she was alive and hiding, or she’d been killed by the same people involved in Alex Tyler’s death.

  I guessed it might explain one more thing, too. Laura had approached Rebecca’s firm for a job. Rebecca had told me she thought that Laura was testing the water to see if she could ask for help. Now I realised it was more than that. She must have known that Rebecca worked for Alex. She must have been asking herself if she could tell Rebecca the truth. If, maybe, they could work together to uncover the conspiracy behind his death.

  ‘That’s why I didn’t charge your parents a fee,’ Rebecca said, interrupting my thoughts. ‘I was already on Alex’s retainer.’

  ‘And what if my sister had been Alex’s killer? What would you have done then?’

  ‘But that was never going to happen. She was no assassin. She was naïve, maybe. But sometimes I think that’s a good thing. Laura was like Alex. An idealist. A believer.’

  ‘So you killed those men for Alex? For revenge?’

  ‘Not Anderson.’ She shook her head. ‘You give me too much credit. I was scared. I overreacted.’

  ‘And the guy in the back here? This John Menser?’

  She gave me a level stare. ‘I never worked alongside him, but I’ve heard of him. Long career. Distinguished record. And yes, I killed him. For Alex. And for your sister. I know how these things work, Rob. Your sister did, too. He was inside the system. He was part of some dirty little clique. The system would have protected him. This would have all been swept away and cleaned up. You might think that would be difficult but you’d be underestimating the people involved. They can’t permit scandal. They’ve got no use for it. So justice had to come from the outside. From me.’

  We skirted around South Barrule hill, ascending towards the tangle of dirty rain clouds, and Rebecca turned off on to the crumbling track where I’d had my bike accident. We trundled over a cattle grid. Drove past the dirt-bike track and the ruins of the old tin mines. Picked up the boundary of the wooded plantation.

  I was quiet for a moment. Thinking. Then I said, ‘You didn’t do all this just because Alex Tyler was a client, did you? He must have meant more to you than that.’

  ‘He did.’ Rebecca swallowed. ‘For a time. But the fact is he loved Lena. Truly, despite what her father might think. But I liked him, you’re right. I liked him because there was a goodness inside him. Because he was a believer.’ She sneaked a look at me. ‘You remind me of him in that way.’

  She pulled off the road on to the beginnings of the muddy track that led up to the cottage. The van rocked and rolled over the uneven ground. The gate ahead of us was closed. We stopped. The engine idled. The van shook and trembled.

  A believer? Me? I couldn’t see it. What had I ever believed in? Working hard? Doing a good job for my plumbing customers? Racing a motorbike as fast as I dared? Streaking along public roads at crazy speeds, trying to go faster than the next guy? Faster than my dad?

  Rebecca saw the puzzle she’d carved into my face. She placed a hand on my knee.

  ‘Your sister,’ she said. ‘You believed in her right from the beginning. You believed in her all the way through.’

  She popped the door
on the van and dropped down on to the compacted earth, leaving her words to bounce around my head. It was a kind sentiment. A touching remark. But I wasn’t going to kid myself. I hadn’t been that good a brother. Oh, I’d tried very hard to make up for it. I’d done all I could to make amends. But I already knew it would never be enough.

  Rebecca approached the gate, hips swaying in her fitted jeans. She wedged the gate open against the tall grass to the side. Then she raised a hand to Dad and Shimmin, climbed back inside the cab and started up along the track.

  It began to rain. Heavy drops struck the windscreen. They impacted on the glass and beaded and formed branching rivulets. Rebecca flicked on the wipers. They smeared the water. Blurred the trees outside. The massed clouds above.

  The van bucked and pitched and yawed, the rainwater lashing the glass windows and the metal sidings like we were inside a boat on a rolling swell. We reached the familiar three-way fork in the track. Followed the middle path up over a muddy rise and deep inside the tree cover. The rain faded away, filtered out by the millions of pine needles above us. We neared the second gate. The aged slate. That name again. Yn Dorraghys. The murky green twilight that surrounded us was cold and damp and smothering. After today, I never wanted to come here again. I never wanted to set foot in this plantation as long as I lived.

  Rebecca pulled over close to the cottage and Shimmin drew up alongside us in the dead man’s car. The blue paintwork was slick with rain. He removed his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped down the car keys. He tucked the keys away behind the sun visor. Wiped down the visor and the steering wheel and anything else he might have touched. Used his handkerchief to force open his door. Hauled himself out and flipped up the collar of his mackintosh.

  I looked across Rebecca’s lap towards Dad. He was staring blankly ahead, into the gloomy depths of the woods. He seemed disengaged. Unfocused. As if he’d zoned out of his surroundings altogether. I thought maybe he was picturing Laura up here. Running errands to the cottage. Checking on Lena. Trying to find a solution to a problem that was bigger than her.