by Iain Colvin
Chapter 10
Blake made a grab for Dunlop a split second too late as he realised he was making a break for it. He jammed the car into reverse and looked out of the rear window. Another car had pulled up behind and stopped two feet away from the Fiat’s bumper. His car wasn’t going anywhere fast. Blake jumped out of the driver’s door and half ran, half vaulted round the bonnet and started running after the younger, fitter man, who by then was turning a corner and disappearing from sight. He cursed as he sprinted for the same spot, thirty yards away. He got to the corner and used a lamp post to spin himself ninety degrees into the side road, then pulled up as he saw an empty pavement stretching in front of him. A row of small industrial units lined the road for maybe three hundred yards. No sign of Dunlop. Blake ran to the next corner and looked both ways, left and right. The street was empty apart from a few cars and vans parked by the kerb. He ran to the first industrial unit and checked round the back. More parked cars, maybe ten in all. He ran along the front row of cars and looked between them. He didn’t see any crouched figures. Blake went back round to the front of the unit and surveyed the block. He was in a small estate, containing perhaps twenty small business units. Dunlop could be anywhere. Plus, he had local knowledge and it was likely that he knew the rat runs to get from one side of town to the other.
Blake decided to regroup and rethink. He jogged back to his car, by now sitting on its own in the middle of the road. Another car blasted its horn as it negotiated its way round the stationary Fiat. Blake got in, performed a three-point turn amid more horn blasts, and turned into the industrial estate. He drove around the small grid of roads, stopping at each opening to peer at the car parks and loading bays. He pulled up at an older brick-built office, with a couple of vans parked behind it, and could see that there was a pedestrian path beyond it that led north, back in the direction of the town centre. Blake came to a decision. He put the Fiat into gear and sped off, turned two corners and found himself back at the main road again.
Blake was convinced that this Dunlop knew all about the letter, and its significance. He had his man. Or soon would have his man. Meanwhile he had a phone call to make and he decided that he should make it sooner rather than later. Phone call… a thought struck him. About a hundred yards ahead there was a café with a metal ‘open’ sign outside on the pavement. He pulled in, two wheels on the pavement and two wheels still on the road. He jumped out and entered the café. It looked like its clientele were mainly housewives meeting up for a coffee and older people taking advantage of the breakfast special. A wireless was playing ‘The Look of Love’ by ABC at a discreet volume.
Blake went up to the counter and asked the assistant if they had a pay phone.
‘Over there.’ She pointed to a phone in a corner to the left of the counter. It was wall-mounted, with a Perspex bubble canopy above it to provide an element of privacy. Blake saw that there was a local telephone directory on a shelf below the phone. He pulled it out. It was thin by normal telephone directory standards. Blake knew it would be. He’d used a similar phone book to trace the teacher’s address nearly two weeks earlier. He opened it at the Ds, skipped the pages till he got to Du. Duffs, Duffields, Duffys… next page: Duncans, Dunlevys, Dunlops. Good, there were only about a couple of dozen Dunlops. He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out the photostat. He looked at the phone number that the recently deceased Claire Marshall had jotted down. It took Blake all of ten seconds to find the matching phone book entry. He scribbled the address down, then went back to the assistant, who was giving change to a young customer.
‘How do I get to Dalrymple Street?’ The assistant didn’t much care for this interruption and gave him a ‘charming – and you’re not even going to buy anything, are you?’ look.
After a pause she said, ‘Go right at the roundabout at the end of the street, follow the road to the end, first left, first right and that’s you on Dalrymple Street.’ Blake nodded his understanding and dived back out the door. He jumped in the car and bounced the Fiat back into the traffic.
The roundabout was only a couple of hundred yards along the road. There were four exits. He made a decision, and chose what looked to be the busier of the two right-hand exits. He followed the road to the end and at the T junction turned left. Almost immediately he saw the right turn, and on the gable end of the building in front a sign said Dalrymple Street. He gunned the big engine up the residential street. A large van was ahead of him, heading south, and Blake realised that he’d seen another two with identical livery earlier, parked behind the red brick office. He smiled. Dunlop’s house was close to the industrial estate. ‘Gotcha’, he murmured. He saw the house he was looking for on the left. It looked like it was originally one house that had been split into two flats. Numbers 75 and 75a. He pulled up about fifty yards past it, got out of the car and walked back. He rapped the door knocker to No. 75a and waited. Ten, twenty seconds. No answer. He didn’t expect one. He looked around. It was unfortunate that the door opened straight onto the street, with no garden to obscure the view from passers-by. Blake fumbled with the Yale lock, making it look like he was fiddling with keys.
‘Hello?’.
Blake immediately put his hand back in his coat pocket and turned to face the questioner. He saw a small woman, maybe in her seventies, wheeling a shopping bag behind her.
‘There’s no one in, son. The postman’s just left a delivery with me’.
‘Oh. Okay, thanks.’ He cursed his luck at being interrupted and turned to go back to his car.
‘But if you’re looking for Craig, I just saw him going into his parents’ house’.
Blake stopped and turned round again. ‘Really? Yes I was meant to meet him earlier but I’m running late. Could you tell me which house it is?’.
‘Number 122, up the road on the other side.’
‘Thanks, you’re a life saver’. Blake turned to go back to his car with a smile on his face as he relished the irony of his last comment. Small towns had their advantages after all.
Chapter 11
It had taken Craig no more than a minute to find a temporary hiding place in the industrial estate, out of sight of the queue of cars at the road works. He crouched behind one of the Galloway Beef Co. vans parked behind the brick office building. Partly to catch his breath, but mainly to let his brain catch up with what had just happened. More pressingly, he had to decide what to do next. In the sheer panic of running from DS Wilson, adrenaline had taken over and it was as if he’d followed it to where he now hid, panting and sweating. He could feel his pulse pumping in his ears, he could almost hear it. He looked around but from where he was positioned he could see no sign of Wilson. His breathing slowed down as the seconds passed. But now that his heart rate had returned to something like normal, the enormity of the last few minutes opened up to him. They say that people who fall off buildings or out of aeroplanes don’t scream or panic because their brains shut down and block out the reality of imminent death. Craig felt as though he was spinning, spiralling towards the ground like the figure in a poster he’d seen for Hitchcock’s Vertigo.
At that moment he was snapped back into the present by the sight of Wilson’s car coming up the street towards him. Craig skittered on his hands and feet like a crab, round the side of the van, out of sight from the approaching car. For some reason he thought it best to lean against the back wheel, just in case Wilson should decide to get out of the car, lie down on the ground and look underneath the van for the legs of anyone hiding on the far side. He held his breath. He heard the car get closer, slow down and stop. The two-litre engine growled rhythmically for a few seconds as it idled, then cleared its throat loudly and sped off, changing tone as Wilson moved up through the gears. Craig heard the car turn a corner and the growl grew quieter until all Craig could hear was the sound of a machine chattering from somewhere inside the red brick office. Craig breathed out. He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind of the noise in his head. He knew he had to decide what to
do, what his next step needed to be. Why had he run? That would only make him look guilty. But his survival instinct told him he’d done the right thing. And now he was here, sitting on this tarmac, and he knew he had to make a decision. He opened his eyes, and he saw the path he used most days to walk the dog. He made a decision. He knew there was one person he wanted to turn to more than any other. Fiona. Easier said than done, he knew that, but as soon as her name popped into his head, he knew it was the right thing to do.
He carefully looked round the back of the van at the street. No movement. He got to his feet and ran across the tarmac square that served as the car park for employees of the Galloway Beef Co, and kept up the pace all the way along the pedestrian pathway. After less than a quarter of a mile, the pathway opened up into a country lane which was bordered on each side by small hedgerows. The lane skirted the southern edge of Stranraer and was a regular haunt of the local dog walkers and joggers. Craig followed the lane for about half a mile then turned left and came to the back entrance of the local cottage hospital. Dalrymple Street was just the other side of the hospital grounds. The noise of a car engine behind him made him jump, but to Craig’s relief it was only a small Royal Mail van turning into the hospital. Craig watched the van as it went past him and drove up to the main door of the hospital. A man got out and disappeared inside. Craig continued past the main door, past the windows of the medical and surgical wards and joined Dalrymple Street.
He hurriedly crossed the street and walked the few yards to number 122. He went round the gable end of the house into the back garden and tried the back door. Good, it was open, which meant that his mother was home. Craig stepped into the kitchen and heard the Hoover upstairs. The dog was curled up in his basket giving the impression of being asleep but eagerly jumped up and presented his face to Craig. Craig scratched its chin and ears as usual. ‘Good boy.’ Guinness then resumed his duties by curling up in his basket once more. Craig went through into the hall and called out. ‘Mum?’ No response, and the noise of the Hoover continued to fill the house. He went into the small dining room off the hall and rifled through the top drawer of a rosewood sideboard. When he’d been round for dinner the previous evening he left his grandfather’s wallet there because his father wanted to show it to an old friend. Craig found the wallet and put it in his inside suit pocket. As he closed the drawer he saw his passport. He picked it up and double-checked that it was still in date even though he knew it still had three years left on it. He slipped it into his jacket too. The Hoover upstairs stopped and Craig went back out into the hall and bounded up the staircase, taking the steps two at a time. His mother peered at him from the landing. ‘Oh it’s you Craig! I got such a fright when I heard the noise, I thought we were being burgled’. Her choice of phrase sent a chill through Craig’s veins. ‘Is everything okay? Are you feeling ill?’.
‘No, mum, I’m fine. Listen, I need to ask you a huge favour. I don’t have time to explain right now but I promise I will, soon. I need to take some time off work, probably just a few days, and I need to go now’.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing. Well, I mean, I’m not sure.’ He could see worry starting to etch itself on his mother’s face.
‘What?! Craig, you’re not making sense. What’s this all about? Are you in trouble at the bank?’
‘Kind of. No. I don’t know. I know this sounds crazy but if anyone calls here looking for me please for God’s sake say you haven’t seen or heard from me at all today. It’s important.’
‘What have you done, son? Wait, I’ll phone your father, he needs to hear what you’ve got to say. He’ll be able to help, he knows your manager’.
‘Mum, no!!’ Craig couldn’t disguise the frustration in his voice. His mother stopped dead in her tracks and stared back at him, confused and scared. Her eyes started to fill with tears. ‘Mum, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shout at you. Listen, you have to trust me’. He took her by the shoulders. ‘I haven’t done anything, I swear on my life. But I think I’m in trouble and I have to try to sort it out. I don’t have much time. They’re bound to come looking for me here sooner rather than later so I need to go. I need to find someone.’
‘Go where? Who’s looking for you? What trouble?’
‘It’s better that you don’t know for now’.
‘Craig, I’m your mother.’
Craig thought for a second. ‘A man might come looking for me. He’s about my height, early to mid-40s-looking, fair hair, and speaks with an English accent.’
‘Who is he?’
‘He’s a policeman. Plain clothes. Metropolitan Police. His name’s Detective Sergeant Wilson. He’s been looking into Claire’s murder. Whatever you do, don’t let him into the house’.
‘Claire’s murder? What has that got to do with you?’
‘Mum, please! I just need some space and time to try to figure everything out. I had nothing to do with Claire’s death but someone thinks I know more than I do. I think it’s got something to do with that letter I found in Grandad’s wallet. I need to find the lecturer we sent the letter to and get him to talk to the police.’
Marion Dunlop looked at her son for a couple of seconds then drew herself up to her full five feet five inches. Her eyes recovered the steely resolve of a west of Scotland matriarch who was used to defending her kith and kin.
‘Don’t you worry, I’ll know what to say to anyone who comes round looking for you’.
‘There’s one other thing Mum. I’m going to have to borrow some money. Just till I can cash a cheque’.
‘You’re in luck. I was at the post office yesterday’.
Marion hurried through to the kitchen, opened a drawer in the worktop and pulled out an envelope that contained a Post Office book and a small wad of banknotes. Without a word, she handed the notes to Craig, but held on to his hand a little longer than she normally would have. Craig gave her a hug, rubbing her back as he did so.
‘Thanks Mum, I probably don’t tell you this very often. But you’re the best. I’ll give you a ring in the next couple of days, but don’t worry. I’ll sort this out’.
And with that he headed towards the hallway, only to freeze where he stood at the familiar signature squeak of the front gate opening. This was the best early warning system the Dunlops could have asked for. Within a second of hearing the noise, the dog had jumped out and ran past Craig into the hall. Guinness leapt up at the front door and began barking with the ferocity you would expect of an animal his size. He performed this routine every time a stranger came to the door, and Craig used to wonder what canine sixth sense enabled the dog to distinguish between the front gate squeak made by a family member’s entrance as opposed to that made by unknown visitors.
Through the frosted glass on the upper half of the front door, Craig could see the dark outline of a figure getting closer. ‘
‘I’ll get it. Go, go!’ said Marion, shooing Craig away with a tea towel she’d just picked up to use on the dog. She marched into the hall, closing the kitchen door behind her to block any kind of view that the visitor might get from their side of the frosted glass. Craig also knew that it would prevent a tell-tale through draught when the front and back doors were both open at the same time. He silently exited the way he had come in, skirted the back lawn, scaled the small wall at the back of the garden and landed softly on the other side. From there he made his way round the side of the neighbouring house and emerged onto the street parallel to Dalrymple Street. He crossed the street and disappeared into the housing estate beyond.
Chapter 12
The doorbell rang. Marion Dunlop flicked her tea towel at the Doberman as it continued to bark at the visitor’s arrival. She had to aim several smacks at the dog’s nose before it made space for her to open the door. ‘Guinness, down. Down!’ Normally she would take it through to another room, but on this occasion she was happy for it to push at her legs in an attempt to tackle the stranger. She grabbed its collar with one hand and opened the door wit
h the other. It opened six inches then jarred to a stop on the security chain. ‘Yes, can I help you?’.
‘Mrs Dunlop?’.
‘Yes.’
‘DS Wilson.’ Blake flashed his warrant card through the small gap. ‘Would it be possible to come in for a moment?’
‘You couldn’t have picked a worse moment to be honest, would it be possible to come back later?’ Marion Dunlop realised how weak that sounded and tried to shore up the paper-thin excuse as best she could. ‘It’s not convenient for me at the moment as you can see, and I’m just getting ready to go out, I’m already late for an appointment’. Oh for God’s sake Marion, she thought, you’re just making it worse, you couldn’t have made it more obvious that you’re hiding something if you tried. Why don’t you just tell him you’re hiding your son and be done with it. She knew she couldn’t lie to save her life and hoped that this stranger would think that her flustered appearance was due to the persistent pulling of the dog against her grip.