Alias

by Cari Hunter

  “Maybe you are,” she says, which doesn’t exactly boost my confidence. “That’ll come out in the wash, one way or another. At a guess—and this is only a guess, mind—there are two plausible scenarios that put you and Jolanta in that car.” She raises her index finger. “One, you were both on the take, something went pear-shaped, and you had to get out of Dodge. Two, for whatever reason, you were trying to find a safe place for Jolanta, and the driver of that Audi made sure you never got there. What troubles me is that you didn’t choose to alert anyone in MMP. Now, that would be understandable if you’d gone rogue, but if either of you were in danger and needed help, then the obvious place to turn for that would be your own force.” She doesn’t need to spell the rest out, and the implications settle all around us. Our shoulders slump, and the deepening of our breathing sends out heavy puffs of white.

  “How did I do?” she asks, angling her head until she can see my face.

  “A little too well,” I admit, but there’s no point refastening the gate when the horse is halfway to Llandudno.

  “Determined to solve the whole damn mystery on your own, aren’t you?”

  I shrug, and she shakes her head in despair.

  “Despite having been suspended,” she says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “That’s proving to be a bit of a ball ache.” Before I can second-guess myself, I take off my coat and unbutton my shirtsleeve, rolling it up past my cast. I tilt my wrist to display its scribbled clues: Two men. My accent. Leather glove? Metal, and, off to one side, 2311.

  “Where did those come from?” she asks. Somewhat understandably, she doesn’t seem impressed by my sterling detective work.

  I shuffle my bottom like the idiot newbie who’s just arrested an innocent bystander. “I had a nightmare my third night in the hospital, and I wrote what I remembered as soon as I woke up. Two men got into the car after we’d crashed. They took the keys to my flat in Gorton, and they left us to die.” I touch the ridge of my cheekbone. “I found bruises here where one of them gripped me.”

  Her eyes flick to the spot I indicate, searching for evidence long since faded. “It’s not much to go on,” she says with admirable tact. “Could you identify either of the men?”

  “No.”

  “And you have no idea why they wanted you dead?”

  “No.”

  “What about MMP? Do you think someone there might be involved?”

  I nod miserably, and she kicks at a pebble, sending it spiralling into the water.

  “You and Jolanta weren’t lovers, were you?”

  “No, we weren’t.” The words crack on their way out of my throat, and I don’t say anything else. I’ve already overplayed my hand. She doesn’t budge, though. She doesn’t caution me and march me to the car.

  “These last three days,” she says, “I’m assuming you’ve not been recuperating like a model patient. So what have you been up to?”

  I tick my adventures off an imaginary list: foiling a couple of break-ins, getting kicked in the guts, chasing Krzys’s shadow, staking out the factory, searching high and low for a flash drive that may not exist, pondering the significance of 2311.

  “It’s a long story,” I hedge.

  She picks up my coat and drapes it around my shoulders. “Tell it to me.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Pryce’s fingertips are cold, their tentative pressure raising a chain reaction of goose pimples across my abdomen. I’m already shivering, the heightened adrenaline of the morning ebbing away now that I’ve laid everything in the open for her to dissect.

  “When did you last see a doctor?” she asks, moving her hand from the ugly stain around my belly button and lowering my shirt.

  I tuck myself in, refastening my coat and folding my arms. I can’t seem to get warm no matter what I do, and I answer through clattering teeth. “I’m fine. A paramedic checked me out.”

  “Mmhm.” She doesn’t even bother to articulate her incredulity, and I pity every perp who’s ever had the misfortune to sit opposite her in an interrogation. She must have innumerable counter-theories and arguments to debunk what I’ve just told her, but she hasn’t yet launched her opening salvo.

  “Is that bag of yours an overnight bag?” she asks.

  Keeping my arms locked across my chest prevents me from scratching my head in cartoon-like confusion. “Uh…yeah.”

  She stands and brushes grit from her backside. “Good. I’ll interview you under caution tomorrow. In the meantime we’ve got quite a bit of work to do.”

  I’m still processing the interview under caution part as she makes a beeline for the car.

  “What the fuck?” I mutter, swaying onto my feet, unbalanced by numb toes and a damp arse. “Hey!” I raise my voice, forcing her to backtrack a few steps. “Hang on a minute! Where are we going?”

  “My place,” she says, and elaborates as I gape at her. “Look, the cafe will be overrun by now, and we can’t do this in the office, not without setting off all the bells and whistles. I’ll book you into a B&B on the way, but I guarantee I’ll have better coffee.”

  “Hmm. I might need something stronger.”

  She smiles. “Let’s stick with coffee for now.”

  Punch-drunk with relief and worry, I let her lead me to the Disco and fasten my seat belt. The claustrophobic panic of our first trip down the A5 has been beaten into submission by an all-encompassing lethargy that knocks me into a stupor. I doze, rolling awake again as we stop at a cosy-looking bed and breakfast, but I’m not coherent enough to get out and participate in the registration process. The rumble of the wheels on the unpaved driveway compels me to crack open an eye, but she hushes me and tells me to go back to sleep, her voice so soothing that I obey it without question.

  I dream of sea salt and a mountain that darts like a shark, the images underscored by a lilting tune with incomprehensible lyrics. I wake properly when the song tapers off and cold air hits my face. I’m alone in the car, with the engine ticking over, and I can see Pryce in the rearview mirror, refastening a wrought iron gate.

  “Sorry, I keep meaning to oil the lock,” she says as she gets back in and sets off slowly along the narrow lane. She studies me in the shade cast by a line of trees. “You staying with me this time?”

  I yawn and scrub sleep from my eyes. “Think so.”

  Sunlight is dappling the car, highlighting a stream in spate dashing across the stones, and swathes of copper-coloured moorland.

  “You weren’t kidding about living in the middle of nowhere,” I say.

  “I never kid,” she retorts, deadpan, and reverses into her parking spot in one smooth, done-it-a-thousand-times manoeuvre.

  I spot her house then: a pretty stone cottage, elevated above the lane and accessed via a curving set of steps. A wooden table and chairs sit on a small walled patio, a vantage point with a view stretching for miles. Nostalgia sweeps over me in an unwelcome wave, and I smell fresh bread, and bacon frying with golden-yolked eggs. Martin and I would eat breakfast outside in summer, tousle haired and pyjama clad, dipping toast soldiers in the eggs and squabbling over whose turn it was to muck out the chickens.

  The slam of the car boot and footsteps crunching on gravel haul me back to Snowdonia. I join Pryce at the side of the car, hurrying along with her as the sun disappears behind a bank of thick cloud and hail begins to fall.

  “Careful, they’re slippery,” she warns me, taking the steps two at a time as I almost go arse over tit on the first.

  She’s opened the front door and switched on the hallway light by the time I’ve skidded my way to the top of the flight. I stamp my feet on the mat and revert to old habits, slipping off my boots. She’s done likewise, and I initially put mine beside hers before deciding that looks far too domesticated and rearranging them to face the opposite direction. Following the sound of running water, I find her in the kitchen, filling a kettle with one hand and retrieving mugs with the other. An overhead light casts a mellow glow on the traditional farmhouse kitchen
: Belfast sink, wooden countertops, and an Aga belting out heat. A single plate and bowl sit on the drainer, one knife and one fork in the cutlery tub. I can picture her sitting alone at her table—I bet she never eats off her knee—perhaps reading a book or a journal, and it makes me sad that she’s chosen to isolate herself out here. Then I get annoyed at myself for being so damn patronising. She doesn’t live here because there are no other options for her; she lives here because she wants to.

  I still haven’t moved beyond the doorway. I teeter there on an invisible line, beset by doubts, with second thoughts piling like a train wreck on top of third, fourth, and fifth ones.

  “Pryce, I…” I stare at my socks, waiting out the splash of the tap.

  She places the kettle on the Aga, and everything is so like Hawclough that it makes me want to bawl. “What?” she asks.

  I rub my temple where it’s beginning to ache. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Yeah, honestly.”

  She dries her hands on a tea towel and then folds it into a neat square and sets it on the counter. “You know when something just doesn’t sit right? Like a lid that’s not quite snug when you press it down?”

  “Itch you can’t scratch?” I suggest.

  “Exactly.” She holds my gaze, steady and resolute. “Your case is the itch I can’t scratch, and it has been ever since that night in the wood.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You flinched,” she says. “When I touched your face. I bet you don’t remember, do you?”

  I start to shake my head, but I do remember. I remember panicking and pushing away, and the solid barrier of the rock stopping me.

  “You were like an animal in a trap,” she says. “Nowhere to run, bleeding all over, and yet you still tried. It stuck with me. I wanted to know why you’d do that, and it makes sense now.” She gestures at my cast, its multicoloured clues hidden beneath my sleeve. “I was wearing leather gloves.”

  “You took them off,” I whisper.

  She nods. “I didn’t understand why I needed to, at the time. I sort of put two and two together, but I only got to four this afternoon.”

  “What are you going to do now, then?” I ask, unable to keep the challenge from my question.

  “You mean, who else am I going to tell?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “No one.”

  I throw up my hands, exasperated by her sanguinity. She’s not stupid; she must have considered the potential consequences.

  “You could lose your job,” I say. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “Perhaps. Unless the end justifies the means. Look, the second I make this official, my DI will want to liaise with MMP, and that’ll tip off whoever might be on the take there. It seems more logical to get as far as we can on our own.”

  “Just the two of us,” I say.

  She nods. “Just the two of us.”

  The kettle starts to whistle, a shrill, keen siren. For a second, it ramps up the tension, but then she rolls her eyes, and I let out a shaky laugh.

  “Couldn’t have timed that any better,” I say.

  “Not even if I’d planned it.” She slides the kettle from the stove, muting its shriek, and pours water into the mugs. Outside, the hail has softened to snow, and I watch flakes settle on the bare soil of raised vegetable beds.

  “Here.” She hands me a mug of coffee and nudges the sugar bowl toward me. She’s made tea for herself, proper builder’s tea, not one of those perfumed, herbal monstrosities. We sit at the kitchen table, where she tears the cellophane from a new notepad and writes “Alis” on the first page of our unauthorised case file, dotting a bullet point on the next line down.

  “You should report the second break-in,” she says, holding her pen like a single chopstick and tapping her thumb with it. “Low-key. Just request a FWIN for future reference, and highlight the incident as a potential security concern in the neighbourhood. If someone in MMP has their eye on you and you want your amnesia cover to stick, you need to keep reacting to these events, or they’ll smell a rat.”

  “I will,” I say. “I’ll go through the non-emergency line so Wallace won’t get wind of it.”

  “Good.” She doesn’t lecture me on safety or remind me that one slip-up will probably lead to another attempt on my life. I’m grateful she doesn’t feel the need to spell it out for me, because I’m shitting bricks as it is.

  “Are you able to run the blood sample?” I ask. It’s a big ask. A DNA match would give us our first real suspect, but she’d have to falsify the reason for the request, and I’m not sure how far she’s willing to stick out her neck.

  She jots a note on the second page: “Break-in—blood analysis,” which seems to be the first item on a to-do list. More contemplative tapping.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have it with you?” she says.

  I open my hands helplessly. “It’s in my fridge.”

  “Send it via a courier and address it directly to me. The labs will be four to five weeks at best on a routine analysis, so the sooner you can get it here, the better. In the meantime, I can run a nationwide search on John Does to see whether anyone matching your description of this Krzysztof chap has turned up. Email me a copy of his photo when you get back. That might be easier to obtain a positive ID from.”

  “Right.” I want to thank her, but we’ve fallen into the natural rhythm of a case briefing, the give and take of dealing with outstanding issues, planning future tasks, and deciding what to prioritise, and emotions don’t have a place here. Besides which, we might reach a point where all our hard work ultimately exposes me as a criminal mastermind, so I don’t think we’re supposed to be bonding.

  “Have you managed to access your bank accounts?” she asks.

  “Yes. I’ve got two current accounts and one on PayPal.” I shake my head in anticipation of her follow-up question. “There were no unusual transactions. No deposits other than my wages. I spent over a year living in a shithole, eating Aldi baked beans and soups. I wasn’t exactly living the high life.”

  “Nothing wrong with Aldi,” she says, neatly side-stepping the snide “No, not yet,” response I expected. “This number, 2311,” she continues, moving right along. “Why would you write a vitally important code in a locker you can’t access with any regularity?”

  I gnaw at a piece of dry skin on my thumb as I mull this over. Criminal mastermind I may be, but I hadn’t spotted that flaw. Three times, three times I’d been to Belle Vue since the start of the UC assignment. Each occasion was listed in Wallace’s bloody file. How the hell did I convince myself that 2311 could have any significance?

  “I wouldn’t,” I conclude. I fold my arms on the table and drop my head onto them, bouncing off my cast with a hollow thud. “Bollocks.”

  “Easy, you’ll give yourself a concussion.” It’s hard to tell for sure through my tinnitus, but I think she sounds amused.

  “Yeah? Might knock some bleedin’ sense in.” I peek up at her. “I’m really sorry. I think I’m usually better than this. Christ, I hope I am.”

  “Well, you’ve had a lot on your plate.”

  Straightening in my chair, I tidy my hair to cover the fuzz of my not-quite-bald spot. “Yeah. Plus, my brain got bashed.”

  She smiles, graciously accepting my defence. “It did, but still, I think we can put that particular clue aside.”

  I turn her notepad toward me, scanning the neat handwriting. She’s written more than we’ve discussed, cramming things down while they’re fresh in her mind. I press my finger on a note that reads “route CCTV,” smearing the fresh ink onto my skin.

  “I’m pretty sure I was planning to come back that night,” I say. “My toothbrush and toiletries were still in the Gorton flat, and you never found anything of mine at the scene, did you?”

  “No, but the men could’ve rummaged through the remnants of Jolanta’s bag and removed yours in its entirety. The wreckage was spread over a wide enough area f
or them to have risked taking a bag and hoping no one noticed it was missing. They got the keys to your flat from somewhere.”

  “My pocket,” I say. “I keep my keys in my coat pocket.” I conceal a shudder by swallowing a mouthful of hot coffee. This is something I’ve tried not to dwell upon: the thought of someone touching me, going through my clothing, while I was unconscious. I clutch the mug to my chest, my knuckles turning white as my fingers burn, but within seconds, she’s easing the mug from my grip. She wets a tea towel with cold water and presses it to my reddened palm.

  “Should we call it a day?” she asks.

  “No, I’m all right. Sorry.” I squeeze the towel, letting water seep over my skin.

  “You don’t need to keep apologising,” she says. “If this gets to be too much, just tell me.”

  “It won’t. I’m okay.” I return the cloth to the sink, as if that proves I’m one hundred percent fixed and not in the least bit traumatised. “Did you check the local CCTV?” I ask, refocusing the timeline to before the crash. I know she used ANPR cameras to track my car into Wales, but these days the councils have stuck cameras onto every other lamppost, and one of them might have caught the Audi.

  “Only for your car,” she says. “Plate recognition won’t work on a partial, and I can’t submit a far-reaching request if we’re keeping things below the radar.”

  “What about the footage you already examined? Do you still have access to it?”

  “Yes, it’s part of the case file.” She adds a dash to the original bullet point. “Fancy taking a look?”

  “Sign me up,” I say, happy to have a task.

  “That leaves the flash drive.” She heads a fresh page. “Or disc, or whatever it may be that these people are repeatedly breaking into your home to retrieve.”

  “How do they even know about it?” I ask. “I don’t even know it exists, not for sure, so how the hell do they?”

  “They probably don’t,” she says. “They’ve probably just reached the same conclusion you have: that you recorded these events at some point, by some means, whether that’s a file, a disc, a set of notes, a diary entry, or something incriminating scribbled on the bottom of a shopping list. They’ll think they have the luxury of time, given your head injury, and we need to keep them thinking that.”