by CJ Carver
‘Will you be all right?’ She looked at him anxiously. ‘You look as though you could use another mao-tai.’
‘I’ll be fine.’ He held up the envelope. ‘Would you mind looking after this for a little longer?’ He was thinking he might need it as evidence and couldn’t think of a safer place to keep it.
‘Of course not.’
They both rose. He handed her the envelope.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
She leaned up and kissed his cheek. ‘If you ever need me or my help, you only have to ask.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dan spoke to the funeral directors who were arranging the return of his father’s body. They suggested he speak to the Staatsanwalkt, the Public Prosecutor of the area in which the death had occurred, and gave him a number to ring. After several attempts Dan finally got through to the right person who, luckily, spoke English.
‘I am absolutely satisfied your father died from natural causes,’ he was told firmly. ‘The death certificate has been issued. I am very sorry for your loss but I see no reason to have a post-mortem.’
It transpired that in Germany, if the doctor attending the body was sure about the cause of death, they would simply issue the death certificate and arrange for the body to be taken by a mortician and prepared for a funeral.
When Dan started to ask how he could get a private autopsy done, the man said, ‘You will be paying for this yourself?’
‘Yes.’
After a long pause, the man cleared his throat. ‘In that case I will review the situation but I am not guaranteeing anything, understand?’
‘Thank you.’
Dan hung up. Thought for a while. Made several phone calls, after which he headed for his father’s apartment located a block from the Bristol Channel in Weston-super-Mare. When he arrived a westerly wind was blowing hard and the tide was out, showing acres of dark sand, coloured brown-grey by river silt. Aside from a couple of dog walkers, the beach was empty.
His father had moved here when Dan’s mother had died over a decade ago, and when Dan had asked why – they’d never holidayed in Weston-super-Mare or had any connection to the place that he knew – his father had said, ‘I find it extremely cheerful’. He hadn’t said any more and Dan hadn’t pressed any further since his father had seemed so very content.
As he walked down his father’s street, and without a conscious effort, he took in who was around. A young couple at a bus stop. A woman with a buggy. A family of four in the café opposite. Nothing out of the ordinary that he could see, but his senses were more alert than usual. Olivia’s voice echoed in his mind. He said he’d discovered something that might put him in danger. Now his father was dead, Dan thought he had every right to be cautious.
He let himself into the apartment. He’d come here the day his father had died to check it was secure and that all the appliances were switched off, the heating set to sixteen degrees. The air felt bitterly cold, but it wasn’t the temperature as much as the lack of life that made it feel so. A surge of sorrow rose within him when there was no welcoming holler, no shout of happy greeting.
Dan moved from room to room to find that everything was, as far as he could tell, exactly as he’d left it, from his father’s spectacles by the phone and notepad on the hall table to the neat stack of books by his bedside. He paused to pick up a framed photograph of the Fearsome Four, as his dad used to call them, taken by the fishing hut at Glenallen. Gustav, the broadest and tallest, followed by Dan, then Christopher the beanpole and Sophie, looking at the camera through her eyelashes.
Out of nowhere he was ambushed by the vision of Sophie arriving at the lodge that year. She had missed a summer and it had been two years since the boys had seen her, and when she stepped out of the taxi all their jaws dropped. At fifteen years old she was no longer the tow-headed tomboy they remembered but an unbelievably sophisticated and striking-looking girl.
None of them had known how to act around her at first but the second the four of them were alone together she’d reached into her voluminous handbag (when had Sophie ever had a handbag?!) and brought out a bottle of vodka.
‘Fancy a drink, boys?’
Not even Gustav demurred and they’d drunk straight from the bottle, exhilarated and euphoric at the summer stretching ahead before them.
Putting the picture down, Dan went to the sitting room to find a copy of the Daily Telegraph folded to the cryptic crossword. His father had filled in just over two thirds, and if he’d lived he would have finished the remainder when he’d returned from his golf trip.
Had someone really murdered his father? It seemed unlikely but with his father’s words echoing in his mind, check my body for any signs of foul play, Dan quickly scoured the apartment for any newspaper clippings. There were none, so he collected the newspapers from his father’s recycling bin and laid them on the kitchen table. He started with the Saturday Telegraph and moved to the Sunday Times but there were no clues. No scribbled notes, no marks, not a single indication that any article meant anything in particular. He moved to the colour supplements but had no more luck. Part of him wasn’t surprised. His father wouldn’t have wanted to leave any clue for an enemy. What had Olivia said? That Bill was looking into it, in case it was true.
Dan picked through the newspapers again, concentrating on things military along with the political commentary, but since there was nothing that raised the hairs on the back of his neck, he bagged the previous week’s newspapers to take home. He’d have to work through them until something jumped out at him, but in the meantime there was more he could be doing. Like working through his father’s emails and seeing where he’d been recently, who he’d been in contact with, who he’d visited. Fortunately, his father had shared his usernames and passwords with Dan – no point in making things painfully difficult for you when I pop my clogs – so he wasn’t worried about accessing any of his father’s devices. It was just the time it was going to take as he bet his father wouldn’t have left any trace of what he was ‘looking into’ for anyone to find.
Dan propped his father’s laptop and newspapers by the front door along with the leather pouffe his father had bought on a trip to Morocco years ago and that Aimee loved. Beautifully hand crafted and embroidered delicately with silver, it would last a lifetime and be something for her to remember her grandfather by.
Heading to fetch his car, he had barely taken three steps outside when a shifting, uncomfortable feeling brushed over him. Something was lurking at the corner of his vision, something that wasn’t quite right.
He didn’t slow down or change his pace in any way. He kept walking. But his senses switched to high alert.
He looked at the people along the street. A man at the bus stop, another in a car on his phone. Two women in the café opposite, chatting. He continued to scan. Everyone seemed to fit into the environment, but then he realised that the couple he’d seen earlier at the bus stop had split up and the woman was now behind him, ostensibly on the phone.
When Dan reached the end of the street, instead of turning left toward his car, he turned right heading for the Sovereign Shopping Centre.
The woman followed him.
He passed McDonald’s on the left, began to cross the road for the High Street. The young woman remained behind him. He committed her face, her size and style of movement to memory in case she altered her appearance in any way in order to confuse him.
Shoulder-length brown hair. An ordinary face. Oval, slightly pallid. No noteworthy features. Nothing outstanding, everything muted, unexceptional. Small, wiry body. Her clothes were bland –jeans, plain white shirt under a wind breaker, a pair of black high-top sneakers – nothing to remember. Mouse Woman. She was the perfect surveillance tool. If it hadn’t been for his father’s letter the sixth sense of an ex-spy wouldn’t have kicked in and he’d never have known she was there.
When he came to a Vodafone store, he ducked inside. Browsed for a while, had a chat with one of the sales staff. When he exi
ted, he glanced about, seemingly for traffic, before he committed to cross the street. No young woman. Dan walked to Boots where he bought an energy drink. Still no young woman but his nerves tightened when, in a shop window opposite, he saw the man from the bus stop exit Poundland and fall into step behind him.
Dan continued his surveillance until he was certain there were just two of them. Tracking jobs were usually done in threes, minimum. Why just two? Whatever the reason, it made things easier for him. He didn’t want them to know he’d spotted them, so he concentrated on disguising his evasive moves as ordinary behaviour, finally losing the man by ducking inside the shopping centre – a haven for counter surveillance operatives – but Mouse Woman was more persistent. She was good. She needed shaking fast before her partner could catch up.
He stopped suddenly and pulled out his phone as though he was answering a call. He spoke quickly, making his body language tense and angry, pretending he was having an argument. After he’d hung up, he broke into a fast walk. Annoyed, wanting to get somewhere in a hurry. He walked too fast for her to follow without breaking into a run. She wouldn’t want that.
Dan headed back the way he’d come. He zipped past the shopping centre, past Poundland, past the Vodafone store. He outdistanced her quickly. He kept his eyes open for her partner but didn’t see him.
As he passed McDonald’s he increased his stride and at the same time saw her drop her pace a fraction. He felt a moment’s satisfaction. She’d fallen for it. She thought he was returning to the apartment. At the next corner he turned right and then switched left, but when he reached Oxford Street, instead of walking down Union Street, he ducked right and right again into St James Street. From there he dry-cleaned assiduously as he worked his way back to his car ensuring there was nobody else on his tail. Another day he might ignore them. Let them watch, for who knew who was watching the watchers? But Dan knew the secret world and that they might already know who he was. They might know the make of his car, his number plate, and that he was married with one daughter, a son on the way. However, if they didn’t know that, then he’d like to keep it that way.
He scrutinised his car for tracking devices and felt a wash of relief when he found nothing. He drove home carefully, checking behind and around him all the time. He only pulled into his driveway when he was a hundred per cent sure he was on his own.
The breeze was damp and scented with grass as he climbed out of the car. He could see Jenny in the sitting room, working. She was frowning, absorbed in whatever she was doing. He did a perimeter check of the property before heading inside.
‘Hi, Pops.’ He greeted the family dog, a Rottweiler he’d rescued last year. Stumpy tail wagging, she greeted him back. ‘Heard you hid Aimee’s shoe earlier. Hope you didn’t chew it.’
Next he went to check in with his daughter, who was in her bedroom creating a ‘museum’. When Aimee had started collecting various things – bird’s feathers, shells, the odd animal bone from the moor – Dan had built a cabinet for her to store them, and now she was putting a broken blackbird egg alongside one of Jenny’s earrings.
‘Hi, Aimee.’
‘Hi, Daddy.’ She finished what she was doing and turned around, expression serious. ‘Will Connor have a wake like Grandpa will?’
Aimee didn’t remember Connor that clearly but she certainly knew who he was. Two deaths in the same month was quite a lot for her to be getting her head around but she seemed to be coping pretty well.
‘I would think so,’ Dan replied.
‘Will I go?’
‘It might be a nice thing to do, to say goodbye to him. We can also say hello to all the people who’ll be there, and share their sorrow.’
She came over and put her arms around his waist. ‘I miss granddad.’
Dan cleared his throat as he hugged her back. ‘I do too.’
Finally, he headed downstairs where Jenny was propped on the sofa, calculator on one side, papers and pen on the other.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Hey.’ She made to rise.
‘Don’t get up.’ He went over and gave her a kiss.
‘Was it awful?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
She touched his face, expression sad. ‘I’m so sorry.’
He took her fingers and kissed them. ‘You shouldn’t be working,’ he chided her gently.
‘It distracts me.’
Jenny was an accountant, looking after the books and tax returns of local businesses, and as word had spread about her efficiency and speed in getting things done, her client list had grown. If she wasn’t careful, he’d warned her, she’d be busier than she’d been when she’d worked in London.
She looked at the mess on the sofa and gave a sigh. ‘I got so uncomfortable upstairs, I moved.’
He wasn’t surprised. The baby was due any time now and even though she felt exhausted, she found it almost impossible to settle for any period of time. Her belly was too big, her breathing shallow. Her body ached and she felt permanently hot. ‘I’ve had enough of being pregnant!’ she kept telling Dan. ‘I can’t wait to have this baby!’
‘Can I get you anything?’ he asked.
‘A cup of tea would be lovely.’
‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
He stood in the kitchen looking at the array of family photographs stuck on the fridge door along with several of Aimee’s drawings. He was thinking about normality, where he came home every Friday and dropped his briefcase by the front door where it remained untouched until Monday morning. He was thinking about his wife, his baby boy and Aimee playing on a beach. He was thinking how the secret world refused to let him go, how its tentacles kept reaching out and enfolding him, drawing him back in.
Then Jenny walked into the kitchen and he took her in his arms. He held her and she kissed him and there were no words between them, just love. He wondered how to protect her while he finished what his father had started.
That question kept him awake for most of the night.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lucy leaned over the strip of blue and white barrier tape strung sloppily on one side of the bridge. POLICE – DO NOT CROSS. More tape had been strung to prevent people from entering the ravine, but the bridge itself hadn’t been shut, giving walkers and other traffic their usual access.
She hadn’t been able to have a look yesterday thanks to Constable Murdoch’s presence. He’d been nice enough when he’d told her she really shouldn’t be rubber-necking and for a moment the urge to tell him she was a fellow police officer had almost overcome her, but she’d swallowed her ego and simpered at him, her eyes watering from the effort. God, she’d make a crap undercover officer.
No Murdoch today. Nobody, thanks to the weather.
It was chucking it down, sheets of rain, and even though she wore a pair of Grace’s waterproof trousers and jacket, water still managed to work its way beneath her hood and trickle down her neck. Bunches of flowers were piled to one side, some for Nimue Acheson, some for Connor, and all had collapsed into a soggy mess. There was a sodden teddy bear with a tartan scarf and a waterlogged looking Eeyore lying on its side.
Lucy did her best to study and analyse the site, checking to see if any lichen had been disturbed, whether a vehicle had struck the bridge leaving behind any paint or paint chips, but found nothing. She made a note of where Nimue’s body had been found in comparison to Connor’s resting place. Lucy didn’t go into the ravine. Anything that might have been useful would probably have been washed away.
Stripping off her waterproofs, she stuffed them in the back of the car and headed to Elgin. As she drove she listened to the news. Another terrorist attack, another lorry driven into pedestrians, killing six and injuring dozens more. This time in India. When was it going to stop?
When she arrived at the Crown Office she found Grace waiting just inside the door.
‘Perfect,’ Grace said smiling. Lucy’s mind hummed a soft peach. Grace always had that effect on her; soothing and restful. A
fter they’d checked in at reception they settled on a pair of plastic moulded chairs in a waiting area that seemed to be caught between two centuries. Blue commercial carpet tiles, maroon flocked wallpaper dotted with sepia hunting and sporting prints.
Lucy’s phone rang. She looked at the display. ‘Dan,’ she told Grace as she answered it.
‘You’re OK to talk?’ he asked.
‘Yep.’
When he didn’t say anything she realised he was waiting for her to fill in the gap. She really must sharpen up. Give him information faster. ‘I’m with Grace. We’re at the Crown Office in Elgin.’
‘Was Connor suicidal?’
‘I’m not a shrink,’ she answered, ‘but at first glance it doesn’t look like it.’
‘What does it look like?’
‘I’m not sure yet,’ she admitted. ‘We’re going to talk to the fiscal in a minute and see what he says.’
‘OK. Anything else?’
‘Well, I visited Connor’s school. Spoke to the head teacher as well as two of his class teachers.’
‘And?’
‘They were all shocked. But not disbelieving. Suicide among kids is rising. They’re under huge pressure these days, not just from parents and SATS, but keeping up with their peers. When you think ChildLine received over thirty-five thousand calls from under-eighteens who had suicidal thoughts last year . . .’
‘That many?’ He sounded dismayed.
‘Sadly, yes.’
‘OK. I’ll let you crack on.’
‘And you?’ Lucy said hurriedly. ‘How are you?’
‘Bearing up.’
Small pause and then he said, ‘Thanks,’ and hung up.
‘How is he?’ Grace asked.
‘Bearing up, apparently.’
Grace nodded, and at that moment a man appeared in the doorway. Tall, almost stately, with silver hair and a serious expression, he was wearing the sort of suit men would pay hundreds of pounds for.
