by Peter James
‘Are you willing to buy them?’ she asked. ‘At a discounted price?’
‘Can you explain to me in more detail how they came to be in your hands? You said, last night, you were clearing out your aunt’s house?’
‘Yes.’
‘In Sydney, Australia?’
She nodded.
‘What was your aunt’s name?’
‘Anne Jennings.’
‘And do you have anything that can show me the chain of title?’
‘What do you need?’
‘A copy of her will. Perhaps you could get her lawyer to fax it to me? I don’t know what time of day it is there now.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Middle of the night, I think. He could do that tomorrow.’
‘And how much would you pay me for the collection?’
‘With kosher chain of title? I’d be prepared to pay around two and a half. Million.’
‘And without? Cash on the nail, now?’
He shook his head with a wry smile. ‘Not the way I operate, I’m afraid.’
‘I was told you were the man I should come and see.’
‘No, not me, not any more. Look, young lady, I’ll give you some advice. Break this collection down. This is too big. People are going to ask you questions. Break it right down. There are a few dealers here in the UK. Take one plate to one of them, another plate to another one. Maybe go to a few dealers abroad. Haggle with them. You don’t have to take their prices if you don’t like them. Sell them quietly, over a couple of years, and that way you won’t pop up on any radar.’
He gathered the stamps up carefully, almost reverentially, and slipped them all back in their protective sheets.
Gutted, Abby said weakly, ‘Can you recommend any dealers here in the UK to me?’
‘Yes, well, let me think.’ He reeled off several names as he began putting the stamps back into the Jiffy bag. Abby wrote them down. Then he added, as if it was an afterthought, ‘Of course, there is someone else who springs to mind.’
‘Who?’
‘I hear Chad Skeggs is in town,’ he said, giving her a hard stare.
And she couldn’t help it. Her face turned the colour of a beetroot. Then she asked if he would call her a taxi.
*
Hugo Hegarty saw Abby to the front door. There was a frosty silence between them and she could not think of anything to say that would break it, other than a lame, ‘It’s not what you think.’
‘That’s the problem with Chad Skeggs,’ he retorted. ‘It never is.’
When she had left, he went straight back to his study and phoned Detective Sergeant Branson again. He didn’t have a lot more to add to his previous conversation, other than to give him the name of the young woman’s aunt, Anne Jennings.
Anything he could do, anything at all, to get one back on Chad Skeggs would not, in his view, be enough.
104
OCTOBER 2007
Abby opened the rear door of the taxi, deeply distressed by the encounter with Hugo Hegarty, and shot a bleak glance through the pouring rain up and down Dyke Road Avenue.
The British Telecom van was still there and the small, dark blue car was still parked further along. She climbed in the back of the taxi and pulled the door shut.
‘The Grand Hotel?’ the woman driver checked.
Abby nodded. It was the wrong address, which she had given deliberately when she phoned from Hegarty’s office, not wanting him to know where she was staying. She would bail out somewhere before there.
She sat back, thinking. No word from Ricky. Dave was wrong. It was going to be a lot harder to sell the stamps than he had told her. And it was going to take much longer.
Her phone started ringing. The caller display showed it was her mother. She felt sick with fear as she answered, clamping the phone tightly to her ear, aware that the driver would be listening.
‘Mum!’ she said.
Her mother sounded disoriented and deeply distressed. Her breathing coming in short bursts. ‘Please, Abby, please, I’ve got to get my medication, I’m getting—’ She stopped and drew her breath in sharply, then let out a gasp. ‘The spasms. I’ve – please – you shouldn’t have taken them. It’s wrong—’ She let out another gasp.
Then the call terminated.
Abby redialled frantically, but it just went straight to voicemail, as before.
Shaking, she stared at her phone’s display, expecting it to come back to life at any moment with a call from Ricky. But it remained silent.
She closed her eyes. How much could her mother take? How much more could she put her through?
Bastard. You bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard.
Ricky was smart. Too bloody smart. He was winning. He knew she wouldn’t be able to sell the stamps easily and that therefore she almost certainly still had them all. Her plan to palm him off with a small cash payment, telling him that she’d transferred the bulk to Dave, was now out of the window.
She didn’t know what to do any more.
She looked at the phone again, willing it to ring.
Actually there was one thing she could do, and she had to do it as fast as possible. She had to stop her mother’s suffering, even if that meant making a deal with Ricky. Which was going to mean giving him what he wanted. Or at least pretty much everything.
Then she had a thought. Leaning forward to speak to the driver, she said, ‘Do you know any local stamp dealers?’
The name on the driver’s ID card read ‘Sally Bidwell’.
‘There’s one in Queen’s Road, just down from the station, called Hawkes. I think there’s one out in Shoreham. And I’m sure there’s one in the Lanes, down Prince Albert Street,’ Sally Bidwell said.
‘Take me to Queen’s Road,’ Abby said. ‘That’s nearest.’
‘A collector, are you?’
‘I just dabble,’ Abby said, reaching inside her coat and unbuckling her belt.
‘More of a boy’s hobby, I always thought.’
‘Yes,’ Abby said politely.
She retrieved the Jiffy bag, held it down, below the line of sight of the interior mirror, and shuffled through the contents, looking for some of the lower-value items. She pulled out a block of four stamps with Maltese crosses on them that were worth about a thousand pounds. Also, there were some blocks of stamps featuring Sydney Harbour Bridge that were worth about four hundred pounds a sheet. She kept these out, then replaced the rest in the Jiffy bag and belted it back securely under her pullover.
A few minutes later the taxi pulled up outside Hawkes. Abby paid and climbed out, keeping the stamps safely dry, in their cellophane, inside her coat. A bus rumbled by, then she fleetingly noticed a small blue car passing her, with two men in the front, a Peugeot or a Renault, she thought. The passenger was talking on his mobile phone. The car looked very similar to the one that had been parked near Hegarty’s house. Or was she being paranoid?
There were no customers in the shop. A woman with long fair hair was seated at a table, reading a copy of the local newspaper. Abby rather liked the slightly ramshackle feel of the place. It didn’t seem precious, didn’t feel the kind of place where you were likely to get asked all sorts of difficult questions about provenance and chain of title.
‘I have some stamps I’m interested in selling,’ she said.
‘Do you have them with you?’
Abby handed them to her. The woman put the paper aside and took a cursory look at the stamps.
‘Nice,’ she said, in a friendly tone. ‘Haven’t seen any of these Sydney Harbour ones in a while. Let me just go and check on a few things. OK if I take them with me into the back?’
‘Fine.’
The woman carried them through an open door and sat at a desk, over which was a large magnifying plate. Abby watched her put the stamps on the desk and then start to examine each of them carefully.
She glanced at the front page of the Argus. The headline read:
SECOND MURDERED WOMAN LINKED TO 9/11 VICTIM
Then she saw the photographs beneath. And froze.
The smallest showed a beautiful but hard-looking blonde in her late twenties, gazing seductively into the camera lens as if she wanted to have sex with whoever was behind it. The caption at the bottom read Joanna Wilson. The largest photograph showed another woman, in her late thirties. She had wavy blonde hair and was attractive, with a pleasant, open smile, although there was something slightly bling-looking about her, as if she had money but not much style. The name beneath the photograph was Lorraine Wilson.
But it was the photograph of the man in the centre that Abby was staring at. Totally fixated. She looked at his face, then his name, Ronald Wilson, then his face. Then his name again.
She read the first paragraph of the story:
The body of a 42-year-old woman, found in the boot of a car in a river outside Geelong, near Melbourne, Australia, five weeks ago, has been identified as that of Lorraine Wilson, widow of Brighton businessman Ronald Wilson, one of the 67 British citizens known to have perished in the World Trade Center on 9/11.
She skimmed through it again. It felt as if someone had suddenly dimmed the lights inside her. Then she read on:
The skeletal remains of Joanna Wilson, 29, were discovered in a storm drain by workmen digging the foundations for the New England Quarter development, in central Brighton, last Friday. She had been Wilson’s first wife, DI Elizabeth Mantle, of Sussex CID, the Senior Investigating Officer, confirmed to the Argus this morning.
Sussex Police are mystified by forensic evidence indicating that Lorraine Wilson’s body had been in the Barwon river for approximately two years. As reported by this newspaper at the time, it was believed that Mrs Wilson had committed suicide in November 2002, when she disappeared from the Newhaven–Dieppe ferry during a night crossing, although the Coroner returned an open verdict.
DI Mantle said that investigations into her ‘suicide’ were being reopened immediately.
Abby looked at each of the photographs again in turn. But it was the man in the centre her eyes went back to. Suddenly the floor she was standing on seemed to slope away from her. She took a couple of steps to the left, to avoid falling over, and gripped the edge of a table. The walls seemed to be moving, swirling past her. A disembodied voice asked, ‘Are you all right? Hello?’ She saw the woman, the fair-haired stamp dealer, standing in a doorway. She saw her go past her eyes as if she was the attendant on a fairground carousel. She came round again.
‘Would you like to sit down?’ the voice said.
The carousel was slowing now. Abby was shivering and sweating at the same time.
‘I’m OK,’ she gasped, looking at the paper again.
‘Interesting story,’ the woman said, nodding at the paper, then looking at her again, concerned. ‘He was in the stamp trade. I knew him.’
‘Ah.’
Abby stared at the photo again. She barely heard the woman’s words as she offered her two thousand, three hundred and fifty pounds for the stamps. She took the money, in cash, in fifty-pound notes, and crammed them into her pockets.
105
OCTOBER 2007
Abby walked out into the street in a daze. Her phone started ringing, but it was several moments before she even noticed.
‘Yes, hello?’ Abby blurted.
It was Ricky. She could barely hear him as traffic roared past. ‘Wait,’ she said, hurrying down the street through the rain until she saw a covered doorway. Ducking into it, she said, ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’
‘I’m worried about your mum.’
It took her a moment to be able to reply. To swallow the sob back down her gullet. To slow her breathing down.
‘Please,’ she gasped. ‘Tell me where she is, Ricky, or bring her back to me.’
‘She needs her medication, Abby.’
‘I’ll get it. Just tell me where to bring it.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
A bus stopped in a line of traffic right in front of her. Its engine made it too noisy to speak or hear. She stepped out into the rain again, hurried back up the street and ducked into another shop entrance. She didn’t like the way he said not that simple.
She had a sudden, terrible panic that her mother was dead. Had the spasm killed her, since they had spoken just a short while ago?
She began crying, she couldn’t help it. The shock of what she had read and now this. She was so far out of her depth.
‘Is she all right? Please just tell me if she’s all right.’
‘No, she’s not all right.’
‘But she’s alive.’
‘For the moment.’
Then he ended the call.
‘No!’ she cried out. ‘No! Please!’
She stood leaning against the front door of the shop, not caring whether anyone inside was looking at her or not, rain and tears stinging her eyes, almost blinding her. But not so much that she didn’t see a small brown car drive slowly past.
There were two men inside, the one in the passenger seat on his phone. Both men had short hair: one was totally shaven, the other had a crew cut. Military types. Or police types.
They looked at her the same way as the two men she had seen drive past in the blue car, before she had gone into Hawkes. Her time on the run had sharpened her awareness of everything around her. Something just felt wrong about these two cars.
Each with the passenger on his phone.
Each looking in her direction as they drove past.
Had Hugo Hegarty phoned the police? Was she under surveillance?
Both cars were in heavy traffic southbound. Were there any others? Northbound? On foot?
She stared wildly in every direction, then sprinted north, ducking left down an alley and easing past a row of stinking dustbins. Across the next street she saw an alley running up between two houses. She shot a glance over her shoulder but could see no one following, so dashed into that narrow space. The rain was easing a little. Her brain was racing. She knew this area like the back of her hand, because for a time, in her previous incarnation, she had lived in a flat near the Seven Dials.
She ran fast, checking every few steps that the package was still firmly at her midriff and that the money was safely wedged in her pockets, then checking over her shoulder. She sped up a tree-lined street of terraced houses, with few people out and about in this horrible weather to notice her. The exercise and the pattering of rain on her face helped to clear her head a little.
Helped her to think.
Abby headed uphill, towards the Dials, then turned right, along another residential street, and emerged above the station. Standing back, out of sight from the road, she watched several cars and commercial vehicles go past, then dashed across Buckingham Road and into another street directly above the station. She ran down that, and again, being careful to wait, crossed another main road, New England Street, and ran on uphill again, through a maze of terraced residential streets and forests of estate agents’ boards.
She got a stitch and stopped for some moments, then carried on at walking pace, gulping down air, perspiring heavily. The rain had stopped almost completely now and there was a strong breeze, which felt good and cooling on her face.
She was thinking clearly now, more clearly than for some hours, as if the shock of what she had seen in the Argus had rebooted her clogged hard drive. Striding purposefully, she kept to the back streets, checking behind her constantly for any sign of a blue or a brown car, or any other car with two people in, but she saw nothing that bothered her.
Had Ricky seen the Argus? Would the story be in other papers also? He would see it, for sure. Wherever he was, he would have papers, radio, television.
She went into a newsagent’s and flicked quickly through some of the national dailies. None of them were carrying the story yet. She bought a copy of the Argus, and stood outside the shop, staring for a long time at the face of the man on the front page. Her emotions were in complete turmoil.
Then, still rooted to her spot i
n the street, she re-read the entire story. It filled in the gaps in Dave’s past. The silences, the evasive answers, the rapid changing of the subject every time she brought it up. And the remarks Ricky made, testing her on how much she knew about Dave.
How much did Ricky know about him?
She walked along a few paces, then sat down on a damp doorstep, head in her hands. She felt more scared than she had ever been in her life. Scared not just for her mother, but for the whole future.
Life’s a game, Dave liked to tell her. Liked to remind her. A game. This had all started as a game.
Some game.
Life’s not about victims, Abby. It’s about winners and losers.
Tears were misting her eyes again. Her mother’s pitiful voice was ringing in her ears, in her heart. She dialled her mother’s number, then Ricky’s, to no avail.
Ring back. Please ring back. I’ll make a deal.
After some minutes she stood up and walked down a hill, then along a street with the railway track of the London–Brighton line visible through railings beyond. She continued down stone steps, along a short tunnel and up to the ticket office of Preston Park Station.
It was a small commuter station, busy in the rush hour, deserted at most other times of the day. If the police were following her, if they had seen her downtown, near Brighton Station, that was where they might watch out for her. They were less likely to be here, she decided.
Life’s a game.
She studied the timetable, working out a route that would get her to Eastbourne, avoiding Brighton Station, and then to Gatwick Airport, which was now part of the new plan crystallizing in her head.
Her phone suddenly beeped. She pulled it out, hoping desperately it was a message from Ricky, but it wasn’t. It said:
Silence is golden? X
She suddenly realized she hadn’t responded to his last text. She thought for some moments, then replied:
Problemo. x
A few minutes later, as she was stepping on to the train, her phone beeped again, with a reply.