by Neil White
Charlie looked away. He didn’t feel like judging. Not today.
‘Thanks, Patrick,’ he whispered, nodding down at her.
‘Don’t worry about speed cameras,’ Patrick said. ‘The plate goes back to a scrapped Ford Mondeo. Nothing will come back here.’
‘There are some things I don’t need to know,’ Charlie said, and then clicked the door closed, before bolting into an old sky blue Corsa.
It started on the third turn, and as he drove along the terraced street, Charlie started to feel some of his dread lift. He needed to get to the office. He knew where the video would be, and if it was important enough to murder for, he knew he had to get it before Amelia’s killers found it.
His mind went back to Donia. He should call the police, he knew that, but something made him uncomfortable about her. It was all too neat. She arrived to do work experience, and then people started dying. The people in black knew where to go. Was it all a set-up, Donia in on the whole thing? They had threatened to hurt her, but what had it been? Hair-pulling? It could have been an act.
The journey to his office was brief. He drove to the end of the road and then some way up the hill.
He didn’t go in the front way, where the takeaway owner might tell someone that he’d seen him. Instead, he drove to the street behind and then went into the alley that came out behind his office. There were black wrought iron streetlights lining the route, so it made it harder for people to hide there. Charlie blocked the alley with the car. He had a quick look round as he got out and then dashed into the yard, before running up the fire escape that went to the rear door of the office.
Charlie didn’t turn on any of the main lights once he was inside, because he didn’t want anyone to know he was there. Instead, he closed all the blinds and relied on desk lamps.
He went to the desk in reception and found the key for the safe. That was where they kept all the videos, in a small storage cabinet in the reception area. As he fumbled with the key and unlocked it, he saw rows of discs. They were logged by file reference, a sticker on each case. Charlie couldn’t remember Billy’s reference, but he knew it would begin with PRI. His fingers clicked through the discs, but there was no disc with Billy’s reference on.
Charlie slammed the door closed. If the master disc had been in there, they had taken it, which was why they had left the knife behind and not killed him. They thought they had everything. The letters that Linda hadn’t got round to posting. The disc from the cabinet, if ever there was one. But if they had those, why were they still hunting for something?
He went into Amelia’s office. It was obvious that the police had been through it. Not looking through the files, but checking drawers and at the back of cupboards. As he looked, Charlie felt the sadness for Amelia rush at him, the shock of seeing her dead, and how she died. He picked up a photo frame she kept on her desk. It was her family again, close and smiling.
Tears jumped into his eyes, took him by surprise. She was a young woman, beautiful, her life unfulfilled. He thought he could still smell traces of her perfume, and he expected to hear the click of her heels or the angry snap to her voice. He wiped his eyes, angry with himself. He had no time for grieving now.
Amelia’s client files were not in cabinets, but on shelves, in alphabetical order, alongside large folders that contained materials from whenever she went on a training course, the compulsory hours they both had to do to keep their practising certificates. Charlie’s just piled up on the floor until they made their way to the bin.
Amelia did a lot of personal injury work, and the cases always moved slowly. So she did what most lawyers did; she worked her way through her cabinet methodically, going through each file in turn, writing an update letter, each one billable, or doing any chasing that needed doing. It took around three weeks to get to the end, and then she would just start over again. Updates, chasing, generating paperwork that generated money.
So he went to her files and started to flick through them, looking for a file that was out of place.
Charlie wiped his eyes as he started to pull out files. His exhaustion came at him quickly, and the names started to sway in front of him, not really taking them in. It took him thirty minutes to get to the end. Nothing.
He sat at Amelia’s desk and looked for something that gave it all away. Whatever the intruders had wanted, they hadn’t got. They must have tortured Amelia, but because they were still looking, it must still be in the office somewhere. But he couldn’t see anything on her desk, and if it had been visible, then they would have found it.
He clicked the button on her computer monitor. The screen slowly came to life, pale blue, and then the password dialogue box. Except that there was a red cross next to it. The password had been entered incorrectly. He tapped his lip with his finger. The police might have turned it on, but they wouldn’t need to, because Linda could access everything from her own computer, but she wouldn’t have done that, not without his permission, because she’d be worried about confidentiality. So if it hadn’t been the police, it must have been whoever planted the knife on him, because they had been in the office. They had been looking for something on the computer and been locked out.
Charlie typed in his own username and logged on.
He went to the client search box and typed in Privett. Twelve client numbers came up, all Billy’s case files, although ten of those were from before Alice Kenyon’s death in his pool. There were two from the last year, which surprised him, as other than Alice’s death, Billy had kept out of trouble. One of the files was at Donia’s flat, and so what was the other one?
Charlie clicked on Billy’s most recent client number. He expected to see a list of consultations and letters, so that he could trawl through the history of the file without having it in front of him. Amelia didn’t always put everything on the paper file.
There was just one entry from a week earlier, an attendance note, along with a few telephone calls and letters.
Charlie clicked on the attendance note and started to read.
It said that Amelia had visited Billy’s house, and that they had recorded a video. That’s all it said. Two hours.
He sat back. That note was too brief for Amelia. Attendance notes contained detail, so that they had a record of exactly what the client told them. That note was just so that she didn’t forget to bill him for the time, which confirmed his suspicions from the other file, that if there was nothing on the note that disclosed what was on the video, it told Charlie one thing; Amelia didn’t want a record of it on the file. That must be the disc that had been sent to the press and to the police and to Ted Kenyon. The video was the important thing, and there was no sign of a master copy.
Charlie sat back and ran through the events of the evening in his mind. He was missing something, he was sure of it. Where was Donia? Who was Donia? Just a work experience student all the way from Leeds. A long way to come to work for nothing. And staying in a flat too. It was costing her more than her time.
They had gone through the file together, and when it didn’t contain anything obvious, those people in black arrived. Had she let them in? Was Donia working for the group, and so had applied for work experience just to find whatever it was they wanted, which he knew now was the video?
But that didn’t sit with how she had been in the flat. Or was he failing to see past the pretty face?
He ran out of Amelia’s office, wincing, and went to the desk in reception. The job applications were kept in a folder underneath the desk, the applications for training contracts in one side, the requests for work experience in the other. He flicked through until he saw a neatly typed piece of paper with Donia’s name at the top.
He sat down and read it quickly. Donia Graham. An address in Leeds. Her education. A paragraph about why she wanted the experience in Charlie’s firm. Nothing unusual. Just another request for a foothold in a law firm, hoping that it might come useful later. They hadn’t checked whether any of it was true.
He
put the paper down and realised that he didn’t know what was going on anymore.
Chapter Forty
John stood by the front door on guard duty, holding the shotgun, his eyes scanning the dark hills, trying to see into the shadows. He was still shaking after Dawn’s attempted escape, because he didn’t know what Henry would have done if she had got away.
It was still quiet. There were no headlights on the road, no people coming across the field. If Henry was right, people were coming to get them, but all he could hear was the crack of the branches in the woods opposite, and the occasional rustle of leaves as a bird took flight. The light from the house spilled over onto the edge of the field, the stone circle taking on an amber hue. He remembered what Dawn had said, that it was a graveyard, Henry’s legacy just a field filled with dead bodies.
John looked back and along the hall to where Dawn was trussed up, her hands bound in front of her. He wanted to go to her and find out more about Henry, but the rest of the group were sitting and watching her, making sure that she didn’t make another attempt at running.
Gemma walked along the hallway towards him. She looked distracted, her teeth teasing at her lip. As she leant against the doorjamb and looked over the field, John said, ‘Where did Henry come from?’
She looked at him. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘How did he become the leader? What’s his background?’
Gemma shrugged. ‘Just like us. I know what he told us, that he grew up the hard way and so understands.’
‘But those are just words. They don’t mean anything.’
‘You want specifics?’ Gemma said, and then she sighed. ‘He’s from Manchester. His father was a drinker, and he used to beat Henry, so Henry left home. He learned the guitar and survived by busking. That’s how he fell in with the festival crowd. He roamed around until eventually he ended up here. Just about being lost and found.’
‘What about prison?’ John said, and when Gemma scowled, he added, ‘Dawn said that he’d done some bad stuff, and had gone to prison for abusing a young boy.’
‘That was a set-up – Henry told us about that. It was just some daft kid who liked to make things up.’
‘He was convicted though, and went to prison.’
‘Prison is full of innocents,’ Gemma said. ‘He told us that his beliefs were founded there, because it gave him space to think.’
‘If you are in prison, you will think about being free,’ John said. ‘It’s natural.’ He turned to Gemma. ‘Dawn talked about Billy Privett.’
Gemma looked back into the house towards Dawn. ‘We’re not about the past anymore.’
‘She was going to tell me something about Billy Privett.’
‘So it’s good that she didn’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
Gemma shook her head. ‘You don’t need to know. We’re about the future now, about fighting back.’
‘Was it anything to do with Alice Kenyon?’
‘Why do you say that?’ Gemma said, her eyes suddenly flashing angry.
John took a step back. ‘Hey, I didn’t mean anything by that,’ he said. ‘But why else would Dawn mention Billy, because she was talking about other things Henry had done?’
‘Why is that your concern?’
John thought about what to say, but as Gemma scowled at him, all he could think of was not upsetting her, and so he smiled an apology and said, ‘I just don’t want anything to stop us.’
‘Why would that stop us?’
‘I don’t know,’ John said, shrugging. ‘If the police come for Henry because of what happened to Alice, they won’t care about his vision.’
Gemma thought about that, and then, ‘Do you trust him?’
John considered that for a moment and then nodded. ‘Henry? Of course I trust him.’
‘So stop worrying,’ Gemma said. ‘Henry has it all under control.’ Then she frowned. ‘If the police go after Henry, we all go down. Henry, Arni. Even me. Is that what you want, to see me go down?’
‘Were you there?’
Gemma stepped forward and stroked John’s cheek with her fingers. She leaned into him and kissed him softly. ‘We don’t need to talk about that night,’ she whispered.
John’s misgivings about Billy Privett seemed to dissolve as he tasted her lips on his. He wanted to feel her body under his, the soft feel of her skin under his fingers. He closed his eyes. ‘I just don’t want to lose you.’
‘If you stick with us and trust Henry, you won’t lose me.’
He opened his eyes and smiled at her.
‘You do still trust him? And me?’
John looked at Gemma, and her eyes were wide, appealing to him, and he felt that pull, a need to hold her, almost as if it didn’t matter what she might have done. What any of them had done.
‘I’m falling in love with you,’ he said.
Gemma started to laugh.
‘Stop it,’ he said, feeling embarrassed.
‘I’m not laughing at you,’ she said, and kissed him on his cheek. ‘I’m loving you. Stay with us, babe. We’ll get through this.’
John flushed. He wanted to hold her, for them both to run away and leave Henry behind, but he knew one thing; he wasn’t going to leave Gemma there.
‘Stay strong,’ she said, and hugged him. He pulled her in close, inhaled the scent of her hair, felt her ribs under his fingers.
They stood there together, Gemma in the crook of his arm. Watching. Waiting.
Chapter Forty-One
Charlie went back to the computer. There was more information on there, and so he wanted to read as much as he could before he left the office. He glanced out of the window, towards the alley at the back, where Patrick’s car was parked, expecting to see shadows moving, or perhaps blue flashing lights, but it looked quiet.
Amelia’s note had been typed on the computer and so Charlie looked again at what she had written. He knew there had to be something that he was supposed to see. It was a niggle pricking at his subconscious. As he read it again, he saw it. The exact words were Videotaped interview with Billy Privett. It had been recorded on tape, not on disc or a memory stick. Had the intruders realised that?
Charlie started pulling out drawers in Amelia’s desk. They were tidy, pens and staples stacked neatly together, but when he pulled out the bottom drawer, he saw a small video camera, still with the leads attached that connect it to the computer. Amelia had downloaded the footage and made the discs.
He lifted out the camera. There was no tape in it. He banged the desk in frustration. Where was it?
He went to log off from Billy’s file and click off the computer when he saw another entry. It was the time that stood out. Amelia had made three calls just after she had written the attendance note about the video. He leaned into the screen, curious, and clicked on one. The entry contained little detail. It stated that Amelia had made a phone call and cross-referenced it with a different file with the reference ABB003/1. Everything Amelia had done in the office, she had billed for it. The reference meant that he was the third client with those three letters at the start of his surname, but that it was the first file for him. A new client. There was no more activity that day, and now Billy was dead, along with Amelia.
Charlie went back to Amelia’s shelves. It was the first file he got to, right at the start of the alphabet. He pulled the lamp a bit closer so that he could see it properly.
The file was a criminal file, from one court appearance. Charlie looked at the instruction sheet. John Abbott. An arrest for criminal damage, some graffiti on the side of a building in the town centre. I am a free man and My rule: no rules. Another one was Smash the world.
It stirred a memory in him.
Charlie read on.
John was a loner. He lived on his own after his mother died. He’d been left money and property, but his life seemed empty. He was angry at the world, because it had left him with no one to care for. He had wanted to find answers and started to read on the internet
how governments were colluding together to create one world power, with the so-called free world’s power concentrated in a small number of families. It made John angry, he didn’t want any part of society anymore, but he didn’t know what to do. He had told Amelia that he scrawled on the building through frustration. He wasn’t sorry though, and he was going to carry on finding the answers and fighting.
Charlie closed the file and threw it onto the desk. Something clattered onto the desk but Charlie ignored it. Abbott was just some local crackpot who was unhappy with the direction of his life, and so he was making it someone else’s fault. He had caused some damage and had wanted Amelia to turn the court speech into a protest. But why was Amelia making calls about Billy Privett using that file reference? The case was four months old. It should have been closed and billed.
Charlie reached for the file again, knowing that the answer was in there somewhere.
He went to the call logs on John Abbott’s file. All they said was that Amelia had spoken to M at NPOIU. Nothing more. Three times. Charlie didn’t know what they meant and so he pulled out the bill, hoping it would explain more. When he read it, he was shocked.
He leaned back in his chair, just quietly nodding to himself. He picked up the bill again, confused, to make sure that he had read it right. He had.
The bill was made out to the police. But why would the police pay the legal costs for a defendant in a criminal case?
He realised that there was only one thing to do, despite what he had said to Julie. He did need to speak to the police. But on his terms.
He called Julie. She answered on the third ring.
‘What’s going on, Charlie?’ she said, her voice in a whisper. ‘Andy doesn’t like me being worried about you, but I am.’
‘It’s been an eventful day, and I don’t think it’s going to lay off just yet,’ he said. ‘I need you to get Sheldon Brown to call me.’
‘I can’t just go calling inspectors.’
‘I thought you wanted me to come in.’
