by Tom Bale
‘Thankfully,’ Jen echoed. Though what if they’re wrong? What if something happens to Charlie because I’m not there on time?
Beside her, Freddie had gone very still. She wondered if he was about to doze off when he suddenly said, ‘You know what this reminds me of? When you were in labour.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. All those hours feeling really tense, and knowing so much was on the line – your life, the baby’s life – and yet realising that we had to find a way to push it to the back of our minds, at least for some of that time, or else we’d go insane. Was it six, seven hours?’
‘Just over nine, thanks.’
‘Wow. There you go, then. How the hell did we manage that?’
She thought back, and found herself smiling at some of the daft ways in which Freddie had tried to keep her entertained. ‘I think you ended up showing me cat videos on YouTube.’
‘God, yeah.’ He grimaced. ‘So now let’s tell ourselves we made it through that, and we’ll make it through this.’ He reached for her hand and squeezed it. ‘Although, I do kind of wish you hadn’t told me that stuff about Russell Pearce.’
‘You said it didn’t mean anything,’ she reminded him.
‘I know, but I could be wrong.’ He gazed at a middle-aged couple standing by the central reservation, eating what looked like sausage rolls. ‘Say it was Dean, and he killed Pearce. Why the hell would he do that?’
Because of me. The answer just materialised, without any conscious reasoning. But it felt horribly convincing, Jen thought. It chimed with the lightness of his tone and the way he had looked at her, not just yesterday in London but whenever he’d come to the sports centre. And hadn’t he said something else, when she mentioned Pearce’s interest in her? I wouldn’t have let that happen. At the time she hadn’t registered how possessive he sounded.
She must have gasped, for Freddie turned to her. ‘What?’
‘Nothing.’ She didn’t know anything for sure, so there was no sense in scaring him. In fact, she was already backtracking herself. She didn’t want to believe that Dean was capable of a double murder for any reason, let alone that he’d do it simply because those people had crossed Jen’s path. . .
Pray I’m wrong, she told herself. Pray I’m wrong about this, if nothing else.
By the time they got moving it was twenty to six. The sun was noticeably lower in the sky, filtering through thin streaks of peach and vanilla cloud.
Freddie had suggested he take over the driving again. ‘You’ll be getting a call soon.’
It was a good point, but Jen didn’t spot the flaw until just after six, when her phone started to ring. ‘What if he can tell I’m not alone?’
‘How would he?’
‘I dunno. But sometimes you just get an instinct. . .’ While she hesitated, her screen flashed a message: Missed call. ‘Can we leave at the exit and park somewhere?’
‘Sure.’ He expanded the map on the satnav screen. ‘Looks to be a few minutes away.’
It was a torturous wait. Her phone didn’t ring again. The number was different to the one Dean had used earlier, a sign that he was serious about the precautions he was taking. Hardly surprising, if Gerard had people on the hunt.
But how much did either of them – Dean or Gerard – have Charlie’s best interests at heart, and how much came down to raw self-preservation?
At last they swung into a slip road. Freddie put his hazard lights on and pulled up on a grass verge covered with wild flowers. Jen got out and dialled the number.
Dean answered immediately. ‘Why didn’t you pick up?’
‘I was driving. I had to find somewhere safe to stop.’
‘Are you lying to me? You should be here by now.’
‘I’m not. W-there was a bad accident on the M6, close to Carnforth. Look it up on the news.’ She stopped for a breath, her heart pounding with fear: she’d so nearly said We – and was praying he hadn’t picked up on it.
‘I will do,’ he said. He’d gone from irascible to doubtful, even a little panicky.
‘I’ll try to make up the time. Where do I need to go?’
He said nothing for fifteen, twenty seconds. Then: ‘I hope I can trust you, Jen. I said to come alone and I’m not pissing around. I mean it.’
The menace in his voice was unmistakeable. Afraid to antagonise him, she said, ‘I know, and I’ve done what you asked. Is Charlie all right? May I speak to him?’
‘Not now. Drive to Bowness and take the lake road south for approximately four and a half miles. You’ll find a small parking area where the road cuts away from the lake. Wait there and text me on this number.’
He ended the call. Jen almost collapsed against the car. Freddie opened the window and cried, ‘What’s happened? Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said. But she wasn’t. In that call Dean had revealed a very different side to his character: dark, menacing, vicious. She felt horribly out of her depth, and for a second she wished that DS Howard or DC Reed could have been here alongside her. But that was impossible: she’d made her choices, and there would be no one else coming to the rescue at this late stage.
‘I’ve got the directions,’ she said. ‘But I need to drive. And we have to be a lot more careful from now on.’
For many years Stemper had employed the services of a researcher, an accomplished but blissfully naive woman who accepted that his need for a bewildering variety of information was entirely legitimate. Once again, she had proved her worth. As well as owning a bungalow in Carlisle, Dean Geary’s father was listed as the freehold owner of another property, a converted boathouse and former bed-and-breakfast on Lake Windermere. The B&B had ceased trading in 2014, and planning permission had been granted for extensive renovations, designed to return the building to a private dwelling.
Stemper caught the warning of delays in time to get off the M6 and plot an alternative route. He was making good progress when Hugo Hamilton rang with more information about Dean. ‘I have to stress that this was deeply buried. I had no inkling when I employed him.’
Stemper wasn’t interested in his pleas for mitigation. ‘Tell me.’
At the age of twenty-two, while serving as a police constable in Greater Manchester, Dean had fixated on a girl he’d encountered while attending a minor drugs bust. ‘She’d broken up with her partner, but wasn’t interested in Dean. He had trouble accepting that, and harassed her for months. Eventually his colleagues got involved, and though there were no charges brought, he resigned from the police. Jumped before he was pushed.’
A few weeks later he abducted the girl and held her for several hours, subjecting her to a prolonged sexual assault. ‘He told her this was payback for destroying his career, though he was deluded enough to believe there could still be a relationship between them.’
‘And this wasn’t on record?’ Stemper queried.
‘By now the girl’s family had little confidence in the police. They took matters into their own hands – the father and brother beat seven shades of whatnot out of Dean, and the girl never set eyes on him again. He cleared out and moved to Hereford, where he started working in security.’
‘And fantasised about being in the SAS, according to his friend, Nolan.’
‘Yes, but that’s not the end of the story. Four years later the girl’s father failed to come home from the pub one night, and has never been seen since. A year after that, the son, along with his wife and baby, died in a house fire. Both incidents could be unrelated, of course. . .’
‘But probably not,’ Stemper said. ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
He checked the time: almost seven o’clock. Judging that he was about half an hour away, he felt the familiar tingle of anticipation. There were various ways he could bring this to a conclusion, and the one that Dean might have employed himself had much to recommend it.
Fire was good.
64
The attractive town of Bowness-on-Windermere was still choked with traffic at seve
n in the evening. Jen was sure she’d come here once with her parents, before her sisters were born. The sight of pleasure cruisers lined up at the jetties prompted ancient memories of excitement and vague distress, of Mum scolding her while Dad took a more relaxed view; Jen had a feeling she’d been climbing on a deck rail and nearly fallen overboard.
She’d been to the Lakes a few more times over the years, but usually to the wilder, less populated areas. Here, the huts selling ice cream and the gift shops full of tourist tat were exactly what she used to avoid – at least until she became a parent.
An air of weary elation seemed to hang over the place: how Jen wished she could share that feeling, to be in among the crowds with Charlie, feeding the ducks and geese, then wandering off for pizza and a cheeky vodka. . .
Putting that longing aside, she drove out of town, the road rising and twisting as it followed the contours of the hills beside the lake. Trees grew thickly on both sides of the road, allowing only glimpses of water and the occasional cluster of chalet-style properties by the lake shore.
She kept her speed down, watching the satnav for the turn Dean had described. A motor home rumbled past, followed by a long queue of frustrated drivers. There was a Range Rover on her tail; Jen slowed to a crawl and waved it past, then spotted the car park’s entrance, opposite a sharp left-hand bend.
The car park was a rough, uneven patch of earth and gravel, which the surrounding foliage seemed determined to reclaim. It was large enough for thirty or forty cars, though there were fewer than a dozen here this evening. A grassy footpath sloped towards the lake, and a couple of young men were hauling kayaks in that direction. An older man was loading fishing gear into the back of his car, and a middle-aged couple were taking photographs of the trees.
Jen parked in a quiet corner, glanced in the mirror and saw the fisherman staring in her direction. Admiring the Mercedes, perhaps, or wondering how a young woman could afford such an expensive car. She had a flashback to the road rage incident on Monday and shuddered.
She picked up her phone and texted Dean: I’m here.
A minute passed, then two. The fisherman got into his car and drove away, and from the rear footwell came a whisper: ‘Anybody watching us?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Jen mumbled.
‘It’s bloody uncomfortable down here.’
‘Tough.’ She covered her mouth with her hand. ‘There are people around, and lots of places to hide in the trees. You need to stay down.’
Freddie started to grumble again, just as her phone rang.
It was Dean. ‘You’re alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you weren’t followed?’
‘No.’ She fought the natural tendency to elaborate. If he was watching her now, surely he’d ask why she was driving a Mercedes and not the Audi?
‘Okay.’ He let out a breath. ‘It’s quite a way to the house, though it’ll be worth it.’
The abrupt switch to a flirtatious tone made her nauseous. He instructed her to follow the path to the shore, then turn left and head along the lake until she reached a barbed-wire fence. She was to climb the hill for approximately a quarter of a mile, where she would find a hiking trail up in the trees.
‘Turn right and follow it through a couple of dips. After the second rise, leave the path and head down to the lake. There’s a sign warning of forest fires. When you get to that, bear left, through the undergrowth, and you’ll see the house about a hundred yards away, sitting on the water. Got that?’
‘I think so, but isn’t there a way of reaching it from the road?’
‘Yes. But I don’t want you turning up by car. Oh, and you need to leave your phone behind.’
It’s a trap. Jen almost said the words aloud, but that wouldn’t have helped. Instead, she asked how long it would take to get there.
‘About twenty minutes. It’s longer if the ground’s wet, so you’re lucky there.’ She heard him muttering, away from the phone, and then a beautiful voice said, ‘Mum? Are you nearly here?’
‘Charlie! Yes, I am. Really soon.’ All her fears were pushed aside by the flood of relief, the sheer joy at hearing Charlie’s voice.
Dean was back: ‘He can’t wait to see you. And neither can I.’
Jen shivered as the call ended. This was still far from straightforward, much less safe.
She looked around the car park, couldn’t see anyone suspicious, but pretended to scratch her top lip as she spoke. ‘That was Charlie. He sounds okay. But I’ve been told to come alone, and leave my phone here.’
‘Jen, no. Let me follow you, at least.’
‘It’s too tricky. The house is on the lake, about twenty minutes’ walk from here. There’s a road, but he doesn’t want me using it.’
Freddie started to say, ‘I don’t like the sound of—’ but Jen knew there was no choice. She opened the door, twisting her upper body to get out, and in the same motion dropped the keys into the rear footwell, where Freddie had been hiding for the past half an hour.
She shut the door and marched towards the path.
Stemper had made only one brief stop for refuelling, at which point he’d gone online to view the property on Google Earth. Satellite images showed that the house was situated on a quiet stretch of the lake, surrounded on the other three sides by dense woodland. The nearest neighbour was half a mile away, one of eight or nine fairly exclusive dwellings served by a narrow access road that had escaped the attention of Google’s Street View cameras.
On screen, Stemper had located the place where the access road emerged from the trees and joined the A592. From the main road it looked like nothing more than a farm track. When he reached it, he discovered that the residents must have agreed on further measures to protect their privacy, for there was now a gate across the entrance, and a sign that read, ‘PRIVATE’.
But the gate wasn’t locked, so he opened it and drove through, and nobody appeared from the gloomy woods to challenge him.
Jen quickly discovered that it was cooler here than in Sussex. She should have got a fleece from the car, but it was too late now. With the sun having dropped behind the hills, the sky overhead was a rich deep blue, and the flat, glassy surface of the lake shone with a pearlescent glow that only served to make the land around it seem darker and more forbidding.
For a moment she was fourteen, and back in Tilgate Forest on that first night as a runaway, her courage ebbing as the shadows lengthened and the temperature fell. She shivered, and thought of the figurine she’d found in Alex Wilson’s home: she had to take Elen as her inspiration now, and trust in her ability both to find the hideaway and to know what to do when she got there.
Whether she was right or wrong about his part in Pearce’s disappearance, she could no longer avoid thinking about the threat posed by Dean. It was clear that he regarded himself as her saviour – and it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to work out what he was expecting in return.
If it came to it, could she exchange sex for Charlie’s safety? The thought turned her stomach, but the answer was so automatic that she hardly needed to pose the question.
To protect Charlie: anything.
Within the trees the light was dim, and it took a lot of concentration to follow the path at any speed without tripping over the uneven ground. Fortunately Jen had spent years running on worse terrain than this, and in little more than ten minutes she’d found the final outcrop, which looked down on a lonely lakeside property.
It was a former boathouse with a couple of additions that had turned it into a substantial three-storey home. A light shone from a room on the top floor, which was contained within the roof space. The roof itself was almost a mansard design, flat on top with a short, steep pitch on either side and gables at the front and rear, clad in white weatherboard. On the lower floors, every window in sight was obscured by steel shutters, bolted to the walls. The front door appeared to be equally formidable, designed to deter intruders.
Jen crouched behind a tree and watched for sig
ns of movement. There was a black van parked in front of the house, and a rowing boat tied up at the jetty to the rear. The area around the building had been cleared back to bare earth, though it was strewn with weeds and even a few saplings. A large rusted skip sat close to the house, half filled with rubble and timber.
She was about to move when she heard an engine; she looked over her shoulder but the gradient of the hill made it impossible to see the road. After the vehicle had passed, she made her way cautiously down the slope, not directly to the house but steering to one side, always remaining within the cover of the trees.
She thought of Freddie’s concern about her going alone, and almost wished she’d asked him to follow. Being twenty minutes away wouldn’t help in an emergency. But perhaps she could reduce the risk in other ways.
For a start, Dean would be expecting her to walk up to the front door and knock.
She had to try something else.
65
Freddie was a coward – he’d admit that to himself, if not to anybody else. But he wasn’t the total cop-out that his dad sometimes accused him of being.
So he only fought with his conscience for a minute before sitting up. Wincing, he opened the door and extricated himself from the car. A woman who’d just parked alongside gave him a peculiar look, but he only nodded at her, locked the car and hurried away.
He’d heard snatches of Jen’s conversation with Dean and thought he had a good chance of finding the house, providing he could pick up Jen’s trail. He ran along the lake and took a left into the trees, only to trip and fall flat on his face.
As he picked himself up, his knee popped, and he yelped with pain. His arm was scratched, a few beads of blood emerging, but the real injury was to his pride. Cursing his clumsiness, he hurried up and along the hill on what he thought was the right course. After taking a turn he wasn’t certain about, he changed his mind and was ready to backtrack when he spotted movement: Jen, a long way ahead, just disappearing from sight.
