by M. A. Hunter
‘Who?’
‘A new lad; he’s only been there for a couple of weeks, and he’s been struggling to adjust. This is his first time inside, and he’d been expecting his fiancée to visit him this week, but I heard on Thursday that she was a no-show and I was worried about what he might do, so I stopped by to check on him. That’s all. Perfectly innocent.’
‘Nothing’s ever perfectly innocent where you’re concerned, John,’ Bronwyn scoffed.
They exchanged a silent glare before both remembered Emma was still in the room with them.
He looked up at the grey clouds framed in the windows. ‘I don’t know what else to tell you. I went in to see him, and that all went perfectly well, but then as I was leaving, and chatting to one of my friends, suddenly all hell broke loose and three of the inmates charged us, and threatened us with shivs they’d made from toothbrushes and combs. We should have been better prepared, but they took control of the room, and used me and Josh as shields. We were never really in danger, and it was only a matter of time until the governor negotiated with them and we were released.’
She snorted with derision. ‘Never in danger? Look at your neck, John. How do you explain that?’
He shifted uncomfortably. ‘Do we have to do this now? In front of Emma? Hasn’t she been through enough already?’
‘All she’s been through? What about me, John? When are you going to accept accountability for what you’ve put me through?’
Emma didn’t like that her mum had decided to pick a fight when he was in such a bad way. She’d seen how worried her mum had been since receiving the phone call: how she’d devoured the chocolate in no time; how she hadn’t been able to keep her hands still while they’d waited for news. Why couldn’t she just admit she still loved him, and then they could all go back to the small house in Portland?
‘This isn’t the time for any of that,’ he grizzled.
She looked at her watch. ‘Great! Now I’ve missed my appointment, and I’m going to have to rearrange it.’
‘What appointment?’
She glanced at Emma before shaking her head. ‘That’s the problem with you, John, you never think about anyone but yourself. Heaven forbid that I might use your monthly visitations for myself.’
He looked confused. ‘What appointment? Your hair looks fine.’
She shook her head. ‘Not for my hair… Oh, never mind. What’s the point anyway?’
‘Listen,’ he said calmly, ‘will you give me and Emma a bit of alone time so I can apologise properly for missing our visit today?’
Bronwyn ran her tongue across her teeth in disbelief, before stamping her feet. ‘Fine, you can have as long as it takes for me to go and buy a cup of tea.’ With that, she turned and headed out of the door, closing it behind her.
Emma’s dad raised his eyebrows and he pulled a guilty face. ‘Looks like your old man is in the dog house again.’ His face softened into a smile. ‘Sorry you had to see that. There’s a lot of things about your mum and me that you don’t know, and it isn’t right for the two of us to carry on like that in front of you.’
Emma sighed. ‘I just wish the two of you could show how much you still love each other and get back together.’
He frowned sadly. ‘There’s nothing I’d love more, squirt, but I don’t think that will ever happen now. As I said: too much water under that bridge. But listen, there were two things I wanted to talk to you about, and we probably haven’t got much time before your mum comes back and takes you away. Firstly, I wanted to apologise for how we left things last month. I know—’
‘I’m so sorry about that too,’ Emma interrupted. ‘I only said what I did because I was worried about you.’
His lips pulled into a thin smile. ‘I realise that now, and how I reacted was immature, and I’m sorry. You’re such a bright and clever girl, sometimes I forget which of us is supposed to be the grown-up. I shouldn’t have shouted at you, and then given you the cold shoulder. I’m sorry.’
She gingerly wrapped an arm across his chest. ‘I’m sorry too, Dad.’
He patted her head with his free hand, before resting it on her shoulders. She wished she could have stayed like that for ever, but he withdrew his hand and lifted her chin.
‘There’s something else… I need you to do me a favour, but you can’t tell your mum, whatever you do… Can you promise me?’
She thought about all the promises he’d made her keep since she’d first been shown the bedsit, but nodded anyway. ‘Okay.’
‘Before I moved out, I left something in the garage. It’s a box of sorts, a green case but small. It contains something very important and I need you to get it for me.’
She frowned. ‘What is it?’
He shook his head. ‘That isn’t important. Listen, we don’t have much time. I need you to find a moment when your mum isn’t going to catch you and start asking questions, and go into the garage. If memory serves, you’ll find the green case on the shelving unit at the back of the garage. You know, behind where the shovel and fork hang, where I have shelves that contain things like my tool box, and all those tins of paint?’
She could picture the dusty shelving unit he’d always insisted she stay away from and which he’d once chastised Anna for climbing.
‘I know where you mean,’ she said quietly.
‘Well, it’s on the top shelf, right at the back. You might need to climb up to see it. I need you to get it down and hide it for me; then, once you have it, use your mum’s phone to call me and let me know, and I’ll work out how to collect it from you.’
Emma couldn’t shake the feeling of doubt clawing its way over the knot in her tummy. ‘But what is it? Why can’t you ask Mum to get it for you?’
He took a moment to think. ‘It’s… it’s a present for your mum’s birthday, and I don’t want her to know about it. If you can get it to me, I can wrap it and give it to her. You see? That’s why you can’t tell her about it.’
Emma might have been young, but she wasn’t stupid, and the way he was avoiding eye contact and shuffling awkwardly told her that whatever was in the case wasn’t a gift for her mum.
‘Will you do that for me, squirt? Please?’
She hated to disappoint anyone, least of all her dad. ‘Okay,’ she nodded.
‘And promise me you won’t mention any of this to your mum, yes?’
‘I promise.’
He pulled her into his body with his free arm and squeezed her tightly.
‘I need the toilet,’ she told him.
‘That’s okay, sweetheart, there’s one through that door in the corner of my room.’
She looked to where he was pointing and headed over, closing it to and flicking on the light. She didn’t like that he was asking her to keep more secrets from her mum, but she couldn’t begin to think what else could be in the case aside from a present, and decided she would try and open the box to check the contents before determining whether she spoke to her mum about it.
Finishing on the toilet, she couldn’t reach the flush, so focused on washing her hands in the sink. She was about to push the door open and tell her dad that she hadn’t managed to flush the toilet when she heard him speaking.
‘I know you don’t believe me, Winnie, but I’m doing everything I can to fix things.’
‘As am I, John,’ her mum replied, apparently back from buying her tea.
‘There’s something else I haven’t told you, Winnie… About the real reason I was at the prison yesterday… The guy I went to visit, he reckons he knows where she is. He’s going to tell me if I can just get him what he wants. We’re so close, Winnie.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
Now
Chichester, West Sussex
Anna has increased her pace, and as I turn back to check on the campervan, I can no longer see it, such is the darkness of night surrounding us. I don’t like the idea of leaving Daisy alone in the campervan. Yes, she’s fourteen, and based on what Anna has told me, I don’t doubt t
hat she’s a very capable girl, but that’s the point: she’s still a child. Maybe I should have insisted on staying with her, but I’m not sure I’d be able to find my way back through the trees we’ve cut through. The ground is so uneven, yet if anything, Anna’s pace has only increased, as if this is a route she’s taken multiple times.
I’m relieved when she suddenly stops and begins running her hands along a solid surface. Moving closer, I push out my hands, and feel the rough grain of the wood pressed against my skin. A fence of some kind, though what it leads to and what it is protecting are questions currently beyond my imagination.
‘What are you looking for?’ I whisper as I hear Anna continuing to run her hands over the wood.
I’m not entirely sure why I felt the need to whisper, but Anna whispers her response back. ‘There’s a gate here somewhere.’
A second later, a flash of light erupts before my eyes as she uses her cigarette lighter to brighten the area immediately in front of us. She spots what she’s looking for and moves onwards, reaching into her pocket and extracting a key that she places into the handle of a gate, turning it until we hear the click. She pushes the gate open. She hurries me through and quickly closes it behind her, relocking it.
The garden we now find ourselves standing at the end of is better lit, with a series of lights stuck into the ground beside a pathway of paving slabs. To the left of the path, steam shimmers from the Olympic-sized pool, and beyond that there is a covered hot tub and area of decking. To the right of the path is a large shed and glass greenhouse. The garden is well tended, and as we head up the path a large detached property comes into view. I haven’t quite got my bearings, but it must be one of those we drove past on the private road.
Is this her place? It doesn’t feel likely, and I’m now starting to worry about why she’s brought us in via the garden fence, rather than up the driveway and in through the front door.
‘What is this place?’ I whisper again, hurrying after her. ‘Where have you brought me?’
‘Relax,’ she says, with more than a hint of nonchalance, ‘it belongs to a friend of mine. I figured it was safer to come in the back in case the police are watching the front.’
I suppose there is some logic in her response, even if the voice of paranoia in the back of my mind is shouting. After all, she did have a key to the gate, which would lend itself to the property belonging to a friend.
The path continues all the way to a conservatory, with lawn either side of us, but as we get near, an overhead security light floods the garden and Anna ups her pace, throwing herself against the wall beside the conservatory and dragging me with her. Alarm bells are ringing inside my head.
Anna presses a finger to her lips, preventing me asking any further questions, and then she appears to mime something that leaves my face in wrinkles of confusion. She eventually rolls her eyes and indicates for me to stay put. I watch on as she shimmies along the ground, her body remaining pressed against the wall like something from those old prisoner-of-war movies our dad would watch on television on a Sunday afternoon. And then she’s up a small flight of brick steps to a raised patio, leading to more stairs that lead up to an extended balcony on the first floor.
Every muscle and sinew in my body is telling me that Anna is about to gain illegal entry to this house, and, remembering the promise I made myself to be her conscience, I hurry after her up the stairs where I find her crouched down at a patio door on the upper balcony.
‘I told you to stay down there,’ she chastises in a fog of breath.
‘You’re breaking in here, aren’t you?’ I fire back in an angry whisper.
She rolls her eyes again, but doesn’t answer the question, reaching inside her coat and extracting a small leather pouch, which she proceeds to unzip. It isn’t much bigger than a purse, but as I look inside, I know precisely what tools I’m looking at. I press my hand over the selection of picks, shake my head, and mouth the word ‘no’, but she bats my hand away and extracts two thin spiky shards and places them into the lock of the door.
‘What is this place?’ I demand, raising my voice a fraction over a whisper so she’ll hear the urgency in my voice.
She pauses momentarily. ‘Whose place do you think it is?’
I think back through everything we’ve discussed since meeting in the car park in Alton, and then my eyes widen in panic.
‘This is Ian Beauchamp’s estate, isn’t it? The one where Daisy accessed his computer.’
A broad grin breaks out across her face, and it’s my turn to feel disappointed by how much we’ve grown apart.
‘I cannot allow you to go in there,’ I say. ‘It is against the law, and you are already facing enough charges without adding burglary to the list.’
She doesn’t stop fiddling the picks in the lock, leaning one ear close to listen while she works. ‘What’s your problem anyway? We both want the same result: to stop the paedophiles and traffickers operating along the south coast, right?’
I nod, defeated, knowing nothing I say or do is going to stop her going through with her ridiculous plan.
‘Well you have your ways,’ she says, her grin widening as she hears the lock pop. She quickly returns the picks to the pouch and hides them back inside her coat. ‘And I have mine. We need the external storage device that’s inside this house.’
‘But what’s the point?’ I try one last time. ‘If you take it, it won’t be any use to the police. Stolen evidence is inadmissible in court. They’d need to locate the drive here with proof that Beauchamp is the only one with access. Even if you phoned the police now and told them, your picks have probably left scratches inside the lock allowing a defence team to question the evidential value of anything recovered in the property.’
‘I’m not planning to give the drive to the police,’ she snipes. ‘I’ve already told you that all police intervention will do is allow the group to cover their tracks quicker. Tomlinson said as much to me on the phone before I went to his place. For all I know, he knew they were going to kill him and his inviting me over was one last favour for them. This entire business is covered in manure, and the only way to get to the bottom of the mess is to get your hands dirty.’
‘I’m not going in there with you,’ I tell her firmly.
She lowers the door, and there’s a part of me praying an alarm will sound, forcing her to abort her mission, but our ears are only greeted with silence.
‘That’s your choice to make,’ she says, crawling through, ‘but if I were you, I’d hurry up and think how I’m going to explain my presence here to the guard patrolling the perimeter.’
She nods at a figure who has emerged on the lawn below the security light, the large black and tan dog beside his feet already sniffing the air.
I have no choice but to follow Anna in through the door on my hands and knees, but everywhere my palm touches feels like another year they’ll add to my sentence. I can already picture the headlines:
BESTSELLING AUTHOR CAUGHT REDHANDED
Anna closes the door behind us, so as not to attract the security guard’s attention. I can only assume he must have been alerted when the security light came on, or perhaps there was a silent alarm triggered when we opened the gate. Either way, he’s blocking our escape, so we’re trapped here until he moves away.
‘Come on,’ Anna whispers, still crawling, but now away from the patio door and past a low-slung leather sofa.
We must have come into a living room of sorts, as there is a flat-panel television on the wall across from the sofa, and a small refrigerator humming beside it. I’m angered that Anna clearly always had the intention of breaking in here, and was just stringing me along in the campervan with her talk of showing me evidence to quash any doubts. Presumably Daisy gave her the key to the rear gate, and the real reason for mounting an attack from the rear of the property was to avoid attracting the attention of the security guard.
There is no noise in the house, and as we crawl out onto a carpeted landin
g, there isn’t any obvious light from anywhere else in the house. It’s not long after five, so wherever Beauchamp is, I can only hope he isn’t planning on returning any time soon.
‘Daisy said his office is on the second floor,’ Anna whispers, leading me to a staircase and crawling up it.
I follow because I don’t know any better, and I’m resenting myself for ever daring to believe I could trust my sister not to get herself into more trouble. If I had my phone, I’d call Jack and let him know what’s going on, but that isn’t an option. The best thing that can happen from here is for Anna to either find what she’s looking for, or to give up, so we can get out of here before we’re discovered.
At the top of the stairs, there are two doors, both of which are closed. Anna stands, and tries the handle of the door to the left, which opens into a large double bedroom, smelling of fresh flowers. Closing the door, she tries the second, undeterred when she finds it locked, immediately reaching for her picks again.
I step to block the door as she’s unzipping the pouch. ‘We could phone the police now. We could speak to my friend Jack, or to the Detective Inspector who interviewed you in Market Harborough yesterday. We can certainly trust Jack, and he could put us in touch with someone who will take our claims seriously. We can tell them about Daisy’s input, and then a professional team of detectives can search for this hard drive.’
Anna makes no effort to be soft as she pushes me out of the way, and I have to reach out for the wall to correct my balance. She doesn’t offer an apology as she crouches and goes to work on the lock with her picks.
Rubbing my arm gingerly, I remain on the small landing as she unlocks the door and heads inside the room, leaving the door open. I watch on as she moves immediately to the large wooden desk in the centre of the room, dropping into the black leather chair in the room and trying the drawers, finding all locked. She doesn’t bother trying to pick the locks; instead, she stands and moves around to the front of the desk, pulling out her lighter to give her a better view of what else is inside the office.