Relentless: A Novel

by Simon Kernick

  After a few seconds, Kathy stood up and looked my way. Her expression looked worryingly like pity. ‘Oh Christ, Tom, I’m sorry I got you involved in all this.’ She was fitter than me so I was still on my knees, panting. I didn’t say anything, but I guess my own expression must have said it all. ‘I didn’t know they’d be after Jack,’ she continued. ‘I was just there because, you know . . .’ She let the words trail off.

  I pictured her and Jack on his big double bed – I knew it would be big – him on top. Fucking her. My wife. Our love life had become sporadic of late. In fact, it had been sporadic for a long time now. This was why. The betrayal felt like a physical weight bearing down on me.

  ‘How long’s it been going on?’ I asked, still on my knees. It felt like an apt position to be in, fitting my humiliation perfectly.

  ‘A while,’ she answered. ‘Almost two years.’

  It came as a bit of a shock when she said this – and yes, even now I was still capable of receiving one. Of course I’d had my suspicions, but two whole years? This made it even worse.

  The rain dripped down my forehead and onto my face, and I wiped it angrily away.

  ‘With my best friend,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t plan it like that. It just happened.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I met him at O’Neills in Harrow. I was out with people from work.’

  ‘Classy.’

  ‘Don’t start getting like that, Tom. This is one time when we really don’t need your sarcastic humour. And you’re not exactly holier than thou, are you?’

  She had me there. Five years ago, I had a brief affair with a girl at work. Her name was Bev, and she was seven years younger than me. It had started almost by accident, after a few drinks too many at one of those pointless team-building weekends that companies like you to go on these days, where you learn skills such as orienteering and rock climbing that you know you’re never going to use again. A few fumbles after work in the office and a night away in a hotel room in Brighton had followed, but I don’t think either of us was ever that interested, and I was finding the guilt hard to handle, so when she finished it – somewhat undiplomatically, citing boredom as the main reason, and adding nothing about wanting to remain friends – I was actually quite relieved. At least, that is, until it became clear that someone – God knows who, I’d never found that out – had told Kathy what had been happening. We’d split over it for a couple of weeks, but she’d finally managed to forgive me, although thinking back now, I wonder if it may have been the catalyst for everything else. Either way, I was never going to get away from it entirely.

  ‘OK, OK,’ I said, ‘point taken. So, did you start a relationship with him straight away?’

  She gave me a look that cut me dead, her dark eyes full of contempt. ‘Is your opinion of me really that low? Of course I didn’t. We had a chat for a little while, he bought me a drink, then we said our goodbyes, and I didn’t see him again for a long time after that. Months, probably. But then we ran into each other in the street one Saturday when I was without the kids, and we went for a coffee. We got on well, and arranged to go out to lunch a couple of weeks down the line. We went out a couple of times like that.’

  ‘Behind my back.’

  ‘That’s right, Tom. Behind your back. We weren’t getting on well at the time. We haven’t been getting on well for a long time now. Or hadn’t you realized that?’

  I didn’t say anything. I suppose things hadn’t been as good between us as they had been before the children were born, but I’d assumed that was natural. Part and parcel of the whole kids thing. I guess I’d been wrong. It looked like I’d been wrong about a lot of things. Delusional, even.

  ‘Jack made me feel good, Tom. That’s all I can say. We had a platonic relationship for a long time, but eventually it turned into something else.’

  Typical Jack Calley. He’d always been persistent. That was why he’d been so successful. Not just in romance, but in everything in his life. I could just imagine what he’d been thinking as he pursued my wife. Easy does it. Be patient and she’ll relent. They always do. Pay her compliments. Tell her how pretty she is. How taken for granted she is in her marriage. He’d bedded dozens of girls that way down the years. I’d even admired him for it, once upon a time. Now I knew he was simply being a selfish bastard. It was sad to only find this out now, after he was dead. It would have been nice to have had the opportunity to tell him what an arsehole he was. I couldn’t believe the extent of his betrayal. Choosing Kathy over me and sacrificing a lifelong friendship as if it was nothing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I really am.’ And she was, I could tell.

  I sighed. ‘Were you ever going to tell me?’

  ‘We talked about it, but there never seemed to be the right time. And I didn’t want to do anything that would affect the kids. It was just . . . I don’t know . . . a separate relationship to the one I had with you and the family. It existed in parallel.’

  ‘It existed for a long time.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it did.’

  At that moment we heard the sound of a car coming down the road, its tyres hissing in the wet. It was coming slowly, the headlamps lighting up the trees. Instinctively, we both crouched down and stayed absolutely still as it came past. I didn’t get a good look at it – there was a thick holly bush in the way – nor did I want to try too hard, in case I got spotted by whoever was inside. They might have been perfectly innocent, but I’d had enough scrapes today to know that it was better to be safe than sorry.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Kathy whispered, standing back up as its lights faded into the distance.

  ‘We need to get out of this rain. Then we need to call the police. You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.’ I stood up as well and pulled out my phone, but there was still no reception. ‘Something else, too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They found a pair of my gloves at the scene of Vanessa’s murder. They had bloodstains on them. I think someone’s trying to set me up.’

  She looked shocked. ‘Do you have any idea how they got there?’

  ‘None at all. Luckily, the police don’t know they’re mine, but there’s probably tests they can do to find out, and I really don’t want to end up spending the next twenty years of my life in prison for something I didn’t do.’ I paused. ‘So, you know, if—’

  ‘I didn’t have anything to do with Vanessa’s murder, Tom. I promise you that. And I don’t know how the hell my fingerprints got on the knife either. You trust me, don’t you?’ She sounded like she needed that trust.

  ‘Why did Jack phone me, Kathy? When they were after him? And how much do you really know about all this?’ I’d raised my voice and was aware that we were sailing very close to an argument, which, under the circumstances, really would have been foolish.

  ‘I had nothing to do with any of it,’ she said firmly, ‘and I don’t want the police to frame me with Vanessa’s murder either.’

  ‘We’re both going to have to talk to them eventually. And, to be honest, who else is going to protect us?’ Calming down, I walked over and put an arm around her shoulders, burying my face in the crook of her neck. It was wet and I couldn’t pick up her usual fragrant smell. I kissed her gently. ‘It’s going to be all right, don’t worry,’ I said, somewhat optimistically. ‘Now, let’s get out of this rain. Then we can decide what to do.’

  We fought our way through the bushes at the edge of the treeline, crossed the road and climbed over the fence into the wheat field. It had been ploughed recently and was muddy underfoot, slowing our progress. I could see the two large wooden storage sheds in the distance. A tractor was parked on a concrete forecourt in front of the first, but there was no sign of activity. As we ran across the field, I turned and looked back. In the distance, beyond the pine trees, the sky glowed and flickered at the spot where they’d set the cottage ablaze. I thought of Warren and Midge, and wondered what their faces would look like when they found out what h
ad happened. I’d gone off them since we’d bought that quarter share, because I felt they’d taken us and our money for granted, but I still felt bad for them. They loved that place.

  I was panting again by the time we got to the first storage shed. I ran across to the huge double doors and was pleased to find they weren’t locked. With a heave, I pulled one of the doors open, and the two of us stepped inside out of the rain. The place smelled of dry hay and motor oil, but felt hugely inviting after the other places I’d been in tonight. I found a light switch on the wall and flicked it on. The room was cavernous, with huge empty shelving units on either side going up to the roof and a space on the ground easily wide enough for driving a tractor in and out. A solitary Land Rover was parked opposite us in front of the far wall, and I walked towards it with Kathy following, pulling off my wet coat at the same time.

  I looked at my phone again. There was still no reception. It pissed me off. This area must have been about the last in the country where it was impossible to get a mobile phone signal. On those few weekends when we’d actually made it down here to stay, this had seemed something of a boon. We’d never given out the number of the cottage so it was impossible for either of our employers to reach us, which meant we could take time out and relax. Now, trapped in the middle of nowhere with hostile forces searching for us, it was proving to be a real problem.

  It was too much to expect that the Land Rover would have the keys in it, but at least the door was open, and there was a thick sweater draped over the front passenger seat. I climbed inside and offered the sweater to Kathy. She peeled off her suede jacket and blouse, both of which were soaked through, and took it with a whispered ‘thanks’.

  ‘Can you get a reception on your phone?’ I asked her.

  She shook her head, and undid her bra to reveal pert breasts with cherry-red nipples. She had a slim, toned body with skin like pale gold, and I gazed at it for a moment, full of regret, before she pulled the sweater down over her upper body and clambered in the other side.

  ‘God, I’m tired,’ she said, closing her eyes.

  ‘We can’t really stay here,’ I told her, but it was clear she wasn’t moving anywhere.

  ‘I need to think,’ she added, her voice heavy with weariness.

  I needed to think too, but I didn’t want to, because there were holes in Kathy’s story and I knew there were things she wasn’t telling me. I found a tartan dog blanket in the back of the car and silently thanked the owner for his level of preparedness. By the time I’d removed my clothes and settled back in my seat with the blanket covering me up to my chin, Kathy had fallen asleep and was breathing softly through her mouth. I moved closer to her and tried to cuddle up, but evidently she wasn’t completely gone because she moved away.

  A few moments later I heard her weeping, and my heart sank. My marriage was over, and for the last however many years my wife, the woman I genuinely loved, had been living a complete lie.

  The question was, would I ever know the extent of that lie?

  Part Two

  SUNDAY

  32

  Sinking his shapeless, slug-like bulk into the specially reinforced chair in front of his state-of-the-art computer system, twenty-nine-year-old computer hacker Dorriel Graham began the hunt through cyberspace that would find the information his client was looking for. His client was Lench, but neither man knew the other’s real identity, nor had they ever met. Graham was simply a mobile telephone number that could be called at any time, while Lench was Lima 2, a customer who used his services periodically, and who could be trusted to pay for them.

  The virtual world of the Internet was Graham’s life. He was a techno-mercenary, his speciality being the ability to use his hacking skills to track down anyone. The average UK citizen over the age of eighteen has his or her personal details held on scores, sometimes hundreds, of electronic databases. Even those who never take part in telephone questionnaires, who actively avoid giving out information to anyone, and who try to register as little as possible in their own name, leave their virtual footprints everywhere. If you use a credit card or debit card, there’ll be a record held in someone’s database of where and when it was used, and what you bought. If you use your mobile phone and the person looking for you has the number, there will be a record. Only the most serious and organized criminals, who know all the tricks, pay with cash for everything and have literally nothing registered in their own name, represent a more taxing proposition. But even they can be traced. It’s just a matter of using their family and friends who aren’t as careful.

  The point is, you can find anyone if you know where to look, and Dorriel Graham always knew where to look. Tonight he’d been given two names, Thomas and Katherine Meron. He’d been told to find out where their close relatives lived, starting with the nearest first. It was, Lima 2 had added, a rush job; he’d been given a time limit of two hours. Usually, he would have told the client to forget it – after all, there was plenty of demand for his services, and he didn’t have to put himself out unless he wanted to – but he’d been promised a hugely inflated fee of three grand for this work, and he knew Lima 2 would pay it.

  Taking a huge bite of the kingsize Snickers bar he was holding in his left hand, Dorriel started with Thomas Meron. A quick Google search revealed that he worked for Ezyrite Software Services based in Harrow, and had been there for eight years. The next step was to break into Ezyrite’s employee database. Dorriel assumed that, being an IT company, this would be a harder proposition than might otherwise have been the case, but his assumption was wrong. Their main firewall was full of holes and it took only eleven minutes before Meron’s details were up on his screen. These gave Dorriel the names of Meron’s parents and younger brother. He then perfectly legally accessed the electoral roll and discovered that the parents now lived in Sidmouth, Devon, while his brother resided in east Kent.

  Katherine Meron turned out to be a tougher proposition. He located her place of work quickly enough, but the university employee database proved surprisingly hard to crack, and it took him twenty-seven minutes before he finally got inside. She had one older sister who didn’t turn up on the electoral roll or in a Google search, and Dorriel was forced to use more basic tactics by accessing Friends Reunited. Like millions of other people wanting to catch up with old friends from school, she used the site and had helpfully posted the information that she now lived in Sydney, Australia, with a wonderful husband, John, and ‘her babies’, two Dalmatian dogs called Harry and Spike.

  With that, Dorriel had found out everything he needed, and it was only an hour and twenty-two minutes after receiving his instructions from Lima 2 that he called him back with the information requested. Not once did he consider what the information could be used for. Dorriel was not a people person and, frankly, he didn’t care. It was one of the reasons he was considered so reliable.

  ‘Have you got what I need?’ asked the voice at the other end.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dorriel, shifting his bulk in the chair while logging on to a favoured porn site. ‘I’ve been through all the relatives, and the nearest one is Katherine Meron’s mother, Irene Tyler. Do you have a pen? I’ll give you the address.’

  33

  DI Mike Bolt lived in the heart of London. Nestled in the quiet area of streets that sprouted from either side of the Clerkenwell Road between the points where the West End finished and the financial district of the City of London began, Clerkenwell was about as central as a man could get. At one time it had been home to the printing and brewing industries, but in recent years it had undergone a prolonged period of gentrification as the fashionable young rich moved in, creating residential lofts and apartments among the old warehouse buildings.

  Home for Bolt was an attractive studio apartment on the third floor of a converted warehouse near the jewellery district of Hatton Garden, not far from Farringdon station. He’d lived there for a little under two years, and rented it from a Ukrainian businessman called Ivan Stanevic. It was a stunning
place, done out to the highest specifications. Long and spacious, with polished wood floors and an open-plan mezzanine containing the bedroom. The windows that ran its entire length faced east on to the bright lights of London, the towers of the Barbican reaching up like stubby fingers from behind the buildings opposite. Stanevic, a property developer, could have got £500 a week for the place easily, probably more, but instead he charged £150 a month. The reason: Bolt had once done him a big favour. An extremely big favour.

  Two and a half years earlier, not long after Bolt had been seconded to the NCS, Stanevic’s twelve-year-old daughter had been snatched from the street outside her Chelsea school by business rivals, who’d then threatened to strangle her unless her father signed over the deeds to his share in a hotel complex in the south of France. After the intervention of his wife, Stanevic reluctantly brought in the police, and the case had been handed to an NCS team led by Bolt.

  A meeting was set up between Stanevic and the kidnappers at a café in Tottenham, during which the deeds were duly signed over. Unfortunately, just to make sure that nothing got in the way of their plans, the kidnappers decided to take Stanevic prisoner too, while the transaction was being processed, so that they could then sell their new share of the business on to another party. But the meeting was being monitored by Bolt and his team. Rather than intervene, he’d ordered that they allow Stanevic to be taken and follow the kidnappers at a safe distance to find out where they went.