She was flirting with him. Eyes teasing, a smile dancing on her lips. It was a very convincing act. If it was an act.
Rick Procter was definitely buying it, showing her out of the courtyard door, his hand on the small of her back. Then he leaned down and kissed her and a dark shaft of jealousy pierced Samson. He watched Delilah leave, out of earshot and out of sight, while Rick stood in the open doorway, his back to the foyer until she was gone. When he turned, the hidden camera caught the smile on his face.
It was feral. Samson hoped to God that Delilah knew what she was playing at.
He saw the property developer walk past the Christmas tree, put his key in the door and open the office. Then he disappeared off-screen, leaving Samson looking at the empty foyer and trying not to let his irrational annoyance at Delilah – the woman who had just saved his bacon – affect the operation he was supposed to be carrying out.
It was at that moment that he remembered the USB drive inserted in the computer.
Had she done enough? Delilah walked along the side of the building as slowly as possible, waiting to hear the shout of discovery. But nothing came. She edged to the front corner and peered round – Fell Lane was quiet, the police station brightly lit down the bottom of the road.
A dog barked somewhere in the town and she jumped. Tolpuddle. She needed to get back to him. She’d thrown a couple of Dog-gestives on the floor to keep him occupied when she hurried out of the guest suite, but he’d have demolished them by now. And then he’d realise that she wasn’t there. Nor was Samson. Which would be enough to start him wailing. If that happened, the game was up, even if Samson had managed to conceal himself from Rick Procter.
Sending a quick text to Joseph O’Brien, she moved back to the fire exit and resisted the urge to hammer on the door.
She needed to get inside. Now.
It was only when the last crumb of biscuit had been licked up that Tolpuddle noticed the empty silence of the flat.
He walked through to the hallway, sniffed the floor, turned and headed back into the lounge. She wasn’t there. She was gone.
Anxiety building, the dog padded across to the window, stretched onto his hind legs and looked out. There! She was below him, at the door of the courtyard.
He let out a small whine. Raised a paw to scratch at the window, hoping she’d notice. But she didn’t. She walked beneath him, her red coat vibrant in the light spilling out from the wall of glass.
Then she turned the corner out of sight.
Tolpuddle waited, front paws on the windowsill. How many minutes? He didn’t know. He sniffed the damaged microphone, which held an aroma of tea. He found a couple of biscuit crumbs up against the window frame. Then he started to fret.
She wasn’t there.
He rubbed his nose against the cold of the glass and panic swelled inside him.
Samson was trying not to panic.
Squatting underneath the office window, the sharp edges of branches digging into him, he was telling himself it was too late to worry. Either Rick would discover the USB drive or he wouldn’t. It was out of Samson’s hands.
The light came on in the room behind, filtering round the edges of the closed blind and through the distortion in the slats where the window handle remained out of position. He might not be able to do anything about the memory stick, but at least he could watch what was happening.
Twisting around in the confined space, he squirmed upwards, raising his head slowly until his eyes were level with the warp in the blind.
He couldn’t see much, the gap affording a restricted view. Down to his left, the red light blinking on the USB drive was visible as it worked away. Directly opposite, he could see Rick Procter. The property developer was moving away from the door, approaching the desk.
Another couple of steps and he’d be close enough to spot that the computer was on. That someone was copying all of its files.
Samson held his breath as the figure in the office came nearer the window. Then stopped.
Rick Procter had moved to Samson’s right, towards the filing cabinet in the corner and out of sight.
‘What happened?’ whispered Joseph as Delilah squeezed through the fire exit and into the stairwell.
But she was already running up the stairs, the key to the guest suite in her hand.
‘Can’t explain now,’ she hissed. ‘I’ve got to get to Tolpuddle before he blows our cover.’
She was through the door on the first floor before Joseph had even got to the turn on the stairs.
The relief was short-lived. In the corner of Samson’s limited vision, Rick Procter had reappeared and was coming back towards the desk. He walked round it and reached up to the shelves behind with his left hand, his right arm tucked in against his body, holding something.
If he turned a fraction towards the window, he would see the USB drive.
Samson couldn’t look away, following the motion of the property developer’s hand as it stretched out and took a large brown envelope from one of the boxes. Then Rick began to turn towards the desk. Began to turn towards the computer and the flashing red light of the USB drive.
Delilah hurried down the corridor, trying to be stealthy and fast, praying that she would be in time. She heard Arty’s front door open as she went past but she didn’t pause.
‘Good boy, good boy,’ she was muttering as she put the key in the lock and began to turn it.
It was like triggering a burglar alarm.
The door opened and a long, loud siren of distress came wailing out of the lounge, echoing down the corridor and through the building.
She swiftly closed the door after her, but the damage had been done.
It came from somewhere in the building. A howl of anguish, high-pitched and hair-raising.
Rick Procter flinched at the sound, twisting back round to face the door, whatever he’d been carrying spilling out of his grasp and falling to the floor on the far side of the desk.
He froze. Alert. Waiting to hear if it happened again.
After a few seconds he moved hastily around the desk and began gathering up the items he’d dropped.
The property developer was fast. But not fast enough. Through the gap in the blind, Samson saw what was on the carpet.
Rick Procter was picking up bundles of cash and stuffing them in the envelope.
What was Bruncliffe’s self-made man doing with that much money? In cash? And why was he storing it at Fellside Court?
Rick turned off the lights and let himself out of the office, Samson watching the camera feed on his mobile as the property developer left through the courtyard. He was walking fast, head down, behaving as furtively as Samson himself. As if he shouldn’t have been at Fellside Court that night, either.
Samson waited until Rick’s Range Rover had driven past and down towards town before hauling himself back into the unlit office. With his mind still on the property developer’s odd behaviour, he retrieved the USB key, closed down the computer and was at the door when he remembered. The envelope in his jacket pocket.
He pulled it out. A brown envelope, blank, the flap unsealed. He tipped the contents onto the desk and in the harsh light of the torch, the truth of what had been hidden behind the photograph stared up at Samson.
The evidence against Ana Stoyanova had just become damning.
22
‘I’m so sorry!’ whispered a contrite Delilah as she opened the door of the guest suite to Samson and let him into the dark of the hallway, the light from her mobile the only illumination. ‘Tolpuddle didn’t mean it. He couldn’t help it—’
Samson put a finger to her lips. ‘It’s okay.’ He grinned and held up the USB drive. ‘Mission accomplished. And Tolpuddle was more a help than a hindrance. He put the wind up Rick Procter with that howl.’
The accomplice in question padded over to Samson and allowed his ears to be fondled and his head rubbed.
‘Well,’ hissed a voice from the gloom of the living room. ‘Did you find anything
?’
Samson looked at Delilah and she shrugged. ‘They were all woken up by Tolpuddle’s distress call. I didn’t have the heart to send them back to bed.’
He stepped into the lounge to see four dark figures crouched around the coffee table, a weak torch on the floor between them casting an eerie glow across their elderly faces.
‘We couldn’t sleep,’ explained Clarissa, wrapped in a fluffy dressing gown, cosy slippers on her feet.
‘No one could sleep with the noise that dog made!’ said Edith, likewise clad in her night attire.
Pyjamas poking out from under a jumper, Arty was sitting next to her, eyes alert despite the hour. And opposite him was Samson’s father, his grey hair covered by a woollen hat, his slight figure swamped by a fleece bathrobe.
They were the most unlikely group of undercover operatives Samson had ever worked with.
‘So,’ asked Arty, ‘what did you find?’
Samson tossed two passports onto the coffee table. One Bulgarian. The other Serbian. ‘There’s definitely something clandestine about the lovely Ana Stoyanova.’
‘So she has dual nationality,’ said Joseph, as they stared at the passports. ‘Lots of people do. It doesn’t make her a murderer.’
‘Fair point, Dad. But have a look inside.’
Joseph did as Samson suggested, Arty leaning over his shoulder as he opened the Bulgarian passport, a younger Ana in the photograph.
‘Anastasiya Stoyanova,’ he read out. ‘Place of birth, Sofia.’ Then he opened the Serbian one. ‘Ana Stoya—’ He paused. ‘Stoyanovic?’
‘What else?’ asked Samson.
His father looked at the Serbian passport again. ‘Place of birth, Belgrade?’
‘And the date of birth,’ said Arty. ‘The same year, but two months apart!’
Samson nodded. ‘According to these, Ana was born in two different places at two different times. You can have dual nationality. But you can’t have dual identities.’
‘Maybe it’s not hers?’ said Clarissa, pointing at the Serbian passport. ‘Maybe she’s keeping it safe for a friend?’
Arty held it out so she could see the photograph. ‘That’s Ana,’ he said. ‘No doubt about it.’
‘Or Anastasiya,’ said Edith. ‘We don’t know which one is her real name. Or the real her.’
‘But we do know which one she is using in order to be here.’ Samson showed them the photos he’d taken in the office on his mobile. ‘She’s documented everything as Anastasiya Stoyanova. University qualifications, nursing qualifications, language certificates. As far as the UK authorities are concerned, the manager of Fellside Court is Bulgarian.’
‘Yet she has a Serbian passport . . .’ Arty shook his head.
‘There’s something else,’ said Samson. ‘She has a son.’
‘A son?’ Delilah looked up from her laptop, where she was busy uploading the files from Ana’s computer. ‘Odd that she never mentioned it. None of you knew?’
‘No,’ said Edith. ‘Strange, isn’t it? And she’s never slipped up when talking to us about our families.’
‘Strange?’ Arty snorted. ‘I’ll say. She’s clearly a brilliant actress. Makes you wonder what else she’s hiding.’
‘While I agree the passports are puzzling,’ said Joseph, arms crossed over his chest, ‘if Ana wants to keep her private life to herself, then that’s her choice.’
‘But you have to agree it’s bizarre.’ Edith had flicked to Samson’s photos of the child’s letter and the envelope it came in. ‘Clearly she adores him. Yet she never talks about him.’
‘And those letters are addressed here, not to her home,’ pointed out Samson. ‘Which is unusual. Where is her home, by the way?’
Edith frowned. ‘You don’t know?’
‘No. Should I?’
‘Well, seeing as you’re practically neighbours, I thought you might have seen her out and about.’
‘She lives in Hellifield,’ offered Arty, sensing Samson’s confusion. ‘Like you.’
‘Oh.’ Samson nodded while frantically trying to think of a way to change the conversation before he was caught out in the lie he’d been perpetuating since the night of his arrival. The night he decided to sleep in Delilah’s spare room. ‘Oh, right, Hellifield . . .’
‘So which is the real Ana?’ continued Edith, oblivious to his unease. ‘Is she Bulgarian or Serbian?’
‘And,’ muttered Arty, with a question that turned Samson’s blood cold, ‘what happened to whoever the other person is?’
Samson picked up the passports, Ana’s blank expression stared up at him. Which was her? It was hard to say, the photographs taken eight years ago and with the lack of regard for flattering the subject that was common to all passports. They both depicted a young woman with pale skin and blonde hair who bore a strong resemblance to Ana Stoyanova.
‘I think she’s Serbian,’ said Clarissa. She was hunched over Samson’s mobile, peering at a photograph of an envelope that had contained one of Ana’s son’s letters.
‘Here, try this,’ said Arty, showing her how to enlarge the image with her fingers. ‘Is that better?’
‘Much better,’ she beamed at him. She zoomed in even more. ‘Look!’ she said, holding the mobile up for everyone to see.
Two stamps, each bearing the image of a woman in what looked like military uniform against a background of war, filled the screen.
‘What about them?’ asked Edith.
‘They’re the stamps off that programme. Remember? The one about British women in the First World War?’ She pointed at one of the women. ‘This is Flora Sandes. She was the only British woman to bear arms in that conflict. And she was from Yorkshire. She somehow managed to get herself enrolled in the Serbian army—’
‘Clarissa, it’s hardly the time for a history lesson,’ said Edith firmly.
‘I’m not giving a history lesson,’ said Clarissa with a rare outburst of indignation. ‘I’m trying to help! These stamps are Serbian. Ana’s son lives in Serbia. Wouldn’t that suggest she is Serbian?’
‘Not only that,’ added Delilah, finally looking up from her laptop where she’d been going through Ana’s email account. ‘The majority of Ana’s personal emails are from Serbia. Mostly from her mother, by the look of it.’
‘So Ana is most likely Serbian,’ mused Samson. ‘And lying about her nationality.’
‘And goodness knows what else,’ muttered Arty. ‘It doesn’t bode well.’
‘I can’t believe she’s from Serbia,’ said Edith. Then she gasped, recalling a conversation in the cafe not that long ago. ‘Goodness, poor old Eric!’
The others looked at her, comprehension dawning.
‘No wonder Ana reacted so badly when he mistakenly said she was from Serbia,’ continued Edith. ‘She must have thought he’d rumbled her.’
‘And then she tried to kill him.’ Arty sat back in his chair, arms folded across his chest.
Joseph was shaking his head. ‘You’re seriously suggesting that Ana whatever-her-name-is has been killing people because she’s trying to hide the fact she’s from Serbia?’
‘Yes, I am. Who was it who arranged our trip to Morecambe? Ana, that’s who. She made sure we were handily out of the way, giving her the chance to fit that timer in Eric’s flat.’
‘That’s ridiculous. Do all of you think this?’
Clarissa looked at Edith, who gestured at the passports. ‘There’s something going on, Joseph. Ana is lying about who she is. It doesn’t speak of an honest person.’
‘A killer, though?’ He turned to Delilah and Samson. ‘What about you two?’
Delilah pointed at the laptop. ‘It’ll take me an age to translate these emails but from the few I’ve seen, Ana is definitely hiding something. Whether that makes her a murderer, I couldn’t say.’
‘And you, son? You don’t believe this nonsense, do you?’
To his own surprise, Samson found himself shaking his head, the glimmer of trust he had in Ana Stoyanova sti
ll not extinguished. ‘Not all of it. While Ana is not the person we thought she was, it’s too soon to start jumping to conclusions. What we need is more evidence.’
‘How do you propose to get that?’ asked Arty with scepticism.
Samson turned to him and smiled. ‘By using you as bait, Arty. If you’re game?’
‘You’re mad!’ said Edith. ‘This is too dangerous. You could be killed.’
Arty grinned. ‘Didn’t know you cared, Edith.’
She glared at him. ‘Stop being so foolish, Arty Robinson. This is serious. And as for you,’ she turned her fierce gaze on Samson, ‘you should know better than to put a pensioner in harm’s way.’
Transported back to primary school by the retired headmistress’s wrath, Samson found himself momentarily tongue-tied. Delilah stepped into the breach.
‘What else can we do, Edith?’ she asked. ‘We’re all agreed that Ana is hiding something. But that’s not enough to pin what happened to Alice and the others on her. At least this way we’ll have a chance of triggering a reaction, rather than waiting for the next person to be targeted.’
‘And Arty is to be the lure?’ The tremor in Edith’s words belied her anger.
‘It’ll be fine,’ said Samson, finding his voice. ‘Really, Edith. I’ll be there the entire time. No one will come anywhere near Arty without me knowing.’
‘We’ll be there too,’ said Delilah, nodding at Tolpuddle who was half-asleep while Clarissa rubbed his head. ‘There’s no need to worry.’
Edith stared at Arty. He was grinning and looking like his old self for the first time in weeks. Then she turned to Joseph. ‘Can’t you change their minds? Make them see how insane this is?’
The older O’Brien raised his hands. ‘I don’t see how. Everyone seems to think Ana is the devil incarnate. Perhaps this will finally clear her name?’
It wasn’t the comfort Edith was seeking. She drew her shoulders together and straightened her back, fixing Samson with her blue eyes. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if you are going to insist on this foolish venture, perhaps you’d better explain exactly how it’s going to work. But I’m warning you, young man, if anything happens to Arty, I will be holding you responsible.’
Date with Malice Page 27
