by A K Reynolds
‘Where are we going?’
‘To Whitby,’ she said, setting off up the track leading to the road.
‘Why Whitby?’
‘I know someone who can help us who lives near there. Plus, I like the place. Don’t you remember?’
We’d enjoyed a long weekend in Whitby when we first met. It was one of my fondest memories of the time I’d spent with Sarina. But it was hard for me to look forward to going there again when I’d just seen a man killed by the woman who was taking me there.
‘Yes,’ I remember,’ I said softly, feeling about as good as I would have done if I’d been sitting next to a cobra.
We turned onto one of the A-roads heading east.
‘What’s going on, Sarina?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Someone tried to frame me with Tara’s murder. Do you know anything about that?’
For a moment she took her eye off the road to give me a puzzled frown. ‘Frame you?’
‘The crime scene was fixed to make it look like I was the murderer.’
‘That’s awful, Jo. Devlin’s men must’ve done it. The bent coppers. They probably meant to frame me, not you. But when the honest ones got on the job the frame-up didn’t work out as planned.’
‘Why did you mortgage my house, steal from me, and cripple me with debt?’
She gave me another puzzled frown. ‘What?’
‘I used to own my house outright. It’s now mortgaged to the hilt. Why did you do that?’
‘I didn’t. Someone’s trying to destroy you, Jo. They’re trying to destroy both of us. Can’t you see that?’
‘Why did you tell me you worked at MKM International when you don’t? Why did you invite paid actresses to our wedding and tell me they were your friends?’ She didn’t reply. ‘Why?’
A sign to our left told us there was a layby half a mile ahead. Sarina turned into it and stopped the car behind an articulated truck. She looked at me, her huge eyes glistening, her facial expression earnest. ‘We can’t talk properly while I’m driving. And it’s too big a risk to keep the car stationary for long on a road like this so please bear with me. I’ll tell you everything when we get to Whitby. In the meantime, please trust me. I won’t let you down, I promise.’
She put the car into gear and set off again, and I wondered whether she really was planning on telling me the truth or whether she was going to use the rest of the journey to think up an outrageous lie to fob me off with.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The sea came into view; a blue-grey wall on the horizon as we entered the outskirts of Whitby, drove past street after street of semi-detached houses with white walls and red roofs offering guest accommodation and, as we neared the centre, passed large Gothic-looking hotels built of stone, most of them the former dwellings of rich Victorians. Sarina descended to the bridge crossing the river Esk, parking in front of a modern glass and concrete apartment building overlooking the river.
I watched in fascination as she got out of the car donning her parka, placed the magazines safely in her pockets. Striding confidently to the rear of the car she opened the boot and took out a small suitcase which she wheeled to the entrance of the apartment building. I followed in her wake like a lapdog. In mitigation there was little else I could do. I had nowhere else to go. A brushed steel sign next to the door told me we were outside The Estuary Apartments. The exterior held out the promise that the accommodation would be rather swish. A key appeared in Sarina’s hand and she opened the door. As we went inside she grinned at me. ‘We’ve got the penthouse suite.’
A lift smoothly transported us to the fifth floor where we emerged into a carpeted corridor with a floor-to-ceiling window at the end providing a spectacular view across the bay. Sarina unlocked a walnut door and we entered the penthouse. Taking her wheelie-case to the biggest of the four bedrooms she unpacked her few things while I stood watching like a spare part.
When she’d finished, I said, ‘Don’t you have something to tell me?’
She came up close to me, caressed my cheek with her hand, her fingers gently traversing the scar Jenrack had given me.
I pulled away.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Let’s make ourselves comfortable in the lounge. It’ll be more conducive.’
Conducive to what?
The lounge bore floor-to-ceiling windows too. The furniture appeared to have come from somewhere exclusive. Two reproduction paintings hung on the walls – Blue, Grey and Pink by Mondrian, and Nocturnes Blue and Silver by Whistler. I threw my jacket onto a low sofa and sat next to it. Sarina perched herself elegantly on a similarly low armchair opposite me.
‘It’s hard to know where to begin,’ she said. ‘There’s so much to tell you.’
‘How about starting with who you really are?’
My question seemed to take Sarina by surprise but within a fraction of a second she’d composed herself. ‘I’m the woman who loves you Jo. Whatever I tell you today please remember that. I take my marriage vows seriously.’
‘Maybe you do. But who are you, really?’
She sniffled and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye, something I’d only seen her do once before, and that was on our wedding day. At the time I’d been impressed with the way her emotions had overwhelmed her. Now I was beginning to wonder whether she’d faked that for my benefit.
‘I don’t know who I am anymore,’ she said. ‘But I used to be a private investigator.’
‘You’re not making any sense, Sarina. What do you mean?’
‘I’ll explain in a minute.’
Her eyes filled up. She stood and went to the bathroom. Muffled sounds of sobbing came from within and I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. From what I’d seen lately, she was capable of doing anything to get her own way. Including killing people and shedding a few fake tears. After a minute or two she returned to the lounge, her cheeks red.
Sashaying to a stainless steel cabinet in the corner, she said, ‘I’m fixing myself a drink. Would you like one?’
‘Maybe later. The truth is all I want at the moment.’
She poured herself a large measure of Cotswolds Dry Gin and topped it up with tonic. From somewhere in the cabinet she got a couple of ice cubes and dropped them in with a plip-plip sound. Then she sat opposite me again and took a glug of her drink, which, judging by its size, was at least a triple measure.
‘Like I said, I used to be a private investigator. When I’d learned as much as I could learn about the investigating trade I went self-employed. And that was when I got my most important job ever. It was for a client called Hazel Flint. She had problems, not that you’d have known it to look at her. She passed herself off as a happy person but beneath the veneer of happiness she was in a state of turmoil. Everybody blames their childhood for the bad feelings they have, but in her case it was true. Her mother pimped her out for sexual services when she was too young to know what sex was. It traumatised her. When she grew up she wanted to find the man her mother had pimped her to and make him pay. But her mother was dead, she didn’t know the man’s name, and she didn’t have any photographs of him. She had too little to go on to find the man, which is why she needed a PI in her corner.’
She took a sip of her gin and looked pensive. I felt I had to break the silence.
‘Did you find him?’ I said.
‘Yes. It took some years, but I did.’
‘What happened when you did?’
‘My client was delighted of course. But her delight soon turned to despair when she realised she couldn’t get the revenge she wanted and deserved. There was no evidence of his crimes. He’d covered them up too well. He was still going about his evil business but there was nothing I could do about it. He was too good at covering his tracks.’
Again, she stopped talking. It seemed the truth she wanted to tell me was a painful one.
‘So what did you do?’ I said, by way of a prompt.
‘This is when it gets awkward. You see, he was Martin Von Koss.’
She waited for my response. The room began to spin and my heart raced even though I hadn’t had a drink. Pieces of the jigsaw were coming together. What strange and frightening pattern would they form?
‘Tara’s boss,’ I said.
‘Yes, Tara’s boss.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Sarina saw that my mind was reeling and she gave me a moment or two to take in the news before continuing her narrative.
‘I had to find a way of proving Von Koss was a paedophile. Only if I did that would the police believe Hazel’s story. So I found out who worked for him and got one of his employees to plant some cameras for me to record what he got up to.’
I arranged the pieces of the jigsaw into a coherent pattern.
‘Tara. You got Tara to do that for you.’
‘I’m afraid I did.’
‘And you only got close to me so that you could win Tara’s trust.’
Her face fell. She got the look on her face some of my guilty clients got when they were before a judge and I was offering up a plea in mitigation.
‘You’re right. I was so hell-bent on getting the evidence of what Von Koss was really like that I was prepared to marry you to get it. Marrying you meant I had Tara’s complete confidence. When I asked her to spy on Von Koss for me, she agreed. But she videoed something neither of us had expected. She videoed Martin Von Koss killing someone. When Tara saw what she’d recorded Von Koss doing she got scared and refused to give me the evidence. She was worried Von Koss would catch up with us and kill us both. So she hid the video and we agreed never to do anything risky with it. Then Tara made a big mistake. She told her boyfriend James what we’d done. He saw a chance to make some money out of it. He got in touch with Devlin and offered to sell Devlin the video. Von Koss was Devlin’s biggest rival in the Manchester underworld. Devlin was keen to get the video because he knew he could use it to get rid of Von Koss, who’d been a thorn in his side for years. Tara refused to let James sell the video but by then the cat was out of the bag and Devlin was determined to get his hands on the footage, come what may. Tara went home on Tuesday evening last week and found her house had been broken into, and signs that her boyfriend had been taken away for questioning by Devlin. Tara came to our place to talk about what we should do. She was in a state. I gave her one of your sleeping pills in the hope it’d calm her. After we’d discussed things we decided to leave town and I went upstairs to get my purse. That’s when Devlin’s men got in. I hid from them but they got Tara. After they left I went on the run.’
‘My God. You put Tara in danger. And it killed her.’
‘I know I did, and I’ll never forgive myself for it. But when I told her about Von Koss, she wanted him to pay for his crimes. Your sister was a good person, Jo. She wanted to see justice done for Hazel. And it would all have been okay if not for her boyfriend. He’s the one who got Devlin involved.’
I stood up and went to the steel cabinet.
‘I need that drink now,’ I said, pouring myself a large Glenmorangie scotch whiskey.
After taking a good swig I topped it up and with the glass nearly full I returned to the sofa.
‘Without you happening along, Tara would still be alive.’
‘I know. I never meant it to happen this way.’
‘And our marriage was all a big sham.’
Because I’d had a week to get used to the idea that Sarina had taken me for a ride I managed to say those words without bursting into tears, but it took everything I had and then some to hold them back.
‘It was at first. But then I grew to love you. That’s why I asked you to join me here.’
‘Very flattering.’
‘Don’t be like that. You mean everything to me, Jo.’ She straightened out her legs, stood up, and joined me on the sofa. ‘I’d do anything to turn the clock back.’
My stomach muscles tightened. I took another slug of whiskey in the hope it’d help me calm down.
‘Why did you mortgage my house and take my money?’
‘I didn’t do that, Jo. It must’ve been Devlin who did it. Once he found out we had something he wanted, he set out to put pressure on us any way he could, to get us to toe the line. He’s capable of anything.’
‘Why is the mortgage in my name?’
‘He must’ve got the impression you were involved in getting the lowdown on Von Koss, or that he thought you could be used to get to me or Tara.’
Raising my glass to my lips I swigged another healthy measure of whiskey and realised I still hadn’t been given all the pieces of the jigsaw to fit together. She’d left out some obvious ones that were an important part of the picture.
‘Wait a minute. What kind of PI goes to the lengths you went to for a client? Not even an important client with an important case is worth marrying someone for. Not unless you’re your own client. That’s it, isn’t it? You’re Hazel Flint aren’t you?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The part of me that was Hazel Flint died a long time ago. Von Koss killed her. I don’t think of myself as Hazel Flint any more. I’m Sarina Finnegan now, and I always will be. I hope I will be anyway.’
‘Whether you’ll always be a Finnegan very much remains to be seen to put it mildly.’
‘Don’t be like that, Jo.’
‘Can you blame me?’
‘I suppose not.’
Something else came to me. A high-profile case I’d read about in The Criminal Barrister magazine. It involved a woman called Hazel Flint. She’d been a sex worker. One of her clients had turned violent – so she claimed, there were no witnesses – and she’d stabbed him with a kitchen knife. She claimed to have acted in self-defence, which seemed a bit of a stretch in view of the fact she’d stabbed him thirty times. I couldn’t remember if she’d been sent down for murder or manslaughter but she’d definitely done time. Had she now been let out, possibly on licence? And was this the same Hazel Flint I’d seen a photo of in The Criminal Barrister, my profession’s official magazine?
‘You were sent down for killing a man weren’t you?’
‘That wasn’t me, Jo. It was just some woman who had the same name as me.’
I didn’t know whether I believed her but we had a mutual interest in staying alive and that trumped everything else.
‘Look, we are where we are,’ I said. ‘I’m not happy about it. In fact I’m quietly seething. But I’ve got to deal with things. I might as well start by giving you this.’ I pulled the mobile phone Tara had left me from my jacket pocket.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s something Tara gave me. She said I should have it and that I’d work it out. I think it must have that video on it you were talking about but I haven’t been able to find it.’
She held out her hand. ‘Here, let me look.’
I passed the mobile to Sarina and she fiddled with it. Soon enough it asked her for a password. She typed something in and a video appeared.
‘How did you do that?’ I said.
‘She said you’d work it out, so I figured she was referring to the calculator. Work it out, see?’
‘Yes, I do see now.’
‘When I opened the calculator app and played with it, it asked me for a password. The password had to be Tasmin. She wasn’t going to make it too difficult for you.’
‘She told you her middle name?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re a member of a small and privileged elite.’
It occurred to me that my wife, if I could still call her that, was even more of an expert in matters of deception and subterfuge than I’d given her credit for.
‘We ought to watch the video,’ I said.
She pressed the play button and held up the mobile so we both got a good view of the screen. Just as she’d said, the video showed Martin Von Koss torturi
ng and killing some poor devil he had tied up in a dingy-looking room. I had to avert my eyes before too long. ‘Turn it off,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen enough.’
She carried on watching and fiddled around with it for a while.
‘There’s a lot more here than just the video of Von Koss murdering someone. It looks like Tara found out Von Koss was getting money from drugs and prostitution, and she’s given us details of how he was laundering his money. She’s also provided evidence that his claim to running his companies in a green way is fraudulent. Everything he does is bent. Plus there’s something else she videoed that you definitely don’t want to see.’
Sarina slipped the mobile phone into her pocket.
‘You’re right, I don’t want to see it. What’s the plan?’
‘First we have to get you a new look and a new identity. We’ll spend the afternoon shopping. We’ll stay here tonight and visit a contact of mine tomorrow. She’ll give us new identities and make us new passports. Then we’ll get an airplane to Spain, use our evidence to get justice for Hazel, and go into hiding.’
‘That’s it? We run away and hide forever?’
‘Not forever, Jo. We’re just giving ourselves some breathing space until we can work out a more permanent solution that allows us to come back to England. I think you’ll agree with me that it isn’t safe for us here right now.’
‘That’s one thing I can agree with you on.’
‘Drink up, let’s go,’ she said. ‘We have things to do.’
Since I couldn’t think of a better plan I swallowed down the rest of my whiskey and walked with Sarina into Whitby. It was the middle of the afternoon and several hours since I’d had breakfast.
‘I’m hungry,’ I said.
Sarina bought us fish and chips from a takeaway on the east side of the town. We ate them from the wrappers while walking the streets and threw the empty containers into a bin. She took me to a surfer shop, picked up some shoes, underwear, and a couple of new outfits for me, and carried them to the till.
