by Andrew Lowe
A car engine, and lights: on a road up above, beyond the ridge. The lights flared, then faded.
He dug in, aiming for the shore. He mistimed his breathing and took in a gulp of water. Stringy, brackish. He was numb now, all over. But there was no option; he had to keep going, keep moving forward.
Sawyer dragged himself onto the shore and stumbled on, heaving his battered body up the incline. He scrambled forward, clawing at the earth.
More car lights from up above, now with the crunch of tyres on the road.
At the top of the ridge, he stayed low and scanned the roadside bushes. He had expected the blond man to be watching and waiting. Ready to finish the job.
Another car approached: a hefty 4x4. Sawyer hobbled into the road and held out his arms. The car pulled up onto the verge.
There was nothing left now. If this was the blond man, he could offer no resistance.
The driver got out. He was a broad, middle-aged man wearing a woollen hat and a fleece-collared jacket. Another man—younger—got out and hung back by the open door.
Sawyer noticed he was shivering.
‘You okay, mate? What’s happened?’
He spoke. Something about coming off the road. It was hard to speak. Jaw frozen, in spasm.
Down on his knee; hand on the cold earth.
The second man, wrapping something round him. Coat, blanket.
Inside the car, across the back seat. Shivering, shivering.
The first man. ‘Don’t think you’ll be seeing your car again, son.’
Driving away. The second man watching him from the passenger seat.
And laughter: retched up, sweeping over.
Dark, uncontrollable laughter.
34
Sawyer sat up in his temporary bed. The corridor flared into focus: too bright; everything moving, everything amplified.
A man stood at his bedside: smiling, waiting. Early twenties, goatee, man bun. He wore olive green scrubs, with a stethoscope draped around his neck. ‘Mr Sawyer, my name’s Lyle. I’m one of the doctors here. Do you know where you are?’
Sawyer winced at his fierce headache. The doctor handed him a plastic cup of water, and he downed it in one. ‘Hospital? Cavendish?’
‘Yes, you’re in A&E. You’ve been here a couple of hours. You were quite confused when you came in. You were shivering and your clothes were wet. Do you remember that?’
He did. Just. The car, the lake. Already, it seemed so distant and dreamlike. ‘What time is it?’
‘Just gone eleven PM. You had a mild touch of hypothermia. We’ve dried you off, warmed you up.’ Sawyer looked down; he was wearing a hospital gown, his arm attached to a drip. ‘The line is just warmed saline. You’ve been monitored, and I’m happy that you’re out of the woods. But you need to take it easy. Your body’s been through quite a shock.’ He disconnected the drip. ‘You had a few cuts to your arms. Some bruising. Did you fall? Into water?’
He reached for a clearer memory of the time before the lake. Nothing. ‘Yes. Might have drunk too much.’
The doctor eyed him. ‘Have you taken anything else this evening?’
‘No.’
‘Is there a possibility that you might have ingested something without your knowledge?’
‘Yeah, there’s a possibility.’
‘Your saliva test came up negative for GhB. But, judging by your behaviour when you came in, I would suspect flunitrazepam. Rohypnol. Roofies. Do you have any dependency issues, Mr Sawyer?’
He managed a smile. ‘No.’
The doctor nodded. ‘Well, you’re awake. You have some recall. However this got into your system, it seems you had a mild dose. If your drink was spiked, then that’s a criminal offence. You should inform the police.’
A flash of the glass of Coke. Half drunk, spilled. The blond man taking the bottle out of the fridge, replacing it.
‘Who brought me in?’
‘I didn’t see you at that stage. You must have been triaged quickly, though, given your state.’
The doctor gestured to a chair at the side of the bed. Sawyer’s clothes sat in a folded pile with his boots underneath. ‘We’ve dried out your things. Your phone is in the coat pocket. Not in the best shape, though.’ He frowned. ‘Do you remember coming in? Giving us your name?’
Again, he flexed for recall. But there was little beyond the house, his brother. He sat up, hopped out of bed. ‘Got to go.’
Sawyer took a taxi back to the cottage, paying the unimpressed driver in 20p pieces from his change jar. He checked each room, looking for missing items, anything out of the ordinary. The Coke glass had been placed back on the coffee table, and the spillage cleaned away. He took the bottle out of the fridge and sniffed the contents. Nothing unusual.
Bruce reappeared, and as he scraped some food into his dish, Sawyer noticed his wallet was still there on the coffee table. He checked it: no cash removed. He reached into the inner pocket and pulled out the polaroid of his mother, standing at the garden gate on Christmas morning, 1987. Orange bathrobe; long, raven-black hair gathered into the hood; uncertain smile. He took out his phone; it was clammy, with a clouded screen, and wouldn’t turn on.
He shuffled into the bathroom and turned on the shower, hot taps only. He stripped and stood there in the billowing steam, with his chin on his chest. Reviving, reheating.
He dressed and checked around the sitting room again. He dug a hand down the side of the sofa and pulled out the burner phone. Text message from Max Reeves.
Call me when you can.
That could keep. There was someone else he needed to speak to first.
His thumb trembled as he made the call. It rang for a long time before connecting.
‘Hello?’ Eva sounded wary but sleepy.
‘It’s me.’
‘Jesus, Jake. What now? It’s late.’
He flopped back on the sofa. ‘Whatever Dale is up to, he must have a lot riding on it.’
Eva yawned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Because I think he just had someone try and kill me and make it look like suicide.’
35
Sawyer slept in his clothes: clenched and foetal, buffeted by a collage of leering nightmares. The doctor, tending him, transformed into the blond man, manipulating his drip. And the blond man became the man with the moustache from his dream: holding down his mother, raising the hammer. Sawyer lunged forward to stop him, but the man smiled and dazzled him with the shine from his watch.
His brother, flat out on the bloodied grass. His dog, motionless.
His mother called out to the man. ‘Why?’ He replaced the balaclava and brought the hammer down into the centre of his mother’s face.
For the first time, he saw something close to distress in the man’s eyes. A loathing. As if the hammer blows were inflicting pain on himself.
‘Jake! Run, my darling. Don’t look back.’
He woke with a shout, on the edge of the bed, clinging to the headboard. His breaths came in juddering rasps, and he realised he was convulsing: half laughing, half crying.
He showered, changed, and took a taxi to Enterprise Rentals, a car hire garage in an industrial estate on the edge of Buxton. The office was manned by Howard, the grim-faced but friendly South African clerk who had sold him the Mini.
Howard stood up and shook Sawyer’s hand. ‘Nice to see you again. Looking for something new already?’
‘Just a rental. Had a slight mishap with the other car.’ Howard squinted at him, waiting for more. ‘Whatever you’ve got for a couple of weeks. I’m not fussy.’
He signed off a white Corsa and drove into town, where he bought a new official phone from the same contract provider and set himself up in The Source with tea and white toast. As the phone restored everything from his back-up, he called Reeves on the burner.
He picked up straight away. ‘I’d hoped you would spare me on a Sunday.’
Sawyer dug a knife into the butter. ‘The law doesn’t rest, Max.’
Reeves ignored him. ‘Got something for you.’
‘Me first. You need to look into a character called Dale Strickland. Work connections in Manchester. He’s got a club. Players. There’s one in Deansgate, and he’s set up a second in Buxton. The timing is indecently efficient. Snooker. Videogames.’
Reeves lit a cigarette. ‘Sounds like an upstanding business to me.’
‘Strickland is a crook, Max. I think we’re talking county lines here. Drugs.’
‘Teenager-friendly businesses. Plenty of buyers.’
‘And sellers. I think he’s got a lot riding on this. I would love to do some deeper digging myself, but obviously…’
Reeves puffed out smoke. ‘You are a tad compromised right now. Alright. I’m on it. My turn. Your burgundy BMW. Plenty of them registered in your area. I’ve got a data services intern working through ANPR catches in the period following Klein’s release.’ A rustle of paper. Sawyer looked up, made eye contact with the owner, who averted his gaze. ‘There are four burgundy BMWs active in Derbyshire between Klein’s release and his death, but only one was clocked in the area near Magpie Mine on the day you gave me. It’s a 2008 X5. Current owner bought it second hand in 2014. DVLA registration certificate transferred online to a Charles Kelly.’
Sawyer stirred his tea; the owner was still sneaking the odd look in his direction. ‘Kelly. Is he a GP? That’s the name of my old family doctor. Lived near Wardlow. He was good friends with my dad. I remember him being around the house a lot when he was struggling after my mum died. Bit of a Bible basher.’
‘Address near Wardlow. Must be the same guy.’
‘So, what the hell is my old family doctor doing, snooping on Klein?’
Reeves took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘I’ve got a better question. What the hell is your old family doctor doing driving his car around when he died three years ago?’
‘Someone stole the car?’
‘Or acquired it and never transferred the registration. That explains why it’s not pinging ANPR as stolen or illicit. It’s fallen through the admin cracks. Whoever has it now is probably keeping it legit with cash in hand MOTs. You might get lucky if you check local garages, but not as a civilian.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Jake. There’s one more thing.’
Sawyer crunched into his toast. ‘Go on.’
‘You made the papers again.’
36
Austin Fletcher pushed open the door to the basement snooker room. As soon as he stepped inside, two weighty men in branded black polo shirts abandoned their game of American Pool and barred his way.
Fletcher took out a packet of cigarettes, tapped one out.
One of the men shook his head. ‘No smoking down here, boss.’
Fletcher took out a match and slowly turned it around in his fingers. He struck it and raised the flame to his cigarette, puffing it into life. The men eyed each other.
He tossed the spent match to the floor; he still hadn’t made eye contact with either of the men. ‘Strickland?’
The men took a step closer.
‘He’s good!’ An even larger man in a caramel blazer and white shirt called from the door of the corner office. The men stepped aside and Fletcher strolled past the lit but unoccupied snooker tables, into the office. The blazered man followed him inside and closed the door.
Dale sat at the desk, with Marco stood off to the side. He nodded to the blazered man. ‘Austin. This is Hector.’
Fletcher ignored him.
Hector moved further into the room and perched on the desk, between Fletcher and Dale. ‘What happened?’ He was square jawed and angry-looking, with a slight Slavic accent.
Fletcher pulled on his cigarette, exhaled an opaque fog of smoke. ‘He got out.’
‘We know that,’ said Hector. ‘How?’
Fletcher raised his head, laid his hollow eyes on Hector. ‘Too rushed. Not prepared enough.’
Hector shook his head. ‘Not good enough.’
Dale held up a hand. ‘Gents. We’re celebrating. It looks like our dear friend might be on his own way out of the picture.’ He passed a copy of the morning’s Sunday Mirror across the desk. Fletcher leaned forward to read it. The main splash story—RED ARROWS HERO DIES—dominated most of the front cover, but a second story occupied the left-hand column, with a picture of Sawyer, under a stacked headline.
TOP COP IN MURDER PROBE
Dale tapped the story. ‘He’s been bailed, under investigation. We might not need to do anything. Let’s hang back, focus on the new business, and revisit if we need to.’
Hector spluttered and waved a hand through the air. ‘Put the fucking cigarette out.’
Fletcher raised his head, stared at Dale.
Dale pulled a crystal ashtray from a desk drawer and set it down on the desk. ‘Stick around. Enjoy the bright lights of Manchester. We’re finished, for now.’
Fletcher took another drag on his cigarette, expelled the smoke through his nose. ‘We didn’t start.’
37
Sawyer stood before his bedroom mirror, in T-shirt and hoodie. He would normally train topless, but the memory of the cold water still clung to his bones. He plugged his iPhone into an ancient speaker dock and set his Spotify nineties playlist to shuffle.
McAlmont and Butler – ‘Yes’. He smiled at the irony: the euphoric tone, lyrics about feeling better, escaping a toxic past.
He slipped into Wing Chun horse stance and drilled out a series of double punches. As he switched into the Sil Lum Tao form again, he saw Sheila Caldwell: alone with her chintz, abandoned, recalling the last time she saw her husband, his father’s boss at the time.
‘It was as if something was eating at him. Boring into him. He seemed angry.’
And her poem. Delmore Schwarz. A lament for the fleeting nature of life.
‘Time is the fire in which we burn.’
He pondered Logan, and his father’s refused visit to Klein.
‘It looks like your old man might have been a few steps ahead of you.’
His old doctor, Charles Kelly. The burgundy BMW.
And, always. His mother’s final words.
‘Jake. Run, my darling. Don’t look back!’
He broke out of the form and sat on the bed, letting his thoughts drift and settle. He made a call on the burner phone.
‘Richard Jensen.’
‘Jake Sawyer.’
A laugh at the other end. ‘Calling from a secret number on a Sunday evening. Who are we planning to piss off this time, Jake? The Mossad?’
Jensen was an old friend from Sawyer’s time at Keele University. He’d began post-academic life as a self-styled ‘supernatural investigator’, but had evolved into a professional sceptic, and author of a series of pop psychology books. He was a little rough round the edges, but they had developed a solid mutual trust, and Jensen had helped Sawyer with the Crawley case.
‘Just one man, Rich. No international incidents. And if we’re careful, we might not even need to piss him off.’
‘I love it. Talk cryptic to me.’
Sawyer sipped at the Coke. ‘I’m embracing technology. After our triumphs against Mr Viktor Beck, I was hoping you could help.’
‘I’m sure I can. You around tomorrow? I’m in Birmingham later that day with our mutual friend.’
‘Professor Ainsworth? How’s the book going? I heard you might do a podcast? Debunking the bullshitters?’
‘It’s going really well. But our ambitions are at different ends of the scale. He wants podcast, I want Netflix series.’
Bruce scratched at the side door and Sawyer got up to let him out. ‘Tell me more over lunch tomorrow. I’ll text with details.’
‘Cheerio.’
He made cheese on toast and slumped on the sofa with an episode of Life on Earth. A herd of zebra milled around an African plain, watching a lion and lioness prowl past. David Attenborough’s half-whispered narration settled over Sawyer like a familiar blanket.
‘Provided they’ve got a
start in the race, the lions will never catch them. The lions’ only chance is to get really close and rely on their spectacular acceleration.’
His iPhone rang: still in the speaker dock. He sprang up and hurried into the bedroom.
Maggie.
As he connected the call, she was already midway through a sentence, talking to someone else. She sounded shrill, panicked.
‘Mags?’
‘Jake! Please. Will you… What do I…’ She spluttered, struggling to measure out her words.
Sawyer sat on the bed. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay. Take it slow. What’s happened?’
Maggie breathed fast, sobbing. ‘I don’t… Justin. He took them out.’
‘The swimming? Mia and Freddy.’
‘Yes! He took them. And they went to a Christmas market in Bakewell.’
‘Maggie—’
‘He was… he was buying something. With Freddy. He says it was busy.’ She broke down again, pulled herself back. ‘Mia went off.’
‘Went off? Where?’
‘To look around. But it was dark and busy. He shouldn’t have…’
Sawyer stood up. ‘Mags. What happened?’
She let out a cry: bereft, angry. ‘We can’t find her, Jake. We can’t find Mia.’
Part II
SOUR TIMES
38
The woman pocketed her yellow gloves and tapped on the door of the old sitting room. She took a breath, and walked in.
The blind was closed, and the woman had to squint to spot the outline of the man, sprawled across the bottle-green sofa. He flicked on the reading light clipped to his book and looked up. The music was much louder this time: deep, droning guitar and plodding, time-delayed drums. He reached for a control and lowered the volume.
