What Falls Between the Cracks

by Robert Scragg

  Styles held Porter’s gaze for a moment while he crunched the possibilities in his mind. ‘What the hell, let’s do it. You’re right: whatever happened, she’s part of it one way or the other. That’s the only way this makes sense.’

  Porter shook his head this time. ‘I’ll go. No sense in us both getting a kicking over it if I’m wrong.’

  Styles rolled his eyes. ‘Oh yeah, cos of course I’m “that guy” who lets his partner fall on his sword. Do me a favour.’ He stood up and pulled his jacket on. ‘Come on, then, if we’re going to tilt at windmills we might as well do it before rush hour kicks in.’

  Porter flirted with the idea of trying to talk him out of it. If it did blow up in their faces, he saw no sense in them both suffering, but he knew Styles was stubborn when it came to backing him up. Porter wouldn’t have borne a grudge if his partner had taken the out offered to him, but deep down he’d known it would be refused point-blank; that’s exactly what he would have done.

  He patted his pockets, listening for the jangle of keys, but spotted them peeking out from underneath a folder on his desk. He had no idea what truths lurked behind Mary Locke’s lies, but thirty years’ hibernation was enough; it would end today.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Mary Locke’s anger was a tangible thing that crackled through the airwaves and shot out from the intercom speaker. The quiet, submissive tone of previous visits had been replaced with an abrupt, clipped reply that brooked no argument.

  ‘Sorry, Detectives, but I’m under strict instructions not to admit you, and to contact my husband immediately. I believe he’s spoken to your superiors.’ Her words were coated with a smug glow of immunity.

  ‘I believe he has, Mrs Locke, and you’re well within your rights to do that. Before you do though, I’d take a moment, and consider how your husband, and my superiors’ – he placed heavy stress on superiors, merely the proverbial messenger begging not to be shot – ‘would take to finding out that you lied about your trips to see Natasha.’

  A tremor of anger rippled through her reply, but it rang false in his ear. ‘How dare you call me a liar? Just you wait until my husband—’

  ‘Mrs Locke, excuse my being blunt, but you provided false information to officers investigating an alleged murder. We can prove that you didn’t take trips to Poland to see your stepdaughter when you claim to have. As to why you felt the need to give us that information, I can’t say, but I’d much rather discuss it face-to-face, unless you’re happy for your neighbours to listen in as we chat through your intercom.’

  Silence, not even the hiss of static through the speaker. Porter and Styles stood motionless, staring at the intercom, willing her to respond. Every second of silence that slipped past could be a second on the phone to her husband. Finally, after moments that felt like eons, a noise made them both look up sharply. The front door opened, and Mary Locke came out. She locked the door behind her and looked furtively both ways to neighbouring houses. She looked directly at them, but walked to the Range Rover parked off centre and got in without a word. The reflection of the sun off her window as she closed the door dazzled Porter and he shielded his face with a forearm, hearing and feeling the rumble of the gate opening as he rubbed at his eyes.

  They had called her bluff and lost. Whether she had already called Locke, or would call him when she was safely away from them, it didn’t matter. The first domino had fallen and the rest would soon follow. Her engine revved as she crept out of the gate. The stars had cleared from his vision now. He saw the sun glint off her Jackie-Onassis-size sunglasses as she pulled onto the road and drew level with them.

  When she stopped abruptly it took him by surprise. The driver’s side window purred as it lowered. She spoke without turning her head, eyes staring along the road in front, or at least he assumed they were; it was impossible to tell behind her dark glasses.

  ‘There’s a coffee shop about five miles from here called Hutton’s, near Harrow. Do you know it?’

  He nodded, then realised she wouldn’t see the gesture. ‘Yes.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I know where it is.’

  ‘Meet me there in an hour.’

  The window whirred back up and she accelerated away. Styles turned to Porter and cocked his head to the side.

  ‘What just happened? I thought she was going to do a vanishing act there.’

  ‘That’s what we detectives call catching a break, son. I knew it. I knew she was holding out on us.’

  ‘Holding out what, though? That’s the question.’

  ‘I haven’t got a bloody clue.’ Porter laughed. ‘Let’s go and find out.’

  She was ready to talk, reluctant but ready. Porter didn’t understand the need to wait an hour and wondered what could be so pressing, so they opted to follow her in the absence of anything more productive. There was also a tiny part of him that thought she might make a beeline for her husband, and he wanted to be in position to head her off if that looked likely.

  They had kept a safe distance of at least three cars behind, but she showed no signs of being aware of a tail, let alone trying to evade them. She drove west through Stanmore. Porter wondered if she was heading to their rendezvous early and just wanted time to compose herself with whatever she wanted to talk to them about, but she went past the turn-off and on towards Northwood.

  After another five minutes, she turned south towards Ruislip. Porter was beginning to think she had spotted them after all, and was leading them on a pointless loop back towards their intended meeting place. They were nearing the village, tucked in two cars back behind a red Mini Cooper that made Porter think of The Italian Job, when he saw her signal left onto a street marked Reservoir Road. Neither of the two cars between them followed suit, so after Porter made the turn, he eased off the accelerator to avoid catching her up.

  The straightness of the road ahead made him even more cautious. As much as he didn’t want to risk losing her around any bends, there was now nothing but a hundred yards of road in between them.

  Styles sensed his hesitation. ‘Let her go. It’s a dead end up ahead.’ He tapped the screen on the satnav.

  Porter slowed to fifteen miles an hour as they passed the gate on their right that lead to a lake called Ruislip Lido. Originally a reservoir built to feed the Grand Junction Canal back in the 1800s, it was known nowadays for its artificial sandy beach, speckled with towels and picnic blankets in the summer months. It was bare today, though, a couple strolling arm in arm its only occupants.

  Up ahead he saw her brake lights winking as she came to a stop, and he quickly pulled over to the kerb. He reached across Styles to open the glove box, and then remembered he hadn’t replaced the compact binoculars he’d broken several months back. He made do with leaning forward in his seat and narrowing his eyes in a squint as the stick figure in the distance exited the Range Rover, its lights giving a rapid double flash as she locked it. Instinct from Porter’s previous life in the army registered it as two dots, the letter ‘I’ in Morse code. He smiled at the memory.

  He heard the click of a camera shutter, and turned to see Styles resting his iPhone on the dash. He had zoomed in far enough to be able to identify Mary Locke, but not so much that the picture had surrendered to grainy vagueness. Porter nodded his approval at the improvisation.

  ‘I’m not just a pretty face,’ said Styles, his eyes fixed on the image on screen. ‘And I’m guessing she’s not just here for a breath of fresh air, so worth taking a few snaps to establish her whereabouts, and whoever she might be here to meet.’

  ‘You think the hubby might put in an appearance?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m going to go with no. I think you called it right first time. Whatever she knows, she doesn’t want him knowing.’

  Mary Locke headed straight for the treeline at the end of the road. As soon as she was out of sight, Porter started the car up again and drove slowly past the Range Rover. The only other people in view were an elderly couple coming out of the Water’s Edg
e pub, and a woman coming towards them with a pushchair. She had come from the direction Mary Locke had headed. A dull green gate marked the end of the road and the start of Ruislip Woods. Despite the branches that reached down to obscure the path, several of the gaps in the foliage shifted from green to red and back again as Mary Locke’s coat refused to be camouflaged.

  Porter swung into the car park on the left and they walked back down to the entrance. The trees that crowded the gate opened up into a clearing. The path hugged the treeline on the right, and they could see her, red coat seeming to glow every time she stepped from shadow to sunlight.

  ‘You think we should be laying a trail of breadcrumbs?’ said Styles.

  Porter smiled but said nothing. They kept pace with her, careful to maintain their distance while keeping hers in their line of sight. Each time she vanished, they quickened their pace. The path forked ahead and she bore left, away from the lake. The trees grew thicker on their left, a solid wall of greens and browns, oak and silver birch. Porter checked his watch. They had been walking for almost ten minutes at an unhurried pace. He guessed they had covered half a mile, maybe a touch more.

  Suddenly she veered left and vanished from view. They broke into a fast walk that made Porter think of the Olympics, how he’d chuckled at the swinging hips of the long distance walkers, how Holly had mimicked their swaying steps around the living room. He pictured the serious look of concentration as she turned a hard right angle in each corner; remembered tripping her up so she collapsed across him on the sofa. He struggled to embrace these glimpses of happier times. They left him with an empty feeling somewhere inside, reminding him that whatever it was, his heart, his soul, it hadn’t fully healed.

  That feeling stayed with him as they reached the point they had last seen Mary Locke. Five paths converged, spreading outwards from the centre like spokes on a wheel. Shadows coated the route she had taken, a protective cloak of green allowing only a fraction of the light safe passage to the ground. They could still make her out ahead. The gloom had turned the red of her coat into a rusty hue as she picked her way along the path.

  Porter turned to his partner, his voice a low whisper. ‘I say we take a side of the path each and stick close to the trees in case we need to take cover.’

  Styles nodded and pointed off to the left. Porter nodded and moved to the right. They carefully picked their way along the edges of the path, careful to avoid making too much noise by doing anything as clumsy as stepping on fallen twigs. They both froze as the figure ahead took a sharp right off the path and into the thick combination of trees and undergrowth, glancing back the way she had come as she turned. Neither of them dared move, unsure as to whether they had been spotted, or whether they’d blended into the shadows. Porter looked across at Styles and gave a shrug. His partner replied by wiggling his hand palm-down to signify a maybe.

  Porter waited a full count of ten before risking a glance ahead. Nothing. He took a chance and crossed the path to where Styles hunched behind a large oak.

  ‘Three options,’ he said, counting them off on his fingers. ‘We head back to the car, we head in there after her, or we walk past where she dodged off the path and keep walking but see if we can see where she’s at.’

  ‘How about option four?’ said Styles. ‘We hide out here and wait for her to head back. One of us follows her back towards the cars, the other has a nose round up there and see if we can figure out what she’s doing. Worst case we’ll be at the cafe five minutes behind her.’

  ‘If she shows.’

  ‘If she shows,’ agreed Styles.

  Porter thought about that for a moment, then nodded. ‘Alright. Let’s get set behind there.’ He pointed to a large bush to their left. ‘You pick her up when she goes past and I’ll take a look.’

  They settled down to wait, and a few minutes later heard a crunching of leaves from the direction she then came from. Porter stared at the leaves in front of him, willing them to part enough to let him watch her walk past. The footsteps grew louder, and were accompanied by snatches of colour on the other side of the bush. Porter frowned. The colours were wrong, and a second later a man wearing a light blue waterproof jacket walked past, hands jammed in pockets, strains of music, audible but not identifiable, leaking from his headphones.

  Mary Locke made them wait another five minutes, her footsteps quick and light. She was past them in a flash of colour, but Porter put a hand on Styles’s arm and counted a full ten seconds before letting go and stepping out onto the path. She had already reached the junction of the five routes and Styles headed after her without a word.

  Porter watched him go before turning and breaking into a jog towards the spot he’d fixed in his memory earlier. She had left the path a few yards past a large stump on the right-hand side. The relatively flat top, and absence of trunk anywhere in sight, suggested it had been felled rather than fallen; a long time ago, judging by the top, worn smooth. He glanced down the path again in time to see Styles disappear round the corner. He figured he had ten minutes before Mary Locke reached her car, so that gave him five minutes to look around if he wanted to get back in time to follow her to the cafe.

  Porter scanned the trees and bushes ahead. He stood still, listening for anything that could signify another person nearby but all he heard was the faint noise of traffic in the background, punctuated by the chatter of unseen birds. As they had waited for her to pass them a few minutes ago, an idea had started to form. What if she wasn’t here to meet anyone? What if she was here to hide something, leave something behind? She had been carrying a large handbag that could have concealed any number of things, maybe something relevant to Natasha.

  He looked up into the branches and slowly worked his way down. The thick canopy of leaves meant that the diluted sunshine had to work even harder to suck up any rainwater that made it down this far. There was no surface water, but the soil looked far from dry. He squatted down for a closer look, and saw the tread of a shoe in amongst the dark ridges of mud. Another, less clear, but a similar enough size to be from the same shoe, lay just ahead of it. A small shoe. A woman’s shoe. He was on the right track.

  Porter kept to the right of the prints and followed them beyond the first line of trees. He paused twenty feet in when they seemed to end abruptly, but saw they started up again a few feet further on. He glanced back over his shoulder but the path had vanished behind a screen of leaves. Time check. He had three minutes left of his allotted five. The tracks stopped suddenly by a huge oak. The trunk was so large that Porter doubted he could circle it with his arms. Branches, too many to count, reached upwards, clawing against each other, competing for sunlight. He did a lap of the tree to see if she had gone further in, but the ground either side was untouched. He squatted again and looked at the marks closest to the tree. Two outlines sat side by side, as if she’d stood on the spot for some reason.

  Satisfied this was as far as she had gone, Porter did another circuit of the tree, less concerned now about scuffing her trail. He walked slowly, staring at the base. The roots rippled outwards like octopus’s tentacles, but the soil was undisturbed. If she had left anything behind it wasn’t here. The only thing that broke the monotony of rough bark was a patch of snowdrops on the far side, shaped like a giant teardrop by what light and rain could battle its way down to help them grow. He looked at his watch. Time to head back or he’d risk losing her. He spun a last lazy circle before retracing his steps back to the path.

  Damn it! What the hell was she playing at?

  It started as the vaguest of notions but grew in an instant, then hit him full force, and if he was right this would change everything.

  They spotted Mary Locke sitting in the far corner when they got there. It was a bright, homely place; the big glass front unobscured by curtains or signage allowed the sunlight access to all areas. It wasn’t the kind of place she could hide in a dark shadowy booth at the back, but Porter assumed that burrowing herself away in the corner made her feel somewhat more secu
re.

  They were the only customers, and the waitress intercepted them before they’d pulled chairs out from the table. They both ordered black coffee in cardboard take-out cups. There was no telling how quickly the clandestine meeting might end. Mary Locke didn’t rise to greet them, didn’t even look up from her cup, head bowed and glasses resting just above her hairline. Porter caught a whiff of peppermint from her teabag as she submerged it repeatedly on her teaspoon, like a witch on a ducking stool.

  ‘I don’t know if …’ When she spoke, it came out thick with emotion and she coughed twice, clearing her throat and starting again. ‘I don’t know if I can give you what you need.’

  ‘What do you think we need, Mrs Locke?’

  ‘You say you can prove I didn’t go to Poland. What do you mean by that?’ she said, deflecting the question.

  ‘Exactly that. We know you travelled abroad to two destinations on the dates you told us about, but Poland wasn’t one of them.’

  ‘I don’t appreciate being called a liar, Detective,’ she said, a flash of defiance in both her voice and in her eyes as she looked up.

  Porter nodded slowly. ‘Then I suggest you don’t tell any that we can easily disprove.’ He met her gaze and held it until she looked back down at her cup. ‘Before we get on to Poland, why don’t you tell us why you went to Ruislip Woods, Mrs Locke.’

  She stiffened, then opened her mouth to speak but only managed fragments of words. ‘I … What do mean … I don’t …’ She regained composure and went on the offensive. ‘Have you been following me? You have no right.’ She stopped short of shouting, but the shrillness of her voice made the waitress glance over.