Tim Brandon had surprised them that night and that was a bad thing. Surprised them and showed also that their local knowledge was sadly lacking. He hated to have so little time to prepare, to recce an area of operation. All the maps in the world were no substitute to seeing the terrain first-hand. They had been surprised too by Tim Brandon himself, had made the mistake of seeing him as a soft target, likely to be scared out of his wits and so easily controlled.
Two errors compounded into one almighty fuck-up; he was wise enough to know he would not be forgiven for a second.
THIRTY-TWO
Abe Jackson watched Mac leave the police station and walk along the promenade. He turned off on to Newell Street and, Abe assumed, Peverill Lodge.
He was certain enough of his assumption not to bother following; besides, Newell Street was less crowded than the promenade and Mac was not such an easy tail that Abe could be complacent. He watched as Sergeant Baker and Andy Nevins also took their leave. Baker walked home every night. Andy usually drove, but Abe knew that tonight he was planning to meet friends and have a night out. One of them was driving and Andy’s car left parked safely behind the police station.
Kendal had been there earlier, but had left close on an hour before as had the two officers he had borrowed to collate the sackfuls of evidence – or potential evidence – Mac had brought from Paul’s flat.
Abe had been surprised by the way the whole operation had been kept so low-key. Voices from the top advising caution, no doubt. Managing the media. Not that they’d be able to keep the lid on for long, Abe thought, as the story they’d put out about a tragic accident on board The Greek Girl wouldn’t cut it for long. The media reports had, so far, given the impression that Paul had been alone on the boat, but too many people had seen the second body being brought off. Even given Abe’s own dealings with official dissembling, he was astonished that the pretence had held for this long.
Abe waited, watching the world go by and the boats sail into the marina. Families, late at the beach, were enjoying the evening sun and then he turned back along the promenade and made his way to the rear of the police station. There were three cars parked in the tiny space. Mac’s own, Andy’s little Fiat and the official, area car. Abe had already familiarised himself with the terrain. The small yard was at the head of a cul-de-sac. A few houses backed on to the little road, but unless you had a reason to be there, it was not somewhere anyone would need or want to be. Once inside the yard, he could not be seen from the road, nor was he overlooked from any of the nearby properties. Abe slipped between the cars. He had already selected his point of entry earlier in the day, checked out the ageing alarm system while he had been there legitimately, with Mac, and he decided now not to wait for dark. He might be able to make himself invisible in the yard, but start shining a torch around and there was a fair bet someone would notice an unusual light. There were no street lights in the dead end of a road and Abe was pretty sure that, much past seven o’clock, there would be little ambient illumination in the cramped little yard even at this time of year.
Mac’s car was parked close beside the wall. Abe clambered on to the bonnet and took a careful look around. The wall was still high enough to conceal him from the road. The small window at the back of the police station had a simple latch. Abe had noticed when he had first visited the police station that the little room beyond was just used for storage, but that the door had no lock and, from there, he was out in the main reception area. He had brought with him a glass cutter and a roll of tape bought at a local DIY warehouse. He donned thin latex gloves and, carefully, he cut a half-circle above the latch leaving an inch or so of glass still attached. He taped across the cut, so it would not fall, then cut the rest. A light tap and it freed itself from the rest of the pane, kept from falling by the tape. Abe fished a tough, zip-lock bag from his pocket and slipped glass cutter, glass and tape inside, then reached in and released the latch.
This window, he knew, was not alarmed and he knew too that once out of the storeroom, he’d have thirty seconds to reach the panel and unset the alarm. The same to get out again once it had been reset.
The latch was stiff; Abe figured it had been years since anyone opened it. His worry was that the window would have been sealed by equal years of over-zealous decorating, held fast by sedimentary gloss paint.
He need not have worried. Re-decorating had clearly not been on anyone’s list of ‘must dos’ for a long time. Abe opened the window and jumped lightly down from the sill, closing the window behind him. Out of the store room, into the front of house, the panel for the alarm was behind the desk. It had a lock but the key, as Abe had also noted on his visit, hung on the wall beside it. He opened the panel and unset the sensors, watching as the light blinked out and hoping there was nothing more sophisticated that he was unaware of, and decided, judging by the rest of the set-up, that thought was just paranoia on his part.
Mac’s office door was open and the case file in the cabinet, together with the bags of assorted detritus he had collected from the flat.
Abe flicked through the crime scene photographs, looking not so much at the bodies as at the background, examining what was there and what was not.
Updated reports told him that Mac and Kendal were little further on than they had been when his subterfuge had been discovered and he’d lost access. He read with interest an account of Tim’s misadventures, which Mac had copied into the file in the belief that this might be related to the death of Paul de Freitas.
‘No doubt about that,’ Abe said softly. Question was, who? Not Hale, he thought. Hale was more subtle, more patient than that. There were additional notes, too, about the visit to Iconograph. Abe had noticed that day that Mac had hung back, chatting to Lyndsey and Ray, but had been unable to get close enough to hear what had been said. Mac had noted in the file that he had asked them about The Power of One and the phrase Payne 23. He had recorded Ray’s comments and noted that Lyndsey seemed oddly silent on the subject.
They still had no name for the second man on Paul’s boat. Nothing more than the first name of Ian.
‘Manning,’ Abe said. ‘His name, Mac, was Ian Manning.’ He found one of Mac’s business cards in a desk drawer, wrote the name on the back, and lay it in a prominent position on Mac’s desk. Then rummaged through the collection of evidence bags not yet submitted for forensic examination. Had it been Abe’s call, the lot would have gone, and he suspected Mac would have liked to do the same, but Abe knew the deal. Each test cost money and ninety-nine per cent of what Mac had collected, and was currently collating with help from Kendal and his assistants, would prove irrelevant. Abe glanced through the selection of bank statements and web printouts, takeaway brochures and shopping lists and decided, as Mac had already done, that there was nothing here. The one exception being the Payne 23 clipping that he had already seen … and the pack of pills, which he had not.
Abe turned the blister pack between his fingers, knowing who they had belonged to and what they meant and that they had nothing to do with any relationship of Paul de Freitas with anyone.
Lyndsey Barnes, assistant to Paul de Freitas, had met Ian Manning, minder to the same, and they had fallen for one another. Simple as that. Ian had no proper base down south; Lyndsey shared a flat with a couple of girlfriends, so Paul had allowed them to meet up in his. Result, one happy couple, but also one young woman drawn further into her boss’s affairs than would usually have been the case and what Paul might have told her, outside of working hours, was something Abe would give a great deal to know. Abe and others too.
He dropped the pills back on the desk, straightened everything up, and packed it back in to the filing drawer.
Abe would never have allowed this relationship to develop. If Ian had shown interest in Lyndsey on Abe’s watch, he’d have taken him off the watch, given him a good dressing-down and an ultimatum. Keep away from the girl until the work was done. Anything otherwise was messy, sloppy, unpredictable and by the time Ian had realised t
hat for himself, it had been too late. He’d tried to tell Lyndsey that it was over, but been unable to do so because he hadn’t believed it himself. Abe didn’t want to think that Ian’s distraction was what had got him killed but he knew it hadn’t helped. The girl had become an unwilling chink in his usual armour and Ian had died, Paul de Freitas with him.
Abe had lost a good friend and when the opportunity to run interference had arisen, Abe had grasped it with both hands. That the brief he had been given had gone rapidly astray and Abe found himself ordered out had done nothing to dissuade him. His masters may not want him in the game now but, too bad. They’d invited him to the party and, just because the host had thrown a strop, Abe saw no reason to leave just yet.
‘You were a good man, Ian,’ Abe said softly, glancing down at the name he had written on Mac’s business card. ‘But always a fool for a pretty face. Was she worth it, is what I want to know? Frankly, my old friend, I think not.’
‘Can I come with you tomorrow?’ Tim said. ‘Or would that be too unofficial?’
‘To Manchester? I don’t see why not. I’m using my own car and to be honest, I’d appreciate the company and the extra pair of eyes.’
‘Good. Thanks. You’ll be all right, Rina?’
‘Oh, course I will. We’re all being careful and you can’t stay chained to the house. Give my best to Joy,’ she added with a sly smile. ‘Tell her she’s more than welcome to come and stay for a while once things have settled down. You know, I do find all of this a little ironic.’
‘Oh, what particularly?’ Mac asked.
‘That you and Bridie Duggan should both end up on the same side. Considering her background and history and all that.’
Mac laughed. ‘I like Bridie,’ he said. ‘For that matter, I liked James, though I doubt it would do to say so in front of Superintendent Aims.’
‘His nose still out of joint, is it?’
‘Oh yes. Very much so. Dave Kendal says he’s practically apoplectic and looking very hard for someone to blame. You can’t be too hard on him though. I knew Hale wasn’t what he said he was, but I still don’t know exactly what he is and for all I do know, he may well be working for the government or the MOD or something just as unlikely.’
‘And your money would be on?’ Rina asked.
‘Well, given the warning passed on via Tim’s Uncle Charles, I’m guessing something at least semi-official. Unless, of course, they just want to give him enough rope and see if he saves them the trouble of hiring a hangman.’ He frowned. ‘For what it’s worth, I think you’re probably right, Rina, about there being three distinct parties involved. I’d pretty much reached the same conclusion. I told Hale as much and he argued, but he didn’t tell me I was wrong.’
‘And still no sign of Abe Jackson? What did you make of him, Mac?’
‘Well, again for what it’s worth, I thought he was an honest-seeming man and I felt, had the circumstances been different we could have got along comfortably enough.’ He shrugged. ‘But what do I know, I liked Jimmy Duggan and he was a career criminal, so I’m not so sure you should trust my judgement when it comes to character assessment.’
He got up and stretched wearily. ‘Best be off, early start if we’re driving up there. Seven thirty, Tim?’
Tim winced, he was not by nature an early-morning person. ‘So long as you don’t want conversation for the first hour,’ he said.
Rina waved Mac off and then returned to her little front room. Tim was thoughtful. ‘Not so long ago you’d have been suggesting he stay in the spare room,’ Tim said. ‘A lot has changed, Rina.’
‘Mostly for the better,’ Rina agreed, ‘though I could do with a little boring routine for a while. It’s all been a little too exciting lately. I could do with living in slightly less interesting times.’
Lyndsey had wandered down to a local cafe-bar she and Ian had liked and sat in the window looking out at the quiet street. She missed him so much and the worst of it was, she couldn’t tell anyone about him. Few people knew they had been involved. Two people, to be exact. Paul and Ray. It was impossible to keep anything from Ray; she worked far too closely with him and he with Paul for that kind of thing to stay secret for long, but her flatmates didn’t know. They guessed she’d had a boyfriend and teased her a bit, but she’d even lied about his name and, to be truthful, wasn’t close enough to either to confide. She’d been the third girl, moving into an already long-term agreement, taking the smallest room and, to be fair, the smallest share of the rent. Sisters, Jennifer and Suze, were pleasant enough and as work took up so much of her time anyway, it had been fine. Until she met Ian.
The flat share had been a cheap option when she’d first moved down to work at Iconograph, something of a stopgap until she decided whether or not she wanted to stay in Dorset and it had allowed her to save, put a fair bit of her salary aside for the deposit on the house she felt she should be working for, and that her family had always told her she should be working for.
‘Why?’ Ian had asked. ‘Is that what you really want?’
‘No, I want to chuck it all in, bugger off round the world for a year, meet a nice guy and go to Las Vegas to be married by a Korean Elvis.’
‘Then why don’t you? Why don’t we?’ He had reached across the table and taken her hand almost shyly. ‘You’ve already met the nice guy and I’d be happy with a Korean Elvis too.’
She had laughed, not sure whether or not it was a real proposal. Not sure either of them was ready for her to accept if it was. She had clasped his hand, happy, content to let things be, see where it led.
A week later he’d been telling her it would be better if they split up for a while, though she could see in his eyes he meant not a word of it.
A week after that he was dead and she understood why he thought they’d be better apart. Understood that he was scared, not of the relationship, not of the commitment, but of something less abstract.
‘What if I’d said yes?’ Lyndsey whispered at her own reflection in the window glass. ‘If I’d said yes, would you have gone away with me? Then, right then? Would you still be alive?’
She fumbled in her bag for a tissue, pulled out the small cellophane-wrapped pack and with it the newspaper clipping. For a minute or so, she sat with the clipping on the table, staring at it. She had tried the number twice now, but with little response and was starting to think that she’d have to give it up and let it go … whatever it was. But she had made a promise to Paul. A promise Ian knew nothing about and, more than that, whatever this was all about was, she was certain, what had killed both her lover and her boss.
She searched her bag again, this time for her mobile phone, and dialled the number on the scrap of paper.
‘Look,’ Lyndsey said into the empty space that opened up at the other end. ‘I’ve got something you want. You have to talk to me. Talk to me now or I give it to the police, you understand me?’
No voice, no human sound, just three or four clicks as though something had been pressed or some mechanism engaged. Then the silence closed and her phone went dead.
Angrily, Lyndsey stared at it, then threw it back into her bag in disgust, together with the pack of tissues and the scrap of paper. Ian was gone and her last ephemeral contact with him, with whatever he had been involved in, seemed to be fading too.
Abe Jackson’s problem was that he was used to being part of a team and current events had found him rather out on a limb. He had resources he could call upon. Old colleagues or people who owed him favours or had reason to be nervous of offending him, but he didn’t want to waste resources he may have need of later.
Of the three categories of potential help, old friends were the most reliable, working down the food chain from that to those too afraid of him to say no. There was, Abe knew from bitter experience, always the chance that, once the habit of fear had become established, there may well be others more frightening or more immediately threatening than Abe himself.
He had set a couple of former c
olleagues the task of watching Lyndsey. It helped that they’d also known Ian, but was not perfect, neither being able to commit the time and energy to the task that Abe would have liked. They were family men now, and regular civilians.
The value of even such sporadic watchers had proved its worth though. He had left the police station and found two missed calls on his phone. Lyndsey had gone out, he was told and all had seemed quiet but then … ‘Company,’ Abe’s associate said. ‘One in the building, two outside. You want a hand?’
‘Hopefully not. I’m on my way.’
The drive was no more than twenty minutes but the fear that Lyndsey might return before then made it seem so much longer. He parked at the end of her street and joined his friend, staked out on the ground floor of an empty flat Abe had rented almost opposite the building in which Lyndsey lived.
‘Anything?’
‘She’s still out. Green car, three down on the left, parked behind the Mondeo.’
Abe nodded. ‘And the other man?’
‘I saw the ground-floor tenant go in half an hour ago. Everything looked normal. I’m guessing our boy is waiting on the first-floor landing. There’s a dogleg in the staircase. That’s where I’d be.’
Abe nodded agreement. ‘You know where she went?’
He shook his head. ‘Left ten minutes before I relieved Niall, went down towards the centre of town, so he said.’
‘We need more bodies. It just can’t be done with two part-timers.’
His friend took no offence, knowing the truth of that. ‘I’d say it felt like old times,’ he said wryly, ‘but even old times were better prepared and equipped than this. So, what now?’
Abe considered. ‘Sit tight,’ he said. ‘I’ll drive past the flat, see if I can pick her up on the way back. Did she look like she was going for a night out?’
‘Jeans and a blue shirt, nothing out the ordinary. Shoulder bag, no jacket.’
The Power of One Page 15
