by A K Reynolds
This is it then. I grabbed the door handle and pushed open the door. This is where he kills me for Tara’s mobile.
I bailed out while the car was still in motion, landing on the pavement. I didn’t know which way up I landed or how fast I was travelling. I rolled over painfully a few times before coming to a halt. Aching all over, and barely able to think because I’d banged my head, I somehow got to my feet. By that time the Ford Focus was stationary, parked right next to me, and the driver’s door was opening. I broke into a run. On my left a sign told me I was on Haverford street. A hand grabbed me by the collar, bringing me to an abrupt halt. Turning, I swung my fist at my attacker. He blocked it as easily as if I’d been a child, got hold of the front of my jacket with both his hands, and rammed me up against the mesh fence.
‘For God’s sake Jo.’
I swung another punch at him. He shrugged and I hit him on the shoulder. He let me go and punched me in the stomach. With a hiss like a deflating tyre I doubled up.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, I want to help you. Now get back in the car and I’ll explain what this is all about.’
‘All right,’ I gasped. Then I straightened up and sucker-punched him on the jaw. I gave that punch everything I owned, including my pent-up frustration at the way my life had been turned upside-down. His eyebrows shot up in amazement, I think, as much as pain and he staggered backwards. Determined to press home my advantage I aimed a boot at his bollocks but he turned away and I booted his hip instead. Shaking the grogginess from his head he came at me like a bear and although I punched him in the mouth drawing blood he was able to get his weight on me, drag me to the ground, and sit on me.
‘I’ve said I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said, wiping his split lip with the back of his hand. ‘But I will if I have to. I hope for your sake you understand I’m serious about that.’
‘I understand,’ I said, wondering whether I dare smack him one again and try to make a getaway. In the end I decided against it. He was just too big for me, and the opportunity to get away wasn’t there, and I wasn’t strong enough to create it. So I got into the car and shut the door. He sat next to me.
‘I’ve bought us a little time but we’ll have to get moving again soon. You never know who might be watching us, even here.’
‘So who are you?’
‘I work for the NCA.’
‘NCA?’
‘National Crime Agency. We’re the people who fight serious and organised crime in the UK.’
‘Show me your warrant card.’
I knew by now they could be forged but thought it worth asking. He gave me a withering look.
‘Do you think I have a death wish? I don’t carry it on me while I’m working undercover.’
Having been through what I’d been through I wasn’t going to take him at face value.
‘Then how do I know you’re telling the truth?’
‘Because I met your wife and she gave me a message for you: you’re to meet her at your place. She asked me to take you there. How would I know you even had a place you referred to as your place if your wife hadn’t told me about it?’
No one but me and Sarina knew about that place. The fact Jurgen knew about it meant he had to have been on good terms with her. How else would he have come by this information? Another point in his favour was he’d saved my life. Even so, I’d keep my eye on him. Leave nothing to chance had to be my watchword.
‘All right, point taken. Seeing as we’re both on the same side, how about you give me my gun back?’
‘Are you a member of a gun club?’
‘No.’
‘Then you’re not licensed to carry one. I am. I’ve been trained by the police in the use of firearms and I used to be in the army. I know how to handle guns. You don’t. If something kicks off, I’ll be able to protect you better than you can protect yourself.’
I couldn’t argue with that.
‘Okay. The place Sarina was talking about, the one we call our place, is Cathedral Cavern in Little Langdale.’
‘Cathedral what?’
‘Cathedral Cavern. It’s a big cave in the Lake District. We call it our place because that’s where we decided to get married.’
‘Romantic types, eh?’ He switched on the ignition, turned the car round, and set off. ‘I don’t want to risk heading back into Manchester,’ he said. ‘We’ll take the ring road and go the long way round.’
‘When will she be there?’
‘Tomorrow between 9.30 and 10.30 a.m.’
We joined the M60, circling south and east, then north to the M6. As we headed up the motorway a knot made its presence felt in my intestines.
‘Who killed my sister?’
‘A man called Hench. He works for Devlin.’
That put Sarina in the clear as far as Tara’s murder was concerned, which was a relief.
‘Why did Hench kill her?’
‘He thought your sister and your wife had something Devlin wanted. Your sister refused to hand it over. Your wife got away.’
I made a sincere promise to myself: that I would kill Hench for what he’d done, in cold blood, given half the chance.
‘What is it they had that he wanted?’
‘I don’t know, but it’s worth a lot of money, apparently.’
‘Why does Devlin want me?’
‘He thinks you can tell him where your wife is.’
Those words got me thinking. When Devlin put the word out to his network of dealers to look for me, Jenrack must have assumed I had information which could put Devlin behind bars. Jenrack got greedy and tried to get the information from me.
‘How did Devlin’s men find me?’
‘You used your burner phone to text your wife. That made it easy for them to get your number and do a reverse location lookup.’
‘Reverse location lookup?’
‘Get the physical location of a mobile phone using just its number.’
It was then that I had a horrible thought.
‘Fuck.’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘I have my mobile phone right here.’ I took it from my pocket. ‘It’s switched on. they’ll be able to find out exactly where we are.’
‘Jesus. Turn it off.’
As soon as I’d switched it off I looked at the road behind us, wondering whether anyone was following us.
The closer we got to the Lake District, the better I felt. We were putting space between ourselves and Devlin, I was looking forward to seeing Sarina (in spite of everything she’d done I still loved her, and deep down I was hoping she’d be able to give me an innocent explanation for the mortgage on my house). My life had collapsed around my ears, but Sarina might help me salvage something from the rubble.
We left the M6 at the Burton-in-Kendal Moto and pulled up in the car park outside the café.
‘What are we stopping for?’ I said.
‘Give me your phone.’
As I was in no position to argue, I handed it over.
‘You might as well grab yourself a coffee. I’ll join you in a minute.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Watch and learn.’
We both climbed out of the car. Ahead of us was the big glazed porch which marked the entrance to the motorway services building. It resembled an old-fashioned conservatory. I walked towards it. Jurgen switched on my mobile and headed across the car park to a parked vehicle. It was a 4 x 4 towing a trailer tent. He shoved my mobile into the trailer and jogged over to me. I held open the door for him.
‘That thing’s unlikely to be going where we’re going,’ he said. ‘Hopefully I’ve sent Devlin and his men on a merry dance.’
He had also endangered the life of the innocent driver of the vehicle. That didn’t bode well. What sort of undercover cop was he?
We took full advantage of the amenities, making use of the rest room before ordering ourselves
a black coffee each from Costa, which I paid for.
‘How did you become a policeman, Jurgen?’ I asked as we sat drinking our coffees.
His action man features creased into a smile.
‘I left the army after six years with no job skills other than being able to gather intelligence, see people without being seen, and fight if I had to. Becoming a detective seemed a natural fit for me.’
‘How did you meet Sarina?’
‘Devlin told me to find her. I tracked her down but didn’t tell him. I told him instead that I couldn’t find your wife, and I warned your wife how serious things were getting. I told her Devlin wants the information she’s got and he’s prepared to kill for it. She told me she already knew about Devlin but she wouldn’t disclose her information to me. She’ll only talk to you. She wants to meet you to tell you what she knows. She says it’ll exonerate you both and give you leverage with the police. She’s hoping we’ll give you police protection. And we will, if the information is good enough.’
Was Jurgen telling the truth? I couldn’t be at all sure. His behaviour suggested he was no undercover cop. Then again, the police aren’t meant to get women they’re spying on pregnant while working undercover but they do. So he could be a policeman in spite of his behaviour. And he certainly knew something he could only have got from Sarina. Why would she have told him what she did about our secret meeting place, other than to help him establish his bona-fides? The jury was still out on whether he was really a policeman. And until it reached a verdict I’d be watching him like a hawk.
We finished our coffees. Jurgen glanced at his watch.
‘We’ve been here twenty minutes. We better get going.’ We returned to the car. ‘They’ll know we were here,’ he said, reversing from the parking space.
‘Because of the phone?’
‘Not just that. They’ll send someone here to ask about us, probably a PI, one who specialises in finding missing people. And we’re not exactly inconspicuous.’
We pulled back onto the M6, left it at junction 36, and followed the A590 along the side of Windermere lake to Ambleside. The sky was overcast, the lake was grey and choppy with a few brave souls enduring the cold conditions to take canoes and yachts onto the water.
‘No telling where your wife is right now,’ Jurgen said. ‘We might as well stop in Ambleside and get a place to stay overnight. But I can’t risk using my card to pay for anything and nor can you. We might be traced if we do. How much cash have you got?’
‘Enough to pay for us both, as long as we don’t stay anywhere expensive.’
‘Cheap and basic will do fine.’
‘They’ll be on the lookout for this car. We need to park it somewhere it won’t get seen too easily.’
A sign on our left with an arrow on it said: Wilderness Hotel: 4 stars, 300 yards this way.
‘That looks promising,’ Jurgen said, driving in the direction indicated, which took us to a detached building overlooking the lake.
Wilderness had a pitched slate roof, white stucco walls, and a tall-windowed double-glazed entrance with a triangular sculpture in front of it like the sail of a yacht in a high wind. The car park was almost full, mostly with expensive cars. BMW’s jostled with Mercs, Porsches, Range Rovers and even a couple of Ferraris. A good half of the area was hidden from view of the road. Jurgen headed for that section of the car park and reversed into a space between two 4x4s: a Mercedes and a BMW which made our Ford Focus nigh impossible to see unless you were standing right next to it.
Jurgen turned to me. ‘I’ll be calling myself David Simpson. What name are you going to use?’
I thought for a moment.
‘I don’t know. Cindy Booth?’
‘That’s good.’
He held out his hand. ‘Now please give me some money.’
‘What?’
‘We need to go in separately. A couple of people arriving at the same time looking like us will stand out. If someone rings this place and asks about two people, and gives our descriptions, we’ll be fingered in no time. But we might have a chance of not being identified if we book in on our own. And you need to give me the cash to pay for my room as I don’t have any.’
‘Okay, got you.’
I handed him two hundred and twenty pounds which I reckoned would be more than enough for a room out of season in Ambleside, even in a four star hotel. The expression on Jurgen’s face told me he wasn’t impressed by my generosity.
‘I’ll need something to eat.’
I frowned and gave him another twenty. ‘That’s your lot. Make the most of it.’
He handed me the car keys.
‘I’ll go in first,’ he said. ‘You wait here half an hour, then come in yourself. Eat in the hotel. If you see me, you don’t know me. Don’t leave your room except to eat. Don’t leave the hotel unless it’s absolutely necessary. We’ll meet in the car park tomorrow at 9 a.m.’
‘What do you class as absolutely necessary?’
‘A fire. Or being attacked. I can’t think of anything else.’
‘Okay.’
Jurgen got out, went to the back of the car, and opened the boot. He took off his overalls. Beneath them he was wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans. He ferreted about until he retrieved a blue cable-knit jumper which he then proceeded to put on. Then he grabbed a camouflage jacket which looked like he’d bought it in an army surplus store and put that on over the jumper. I was pretty sure that somewhere in that camouflage jacket he was carrying my gun and ammo. He disappeared around the corner to the hotel entrance. I waited a good while before I too, got out, locked the car, and entered reception. It was plush-carpeted and wood panelled, with a grand staircase leading off one side and an equally grand hall opening up behind it.
My standard double room (they’d run out of singles) cost me two hundred and thirty pounds, which included dinner and breakfast. It was rather more than I would’ve liked to pay for an overnight stay in Ambleside, especially given that I owed a lot of money due to a massive debt on my house I hadn’t signed up for. As I handed over the cash I wondered if I’d ever get straight again. Then I reminded myself that my new mortgage was the least of my problems and I ought to count myself lucky just to still be alive.
The woman on reception tried her best not to look too closely at my scarred face but I could tell that it was killing her. She told me that as I was paying cash I had to settle my bill in advance. I counted out the money and put it on top of the oak counter. Keeping my head lowered to make it harder for her to see exactly what I looked like, I signed in using the name Cindy Booth then she gave me a key.
‘Room twelve, second floor.’
‘Thanks.’
I went up to my room, and thought about giving Jurgen the slip. I had the perfect opportunity to do so. But the lure of meeting Sarina proved too strong. Seeing her was the only way I had of getting to the bottom of all this. So instead of making my escape I locked the door and had a reviving shower. I spent the afternoon watching television and wondering what I was going to say to Sarina when we met and what she was going to say to me. She’d arranged this meeting so I reasoned she must have something significant to say to me.
The hotel dining room was three quarters full that evening. Jurgen arrived before me and was halfway through his dinner when I got there. He didn’t acknowledge me and I didn’t acknowledge him. I sat at a table on my own and ordered a lamb shank with roast potatoes and vegetables, and was pleasantly surprised to find there was an offer on and my meal included a bottle of wine. I chose a Merlot and drank most of it with my dinner. It looked as if Jurgen hadn’t bothered asking for his bottle of wine. He seemed like an intense sort and I guessed that was why.
When I’d finished my meal I took the remaining wine and glass to my room and lay on the bed to polish off the bottle. My meeting with Sarina was only twelve hours away.
Once the bottle was empty and I’d watched the late night news I switched of
f the television and turned out the lights. Although I was drunk it took me a while to get to sleep because of the turmoil in my head.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
WEDNESDAY
Although I wasn’t due to meet Jurgen until 9 a.m., I woke up at 6 a.m. and put my grubby clothes back on, wishing I had something clean to change into. At around 8 a.m. I went downstairs for breakfast, choosing a full English with everything they had to offer, and washing it down with a couple of mugs of black coffee. Just off from the entrance was a small room with a view of Lake Windermere. It was furnished with a bookcase full of paperback thrillers, comfortable armchairs, a couple of sofas, and a table with the day’s newspapers on it. As I had time to spare I went into the room, grabbed a copy of the Guardian, and spent twenty minutes sitting in the comfiest of the armchairs reading it.
Just before 9 a.m. I returned the newspaper to the table and went out to the car. Jurgen was standing next to it waiting for me, wearing his camouflage jacket fastened all the way up to his neck. He needed it on account of the low temperature which had turned his face whiter than usual. I unlocked the car and climbed into the passenger seat. He climbed in next to me. I handed him the key. He glared at me, eyebrows knitted, his usually smooth brow furrowed for once.
His face reddened. ‘What the hell were you doing in there?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I told you not to leave your room except to eat. I saw you sitting reading a newspaper looking for all the world as if you were enjoying a nice break in Ambleside. You’re not. This is deadly serious business we’re conducting, and I do mean deadly. You could get us both killed if you’re not careful. Remember that.’
‘Sorry,’ I said lamely. ‘I didn’t think.’
‘Too right you didn’t. We’ll leave it at that.’
He started the car and pulled out of the space, drove along the A593, a narrow road which took us through lush countryside. During the holiday season it carried a lot of traffic but at this time of year, November, it was practically deserted. We’d been driving for about twenty minutes when Jurgen turned right onto a narrow track that declared itself to be restricted use only. We passed a deserted tea room on our right, and stopped in sight of Cathedral Quarry, where Jurgen manoeuvred the car into a small layby. A brand new red Mini Countryman was already parked there. I wondered if Sarina had used it to drive to the quarry.
