Where There's Smoke

by Penny Grubb

  ‘Any idea who?’

  He laughed without mirth. ‘No, but Rob and I had cut corners. I didn’t want my name on it when I was due off on leave. It was only chance I was there with him. And he’d cut corners, too, with the paperwork. It might have looked like we’d been covering our tracks. The finger might have been pointed at me and Rob. That’s why we’ve had to keep a lid on it.’

  ‘And you’re sure Rob Greaves isn’t in on it?’

  ‘No, of course not. Anyway, whoever helped to spring the woman knew more about the whole op than we did. It’s a mess, Annie, and it wasn’t anything I could risk getting tied up in. Did you hear about that undercover officer in Leicester a few months ago?’

  She shook her head, but he went on as though she’d nodded.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t him they targeted, it was his family, and it looks like there’s a link. Believe me, when you’ve young kids, you don’t risk them for anything. It’s not our case. It was never really on our patch. There’s a whole team somewhere on to it. It’d be madness to stir things up, knowing what we know.’

  Or what we don’t know, thought Annie, who felt she needed an hour alone to mull over this tangled account. ‘So why are you chasing it up and where do the Thompsons fit in?’

  ‘Rob came in last Monday to tell me he’d heard Sleeman was involved. He wasn’t sure if Sleeman’s mob had snatched the woman or were at war with whoever had. He said Sleeman had set the Thompsons on to it and they’d called you in. I knew you wouldn’t work on that sort of case if you knew what it was, but I knew Sleeman would have kept you in the dark. That’s why I came to warn you.’

  ‘And that’s why you looked through Pat’s files. But Scott, it can’t be Vince Sleeman. He’s at death’s door, and even if he wasn’t, I’m the last person he’d pay good money to.’

  ‘Pat Thompson wouldn’t talk to me. Would she talk to you?’

  Annie nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll get to find out what she knows. My worry is that she doesn’t know much. I think Barbara’s the key to this.’

  ‘She’s not going to be talking to anyone for a good while.’

  ‘How bad is she? How do you know, anyway?’

  ‘I checked with the hospital when I heard about it. She’ll be in there a while.’

  Annie wondered when and how he’d heard, but he looked so glum she couldn’t help smiling. ‘You always wanted to do it by the book. I guess the book let you down for once.’

  Before he could respond, the phone rang. He glanced at the handset on a table in the far corner of the room, then briefly at Annie, before he murmured, ‘I’ll take it out here,’ as he turned and strode out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him.

  Annie leapt to her feet and went to press her ear to the door as the phone fell silent. She could hear the murmur of his voice, but couldn’t make out the words. Was this the avenging fury? Did it mean she had better take off as fast as she had from Pat’s earlier? Scott was fool enough to let them meet up. She stepped quickly across the carpet to the far side of the room, feeling apprehension run a shiver down her back at the thought of Scott catching her. She slipped the handset free of its rest and, praying he wouldn’t hear her, she clicked the button to open the line.

  It was a man’s voice … unfamiliar. It said, ‘… get back to Lance Mailers.’

  As shock prickled her skin, she heard Scott’s voice say, ‘OK,’ and the call was cut.

  CHAPTER 7

  Annie bumped her car on to the grass verge. Up ahead was the rutted lane that led to the back entrance of the racecourse. Her phone beeped a text message. Scott. She glanced at it.

  WTH was that about?

  Her mouth curved to a cold smile. Well might he ask, she thought, noting that a wife and young family had moderated his language. In the old days it would have been WTF. And what had it been about? Had she acted precipitously in running out on him; simply slipping out of the door when his back was turned? On balance probably yes, but after that snatch of overheard conversation she’d had no intention of taking a risk she would later regret.

  Up ahead, the lane that had been all but deserted on every previous visit now bustled with people and vehicles. Trailers bounced behind cars as they swung off the road on to the track. A horsebox followed, silver lettering on its side glinting in the afternoon sun. Even to her untutored eye Annie could see these were not racehorses arriving for a race meeting. This must be the camp Jean had told her about; the camp where drugs would be dealt, the job she’d supposedly been brought all this way to do.

  Her gaze lost its focus; her mind on other things. Pat had made some reference to the horsey job that had raised no flicker of recognition in Scott. He thought she was here about some modern-day mermaid. The cases seemed poles apart and yet Scott knew Lance Mailers, the guy who had approached Jean about drugs at the pony camp. The knowledge sat in her head, an uncomfortable anomaly. Who was this guy? What had she missed?

  And could she trust Jean? The only sensible answer was no. Her plan had been to leave the car here and cut across the fields on foot, so as to approach unobserved, but, with the volume of people going in, she might risk driving closer. Decision not quite made, she reached for the ignition, but didn’t turn the key.

  She remembered her first reaction on hearing about the Hull job; her certainty that it was a ploy to get her away from London, rather than that anyone needed her help in Hull. Did the events of the last few days support her initial theory or blow it out of the water? Someone was out to trash her and Pieternel’s reputation. It wouldn’t be the first time. They were a success story now; they’d trodden on a lot of toes. Whatever the truth of it, Vince Sleeman was the absurd cover story. Someone, knowing he was out of action, had used him to explain her presence. Well, Vince was out of hospital now, and the someone, whoever it was, would be quaking in their boots.

  A brand new Hyundai four-by-four slid past her, its trailer rattling behind it on up the lane. She picked up her phone and rang the hospital. ‘I’m ringing about Mrs Barbara Caldwell … to see how she is … no, not family … just a friend, a colleague … wondering about visiting …’

  ‘No change … no visitors … only family …’

  No help to be had there. Annie must work it out on her own. Jean was expecting Lance Mailers and Annie determined to listen in on their meeting. She started the car.

  Keeping out of Jean’s way wasn’t difficult. The ill-at-ease, unconfident woman Annie had come to know was unrecognizable in the granite-faced, megaphone-voiced personification of power and authority who strode back and forth waving her arms, issuing orders, cutting a path through the chaos.

  With her car discreetly tucked in amongst the trailers, Annie threaded her way round the edges of the action to the building that housed the tiny bedrooms. At one end, next to the small kitchen, a space was set out as an office. It was the obvious place for Jean to hold a meeting that she wouldn’t want all and sundry to know about. Annie’s only fear was that the place would be awash with noisy children, but when she rounded the corner, the chaos subsided. The action seemed concentrated on the stable block.

  Although clear that no children would be housed here, a rapid sweep of the building showed signs of occupancy, holdalls slung on to beds, clothes hanging over chairs. Annie’s room lay undisturbed as far as she could see, but this would not remain the solitary bolt hole it had been up to now.

  In one of the rooms, along with a battered suitcase containing clothes, Annie found a clipboard and sheaf of papers labelled with Jean’s name. The loose pages documented the attendees at the camp, giving names and addresses, details of teams, an opaque points system. Nothing of interest. But at the bottom of the heap was an appointments diary. Quickly she flicked through the pages and felt a glow of satisfaction as she read:

  2.30 p.m. Lance Malers

  She noted the spelling. Malers with no i. Unusual.

  Somewhere behind her, a door creaked open on laughing voices. Annie pushed the book back in amongst the papers
and shot across the corridor to her own room, where she listened intently. Neither of the voices was Jean’s. Two people clattered about in the small kitchen for a few minutes and then left the way they’d come in. Annie watched from her window as they strode away, steaming mugs in their hands. She stepped closer to the window, trying to see where Jean was, unsure now that she’d made the right call. With people coming and going at will, this no longer seemed the best place for a clandestine meeting.

  But it was close to 2.30, so she waited and watched, and, as the half hour struck, she saw Jean and a young man approach across the grass. He stood a head taller than Jean, the high, brown colour of his skin marking him out in this largely white middle class world of horsey East Yorkshire. Something in his build made Annie think he was older than he’d told Jean; too old for the schoolfriends story to hold water. He reminded her of someone, a younger guy, but she couldn’t catch the memory of who.

  She lingered as long as she dared, to impress on her memory the features of the man Scott knew too, then shot back towards the small kitchen and eased herself into a cubbyhole of a broom cupboard. Through the flimsy interior walls she would hear everything they said whether they stayed in the kitchen or moved to the office.

  A door banged open upon a sudden cacophony of voices. It took Annie a moment to realize it wasn’t just Jean and her companion who had entered. Questions were showered on Jean about who belonged where; about some fracas over a suitcase. Annie listened to Jean’s voice and heard the strain of her trying to get rid of these people and their problems; to get them out of the way.

  ‘OK, OK. I’ll be across in a minute. Go and check with …’

  Jean hustled them out. As she came back, Annie heard her say, ‘We can’t talk here. Go across to my box. Over there. Yellow trim. It’s open.’

  Hell, thought Annie, what box? Two sets of footsteps retreated and she had yet to hear Lance Malers’s voice.

  She leapt to the door, opening it a crack to peer through. The man who must be Lance Malers had wandered off to one side, clearly wanting to keep away from the crowds that had immediately engulfed Jean, who tried with flailing hands to shoo them away. Annie risked opening the door wider, her gaze raking the area, frantically looking for a horsebox with a yellow trim.

  There! At the far side of the gravelled area hemmed in by dozens of vehicles. Lance Malers hung back waiting for Jean.

  Without time to think out a sophisticated plan of action, Annie dived back towards the nearest of the small bedrooms, grabbed the outsize jockey’s helmet that lay on the bed and rammed it on. It was a tighter fit than she expected for its outlandish size and felt heavy on her head.

  Pausing only to be sure that neither Jean nor Lance Malers was looking her way, she slipped out of the building and sprinted down the side of the gravel track. She could only hope her headgear would be adequate to disguise her as just another in the mêlée of people racing about. Her route took her in a wide arc, round the back of all the vehicles, in amongst the noise of ramps being lowered and lifted, the clatter of ironclad hoofs as ponies were unloaded.

  She threaded her way through to the horsebox with the yellow trim, then stopped momentarily fazed by the number of doors. Where would they go? Surely not the cab where anyone could see them. The enclosed space where they put the horses seemed a good bet, but Annie could find no easy way to get in from the rear other than lowering the huge ramp. Running out of options and not knowing how far behind Jean would be, she climbed up to pull open a side door behind the driver’s cab and was surprised to enter a self-contained living area, complete with sink and cooker.

  Desperately she spun round looking for somewhere to hide before they arrived. The one cupboard that might have held her was crammed to bursting. As she pushed its door shut again she glanced up. There was some kind of storage space stretching over the driver’s cab, footholds were built into a metal pillar to give access.

  A voice she recognized as Jean’s murmured something from just outside. Annie threw herself at the makeshift ladder and scrambled up. Forgetting the height of the bulky helmet, she heard the crack of it hitting the metal roof. At once she flattened herself into the gap fighting against a bundle of sleeping bags and bedding that tangled her arms and legs. She kicked them free and tore off the helmet. It had saved her from hurt but that bang on the roof sounded like it had reverberated around the lorry park. Pressing herself to the back of the space, she struggled to hold her breathing steady and quiet as the door clicked open.

  ‘… got someone, right?’ The voice, mid-sentence, held a trace of the flattened vowels of a Hull accent.

  ‘I’m doing what I need to do.’ Jean’s voice was firm with a hint of admonition, but at the same time she sounded flustered.

  ‘Yeah, but you got them in like I said?’

  ‘I told you I’m taking it seriously, but I spoke to a Sergeant Greaves and he said—’

  ‘What would he know? He’s a copper. I told you who you need working on this.’

  At first suspicious of what the exchange said about Jean’s role, Annie felt reassurance as the conversation continued. Lance Malers wanted Jean to spell out what she was doing about his drugs tip off. He brushed aside Sergeant Greaves but didn’t seem bothered that Jean had involved the police.

  Jean was careful in her responses, acknowledging her debt for the warning, but not trusting him with information he seemed too keen to know.

  Lance Malers gave in with a sigh that was half irritation, half amusement. ‘Well, I hope you’re doing the right thing here. But there’s something you need to pass on. Tell them to look out for a horsebox that ain’t.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean a box that ought to be for horses, but ain’t. All stars and glitter. A proper professional job, but no horses.’

  ‘Are you saying that’s where the drugs’ll be? Have you seen it today? Is it here?’

  ‘Nah, let’s hope it ain’t coming here. She’s gonna have to go out and find it. But that’s the one.’

  ‘But I don’t follow …’ Jean’s voice reflected the puzzlement that Annie felt.

  ‘You don’t need to. Just make sure you take this seriously. I don’t want to see any kid come to harm.’

  Annie listened as the conversation wound down. In her head, she replayed Lance Malers saying ‘she’: She’s gonna have to go out and find it, over the knowledge that Jean had been careful not to say who was working on the information she’d been given. He didn’t seem to have noticed his slip, nor had Jean picked up on it, but Annie turned it over in her mind. It could be innocent, no more than a slip of the tongue, or maybe Jean had mentioned her in a previous meeting with Lance, but Annie didn’t think so. Lance Malers knew who she was and that she was working for Jean.

  But how could he know that?

  Below her, the conversation came to a close. The lorry swayed beneath Annie as Jean and Lance climbed out and slammed the door closed. Annie twisted in her narrow bunk and peered through the tiny window high above the driver’s cab. Jean strode across the uneven surface, already shouting out to someone. Lance Malers, hands in pockets, head held high, marched off at a tangent.

  It was the bouncy confidence of his stride that jolted Annie’s memory. Of course he reminded her of someone … of someone younger. He reminded her of himself seven years ago. She’d never met him properly, but she knew him. The recollection went right back to her first six week stint working for Pat. His name wasn’t Lance. It was … She closed her eyes and called the memory back … Carl. His name was Carl.

  She thought of the words in Jean’s appointments diary. Lance Malers.

  And with an exasperated slap of her hand to her head, she plucked out the name Carl and saw what was left. Thoughts spun in her head. Scott knew Lance Malers, but Lance Malers didn’t exist.

  Vince Sleeman, out of commission, had no idea what was going on, but Lance Malers who didn’t exist knew that she, Annie, was here working for Jean Greenhough. And Lance Malers was
Vince Sleeman’s nephew, Carl.

  CHAPTER 8

  Late afternoon found Annie back in the building that housed Pat and Barbara’s cramped office. As she climbed the stairs she could hear Pat talking to a client on the phone and slipped inside, giving Pat a nod. Pat shot her a glare, began to mouth something at her and for a moment juggled her conversation on the phone with her urge to berate Annie, before turning her attention to cutting short the former and putting down the phone.

  ‘What’s going on? Where the hell do you keep disappearing to? I’ve told people you’ve upped sticks. Are you working for me or not?’

  Annie filled Pat in on the events of the day, glossing over Scott’s involvement and watching closely as she mentioned Vince’s nephew. ‘Did you know he goes by Lance Malers these days?’

  ‘Yeah, Vince made him do that years ago. Made him drop out of sight for a while and he came back reborn, as it were.’

  ‘Does he toe the line these days, then? He was all out for himself seven years ago the way I remember it.’

  Pat shrugged. ‘Probably. More or less.’

  Annie held back from voicing her theory of Barbara and Carl working against Vince. It wasn’t that she thought Pat might be on the other side, but that she’d dismiss it as ludicrous and spill the beans somewhere she shouldn’t. She pushed Pat for answers and discovered that yes, Carl Sleeman had been one of the people to enquire after her whereabouts.

  ‘I’d like to get to talk to him. Do you have an address?’