Lie in Wait: A dark and gripping crime thriller

by GJ Minett

  ‘She’s not a bitch, Willie.’

  She’s a bitch and you know it. Stop making excuses for her.

  ‘You don’t even know her.’

  I know you’re well shot of her. I know she did squat to help you when everyone else was treating you like shit. You think she couldn’t have put a stop to it if she’d tried hard enough? You think for one minute she gives a toss about you? Ask yourself, who did she marry, eh, this so-called friend of yours? Who did she marry?

  ‘Please don’t swear. It’s not necessary.’

  Callum FUCKING Green, that’s who. Christ, how many times did you come home either bawling your eyes out or with sopping wet trousers where you’d pissed yourself? How many times did he take your lunch off you and hand it out for everyone else to chuck around the playground? Have you forgotten how he used to bark in your face when he heard you were terrified of dogs? Really loud. Close up. WOOF WOOF! You remember that? WOOF WOOF! WOOF WOOF! Till you started crying? That’s the person she married, this sweetheart of yours.

  ‘She’s not my sweetheart. And she was nice to me.’

  She was not nice.

  ‘She used to sit and talk to me.’

  Only when she was damned sure the others wouldn’t notice. Moment anyone else came along she was out of there like shit off a shovel.

  ‘Please don’t swear.’

  It’s all gonna start up again, you know that don’t you? All those years are gonna come flooding back . . . just as you’ve started to turn a corner.

  ‘You’re wrong.’

  I’m not wrong and you know it. She’s gonna twist you round her little finger all over again. I’ll bet you’ve already told her you’ll do it.

  ‘I haven’t.’

  Yeah, right.

  ‘I said I’d go and have a look. I didn’t promise anything.’

  No . . . course you didn’t. Fucking joke. You might fool yourself half the time but you don’t fool me. I know you too well.

  ‘I know why you’re doing this.’

  You don’t know squat.

  ‘I know why you never liked her.’

  FUCK ALL is what you know.

  ‘If you’re going to keep using that sort of language –’

  Yeah, I know. You’ll piss off back to bed and leave me here. Well, before you do, let me tell you this, OK? You allow her to sneak back in, don’t come crying to me when it all goes tits up. You hear me?

  ‘I’m going back to bed now.’

  That bitch is your weak spot and some day you’ll wish you’d listened to me. You mark my words.

  ‘Goodnight, Willie.’

  You mark my words.

  2

  NOW: THURSDAY, 2ND OCTOBER

  HOLLOWAY

  At 10.25 Andy Holloway was sitting at his desk, catching up on paperwork and wishing he could turn back the clock, just an hour or so. Specifically, he’d have welcomed the chance to rewind to a few seconds before he tore into DC Andrew Walker, giving him the sort of bollocking that he undoubtedly deserved and which had been coming for quite some time but which, on reflection, might have been more appropriate if delivered in private, rather than during morning briefing with the rest of the squad looking on. Thirty seconds of sustained vitriol, bordering on spite, might clear out a few cobwebs, but that wasn’t exactly textbook procedure for dealing with a subordinate with an attitude problem.

  It would have been nice to be able to airbrush those thirty seconds from the record and find a better way of dealing with the arrogant little turd but you don’t get second chances in life, he’d learned. You have to live with your mistakes. There was no point in worrying about it now. It was done.

  He suspected that if it had been anyone but Walker he’d probably have cut him some slack, and the double standards implicit in that flash of insight didn’t sit easily with him. The plain and simple truth was, he just didn’t like the kid. He’d seen his sort before – nepotism on legs, naked ambition shining out of his arsehole, career plan already mapped out, future promotions underwritten by influential family connections, the whole process delayed only by the need for a touch of plausibility in the timeline of the narrative. Walker wouldn’t be stopping at plain old DI, a fact he made clear with his body language every time he entered the squad room. For young Master Walker it would be a case of onwards and upwards, per ardua ad astra, only with as little of the ardua as he could get away with. The only consolation for Holloway was the knowledge that by the time the wunderkind got an office of his own and started looking around for a little payback, he himself would be long gone and out of harm’s way. Four more years. He could do that.

  He read through another sheet, scribbled a few notes in the margin, scrawled his signature at the bottom and transferred it to a much smaller pile in his out tray. In a different context, with much less at stake, he might have laughed at the futility of it all. Catch-22 had nothing on the Major Crimes Team. The harder they worked, the more paperwork they generated and the less time they then had to do the groundwork which might bring some sort of breakthrough with the crimes they were so busy cataloguing. It was like slapping the custard pie in your own face. You spent days setting yourself up, producing all the evidence needed to confirm your own failings. And much as he hated that word, no more appropriate alternative sprang to mind because that was how it felt right now. By any yardstick you cared to choose, they were failing.

  Young Jamie Barrett had disappeared a week ago now – and a week was too long. Forget the first-forty-eight-hours myth that TV shows were so keen to peddle under the guise of authenticity. The first six hours were what really mattered. If you hadn’t turned up anything by then, you might as well accept that you were in this for the long haul, and this was very much where they all found themselves right now. Deep in it.

  So now they were going to have to start over, go back through every piece of evidence, re-examine every lead, challenge every assumption in the hope that shaking the dog for long enough would work a few fleas loose. It would require huge levels of commitment and team work from everyone in the room. What they most definitely did not need were exaggerated sighs and muttered asides about what a waste of time it was from DC Walker or anyone else.

  Add to that the South Mundham murder case, which appeared to be going absolutely nowhere at present, and you’d have to say the past couple of months hadn’t shown him in a very good light. He’d heard on the grapevine that eyebrows had been raised upstairs and questions asked about his handling of these two high-profile cases. He knew his worth, was confident he still had an open line of credit in the bank of professional credibility, but he was relieved none the less to have someone with the integrity of Marie Loneghan watching his back. Move it along ten years and imagine newly promoted DCS Andrew Walker sitting in the office along the corridor . . . Didn’t bear thinking about.

  He reached for another sheet of paper as Neil Horgan knocked and poked his head round the door.

  ‘Boss, you got a minute?’ he asked.

  Holloway held out both hands to indicate the imposing piles of documents on the desk before him.

  ‘Depends whether it’s good news or bad.’

  ‘Not really sure to be honest, but I think you’re going to want to hear this.’ Horgan stepped into the office and closed the door behind him. He walked over to the desk and waited to be asked to take a seat before doing so, a touch of deference Holloway always appreciated. There was no sense of entitlement with Horgan but neither was there the slightest hint of sycophancy. He was the model DS: loyal, hard-working, intelligent, dependable, a family man whose devotion to his wife and two small children somehow never made him a target for the more cynical members of the squad. He was also immaculately turned out without being remotely showy about it. He wasn’t one to splash out on a different suit for every day of the week and expensive shirts and shoes from up-market stores in Chichester and Portsmouth, but whatever he wore he always managed somehow to look as if he were ready to step straight into a pho
to shoot. Old school. Bit of a throwback. Holloway had a lot of time for him.

  He told him to take a seat, putting his pen on the desk and leaning back to ease some of the stiffness out of his shoulders.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘What have you got for me?’

  ‘It’s a flag.’

  Holloway folded his arms and made a moue with his mouth. A flag was interesting.

  ‘Jamie Barrett or South Mundham?’ he asked.

  ‘South Mundham. Littlehampton have been in touch. Seems there was an incident last night at a petrol station on the A259. You know, the Shell garage opposite the Body Shop?’

  Holloway nodded. ‘What sort of incident are we talking about?’

  Horgan rested his notebook on the edge of the desk, confident that he had the DI’s attention.

  ‘Bit of an odd one, really. There was a report of a disturbance: a man hammering on the door of the toilet and insisting that some girl – Julie, apparently – must be inside.’

  ‘And this Julie was . . . what? His girlfriend?’

  ‘Didn’t say. But he was getting worked up because she wasn’t where he thought she’d be. He was adamant he’d driven up only a few minutes earlier and that she’d nipped in to go to the loo but never come back out again. The person on duty was equally adamant no one had used the toilet for at least a couple of hours. You need to get the key from the desk.’

  ‘And the girl had disappeared?’

  ‘Right. Assuming she was there in the first place. I’ll come to that in a minute. Anyway, one of the customers decided to call the police – either because he was concerned for the girl or just scared that the situation was getting out of control – at which point the guy causing all the fuss promptly dived into his truck and drove off like a bat out of hell.’

  ‘Without waiting to see what had happened to her . . .’

  ‘Exactly. By the time the patrol car got there he was long gone. They thought it was probably someone’s idea of a practical joke but decided they might as well take a look at the CCTV while they were there. And the weird thing was, the cameras picked up this Mitsubishi truck as it came round the front and parked away from the petrol pumps, and you can see the guy get out of the truck, but there’s no sign whatsoever of any girl. He goes inside for a few minutes, comes back out, waits around for a while, then goes back in and starts kicking off.’

  ‘But no sign of the girl during all that time?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So he came alone.’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘What about cameras at the rear?’

  ‘None there – no need. There’s nothing out back, just a few bins. The cameras just cover the forecourt and the entrance to the store itself, and then there are the ones inside of course. They checked all of them, working on a description the guy had given while he was kicking off, and there was no one who even vaguely resembled this girl, either inside the shop or out.’

  ‘So he . . . what? Made it all up?’

  ‘Who knows? All they could say for certain is that there’s no visual of her at any time while he was there.’

  ‘So what’s he up to then? Why invent something like this and kick up such a fuss that the police are called in and then disappear before they’ve arrived?’

  ‘I agree it doesn’t make a lot of sense. And here’s the good part.’

  ‘Oh, I think I can guess the rest. It was a big guy, right?’

  Horgan smiled. ‘Right.’

  ‘The Mitsubishi truck . . . I notice you slipped it in there without drawing attention to it. Testing out the old man, are we?’

  ‘Wouldn’t be so presumptuous, sir.’

  ‘And I’ll bet the truck’s a red one – even if it’s lost a bit of colour over the years.’

  ‘I said you’d like it.’

  ‘I do indeed. Owen Hall,’ mused Holloway, steepling his fingers and tapping the bridge of his nose. ‘Now what do you suppose that’s all about, eh?’

  3

  EARLIER: SATURDAY, 23RD AUGUST

  ABI

  The first thirty seconds of their phone call the previous evening had been enough to confirm that this was indeed the same Owen Hall. Not exactly the same, of course – the voice was a couple of octaves lower and twelve years had eroded all but the merest hint of the stammer which had been the bane of his adolescent life. But the pauses were still there, the same interminable gap between question and response while he formulated his reply, as if testing it out mentally before committing himself. The delivery, although nowhere near as robotic and unnatural as before, was still hesitant, almost diffident. Clearly in the darkest recesses of his mind there lurked the suspicion, even after all these years, that anything he was about to say was bound to meet with derision or worse.

  But as she watched him step out of his truck this evening, she wondered in all seriousness whether she would even have recognised him if they’d passed in the street. He was a good eight or nine inches taller for one thing, and the soft, almost flabby teenager she remembered had disappeared beneath several layers of muscle. If Mary’s description of him as ripped was a little wide of the mark – he was too bulky, his movements laboured and bearing none of the lithe athleticism she always associated with the word – he nevertheless cut an imposing figure as he walked up the drive towards her front door. Whatever scars might still be there on the inside, it was clear he no longer had anything to fear from the adult equivalent of playground bullies.

  After a few awkward moments – a nod from him, an effusive hello from her and a hand on his elbow that served as a halfway house between a hug (surely a bit OTT) and a handshake (too formal) – she suggested they get down to business right away. Then maybe they could catch up on the last dozen or so years over a cup of tea. She was looking forward to it. She’d always felt sorry for Owen at school and had taken Callum to task as much as she’d dared for the way he and his friends were always picking on him. When he didn’t return at the end of Year 9, it was assumed he’d simply transferred to another school and it was a good while later that she learned he was being home schooled by his mother. She’d felt bad about that and it would be nice to know he’d come through it all and was doing well for himself.

  She led the way down the path at the side of the house, through a gate whose hinges were betraying the first signs of rust, and into the area at the back of the house, on which she hoped he might be able to bring a little imagination to bear. It would be intriguing to see what he might come up with. At Mary Kowalski’s he’d had a virtual ground zero to work with. Here it would be different and she wasn’t sure whether that would make it more difficult for him than starting from scratch.

  The garden had definable areas for one thing; the lawn was mown every three weeks or so and she’d managed to keep flower beds and borders pretty much under control. But lately it had begun to feel more like fire-fighting than maintenance – keeping things vaguely tidy and functional fell a long way short of what she and Callum had envisaged when they’d first viewed the property. She remembered walking through it, his arm around her waist, as they talked enthusiastically about its potential. What they’d had in mind – and she was sure it applied as much to Callum as to her – was a shared interest, a joint venture with an end product they could show off whenever friends came to call, or Callum brought home business clients for dinner.

  The reality however had proved to be very different. Network marketing was a demanding mistress and before he was headhunted by ACI, neither of them had any way of knowing he would be spending quite so much time away from home. Even on those weekends when he wasn’t travelling the length and breadth of the country, delivering keynote speeches at a never-ending succession of conferences, it wasn’t easy for him to forget work entirely. There was always a presentation to prepare here, markets to analyse there, important phone calls breaking into what was supposed to be their time together.

  As a result, their ambitious plans for a shared labour of love had inev
itably been downgraded over a period of time to little more than routine upkeep, for which she was almost exclusively responsible. He might come out occasionally for half an hour and pull up a handful of weeds to show willing, but that was pretty much the extent of their collaboration nowadays, and in her more negative moments she couldn’t help seeing this as representative of a much wider picture.

  She took a few minutes now to explain to Owen some of the original features she and Callum had been keen to incorporate into the overall design and they talked briefly about possible budget constraints within which he might work. Then she left him for a moment to go inside and put the kettle on, watching through the window as he strode around the garden, pacing out measurements and jotting them down in a small notepad. When the tea was ready, she brought it outside with a plate of biscuits and sat at the garden table while he finished off what he was doing.

  The business side of things was dealt with relatively quickly. He offered to draw up a number of plans based on different budgets she’d given to him. He’d start in the morning as Sunday was usually the day he set aside for designing anyway. He still had other work which would keep him from starting here for a few days but he could bring the plans round on Monday evening after he’d finished work if that was convenient. They agreed on a time and she was just wondering how to work the conversation around to his life away from work when the patio doors slid open and there was Callum, stepping out onto the path, squash racquet dangling idly from one hand.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said, a wry grin sketching an unconvincing welcome as he walked over to join them. ‘If it isn’t Owen Hall.’ He kissed the top of Abi’s head and placed what felt like a proprietary hand on her shoulder. Laying the racquet on the table, he reached across and held out his free hand which Owen shook as he hauled himself to his feet.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Callum, craning his neck in exaggerated fashion. ‘Mary Kowalski wasn’t kidding, was she? How tall are you for Christ’s sake?’