Know Me Now

by CJ Carver

  ‘Good.’

  He dropped her hands and as she began to turn around, he said, ‘Don’t.’

  Jenny paused, her eyes fixed on Mischa, his sounds of distress, but her senses were also on the man and the second he vanished through the curtain she leaped for her son, pulled him against her breast. She was crying, sobbing with relief as she wrenched back the curtain.

  The man was already at the end of the ward, moving swiftly. He’d be out of sight any second. Jenny took a huge breath and holding Mischa in one arm she pointed with the other, yelling, ‘That man in the coat! The fawn coat! He just tried to steal my baby!’

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Lucy was halfway down the hillside when to her relief the signal kicked in again and the details of the Fiddichside Inn reappeared. No website, just a couple of photos and a dozen reviews. Thank God it was in the next village, Craigellachie, and not on the other side of the Cairngorms. She didn’t want to let Dan down.

  Firecat. It sounded like a code name. Would she be meeting a spook? An informant? A friend or a foe? Maybe they were a covert environmentalist, a greenie. When she’d gone back to Duncaid School she’d asked whether the kids supported any kind of environmentalism and met with Connor’s art and design teacher, Lucas Finch. Dark hair, slightly tousled, topped a narrow intelligent face.

  ‘I took Connor to a protest rally, if that helps,’ he told her. ‘Climbing the Scott Monument in Edinburgh.’

  Lucy blinked. ‘Is that legal?’

  ‘No.’ He grinned, unabashed. She’d bet he wouldn’t look quite so smug if he knew he was talking to a police officer.

  ‘I think I caught something about it on the radio,’ she responded, carefully neutral. ‘Wasn’t it something to do with saving the Arctic?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You were there as a protester?’ Lucy was doing her best not to let her disapproval show, but it leaked through. She’d been policing a protest rally against fracking in North Yorkshire last November and had a can of soup thrown at her. She’d ended up in hospital with a cracked skull.

  ‘Yes.’ His amusement seemed to grow but she refused to let it bug her.

  ‘Was Connor protesting too?’

  ‘No.’ Finch shook his head. ‘His father’s into GM and since he’s a loyal kid . . .’ He shrugged.

  ‘Why did you take him with you?’

  ‘I was introducing him to the power of the media. He was doing a project on advertising and I wanted to show him how a big event like that grabs headlines.’

  When Lucy checked Lucas Finch out it was to find he’d been arrested several times for a variety of protest stunts, but although she couldn’t think how he might be involved in Connor’s murder she didn’t want to drop the greenie or GM angle just yet.

  It was only after she bypassed a small rock fall that she realised Duncaid’s clock tower was over her right shoulder. She hoped the path would double back soon, or she’d end up on the wrong side of town. Wasn’t she supposed to have come across a bothy of some sort? As she rounded a corner she was met with a rock face. She was definitely not on the right path.

  She pulled out her map, had a look. Studied Duncaid. It was only walking the trails that she’d come to realise how easy it was to get lost, and she was thankful the weather was clear or she could well be in trouble. Was that what had happened to Connor? The weather had been appalling when he’d done the same journey, rain and fog, virtually no visibility. Plus, he was angry and probably hadn’t been concentrating on where he was going.

  Lucy tried to imagine what Connor would have done if he’d come to the same point as her.

  Head downhill. Find a stream and follow it to some kind of habitation. Which would, she realised, bring him to the east side of town and near the Blackwater Industrial Estate. Or had he cycled down the hill and into town as normal? However, nobody had seen him. Had he been snatched off the hill? If so, why? Every instinct told her he’d been murdered near a lab of some sort where any tame chemist could make phenol. It’s easy.

  He’d witnessed something, she was sure of it. She just had to find out what.

  The path steepened, forcing her to edge sideways, and when her phone rang she hurriedly wedged a boot against a flat-topped rock to stabilise herself and whipped it out of her jacket, hoping it was Philip Denton, but instead the screen told her CALLER UNKNOWN.

  ‘Hello?’ she answered.

  ‘Lucy?’

  Just one word filled with panic and tears. All the hairs on Lucy’s body rose. She’d heard that tone often enough in her job to recognise something was very wrong.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A man j-just’ – Jenny’s voice quavered – ‘threatened my baby. He told me to tell D-Dan to stop what he’s doing in Germany or . . . or he’d . . .’ She desperately tried to contain her tears. ‘H-hurt Mischa. C-can you get hold of him? He’s not answering his phone. I’ve left several messages . . .’

  ‘I’ll certainly try. Can you tell me exactly what happened?’

  When Jenny described the man – camel coat, long pale face, dark eyes – Lucy felt a wave of horror drench her.

  ‘I screamed for help, b-but he vanished. The police came but h-haven’t been able to do anything. They w-want to talk to Dan but in the m-meantime, they’ve moved me to a private room and p-put an officer outside.’

  ‘Did the man give a name?’

  ‘Sirius. No surname.’

  Lucy knew her blood pressure was in freefall and she hurriedly sat on the rock and bent over, her head between her knees. Sirius. The man who Lucy had tried to arrest and who had tasered her before handcuffing her and Grace to a radiator pipe last year. A professional assassin, he was well known throughout the security services and was wanted for murder in several countries. Lucy hadn’t heard anything of him since that incident.

  ‘The p-police know him,’ Jenny added. ‘He’s wanted for GBH, kidnapping, k-killing . . . you name it . . .’

  Lucy raised her head. Took several gulps of fresh air to try and steady herself. What the hell had Dan got them into? Even though Jenny said she had a cop with her, was that enough to protect her from Sirius?

  She said, ‘You need to go somewhere safe, where this man can’t find you.’

  There was a small pause.

  When Jenny spoke, her voice was quite calm. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I won’t go into hiding again. If Sirius comes to me a second time and harms me and Mischa, then on Dan’s head be it.’

  Without another word, she hung up.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. Lucy was sweating but she felt cold.

  Sirius fucking Thiele was back in their lives.

  FUCK.

  She squeezed her eyes hard together before opening them again and fixing her gaze on a spray of autumn-brown heather by her boot. What to do now? Her mind careened along various avenues at dizzying speed, tongues of green and yellow flickering as it picked up thoughts, discarded them and picked them up once more.

  She decided she would meet Firecat and then she’d head south and, whether Jenny liked it or not, she’d stay with her and try to protect her until Dan returned.

  But first, she had to warn Grace.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Grace had tried to persuade Alistair Tavey to go to hospital, but he wouldn’t have it.

  He’d rolled his head to look at the sweeping moorland outside his bedroom window and said, ‘I’m staying here.’

  He’d died eighteen hours later.

  Now Grace was driving along the rutted track to the Taveys, and when her phone rang she lifted it off the passenger seat and answered it. No police out here to bust her.

  ‘Pull over,’ Lucy told her. ‘Handbrake on.’

  ‘I’m fine. I’m on a private road. There’s no traffic for miles. Just the odd rabbit or two.’

  ‘I want you to pull over.’

  Lucy’s voice was tense. Grace felt the first inkling of something wrong. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Is your
handbrake on yet?’

  ‘OK, OK,’ Grace grumbled and shoved her foot on the brake, flipped her gear stick into neutral and pulled on the handbrake. ‘Do you want me to turn the engine off too?’

  ‘No. That’s OK.’

  She heard Lucy take a deep breath.

  ‘Jesus, Lucy, what is it?’

  ‘I’m not sure how to tell you this . . .’

  Alarm speared her. ‘It’s not Ross, is it?’

  ‘No, not Ross. Sorry. It’s just that Dan’s wife Jenny has just been threatened. And the man who threatened her told her his name was Sirius.’

  Grace felt the world tilt on its axis.

  Her gaze was fixed on a grassy tussock but she wasn’t seeing it. She was seeing Sirius Thiele’s face last year, as he held her wrist in his hands, threatening to snap it in two. The man who had no hesitation in abducting, torturing and killing people. It didn’t matter if they were women or children. She remembered him turning up after her mother’s funeral saying he was a debt collector and demanding money her mother supposedly owed his client. She had no idea what he’d been talking about but it hadn’t mattered. He’d threatened her until she was forced to do as he asked and after she’d found the money he’d thanked her as politely as any guest at a tea party.

  ‘Hello?’ Lucy’s voice squawked. ‘Grace, are you still there?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was hoarse.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I thought you had to know.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Grace listened as Lucy told her what had happened to Jenny and her newborn baby. Her mouth tasted bitter. She’d hoped she’d never hear that name again and now here he was, back in their lives.

  ‘Where are you?’ asked Grace.

  ‘Still on the hillside.’

  When Lucy said she was going to stay with Jenny after meeting a contact of Dan’s, Grace swallowed her instinctive protests. She wanted Lucy with her, not heading off down south. She hung up feeling vulnerable and scared until she remembered that Ross had some guns. A rifle, a couple of shotguns. Would they be enough against someone like Sirius Thiele? Probably not, but they might give them a fighting chance.

  Hands trembling, Grace put the car back into gear and stalled. Do not let the memory of that man get to you, she told herself. Don’t let him win.

  When she reached the bothy, it was to see the ambulance had already arrived. Grace let herself inside to find Alistair’s twenty-year-old daughter sitting on the stairs. ‘I’m so sorry, Sorcha.’

  The young woman’s expression was blank. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Dr Reavey. I saw your dad yesterday.’

  ‘Dad?’ She frowned, obviously puzzled.

  Grace put her confusion down to shock and made her way up the stairs. After commiserating with Disa, she checked Alistair’s body. Despite being a tough, fit man of sixty-one, he’d died of pneumonia. A death by natural causes. But she still took two blood samples.

  As she went back down the stairs, Sorcha looked up at her. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’

  Deeply disquieted, Grace decided she couldn’t let it go. She took a blood sample from Sorcha as well. Back at the surgery, Grace carefully wrapped the test tubes in bubble wrap and sealed them in a Ziploc bag. By the time she’d called Ben at Barts and addressed the box, the FedEx courier was on the doorstep, hand outstretched.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Lucy washed her boots clean in the shallows of the river Lomhar before heading through the Blackwater Industrial Estate and the main road that would take her into the centre of Duncaid and to her car, which Ross had kindly driven to Grace’s surgery earlier.

  As she clambered up the bank, she took in the van parked outside the Green Test Lab. Black, no decals, double rear doors. It looked like a mortuary van – she’d seen enough in her job – but if she remembered correctly, the funeral directors were on the other side of the auto-electrical workshop. What was it doing here?

  She went and had a quick look but couldn’t see inside thanks to the tinted windows. Since the van was the only sign of human interaction with the Green Test Lab that she’d witnessed, she texted Mac the number plate asking who owned it. If it belonged to the funeral directors, she’d nip around later and have a chat.

  Checking her watch, she saw she had just enough time to duck back to Lone Pine Farm to change and collect her things before meeting Firecat. Afterwards, she’d drive to Jenny. She didn’t mind a night drive when the motorways were quiet. And maybe when Dan was back, she might zip down the M4 to London and see her mum.

  Inside her car, she had just buckled her seat belt when her phone rang.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s Philip Denton.’

  His voice was clipped and brisk. Lucy tempered her tone to match his.

  ‘Dan Forrester called me at twelve twenty-five,’ she told him. ‘He asked me to tell you that German Immigration has him in custody at Hanover Airport.’

  ‘What else?’

  She told him she’d called Jenny to tell her Dan was OK. She didn’t know whether to mention Sirius or not, let alone that she was meeting someone called Firecat. Dan was obsessively secretive and from her dealings with him he usually had good reason so she held her tongue. Jenny was under police protection after all, and Dan could fill Philip Denton in when he spoke to him.

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she lied.

  ‘Thank you,’ Denton said.

  *

  After picking up her stuff and changing out of her walking gear, she drove to Craigellachie. She used google maps to help direct her, her mind spinning cartwheels of colour as it tried to assimilate everything that was going on. Dan investigating his father’s murder, now in custody in Germany. Sirius threatening Jenny and her baby. Connor’s death . . .

  She was so absorbed in her thoughts she didn’t realise the vehicle ahead of the car in front of her had stopped to turn right and she had to slam on her brakes. The lorry behind her sounded its horn at her sudden stop and she hurriedly wound down her window and waved an apology.

  Jesus, she had to stop reflecting on things when she was driving. Trouble was, she’d found it was one of the best places to think. No more, she must concentrate when she was behind the wheel.

  The road wound around the bottom of the village, the majestic river Spey on the left, pretty stone cottages rising up the hill on the right. As she came around another corner, she saw the inn on the other side of a narrow bridge. Cute, she thought, taking in the whitewashed walls and dorma windows perched like eyebrows in the slate roof. Really cute.

  The car park at the rear of the building was empty, so she parked at the far end, nose in to the grassy bank, leaving lots of space for other customers. She zipped up her fleece as she walked round to the front door. The temperature was dropping fast; it would be cold tonight.

  She pushed open the door into the smallest bar she’d ever seen. Six people and the place would be full. As it was, there were two customers warming themselves by the open fire. Both of them looked at her curiously, as though she’d just stumbled into their living room.

  ‘Evening,’ she said.

  Both men nodded and raised their glasses. ‘Hello, there.’

  Lucy looked at the handwritten list of drinks and their prices on the wall, the photographs of huge salmon caught in times past, and even though she was on edge, waiting for a sign that one of these two men could be Firecat, she felt the history seep from the walls and relaxed slightly.

  A man with a mane of white hair appeared behind the bar. ‘What can I get you?’ he asked, at least that’s what she thought he said but his accent was so strong she wouldn’t have bet on it.

  ‘Half a pint of McEwan’s, please.’ With the dozens of Scotch and beer bottles on display, she didn’t think he’d take too kindly if she asked for water.

  ‘You a walker?’ he asked. ‘We get a lot of walkers here, doing the Spey Way.’

  ‘Sort of,’ she responded. ‘I walked from G
lenallen Lodge to Duncaid today. I drove the rest.’

  ‘You know the Bairds?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nice lodge they’ve got,’ one of the men said behind her opening up the conversation and, realising it was one of those pubs where you went to socialise, she moved over to talk to them.

  Plum on six o’clock the door banged and another customer hoved into view. Broken veins splayed over a pasty face. Fleshy lips, thinning hair. He wore fawn trousers and a checked country-style shirt beneath a windbreaker jacket.

  ‘Jo,’ he said.

  ‘Murray. Usual?’

  ‘Ta.’

  Lucy watched Murray’s eyes flick over the two men and her, then to the door and back to Jo, who dispensed a dram of Macallan and pushed the glass over. She felt Murray’s eyes studying her as she sipped her beer. Although she appeared absorbed in what the men by the fire were saying, she was intent on Murray.

  ‘Anyone else been in tonight?’ Murray asked Jo.

  ‘Just Dougie.’

  ‘But he disnae drink.’

  Jo shrugged and at the same moment she took in the sign behind the bar. Service may vary according to my mood and your attitude.

  She began to like Jo.

  ‘Nobody else?’ Murray insisted.

  Jo gave him a steady look that said, I’ve already answered you once, and Murray muttered, ‘sorry,’ but he kept glancing at the door as though expecting someone to walk inside.

  Eventually, Murray tipped the remainder of his drink down his throat. ‘Another, please, Jo.’

  Lucy sipped her beer slowly. Continued to talk to the two men. Watched Murray as he ordered and drank two more whiskies. Finally, he said, ‘Bugger it. They’re not fucking turning up.’ And left.

  Making her apologies, Lucy put her glass on the table and hurried after him. She caught him up just as he beeped open his car, a tatty old Rover, and he turned, surprised.

  ‘Firecat,’ she said.

  He stared at her. ‘What?’

  ‘You’re Firecat.’

  ‘What the fuck is this?’

  ‘You’re supposed to be meeting someone else but they can’t make it. I’m here in their stead.’