Nothing But Lies

by Lyndon Stacey

  Another search, this time for John McAllum, threw up rather too many results, though narrowing it down to Scotland helped. However, Daniel had no idea whether Cal had actually been born in Scotland or merely to Scottish parents. He was forced to give up that avenue of curiosity and finally, stretching a stiff back, to admit that he was very little further forward. The mystery might very well be no mystery at all, and merely a product of his over-suspicious mind.

  He stretched his cramped back muscles and glanced at the clock on the wall. Half past one.

  Time for bed.

  Time for one last search.

  He typed Chris Haynes and IT into Google and it immediately gave him a website. She was indeed in internet security. There was nothing untoward about her professional profile, as far as Daniel could see. In her photograph she had longer hair and wore make-up, which made her almost unrecognisable as the woman he’d seen at the fundraiser. Having your hair cut was no crime, though Daniel reflected with an inward smile that he’d seen a few haircuts that were on the verge of criminal.

  He switched the computer off and Taz, roused by the familiar quadruple note of Windows closing down, stood up from his position by Daniel’s feet and shook himself, sending a shower of loose hairs to decorate the carpet.

  ‘Yep. Time for bed, mate. Let’s go,’ Daniel told him.

  The following day Tamiko and Daniel rode, as was their custom, in the cool of the morning before Tamiko’s first client arrived, and then Daniel and Jo-Ji looked after Jahan until lunchtime, when Jo-Ji set off for his shift. The afternoon was rendered stressful by the necessity of the ongoing funeral arrangements. A date had been set for the Friday, but as Hana had had few friends that Tamiko knew of, it was going to be a very low-key affair.

  ‘Tami, do you remember that silver Mondeo that was parked along the lane this morning when we rode out?’ Daniel asked when Tamiko finally finished phoning. He was standing to one side of the window, looking out. Jahan was sitting on the floor by the sofa, playing with a selection of toy cars that Karen the beautician had brought for him.

  Tamiko shook her head.

  ‘I don’t think I notice it particularly. Why?’

  ‘Well, it’s back. It wasn’t there at lunchtime, when Joey went, but it’s back, now.’

  ‘Who do you think it is? Not Samir?’ Her eyes widened.

  ‘It’s possible. It may not mean anything, but I don’t feel like taking any chances. What do you say we ring Joey and ask if there’s a squad car in the area that could just swing by.’

  ‘I think so. That’s a good idea.’

  Daniel did so, giving Jo-Ji the car’s registration number for good measure.

  ‘How did you know that?’ Tamiko asked, coming to stand beside him. ‘The car I didn’t even notice and yet you have his number. Can you see it from here?’

  ‘Habit,’ Daniel said. ‘Anything out of place and I automatically log the details.’

  It was around twenty minutes before the police car appeared, and about halfway through that time, at a moment when Daniel wasn’t watching, the silver car disappeared. Jo-Ji had been in touch with the news that it was registered to a pensioner living on the outskirts of Bath, whose name meant nothing to any of them.

  ‘Sorry. It may have been a false alarm,’ Daniel told the two uniformed officers who came to the door to check on them. ‘But it was there for several hours – either that or it went away and came back.’

  ‘That’s all right, sir. Better safe than sorry. We’ll swing by again, later, if we’re in the area.’

  Minutes later, Jo-Ji called back.

  ‘I just called the owner of that Mondeo – a Mr Graham Siddons – and he was at home. I asked him if he knew where his car was at that moment and he said parked in a residents’ car park, along the road. I have a feeling he’ll ring back in a minute. Anyway, I hear it’s moved on, now.’

  ‘Yeah, just before your guys got here. Bloody typical!’

  ‘Well, keep your eyes open and don’t let Tami or Jahan go out alone – even into the garden.’

  ‘Grandmother; eggs,’ Daniel said lightly.

  ‘Yeah, mate, I’m sorry. It’s what you’re there for. See you later. I’ll be back about eleven with any luck.’

  The rest of the afternoon passed without incident. The car didn’t reappear and as the heat of the day cooled into evening, Daniel took the chance of giving Taz his second run of the day, taking Tamiko and Jahan along with him. The horses had spent the day in the wooden field shelter to avoid the flies but as the temperature dropped they moved out into the open to graze on the short grass.

  Jahan pointed as they walked past the gate into the lane. ‘Jahan ride the horses,’ he suggested hopefully.

  ‘Not now, sweetheart,’ Tamiko said. ‘We’re taking Taz for a run.’

  Even though he thought they were quite safe with the dog around, Daniel kept their walk close to the village and habitation, but they didn’t see Jafari, or the silver Ford, or indeed, anything suspicious.

  By the time they returned to the cottage, clouds were building in the southwest and by ten o’clock, when Tamiko habitually settled the horses for the night, it was just starting to rain in big, slow, heavy drops that presaged a downpour.

  ‘This is good,’ Tamiko said, as she and Daniel let themselves out of the kitchen door and locked it behind them, leaving Jahan asleep upstairs in his bed. ‘We need the rain. The horses will be happy to come in, now. I’m surprised they don’t shout already. Babs doesn’t like to get wet.’

  Halfway down the garden path, when the security light came on in front of the stables, there was still no sound from Babs and Rolo, and Tamiko muttered something and started to hurry. Fetching two lead ropes, she gave one to Daniel and went to the field gate, where they would normally have been jostling for position, ready to come in.

  ‘Where are they?’ she said, anxiety sharp in her voice.

  ‘We need a torch,’ Daniel stated.

  ‘Yes. In the feed store there is one. On the shelf over the bins.’

  As Daniel went to find it, Tamiko raised her voice to shout the horses’ names in the distinctive way she always did.

  ‘I can’t hear them. Rolo always calls,’ she told Daniel when he returned with the torch. She opened the gate and they went through with Taz pushing at their heels, reacting with excitement to Tamiko’s tone.

  The torch was fairly powerful but its beam didn’t pick up the hoped-for glow of the horses’ eyes. It was obvious almost straight away that the paddock was empty and the reason wasn’t difficult to divine. In the far right-hand corner there was a five-bar gate that provided access to the field from the lane. Normally it was kept chained and padlocked at both ends; now it stood open to the road and when Daniel and Tamiko reached it, they found that the heavy-duty chain had been cut through near the catch with bolt-cutters.

  Tamiko looked at Daniel through the increasingly heavy rain, her face stricken.

  ‘Oh my God! They’ve gone! They’ve been stolen!’

  Daniel stepped out into the lane and without much hope swung the torch beam in the direction of the village and the main road, and then the other way, towards the farm and woodland. Here, against all logic, perhaps twenty or thirty feet away, the light picked out the ruby red gleam of two eyes looking back at him.

  Tamiko clutched his arm. ‘That’s Babs! Her eyes always shine red. Oh, my God!’ She took a few steps towards the mare. ‘Come baby, come here.’

  Daniel stayed back and watched her, keeping the torch beam steady. However biddable horses were from day to day, once they were high on the excitement of being loose in the world beyond their field, they could be extremely difficult to catch again. He was aware that what they really needed was a bucket with some food but he had no intention of leaving Tamiko out in the dark lane by herself while he went to fetch one.

  The whole situation worried him. Why had somebody gone to the considerable trouble of cutting an industrial strength chain to get at the horses,
just to let them go free? One possibility was that they had only been interested in the younger, more valuable horse. The other was that it was a trap – a decoy to get Tamiko and Daniel away from the house. If that was the case, was Tamiko the target or was it Jahan, asleep alone in the house?

  Tamiko was close to the mare now. Babs had raised her head high at her approach but thankfully not attempted to escape. A couple more steps and she would have her.

  Then, walking in her own shadow as she was, Tamiko appeared to stumble, twisting her ankle and falling sideways. The horse, it’s nerves already on edge, whirled round and with a clatter of hooves, disappeared into the darkness.

  Tamiko let out a squeal of pure frustration, picked herself up and began to run in pursuit.

  ‘Tami! No!’ Daniel shouted, but now his torchlight showed only an empty lane. He swore out loud, torn between following her and the uneasy feeling that he ought to turn back and check on the boy. Who were they dealing with? If it was Samir Jafari, then the boy would almost certainly be the target, but would he really try and kidnap the child when he had just started proceedings through conventional channels?

  And what of the other, unknown threat, who may or may not have caused the death of Jahan’s mother? If their suspicions were founded in reality then it would be madness to leave Tamiko out here alone.

  For Daniel, the whole situation was careering horribly out of his control but he was aware that by standing irresolutely in the dark lane he was protecting nobody.

  It had begun to rain in earnest now, silver rods in the torchlight, quickly soaking through the thin cotton shirt he wore. He made a snap decision.

  ‘Tami! Wait!’ he yelled again, and loosely tying the lead rope over one shoulder and round his body he began to run after her, his trainers slapping on the glistening wet tarmac. Immediately Taz ran ahead, leaping and bounding; highly excited by the night-time jaunt. It was all a huge game to him.

  After perhaps fifty or sixty yards, the road curved left with an even narrower lane forking right. Here, to his huge relief, Daniel nearly ran into Tamiko, who had stopped at the junction.

  ‘I think Rolo is there too, but they both run and I don’t know which way they go,’ she panted. Her face, in the light of the torch was strained with anxiety; her dark hair wet and plastered to her skin. She pointed to the right fork. ‘If I go this way – you go down there.’

  ‘No! Tami, wait!’ Daniel said urgently, catching her arm. ‘Listen. I don’t like this. Why did they get them out and then let them go? It could be a trap.’

  ‘I don’t know, but I can’t just leave them out here,’ she cried, trying to loosen his hold. ‘Please, Daniel. Please! We can’t leave them.’

  ‘I’m going to ring Joey,’ he said, tucking the torch under his arm and taking his phone from his pocket. He found Jo-Ji’s name in its memory and made the call.

  ‘That’s good. You call but I go after them,’ Tamiko insisted, still trying to twist her arm free.

  ‘We need to stay together.’

  ‘Then you must come. I’m not going back!’

  With a final tug, she broke free and started to run again, the violence of her action sending the phone spinning from his hand. In his instinctive effort to save the phone, Daniel felt the torch slip out from under his arm. It clattered on the wet road and promptly went out.

  Daniel swore. He could see neither the torch nor the screen of the phone, which should have remained illuminated for a few seconds at least, and it might take precious minutes to find them; time that would let Tamiko get further and further away.

  ‘Taz. Go seek Tami!’ he commanded sharply, and the German shepherd disappeared into the darkness.

  Cursing the rain, his own clumsiness and the overhanging trees that were robbing the lane of any faint light there might have been, Daniel searched the wet tarmac around his feet for the torch, not knowing which way it might have rolled. If he had had his own torch, which was uselessly locked in his car back at the cottage, it would have remained where it fell. Experience had taught him the disadvantages of carrying cylindrical torches.

  Why hadn’t he asked Taz to find the torch before he sent him after Tamiko?

  For once, though, luck was on his side, and as he moved cautiously forward, he kicked it with his foot. Within moments his fingers found the metal barrel and with a triumphant, ‘Yes!’ he straightened up, feeling for the on switch.

  Directly in front of him, almost sensed rather than seen, stood a deeper shadow in the darkness, and before the realisation of danger even dawned upon him, Daniel was hit with a clubbing blow to the side of the head, which sent him stumbling and sprawling into the hedge at the side of the road. For the second time in as many minutes, the torch spun off into the darkness.

  NINE

  The attack was so sudden and unexpected that for a moment, Daniel couldn’t gather his wits. His ears were ringing from the blow and his cotton shirt was no protection at all against the sharp twig ends of the blackthorn hedge.

  He had thought there was no light in the lane, but the deeper looming darkness of an approaching figure proved otherwise.

  There was no time to wonder who he was facing. This was survival. The attack had been brutal, and his assailant clearly meant to follow it up. Without waiting to find out how, Daniel scrambled onto all fours and propelled himself in a low, rugby-style tackle at where he estimated his attacker’s legs to be, catching him thigh-high and bearing him backwards, wildly off balance.

  As they both landed heavily on the road, a definitively male voice cursed and its owner kicked out to loosen Daniel’s hold, but he was already rolling away and the booted foot only caught him a glancing blow as he came to his feet.

  He would have given anything to have the torch in his hand but he had no time to look for it, so he stepped forward and aimed a hefty kick at the shadowy form in front of him.

  He felt it connect and a grunt told him that it had landed well, but the other man was clearly a tough proposition, for instantly Daniel felt his leg grasped above the ankle and the next moment he was on his back in the lane. He pulled the trapped leg towards him sharply to draw the man closer and kicked out with the other, this time with the satisfaction of sending his assailant staggering backwards.

  Somewhere off in the darkness Daniel heard a scream and then Taz started barking. He knew that bark; it was the one that signalled a quarry found. When he’d been on police business it had signalled success, now it told Daniel that his attacker wasn’t working alone, which meant Tamiko was in danger.

  His first instinct was to run to her aid while he was free to do so, but even if he could outrun his man, it wouldn’t be for long. Almost certainly his assailant would be close behind. Sooner or later, if he and Tamiko were to survive the night, Daniel would have to disable his attacker, even if only for long enough to get them both away to safety.

  Even as he dismissed the notion, the moment for flight was past. It seemed his opponent was becoming annoyed, for he came charging back with a roar of pure aggression, like a power lifter attempting a world record.

  Whether the roar was meant to intimidate Daniel or was just the result of temper, he didn’t know. However, the man’s anger made him unwary and Daniel was able to side step and aim a short punch at his torso that doubled him up, grunting in pain. Clasping his hands together, Daniel brought them down with all the force he could muster where he judged the man’s neck to be, and heard and saw him drop to the ground.

  Breathing hard, he stepped across the dimly seen figure and sat on him, pulling his arms behind his back. It seemed the man might have hit his forehead on the tarmac because although his ribcage still rose and fell under Daniel’s weight, he made no attempt to struggle.

  Daniel had no way of knowing how long the man would remain stunned, but some innate morality stopped him from slamming his assailant’s head against the road again to ensure his continued immobility. Instead, he untied the lead rope that was still around his body and used it to tight
ly bind the man’s wrists, fairly sure, even as he did so, that had their positions been reversed, he would have been shown no such mercy.

  Shaking his head at his own unbending principles, he stood up and dragged the man’s limp body to the side of the road where he wouldn’t be run over by a passing car. From the weight of him, he was a big man – around ninety to a hundred kilos, at a guess, but without the torch, Daniel was no closer to knowing who he might be.

  Even though Taz’s urgent barking still rang through the night, he paused just long enough to swiftly go through the unconscious man’s pockets, finding only what felt like a cigarette lighter, a few coins and some scraps of paper, which he pocketed without compunction. The mobile phone he took from the back pocket of the man’s jeans had clearly suffered as a consequence of the rough treatment Daniel had dealt its owner, and something fell off it to clatter onto the tarmac. He touched the screen but it remained dark, so he slipped it into his own pocket along with the rest. It could still provide valuable clues.

  In the absence of his own torch or phone, he kept the cigarette lighter out, intending to see what he could make out by the light it generated, but it was empty.

  His frustration at this accumulation of bad luck was banished from his mind by the sound of shouting and renewed barking, away down the lane. Moments later, he had pocketed the lighter and was running as hard as he could down the road Tamiko and the dog had taken.

  It was still raining but coming out from under the overhanging trees, it was possible to make out the outline of the hedge against the sky as he ran towards the sound of the dog.

  As he drew close he could see the bulky shape of a horse, with the smaller vertical of someone holding onto it. Logic suggested that this was probably Tamiko, which relieved Daniel’s most pressing care and as he slowed up he heard her say his name with an echo of his own relief.