by Chris Ewan
Lake Brienz was long and vast, ringed by mountains, surrounded by trees. Miller propped his forearms on a low stone wall and squinted across the windswept waters. He’d heard talk that the lake was as deep as the mountains were high. Glancing up at the jagged tips of the most distant glaciers – ice white against massed banks of low grey cloud – the notion seemed inconceivable to him. But then, many things had appeared almost impossible to Miller just lately. Like, for instance, how to begin to tell Kate what he needed to say.
He heard footsteps on gravel and turned to find her coming towards him, her movements hesitant and unbalanced, her face white as bone beneath whipped tendrils of red hair. She had on a hooded top over faded jeans. Her arms were folded tightly, her shoulders hunched.
‘You made it.’
She stopped many metres away and considered him without speaking. She looked cold and worn out and he felt a sudden need to go to her, to hold her, but something in her demeanour, in the awkward way she was standing there, watching him, made him hold back.
‘Where are the others?’
‘Nearby.’ Her voice was cracked and wavering. ‘Emily needed to sleep. They’re checking in to a hotel. I thought we should talk alone.’
Miller nodded. It was what he had wanted, too.
‘What happened to your face?’
He shrugged, and showed her his bandaged hand also. ‘Aaron Wade happened to it.’
‘Looks painful.’
‘I think that was the general idea.’
He half smiled and the sliver of sight in his bad eye blurred and merged. Behind him, yellow storm lights blinked from the villages on the far shores. He could sense a tightening of the air, a friction all around him, and the particular smell he associated with the coming of thunder and lightning – of woodsmoke and metal and match strikes.
He was wearing a flannel shirt and a vest under a corduroy hunting jacket but still he felt chilled.
Kate said, ‘It’s beautiful here.’
Miller was glad that she was seeing Brienz when the weather was raw and fierce, when the light faded unnaturally fast with the coming of a rainstorm and the mountains pressed in, making the tangle of twee wooden chalets clustered around them seem somehow vital and primitive.
‘I missed you,’ he told her.
She didn’t respond, and Miller could almost have believed that he hadn’t spoken at all. For a big man, he felt suddenly small.
‘I’ve been waiting here thinking of what to say to you. Of how to start.’
Kate took a half-step closer.
‘There are so many things to talk about. Rome, for one.’
She raised a hand. ‘You said there was somebody you wanted me to meet.’
‘I’m getting to that.’
‘I want to hear it, Miller. I don’t want any more secrets between us.’
There was a strained, robotic quality to her speech, almost as if she was repeating lines she’d rehearsed too many times. Miller sensed some kind of disconnect between her eyes and mouth. Did she regret sleeping with him? Was that what he was seeing in her expression? How else to explain the strange way she was holding herself, or the distance she was keeping between them?
‘Is she here?’
‘Who?’
‘Anna. That’s who you want me to meet, isn’t it?’
There were several answers to that question, but none that were simple.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And no.’
‘Enough riddles.’ She was crying now, shaking her head, the line of dark stitches on her brow contrasting with her bloodless face. ‘Tell me the truth.’
‘The truth.’ He held her gaze. ‘The truth is there is somebody here I want you to meet. But it’s not Anna.’
‘Who then?’
Miller took a deep breath and opened his mouth to begin.
Chapter Sixty-Three
‘We need to talk.’
DS Lloyd barged past Fiona Grainger and through the front door of her house, heading for the kitchen.
‘Hey!’ Fiona called after her. ‘You can’t just come in here like this.’
‘Tell me about the coroner’s report into Melanie’s death. Tell me why you requested access to the file.’
Fiona rushed to catch up with Lloyd. Her hair was a mess and her clothes were rumpled. An empty bottle of red wine was open on the counter, next to a stained wine glass.
Over by the back door, down on the floor, Lloyd could see a suitcase with a passport resting on top. Fiona caught her looking and dived towards it but Lloyd got there first. She snatched the passport up, flipping it open.
Fiona’s image was in the back but the name printed on the document was not her own.
‘What is this?’ Lloyd asked. ‘What’s going on?’
But Fiona didn’t respond. She was too busy trying to get the passport back.
‘Nick’s behind this, isn’t he?’ Lloyd held her away, lifting the passport beyond her reach. ‘Nick’s behind all of it. He’s been in touch with you all along. He asked you to get access to that file.’
Fiona stretched until the frustration became too much for her and she stepped back, glaring.
‘You might as well tell me now. I can’t let you leave. You understand that, don’t you?’
Fiona didn’t say anything.
‘Where are the records from the coroner’s file? Why did you take them?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Then who did?’
She shook her head, breathing hard.
‘I’m not talking to you about this. I can’t. Just go. Please.’
‘I can arrest you. Obstruction of justice.’
‘Then do it.’ Fiona looked at her with defiance in her eyes. ‘Do it and end this for me. The hope has been killing me, anyway.’
‘Hope for what? Fiona? Hope for what?’
But before she could reply, Lloyd’s mobile began to ring, the bright electronic tune sounding crass and misplaced in the charged silence of the room.
Lloyd fixed a warning look on her face as she answered the call.
‘DS Lloyd? It’s Julia Summerhayes. I have some news for you, though I’m afraid I’m not sure what to make of it just yet.’
Lloyd maintained watchful eye contact with Fiona.
‘Go on.’
‘My assistant managed to track down the missing documents from the Melanie Adams file. Not directly. The records have been wiped from our master system entirely. IT couldn’t retrieve them at all. But my assistant thought to check email correspondence. The electronic file was attached as a PDF to an email my predecessor sent to himself. He sent it to his private email address.’
‘And that’s unusual?’
‘It’s not something that has ever been allowed. I took a quick look at the records before calling you.’
‘And?’
‘At first glance everything seemed to be in order.’
‘But at second glance?’
‘I noticed something. Something I can’t explain. A mix-up of some kind.’
‘Yes?’
‘The path lab ran a tox screen on Melanie. The results don’t make any logical sense. There were traces of drugs in her system that shouldn’t have been there.’
Lloyd’s heart was banging in her chest. Fiona was studying her intently, looking panicked, almost as if she could hear the coroner’s words for herself.
‘What drugs?’
But Lloyd knew. She knew before the coroner said it.
‘One was perampanel. The other was—’
‘Oxcarbazepine. Used to treat epilepsy. And not a common combination.’
‘How on earth did you know that?’
‘Because you just confirmed something I really didn’t want to believe.’
Lloyd thanked her and ended the call. She pocketed her phone and allowed her hand to linger by her hip. She was wearing one of her formless grey trouser suits and clipped to her waist was a can of CS spray. She pushed back the tails of her suit jacket and unclipped th
e leather strap holding the spray in place.
‘Melanie didn’t die in that fire,’ Lloyd said. ‘She wasn’t shot and killed. Your sister was. I believe that and I’m sorry for it. But Melanie got away, somehow. The girl who perished was Anna Brooks.’
Lloyd felt an itch in her fingers, the desire to take out the spray and aim it. But she held her nerve. Held on.
‘You left a link to the truth, Fiona. You didn’t shred every copy of the records. Nick faked his daughter’s death, using the body of a teen runaway. I guess his friends and contacts at the path labs and the coroner’s office helped him to get away with it. I bet if I look I’ll find that he worked with them on plenty of cases. Or maybe he bribed them. Doesn’t matter, either way. The part I’d really like to know is when did you know, Fiona? Was it before you cried in my arms, here in this room, or was it afterwards? Was it all just an act?’
Fiona stumbled backwards, grasping for the backrest of a kitchen chair.
‘Tell me the truth right now or so help me I’ll call Manchester CID and you can explain it all to them under caution. You can start right from the beginning. You can incriminate yourself a hundred different ways.’
Fiona turned her head slowly and stared at the suitcase down on the floor.
‘Tell me now. I’ll help you if I can. I want to be able to help you.’
‘It was that night,’ she said quietly. ‘The night of the fire.’
She looked off towards the kitchen window, staring blindly out at the straggly woods and the void in space and time where her sister’s house had once stood.
‘I heard the shots. A scream. My sister’s voice. Then I saw the flames and I knew. I knew they’d been taken from me.
‘I went out into the garden and I stood there, looking. And then there she was. A miracle. Melanie, running towards me, covered in soot and grime. And Nick, just behind. A man had come into their house. Melanie had heard him shoot Sarah. She’d heard her scream. Then he’d rushed upstairs and shot Anna, in the darkness on the landing outside Mel’s bedroom. They looked similar, you know, Melanie and Anna. Both had brown hair, both sixteen. The killer made a mistake. He didn’t search the house for anyone else. Melanie hid in the bathroom. Then the fire started. The flames became too much. So she climbed out of a window and there was Nick, below her, yelling at her to jump, leading her off through the woods to me.’
‘Why was Anna even there?’
Fiona blinked, as though coming round from a daze.
‘She visited sometimes to hang out with Melanie. To watch movies. To sleep over. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Sarah wasn’t supposed to allow it. But sometimes she turned a blind eye.’
‘And Nick?’
‘He reached the house too late. There was nothing he could do. The place was an inferno by then. The killer had used something to speed the fire. Nick tried to get inside the house and he couldn’t. He saw Sarah dead on the floor, the flames taking her. Then he looked up and saw Melanie. Alive.’
The fire inspector’s report into the blaze had identified the accelerant as lighter fuel. Lloyd had wasted countless hours trying to find a local shop that might have sold some to Nick in the build-up to that night.
‘Nick made us come in here and he started telling us what we needed to do. He saw it all right away – before the police and the fire service and the ambulance showed up – and he swore me to secrecy. That sickened me. I hated him for it. He was trying to protect Melanie. He was scared for her. I can see that now. But back then I was angry. With him, and with myself. I should have stopped him. I should have said no to what he had in mind.’
‘Telling the world that Melanie was the dead girl.’
‘It was the fire. The fire made it all possible. He said it would . . . conceal what needed to be concealed.’
‘And the rest?’
‘He had friends, like you said. Someone at the hospital. The coroner. They’d helped Nick with hiding people before. Officially. This time, they agreed to hide Melanie for him.’
‘Because Anna was disposable. Because she was just a runaway. You people.’ Lloyd did nothing to temper the revulsion she was feeling. ‘How do you think Sarah would have felt about that? Some legacy.’
Fiona shook her head, bewildered, unable to confront it.
‘I visited Anna’s parents just yesterday,’ Lloyd continued. ‘Good people. They still live for the day they’ll see their daughter again. They still hope. And now I’m going to have to end that for them. I’m going to have to tell them Anna died four years ago. That her remains were cremated. That they’ll never get to say goodbye.’
Fiona clutched at her chest, tugging on her blouse.
‘Don’t you think I hate myself for it? Hate what was done?’
‘I’m not sure that matters, Fiona. I don’t think that counts for anything right now.’
‘I hated Nick for it. I hated being a part of it. That’s why I was so angry with him. Why I said such wicked things to you. I kept thinking about the fire. About those flames. How he turned them to his advantage so quickly.’
She shuddered, and her voice became small and hollow.
‘Part of me wanted you to find the truth. Part of me dreaded it. That’s why I requested the records.’
‘You could have given them to me, shown them to me.’
‘No, I couldn’t, because there was nothing to show. The coroner, McGuintyre, he came here, to my house. He told me there were no records any more. They were already gone. He’d dealt with it. There was nothing to worry about.’
Lloyd held up the counterfeit passport in front of Fiona’s face. She’d curled it in her hand, bending it into a tube.
‘So where are you going, Fiona? Where are you running to?’
‘It doesn’t matter any more. None of it does.’
‘Where’s Nick? Where’s Melanie?’
‘I don’t know.’
But she did know. She had to. Lloyd shook her head, disgusted, and looked about the room, trying to calm her rage, to think, to see.
And then, quite suddenly, she did.
She moved towards the fridge, extending her hand, ripping the little magnetised frame free and tearing off the backing, removing the pretty Alpine scene.
Fiona had lied about that, too. The image hadn’t come free with a magazine. It was a postcard.
Lloyd flipped it over. There was no message on the back. It was blank aside from Fiona’s address and a stamp and a postmark. The stamp was Swiss. The postmark was dated nine months ago. A line of printed text at the bottom of the card told Lloyd that the image was of a place called Brienzersee, a lake in central Switzerland.
Chapter Sixty-Four
‘Say something.’
Kate wouldn’t speak. Perhaps there wasn’t anything to be said. Miller knew that what he’d done was terrible, shameful, but he’d wanted to be honest with her, to have her try to understand.
‘Please say something.’
But she didn’t. Or couldn’t.
‘I’m sorry for it,’ he told her. ‘You have to believe that. But you asked me for the truth, and honestly, I’d do it all again tomorrow if I had to. You know now what Lane is capable of. You’ve seen it for yourself. I wanted my daughter safe.’
Kate took a step back and looked up to where the dirty grey clouds were drifting down over the high mountain peaks.
‘Melanie hates me for it. I thought I was saving her and now she’ll barely talk to me. But she’s safe. She’s alive. I have that for Melanie, and I have it for you, too. And all right, maybe I’m stupid to want more. Maybe I can’t ever be allowed it. But I want it, Kate. I want a future with you. With Melanie. That’s why I brought you here. That’s why I told you. I saw something in Prague. Something that made me understand that there can’t be any secrets between us if we want a real chance for whatever we have together to truly begin.’
Kate wiped at her face with the back of her wrist, smearing her eyes. She was sniffing, her breathing irregular, her chest
hitching and falling.
‘I won’t do it,’ she said. ‘I can’t.’
Miller felt his heart lurch.
‘I know I’m asking a lot. I know that, Kate. But I’m going to ask it all the same.’
She smiled through her tears, as though he’d somehow misunderstood her; as if his confusion only made it worse.
‘What is it? Tell me.’
She shook her head some more, drawing in a deep breath and summoning enough composure to steady herself. Then she sighed and fixed her gaze on Miller, speaking with a fragile calm.
‘Is she close? Is Melanie here?’
Miller raised an arm and pointed up the mountainside, beyond the village.
‘See the chalet all on its own in the clearing? She lives with a man and his children. His name is Timo. A good man. A widower. Timo, Nico and Mia. They’re Melanie’s family now.’
But as Miller was talking, Kate had started shaking her head, lifting her hands, backing away. What was it she was saying to him? He couldn’t make it out. Her eyes seemed to be searching him, pleading with him.
He finished talking, and Kate stood still for a long second.
I’m sorry.
That was what she’d been saying. And now she was repeating it, mouthing it over and over as she reached up to the side of her head and plucked free an earpiece connected to a flesh-coloured wire. Miller, numbed, felt his whole world tip on its axis, everything thrown upside down and falling around him as she unzipped her hooded top and rolled up her white T-shirt and showed him the radio transmitter that was strapped to her chest.
*
Half a mile away, Mike Renner lowered the two-way radio he’d been talking to Kate on and turned to Aaron Wade. Both men had headphones covering their ears. Both men had been listening to every word Nick Adams had had to say. They shared a look. It was a look of shock and concern and confusion. And on Wade’s bruised and grazed face Renner caught something else.
Fear.
His lips and mouth were still swollen, an after-effect of whatever drug Nick Adams had disabled him with, but the tightness that gripped hold of his features was unmistakable all the same.
He had good reason to be afraid. Connor Lane did not tolerate mistakes, least of all where his younger brother was concerned. But this mistake affected them both, and it had happened on Renner’s watch.
