The Family Lie

by Jake Cross

  * * *

  M1/A/126.5

  ‘A present?’ the boy says. ‘I nearly got smashed dead, now I’ve got presents?’

  Smiling, she removes her lucky five-yen coin from a pocket. It’s been everywhere with her since her mother passed it on, but she’s not even sure why. Has it brought luck? She is alive, but right now that doesn’t feel like a blessing. It’s part of her old life, and it has to go. Her father will ask, but she will simply say she lost it.

  The boy takes the offered coin and rubs a wet thumb across it, then puts it to his eye so he can stare at her through the hole in the middle. She manages a rare smile. He asks if it’s a lucky coin and she nods, somewhat reluctantly. Japanese, she tells him. Grants luck-wishes. ‘You should make sure it’s the first thing you put in a new wallet.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t need it?’

  She sees the sun glint off the freshly cleaned coin, giving it a renewed sparkle. ‘My mother gave it to me, but it ran out of power for me. Now, with a new owner, maybe it will be refreshed for you. Wish for luck and hopefully you will be successful in everything that you do.’

  ‘Jumbo-giganto thanks. Maybe it will help me marry you,’ the boy says. She manages another smile. He jumps on his bike and she watches him ride away, out of sight beyond a wall of battered old cars. She never wants to see him again but hopes he will have good luck and achieve greatness. Jumbo-giganto greatness…

  She was cast out of her daydream by Bennet’s voice, telling her to wake up. Nick was staring out his window. Miller was asleep against the window again. Miller, not Anna, was the one Bennet was trying to wake. Anna reached into her pocket.

  ‘Is she ill?’ she said. ‘She seems worse than the rest of your team.’

  Bennet looked away from the road only to check his watch. ‘She got no break before this investigation. The rest of us got half an evening off, but she worked through. Fifty-two hours and counting.’

  Miller had mentioned a break for the team between investigations, but not her own lack of one. As Bennet tried to shake his boss awake, Anna warned him to leave her alone.

  ‘She can have an hour till we get back.’

  It wasn’t to be because Miller’s phone rang and she jumped awake. She turned towards the back seat, wide-eyed as if fearful she’d missed a major development. ‘No sleep, I said,’ she told Bennet, then answered her phone.

  As Miller listened to her call and Bennet watched the motorway, Anna buzzed down the window and stuck her arm out. The cold wind immediately bit into her hand and filled the car with noise, although nobody reacted except Miller, who stuck a finger in her free ear in order to hear her call. Anna was preparing to lob an item taken from her pocket, but something deep inside was giving pause.

  When she looked at Miller again, the detective was watching her in the rear-view. But not because of her actions…

  Bennet got the same funny feeling Anna did and leaned close to his boss, like an invitation to whisper in his ear. Which she did. In the next moment, Anna felt the car gain speed as it drifted right, across two lanes, into the fast one. Even Nick was drawn from the countryside gliding past his eyes.

  Before either could ask, Miller turned to face them. She even knelt on her seat in order to reach out both hands, one for each of them. Still with her hand in the cold wind, Anna felt the buzz of something new and meteoric in the air and burst into tears, even before Miller had spoken a word.

  ‘We know where Josie is,’ she said. ‘And she’s safe and sound.’

  Shocked, and disbelieving, Anna pulled her chilled hand into the car and against her chest. In tightened fingers was the necklace that she had wrenched from Dominic Watson-Bruce’s throat.

  The string was grimy and roughened with age, but the old five-yen coin seemed to suddenly have a renewed sparkle.

  Trowell Services, fifteen miles south of them, but they had to do another mile away from Josie to reach the next junction. Bennet hit a button that put on a siren and there was a pulse of blue from an LED light bar above the rear-view mirror. Flashy drivers in the fast lane quickly jumped aside and everyone remembered the speed limit.

  Despite the speed of over a hundred for the journey south, Nick and Anna were impatient. Nick thumped his fist constantly against his thigh; Anna had her fingers in the door release lever the whole way.

  There was a BMW SUV in the forecourt of a petrol station by the slip road, and a Mercedes Vito van, and two police cars, and police tape encircling the Vito. Nobody but police around. They drove by, onwards to the Services building.

  At least here there seemed to be no buzz, as if nobody knew who they were. It allowed them to walk, brisk but ignored, into the Services, where immediately Anna spotted two uniforms, also being ignored, standing outside an arcade area. She got there first, at a run. Nick was happy to let her.

  ‘Josie!’

  There she was in a little blue tracksuit with stripes down the sides, and her blonde ginger hair all a mess atop her head, and her special necklace still around her sweet, pale little throat. She was standing with a man at a large gaming console, blasting away at flying dinosaurs with a plastic rifle. Both turned at her shout.

  ‘Mum!’

  Bubbling under the surface: a terrible fear that they would deliver the wrong girl, and kill her by heart attack while they scratched their heads. But there was her little face, all hers, unmistakably hers. Josie dropped the gun and ran, and launched herself into her mother’s arms from a whole metre away. Anna snapped her arms around her like a bear trap and Josie moaned at the pressure. She had to dig deep to let her go, as if fearful she could be snatched away again in a half-moment.

  ‘’S’posed to scratch over a towel, Mum.’ Josie’s fingers rubbed over the coarse and broken skin on Anna’s neck. Then she put on her sheepish face. ‘Soz for scribbling on the wall. I don’t want to stay away at night again.’

  Anna planted her lips on Josie’s cheek so hard she moaned again, but they both laughed about it. And Josie had to wipe away wetness transferred from mother to daughter.

  ‘You weren’t being punished, Josie. Those people were…’

  No lie would come, but there was no need because Josie was nodding. ‘Good dream police.’

  She didn’t ask, not yet. She would be told the story later by—

  ‘Dad!’

  She turned to watch her girl – her girl – run to her father. Nick had stopped a few metres out, his face in his hands. He bent to his knees with one arm out to receive Josie, but the other hand trying to cover his whole face still. She knew he didn’t want to be seen crying. When Josie thundered into his embrace, Nick disguised his emotion using the shoulder of the blue tracksuit.

  Anna faced Miller and, through tears, gave her a big smile.

  ‘That’ll do,’ Miller said.

  Josie high-fived her father and ran back to her mother with a demand to challenge her on the video game. Miller noted that the girl didn’t seem very upset by recent experiences.

  Nick stood and watched with joy, and that was the moment both parents actually took note of the man with Josie for the first time. The man who had saved their little star. He wore jeans and a bomber jacket and didn’t look like a policeman at all.

  Nabi, the foul detective constable.

  But he didn’t act like a hero. He handed Anna the big plastic rifle without looking at her. It even looked like he ignored her words of thanks. And the direction of his walk suggested he was going to ignore Nick, too.

  But Miller alone saw this, because the parents were blinded by relief and gratitude and a blend of many more emotions. Nick sidestepped with his hand out. Blocked, Nabi took that hand in his, but they didn’t shake. The detective pulled Nick close, as if for a conspiratorial whisper.

  ‘Watch your bloody kid in future, okay?’

  And then he strode past, and out the door, as carefree about praise as a comic book superhero. Bennet followed. Nick found himself frozen with a confusing mix of anger and adulation. Then h
e forgot all about it and watched Josie trying to educate her mother on how to properly hold a rifle, but she kept interrupting to plant kisses on Josie’s face.

  Nick watched Miller step up, say hi to Josie.

  ‘I’d like to know about these Good Dream Police,’ he heard her say. ‘Can you tell me while you shoot dinosaurs?’

  Good Dream Police: people who randomly selected a good and happy child to take in their vehicle, because sleeping while constantly moving guaranteed a night of good dreams.

  Anna had called her father and Jane, who were en route to pick them up, and that meant killing time. Anna wanted hers alone with Josie; Nick, though, chose to indulge a desire to see where his daughter had been held prisoner. Staring into the Mercedes Vito, he understood Josie’s bizarre statement.

  The cargo area was slick, no seats, and there was an added black Perspex partition to separate the cargo area and cab. There was a toybox, and toys strewn across the floor. A battery-operated small TV. A mattress and pillow and duvet with cartoon characters on the covers. Biscuit wrappers and crisp packets in a wire mesh bin, other snacks in a cardboard box. Sausage rolls. Bananas. Across the blacked-out back window was a large poster framed like a window and with a sea view. There were large stickers all over the walls and ceiling. Not quite the dank cellar Nick had imagined.

  It was like a child’s bedroom.

  ‘They were constantly on the move? But where were they going?’

  Miller explained. The Vito, which the female kidnappers must have swapped into at some point between the lock-up garage and the M1, had indeed gone south down the motorway, to the point twenty-five or so miles away on the A28 near Sutton – and Kirkby-in-Ashfield. Where the kidnappers made the 5 a.m. call to the house. East of the M1, because a slip road on the south run would poke east. They had simply pulled off and found a place to park.

  The next call, to the hospital on a new mobile, had come a few hours later, but only eight miles south, in Nuthall – west of the M1. Not because the kidnappers had taken a slow journey on to the other side of the motorway, but because by then the van had travelled further south, turned around, and was heading north, which meant exiting to the left.

  The final call from a fresh burner phone had originated again in Nuthall, but east of the M1 this time. Which was where you’d end up if you exited the motorway while travelling south. Not a zigzag. But:

  ‘A loop?’ Nick said. ‘They didn’t stop. They just drove up and down the M1 all night?’

  DC Nabi had worked it out. He used the timeline of the phone calls to determine a loop between Sheffield and no further than Leicester, about seventy miles. Being on the motorway would allow them to travel anywhere they wanted quickly if they had to flee. They would know the police wouldn’t expect to find them on the move and police cars don’t often roam motorways. No chance of a random stop if they stuck to the speed limit. And the monotony of engine noise and vibration are said to simulate conditions in the womb, which is why young children so easily fall asleep in vehicles.

  ‘So he just watched and waited? And without telling you?’

  He was off the case, but apparently wasn’t happy with that. Nabi’s brother, when both boys were nine years old, went missing. He’d been with their father, but the father had gone into a pub and left his boy to play outside. Got drunk, forgot about him, came out hours later to find him gone. For good.

  Nick figured that explained his attitude towards Anna and himself. ‘But how did he know what van to look for?’

  The roadworks they passed through about a hundred miles from London. Nabi got the cameras turned back on, but with no warning for drivers, everyone blew past at well over the fifty miles per hour limit. He got a list of triple area sightings, which meant the same vehicle being captured going south twice and north once, or vice versa. He got it up and running by midnight, and by the time Miller’s car had been heading back to London, Nabi had his list. Two vehicles had made the relevant trips, and one of those was a biker who’d travelled from Nottingham to Cambridge, realised he’d forgotten his best man’s suit, and gone back for it. The other: the Mercedes Vito. With a description and registration, he simply waited near Junction 26, the Nuthall turnoff, which the timeline made him pinpoint as about the halfway point, and gave chase when he saw it go past, heading south. He forced it into the Services, made the arrests.

  ‘Quite ironic, you know. Apologies for the lie, but it wasn’t my superintendent at all. Calling in the search dog to your house, I mean. All DC Nabi, that. Off his own back. He offered my superintendent the idea of moving you to a hotel, too. And then he about-faces and does this.’

  Nick didn’t care. He looked into the van again, but its cosmetic mask slipped. Just because Josie had been kept comfortable, it meant nothing. This was not a bedroom, but a prison cell. Had Nabi not found her, Josie’s captors would soon have found out about the London arrests of their boyfriends and she might have been killed.

  In response to a question about the captors, both already headed to the police station, Miller showed him a pair of mugshots. Two women. One was Elsie Watson-Bruce, girlfriend of the man who’d had a change of heart. One of the hired help. But it was the other woman he focussed on. Louise Mackerson, the girlfriend of Dominic Watson-Bruce.

  ‘I recognise her,’ Nick said, shocked. ‘She came to the house a few days ago. Pizza girl. She wanted to know about my sleeping habits and family and stuff, to see if I could benefit from an organic lifestyle. Jesus Christ, I even told DS Bennet about her.’ He quickly explained his sarcastic answer to Bennet’s query about people Nick had come across in recent weeks. ‘She sounded so… genuine. But… all those questions… she wasn’t seeing if an organic lifestyle would suit me in order to sell a damn product. She was milking me for information, wasn’t she? And getting close to the house. Were they watching us all that time?’

  ‘Probably, my friend. They were very good. Some don’t know how criminally adept they are until they try it.’

  If Nick had somehow known, when he opened the door to this girl who had tried to engage him in chat, that she was planning to steal Josie… He slapped the side of the van, which sent a gong-like sound rushing away.

  ‘All this, and for what? It had better be to avoid something catastrophic. I hope that bastard Eastman did this to prevent another Middle Eastern war.’

  ‘Nothing so respectable, I fear,’ Miller said. ‘Last week a newspaper exposed three affairs Eastman had over the last fifteen years. Each of those women was contacted and agreed to tell their story, probably for a fee. The three Witches of Eastman. Suppose there was a fourth Witch, as yet unknown? Someone who might sell her story soon.’

  Nick said he didn’t understand.

  ‘None of those Witches lived in Greenford. Eastman told your Anna that the lady he was meeting lived near All Hallows Church in Greenford. That’s barely a few hundred metres from where those hikers were killed.’

  Nick still didn’t understand.

  ‘Just my opinion, mind. Witch number four comes forward to say that Eastman planned to forgo an important function at Hammersmith Medicines Research to meet her. Not a great piece of detective work to find that date, 5th September 2011. Same time, nearby, two hikers are killed by an 05 plate blue Fiat Punto. Such as was owned by Eastman’s caseworker, a lady known for ferrying him around when he wants to remain inconspicuous.’

  ‘Someone would connect the dots. The police would find Anna, find out about the scrapped car, everything. And she would have no choice but to expose the disk to back up her version of the story. So this bastard kidnapped my daughter so there would be no proof he was even there when Anna killed those hikers. Why not try to get this woman to say nothing?’

  ‘Just my theory, like I said. No evidence. I’ve already set the wheels of his arrest turning, so perhaps we’ll know before long.’

  Nick barely heard. Inside, he was rebuking himself for a horrible thought: if Eastman had instead chosen to send his goons to kill the woman
who might expose their affair, none of this would have happened.

  * * *

  Josie was first out of Middleton’s Range Rover, running for the door with Anna close behind, as if unwilling to let her get more than a few feet out of reach, even here. Middleton helped Jane into the house, but Nick took a moment to walk to the end of the driveway and peer down the road. DCI Lucy Miller’s car had parked about fifty metres away. He noted that it had only a driver, no passenger. And it was Bennet who got out. He started approaching.

  Nobody on the street seemed to care, which was a world away from what he’d heard was happening at his own home. The plan was to hide out here at Anna’s father’s house until the gawkers and reporters had cleared away, but he had a rising feeling that they would never be returning to that house, at least as a complete family.

  ‘Where’s your boss? I think Anna would prefer her to take her in. No offence.’

  ‘I’ll be taking it from here. DCI Miller has tasks to do.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Nick said. ‘She’s done her job and so long? Without even a goodbye? Just another day at the office for you guys, right?’

  ‘No, Nick, no. Far from it. Personal cases, like this one, they’re the hardest. We’re not supposed to get emotionally attached. You got to her. All three of you got to her. You amputate that limb before the infection spreads, so to speak. I’ll deal with it from here.’

  Nick thought he understood. ‘Because you’ve got that heart of ice, right?’

  Bennet returned Nick’s grin. ‘You guys have an hour. I’ll wait out here.’

  Nick stuck out his hand. ‘This is my way of apologising for being an arse while you were trying to do your job. Thank you, Detective Sergeant Bennet. Maybe you’ll rise to inspector for this.’

  Bennet shook the hand. ‘I’m due to go downhill, not up. Long story I won’t bore you with. Get back to your family, Nick Carter.’