Fran tilted her head, but her expression was lost in the darkness. ‘There’ll be something.’
‘Are you sure about this?’ Jessica asked. ‘None of this is worth it if you’re not safe.’
This time Jessica could see the grin. ‘I had a good-girl upbringing, remember? I might be a little late to the party, but it’s about time I caused some carnage.’
Fran hoicked herself over the gate and trudged through the overhanging trees, not worrying about the mud. Within a few seconds, she was swallowed by the darkness as she followed the hedgerow, leaving Jessica alone at the gate.
Jessica waited for a couple of minutes and then continued through herself. She kept low, remaining tight to the hedges until she found a spot with a good view of the farmhouse. She was within thirty or so metres, on a patch that was starting to dampen but was not too wet. There was an upstairs light in the farmhouse and another in what looked to be the kitchen. Other than that, the rest of the house, the yard and the barn were all in the same miasma of darkness through which they’d spent the evening walking.
She didn’t dare take out her phone to check the time, so Jessica continued to wait in the bushes. Every now and then, there would be a scratch or a scrape from nearby. Jessica wasn’t scared of the dark, not really, but her heart jumped every time, her mind racing with illogical conclusions about what lay out of sight.
Eventually, it happened.
Max had told Jessica that his father was paranoid about being robbed – and it was time for a show. There was a fizzing clatter of metal and then a loud pop. Fran was at the far end of the field and had lit a firework and sealed it in a rusty old pot. She’d promised Jessica it would be noisy, but this went beyond that. The noise was so loud that Jessica jumped. Within seconds, more lights were coming to life within the house. The front door banged open and the massive silhouette of Vince Waverly emerged onto the yard. He had one leg cocked as he tied his laces, calling over his shoulder for Max. The younger Waverly dashed through the door, turning in a circle.
‘What was that?’ he asked.
‘Shush!’
The two men stood in silence for a few moments – and then Fran struck again. There was a bang-bang-bang and then the sound of glass being smashed on the far reaches of the farm. Jessica had asked Fran for a diversion, but had said nothing about causing actual damage.
Bit late now.
Jessica thought they’d go haring off in search of the potential poacher or vandal, but Vince’s next line sent shivers through her. ‘Go get my gun.’
She thought about using her phone to warn Fran, but there was no way Jessica could do that without revealing her own location. All she could do was hope that Fran was in the middle of running for it.
There was another pop in the distance – a second firework thundering into something metallic – followed by a fizz of sparks.
‘Max!’
Vince turned back towards the house just as his son emerged with a pair of shotguns. At his side was another figure Jessica recognised, though someone she hadn’t expected.
Greg Salisbury was wearing a T-shirt despite the cold, his gut and chest filling it comfortably. A little behind them was a fourth man – a distinctly alive and well Peter Salisbury. Unless bodies really were rising from the grave and The Walking Dead was coming true, he was the man responsible for so much of what had happened to her.
For a few moments, the four of them stood at the front of the house.
‘Can you shoot?’
Vince was talking to Greg, who mumbled something Jessica didn’t hear. Either way, Max handed him a pistol. Only Peter was unarmed. Vince had taken control, his growly northern accent crisp through the night.
‘You three take the barn, I’ll go for the fields. If anyone’s running, shoot.’
There were no further discussions as the four of them shuffled quickly across the yard; Max, Peter and Greg heading towards the barn, Vince separating away and hurrying towards the bushes on the far side. None of them were running and Jessica suspected Greg and Vince were too old to get much speed up in any case. A bullet would still travel pretty quickly, though…
As soon as they were out of sight, Jessica ran for the front of the house. Aside from the phone in her pocket, which was definitely on silent, she was carrying nothing and feeling uncharacteristically athletic. She flew through the open door, giving up a few seconds to wipe her feet on the welcome mat and make sure her entrance wouldn’t be spotted. She didn’t know what she was looking for but knew there’d be something – there had to be.
The kitchen was generally clear of clutter, other than a chunk of cheese on a block of wood on the dining table. Jessica’s mouth watered but she ignored it, dashing through into what turned out to be the first of three living rooms. There was a television and sofa in each, plus assorted nothingness: magazines, shoes, some coats, bottles of whisky. She checked a filing cabinet, but the papers at the front were ancient: invoices from a decade previously. A nearby bureau was also packed with paperwork that she didn’t have time to sort through. Nothing out of the ordinary.
There was another bang from the distance, but it didn’t sound like a gunshot. There was little Jessica could do other than hope Fran hadn’t hung around.
As she continued upstairs, Jessica struggled to mask the sound of her footsteps. The floors were wooden, ceilings high. Every movement she made seemed to creak and echo, but there was no going back now.
The first room had an unmade double bed in the centre, clothes flung on the floor, laptop open on the bed and a vague whiff of deodorant. Jessica lifted the lid, but the computer asked for a password and she didn’t have time to even guess. Nicking it was out of the question, too.
The next room had bare floorboards and was empty except for a single metal-framed bed pushed against a wall. It seemed so out of place compared to the rest of the house that Jessica stepped inside and peered around the corner, looking for any sign that it was lived in. One of the windows had a wooden board fixed where the glass should be, but there was nothing else. The lack of a carpet was making her footsteps echo too loudly and Jessica backed away.
She continued opening doors until she found herself in a games room at the front of the house. The lights were off but there was enough light from outside for her to see that the room was lined with leather armchairs. There was a pool table in the centre, a dartboard on the wall. She rushed to the window, covering her eyes and squinting into the murk. In the far distance, somewhere close to what she guessed was the boundary, she could see a light from a torch or phone. That was where Vince had headed, shotgun under his arm. It was hard to tell, but it looked like he was checking the hedges. Jessica pressed herself against the glass, feeling the coolness on her forehead, saying a silent prayer to a god in whom she didn’t believe, hoping Fran was nowhere nearby.
Jessica jumped as something slammed. Her gaze shot towards the yard, where Peter and Greg Salisbury were closing in on the house. There was another bang from directly below: Max was in the house. Jessica stepped away from the window, but the floorboards betrayed her, squeaking and reverberating. She froze, one foot in the air, listening for confirmation that she’d been heard.
Luckily, her noise had come at the same time that Peter and Greg re-entered. Jessica couldn’t hear the exact words, but they were talking with Max in the kitchen below. She’d not had much time, but Jessica had managed to peep into every room of the house and she’d found nothing. As far as she knew, there were only two doors in and out – and there was no way she’d be able to get past the trio downstairs. She’d been so focused on watching Vince in the distance that she’d failed to spot the three men who’d rushed to the barn.
Jessica peered out the window to see that the light in the distance was now close to the house. Vince was on his way back, too, and then all four of them would be blocking her escape. She wanted to know who they were, why they were working together and how she’d been dragged into a mixed-up world of misidentified dead bo
dies. She’d sneaked into the house hoping for answers but had failed and now she was trapped, hoping nobody would enter this room.
Staying put would be quite a gamble – the sofas were pressed against the wall, with no space to hide behind. If she moved back onto the landing looking for another spot, the bumps and groans of the ancient building would give her away.
‘Shite,’ Jessica whispered to herself. This had not been part of the plan, not that the plan had been anything other than getting into the house and hoping there was some piece of obvious evidence lying around for why these four men had tried to frame her.
She thought about calling DCI Fordham, telling him she was in a building with Peter Salisbury. The dead guy was a few metres below her, definitely not dead. That would prove something, except that Fordham’s phone number was on the device she’d dismantled and then dispatched into a bin.
This was a hole she was going to have to get herself out of.
Jessica climbed onto one of the sofas, figuring the material would mask her footsteps. She moved around the room until she was at the door, where she could hear one of the men’s voices drifting up the stairs.
‘… what d’yer reckon it was?’ somebody asked.
‘Foxes? Who bloody knows.’
‘You wanna finish that game o’ darts?’
Jessica swung around to spy the board, where there were three darts peppering the lower half.
‘Let’s wait till Dad gets back.’
Jessica returned to the window, where Vince’s light was nearly level with the barn. Another minute and he’d be there. She turned in a circle, trying to swallow the rising tide of panic. It was only as she nearly tripped over one of the sofa arms that she peered up, spotting the square hatch in the ceiling. When she’d been on the farm the previous day, she’d guessed the tall sloping roof meant there was probably an attic but then forgotten about it.
A circular pulley was built into the hatch and Jessica strained upwards, only just able to loop her fingers through as she stood on the armrest. She expected the flap to pull downwards – which it did – along with a stepladder that was attached.
From below came the sound of the front door slamming.
Jessica pulled the ladder down as far as it went and then stepped across to it from the sofa. The metal rungs screeched but nowhere near as loudly as the floorboards. She hurried up, reaching for the attic floor and pulling herself up. Jessica expected the attic to be shrouded in darkness, but the opposite was true. She was blinded by the ferocious expanse of light as she blinked away the green and pink stars, reaching down and yanking the pulley upwards. The stepladder folded in on itself, the hatch coming with it until it latched in place.
She stepped backwards, immediately colliding with something hard at hip height. Jessica winced, putting her hand down into something soft and mushy. Her vision was still clouded by how bright it was, like stepping out from a darkened room into the mid-afternoon sunshine. It took her a couple of seconds to blink away the disorientation – and then she saw precisely what Vince and Max Waverly were hiding. It was perhaps no surprise they didn’t have vast swathes of crops outside the farmhouse, because they had more than their fair share inside.
Long lines of tables stretched the full length of the house, each topped by planters containing hundreds – thousands – of cannabis plants. The attic was so bright because lamps hung from the roof, flooding the plants with the heat and light they craved.
Considering the illegality of what she was looking at, it was bizarre that Jessica’s first thought was that the electricity bill must be sky-high. That was the perils of owning a home and paying bills. Suddenly the mundane things in life hit before anything else.
Jessica slowly made her way along the lines of plants, taking each step carefully. The floor was wooden, but nowhere near as noisy as the one below. She was sweating from the heat but didn’t dare remove her jacket, not yet anyway. Every few seconds, Jessica had to wipe the moisture from her forehead as she continued along, wondering if there was a second trapdoor anywhere. She’d paced each line twice before concluding that there wasn’t. There had been one way into the attic – and there was one way out.
Once she’d settled on that, Jessica crept away from the door, heading to the furthest side of the house. She could hear voices underneath and the occasional thunk of dart on board. Aside from the long rows of cannabis plants, the only other thing Jessica noticed in the attic was a small metallic red lockbox. It was on its side between a pair of planters on the table furthest from the door. If she hadn’t have found a spot to sit on the floor and wait for the house to go silent, she’d have never seen it.
Jessica picked it out from where it had been wedged and turned it over. There was a plasticky rattle, but the lid was closed, the lock turned. It was only a cheap box and wouldn’t stand up to a lot of punishment before opening, but Jessica wasn’t sure she wanted to steal it. At least for now, she’d got into the house unnoticed. If she waited until the early hours, she hoped she could get back out again.
She slipped it back between the planters but couldn’t stop staring at it. Aside from the obvious illegality of the cannabis, it was the first thing that looked off in the house. The plants were evenly spaced across the room, potted by someone who’d done their homework about what they needed to thrive. Cannabis wasn’t as big a moneymaker as some, but there was still hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of drugs if it was prepared properly. Enough to pay that electricity bill, in any case.
Which was why it was strange that the soil surrounding one of the plants close to the lockbox was dimpled and uneven. Jessica pressed into it with her fingers, finding nothing at first and then delving deeper. A few seconds later, she was holding a small metal key. It hadn’t been rocket science, and wasn’t quite up there with creating the Hadron Collider, but Jessica was still chuffed with herself. She wiped her fingers clear of the caked soil and then reclaimed the box and unlocked it.
Inside were twenty or thirty memory cards that would fit a camera or possibly a mobile phone. They were nearly identical – the same brand, same amount of storage, same green and blue label on the front. The only thing different was the tiny block capital letters that someone had written on the front of each. Every one was labelled with a different female name. Jessica flipped through them one after the other until she settled on one that left her hand trembling. The box rattled as she returned it to the table, still clutching the memory card.
Written on the front was a single name: ‘Rebecca’. It might have been the full name, but Jessica knew it was referring to Bex. She slipped it into her pocket and was about to relock the box when there was a resounding creak from the far side of the attic.
Somebody had opened the hatch.
Thirty-Three
Jessica quickly returned the box to its spot, then flicked the key into the planter and smoothed the soil down. There was nowhere obvious to hide – none of the tables had covers to shield her from view – all she could do was squat behind the legs and hope for the best. She dropped to the floor, eyeing the opened hatch on the other side of the room, though nobody emerged. Voices were echoing upwards from the games room.
‘Do you get people out here often?’ Greg Salisbury asked. It could only be him given that the voice belonged to someone older.
‘Nope,’ came the growled reply from Vince.
Jessica slid along the floor on her backside, trying to get to the corner next to the row of tables in the centre of the room. Because it was in the widest part of the house and the roof sloped downwards, there was a small amount of shadow. If anyone peered in her direction, she’d be seen, but it was better than nothing.
‘Anything in the barn?’ Vince asked.
‘Nothing. You reckon the police might be poking around?’
‘Nah, I’d have smelt those bastards a mile off. Prob’ly just kids or summit.’
‘The detective?’
Jessica was most of the way across the room but stoppe
d where she was, holding her breath. Did he mean her?
‘No chance – she’s busy with the Old Bill, ain’t she?’
There was a loud exhalation, possibly just a breath but maybe a laugh. ‘You dint say she’d be round mine asking ’bout Peter.’
‘Aye, well, I dint expect that neither. She turned up here yesterday, too. Smart girl. She’s still fucked, though.’
The ladder squeaked and Jessica dropped flat to the floor, feeling the grit tickling her cheek. A hairy hand appeared next to the opening, but then Vince groaned in pain and croaked: ‘My bastarding back’s gone.’ There was a pause and then he bellowed Max’s name. The hand disappeared and there was another screech of the ladder.
Jessica crawled across the wood as quickly as she could until she was squatting underneath the darkest part of the attic. She was partially obscured by the table legs in front of her and this was as good as she could manage.
At least she now knew one thing for sure: she might not know who Vince Waverly was but he definitely knew her. Somehow, for some reason, he’d instigated everything that had happened since she’d come to Blackpool.
‘You see the Gazette today?’ It was Greg’s voice.
Vince moaned again, grumbling about his back. ‘Aye, took ’em long enough to find that tart on the rocks. Your lad should’ve left her somewhere better. Might’ve sped things up a bit.’
‘The only reason we’re here is because of your lad’s bitch girlfriend.’ Greg’s tone was different, fiercer, but not entirely questioning of Vince’s judgement. It was clear who was the boss.
‘Aye, well… speak of the devil,’ Vince replied.
‘What’s up?’ Max asked.
Vince told him that his back was hurting, so he’d have to ‘do the business’ in the attic. There was the sound of foot on metal, but then Greg cut in.
‘Me and the lad should be off,’ he said. ‘Only came round to check your wires and pick up my cut, didn’t expect to be chasing shadows in the dark with a gun. How’s the electric holding up anyway?’
Silent Suspect: A completely gripping crime thriller with edge-of-your-seat suspense (Detective Jessica Daniel thriller series Book 13) Page 20
