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Touched by an Angel
JONATHAN MORRIS
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Published in 2011 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing A Random House Group Company
Copyright © Jonathan Morris 2011
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To my wife, Debbie
10 April 2003
Slosh-thwack! Slosh-thwack! Slosh-thwack!
The rain splattered against the windscreen before the wipers swiped the glass clean, patting the water down into a splashy trough above the dashboard. Beyond, the car headlights picked out a narrow country lane rolling out of the darkness, the high hedges on either side giving it the feel of driving through a tunnel.
Rebecca rubbed her forehead. Another headache.
Probably due to the idiot who had spent the last five miles behind her, his headlights blazing away in her rear-view mirror. Or exhaustion from driving non-stop from London. There was definitely no other reason for her headache. OK, she had been having them almost daily since the accident, but that was no reason to go and see a doctor, no matter what Mark said.
Rebecca felt a flush of anger. Mark should be with her now, paying the traditional bi-monthly visit to her parents in Chilbury. He had an excuse, of course; he always had
an excuse. There was a crisis at work and he had volunteered to work late to sort it out, as usual.
Slosh-thwack! Slosh-thwack! Slosh-thwack!
The radio hissed as it lost the signal for The World Tonight. It didn’t matter, Rebecca already knew what the news would be. It would be all about the invasion of Iraq.
The television news had been full of nothing else for weeks; journalists in flak jackets reporting live from hotel rooms, interspersed with infra-red footage of green blobs flashing back and forth over a burning city. It was like watching someone commentating on a computer game.
Today’s big story had been about American soldiers pulling down a statue of Saddam Hussein in some dusty town square while the reporter burbled excitedly about it being a momentous event in history. Seeing the footage of the conquering heroes draping their flag over the fallen statue, Rebecca had felt sick and ashamed. They’d be handing out chocolate bars next.
Slosh-thwack! Slosh-thwack! Slosh-thwack!
Rebecca twisted the dial for Radio 1. A plaintive piano riff emerged from the speakers, introducing Beautiful by Christina Aguilera. Rebecca left the song playing; it suited her mood and wouldn’t distract her from driving.
Slosh-thwack! Slosh-thwack! Slosh-thwack!
Approaching a sharp left turn, Rebecca changed down to second gear. She turned the corner, to be suddenly confronted by two brilliant shining lights bearing down upon her.
A horn blared out like a monster’s roar. Instinctively, Rebecca wrenched the steering wheel to the left to avoid
the oncoming heavy goods lorry. The left-hand side of her car went into the hedge, leaves and brambles scraping along the side. Her heart pounding, Rebecca remembered, too late, to apply the brakes.
The front of her car smashed into the grille of the lorry and the windscreen shattered into a million beads of glass.
The impact threw Rebecca forward, her seatbelt tightening so much it crushed the wind out of her lungs. Barely a second later, Rebecca found herself being thrown to the side as her car rolled over. Rebecca had a brief sense memory of being on a theme park roller-coaster ride. She had never liked roller-coaster rides.
Her only other thought was to observe with wry amusement that this was like something out of Casualty.
The next thing she knew, she was lying in her seat, gazing across a muddy field. Lying in her seat? Her seat had been upturned and her weight rested on her back. But if she was still inside the car, why could she feel the rain upon her face? She couldn’t feel any pain, though, which was a relief.
Rebecca cursed herself. How many times had her mother moaned on the telephone about lorries using the village as a shortcut, even though the council had installed speed cameras? It was an accident waiting to happen, she’d said. Turned out she’d been right.
Rebecca wondered why everything in the field had an orange hue, as though lit by a street lamp. A second later, everything went dark, before lighting up again with the same orange hue. The lorry must have activated it’s warning lights. What had happened to the lorry driver?
For a moment, Rebecca hoped that he’d been hurt, it would serve him right, before banishing the thought.
She’d been very lucky not to be injured.
But if she was OK, why couldn’t she move? Rebecca tried wriggling in her seat; her seatbelt was so tight she could hardly breathe. But nothing happened. She wanted to wipe the rain out of here eyes, but for some reason her hands didn’t respond. She began to wonder if she might’ve been hurt after all.
Outside the car, the orange light blinked back on.
Now that was weird. About six metres away, in the field, stood a statue, like might be found in a graveyard or a Roman museum. The statue was of a young woman with coiled hair wearing a flowing robe. It had two wings. An angel. The statue stood hunched, burying it’s head in it’s hands as though crying. To add to the effect, rain trickled from between it’s fingers.
The light blinked off, returning Rebecca to blackness.
She thought briefly of bonfires, of Guy Fawkes Night and toffee apples. Why was she thinking about bonfires? And then she realised she could smell burning.
The orange light blinked on again. Rebecca couldn’t be sure, but hadn’t the statue been holding its he
ad in its hands? Because now it was looking towards her with blank, pupil-less eyes.
There was the darkness again. Then the orange light.
The statue had moved closer now. Still staring at her with it’s impassive, stony eyes. Its mouth was now slightly open, as though drawing in breath to speak.
Darkness. Orange light.
It now stood only two metres away. It filled her view, looming over her.
Caught in the flickering glow of a fire, thick black smoke billowing around it, its expression had changed to a snarl of hunger. Its lips had drawn back to reveal rows of sharp fangs, like those of a bat. It reached towards her with outstretched hands, its long fingernails like talons.
But this was impossible, Rebecca thought. It wasn’t moving. It wasn’t moving.
Chapter
1
7 October 2011
Toby Murray was a difficult man to like. He had a pudgy, red face, he was flabby and sweaty, and he affected a very bad East End accent.
‘You wanna win this one, Mark. We wanna take ‘em dahn.’
Mark sighed. This wasn’t Law and Order, this was a routine piece of contract law. He’d only taken it on because Toby’s employers were one of Pollard, Boyce & Whitaker’s most prestigious clients, and because Toby had, rather pathetically, insisted on dealing with a senior partner. But if Toby wanted to be fed a load of high-powered gibberish, Mark would be only too happy to provide.
‘Nevertheless, I recommend we pick our battles carefully,’ said Mark. ‘Find as many areas of common ground as we can, because at the moment our position is about as solid as soufflé.’
‘So, what are you saying? What’s our next move?’
‘Make an audit of every contract, all the ones that have been fulfilled, all the ones that haven’t. I need points of contact, dates, emails and paper trails, everything that you can give me.’
Toby nodded and stood up. ‘You’ll have it next Monday.’
Mark pressed the button to summon his personal assistant. ‘Take as long as it takes.’
Toby glanced around the room, his eyes resting on the photograph that Mark kept on the shelf opposite his desk.
Toby whistled in admiration as he picked up the photograph. ‘Who’s the babe?’
The photograph showed Rebecca perched on the balcony of their hotel room in Rome. The morning sun shone in her hair like a halo and gave her skin a golden glow. Her eyes were wide and impossibly blue and a contented smile curled across her lips.
‘My, ah, wife,’ said Mark, feeling a sudden flush of anger. ‘If you could just put that back…’
‘The missus? Bit young, ain’t she? Well done!’
‘It was taken a while ago, if you could just put it back –’
‘Oh, got you.’ Toby returned the photograph to the shelf. ‘Former glories. Mine’s the same. Second you stick a ring on their finger, they start to inflate. It’s like there’s a valve.’
Siobhan appeared in the doorway, ‘All done, Mr Whitaker?’
‘I think so,’ said Mark curtly. ‘Mr Murray has important business to attend to, no doubt.’
Mark offered his hand to Toby. Toby clasped it and
attempted to crush Mark’s fingers. Toby was one of those men who felt it important to establish he was the Alpha Male.
‘Laters, mate,’ said Toby, releasing him.
Siobhan guided Toby out of the office before returning and closing the door so they wouldn’t be disturbed. ‘Are you all right?’
‘What?’ said Mark, rubbing some feeling back into his fingers.
‘Only I heard you mention your wife.’
‘Oh, Toby was just checking out the photo of her, that’s all.’
‘I see,’ said Siobhan. Siobhan was an attractive, dark-skinned woman in her forties, a lethal combination of a gentle smile and a no-nonsense attitude. She studied the photograph of Rebecca. ‘She looks very happy.’
‘She was,’ said Mark proudly. ‘That was taken the morning after we first got together.’
Siobhan turned to give Mark a concerned look. ‘How long has it been now, since the accident? Eight years?’
‘Yes,’ said Mark, avoiding her gaze by glancing out of his window at the rush-hour traffic on the Croydon flyover. Grey clouds filled the gloomy sky. It got dark so quickly these days.
‘Eight years. That’s a long time for you to still be torturing yourself. Rebecca wouldn’t want that.’
‘You don’t know what Rebecca would want.’
‘She’d want you to be happy. Rather than using what happened as an excuse to be miserable.’
‘An excuse?’
‘You should get out more. Meet new people. Women.
Single, alive women.’
‘Is this about Charlotte?’ Two weeks ago, Mark had gone on a date with Siobhan’s friend Charlotte, an attractive, friendly woman whose idea of a good night out sadly did not extend to spending three hours in a wine bar listening to her date talk about his dead wife.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Siobhan. ‘I have other friends.
There’s Susannah, Joanne –’
‘Thanks, but no thanks. Was there anything else?’
‘Only this.’ Siobhan slid a battered, padded envelope about the size of a paperback across his desk. Mark picked it up. His name and today’s date were scrawled on the front: MARK WHITAKER. 7/10/2011.
‘Has this just come in?’ said Mark, turning over the envelope.
‘No. Bit weird, actually. Apparently it’s been gathering dust in the archive for the last eight years with strict instructions that it should be delivered to you on this date.’
‘Eight years?’
‘A mystery package, eh? Well, are you going to open it?’
Mark ran a finger over the flap where the envelope had been stapled shut. Something about this envelope made him uneasy. His back suddenly felt as cold as a gravestone. ‘No,’ he said. ‘If it’s waited eight years, a few more hours won’t hurt.’
Then he realised what was odd about the envelope.
The name on the front was written in his own handwriting.
It had gone eight by the time he made his way down to reception. If anybody else had stayed behind in the office, they’d have thought he was working late, when in fact he had spent the last hour playing Killer Sudokus on the computer. Putting off the moment when he’d have to step out into the wind and the rain and begin the drive back to his cold, empty flat.
‘Night, Mr Whitaker, sir,’ said Ron, the overnight security guard.
Mark nodded to avoid engaging Ron in conversation, because he would have to ask about Ron’s children and he couldn’t for the life of him remember their names.
‘Lovely weather, eh?’ said Ron, indicating the street outside. The windows and glass doors had misted up, making the street lights look like smudges in the darkness.
‘Yeah, well, goodnight, Ron,’ said Mark. But before he turned to go he glanced at the closed-circuit television on Ron’s desk. Something had caught his eye. The black-and-white screen showed the reception area, facing out towards the street. Where someone stood peering in through one of the doors, their face almost touching the glass. As though waiting to come in. Mark turned to look at the door, but there was nobody there. He turned back to the monitor on Ron’s desk, but it had flicked over to show a view of one of the office stairwells. When it flicked back to the view of the reception area, there was no longer a face at the door.
Ron paused as he turned the page of his Daily Mirror, ‘Was there something, sir?’
‘No, no, nothing.’ Mark buttoned up his coat and headed out into the night, taking care to use a different door from the one in which he had seen the marble-white, staring face.
The rain eased off to a drizzle as Mark pulled into the petrol station. Pulling his coat tightly around him, he stepped into the freezing night and glugged thirty pounds of unleaded into the tank. He started to walk towards the shop to pay when he remembered the envelope, which he’d placed
on the passenger seat. For all he knew, it might contain confidential legal documents and was not the sort of thing he should leave unattended.
Mark returned to his car and studied the envelope under the forecourt light. The name on the front definitely looked like his handwriting, but that didn’t mean anything; someone else could have similar handwriting to him. But he was intrigued as to why anyone would leave an envelope with instructions for it to only be delivered eight years later. And why 7/10/2011? What was so important about that date? Mark poked a finger under the flap and tore it open, just enough to see inside.
The envelope contained at least a hundred neatly folded fifty-pound notes, with several pieces of paper wrapped around them.
Siobhan had been right, it was a real mystery. But it would have to wait. Mark stowed the envelope into his coat pocket, locked his car and made his way into the shop.
It was one of those petrol station shops that was like a
small supermarket, selling newspapers, magazines and microwaved sausage rolls. There were no other customers. Mark hurried to the counter to be served by a young Asian who didn’t look up from his smartphone.
‘Thirty quid.’
Mark slotted his card into the chip-and-pin and typed his number. As he waited for the machine to respond, he glanced over the attendant’s shoulder at the monitor showing the output of the petrol station’s closed-circuit cameras. The screen showed a view from a point above the counter, looking down into the shop. Mark could see the attendant and himself at the counter in grainy, flickering black-and-white. And behind him, at the end of the aisle near the door, stood a statue of an angel.
That was ridiculous. If there’d been a statue by the door, he’d have noticed it on his way in. Mark frowned at the picture on the screen. It was an old statue, it’s surface crumbling and pitted. It stood hunched, holding its face in its hands.
Mark turned to look back down the aisle. It was empty.
Where the statue had stood – where the statue should have been standing – there was just shiny, wet floor.
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