by P. R. Black
‘I’ve no idea. It happened like I said,’ Seth said. ‘I don’t have anything else to tell you. They came here, they put blades to our necks, I took them to the gear. I’m not going to take a chance with my wife being here, and I’m not going to do it now. They’ve got it. There was piles of it. I wasn’t even sure what it was.’
The man with the blade laughed out loud. The sound made Vonny flinch. Something in it told her that the awful ending they’d been spared a few nights ago had only been stayed. He doesn’t just want the drugs. He wants revenge. He knows. Or he suspects. ‘You knew exactly what it was, twerp! Why didn’t you just give it to the cops? Or ask someone, maybe? I think it’s because you were trying to cut a deal. And it’s going to cost you.’
Seth licked his lips. There was a tone of panic in his voice. ‘Look, we can sort this out. I kept some of it back. I just need to…’
He moved faster than she’d have thought possible. He leapt for the bottle Chloe had left on the kitchen table. A rill of wine spewed out as he spun the bottle round, leaving a slick trail on the white tiles below. It splattered the newcomer as well, as the bottle rebounded off his face. The bottle did not break, at least until it hit the tiling.
The brawny man with the kukri sank to one knee, a cut oozing beneath one eye, the other gazing into space, wavering like a pale blue gas flame.
With scarcely believable strength, Seth heaved the table, too, then thrashed out with the chair. ‘Run!’ he screamed. ‘Out the front door, now!’
Vonny did it; she was crying, or shouting, or sobbing, an incoherent garble as her own feet threatened to hurl her onto her face, the flooring rumbling beneath her like the percussion blasts at horse racing, Seth behind her, yelling: ‘Run, run, for God’s sake, run!’
Then the front door wide open, and a scrunched-up older man standing there, picture-perfect in the porch light, with a pair of pristine false teeth reflecting the light back onto them. He had a shotgun in his hand. ‘Where you two going, now?’ he asked, affably. ‘Carol singing?’
Vonny turned tail, rebounding off Seth as he charged out at her back. She caught a glimpse of the man with the kukri, teeth bared, a scene from a nightmare, blood trailing down one side of his face like a bad fringe. Seth ran for the basement door, fishing the keys from his pocket. ‘Only chance,’ he wheezed, ‘get in, go on… stay in…’
Disaster; the keys slithered from his fingers and tumbled across the carpeting that led to the staircase. Seth and Vonny both groped for them; collided, and fell.
Just in time to see the basement staircase door open.
The slim, fair-haired man strolled up the short flight of stairs. He wore the same dark coat he’d worn when he posed as a policeman.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘your basement studio is bigger and tidier than some flats I’ve lived in. Cosier, too.’ He grinned, as the two other men appeared at their backs. ‘Did I crack that joke already? Well, never mind. Don’t be lying around there all day, you two. We’ve got business to attend to.’
41
PC Whelan was in his running gear, tying his shoelaces, crouched on one knee in the police station car park. Susie McCracken thought of a pylon bending down suddenly on the horizon. When she clocked the policeman’s face, she decided he looked more like a boy who had forgotten his kit, and had to make do from the spares box in the PE teacher’s cupboard. Protruding from a pair of petrol blue shorts, he had the skinniest thighs she’d ever seen on anyone, male or female, and she wondered as she approached him if he was still taller than her from that position.
He started when she approached and straightened up. He was sweating, clearly at the end of his exercise. ‘Oh. It’s you.’
‘I called at the front desk – they said you were on a run.’
Whelan might have been blushing, rather than tired out; he palmed sweat off his brow. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Just had a brainwave about Brenwood Green.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah. I’m wondering if there’s maybe something on the property that might be of interest to our mystery impersonator.’
‘Oh, him… Scottish guy with the blond hair? Yeah, the DI I work with, he’s on the case.’
‘Who’s the DI?’
‘Leonard. A real DI, before you ask.’
‘Any leads?’
‘Curious one, in fact.’ Whelan sniffed, and looked around casually before answering. ‘No sign of the guy on any database. Came up completely blank. So Leonard said, anyway.’
‘He based in your office?’
Whelan shook his head. ‘Nah, London. Maybe we should head somewhere else for this?’
‘For what?’ McCracken smiled.
‘For an off-the-record briefing.’
*
Showered, he had changed back into a white shirt, open at the collar, which gave him the look of a slightly harried-looking waiter. His cheeks were still flushed pink as he ordered a mineral water at the café, which he didn’t drink – he only revolved the bottle in his hands, which irritated Susie, although she didn’t say so.
She had her lined notebook out in front of her, the pages pressed flat. ‘So you were actually over there at the house?’
‘Yeah. Saw Seth Miller. He was trying to sneak out a side gate – that’s what it looked like, anyway. He’d already spoken to the gaffer. Looked nervous when he saw me.’
‘Learn anything from him?’
‘Not in what he said. Gaffer thinks he’s lying. This is the bit I shouldn’t tell you…’
Controlling a mounting sense of excitement, Susie kept her voice and expression neutral. ‘It’s OK – you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.’
To her horror, he nodded in acquiescence, then let his head fall.
‘But if you did,’ she continued quickly, ‘I think you could help that couple.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Last time I spoke to her, she was scared. She could have just had an argument with her husband, and I called at a bad time. But I think something’s happened there. Added to a fake copper coming over to our office and asking all kinds of questions, then I think we might have to go over and see if they’re all right.’
‘OK.’ Whelan took a deep breath. ‘There’s something else. Two motorbikes were found at the property. I found them, actually. They’d been driven along a path into the new estate, then hidden at the side of a drystone wall, in a lay-by. Near the side gate I was talking about. When we ran a trace, it turned out they’d been stolen. My gaffer was suspicious but wouldn’t tell me why. He reckoned that someone might have been on the property and maybe set up shop there, or…’
Susie blinked. ‘Or what?’
‘Or they were taken out of play.’
‘What? Murdered?’
He nodded. ‘He reckons it’s serious. Made all kinds of phone calls after we went to the house. But you know what really got me?’ Whelan leaned forward. ‘When Seth Miller saw me, in uniform, he just kind of turned tail and went back into the house.’
‘Something’s dodgy. No doubt about it.’
Whelan frowned. ‘What do you know? Spill it.’
‘I don’t know. I only suspect, but… Well, for my money, there was something ropey about that car. Why would you go to that effort to hide an old Datsun? It’s not that valuable. A Lamborghini or a Ferrari or something, sure. But not that type of car. So there had to be something strange about it.’
‘I don’t get it – if there was something dodgy, then why did they agree to have the pictures run in the paper?’
‘It was only later that I thought there was something weird about it. I was helping them out, or so I thought. It was a great story for a local paper. It got picked up nationally, too – was on the Daily Mail website the other day. We got a few bob out of it. Doesn’t always happen when a national picks up your story.’
Whelan’s expression completely changed – a little mirth around the eyes, which reminded her of his l
unk-headed cousin in her office. ‘So I guess all of this is your fault?’
‘You what? No, of course not. I just took a few pictures for the paper. Christ, I didn’t know anything. I’m only speculating… Look, maybe we’d better find out a thing or two before we go off on weird tangents.’
‘What have you got in mind?’
‘What I’m proposing is we head over there and speak to them. Talk over our fears, tell them what we know.’
‘Absolutely not. My gaffer says we’re not supposed to approach them. He says he has a watching brief, for now. He reckons the house is probably being watched by other people as well as the cops.’
‘How about if I took you over there privately? You’re off duty, aren’t you?’
‘Well, yeah…’
‘And Vonny and Seth haven’t committed any crimes, have they? That we know of?’
‘I guess not.’
‘All right then – we can go over personally. I’ll say I was in the area… in fact, I can say I want to get pictures of the house in the snow.’
‘Seems a bit thin, to me. But sure, I can do that. I don’t think there’s a law against me going there, privately.’
‘They don’t need to know you’re in the police. They might not recognise you out of uniform. Hey, this could be your big break. And – if they don’t buy our excuse, they might fall for an inducement.’ Susie tapped her bag, where the gold foil wrapper of a bottle of prosecco protruded.
‘Sure. Now, what if they tell us to bugger off?’
Susie shrugged. ‘Then I guess you’ve still got half a bottle of prosecco.’
42
Vonny wasn’t tied to the kitchen chair, but she might as well have been. She gripped the bottom of the wooden seat as tightly as she might have clung to the edge of a sinkhole.
‘Hey,’ Jay said, stabbing a finger at her – she’d heard them address each other, on the other side of the door. ‘Keep your hands where we can see them.’
She did as she was told, but her hands shook, an appalling tremor she wouldn’t have believed had she seen it on a TV drama. She clasped them tight, to keep them from quivering out of control. She couldn’t quite do the same for her jaws, and her teeth chattered.
They’re going to kill us. We’re going to die.
Vonny and Seth were sat at either side of their huge to-die-for kitchen table – remarkably unscathed after its earlier gymnastics. Vonny wondered how perverse things could get; how they might both meet their ends, sat here, their foreheads pressed against solid oak, eyes forever staring. Death might come through the back of the head, over in a single sharp pang, an exclamation mark of shock, then nothing. It might slip between her ribs, with drawn-out moments of fear and agony as she drained away. It could be heralded by a sharp slap across her neck.
She didn’t remember them beating Seth, but his nose bled, anyway. He sniffed it back, tilting his head like you would have been told to at school. The short, wiry older man with the close-cropped white hair and the lined, pugnacious face that made him look curiously continental had found a packet of cloths in the cupboard without asking, and had offered one to Seth, who had pressed it to his nose without a word of gratitude, or defiance, or anything.
Then – and this had particularly chilled Vonny – the little man had used another of the cloths to quite fastidiously wipe away a few spots of blood on the table, before rinsing the cloth thoroughly at the sink.
‘Fancy taps, these,’ Vinnicombe said, as he dabbed up the spare drops that silvered the chrome worktop. ‘You mind if I steal them?’
Jay glowered at Vonny, ignoring Seth. ‘You know why we’re here,’ he said. ‘You know what we want. Talk as if your lives depend on it. Because they do. We want the gear that was stashed in the car. Then we want you to tell us exactly what happened to the two boys who were here the other night.’
‘We don’t know,’ Seth said. ‘There’s no point repeating myself. I gave them all the stuff, and they left.’
Cramond, who had stood with his back to the worktop at the far corner of the kitchen, his back to the cabinets with his arms folded, had said nothing for the past while. He only watched, with a faintly amused air. Finally, he said: ‘That’s your story, mate. Fine. All good. Now you.’ He nodded at Vonny.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Seth took the two men outside. He said he gave them the stuff. That was all.’
‘Both stories match,’ Cramond mused, with a kind of oily, sixth-form irony. ‘But I don’t think that’s the case. Here’s the part you might not have known: the two boys who appeared at this house were meant to find out what happened to the drugs that were in the old Datsun. Once they got the answers they were looking for, the plan was to kill you both, and put your bodies into the pond. Water, you see. Wipes away a lot of traces. So, if they split with the gear – and I admit this is a possibility – then why did they leave you alive?’
‘You’ll have to ask them that,’ Seth said, laying down the cloth. ‘They’re long gone.’
‘I wasn’t asking you.’ Cramond unfolded his arms and stood up straight, then turned to Vonny. ‘I was asking you, darling. Does it seem likely they’d have broken in here, taken your security system offline… And I have to say, they made a superb job of that… Escaped with the gear… and then not killed you, as per their own plan?’
‘They gave us their word,’ Vonny said, the words tumbling out, in a higher and higher tone of voice. It might keep rising through the octaves until it disappeared with a tiny squeak. ‘They told us they wouldn’t hurt us if we told them where the stuff was, and they kept their word. They just left.’
‘They didn’t take your phones, either,’ said Vinnicombe. ‘I mean, think about it – you break into someone’s house, roust them out of bed in the middle of the night, then you don’t take their phones? Just leave them behind, like? Schoolboy error, that one. Even if they were being nice. They’d have turned your phones into confetti. SIMs, the lot.’
‘So, we’re not buying it,’ Jay said. The muscles around his frog-like jaw appeared to have a life of their own, quivering and roiling back and forth. Perhaps he was chewing a rock. ‘So, let’s have another go. The truth, now.’
‘That’s it,’ Seth said. ‘That’s all to tell. There’s nothing else.’
Jay came forward. Vonny shrank back, raising her arms to ward him off; Seth got to his feet, but Vinnicombe darted forward with his sawn-off shotgun.
Jay grabbed her by the hair and yanked her out of her seat. Even allowing for the fact she offered no resistance, it was preposterously easy to do, as if he had pulled a doll off a shelf. She was on her feet in an instant, and pain seared across her scalp as some of her hair detached.
Seth started forward, but Vinnicombe jabbed him in the chest with the shotgun, and he sat down. A gleam of ugly, sadistic amusement illuminated Vinnicombe’s tiny rodent’s eyes; Seth’s own eyes glistened, molten black.
‘Don’t hurt her. Please,’ Seth said.
Cramond tutted – at Jay, not at Seth. ‘No, that’s not it,’ he said.
‘Wrong option,’ Vinnicombe said. Never taking his eyes off Seth, he explained, in a stage whisper: ‘Bit of a rookie, our lad, here.’
‘Shut your mouth,’ Jay snarled to Vinnicombe. He shook Vonny by the hair, as if in retaliation over the other man’s comment.
She screamed; by instinct she grabbed him by the shoulder. He shoved her, and she rebounded off the seat and crashed to the floor, the side of her face glancing off the table leg. Sobbing, she curled into a ball.
Vonny was helped to her feet by Cramond, who said gently: ‘I am so very sorry about that. The big guy’s just a bit nervous. There’s quite a lot at stake. I’m sure you get that?’ Cramond stooped to pick up the chair, and guided Vonny into it.
Seth, who still had the shotgun pointed at his chest, said to her: ‘Take it easy, pet. It’ll be all right.’
‘It won’t,’ Cramond said. He walked towards the cutlery drawer, and opened it with his
back to them. They heard the silvery chime and rustle of the knives and forks.
Vonny imagined the biggest butcher knife she had; one from a previous house, too big for the fancy knife block her father had bought them as a moving-in present.
But when Cramond turned around, he had a rolling pin in his hand. He grinned. ‘You know, I never actually used one of these to make food? Never baked, never made a pie, anything… I mean, I love to make something fancy, but pastry’s just like too much hard work.’
He tossed the pin in the air, twice, catching it expertly as he strode across the kitchen floor. Upon catching it the second time, he took a firm grip, then swung it hard at Seth’s face.
Seth managed to block it with his upper arm, twisting his features away. The second blow took him across the shoulder blades, and he cried out; the next blow fell mostly on the backs of his hands as he covered his face.
‘Nah, this is how you do it,’ Cramond said, teeth bared. ‘Tell us where the stuff is! No more fucking around! Where is it?’
He raised the rolling pin again.
‘We’ve got it! It’s all right!’ Vonny cried out desperately. ‘Don’t do anything. Just promise to let us go. We’ve got it. We’ve got the stuff.’
‘Where?’ Cramond roared. Jay and Vinnicombe peered at her, both completely still, as a tiger behind glass at the zoo might assess a child.
‘I don’t know,’ Vonny gasped. ‘But it’s here. We can take you to it.’
Seth’s teeth were bared. Blood made a sharp contrast with the enamel of his teeth. ‘She’s lying,’ he hissed.
‘Shut up! It’s over! It’s done!’ Vonny said. ‘Seth knows where the stuff is. He can take you to it. You get it, you let us go.’
