by Penny Grubb
Ten minutes later, with no incoming call, Annie phoned her boss in London.
Pieternel answered promptly. ‘Ah, Annie, at last. Did you get my e-mail?’
‘I haven’t been online. Haven’t had chance to set up the phone yet. But listen, I’ll have to cut you off if another call comes through.’ Briefly, she outlined the situation with Christa.
Pieternel tutted. ‘Should have trusted my instinct. I knew you couldn’t really want her there, but I couldn’t raise you and you sent that text. If I’m honest, Annie, I was only too pleased to send her away. I’ve sussed out that job, the dodgy one. They’re trying to get our licence revoked.’
‘I knew it! But why? How?’ Annie felt both shock and anger. Loss of the licence to operate would effectively close them down, would drive away their big clients. But she hadn’t needed to ask how. The how was simple – by showing them up as dodgy operators; an outfit that employed illegal tactics; employed functioning addicts like Christa who didn’t give a damn about phone hacking, e-mail mining, using young kids to do her dirty work.
The road ahead was dark, just the moonlight shining a thin strip of silver on to the snaking ribbon of tarmac. She’d turned off the main road some time ago, but it would be the work of a moment to swing back round, to head out of Hull, to leave Christa and Pat to their fate.
‘Is this to do with why I’ve ended up two hundred miles away?’ she asked.
‘I wondered at first, but no, I don’t think so. I can see why they might want you out of the way, but why get rid of Christa? If it was deliberate, they’d keep Christa right here where she’d do most damage.’
‘Do you want me back? I can be there in a few hours.’
‘No need. In fact, best if you can keep Christa walled off with you where she can’t do any harm.’
Annie felt her eyebrows rise, but she said nothing and Pieternel went on. ‘This is personal. It’s to do with me more than you. Do you remember a case where we uncovered a motorbike scam, saved our client a lot of money? Well, we trod on some toes when we did that.’
‘I’ll say,’ murmured Annie. ‘Didn’t you doctor the evidence? You came pretty close to shooting us in the foot as I remember it.’
‘Desperate times call for desperate measures, Annie,’ said Pieternel, unabashed. ‘And we pulled it out of the fire in the end.’
Annie thought back. It had been a spectacular result against the odds. One of the early cases that had taught her the value of researching the detail. Hardly their fault if some other outfit had done a shoddy job and lost business because of it, but clearly someone had held on to a grudge.
‘Are you sure you don’t need me there? I’ll just leave this lot to rot.’ Though not quite, Annie thought, as she made the offer. She would have to extricate Christa. It wouldn’t be fair on Pat to leave her to create havoc. Pat had enough on her plate.
‘No, no. It’s all in hand. People who hold grudges are inveterately dense. If they weren’t, they’d live their own lives, not waste time hankering after things they’re too thick to accomplish under their own steam. By the time you get back, they’ll be history. Game, set and match. They won’t pull another trick like this. On anyone.’
‘OK, best of luck, and try not to enjoy it too much. I’ve got to go. I want to try Christa again. I’ve to find somewhere to stash the car, too, and it’ll be pitch bloody dark soon.’ She glanced up at the sky as she spoke. Not quite pitch dark. The moon was on the wane but the sky was clear.
‘Just one more thing, Annie. I don’t know if you’ve been checking voicemail on your old phone.’
‘Not for hours,’ said Annie. ‘Every villain in the place already has the new number.’
‘Well, I did, in case you hadn’t, and you’ve a message from Mike. He’s flying in from Zurich a week on Sunday, he’ll be back for a few days. He says do you want to meet up?’
Annie felt her mouth curve to a smile. Mike had been part of her life for years; an intermittent part since he’d followed his job to Switzerland. He was one of the few people who understood her work and didn’t get huffy over missed dates and ignored calls. A few days with him was exactly the break she would need after all this. She resisted the urge to reach out and touch the fake wood fascia on the car’s radio. Of course, she’d be around and able to meet him. She asked Pieternel to ring him back, give him her new number and let him know she’d call him sometime in the next few days.
As she approached the lane that led to the farmhouse gates she slowed. The waning moon outlined a straggly row of trees that seemed to mark some kind of track. She found the access point and bumped the car along until it was well hidden. Pat should be at least ten minutes behind her and it was vital that the car was out of sight.
Christa’s phone went straight to voicemail this time. Annie wasn’t sure what to make of that. It could be that Christa had come looking for her, got spooked by her disappearance and headed back to sleep off whatever was in her system – or maybe to top it up. If she considered herself still on duty in the job it was unusual for her not to have returned the call.
From where she watched the moonlight picked out the field edges and silhouettes of trees. In the distance she could see the copse where Carl had parked with her tied up in the boot. She had two choices: to go back down the lane and along the road, or to cut across the fields and hope the way wouldn’t be barred by deep dykes or impenetrable hedgerows. The route across the fields was the obvious choice and she could always double back to the road if it proved impassable.
She tucked a few bits of kit into her pocket along with a torch and had just set off when her phone vibrated an incoming call. Shielding the screen so it didn’t flash an anomalous light out across the landscape, she saw it was Pieternel.
‘What is it?’ She lowered her voice to a whisper although the rustle of the nearby trees would swallow any sound.
‘Don’t know if you need this right now,’ said Pieternel, ‘but I had a thought. I just checked the voice mail on your old phone. Your really old phone, I mean. The one you had when you first came to work for me.’
A shiver ran up Annie neck. That was the phone she’d had when she worked in Hull years ago. Old contacts would still have that number, and Pieternel hadn’t rung for nothing.
‘What did you get?’
‘There’s a message, a recent one, from a couple of hours ago. It’s from a guy called Stills. Wants you to ring him. Mean anything to you?’
Surprise silenced Annie for a moment. She’d never known his real name. Stills was short for Still Waters, as in still waters run deep, a youngish guy in bulky oilskins and a woollen cap. They’d only met once on a sunny afternoon down at the cove. He’d been peripheral to the action, as she had been, or that’s how she remembered it. A boat, the size of a small trawler, had moored a few hundred metres out. Stills had come ashore from it in a dinghy. They’d talked for quite a while beside the barbecue on the beach. If he’d taken the trouble to look out her contact details from years ago, then she needed to hear what he had to say.
‘Text me the number,’ she said. ‘I’ll get back to him.’
It took longer than Annie anticipated to cross the expanse from the small track to the edge of Vince’s property. She kept to the field edges to have the cover of the stubby hedgerows, but had to take a detour round a reed-filled dyke, being unable to judge the depth of the water in the dark. Along a straight stretch with a hedge to guide her, she took out her phone and rang Stills.
It took a while to convince him it was really her, that she had a good reason to ring him back from a different number. A detailed description of their meeting all those years ago seemed to relax him.
‘I won’t speak on the record,’ he told her. ‘And I’m not talking specifics. People I rate have told me you’re OK, but that doesn’t mean I trust you. Twenty-first century now, isn’t it? Slavery should be a thing of the past if we want to call ourselves civilized.’
‘Slavery?’ she queried, feeling her way al
ong the hedgerow, peering ahead to try to pick out obstacles in the dark.
‘Yeah, there are thousands of slaves hidden behind the veneer of what we call civilization. It was Sleeman who paid for bringing that woman in.’
‘I already knew that, Stills.’
‘Yeah, but you didn’t know he’d paid me twice.’
‘What do you mean?’ She slowed her pace, concentrating on what he said.
‘There was the usual payment for the landing. You’ve seen the drill. Single lamp, everything’s above board. String of lamps, abort the landing. This time, right at the last minute, there’s new payment. It’s a whopper.’
‘New payment for what?’
‘Compo for if I get picked up. I’ve to go ahead with the landing, make sure she gets ashore whatever’s happening on the beach. And I’ve to keep my mouth shut.’
‘And both payments came from Sleeman?’
‘Yup. And that’s what I’m telling you. There’s a civil war going on. I’ve no idea who’s on which side, but don’t be shackled by thinking it’s a united front against you. Get that woman out. It’s not right. And sorry, but that’s me done.’
With that, he cut the call.
For a moment, she stood still looking at the silent handset. Civil war within the Sleemans. An almost inevitable outcome given the way they operated. She wasn’t sure the information would be as useful as Stills thought, not until she’d figured out who was fighting who and why, but she would tuck it away for later consideration. For now, she must get across that dark expanse on foot before Pat completed her journey by car.
When she was finally at the boundary of the meadow that stretched almost to the side of the house, she was no longer sure whether or not she’d made it before Pat. She hadn’t seen car lights, but then the undulations of the landscape had disoriented her. Not only that, but intermittent bursts of sound - hammering and screeching - had accompanied her clamber over the rough terrain, each burst a little louder.
Once she could see the place, she expected to find building works in full swing, but the side of the house that faced her showed only a single window high on the wall, the light from it spilling out to the grounds below. It made her wary of continuing the straight path across the meadow. She would have to skirt round in a wide circle to get to the far side where the barn lay.
Again the noise of hammering cut through the night air. Annie tried to home in on where it came from, but she couldn’t tell if it were from the back of the house or further away. She scraped her boots on a fallen log to remove the heavy clods of mud that clung from her trek across the fields. Other than the occasional clattering bursts of sound, everything lay quiet, but close to the house, security lights blinked on and off, apparently randomly but maybe triggered by animals.
Gradually, she edged her way round the house in a wide circle, listening for the sound of a vehicle crunching up the driveway, and at the same time scanning the hard-standing close to the building for any sign of Pat’s car.
The front of the house was as desolate as she remembered it, not a light showing from inside. Again, that sudden burst of sound had her ducking lower into the scrub, but she saw no movement to match it, and continued on. Once she could see down the side of the building, clear signs of life showed themselves. Lights leaking round from the back, but no sign of Pat’s car.
The gravel stretch at this side of the house was too exposed to risk crossing it. She decided to retrace the footsteps of her earlier visit and go right round the barn. There was CCTV at the front to worry about, but the building would shield her from the house and give her a path to the vegetation at the back from where she could get a look in through those big French windows, where she’d seen the woman from the sea coming and going with her washing.
Up by the wall at the back of the barn, Annie found herself in inky blackness and felt her way with care along the uneven panels. Then at last came the unmistakable crunch of wheels on gravel and she spun round to peer through the darkness.
Security lights clicked on at the front of the house, bathing the approaching vehicle in light. She experienced a momentary worry that the car’s headlights would pick her out as they swung round the corner, but it sank to the back of her mind as she saw Pat’s face. Just a glimpse as the angle of the light lit the inside of the car. Pat looked scared; surely too scared for some nebulous childhood trauma. In the last moment before the corner of the barn obscured it from view, as the light clicked off leaving only silhouettes, and as the car bumped across the uneven ground towards the back of the house, Annie saw what had frightened Pat.
There was someone in the back. Now it was clear what had delayed Pat’s arrival. Pat had been hijacked, just as Annie had, but unlike Annie she’d been allowed to stay behind the wheel.
Speed was essential now. She must get right round the barn as quickly as she could.
As she plunged back into the undergrowth, she was almost knocked off her feet by the sudden burst of sound; hammering so loud she felt the ground vibrate beneath her. It turned to a high pitched screech, and with it came a weird pattern of light on the ground in front of her, as though a miniature firework display was played out in the grasses by the barn wall.
It took a moment to interpret. This was the hole under the back wall, the panel she’d bent back to be able to creep underneath. As the noise died away and the darkness engulfed her again, she tried to make sense of the shapes now dancing in front of her eyes.
It wasn’t a trap, not one laid for her anyway. That blinding burst of light had glared out at her through the gap like a searchlight. And the noise was coming from inside. As it died away, a voice came through the gap, a hollow echo. ‘… stability … the electrics …’
She scrambled to her feet, fighting and wading her way through the bushes and a sea of brambles whose long tendrils reached out to tug at her clothes and snap their tiny teeth at her face. Taking this detour round the barn had become the worst possible idea when there was something major going on inside, but she carried on because there was no other way to get unobserved to the back of the house.
Towards the front of the barn the going was easier, but the cover more sparse. The big doors stood open, throwing light on to the gravel yard and into the woodland beyond. She would have to take an enormously wide circuit to remain hidden beyond it, and if she wasn’t quick about it, she wouldn’t see where Pat was taken.
She glanced briefly towards the open barn doors as she fought her way through the undergrowth. The huge entrance was covered in some sort of giant white curtain, glowing with light from within. She turned away before it etched patterns in front of her eyes, and set her sights on the house. It was an awkward angle from deep inside the copse, but the back of the building was now visible. Pat’s car sat empty to one side, but the big windows were uncurtained and she could see Pat at a table inside with two other people; one was the woman she’d seen before, the other a small, stolid woman, maybe Leah. At least one other person lounged in the shadows at the back of the room, but the angle was too acute to make out detail. Annie could only assume it was Carl.
Her gaze raked the back aspect of the dwelling. There was one point where she might conceal herself close to the house, but no obvious way to get to it. There was another door. If she could make it that far and ease her way inside…? But it might be locked and again, there was no obvious way to reach it. She measured the distance with her eye between Pat’s parked car and a straggly patch of bushes to the side of the door. If she could get to Pat’s car, could she cross from there unobserved and try the door? Unlikely. It would have to be a move of last resort.
Gradually, she fought her way closer to the edge of the gravel expanse, all the time keeping a wary eye on the figures inside the house, lit like actors on a stage. Pat sat at the central table. Annie thought she held herself stiffly, but wondered if she could really tell from this distance. Was she just extrapolating from the knowledge that Pat had been stopped somewhere along the way? Should she have
followed and not rushed on ahead? Where had it happened? What could she have done?
It wasn’t all her imagination, she realized. There was a heaped plate of biscuits on the table. The small woman had reached forward twice to pick one out since Annie had been watching; Pat not once. She glanced back towards the barn as the hammering noise rang out again, and she fingered the phone in her pocket. If she called Scott and had him mobilize officialdom, what would they find? The Sleemans had decades of experience of keeping below the radar, of covering their tracks. This wasn’t the moment to make a wrong move.
She had to know if Pat were in trouble and if so, how much. Taking in a deep breath and hoping it wasn’t a bad decision, she pulled out her phone and tapped in Pat’s number. Inside the house, Pat leant sideways to pull her phone from her pocket. Annie was aware of the stumpy woman’s gaze on Pat as she took the call.
‘Hi, is everything OK?’ said Pat’s voice in her ear, then she saw Pat look across the table and heard her say, ‘It’s Babs’s lad from the hospital.’
Keeping her voice low and rattling the words out, Annie said, ‘Pat, are you in trouble?’
There was a pause before Pat responded. ‘Hmm, I’m not sure. I don’t think so. I’ll be round mid-morning. I’ll have her laundry. Don’t worry. ‘Bye.’ She cut the call.
Annie ducked down in the bushes, watching closely, and wondering how to interpret this. Not sure … don’t think so … Had Pat cottoned on that Annie was near by?
Pat pushed herself up from the table. Annie tensed, wondering if Pat would come outside looking for her. Surely not, she couldn’t even know she was here. Pat lumbered off at an angle and out of Annie’s line of sight. She looked again at the thin corridor of shadow that she might use to get into the house if she could get that far unobserved, and wondered if she could use the bulk of Pat’s car to get partway across the gravel yard.
