This was vague even by Uncle Charles’ standards.
‘Charles?’
His uncle sighed. ‘They’ll hold him on some aspect of anti-terrorist legislation I believe. Tim, I can’t tell you more than that, but you lot down there seem to have stumbled into something larger than a murder or two. Oh, and that Hale fellow. He’s not what he seems either, apparently, but I was gently warned not to go poking into business that doesn’t concern me. Oh, and I was to pass that same message on.’
Tim laughed nervously. ‘And that means?’
‘I’m guessing it means that friend Hale is freelance. Cutbacks, you know. Sometimes work is farmed out, shall we say.’
‘Right,’ Tim said doubtfully. ‘Charles, this sounds a little unreal.’
‘Well it isn’t,’ his uncle said quietly. ‘Remember that, Tim. This isn’t an illusion; you can’t control any of this with sleight of hand. It’s serious and dangerous and my advice to you would be to let it go.’
Superintendent Aims was not a happy man. He felt he had twice been taken for a fool and DI Kendal had somehow been a party to it all. Kendal listened to him rant for a while, stopped listening after he had established that the problem was that neither the mysterious Hale nor Abe Jackson were what they seemed and set his mind instead to analysing what Jackson might have been after, what he, Kendal, and Mac might have told him that they might regret and what to do about it next.
Next was to call Mac.
‘World’s going to hell,’ Kendal pronounced.
‘You’ve only just noticed? Well, I take it that we’re not going to get the extra help we were promised. On the plus side, neither are we now constrained by military intelligence.’
‘Were we ever?’
‘Not so you’d notice. Seriously though, Dave, what the hell is going on?’
‘If you find out, best let Aims know before he has a heart attack. Mac, it’s late in the day, I’m for getting home and trying to get to grips with all of this tomorrow.’
‘You’ll not find me arguing.’
Mac lowered the receiver, his mind playing with the facts.
‘Penny for them?’ Miriam said, setting a mug of coffee down on the table between the two sofas.
‘That was Kendal. It seems Abe Jackson is a phoney, or at least, he’s not what he claims to be.’
‘Aren’t those two the same things?’ She settled beside him, leaning with her back against the arm of the sofa and her feet in his lap, her own mug cradled between her hands.
‘Not exactly. I mean, Abe Jackson isn’t working for the government … not now. But he’s an ex-soldier, he’s moved in those circles, so it isn’t exactly an out-and-out lie, but …’
‘He isn’t now. OK. So who is he working for?’
‘That,’ Mac considered, ‘is probably the main question. The other being what was Paul doing that everyone seems to want a part of? Jackson, Hale … I mean we can presume they aren’t working on the same side.’
‘Can we? And Hale isn’t kosher either.’ She frowned. ‘It has to be something about security. National, international, local. No, bigger than local. Something anti-terrorist?’
‘Paul was a games designer.’
‘And before that, he designed high-end security systems. And, if we can believe Jackson about anything, we know he was reverse engineering something.’
‘Which may or may not have something to do with sonar or radar which maybe implies something underwater?’
The phone rang again. ‘That’ll be Rina, or Tim,’ Miriam predicted. ‘I can tell by the tone of the ring.’ She got up and handed him the phone, bent to kiss his cheek. ‘Don’t be long,’ she said.
Mac watched as she disappeared into the bedroom and then answered the phone. Miriam was right, it was Rina, Tim having reported back on his Uncle Charles’ message.
‘Rum deal,’ Rina said. ‘Mac, I know Miriam is there tonight, so I won’t keep you, but Tim wanted me to pass on Charles’ warning. He’s concerned, Mac. Charles thinks this is something very big and very dangerous and he thought that before Tim told him about being driven off the road. He’s all for coming down to sort things out, but Tim’s managed to persuade him otherwise.’
‘Should I be glad about that?’
‘Oh yes,’ Rina said with feeling. ‘I’ve met him twice and he’s a lovely man, but, well, you know how once I told you there were three types of people? Those who lead, follow or get out of the way?’
‘Yees,’ Mac said cautiously.
‘Well, neither Charles nor I could ever be classed as followers, but at least I give people the opportunity to get out of the way. Charles most certainly does not.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
It was getting dark outside and Lydia was sick of the television. She heard Joy go past in the hall, recognising the girl’s light footsteps and, desperate for someone to talk to, followed her into the kitchen.
Joy turned and smiled. ‘Hi.’
‘Is it OK if I get a cup of tea?’
‘You know it is. Anything you like. I was just about to get something anyway.’
Lydia pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table. It was the one thing at odds with the chrome and black, sleek and shiny kitchen. It, and the four chairs tucked beneath it, were old and rather tatty. The red Formica table was the same sort Lydia recalled from cafes of her childhood. The chairs had been re-covered, but had fifties greasy spoon written all over them.
Joy noticed her examination.
‘It was from Granddad’s place,’ she said. She pulled out a chair and plonked herself down. ‘My grandparents owned a little chemist shop. They’ve retired but it’s still going. Dad got a couple and their son in to run it like it had always been. In Granddad and Grandma’s day, they had this bit of a space at the front of the pharmacy, with seats so people could sit down while they waited for their medicines. Grandma started making tea for people and selling cakes and biscuits and it got to be a place people came to gossip or just to be with someone. You know? The old people really liked it and Dad grew up coming home from school and helping out at the shop.
‘He grew up poor, so did Mum. So did everyone round where they used to live but the little chemist’s was a place people came to for a cheap cuppa and a bit of company and, when Gramps retired, Mum had the table and chairs brought here.’ Joy laughed. ‘She’s just as sentimental as Dad was, you know?’
She got up to make the tea.
‘You must miss your dad,’ Lydia said.
Joy nodded. ‘Dad was a Jack the Lad, always in trouble in his teens. Dad was a thief, no getting away from that. He was other things too, but as time went on he got into more legitimate stuff and now, I guess, we’re almost respectable. Even Gran says she can own him again. But he was a great father and I’ve been really lucky. Mum is … well, Mum. I’d never get her to decorate any house of mine, but they both brought me up like I was their princess and my brothers were princes. We miss Dad a lot. Hell of a lot, but we’ve got one another and that’s …’ She broke off, smiling a little mistily. ‘Were you close to your brother-in-law?’
Lydia laughed. ‘Once, I thought we were very close. We dated for about six months. We were both about your age, I guess. I liked him a lot and for a while I thought he really liked me. Loved me, even. Then I realised he wasn’t capable of that.’
‘How come?’
Lydia shrugged. ‘Paul could seem perfect. He was kind, considerate, gentle, but it was all like he had learnt how to be those things by watching other people. He didn’t feel it, if you know what I mean. We eventually had this long talk and he admitted that he liked me, but he couldn’t seem to go further than that. He didn’t know how. It was like … Paul was the most fantastic solver of puzzles and player of games. That was how he lived his life; kind of second-hand through other people and through his puzzles and his games. He was fine if he could treat life like a puzzle or like a really complicated game. Could identify the rules and kind of react according to the rules
, but he couldn’t improvise. You know how much we improvise in our daily lives.’
Joy laughed. ‘I never really thought about it, but I suppose, talking for myself, maybe ninety-nine per cent. I was never much good at rules. So … how can I put this. You fell out with one brother and in with the other?’
Lydia groaned. ‘Oh, that sounds soo bad. No. I broke up with Paul and didn’t see either of them again until after University. Then Edward and I bumped into one another and we got talking and one thing led to another and … Paul was best man at our wedding.’
‘And Edward understands how to improvise,’ Joy said with a cheeky smile.
‘Oh, yes. You may not think he’s the improvising type, but I’ve never regretted getting married. Never regretted helping him to set up the business. Or of bringing Paul on board. It worked well. I just wish he had confided in us.’
‘Maybe he thought that wasn’t in the rules?’ Joy suggested.
Lydia nodded. ‘Maybe so,’ she agreed.
Abe Jackson had lived by his instincts and his training for more years than he cared to remember. It was instinct that warned him, training that helped him to make his escape.
Abe would say that every place had its own soundscape. Every location could be identified not only by the way it looked but the way it sounded and the way it felt. He could stand outside of a house and know if someone was inside. Could sense the subtle changes generated when even the most skilled of searchers had examined a room. Could hear the smallest changes in the soundscape once he’d grown familiar with any location. Abe never claimed supernatural abilities; he just figured his skills were based on sharpened instincts, careful observation and the desire to stay alive.
New recruits would smirk and inwardly snigger at Abe Jackson’s claims. Those that remained with him for any time would soon correct the doubters. Abe knew these things and, perhaps by some strange osmosis, those he trained also acquired such capacities. They watched, they listened, maybe they laughed at first, but then they learnt to copy, to identify, eventually to trust.
Abe was not there when they came for him. Tonight he had watched some detective thing on television, guessing from the second scene who the killer was; still vague at the end as to why he had done the deed. He had wandered down to a local pub for a late dinner, eaten alone, then come back to the hotel at closing time. He paused, more from habit than expectation of trouble, at the corner of the street before turning down towards the hotel. And he had known that something was wrong.
He crossed the road so that he could look down towards the hotel without turning the corner. At this time of night, he had noted that the stretch in front of the hotel tended to be almost empty. Guests would wander back for the night. Taxis occasionally pull up in front of the three steps. For three cars to be parked in the street; that was different. Parked, but not empty.
For a couple to sit for a few minutes before one or both getting out, now that was a normal enough thing, but for three cars to be occupied, one by a pair of men, one by a woman, one by three people; that was unusual. Abe stood in the shadow of a doorway and he watched. Two figures loitered just inside the lobby and another chatted idly to the evening receptionist.
Overkill, he thought. He must have more of a reputation than he thought.
Abe turned and walked back the way he had come, grateful for the training that had long ago taught him the value of planning an escape, even from the most benign locations. His car was parked two streets away and his emergency pack already in the boot. Abe Jackson glanced around, then waited for five full minutes to check there was no one near his car, then he got inside and drove away.
At the hotel, Superintendent Aims and his team waited.
TWENTY-NINE
She needed the laptop to get the rest of the narrative. Paul had promised he would give her the key for safe keeping. He had told her what book he would leave it in, told her too that if anything happened to him he was leaving that particular volume to his sister-in-law, Lydia. She had tried not to mind, but despite her probing and teasing he had never promised her anything. Never given her anything that was personal either.
Taking the book from Paul’s flat had not provided her with the information that she needed but she had it now, delivered almost incidentally. Now, if she had the laptop, she could find the file, know something more of the story.
She had parked about a half-mile from the de Freitas’s house, noting as she drove by that a police car was parked outside with two officers inside. When she crossed the lawn at the rear of the house, it was possible to see that the car had gone. Creeping around the side of the house, she saw that one man had been left on patrol. Was he there all night or just to take a look around?
She hid among the trees and he wandered, checking doors and shining a light through the windows, watched him as he made his way back to the front. Dawn was showing itself in a lightening of the sky and a faint pink glow on the horizon. She was due in for the early shift. Time was not on her side.
The policeman’s voice carried clearly on the still air.
‘A bloody hour. You must be kidding. Can’t someone else come and fetch me?’
She heard the faint cracked voice on the other end of the phone but could not make out the words. From the one-sided conversation she gathered that his partner had been diverted to a domestic, leaving him stranded at the house on the hill. She was faintly surprised seeing that the de Freitas’s were absent, that he was even there, but she supposed that the police were used to checking on properties they knew were empty. Inconvenient for her, though.
Satisfied that he was unlikely to inspect the rear again, she crept back to the kitchen door. A spare key was kept beneath a plant pot full of herbs, there for the housekeeper in case she arrived when the owners weren’t there. Frantham, she thought, was still one of those places where people rarely thought to lock their doors, at least, outside of the tourist season. Praying that no one had slid the bolt inside, she slid the key in the lock and turned it slowly, flinching at the sound of the sneck sliding back.
She held her breath, waited to be heard. Nothing. Just the dawn chorus starting in the line of trees that edged the de Freitas’s land and the faint sound of an early car passing on the road.
She opened the door just far enough and slipped inside.
Paul’s room. Top of the stairs, second door on the right, facing out over the garden. The hall was the danger point. The police officer might turn and see her through the glass panel in the door. She could see him as she emerged from the short corridor between the kitchen and the hall. He had his back to the door, was clearly bored, shuffling from foot to foot. Knowing that she’d lose her nerve if she hesitated, she scurried across the hall and took shelter on the stairs, glanced back at the front door and breathed relief that the officer had not moved. Then ran swiftly up to Paul de Freitas’s room, dived inside and closed the door quietly behind her. The room was dimly lit, not enough of the dawn light yet permeating to allow her to see as clearly as she needed. Nervously, she took her keys from her pocket and gripped the tiny penlight she had attached, thankful that at least she knew where to look. She opened the wardrobe door, withdrew the deck shoes sitting on the wardrobe floor, and pulled out the insole from the left and then the right.
There.
Hidden beneath was a news clipping announcing the funeral of Arthur Payne. Born 1923 and a phone number that, despite what the advert said, was not that of Paul de Freitas. She replaced the shoes, stuffed keys and torch and clipping back into her jacket pocket and shut the wardrobe doors, relieved that she now had the note Paul was supposed to have left inside the book. Irritated too that he should, at his age, see fit to play such childish games.
She fancied she could hear his laughter and his voice. ‘Half in the book, half in my laptop case, maybe. I haven’t decided yet. I’ll put the full version in my shoe. The light-blue ones I don’t wear.’ Then more seriously, ‘If anything happens, this is who you call, you understand that, d
on’t you. I made a promise and I have to deliver on it. If I can’t … if for any reason I can’t …’
She closed her eyes to stop the tears from falling, told herself she was nothing but a fool, then silently, she got to her feet and crept back down the stairs and out of the house.
Half an hour later she was at work, signing in at reception.
‘Hi, Lyndsey, you’re early, even for you.’
She shrugged. ‘I was awake, I thought I’d make an early start.’
She passed out of the reception area and made her way to her office, the adrenaline that had carried her through now draining, leaving her trembling. Once safe in her office, she took out her mobile and dialled the number quoted in the advert, hoping as it had no other code, that this was a local call.
‘Do you have it?’
‘Not yet, but I know how to get it now. The police have the computer …’
‘Not now, they don’t.’
‘But they’ll have copies of the drive. Look, I know what to look for, but only Paul had the complete key.’
There was no reply from the man on the phone.
‘Did you hear me?’
There was only silence. She dropped her phone back into her bag and stood uncertain in the middle of the room. What now? She had expected something more. Something definite.
Dial the number, Paul had said. They’ll know what to do. Well, Lyndsey thought bitterly, if they did, whoever they were, they didn’t seem about to let her know.
THIRY
Mac walked to work. It took ten minutes if he hurried and fifteen if, as usual, he dawdled, pausing often to look out to sea and enjoy the leisurely start to his day.
Life in Frantham was very different from his life before, still in a seaside town but in a much busier area and with a much larger team. When he had first arrived, he had been bored and unsettled, thought himself unable to adjust to the quiet and the intimacy of the small community. Life since then had, in reality, been anything but quiet and Mac had found himself challenged by events and, as he walked in today, he was very aware that this case and what had started out as a murder inquiry, had become unbelievably complex.
The Power of One Page 13
