Tell Me A Lie

by CJ Carver

  Checking her phone, she saw she had a missed call from Mac. Climbing out of bed, she dragged on a dressing gown and padded downstairs and kissed her mum good morning, made a mug of tea, and rang him back.

  ‘Where are you?’ he said.

  ‘At the kitchen table with a mug of tea. Why, where are you?’ From the ssshushing on the line, it sounded as though he was in the car.

  ‘You’re OK?’ he asked.

  ‘A bit tired, but yes, I’m fine.’

  There was a loud rumble and the distant sound of a horn. He was definitely in the car.

  ‘Anything new?’ she asked.

  ‘Actually, yes.’

  Something in his tone made her sit straighter. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Elizabeth Stanton,’ he said.

  The way he said her name, she knew. ‘No way,’ she said in disbelief.

  ‘She was found first thing this morning. Shot dead.’

  Her brain flickered green and blue in confusion. Why had Elizabeth been murdered? Why hadn’t the killer tried to make it look like an accident, like they had Aleksandr? With Elizabeth so distraught over her husband’s death, wouldn’t it have been relatively easy to stage her death as a suicide? Drown her in the lake maybe? Or perhaps it didn’t matter any more. Perhaps the killers didn’t care. They were now, after all, in the open.

  ‘I’m on my way south. I want to talk to the SIO down there, talk to Blain, get hold of Dan Forrester and find out what the hell is going on.’

  A mass of interference made Lucy say, ‘You’re breaking up . . .’

  ‘I want you there too,’ he told her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Margate Hospital.’

  ‘What time?’ she asked.

  ‘Give me three hours.’

  ‘OK,’ she told him. ‘I’ll see you there.’

  Lucy hung up. Her mind was spitting yellow, which she knew meant it had found a connection that her conscious mind hadn’t registered yet. It had fired yellow when she’d been thinking about the killer staging an accident. Staging a suicide.

  ‘Sorry, Mum,’ she said.

  Her mother sat opposite with her hair awry, glasses perched on her nose, reading the newspaper. ‘Don’t worry, love. It was nice to see you anyway.’

  Lucy peered at her mum’s paper. No mention of the killings on the front page but only because it had happened after the papers had gone to press. The media were going to go berserk. Would they connect Aleksandr and Elizabeth’s murders to the mess at the hospital? The police wouldn’t help them, and Lucy wondered how long it would take before a journalist began to connect the dots.

  Lucy called the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital – a ridiculous mouthful but it had been the woman’s title, after all – to find that Blain had apparently been moved to a short stay ward and that visiting hours were unrestricted. He was due to be discharged as soon as the on-duty doctor had given him a final check, probably later this morning. Galvanised, Lucy shoved her tea aside and pelted upstairs. Showered, dressed, pelted back down. She mustn’t let him leave before Mac had seen him.

  ‘Sorry, Mum,’ she said again. They hugged on the doorstep.

  Before Lucy turned the ignition, she checked her phone to see if Blain’s car was on the move or not. According to Google, it was still parked outside Sparrow Cottage, which meant that Blain was hopefully still in hospital. As she drove, she thought about the list of the dead. Polina and her children, now Adrian Calder. Aleksandr and Elizabeth Stanton. Jenny Forrester kidnapped. What did it mean?

  It was raining when she arrived. Great torrents of water pouring straight down from the sky, but it didn’t seem to be deterring the media. Photographers stood beneath a cloud of umbrellas, camera snouts poised over the police barriers for any sign of action. Behind them stood white vans with satellite dishes, journalists talking, soundmen lingering. Some entrepreneurial soul had set up a mobile coffee shop and was doing a brisk business. Bored cameramen filmed the car park, the damp trees, the rain cascading down the hospital windows. Then they spotted Lucy. As she showed her ID to one of the cops and was waved through, a buzz rose and a wave of flashing and clicking ensued, snapping her every move.

  Fame at last, she thought wryly.

  She parked as close to the hospital entrance as she could. Incredibly, as she climbed outside, the rain increased. She broke into a run. Even though she used an umbrella, her shoes and trousers were drenched by the time she made it to the entrance.

  Blain was sitting up in bed when she arrived, reading a newspaper.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. She hung her brolly on the end of his bed, dusted raindrops from her trousers.

  ‘Hi.’ He put the paper down. His hands were heavily bandaged, and he had more bandages on his upper arms and another on his shoulder, but his face held some colour and his eyes were clear.

  ‘How are you?’ she asked.

  He looked at her hands then peered past her. He frowned.

  Lucy glanced around to see what he was looking at but couldn’t see anything. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I was wondering where the grapes were.’

  ‘I don’t come bearing gifts,’ she said stonily. She didn’t trust him an inch and wanted him to know it.

  ‘How about a coffee then?’ He tilted his chin at the bedside table. ‘There’s some change in there. Would you mind? And please, grab one for yourself.’

  Lucy fetched him a coffee from the machine down the corridor. She didn’t take his money. And even though she would have killed for a coffee, she didn’t have one. She didn’t want to make it seem like a social occasion. Pocketbook in hand, she took up position near the foot of his bed. She purposely didn’t look at his medical chart although she was sorely tempted. Leave the man some dignity, at least until she’d questioned him.

  ‘Last night,’ she said.

  He looked at her for a long time, expressionless. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘What were you doing at the cottage?’

  ‘How about if I tell you what I told the police,’ he suggested smoothly. ‘And we take it from there?’

  ‘OK,’ she said.

  ‘I’m a PI. Private investigator. Ex-Special Forces. My name is Nicholas Baker. My address . . .’ As he continued to speak, he sipped his coffee carefully, his cup balanced between his bandaged hands. ‘I was hired by Adrian Calder two years ago, to check on Jenny Forrester, maybe three or four times a year. To take a photograph or two, and write a brief report on her movements, her well-being. I wasn’t given a reason why.’

  He took another swallow of coffee. ‘When he was arrested, Calder instructed me to increase the surveillance on Mrs Forrester and if she ever appeared to be in any danger, I was to call the police and defend her if necessary.’

  ‘What did you make of that?’

  ‘I’ve had far stranger assignments, believe me.’

  ‘So you never knew why Calder wanted you to watch Jenny?’

  He shook his head. ‘I assumed he’d had an affair with her in the past and wanted to know how she was doing, but when he asked me to put a tracker on her car to monitor her movements, I knew things had shifted into another dimension.’

  Lucy mulled things over briefly. ‘So the photograph I saw you showing Justin Tripp wasn’t of Dan Forrester as much as his wife.’

  ‘Correct.’ He put his head on one side. ‘It wasn’t all about Jenny Forrester, though. Mr Calder asked me to do other things for him. Like collect the occasional envelope on his behalf, and deliver it to his lawyer. He instructed me to drive Irene Cavendish to and from the police station so she could visit him. She doesn’t have a driving licence. Adrian and Irene came and visited me in hospital last night. They were going to stay with Elizabeth Stanton afterwards . . .’

  But then the FSB agents had turned up and shot Adrian dead and put Irene in a coma. Lucy wondered if Blain – she couldn’t think of him as Nicholas Baker yet – knew if Elizabeth was dead, and decided probably not. He wasn’t a poli
ceman after all. No matter that he was ex-Special Forces, trained to perform unconventional and sometimes dangerous missions; today he was just a PI. A private investigator who knew nothing about Zama Kasofsky.

  She stood quietly, drawing everything she knew together. The FSB agents had set Adrian Calder up, to make him look as though he’d murdered his family. Had they meant to kill Calder at the same time too, and made it look like suicide? But why had they killed the children? She recalled the warmth remaining in young Felix’s body when she’d found the boy. His look of surprise.

  ‘Who were the couple who attacked Irene?’ Blain asked.

  ‘They followed you to the cottage,’ Lucy responded. She wasn’t going to share any information with him that hadn’t been released into the general domain. ‘If it hadn’t been for you leading them to her, Jenny would still be safe.’

  ‘You can’t say that for sure.’ His eyes held a hint of challenge. ‘They might have followed you.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have known which pool car I was going to use.’ She refused to take any blame for his fuck-up. ‘One last thing before I go, the SIO in this case is coming to interview you in a couple of hours. Please do not leave the hospital until you have seen him. DI Faris MacDonald.’

  ‘Sure,’ he responded. He surveyed her calmly, as serene as he’d been when she’d first seen him sitting in the station’s reception. ‘Now, when I get out of here, would you like to join me for that drink? I need something to look forward to.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘At least say you’ll think about it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘God, you’re a hard woman.’

  Lucy went to check on Irene but she was still unconscious. Two people sat with her. She recognised them from Dan’s description: the two cousins, Robin and Finch. Their heads were together and they were talking softly. As Lucy approached, she did a double-take. Both were bruised, with scratches and scrapes on their cheeks and hands. Robin’s wrist was bandaged, his arm strapped against his chest.

  Lucy introduced herself.

  ‘What happened to you?’ she asked. They looked as though they’d been in a bike accident, or fallen out of a moving car.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ Finch replied. Her skin was pale and she looked shivery and ill.

  ‘All we were doing was walking down the street,’ said Robin.

  Lucy lifted her eyebrows.

  ‘In Margate, this morning,’ Finch took up the story. ‘We were looking for a café to have breakfast. It was pretty early, around eight o’clock. A car came out of nowhere. It mounted the pavement and –’

  ‘Jissus,’ Robin said, shaking his head. ‘I really thought our number was up. Honest to God I thought it was going to hit us. I pushed Finch out of the way and jumped after her . . .’

  ‘It missed us by a whisker,’ said Finch. She reached across and touched her brother’s shoulder. ‘Thank God.’

  ‘Did you report it?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Ja.’ Robin nodded. ‘The cops thought it was someone coming home from a party, pissed to the eyeballs. We didn’t see the driver, or get a number plate or anything much. Just that it was a dark blue sedan.’

  Although it sounded like a freak near-miss, Lucy’s antennae were quivering. With Aleksandr and Elizabeth murdered, and Adrian and his family too, had this been an attempt on the cousins’ lives? She warned them to take good care then went and got herself a coffee. She sipped it overlooking the car park, the rows of white media vans with their enormous satellite dishes perched on their roofs, waiting for Mac, waiting for Irene to wake up.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ Ozzie demanded. ‘Five witnesses saw you break a woman’s neck. Adrian Calder murdered in A & E. You fight the killer, chase him outside, and neither of you are seen again. And intimidating that security guard into backing off . . . well, luckily for you, we managed to beat the police to the CCTV tape that also shows you tying the Russian up and putting him in the boot of a hire car. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Trying to find my wife.’

  ‘And you think this is the way to do it?’ Ozzie’s voice rose.

  ‘I need to know who the guy is. What makes him tick. Whether he’s turned on by money and if not, what I can use.’

  ‘No, Dan. Absolutely, not. We cannot have you doing this alone on some kind of –’

  ‘Find out for me.’

  Dan hung up. Ozzie rang back straight away. Dan switched off the volume and pocketed his phone. Looked at the two men Max Blake had talked about in the past and who Dan had managed, via a flurry of coded texts and emails, to track down. Ibro and Mirza.

  ‘No carrot yet,’ he told them. ‘Just the stick.’

  Ibro shrugged. ‘It may not matter. It depends on the man and how fast we can get to know him.’

  ‘It’s my guess he’ll be too afraid of his own people to talk.’

  Ibro grinned. ‘In that case, I will make him more afraid of me.’

  Ibro and Mirza had been comrades during the war in Bosnia, which was where they had met Max Blake. They had headed military interrogation teams from Algeria to Lebanon and Afghanistan and Max apparently used them not just as interrogators but as information sources and couriers. Extremely skilled, was how Max described them. Reliable. Use them any time. They owe me a favour.

  Which Dan now owed Max.

  Ibro and Mirza knew his wife had been kidnapped. That she’d been put on a private jet that had left from Manston. That Dan wanted her back.

  ‘Can we use water?’ Mirza’s voice was rough and gravelly, as though he rarely spoke.

  Something inside Dan shivered. Waterboarding was a hideous form of torture. One of the worst, and although his intellect told him he could well have authorised such a thing in the past, or been part of such a decision, right now he baulked.

  ‘What else?’

  The two men glanced at each other.

  ‘If he is as frightened of his authorities as you say,’ Mirza told him, ‘it will take us much longer without water. Perhaps a week.’

  A snake of nausea coiled in Dan’s belly. He couldn’t wait a week. He needed to know where Jenny was now. But could he justify such a thing? Sanction such immense suffering on another human being? He allowed himself a glimpse of Jenny the last time he’d seen her, her blazing smile as she told him she was pregnant, and he gritted his teeth. Said, ‘Do it. Whatever it takes.’

  Ibro put out his hand. Dan gave him the keys to the Russian’s hire car. He followed the men from the empty building into the quarry. Huge jagged walls of rock rose all around. Discarded mining equipment, crushers, screeners and conveyors, stood like silent metallic ghosts. Ibro had used the place before, apparently, not just because it was concealed and unused, but it had only recently been abandoned. It still had running water and electricity, security systems and electric gates. It was, as Ibro had said, perfect for their needs. Dan stepped over a puddle shimmering with diesel. It started to rain.

  He watched the two men as they went to the car. Opened the boot. Silently, they manhandled the Russian out. Dan waited for the man to turn his head and look at him, but he seemed dazed. Ibro gave Dan a nod. Dan approached. The man swore loudly in Russian when he saw him, but although his voice was fierce and filled with venom, his eyes swam with fear.

  Dan pulled out his phone. Took the man’s photograph. The Russian fought as they dragged him away but he was no match for the Bosnians who’d done this a thousand times before and overpowered him easily and with professional skill. Dan watched them vanish inside a concrete block next to the outbuilding. The rain increased. Dan moved to stand under the shelter of a corroded mining bucket. He forwarded the photograph to Emily at Six and then to Ozzie. The man might have a bruised and bloody messed-up face but he should still be recognisable. Rainwater began to drip steadily from the mining bucket into a puddle. The minutes ticked past.

  When Ibro and Mirza returned, they were dusting their ha
nds together and looking pleased. ‘We might get lucky,’ Ibro said. ‘The quarry has scared him. But we need the carrot, Daniel. Then we will have something to work with.’

  ‘Just keep asking where Jenny is.’

  ‘OK.’ Ibro gave a nod. ‘We’ll keep in touch.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Jenny lay in bed, shivering. The room felt stuffy and overly warm, but she couldn’t stop trembling. Shock, she supposed. She touched her wedding band and sent a prayer to Dan.

  Find me, my love. Bring me home.

  Tears rose but she forced them down. Tears wouldn’t help her now. Planning might. Strength of will. Determination.

  A nurse came in with a fresh jug of water and a cup. Short and dumpy, she had a pretty round face and mouse-coloured hair pinned beneath a white cap.

  ‘Hello,’ said Jenny but the woman gave no indication she’d heard. She put both the jug and cup on the bedside table. ‘Please . . .’ said Jenny. She raised her right hand and jingled the handcuffs. ‘Why am I a prisoner?’

  The nurse walked outside without a backward glance.

  Jenny put back her head and closed her eyes, battling the urge to scream and shout, to weep. They would only tranquillise her, as they had before. She’d tried to fight the two men as they disembarked from the private jet. She’d bitten one on his wrist and lashed her legs at the other, and she was half-off the stretcher when a woman appeared and stuck a needle in her thigh. When Jenny awoke, she was here, in this hospital-style room, shackled to the bed and wearing nothing but an olive-green hospital robe. She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious. It could have been hours or days. She decided to be as compliant as she could; she didn’t want any more drugs inside her. What if they damaged the baby? And what about the stress? How would that affect the poor little mite? She had to try and remain calm and protect him, keep him safe.

  Jenny studied her handcuffs for the hundredth time. Chrome-plated steel with a welded chain and double lock, they fettered her to the side of her bed. She’d already checked to see if she could dismantle the bed but when she’d begun investigating one of the screws holding together an aluminium tube, a sturdy-looking nurse had arrived fast. She’d wagged her finger at Jenny, shaking her head. ‘N’yet, n’yet,’ she said. No, no. She had pointed upwards, towards the corner of the ceiling, and Jenny’s heart sank. A camera. She was being watched.