by Jo Bannister
Hazel stumbled blindly back to her car. It wasn’t tears tripping her; it was too soon for that. It was pure undiluted shock that had bleached and narrowed her perception like the tunnel vision of a near-death experience. Gabriel Ash was not the beginning and end of her existence. She had had a life before she knew him; she would find a way back to it now he was gone. There were plenty of things she could be doing—should be doing. Just, offhand, she couldn’t think what they were. She got into the car and sat still, panting softly like a hard-run deer.
The laptop was on the seat beside her. There was that. Maybe Ash didn’t want her help anymore, but Saturday did. She sniffed determinedly. When you can’t find a cure for cancer, sorting out the filing cabinet is a good plan B. Setting Saturday’s mind at rest could be plan B. She’d head home, if home she must go, via Meadowvale and tell some innocuous lie about how the device came into her keeping.
It was now some weeks since she’d passed the portals of Meadowvale Police Station. They were surprised to see her. Even Sergeant Murchison, who’d seen most things at least once, blinked when she stood before him, friendly smile pinned firmly in place, the laptop in her hands.
“What can I do for you … er, miss?”
The smile didn’t flicker, but Hazel heard the edge on her own voice. “First, Sarge, you can stop pretending you don’t recognize me. Then you can find out if Detective Inspector Gorman’s in his office.”
It might have been Sunday morning but he was, and from the speed at which he appeared down the stairs, he at least didn’t need reminding who she was. “Hazel! Come on in. Come upstairs, I’ll get some coffee sent in.” Instinctively, unaware that he was doing it, he ushered her up to the CID offices with an arm behind her shoulders, as if she might need defending. Of course, he was aware that she’d been stabbed in the back in this building before.
Hazel had expected to feel, and to make others feel, a little awkward. She was not prepared for how powerful the sensation of wrongness would be, or how urgent the instinct to cut and run. She made herself breathe steadily and keep walking. She’d had some difficult encounters in this building. But the facts had come out, and everyone who’d shunned her was now aware that she’d done nothing wrong. She had borne their hostility when they’d thought there was a reason for it, refusing to act as if she had something to be ashamed of. Now they knew the truth, it should have been easier. Somehow it wasn’t. She was glad the place was quiet.
Gorman took her to his office and shut the door. He ordered coffee over the intercom. “How are you?” He peered into her face with every sign of concern.
“Fine,” she lied breezily. “Just waiting for the word to get back to work.”
Dave Gorman nodded. He was a squarely built man with a broad, low forehead and a much-broken nose. If you’d cut his leg off, it would have had the words RUGBY UNION running through it like a stick of rock. He was also an intelligent man, and a good one. “Give it time. What you went through, you don’t get over in a week or two.” He gave a sudden smile. “They’re paying you to sit in the sun and do bugger all. Enjoy it while you can.”
Hazel felt herself relaxing in his company. “I’ll try.” She put the laptop on his desk. “I brought you this.”
He raised a bushy eyebrow. “Whose is it?”
“I don’t know. I think it must be lost property. Somebody left it sitting on my car.”
“Where?”
“Highfield Road. I came out and found it this morning.” She didn’t explain what she was doing at Gabriel Ash’s house, and Gorman didn’t ask.
“You didn’t see who left it?”
Hazel shook her head. “No.” It was a lie, but only a white one.
“Did you try to access it?”
“No,” she said again. “We can now, if you want to. It’s probably the best way of finding out who owns it.”
“Okay.” Gorman nodded. “Though isn’t it a bit technical, getting past other people’s passwords?”
Hazel had taught IT during her first career. “I’ll let you into a secret about passwords,” she said, opening the device and pressing keys. “Something like seventy percent of computer owners use the password PASSWORD.” She entered the magic letters and the laptop let her in.
Automatically she called up the most recent document. But it wasn’t a letter, as she’d hoped—something that would have the correspondent’s name and address on it. For a moment she wasn’t sure what it was. She tried tilting her head to one side in case that might make a difference.
“It’s a map,” said Dave Gorman helpfully.
But it wasn’t, not exactly. “More like a blueprint,” said Hazel. “The sort of thing an architect draws up to show how a building will sit on its site.” Brow furrowed, she slowly resumed the vertical. “It looks familiar. Why does it look familiar?”
Gorman was shaking his head, bemused, when he recognized it and changed the side-to-side motion into an up-and-down one. “Dirty Nellie’s.”
Hazel turned to look up at him peering over her shoulder. “Pardon?” Her mother had thought it a vulgar expression, but she’d never quite cured her daughter of using it.
“The pub on the corner of Market Street. Former pub, I should say, it hasn’t had a tenant for ten years. The sign says ‘The Red Lion,’ but everyone in Norbold calls it Dirty Nellie’s. After a former landlady who ran it as a brothel.”
“And they couldn’t find a tenant for a pub known throughout Norbold as Dirty Nellie’s? Amazing,” said Hazel mildly.
“In the end the council bought the place to redevelop the site, just as the recession hit,” said Gorman, remembering. “Nothing’s been done about it because there’s no money. Except”—he nodded at the screen—“it looks as if someone’s finally taking an interest in it.”
“Housing, by the look of it,” said Hazel. “And shops.” She scowled. “All very desirable, I’m sure, but it doesn’t help us get this thing back to its owner.”
“Yes, it does. The council will know who the developers are, and they’ll know which of their employees has mislaid his laptop. A couple of phone calls, and you can expect a nice bunch of flowers from a relieved architect.”
Hazel grinned. “That’ll be the day.” Flowers were optional, but she’d badly needed a success today, and this simple restoration of lost property would do. Already she was feeling better than she had an hour ago.
“Lunch?” suggested DI Gorman, reaching for his jacket.
Hazel looked critically at her watch. “It isn’t lunchtime.”
Gorman sniffed. “I am the senior CID officer and currently the second most senior officer in this police station. Lunchtime begins when I say it begins.”
* * *
When the house in Highfield Road was built, good families kept their own carriage and horses and needed somewhere to park them. Around the back, accessed from a narrow lane referred to locally as a ginnel, was the stable block. For most of the last century, of course, it had been garages, and there was a car there now. It wasn’t Ash’s car. Ash had had a car, but he’d no idea what had become of it. This had been his mother’s car until her death three years earlier.
For most of those three years he had felt no urge to drive. In the last six months, though, the notion had seemed less impossible than it once had, to the extent that he’d had a mechanic service the vehicle against the day when he might want to use it. Now he’d dismissed his chauffeur, the need to be mobile again was suddenly pressing. He turned the hall bureau inside out looking for the keys.
The white dog sat in the kitchen doorway, watching him.
CHAPTER 5
STEPHEN GRAVES, TOO, WAS FINDING it impossible to sit still. Yesterday’s developments had unsettled him more than he’d realized. He tried to catch up on some work, but though he had the Grantham office to himself, he was unable to concentrate well enough to achieve anything useful. In the end he did what most people do when the rug has been yanked from under their feet and they’re not sure who’s g
oing to do the cleaning up. He went home.
His wife looked puzzled, unaccustomed to seeing much of him even at weekends. Graves assured her—lied to her—that all was well, and offered to treat her to an afternoon’s golf. Then he had the house to himself.
Looking back from where he was now, it was hard to remember how it had begun. He’d been in the business of manufacturing arms for half his life; in a way, for all of it, since Bertrams had been established by a childless uncle with the clear intention that Stephen should succeed him. Most of that time it had been a complex, demanding, exciting, profitable business, one that he was proud to be a part of. Then, the thing with the pirates …
Even now it was hard not to smirk at the word. He knew, as did anyone with a television and half a brain cell, that Somali pirates had been responsible for devastating losses to international trade and to life; still, the word conjured images of Captains Hook and Pugwash.
He’d known it was no joke even before he lost his first shipment. He’d been taking additional precautions since learning that the pirates were beginning to augment their maritime activities with attacks on air freight. Arms shipments held a particular attraction for them, so he and others in the industry had got their heads together to agree on a strategy, keeping details of destinations, routes, cargoes, and estimated times of arrival under wraps for as long as was practical. Maybe it helped, but it didn’t solve the problem. Clearly there was a leakage of information somewhere in the system. But then, so many people had to know. Pilots had to be instructed; flight plans had to be filed. Somehow, the pirates found out.
That first time Bertrams was targeted, Graves couldn’t believe how angry he felt. It wasn’t just the financial loss, it was the sense of helplessness. Of knowing it could happen again the next week or the next month, and unless he could come up with an answer, he’d be just as helpless to prevent it then as he had been this time.
In due course it did happen again. Planes were seized off runways and flown away to God knows where. Planes disappeared in midair, between one refueling stop and the next. Planes reached their destination, only to be taken over while the paperwork was being completed.
They weren’t all Bertrams shipments, of course. They originated in various parts of Europe and were en route to various destinations in Africa. Most of the competitors Graves had talked to seemed to be losing a shipment once or twice a year—not enough to devastate the industry, not enough to send otherwise-sound companies to the wall, but easily enough that there was no other topic of conversation when arms manufacturers got together.
That was when the government started taking it seriously. Not seriously enough to send gunboats—that sort of thing got ex-colonial powers a bad name in these democratic days—but enough to set up a dedicated task force in Whitehall to analyze the threat and propose countermeasures. Which is how Stephen Graves and Gabriel Ash first met.
Then there was the woman: Ash’s wife. If Ash was functioning again, holding her hostage might be all that was keeping the pirates safe. He was, at least he had been, that good. Graves had known it the first time they met. His grasp of the situation, the threat he represented to a major criminal enterprise on another continent, was greater by an order of magnitude than that of any other experts Graves had talked to. Taking Cathy Ash had crippled her husband for four years. Knowing she was still alive might keep him on the sidelines for as long again. Or it might not. Graves didn’t know.
The doorbell rang. Graves flicked on the security screen. An elderly gray Volvo, and a man leaning close to the camera. Gabriel Ash. Not entirely unexpected, but still enough to send a jolt through Graves’s spare frame. He went to the door.
“May we come in?”
Graves looked toward the car, expecting to see the young policewoman. But the car was empty, and while Graves was still looking, Ash walked past him into the hall. So did the white lurcher.
Graves found himself staring, and dragged his eyes away and upward. “Mr. Ash. Is there some news?”
“What news could there be?” asked Ash. “I don’t know where my wife is. I don’t know how to contact the people holding her. You do.”
“Not exactly,” protested Stephen Graves. “I did explain. The pirates contact me. I can’t contact them.”
“They contact the computer in Cambridge?” Graves nodded. “Why not here, or at your office?”
Graves thought it was obvious. “My wife might see what I was doing if I spoke to them from here. Someone in my office might if I used a computer at Bertrams.”
“So you use a computer in an empty flat in Cambridge that belongs to a friend who’s abroad.”
“Yes.”
“How long has she been abroad?”
Graves gave a hunted shrug. “A while. She asked me to keep an eye on the place until she got back.”
“How long ago did the pirates make contact with you?”
“About three—no, four—months ago.”
“That’s when they showed you Cathy?”
Graves bowed his head. “Yes.”
“And said what?”
They’d been over all this the day before. But Graves wasn’t surprised if Ash had been unable to take it in. “That in return for her life they wanted information about forthcoming shipments—ours, and any others I heard about.”
“And you agreed?”
“No, I didn’t!” The flash of temper subsided as quickly as it had flared. “I’m sorry. No, of course I didn’t agree. I said I was going to the police.”
“What made you change your mind?”
The manufacturer chewed on his lip. “Mrs. Ash did. Except that I didn’t know her name. All I knew was she was some poor terrified Englishwoman who’d somehow fallen into their hands, who was sitting shaking in front of the computer with an assault rifle stuck in her ear, begging me to help her. To do as they said, or they’d kill her in front of me. And she said…” He glanced at Ash and the words dried up.
There was something implacable in Ash’s expression, a thread of steel in his voice. “What did she say?”
“She said she had two little boys. That she didn’t know where they were, but the pirates had said they’d use them as hostages if they had to kill her. They’d put them in front of the computer and hurt them to get what they wanted.”
There was a lengthy silence before Ash spoke again. “So you agreed.”
Graves nodded, defeated. “I didn’t want to. I tried to think of an alternative. I couldn’t. They meant it—I knew they meant it, the woman knew they meant it. In the end, I suppose it was cowardice that made me agree. I couldn’t bear to think that I was her only chance and I was going to let her down. To watch her die, knowing I’d let her down.”
“What about the aircrew? The men flying the planes carrying these shipments. Did you think they’d be set free?” Ash’s tone was hard. As if it wasn’t his wife they were talking about, and his sons; as if he wouldn’t have made the same choice himself.
Graves gave a miserable shrug. “I didn’t know them. And I didn’t know they were going to die. Didn’t know for sure. And if they did, it would be thousands of miles away and I wouldn’t be watching. I’m sorry. It seemed a lesser evil than condemning one frightened woman and her children.”
Another of those long, painful pauses. The white dog padded softly across the carpet; it took an effort of will for Graves to ignore her as she walked behind him.
Ash said, “How do you know when the pirates want to talk to you?”
Graves produced his mobile phone. “On this. They give me a time to be online in Cambridge.”
“How did they get that number?”
“They found it on the paperwork when they hijacked one of my shipments.”
“And you really have no way of contacting them?”
Graves shook his head. “They route the calls through different servers in different parts of the world. I don’t think an expert could find them. I know I couldn’t.”
Ash nodded slowly.
“Then we’ll wait till they contact you again. I don’t think it’ll be long, not now they know I’ve seen Cathy.” He was scribbling on the back of an envelope. “This is my number. Call me as soon as you hear from them, and I’ll meet you in Cambridge.”
“All right.”
From the front door of his house, Stephen Graves watched his visitors walk out to the gray car. His heart was pounding in his chest. In fact, though, things could have been worse. Ash might have turned up here with a contingent from the Counter Terrorism Command. Even the girl seemed to have more important things to do. And Ash alone wouldn’t be rocking any boats. He had too much to lose.
As they reached the car, Gabriel Ash looked down at his dog. He said quietly, “Well, what do you think? Is that the man who shot at us?” Who had forced Hazel’s car into a ditch on a remote country road and would have killed them both but that the lurcher drove him off.
Oh yes, said Patience decisively. I never forget a pair of trousers.
CHAPTER 6
A DAY AND A HALF PASSED in which nothing much happened. Nothing important, nothing strange, nothing upsetting. This was close to a record in Hazel’s recent experience, but she was constrained from even a low-key celebration by a sense of deep unease. Something should be happening. More than that, she should be making something happen. She knew as surely as if she’d read the script that Ash was walking into more trouble than he was capable of handling; and maybe he was right, maybe there was nothing she could do to help, but she ought to be there for him. Ready to pick up the pieces when his world imploded.
