by Zoe Sharp
Wisely, perhaps, Pauline didn’t pursue that one any further.
We managed to get into Lavender Gardens unmolested, although we attracted close scrutiny from Garton-Jones’s heavies as we went past. They’d already checked out Jacob when he turned up to collect me earlier.
As I should have expected, Friday went totally ballistic at his owner’s return, bouncing round the living room like a puppy and letting out ear-splitting yelps. The Ridgeback had that crafty look in his eye which said he knew full well this was one occasion when he could get away with total disobedience, and he was damn well going to make the most of it.
Our efforts to shut him up had Jacob grinning. He made his excuses and left quickly once we’d unloaded Pauline’s cases. I supposed I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to leave a Range Rover too long unattended anywhere on Lavender Gardens at the moment. It didn’t matter that it was fifteen years old, and the body was slowly taking on an interesting mottled two-tone colour scheme as the rust encroached on the cream paintwork.
In the midst of all this havoc, it would have been easy to miss the sound of the phone ringing. Pauline dragged her frenzied dog off into the kitchen and closed the door behind her, leaving me to pick up the receiver.
“Charlie!” It was a woman’s voice on the line that I didn’t immediately recognise, the tones made echoing by the distortion of a mobile phone. “Where on earth have you been? I’ve found him!”
“Madeleine?” It took me a moment to catch up. “Who have you found? Roger?”
“No, more’s the pity,” she said. “Jav. He’s inside at the moment, but I don’t know how long he’s going to stay there.”
“Inside where?”
“That gym that Nasir went to, remember? I found out he was also on the membership list and I’ve been keeping an eye on the place to see if he turned up. He arrived about an hour ago. I’m in the car park. Do you want me to go in and talk to him?”
I bit my lip, glanced at my watch. “No, stay put. I’ll be with you in ten minutes and we’ll go in together. That way he’s less opportunity to try and lie about what he told me. OK?”
“OK,” she said, and rang off.
I turned to find Pauline in the doorway with a resigned look on her face. “I won’t ask what you’re mixed up in now,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Pauline.” I shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t go looking for trouble.”
“You don’t have to go looking, dear – it comes and finds you,” she said, then gave me a quick grin. “Go on, girl, don’t look so mortified. Get off with you if it’s so important. Just don’t think you can fob me off indefinitely. I’m going to want to know what you’ve been up to before too long, in all its gory detail!”
If only you knew, I thought.
***
When I turned into the car park of the gym Madeleine had mentioned and pulled up alongside the Grand Cherokee, she climbed out as soon as I’d brought the bike to a halt.
“Jav’s still in there,” she said, by way of greeting. “Let’s just hope he can give us some answers.”
I nodded as I dumped my helmet and gloves onto the passenger seat. She blipped the door locks and we walked across the mainly deserted car park towards the squat pale blue building that was the health club.
Nobody was manning the reception desk as we pushed open the main doors, and we didn’t give them chance to be slow on the uptake. Instead, we carried on straight through a second set of glass doors into the gym proper, then paused to look about us.
It wasn’t difficult to spot Jav. Apart from the blond teenager, the place was deserted. He was working on a set of barbell bench presses at the far side of the room, and his technique was poor enough to make me wince.
He didn’t look round when we walked in, too busy concentrating on locking his arms out against a weight that must have been ten kilos too heavy for him. I nodded silently to Madeleine, and we moved quickly over to stand on either side of him.
He twitched as we came into his line of sight, one elbow buckling. If Madeleine and I hadn’t grabbed hold of the bar, he would have been in trouble.
Mind you, he was in trouble anyway. We pushed down at both ends until it was driving onto his chest, pinning him to the bench.
I shook my head sadly. “One thing I always say to people when they start training, Jav, is never to do bench presses without someone to spot for them,” I said, my voice bland. “If we hadn’t come along then you might have had a nasty accident.”
“Get it off me!” He writhed under the bar, but the combination of the two of us pressing on top of it, and the fact he’d overloaded it to begin with, was enough to hold him.
Madeleine tutted. “Now now, Jav, don’t get stroppy,” she said. “We just want a little chat.”
He kept struggling, but it was a lost cause, and it didn’t take too long before even he realised the fact. Then he stilled and asked sullenly, “What do you want?”
“That’s better,” I said. “I want to know who put you up to coming round and priming me up with all that bullshit about Sean Meyer.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Jav spat, his lisp conspicuous. He gasped as Madeleine and I leaned a bit further onto the bar.
“Yes you do, Jav,” Madeleine said. “Somebody gave you the information, patted you on the head and sent you off in Charlie’s direction, and you did as you were told like a good little boy, didn’t you?”
I took in the mulish look on Jav’s face and gave her a harsh glance. And I thought she was good with children. Ah well, too late now.
“What are people going to think when they find out you’ve been tipping off the police?” I tried a different tack.
Jav’s expression didn’t change much, but at least he said, “They won’t think anything, because it wasn’t me. I don’t talk to the filth,” he panted, no doubt making a sly dig at MacMillan’s interest in me.
“Well, somebody’s been talking to them, Jav, trying to drop Sean in it, and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that you’re the common element here,” Madeleine pressed. “So, who primed you?”
There was a flash of movement on the other side of the glass doors. A couple of figures dressed in pale blue polo shirts, and moving hurriedly.
I saw from Madeleine’s face that she’d seen them, too. Knew that our time was running out fast.
“So, come on, Jav,” she tried one last time, “who was it?” and before I could stop her, she added sharply, “Was it Langford?”
I held back an inward curse, as the doors to the gym flew open, and two large members of staff hustled in.
“Oi,” one of them shouted, “what the hell d’you two think you’re doing!”
We ignored them for a second longer, holding the bar down on Jav’s chest. “Yes, all right, yes!” he cried. “It was that bastard Langford, all right? Now let me go!”
We complied with his request abruptly, but left him to shift the bar himself. For a few moments he just lay there, dragging air into his constricted lungs. One of the staff grabbed the barbell to lift it off the boy. I noted in passing that Attila had been right about the quality of the staff here. His technique wasn’t much to speak of, either.
The other man snatched at my arm, started to try and drag me across the floor towards the exit.
Big mistake.
I broke his grip in an automatic reflex action, twisting his hand back to reverse our positions. Getting out of wrist holds had been part of Lesson One on my self-defence courses. I could do it in my sleep.
The man swore and struggled, but I had his wrist joint, elbow and shoulder all under considerable tension. I could have held that lock all day with one hand, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could have done about it.
Jav was on his feet by this time, rubbing his chest and glaring at us. The other staff man had jerked the barbell back onto its stand and was eyeing up Madeleine, clearly wondering if she was dangerous, too.
“It’s OK,” I said, “we’re leaving now. The
re’s no need for the strong-arm tactics.” I met Jav’s eyes and held them for a long moment. “But God help you if you’ve lied to us, Jav.”
I let go of my captive with enough of a shove to send him sprawling, giving us space for a dignified retreat. At the doorway I glanced back at Jav, and saw the fear there. Stark, it was in the lines of his body, behind his eyes.
But somehow I knew that it wasn’t me he was afraid of.
***
“Look, I’m sorry, I panicked,” Madeleine said later. “I saw those two coming for us, and I just wanted to get an answer out of him quickly.” She turned away from the window and shrugged with a rueful smile. “I guess I just wasn’t thinking straight.”
Sean put down his coffee cup, moved over to put his hands on her shoulders, and smiled back at her. “It’s OK,” he said lightly. “We’ll work round it.”
We were in the living room at my flat, which had seemed like the only safe neutral territory to meet up with Sean after our abortive interrogation of Jav.
Apart from telling Madeleine to follow me I hadn’t said a word to her since we left the health club. I couldn’t believe she’d given Jav such an easy escape route, and I didn’t trust myself not to tell her so in short, pithy sentences. I should have realised that Sean would take a line of less resistance.
Watching the two of them together now I wondered, briefly, what it was about some women that made men so desperate to hold the nasty world at bay for them. Whatever it was, I knew I didn’t have it.
“So, what happens now?” I asked, breaking in more abruptly than I’d intended. “Have you had any luck tracking down Langford?”
Sean let his hands fall away and shook his head. “He’s dropped right out of sight,” he said.
“Is there any chance Jav might have been telling the truth?” Madeleine asked now, with some hesitation.
“Doubtful,” I said shortly.
“But possible, nevertheless,” Sean said. The look he directed towards me lasted only half a second, but it was enough for me to read the warning.
“We still need more information about him.” He sighed, passed a hand across his eyes, and leaned against the wall by the window. He had that focused quality I’d seen in him before. Whenever we’d been out in the field, even just during training, Sean switched into a different mode, pared-down, alert.
“Madeleine, would you go and see O’Bryan?” he said now. “See what you can wheedle out of him about Nasir’s background, and quiz him about Harvey Langford while you’re at it.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then shut it again. Sean had always had the knack of inspiring his troops. The way the other girl reacted, so pathetically grateful at being given the responsibility, took the wind right out of my sails.
“What would you like me to do?” I asked instead.
“If you’ve nothing more pressing, I’ve got a couple of leads on where to find Ursula,” he said casually. “I’d like you to come with me.”
I nodded, downed the rest my coffee in a gulp and collected the empty mugs together. By the time I’d dumped them in the kitchen sink and gathered my leather jacket, Madeleine had already used her mobile phone to check that Eric O’Bryan was available, and willing to see her.
“He’s in his office all afternoon,” she said brightly when I returned to the living room.
We moved out of the flat, and I followed the two of them down the wooden stairs to the street where the Grand Cherokee was parked next to the kerb.
We took the back streets into Lancaster, winding up through the Marsh estate, before dropping Madeleine off near the Castle prison. It was easy enough for her to make her way down from there through the pedestrianised shopping centre to O’Bryan’s office.
She left us cheerfully enough, with a purposeful stride. Sean watched her cross the road in front of us and set off along the far pavement.
“You should go easier on her,” he said as we nosed back out into traffic.
Surprised, I twisted in my seat to face him. “Funny,” I said dryly. “That’s almost exactly what she said to me about you.”
He glanced at me then, nearly smiled, but not quite, and when he spoke his voice bordered on the chilly. “Not everyone’s had the training you have, Charlie,” he said. “Not everyone can stay so together under pressure. Madeleine’s speciality is electronic security and surveillance, and she’s very, very good at it. She’s not a field agent, and never has been. I won’t have her confidence dented because she made a human mistake in circumstances way outside her usual remit.”
“I’m not a field agent either,” I said, stung by the hinted rebuke. The lights changed and we moved forwards into the flow. “You seem to forget, sergeant, that I’ve been out of the army now for longer than I was ever in.”
“Speaking of which,” he said, “I’ve been doing some digging.”
My heart was suddenly thumping in my chest. “And?”
He let the Cherokee freewheel down the hill past the new bus station, changing lanes to head for Morecambe and keeping his eyes on the road, so it was difficult to tell what he was thinking.
“There was a phone call,” he said at last. “Just after the court martial, apparently. Female. She rang the guard room at camp wanting to speak to me. When they told her I wasn’t available she said to pass on a message. Said I shouldn’t have let it happen to you. Said to tell me not to be so cruel as to keep ignoring your calls. That if I still felt anything for you at all I should get in touch.”
My skin shimmied. “Oh shit,” I murmured. “They didn’t exactly need anyone to draw them a diagram after that, did they?”
“No,” he said, voice neutral, “I dare say they didn’t.”
The traffic slowed where it merged from two lanes into one along the opposite side of the river from my flat. I stared out of the window at the jagged pale blue supports for the new Millennium footbridge that spanned the water, but I didn’t take in a line of it.
“So, any ideas who it was?” I asked after a while.
“That we don’t know,” Sean said. “The call came in on an outside line, but that’s as much as my contact could tell me. Why, who do you suspect?”
I shrugged. “It’s difficult to tell without hearing the voice whether it was malicious or genuine. The words sound concerned for my welfare, but that could just be a clever way of disguising the intent.”
I swallowed, alarmed to discover I was close to tears. I was damned if I was going to cry in front of Sean. Instead, I managed with surprising calm, “That call couldn’t have done my cause more harm than it did at the time.”
“I suppose it could have been someone connected with one of the men involved,” Sean said. “A put-up job to stir it for you. You didn’t tell me Hackett was one of them, by the way,” he added. “He always struck me as a nasty piece of work.”
My neck and shoulders seized instantly, and I could hear the thunder of my own pulse inside my ears. Fear was like a stone in my stomach. Oh God, what else had he found out?
“I still wouldn’t rule out Lewis and Woolley as candidates either,” he went on, as though not noticing my reaction. “It wasn’t much of a secret that they didn’t like you, I’m afraid. You were in a different league, and it showed.”
“If I’d known where it was going to lead, I would have happily moved to the back of the class,” I said, trying not to let the bitterness creep out.
“No you wouldn’t,” Sean said straight away. He flicked his eyes across at me dispassionately. “I know how your mind works, Charlie. You want to win, or you don’t want to play.” He managed a smile that mocked himself as much as me. “In that respect, we’re very much alike.”
“Is that why you quit?”
“Not really,” he said. “In the end I found that I just enjoy breathing.”
Nineteen
We didn’t speak again until we’d travelled through Morecambe and were heading further out towards Heysham. Sean had three locations to try, and we drew a total blank o
n the first two.
“If this one is a wash-out, we’re back to square one,” Sean said as we pulled up outside the last address. He peered out through the windscreen at the grim-looking three-storey flat complex in front of us. “Ah well, let’s get this over with. I have a feeling if we’re up there for too long the wheels will have gone by the time we get back.”
We left the Cherokee parked on the broken-up tarmac, and headed across the rubbish-strewn grass to the outside staircase at one end of the block. We took the stairs to the top floor in silence, stepping over the soggy detritus scattered over each exposed half-landing on the way up.
The flat we were after was in the centre of the row. Sean knocked on the shabby front door while I tried not to listen to the full-scale screaming match going on in the next flat along.
