‘Why? What sort of guests are you expecting, for goodness’ sake? Terrorists?’
‘How should I know? I tell you, it’s company policy.’
Hell, she hadn’t meant to get him on the defensive. ‘I’m sorry, Gary. But if you do know, you should tell me. Trust me.’
Avoiding her eye, he shook his head.
‘All right. Tell me why your office plants are in such a poor state when you’ve got an expensive contract to keep them healthy. I saw some memos before I shredded them, you see. And you had a huge delivery the other day. I saw you checking them. They disappeared very quickly. My theory is that it wasn’t the plants that you wanted, but something else in the pots. Are we talking drugs, here?’
‘Kate—you shouldn’t be asking these questions. The less you know the better. For your own good, just forget everything you’ve seen, hand in your notice with the—agency and come and work for us. Kate? You will, won’t you?’ He touched her shoulder.
‘Let’s talk about things here before I make a decision,’ she said. ‘You see, I think some of your colleagues are doing things they shouldn’t. There’s a scam for getting people out to far-flung Sophisticasuns, isn’t there? How does it work? People get stopped in the street, right, and asked a few questions. And, hey presto! They win a prize. Tell me about the prizes.’
‘I don’t know why you want to know this—my God, you’re not Trading Standards?’
‘No. Just tell me. I’m interested. Imagine I’m stopped. What if I won first prize?’
‘The trip anywhere in the world? Well, if you can go at the drop of a hat, it’s a real prize. All expenses paid. But it’s like the old factory system You’re miles from anywhere, of course, because our complexes are in remote corners, and you want to buy some suntan lotion. The only place you can get it is the complex shop. And that only takes Sophisticasun currency. So you’re paying way over the odds. But not many people take that option anyway. Who can, at three days’ notice?’
‘Not people like you and me, anyway,’ she said dryly, as if he were an honest worker.
‘Precisely. But it’s what makes people look at the offer. The second one’s the one most people take. Anywhere in Europe for two weeks. You have to pay the airfares, but since we book everything, you can’t go on a cheap flight. And we have a deal with the company we choose. And the drivers taking you from the airport. And again, people buy at our shops.’
Kate nodded. It tied up with what her colleagues had said, after all.
‘The only really good deal is the free weekend in the UK, but while they say folk can go anywhere in the UK, they can’t. Only a few take visitors. The rest are sold out throughout the year.’
‘Sold out?’
‘It’s a well-run company—people like our complexes.’ Bespoke with genuine pride.
‘I’m sure they do. But is that the only reason they’re forbidden territory? Are they involved in other sorts of dodgy dealing? Money-laundering?’
‘Good God, no. I suppose the transactions in complex currency abroad might just… But it’s only a matter of a few pounds here, a few there. And there’s nothing like that here, Kate. What do you take us for?’
She looked him in the eye. ‘I wish I knew. I wish you were just into commercial sharp practice, but I think it’s worse than that. The surveillance. The peripatetic plants. Gary, it’d be far better if you told me everything. Including,’ she added, as if it were just an afterthought, ‘where you buried Craig Knowles.’
Oh, God. She’d got it right. He crumpled.
‘I didn’t want to. I had to. A gun at my head. I had to. Kate, don’t tell Julie. Please. Please don’t tell Julie.’ He was almost in tears.
‘Did you kill him?’
‘No! NO!’
‘You just said you had to.’
‘No. I had to bury him. I found Gregorie. It was Gregorie—’
She prayed he was telling the truth: a trip through the washing machine or not, the shirt would surrender its secrets to the forensic science team. Splatter marks. They’d show if the wearer had struck a blood-thawing blow.
‘He’d hit him too hard. He was dying. I didn’t even know who it was at first, but Gregorie made me go through his pockets. I wanted to phone the police—you know, saying we’d caught a burglar—but things had gone wrong. But Gregorie wouldn’t let me—Kate, you’ve got to believe me! He died very quickly. No pain.’ He must at last have registered that Kate was supposed to be Craig’s partner. ‘This must be so dreadful for you… A drink? Brandy or something?’
The rain returned more viciously, lashing in sudden squalls their faces and hands.
‘Show me where he’s buried,’ she said.
‘But—’
‘Now.’
‘It’s a long way.’
‘Down by the old glasshouses? I still want to see.’
He led the way down, but not into the glasshouses. He pushed aside rhododendrons heavy with rain and eventually stopped, pointing to a mound quite unmistakable in shape. God, how amateurish: perhaps he was telling the truth.
They stared at it in silence.
‘Can’t we go now?’ he pleaded at last.
‘We have to talk. In there will do. She pointed at the glasshouse.
‘It’ll be so cold in there.’
Indeed, he was dithering, shaking as if possessed by a medieval ague.
‘OK. Somewhere warmer. What was in the plant pots, by the way?’ Catching him off guard had worked once—it was worth trying again.
‘I don’t know. I only do what I’m told. I count them in; then I count them out again. Like that war correspondent,’ he said, looking sideways at her.
She didn’t respond.
‘Kate, I’m so cold.’
‘Is there any apartment not bugged?’
He brightened ‘What about my office?’
‘Oh, there’s a camera there all right,’ she said as dryly as she could; ‘And a bug.’ Let him think it was one of Sophisticasun’s.
‘What about the swimming pool?’
‘What?’ She stopped dead in her tracks.
‘Oh, I shan’t try and drown you or anything. I can’t swim myself. But we’d see anyone coming… Oh, come on, Kate.’ He grabbed her hand and ran with her as if they were friends.
They could have been so easily, couldn’t they? If she’d been fed into the system higher up the pecking order. If she became his housekeeper-nanny. If they’d all met at one of Julie’s precious concerts.
He let her in through the glass doors, but didn’t lock them behind him.
They faced each other in the foyer, full of well-lit display cabinets and dispensing machines. Energy drinks. Goggles. Floats. Confectionery. Some expensive looking towels and bikinis. And a lying police officer and a criminal desperate to tell the truth. She hoped.
‘So tell me about Craig. Why did Gregorie kill him?’
‘I’m sure he didn’t mean to. I’m sure he just meant to lay him out cold.’
‘Like he laid me out?’
Vernon stared. ‘No. That wasn’t him. That was Craig. And then Craig got something out of that big freezer, and made off. That’s when Gregorie hit him. That’s what he said, anyway.’
Kate’s head was pounding again. ‘Are you seriously telling me that Craig—Craig…is involved with all this?’
Vernon shook his head. ‘I told you. He was taking something from the freezer.’
‘You don’t usually get killed for nicking a ready-made beefburger.’
They managed sketchy smiles, pale images of the one they’d exchanged two days before.
‘Or ready-made hot dogs.’ Vernon fed money into the drinks machine. ‘Coke?’
‘Water, please. Thanks. So what did Craig take?’
‘I’ve no idea. OK. But it’s only a guess. You’d have to ask Gregorie.’
‘I gather he’s very talkative at the moment. But his memory’s pretty selective. I’d like to have your theory.’
‘You are going to press ch
arges, then?’ His eyes were terrified.
‘Let’s hear your theory. Craig. What Gregorie did was pretty serious. And you’re an accessory, Gary. Let’s not forget that, either.’
He lost so much colour she was afraid he was going to faint. She steered him to the receptionist’s desk.
‘There. Head between your knees. Deep breaths.’ His hair was as fine as the children’s. She kept her hand between his shoulders.
At last he nodded. ‘It’s OK. I’m fine now.’
‘Come up slowly. And don’t try and move anywhere quickly.’
‘Trust you to know your first aid.’ He turned baby-blue eyes on her. ‘Except I can’t trust you, can I? You’re not Kate Potter at all. You’re some sort of spy. Who are you with?’
‘You make me sound like something out of James Bond. No Much more boring. But it’s not who I am or what I am that matters at the moment. And this is so off the record I shall deny every word if you even so much as hint to anyone I said it. Understand?’
‘For God’s sake!’
‘No. For the children’s sake. And Julie’s. Gary, you’ve buried a murdered man. You’re part of an organisation up to its ears in criminal activity. And you’re the husband of a woman who’s nearer to death than I like to think about and the father of two lovely children.’ Aiming for authoritative, she fought to keep her voice steady. ‘What you are going to do is come along to the police and tell them everything you know about the organisation. Fraud. Drugs. Blackmail. Craig’s death. Every single last detail. You’re going to turn Queen’s Evidence.’
‘I can’t. I daren’t.’ He’d risen too quickly and was swaying again.
‘Sit down. No use falling on this floor and cracking your skull. There’s no alternative, Gary.’
For a moment they both thought of the water ten feet from them.
‘No. You’re not a pro. You couldn’t make it look like an accident. And you blush too easily. You wouldn’t last five minutes under cross-questioning. Would you?’
He shook his head, as if it were a matter for shame. Then he looked straight at her. ‘Kate, I daren’t talk to the police. Gregorie cracked Craig’s skull as easily as if it was his breakfast egg. That’s what they’ll do to me if I talk. And, it’s not just me. It’s the children. Julie.’
‘Of course it is. You’d never sleep at night wondering who was going to get at them. When. How. And don’t think of a quick bullet between the eyes. When the big boys get cross, Gary, they get very cross. Even with children. Which is why they’ve got to be sent down for a good long stretch.’
‘They won’t get everyone. Kate, what’ll I do?’
She leant across and wiped his cheeks, slipping her arm round him. ‘I told you: you turn Queen’s Evidence. You’ve never heard of Witness Protection? If your evidence gets that lot as many years in jail as you can, you’ll be spirited away and never surface again. You, Julie and the kids. That’s what you’ve got to do.’
‘So you’re an undercover cop. I should have known. I had this cousin in the police…’
Didn’t that dot an i somewhere?
‘I just thought you were a really nice kid. I thought—it doesn’t matter what I thought… All the time you were lying and cheating.’
‘Lying, maybe. Never cheating. I never cheated on the kids. Or on your wife. Or on you. On a shitty organisation, maybe. What was in the freezer, Gary? I think you know.’
‘I don’t. I truly don’t.’
‘You’ve got to try harder than that, Gary.’
‘No. Honestly. I’m too low in the organisation for that. Well, you saw. Dancing attendance on the bosses. Wheeling out Julie as hostess when she’d have been better off in bed. Dancing to their tune. You saw.’
She nodded. ‘And so I’ll testify. Why?’
‘They found out about Julie and cannabis. God knows how.’ Perhaps there were other surveillance cameras she didn’t know about yet? ‘It might be all right to take it now, but it wasn’t then. And I had to have a job to pay for it. Joining in was the price of keeping the job.’
She patted his shoulder. ‘Who are the ones we need to send down? Especially Mr Big!’
‘He was at the restaurant we went to.’
She reviewed the faces she’d seen. ‘Not at your house?’
‘Too lowly for him. He runs the drugs side, if that’s any use. Ecstasy, mostly. He’s even got an LSD lab: it looks like a barn, but it’s a regular factory, I’ve heard.’
She saw the brutal face leering at her in her rear-view mirror as he shunted her down the long hill into Chagford. ‘Up on Dartmoor? I think I’ve met him. Does he grow cannabis in his greenhouse?’
‘Pot? That’s way beneath his notice!’
‘Where do you get your pot from then?’
He managed a grim laugh. ‘Funny. We get that from a bloke in Birmingham. I met him up there on a business trip. He’s not a bad bloke. When he saw how ill she was, he started to bring it down when I couldn’t go up there to get it.’
‘Come on! Exeter. Newton. Plymouth even! There must be loads of dealers.’
‘But I don’t know who they are! You know, a respectable married man. And I was afraid to ask. In case it drew attention to us. Criminal offence, possession, in those days. And the company has a policy of sacking people who get into any sort of trouble, any at all, with the law. I didn’t dare… Look, Earle’s a decent guy.’
‘How decent? Are you telling me he doesn’t take a load of Ecstasy back with him?’
Vernon flushed. ‘You don’t really have to say anything about him, do you?’
‘It’s the big fish we’re after, Gary, not the tiddlers.’ She hoped it was true. She’d had enough of lying and deceit. ‘Come on. We’ll go and pick up Julie and the kids and take you straight to Headquarters.’
‘Get them now? But Elly’s got a party this afternoon. And it’s Peter’s Cubs’ church parade tomorrow.’
She nodded. ‘And school on Monday. Yes, all those nice everyday things. They’ll miss all their friends, won’t they? And all their toys. Gary, it’ll be a terrible time for them. And for you and Julie. But what’s the alternative?’
‘Couldn’t you just—keep quiet? You don’t have to say anything! I could get some money together. If you—’
‘I hope I’m not hearing that, Gary.’
He covered his face.
She tried to sound harsh. ‘In any case, you’ve forgotten there’s the small matter of a dead cop, Gary. You can’t imagine them not finding his body. And they’ll find the tiniest drop of blood on your clothes or shoes.’ If they hadn’t already.
‘Cop. You mean—?’
‘Oh, yes. He was undercover too. But forget I said that—’
‘The way he treated you! Julie and I were—’
‘Part of the job, Gary. Now, let’s get back to you and the family. My colleagues will go to your home and pack essentials.’
He pulled himself to his feet. ‘What about Julie’s treatment? You can’t stop her having that! It’s her only hope!’
‘I won’t be stopping anything. Like you, I’m far too small a player for that.’ Was she being ironic? ‘But I’d have thought—did you mention Australia? I’d have thought if you sang sweetly enough that wasn’t a bad bet. Her and the kids. You’d join them later, of course.’ She thrust a tissue at him. ‘Here—please!’
He mopped his eyes, blowing his nose and straightening up. He shot her a glance she couldn’t read. ‘No handcuffs, then?’
‘On the contrary. Really matey, we’ll be. The last thing we want to do is attract anyone’s attention. Now what?’ she demanded with as much asperity as she could manage.
He closed the door he’d started to open. Facing her, he held out the ball of tissue he’d used. ‘Tell me: why do you need this as much as I do?’ And he dabbed gently at her cheeks.
Chapter 30
The Vernon family weren’t the only ones on the move. In the late afternoon, Kate had been whisked from Newton Abbot to
a safe house somewhere in Exeter. They’d produced a change of clothes and a bottle of hair dye. Well, it was something to do.
How was Craig’s widow—they’d never actually divorced—passing the time? Was she grieving, forcing herself to organise a funeral? Kate knew from experience the police liked showy funerals for their own. And Craig had been one of their own—far more than Kate could ever be. Poor bugger: so angry, so determined to have a bit of the action. But not, surely, so determined that he’d hit a colleague on the point of finding something. Surely he hadn’t hated her that much. No, it must have been Gregorie. It would make the same m.o. for three people, after all. Would she be allowed to attend? It would make some sort of closure. God, Craig would have hated the term, dismissed it as psychobabble or worse.
Her colleagues would be in touch with her when they were ready, they said. In the meantime, there was food in the fridge, a radio and TV, and a smart laptop on which she might like to start preparing her report. There was no hurry. She could take as long as she needed. After all, she wasn’t going anywhere for a bit. From time to time one of her colleagues would drop by. She must be prepared to move again at short notice if they thought it best.
She examined her prison carefully. It was an older version of the anonymous house in Newton, in a between-the-wars housing estate. Most of the houses were small semis. She was privileged to be in an equally small detached one. The bathroom had been upgraded, and so had the kitchen, not that she felt much like cooking. Not that she felt much like anything. A game of Sorry with the kids would have been about her level.
She wouldn’t see the kids again. Ever.
That was something she could talk about when they started debriefing her.
God knew when that would be.
If only she could do something. Something active. Interrogating Gregorie for a start! She’d enjoy wiping the smug look off his handsome face. But she couldn’t, of course. Even if she hadn’t been undercover, she couldn’t have done. Victims didn’t question suspects. Not even to ask where they’d hidden the films and the photographs. And why, of course. Not even to ask them why it had been necessary to kill their partners.
If only it weren’t so quiet. If only she could pop out and tell Cassie she was all right.
Hidden Power Page 28
