Where There's Smoke

by Penny Grubb

  Annie thought about making a break for it, heading for the motorway. From here she could divert through North Cave, go the long way to the M1, head back to London, leave Scott and his mates to clear up. But the Sleeman heavies, although they couldn’t quite put a watch on ports, airports and major roads, could come close if they were desperate enough. While they thought there was any chance of getting Vitoria back, they’d pull out all the stops. No, their best bet was to get back to Hull; to hide in the heart of the city, but where?

  ‘Qualification not recognize here,’ Vitoria told Pat. ‘Have to do top up, but they say no problem. They sponsor me.’

  Pat asked about medicals. And of course there’d been a health check involving blood tests. Vitoria told Pat she’d been ‘over moon’ when she learnt she’d been accepted, but less so when it became clear this was no legal way in. But she was desperate to be reunited with her family. They’d even waived her fee, told her that her skills were needed and it would be a matter of just a few weeks hidden away with sympathetic people in the UK, then all the paperwork would be straightened out and she could begin her new life. ‘They explain to me not contact family till paperwork finish. They good liars. I believe them.’

  ‘Got it,’ murmured Annie, swinging the car round off the main road. Maybe not the ideal destination, but it was the last place they’d expect her to go.

  ‘I see chance to find family. New life. Stupid.’

  ‘Where are your family?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Vitoria shook her head.

  For Annie that didn’t quite ring true. Surely Vitoria knew how to find her family; why otherwise had there been any need to get her agreement not to contact them for a few weeks? ‘Pat runs a private detective agency,’ she said. ‘Right up her street, a job like that.’ She said this more to hear Vitoria’s reaction than as a serious suggestion, but it was Pat who responded.

  ‘Yeah right, Babs’ll love that, reuniting illegals. And who’s going to pay?’

  ‘Vince preauthorized my expenses,’ Annie pointed out. ‘The paperwork’ll be solid. Just be creative with the wording on the invoice.’

  ‘So you’ve decided it is Vince paying for you?’

  ‘Oh yes, it was Vince all along. But someone had an iron grip on all his decisions. Would that be Reg Brocklesby?’ It was a guess. Annie glanced at Pat’s face in the mirror.

  Pat’s eyebrows rose slightly. She nodded. Their eyes met briefly and by unspoken consent dropped the topic. It would be for further exploration when they were alone.

  Annie drove the car round the side streets to the back of the Premier Inn tower and up the ramp to the car park. At this time of day it was quiet, the vehicles’ owners asleep on the floors above them. She led Pat and Vitoria up to the reception desk on the seventh floor.

  ‘My colleagues would like to check in for a couple of nights,’ she said, ‘but first, can we get breakfast? All on my bill.’ They sat at a table by the window, a dishevelled group, looking out across the Humber, watching gulls swoop on to the swirling water as a ferry emerged from the mist at the far end of the estuary.

  ‘Are we really going to stay here? How long for? Who’s going to pay?’

  ‘Just for long enough that there’s no point in slaughtering Vitoria to save Vince. Sorry,’ she added, seeing the expression on Vitoria’s face. ‘And I told you, my expenses were preauthorized. No expense spared from either side.’ She looked regretfully at the menu and sniffed at the breakfasty smells beginning to seep through from behind the scenes. They weren’t yet secure enough. ‘They won’t find us here,’ she told Pat, ‘but I want to make sure. Save me toast and coffee, plenty of it. I’ll be back soon.’

  As she ran down to the car Annie rang a local taxi firm to pick her up round the corner from Pat’s flat. If they were to try for a final chance at Vitoria it would be within the next few hours. Annie’s car found by Pat’s flat would be the perfect diversion.

  She parked on the wrong side of the block. The neat maisonettes lay quiet. Anyone waiting would be at the other side, but they’d cruise round the area; they’d find the car. When she stepped out the stiff breeze from the estuary hit her, the fresh air making her shiver. The taxi would come to the far end of the street but she would stay out of view until she saw it.

  As she scurried down the pavement a shadow from a gateway caught her eye just too late. She spun round but he had her arm in an iron grip. ‘Reception party’s waiting at the flat,’ said Carl Sleeman, ‘but I thought you might pull a stunt like this. Where is she?’

  As her heart thudded with shock, just for a split second the thought uppermost in her mind was regret for the coffee and toast waiting for her back at the hotel. ‘I don’t know.’

  He raised his eyes to heaven. ‘Don’t piss me about. You make any fuss and they’ll hear you. They’re not twenty metres away through the tenfoot.’

  She felt numb, unable to marshal her wits. He probably told the truth. They were there waiting. It was the obvious place for her and Pat to take Vitoria. The road was quiet, too early on a Saturday morning for there to be people about. He frogmarched her along the street, into a driveway and pushed her towards the passenger side of a BMW X5, then jogged round to get behind the wheel. ‘Get in.’

  When she paused, he said, ‘I’m not gonna take you anywhere you don’t wanna go, but you don’t wanna hang around here till they find you.’

  That was true, too. ‘Why would I trust you?’

  He shrugged. ‘Why not? I got that dopey mate of yours out, didn’t I?’

  The sound of a car made her turn. There, passing the far of the road, was her taxi. She saw it pull up. Could she outrun him? He wasn’t holding her now. Get there first, leap in, tell the driver to drive? As she watched two figures appeared in front of the taxi, one of them walking to the driver’s door and leaning in.

  Her gaze met Carl’s. ‘You didn’t tell him where you were going, did you?’ Carl asked.

  She stared back at him. Tiredness had crept into every fibre of her being. The cool breeze ripped through her like icy daggers stippling her skin. Had she said where she was going? They usually asked when you booked a taxi.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘No … no, I don’t think so. No! I didn’t. I said the station.’ The relief was enormous. Yes, she’d said the station.

  ‘If you don’t get in,’ he said, ‘I’m leaving without you.’ She climbed in. ‘Keep your head down. It don’t matter if they see me.’

  She waited until he’d driven them out of the waterfront estate and back to the main road. ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘I’ll drop you wherever you want, but we’re gonna talk first.’

  His phone rang. He drove one-handed while he answered it, listening for a while, then saying, ‘They’re headed for the flat. Might be there already. Keep yer head down. I’ll look out for the car.’

  He clicked off the phone and said, ‘That’ll keep them quiet for an hour.’

  ‘Isn’t it too late?’ she said.

  ‘Oh yeah, way too late, but with Leah out cold and Reg gone to ground, it’s a bit Wild West just now. Give it a few hours. So where is she?’

  She ignored the question and asked one of her own. ‘Whose side are you on?’

  ‘My own.’

  Fair enough. ‘All that play-acting at the pony camp, that was to have an excuse to bring me here, wasn’t it?’

  He slowed, glanced in the mirror and bumped the car up off the road on to a patch of waste ground outside a disused factory. Annie tensed as he reached in his pocket, but he pulled out a tobacco pouch and rolled himself a cigarette, proffering the pack to her.

  ‘No thanks. I don’t.’

  ‘What d’you mean, excuse? We didn’t bring you for that. We just shelled out enough money so that that boss of yours would send you. I had to clear the place in case they needed it; get the kids to take stuff and that, but we thought it’d be useful if you had a handle on it, just in case.’

  Annie to
ok this in. ‘Vince brought me here to find Vitoria, didn’t he?’

  Carl nodded.

  ‘And Christa?’

  ‘I said that was a bad idea, but he said you needed some help; said the odds were stacked against you too far.’

  Annie looked out at wall of cracked windows that had once let light into a bustling factory. ‘Why not be upfront? Why not tell me?’

  ‘He said you wouldn’t work for him; said you’d help Pat out, but you’d be off like shit off a shovel if you thought you were working for him.’

  ‘If you’d been upfront, I’d have told you to go to the police with it.’

  ‘Yeah, like that would have worked!’

  Annie thought about the civil war in the Sleeman clan. Vince with no one left to rely on except Carl, who wanted to be on side but had to watch his own back, which was why he’d never been straight with her. Whichever side won, he wasn’t leaving evidence that he’d acted for the other. He’d kept pointing her in the right direction but always leaving room for it to have been nothing to do with him. And maybe Vince had had the mystery Reg Brocklesby on his side, too. She’d never known that much about Vince Sleeman but remembered his intolerance of any mention of illness or medics. ‘He was scared of what she wanted to do, wasn’t he? Vince, I mean.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Said he’d kill himself with a blunt knife before he had someone else’s guts inside him. He wouldn’t stay in hospital or go on that transplant list.’

  ‘So why was Leah so determined to cure him?’

  ‘He hasn’t left everything the way she wants it. She don’t need long, but she needs longer than he’s got to make sure she’ll have full control once he’s gone.’

  ‘So what stopped her doing what she liked? He was in no fit state.’

  ‘Reg. He holds Vince’s will and all the paperwork.’

  Annie looked again at the dark windows of the derelict factory where shattered glass reflected the early-morning sun. Reg Brocklesby seemed an unlikely candidate for the power behind the throne. ‘I’m surprised she didn’t just work on Reg.’

  Carl gave a wintry laugh. ‘She tried. Everyone tries, but Reg is untouchable. He has something on everyone. Even Leah. I never used to believe it, but I do now. She wouldn’t go near him.’

  So the bottom line was that Vince was dying too quickly for his wife’s purposes. And she’d gone to extraordinary lengths to give him more time. ‘What if it had worked? What if he’d had his transplant and recovered?’

  ‘She’d have worked round him one way or another, then she’d have done him in. She wouldn’t have risked him putting her through this again.’

  Leah would have slaughtered Vitoria to give Vince long enough to be talked round and then she’d have disposed of him without a thought. ‘She’s worse than he is!’

  He looked at her as if to say, have you only just worked that out?

  ‘What do you want from me, Carl?’

  ‘I need a bit of play-acting. I’ve done what I could for Vince. I kept you alive even after they knew you were on to them.’

  Barely, thought Annie, thinking of the car by the graveyard.

  ‘I showed you where to go. I took you to the house. I even got Reg out there so I could get your stupid mate out.’

  Annie thought back to the sound of Carl’s car racing up the drive, stopping briefly and then coming round the back. ‘You brought Reg with you?’ she asked. ‘So there’d be a missing car. It was him who knocked on the front door.’

  He smiled briefly. ‘We’ve pulled that one before. Your mate’s not the first one we’ve pulled out of there.’

  Remembering Reg’s comment, she murmured, ‘So his car ended up in a ditch somewhere?’

  ‘Not this time. No need. Too much else going on.’ He turned away from her, looking back towards the main road as he drew smoke in from the fag end of his roll-up before flicking it out into the air. ‘She’s a nasty piece of work. Even Vince couldn’t always stop her. And if you wanted my opinion, not that I’d give it, then I’d say you want to look under that barn floor. It’s had a bit too much concrete put down over the years, patchwork and all. If you were to talk to your mates, that’s where you should be telling them to look.’

  He talked her through what he wanted. Then they climbed out and stood beside the car. She ranted at him, told him Pat was safe in hospital, no thanks to him. He growled at her to tell him where Vitoria was, and she told him Vitoria was in the hands of Immigration, soon to be deported but safe from the Sleemans. Then his tone changed. He began to wheedle her. ‘Tell me where you took her. Who did you hand her to … when? Come on, what harm will it do now? You’re the one with the gun. What am I going to do?’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I don’t see what harm it’ll do. And if you try to bust her out, you’ll end up behind bars, which is just where you need to be. Give me that pen. I’ll write it down for you.’

  He held up his hand as he stopped the recording. ‘That’ll do.’

  Annie didn’t think it would convince anyone, but Carl seemed happy enough. Now, apparently, he had to get round to a mate’s house to get a convincing soundtrack behind the recorded words. ‘While the hired muscle chased false trails, you found me and got the info, is that it?’

  ‘Yeah, more or less. It’ll keep me the right side of her once she’s calmed down.’

  ‘But why do you even want to be the right side of her? Isn’t now the time to bail out?’

  ‘When he’s six feet under and she’s well behind bars, then maybe I’ll think about it. Until then, she’s gonna be the one with the clout.’

  It was tempting to give in and let him drive her back to the hotel, but he was still on no one’s side but his own and she couldn’t trust him, so she insisted he left her there on the waste ground. She watched his car all the way down the dual carriageway until it disappeared from sight, then she began the walk back towards town, calling a taxi to meet her at the Sportsman pub on the old Hedon Road.

  CHAPTER 29

  Annie emerged from a deep sleep, enjoying the warmth of a shaft of sunlight that lit the room. She sank into the comfort of the bed, running a mental inventory of aches and pains. Nothing too bad. A glance at the digital display on the TV showed her it was not quite midday. She’d slept for less than five hours but had slept well. She, Pat and Vitoria had agreed to meet in the restaurant around lunchtime. Annie lay still, feeling properly rested, relaxing into the knowledge that something nasty had been circumvented. A second later she was bolt upright. This wasn’t over yet. What in hell were they to do with Vitoria?

  She was pleased to find Pat on her own in the seventh floor restaurant, toying with a menu and looking out across the Humber, where the sun snaked silver and gold coils across the water’s surface. ‘We need to talk about Vitoria. Any sign of her yet?’

  ‘Let her sleep,’ said Pat. ‘The poor kid must be shattered. What are you thinking?’

  ‘She needs to sit tight here a while longer. Carl talked about it being like the Wild West out there, but it’ll settle once Leah’s back in control and it’s too late for Vince.’

  Pat slapped the menu on to the table. ‘I knew that all along,’ she said, her face scrunched in annoyance. ‘I could kick myself. Did you see the look he gave me last night when I was yapping on about transplant registers?’ Pat gave a huff of irritation and looked at the menu again. ‘He’d no more consent to a transplant than fly to the moon. I knew that!’

  ‘I wish I’d worked it out earlier,’ said Annie.

  ‘Did you ever come across a guy called Stills?’

  Annie felt her eyes widen but tried not to show surprise. ‘I met him once.’

  ‘He rang Babs a month or so ago, asked about Vince; about him not wanting to stay in hospital; refusing to go on the transplant register, all that. He asked her if Vince wanted to get better. She said, of course he did. But he didn’t, not like that. We should both have figured it.’

  ‘How did he know about Vince?’

  ‘He and
Stills go way back.’

  So Stills had tested the waters with Barbara, but known they were just the nonentities in the game, the sisters always on the periphery of the real family business. Nonentities or not, they’d been used by both sides. Leah had them digging dirt on Hassan which they’d failed to do, and Vince had engineered Annie back into their midst, having more faith in her abilities than theirs. But who else did he have? The enigmatic Reg Brocklesby quietly wielding power behind the scenes, but unable to stop Leah, and Carl, the nephew who owed him some loyalty, but who daren’t do anything other than hedge his bets at every turn.

  Vince knew Carl couldn’t fight Leah on his own, so he’d had Annie brought in to work for the Thompsons, who were small fry on Leah’s radar. He knew she wouldn’t work for him, but she would do her best for Vitoria once pushed in the right direction. No one had trusted anyone. So much for her theories about Barbara being in on it, though that phone call had panicked someone. It annoyed her that Vince hadn’t bothered to hide that he was paying for her, knowing she’d never believe it. It looked as though Greaves had been working for Vince, too, trying to get Vitoria out of Leah’s clutches and to the safety of deportation. No doubt Reg Brocklesby had something on Greaves, gambling debts or some such, like Pat had said. Enough to stop him mobilizing official help to intercept Vitoria. No one had anything on Scott. He’d simply walked into the middle of it that night and Greaves had had to busk it. She supposed she should tell Scott about Greaves, but wasn’t sure he’d believe her.

  ‘Vince had to go along with Leah,’ Pat said, ‘or she’d have whipped him off abroad.’

  ‘All he had to do was put the trip off until it was too late for him to survive the journey.’

  Pat shook her head. ‘No, he was wilier than that. I reckon he found that place in the Midlands, went along with all the arrangements and then had someone shop them. He didn’t count on Leah trying a DIY job.’