by Chris Ewan
‘All right,’ I said. ‘But I may bring someone with me. A friend.’
He paused for a beat. ‘You see, I did not think you were really alone, Rob. Please, do not lie to me again.’
And with that, he cut the connection and ended what was without question the strangest telephone conversation of my life.
*
The bald man had told Lena that he was concerned because she wasn’t frightened. This had pleased her more than she could say. It meant the man had doubts. That he was questioning himself. That was good. It could be useful. Anything that disrupted their plans or gave her more time was helpful. And it told her something else. It suggested the evidence wasn’t as solid as the man had claimed.
But more than that, she was proud of herself. Because the truth was that she really was scared. She’d been scared for as long as she could remember.
Mostly, she’d been scared of her father. She’d been scared of the man he’d revealed himself to be. Throughout her teenage years she’d felt suffocated. Until she finally rebelled. Kicked free. And then his tendencies became so much worse than she’d feared. Wherever she went in the world, whatever she did, anonymous men in suits would follow her. They’d monitor her and they’d type up their reports and they’d send them back to her father. Often her father would be concerned by the reports and he’d send more men to watch over her. Even from a distance, even without her consent, he was able to smother her.
So then she went to extremes to express her freedom. She indulged in every vice she could find. Sex. Alcohol. Drugs. Anything that would wound her father. Anything that would scare him, too. But the outcome was, she began to lose herself. She began to forget the real Lena.
Then she’d met Alex. The perfect insult. The ultimate rejection of everything her father stood for. But pretty soon Alex began to scare her, too. Not because of the threat she’d anticipated. Not because of the dangers she’d felt sure she was exposing herself to. No, what scared her with Alex was the way she began to feel. The emotions she experienced. They were more powerful and more overwhelming than anything she’d ever known before. They were genuine, and that was terrifying.
So she became afraid of losing Alex. Of the steps her father might take to separate them. Of the way others might seek to exploit their relationship.
And then she did lose him, and she felt herself break, and she had no idea how she could ever put herself back together again. If she’d ever feel the urge to rebuild her life. Hiding in the cottage had been nothing compared to that. Finding herself smothered by her father again, waiting for the police to come, asking herself how all of it might end. None of those things had come close to terrifying her in the same way.
But now, she was scared anew. Sitting in the cramped cabin, being tossed around by the sea, in the process of being delivered to destinations and people unknown. She was scared of the young guy with the meaningful leer. She was scared of the older man with the questions and the threats. She was scared about what Lukas may have suffered and fearful for Pieter. She was scared of the police. She was scared of confronting what had been done to Alex. She was scared of what had become of Melanie Fleming. She was scared of having to call on her father’s help.
But more than anything else, she was scared for the plumber. Because she realised that she didn’t know what had happened to him. She’d assumed the two men had left him alone, but it had dawned on her now that they might have harmed him in some way. Or worse. And without the plumber, she really was on her own. And that was the most frightening thought of all.
Chapter Sixteen
I waited with Rocky in the kitchen while Rebecca took another quick tour through the rest of the cottage. She found evidence of more surveillance equipment in the living room and the bedrooms but she didn’t bother to remove it. The haul from the kitchen and the garage had been enough to satisfy her curiosity. She stuffed the microphones and the camera cables inside her backpack and then she bolted the kitchen door and followed Rocky and me out through the garage.
Rebecca heaved the metal door closed and turned the key in the lock before dropping it into my palm. ‘Will you show me where you found the phone and the sunglasses?’ she asked.
I looked down at my hand. Something bothered me. I wasn’t sure exactly what.
‘Rob?’ Rebecca was removing her plastic overshoes. She was leaning her weight against the garage door. ‘Did you hear what I asked?’
I bent down to Rocky and ran my hand through his fur. There was a high bank of trees off to the right and I felt myself looking into them. Searching them.
‘We don’t have long,’ Rebecca persisted. ‘Not if we’re going to meet this guy in under three hours.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘The phone and the sunglasses. We can try.’
Rocky led us through the overgrown garden and into the woods. He seemed to be doing a good job of retracing our footsteps, but the further we went, the less sure I became of my bearings. It took a good fifteen minutes of circling in frustration until I began to believe I was finally standing in the right spot.
I looked down at the dry, muddy ground, alongside the husky trunk of a nearby larch, the fronds of a wilting fern and a fallen branch covered in ivy and brambles. ‘See that mark? That’s from Rocky pawing at the ground.’ I eased myself down and circled my hand over an area where the ground was darker because the subsoil had been churned up. I looked behind me. Shards of mirror glass were ground into the earth. ‘This is definitely it. Look.’
Rebecca crouched alongside me, her hair falling over her face. I could smell the perfume she had on. Something with a citrus note. Her skin was soft and pale. Dusted with freckles. Not what I should have been focusing on.
She grabbed one of her gloves from her backpack, snapped it on over her right hand and prodded the shards around with her finger. Then she paused for a moment, as if deep in thought, and ran her hand along the fallen branch. She contemplated her fingertips. Showed them to me.
Blood. Dark and glistening against the white latex. Powdery in places.
I stood quickly, wiping my hand on the seat of my jogging trousers. I shuddered and lifted my shoes and scanned the area beneath them. There was no sign of any gore. But I still didn’t like it.
‘You think Erik was right?’ I asked. ‘That his men were killed out here?’
‘Hard to tell. But somebody was definitely hurt.’
‘Are you going to take a sample?’
She turned and squinted at me. ‘You think I have a forensics lab with me?’
She rolled the bottom of the glove away from her wrist, bunched it into a ball and stuffed it inside her backpack. She straightened, hands on hips, and scrutinised the woods surrounding us.
‘So what’s next?’ I asked.
‘Next is you take your dog and your van back home. There are some things I want to look into. I’ll meet you at your place for half past six. Will that give us enough time to get to the airport?’
‘Should do.’ I reached into my pocket for the phone Erik had called me on. ‘What do I do if he rings me again?’
‘Talk to him. But keep a note of what he says. And don’t agree to change anything about our meeting until you speak to me first.’ She smiled crookedly. ‘Remember, the man you spoke to was just a voice on the end of the line. We don’t know if anything he told us is true. And personally, I don’t like that he asked you not to contact the police.’
‘You sound worried.’
She nudged the bloody branch with the toe of her shoe. ‘That’s because I am, Rob. Truly.’
*
Lukas watched the man and the woman secure the cottage and follow the dog into the woods. He thought about tracking them but the dog bothered him. He hadn’t bathed in two days. He was caked in dirt. The stench of his own sweat and filth. The dog would smell him. Warn them.
The woman had the backpack with her. There was a chance she was carrying a weapon. And the man shouldn’t be underestimated. His arm was in a sling, which wa
s something Lukas couldn’t readily explain, but he was tall and powerfully built.
Lukas waited until they were out of sight before limping away from his vantage point high up on the tree-covered bank. He hobbled across the rutted track, his gun gripped tightly in his hand, his makeshift crutch supporting his weight. He flattened his back against the wall of the cottage, shuffled past the front door and looked in at the sitting-room window. Nothing had altered. He worked his way around the far side of the cottage to the kitchen. Same thing. He wet his lip, stared hard into the woods, then stuffed the gun into the waistband of his trousers and stumbled away.
How many times had he followed this path now? Ten? Twenty? It was becoming no easier. The journey took him fifteen minutes, minimum, and there’d been times during the past few days when he’d had to duck into the trees because he’d heard people approaching. Hikers. Dog walkers.
There was nobody today – no one at all – and Lukas, breathless now, made it through the swinging gate without interruption. A small blue car was parked to the side of the van. He looked in through the windows and saw a covering of golden dog hairs on the rear seat. He tried the door. Locked. Tried the boot. It was shut fast. There was a sticker for a car rental company in the rear window – the same company he and Pieter had used when they’d first arrived on the island. Lukas wondered where their rental car was now. Hidden, probably. Or perhaps just returned and carefully cleaned. The right payments made to the right employee. The paperwork shredded. Records erased.
Lukas looked between the car and the van, trying to clear his mind, to think logically. The car was the vehicle they must have arrived in. It could be how they’d leave. But if they were at the cottage to clear the scene, it made sense that they’d drive the van away, too. And he knew the van. Knew of the dust sheets. The water he could drink.
Lukas hobbled across and slid open the loading door on the far side. The interior smelled of wood and diesel. Of stale air. He dropped his backside on to the plywood floor. Heaved his aching leg up and in. Then he slammed the door closed behind him, shuffled backwards and covered his body with the stained and musty sheets.
He waited.
Chapter Seventeen
Rocky slept deeply for most of the journey home. I wasn’t nearly so relaxed. My van might have been an automatic, but it was tricky to drive with one arm in a sling. More to the point, I was way outside my comfort zone, unsure what I’d got myself involved in and whether I’d have cause to regret it. There was evidence to suggest that two men had been hurt, or worse, in the plantation. Lena, too, possibly. The sensible thing would have been to phone police headquarters and ask to speak with Detective Shimmin or Teare. Tell them what had happened. Wash my hands of the whole affair. Problem was, Shimmin had dismissed my story the first time around and Erik had asked me not to contact the police. True, I didn’t owe him anything – I’d never even met the guy – but if Lena really was his daughter, then I felt like I should at least hear him out.
Hearing him out meant that I’d be relying entirely on Rebecca. So far, she’d struck me as capable and confident. She’d found the surveillance equipment up at the cottage and she’d developed a plausible theory about my crash. Most importantly, she’d believed what I’d told her about Lena and that had made me inclined to trust her. But I had no idea if my trust could really be justified. I didn’t know how Mum and Dad had come to hire her. And I didn’t know why.
I was still thinking about Rebecca as I parked my van in front of my bike workshop and led Rocky towards my front door. He staggered past me and up the stairs, primed for the second phase of his nap, and I shut him inside before heading off to find Dad.
It didn’t take me long. I could hear the chugga-chugga of his lawnmower engine coming from around the front of the conservatory. Dad had invested in a ride-on machine two summers ago and he lavished just as much care and attention on its upkeep as he did on my bikes. The mower was painted green with a yellow stripe down the middle and it was fitted with a spring-mounted seat and a cup holder. I always suspected the cup holder had been the clincher when he’d gone to inspect the machines on offer at the local garden centre. It was perfect for cradling a can of chilled lager.
There was no lager today. I hadn’t seen him touch a drop since Laura’s death. The cup holder was as empty as his gaze, focused blindly on the sloping grass in front of him. This year, he’d chosen a circular design, the lawn patterned in concentric rings of dark and light green. Last year, it had been stripes.
‘Dad?’
He didn’t hear me because of the ear defenders he was wearing. I waited for him to turn and trundle back in my direction. He stopped alongside me, the clamorous engine forcing him to shout.
‘Just getting a cut in before it rains again.’ He removed the ear defenders and wrapped them around the steering wheel. ‘And you know how the residents like to watch.’
He tipped his head in the direction of the conservatory. A motley audience of shrivelled old folk was arranged behind the glass in wing-back seats and wheelchairs. I waved an apology for the interruption.
‘I wanted to talk to you about Rebecca,’ I yelled.
‘Can it wait? Be dark soon.’
‘Not really.’ I reached across and turned the key in the ignition. The engine spluttered, then died. The sudden silence felt weirdly charged. ‘Why did you hire her, Dad?’
‘You know that by now. She would have told you.’ He scowled across the lawn at a rogue patch of grass the mower blades had somehow missed.
‘But you never mentioned any suspicions about Laura’s death to me. And why Rebecca? There must be private investigators here on the island. You probably know some of them. But you hired a complete stranger. From London.’
He sighed. It sounded more like a growl. ‘It just happened like that.’
‘Like what? You went on the internet and searched for private investigators and her firm came up? Or somebody recommended her? Or, what exactly?’
He put his hand on the ignition key. I seized his wrist, holding firm.
‘What aren’t you telling me? There’s something, isn’t there? Dad?’
He shook his head. Snatched his arm free and reached for his ear defenders. Then he turned the engine over and pulled away sharply.
‘Ask your mother,’ he called from over his shoulder. ‘She’s the one you need to speak to.’
*
I found Mum in the television room. She was kneeling beside one of the newer residents, a lady in a matted wig and bunched stockings who had a vicelike grip on the remote control. The television volume was too loud, rousing those who’d been sleeping and forcing others to adjust their hearing aids. But the lady wanted it louder.
Mum was doing her best to prise the remote free without causing offence. It was a delicate procedure but she approached it with the calm assurance I’ve seen from her so often in the past. As I watched, the remote was liberated, the sound decreased and the elderly woman appeased with a loving squeeze of the hand and the offer of a fresh cup of tea.
‘Got a minute, Mum?’ I asked.
‘Of course, love. Walk with me?’
She slipped the remote into the pocket of her apron and I followed her through the lounge into the small side kitchen, our movements tracked by every conscious resident in the vicinity. There was a hot-water urn on the counter and Mum popped a teabag into a metal teapot and filled it with steaming water.
‘How’s the head?’ she asked.
‘Fine.’
‘You look a little peaky.’ She placed a cool palm on my forehead. ‘Hmm.’ She reached down for the pulse point on my wrist. Consulted her watch. ‘Hmm,’ she said again.
‘What’s the verdict?’
‘You should be resting. I told your father as much.’
The stern look she gave me faded into weary fatigue. I didn’t know how long it had been since she’d slept properly but it might as well have been several years. Her skin was dry and powdery at her temples, a sign of her e
czema flaring up, and the only way she could have been any paler was if she was haunting the place. The contrast with her curly red hair only served to make her pallid appearance even worse. She’d lost weight. Lost energy. Lost most things, I guess.
‘I’m fine,’ I said again. ‘Shoulder’s a bit sore, that’s all.’
‘No need for you to be on your feet, though, is there?’
She turned her back on me and fiddled with the hospital-green crockery on a shelf above the urn.
‘I was talking to Dad about Rebecca,’ I said.
No reaction.
‘The investigator you hired, Mum. To look into Laura’s death.’
Her shoulders dropped and she set a cup and saucer down with a clatter. Then she gathered herself and ducked below the counter to scoop a carton of milk out of the fridge.
‘How’s Rocky?’ she asked. ‘Glad to have you back, I shouldn’t wonder. You should have seen him moping around this place while you were gone. Happy to help himself to biscuits, mind.’
‘Mum.’ Still nothing. ‘Mum. We need to talk about this.’
She slapped the milk carton down. A splotch of milk shot out of the top and splashed the counter.
‘Ah, hell.’
‘Here.’ I ran a cloth under the tap and passed it to her. ‘Why did you hire her, Mum?’
‘Oh, Rob.’ She squeezed the cloth in her hand. So tight that it dribbled water on to the floor by her feet. ‘Why don’t you talk to your father about this?’
‘He told me to speak to you. What’s going on, Mum? I know it’s awful about Laura. We don’t talk about it and I get that. I understand why. But it hurts me every bit as much as it hurts you and Dad. And if there’s something going on, I think it’s only fair for you to tell me.’
She looked around for a moment, as if disoriented. ‘You’re right. You are.’ She mopped up the spill. Glanced across at the stewing tea.
‘That can wait,’ I said.
‘I should really just –’