Night Vision

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘So you and Michelle Sanders were involved, and Eddison knew about it.’

  ‘Yes, he knew.’

  ‘And he made it his business, why?’

  ‘Because that’s what Eddison does,’ Travers said bitterly. ‘He collects the scraps and leavings from people’s lives, and he stores them up just for the day when they might be valuable enough to make trouble.’

  Alec looked sharply at his boss. ‘Are we talking blackmail here?’

  ‘What? Oh, not in the money sense, no. Nothing as crude as that. Eddison goes for the jugular in a far more subtle way, but once he has something he’ll use it.’

  ‘And he’s used this affair against you how?’

  ‘It wasn’t an affair,’ Travers snapped.

  ‘So what was it then?’

  Travers shrugged. ‘It’s hard to explain,’ he said.

  ‘Try me.’

  Travers fell silent again. They had reached the hotel, and Alec knew he had missed his chance. Still, this was progress, of a sort. ‘Meet you in the restaurant? Say, an hour?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You’ve got to eat.’

  Travers nodded reluctantly. ‘An hour, then. Have you called Naomi yet?’

  ‘She spent the day with her sister, and she’s out tonight with Harry and Patrick. I’ll talk to her again later.’

  ‘And she’s all right?’

  ‘Shaken, but she’s all right, yes. Trav, why didn’t we tell our esteemed colleagues about the phone calls? You can’t pretend it’s not relevant.’

  ‘And I will, tomorrow,’ Travers promised. ‘Alec, trust me on this, there’s someone I want to speak to first.’

  Alec hesitated. ‘This is Naomi we’re talking about. Trav, if—’

  ‘I know. I’d not risk anything happening to her, you know that.’

  He got out of the car, and Alec had no option but to follow suit and then to follow in his wake as Travers stalked across the car park and into the hotel.

  SEVEN

  Naomi was ready to go out again long before Harry and Patrick arrived. She had made herself a sandwich and a cup of tea, and had showered and changed, all the time listening out far too intently for anything unusual, any sound that did not belong in her home. Listening so hard that she realized she was actually imagining things. Eventually, angry and impatient with such wimpishness, she grabbed a CD from the rock section of their considerable music collection and put it on. The sound of Bruce Springsteen filled the house, singing about hungry hearts and oversized motor bikes, and she sang along, defiantly and tunelessly – holding a tune was, she freely admitted, not among her accomplishments.

  By the time Harry rang the bell and then tried the usually unlatched door, she was sitting on the stairs, waiting, Napoleon’s head resting against her knee.

  He rang the bell again as she crossed the hall. ‘Naomi, it’s us! The door was locked,’ he added as she opened it and bent to fuss the dog.

  ‘Yes, sorry, I forgot to undo it for you. All set then? Is Patrick nervous?’

  ‘I think he is, rather. Is everything all right?’

  ‘No, not really,’ she admitted. ‘But we’ll talk about that later, if you don’t mind. Let’s not spoil Patrick’s evening.’

  ‘Naomi?’

  ‘It’s all right, Harry, we’ll talk about this later. Promise. In fact, is it OK if I stay the night?’

  ‘You know it is. Is that your bag?’

  She could hear the concern in his voice, but knew also that he’d put it aside until she was ready to talk. She locked the door behind her, heard Harry check it – not because he didn’t trust her to do it properly, but because that was what Harry did – then he helped her into the car. Napoleon, sensing that this was not a formal outing, was already in the back with Patrick.

  ‘All set then,’ Harry said. ‘Cameras at the ready? Right, off we go.’

  Alec had sat for some time in the restaurant, waiting for Travers to arrive. Finally, he had given up and ordered dinner, irritated with his boss, but not really surprised that he had not shown up. Who, Alec wondered, was the mysterious someone he’d needed to call before talking to Alec about his affair with Michelle Sanders? Alec was angry with himself, too; he should have pressed the point.

  He probably should have mentioned the note slipped to him by the inmate at the prison too. Alec slipped it from his pocket now; he had sealed it in an evidence bag, but was still none the wiser as to the significance of this little slip of card, torn from a cigarette packet. Like as not, he thought, it was a wind up, a laugh at his expense. Or had been dropped accidentally and would turn out to be the phone number of a girlfriend or some such.

  That it was a phone number, Alec now knew. He’d dialled it from his hotel room, though there had been no reply, the phone just ringing out into emptiness. A local number, he thought; there had been no dialling code. Alec was still not even sure why he had failed to tell someone about it back at the prison. Simple dislike of his new colleagues? Maybe so, but that was still a deeply unprofessional attitude to have.

  As unprofessional as Travers not mentioning the phone call Naomi had received, though that too, he felt, had been driven by the same ill-defined motivation.

  It was a stupid attitude, Alec decided in the end. It had to stop.

  A text from Patrick told him that they had collected Naomi and he should stand by for photos. Alec smiled, then frowned in irritation as he thought where he’d rather be tonight. Certainly not here, three hours away from home and effectively car-less.

  Finally, irritation now at maximum, he returned to the reception in the motel and then went in search of Travers.

  The reception area and restaurant were central to two long arms, two stories high, that stretched out and then folded back, forming three sides of a quadrangle, surrounding a garden area with an empty pond and bleached wooden seats. The fourth side was taken up with a second car park – marked staff only – and then gave on to scrubby woodland and neglected grass. Alec’s room was in the left-hand arm on the first floor; Travers had been given a room on the opposite side, on the ground. Long corridors, with views looking out on to the unkempt garden, led to the guest rooms, the windows of which faced out on to neater lawns and the main car parks. Alec’s afforded him a glimpse of the all-night services and the motorway beyond.

  Alec knocked on Travers’ door and, receiving no response, called out to his boss. ‘Trav, it’s Alec. You were supposed to meet me in the restaurant. Travers? Look, you’ve got to eat sometime. Trav, let me in.’

  Still no response. Something was wrong; Alec could sense it.

  He made his way back to the reception, checking on the way that Travers’ car was still parked outside, then asked the girl at the desk if she’d seen DCI Travers go out. Alec knew that the fact they were both police officers had intrigued her when they’d checked in; he’d lay bets on her recalling every time either one of them had passed her desk.

  ‘No, sorry. I saw you go to the restaurant, but I’ve not seen your friend since you both came back. Is something the matter?’

  ‘Could you try calling his room?’

  The girl frowned. ‘Sure.’

  Standing in the lobby, Alec could hear the phone ring out, but Travers did not reply. The sense of unease was growing, moment by moment. ‘Do you have a pass key?’ he asked.

  ‘No, only the duty manager—’ Her eyes widened. ‘Is there something wrong?’ she asked him again, her tone worried now, Alec’s anxiety contagious.

  ‘Can you get the manager, please? I’ll wait outside the room. Number Fifty-One G.’

  She nodded and was picking up the phone to make the call as Alec strode back out of the lobby. He was probably imagining things, Alec told himself. Trav had gone to sleep or left the motel when the girl at reception wasn’t looking, or he was deliberately ignoring Alec.

  The sense of dread now deep in his stomach told him Travers had done none of those things.

  Back outside his room, Alec hammere
d on Travers’ door again. Further down the corridor a man looked out of his own room and shouted at Alec to keep it down. Alec glared at him and the man ducked back inside.

  ‘Please,’ another voice said. ‘Is it really necessary to disturb the other guests?’

  Alec turned his attention to this new speaker, saw the duty manager, pass key in hand, regarding him with a mix of puzzlement and annoyance.

  ‘Sorry,’ Alec mumbled automatically. ‘If I could have the key, please.’

  The manager hesitated, then something in Alec’s expression seemed to change his mind. He handed the swipe card over and then stepped back, as if to get out of range of whatever was behind that bland wooden door.

  Alec took a deep breath and swiped the card. He’ll be asleep, Alec told himself. Fallen asleep and I’ll feel like a complete idiot. He swung the door wide and swore softly. ‘Call an ambulance.’

  ‘What!’ The manager peered cautiously around the open door and then stepped back hurriedly. ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’

  ‘Call an ambulance,’ Alec said again, though instinct and experience suggested it was far too late for that. Travers lay on the floor beside the bed, eyes open, his right hand reaching for something and—

  So much blood, Alec thought. He had interviewed several finders of bodies during his career, and that phrase had been one he had heard many times. People saw the blood first, amplified the amount of it. Told him, even if the wound had bled little or been largely out of sight. Oh God, there was so much blood . . .

  Alec thought it now, but he had no need to exaggerate. Travers was covered in it, the carpet sticky with it. Knowing he should stay back, wait for the medics to arrive, knowing he was interfering – probably needlessly – with a crime scene and that Travers was likely beyond anything he could do, Alec still went into the room and knelt beside his friend.

  EIGHT

  Past nine o clock, and the ambulance had long since driven from the scene. Eddison had arrived half an hour before, and Parks and Munroe had followed shortly after. Alec had called them, not knowing what else to do, and found he was pathetically grateful at the sight of familiar faces, despite his misgivings about these new colleagues.

  Eddison had taken charge, managing the scene. ‘You touched nothing else?’ he asked again, his voice quiet and calm and surprisingly gentle.

  Alec shook his head. ‘I saw him lying there. I was sure he’d gone, but I needed to – I thought there might be something I could do.’

  Eddison touched his arm. ‘Any of us would have done the same,’ he said. ‘The human reaction takes over: we do what we feel, not what we know we should.’

  Alec nodded. ‘I knelt down there, and I touched his hand. Nothing else. When I left the room I back-tracked as near as I could remember.’

  Eddison nodded. ‘Good, good.’ That verbal tick again. Alec hadn’t noticed it so much that day. ‘Go and get changed, get cleaned up. Then come back here to me.’

  Alec nodded, suddenly horribly aware of the wet patches on his knees where he had knelt beside Travers. Knelt on carpet soaked with his boss’s blood. He escaped to his room, closed the door and stood just inside the entrance, listening as though suddenly afraid that whoever had attacked Travers might also come for him.

  ‘Stupid,’ he told himself. ‘Stupid.’ But he still checked the locks on the windows and the latch on the door before going into the tiny bathroom.

  He showered. The CSI manager had given him bags for his clothes. Gingerly, he emptied pockets and slipped the bloodied clothes and shoes inside. How often had he explained to those first witnesses on scene that they might have picked up something significant on their clothes and shoes as they bent over the body, that it was just procedure? How often had he heard them tell him, shamefacedly, that it made them feel like a criminal, handing their clothes over like this? He tried to shake that same thought now, but found he could empathize. It made him feel somehow unclean, blood on his clothes and shoes, those same clothes and shoes slipped now into evidence bags.

  Dressed, and a little more composed, he carried the bags back into the reception, handed them over to the young woman responsible for collating and listing the evidence. He watched as she sealed and labelled his possessions and then got him to sign the forms, stating when and what he had handed over. Chain of evidence, Alec thought as he confirmed the time of handover and placed his initials beside hers. Then he returned to Travers’ room. Eddison glanced up as he entered; he was crouched down beside one of the CSIs.

  ‘Found something?’ Alec was surprised but relieved that he sounded almost normal.

  Eddison straightened up. ‘A scrap of paper,’ he said. ‘When DCI Travers fell, it was trapped under his body. It looks as though our assailant tried to retrieve whatever it was, but a torn fragment got left behind. Cindy here’s been trying to get it off the carpet without it falling to bits.’

  Alec fought the desire to go closer. ‘Any idea what it is?’

  Addison shook his head. ‘Whoever it was, they escaped out of the window,’ he said.

  Alec nodded. He had surmised as much.

  ‘They left blood smears; likely, they were covered in it. Someone will have seen them. We’ve got people looking at the CCTV footage now. The way I see it, Travers left you at, what, six thirty?’

  ‘More like six fifteen. I arrived at the restaurant at seven ten. I deliberately got there a few minutes early. I waited twenty minutes or so then thought – then thought bugger him, I’m hungry even if he isn’t, and assumed he wasn’t going to show. I ordered, ate and then came here.’

  ‘What time would that have been?’

  ‘I looked at my watch when I left the restaurant. It was twenty past eight.’

  Eddison nodded. ‘So, we’ve got a window of about two hours, give or take, though likely later rather than earlier. He had to have let them in. Smears of blood on the window lock indicate they unfastened it on the way out, so we can assume it was fastened when his attacker arrived. Did he say he was expecting anyone?’

  ‘No,’ Alec said. ‘He mentioned a phone call he had to make.’

  ‘He say who to?’

  Alec shook his head. ‘I think it might have been a personal call,’ he said, suddenly reluctant to report the content of his last conversation with Travers to the man Trav had virtually accused of blackmailing him. His affair with Michelle Sanders could have no bearing on this. Surely.

  ‘Right. Parks is in the lobby. The two of you go and get a cup of coffee, and you make your statement, then find that receptionist and the three of you start looking at the CCTV cameras in the lobby for the relevant period. Hopefully, she’ll be able to tell you for certain who is a guest and who she doesn’t recognize.’

  ‘It might have been a guest,’ Alec said absently.

  ‘In which case, they’ll still be here. Which I doubt.’

  Ten o’clock, and Alec’s phone vibrated. He glanced at the text as he walked back to the lobby to find Parks. It was from Patrick.

  Alec paused to look at the pictures Patrick had sent of a long space that Alec recognized as the college assembly hall, now broken into discreet sections by large wooden screens. Patrick’s display was on the wall at the far end. His pictures stood out from the rest, inspired in part by the graphic novels he loved so much, but with additions that Alec had not seen before. Alec scrolled through the images, glad of the momentary distraction, paying particular attention to these new scenes. There were two large landscapes, or, rather, cityscapes. One was vaguely familiar, but it took a moment or two to realize that this was a pastiche of Hopper’s Nighthawks, the usually empty street now crammed with a procession of strange characters in carnival dress. It was painted not in Patrick’s usual graphic style, but with a freedom and exuberance of brushstrokes that seemed to echo Hopper’s.

  The second was a place Alec recognized. A local view of the canal basin close to where Patrick and Harry lived and Naomi had grown up. The warehouses and quay were roughly as Alec remembered them,
but the narrowboats usually docked in the safe harbour had been replaced by strange, ghostly seagoing galleons and tall ships, all crewed by what looked at first glance to be figures in historic costume. It was hard to tell from the rather low-resolution images on his mobile phone, but Alec was sure that, on closer inspection, none of the figures looked exactly human.

  For a long time, Harry had worried about his son, seeing his somewhat weird art as unnatural and even an indicator that all was not well with Patrick’s head. True, Alec thought, Patrick’s work was as weird as it had ever been, but even to his untrained eye, it was evident that there was real skill here and an original if bizarre imagination at work. Patrick himself was one of the nicest and most balanced people Alec could think of – for all that life experience might have mitigated against that.

  Sighing, Alec dragged himself back to present thoughts and immediate problems. He found Parks in the lobby and relayed Eddison’s instructions.

  ‘We’ve just heard from DCI Travers’ wife,’ Parks told him. ‘She’s on her way. I think a friend is driving her over.’

  Alec closed his eyes. ‘God, poor Maureen,’ he said.

  ‘You know her well?’

  ‘Not really. She liked to keep her home life as separate from Trav’s work as she could. Not that it was always possible, but, you know . . .’

  Parks nodded. ‘It’s hard on families,’ he said. ‘My missus was an army brat, dragged all over the shop depending on where her dad was stationed, and even then she didn’t see him for months on end. She reckons being a policeman’s wife is a doddle compared to that.’

  They settled themselves in the corner of the now almost deserted restaurant. It was officially closed, but the manager and a couple of the catering staff had stayed on to provide refreshments for whoever might need them in the hours to come, and Alec knew that was a very welcome decision. An informal base of operations had been set up, CSIs using one corner of the room to store their equipment and deliver their evidence to the collator. An officer close by prepared a space in which he could take witness statements from anyone in the rooms on Travers’ corridor. By tacit agreement, Parks and Alec took their drinks across to the far side of the restaurant and settled at a table close to the window. Alec looked out at the still busy car park between them and the motorway services. Lights had come on, though it was still not completely dark, the year still building towards the longest day later in the month and the blueness of the summer sky not yet completely banished by what passed for dusk beyond the yellow of the sodium lamps.