by Chris Ewan
I resisted the urge to press my fingers against the screen. I blinked tears from my eyes and tried to hold back the tide of emotions that gushed over me.
The skinny man accepts the vodka. He raises his glass in a silent, mocking toast, and takes a sip. He nods his approval and returns his attention to his book.
Laura straightens her spine and raises her eyes to the ceiling. Then she sets the second tumbler down on the floor by Lena’s feet. She hovers, as if expecting some thanks, but after a few seconds more, she roughly adjusts the strap of her handbag and marches out of shot.
The time on the video file reads 1.33.
Very little happens for the next minute or so. The man on the sofa flicks a page of his book. Lena finishes painting her fingernails and blows on to them. The man on the sofa takes another sip from his vodka. Lena bends down and scoops up her own glass and does likewise.
They begin to talk. They drink some more.
Then, at close to the three-minute mark, Lena’s head droops abruptly and her teeth strike the rim of her glass. She jerks her chin upright and blinks her eyes in an effort to rouse herself, like a bus passenger fighting a spell of drowsiness. She’s unsuccessful. Her face sags again. She lowers her legs from her chair, as if to stand, but her legs are feeble and she crashes to the floor, dropping her glass and spilling vodka across the floorboards.
The skinny man springs to his feet, upsetting his own drink across the sofa cushions. He kneels by Lena’s side, turns her face upright and lowers his cheek to her mouth. He shakes her roughly by the shoulders. Then he turns and pushes up on one leg, as if to fetch help, but his balance fails him and he lists precariously to one side like a drunk.
He strikes the ground on his hip and immediately attempts to push himself up. His movements are weak. He kicks out with his legs and thrashes with his arms like a beached fish, but his actions become vague and after a few final twitches his face slaps down against the bare floorboards.
Lena and the man lie prone and undisturbed for more than half a minute.
Then, at 4.23, the camera shakes violently and tilts a degree to the left, cutting off a portion of the top right-hand corner of the room. It’s as if a sudden, localised vibration has upset the camera in its housing.
Two men wearing balaclavas burst into the scene. One advances on Lena, the other paces towards the skinny man.
The first man scoops Lena into an upright position, allowing her body to sag against the blue armchair, and checks her breathing. He is fast and powerfully built. He wears black cargo trousers with multiple pockets, a long-sleeved black T-shirt and black leather gloves. He pokes one gloved finger inside Lena’s mouth and hooks her tongue forwards. Lena’s head lolls to one side, her tongue hanging from her mouth.
Meanwhile, the second man lifts the bare-chested figure by his armpits and drags him towards the sofa. He heaves him on to the soft leather cushions and arranges him so that he is sprawled against the backrest, his head pivoted towards the ceiling, his jaw gaping open and his dreadlocks spread around his shoulders.
The second man is sturdier than his companion. He wears a grey suit over a light-blue shirt and a dark-blue tie. A black nylon backpack is fitted over his shoulders. He also wears a pair of black leather gloves. The man gathers up the spilt glass tumbler and holds it close to the skinny man’s lips. Once he sees breath condense against the glass, he reaches up and removes his balaclava. The man is easily fifty years old. His scalp is hairless and his ears are flushed.
The first man follows his lead and tugs his own balaclava from his head. He is considerably younger. His hair is clipped short, like an army buzz cut, and he has a fuzz of hair below his bottom lip.
For perhaps five seconds, the first man grins inanely at his older companion. Then the older man says something to him and the first man reacts like he’s been scolded before reaching into a pocket on his cargo trousers and removing a small glass vial and a hypodermic syringe. He upends the vial and pierces the seal with the needle. He withdraws the plunger and measures the dosage he requires.
At the same time, the second man gathers up Lena’s tumbler. He slips his backpack from his shoulders and stuffs both tumblers inside. He fetches two fresh tumblers from the glazed cabinet, pours a shot of vodka into each glass, and spends a few moments fitting Lena’s hand around one glass and the skinny man’s hand around the second glass, until he is satisfied that their fingerprints have been successfully transferred.
Watched by the first man, he sets the glass bearing Lena’s fingerprints down on the floor next to her, and tosses the glass branded with the skinny man’s fingerprints across the already damp sofa cushions. He returns to his backpack and removes a white cotton cloth that is sealed inside a plastic ziplock bag. He uses the cloth to carefully clean the bottle of vodka. He wipes the bottle down thoroughly, then carries it across to Lena and with the help of his accomplice, takes her limp right hand and fits it around the bottle in several different ways, applying several different grips. Once the job is done, he returns the bottle to the top of the cabinet and the cloth to the little ziplock bag. He grabs the white plastic shopping bag and shakes it until a paper receipt tumbles out on to the cabinet‚ then stuffs the shopping bag and the ziplock bag inside his backpack.
Next, he adopts a position behind the sofa. Seizing the skinny man’s gaping jaw in his gloved hands, he angles the man’s head to one side, exposing his neck.
The first man steps away from Lena with the syringe and the glass vial in his right hand. He sets the vial down next to the vodka bottle on the glazed cabinet, flicks the syringe with his nail, flexes his arms and nods to his companion.
The move looks to be something they’ve rehearsed. It’s a procedure they carry out with speed and efficiency. The younger man stabs the needle into the skinny man’s neck and compresses the plunger. Then he removes the needle and they both step away.
The effects of the drug are very fast and very disturbing. The skinny man doesn’t regain consciousness. His eyes don’t snap open. But his body bucks and jerks, and his legs kick out, as if he’s fighting something in his sleep. He arches his back and his chest heaves. He wrenches his head from side to side, his dreadlocks slashing his face. He flails once with his arm. His throat bulges and his lips peel back over his teeth. His skin reddens. Before long, he goes into seizure, convulsing rhythmically, mouth frothing, until, when the footage reaches 7.02, he stops moving altogether.
The two men don’t concern themselves with his suffering. While the older man scans the floor space for anything they may have missed, his younger companion takes the syringe and the glass vial across to Lena. He starts with the glass vial and very carefully fits Lena’s left hand around it. He lifts her index finger and rolls the glass around its pad. Then he takes her right hand and repeats the process with the syringe, being sure to press her right thumb down firmly on the plunger. Once he is satisfied, he collects together the syringe and the glass vial and carries them out of shot. He returns within twenty seconds, his hands empty.
The men check the room one last time and ensure that Lena is still breathing. Then they vacate the scene for good.
The footage continues for a further six seconds, and neither Lena nor the skinny man moves in the slightest.
I leaned away from the laptop. Blew a gust of air from my lips.
‘Well,’ I managed, ‘I recognised everyone except the skinny guy on the sofa.’
Rebecca turned her face away from me and gazed out her side window. She raised her hand to her mouth. There was a long moment of silence.
‘That was Alex Tyler,’ she finally said, in a pinched voice.
I supposed it had to be. Lena’s dead boyfriend. The eco-campaigner.
‘Tell me I’m not going mad,’ I said. ‘We’ve just watched a murder, haven’t we?’
Rebecca nodded, still peering out her window. ‘Not just a murder,’ she said, absently. ‘A comprehensive framing, too. Who were the men?’
‘The younger
one was my fake paramedic.’
‘And the older one?’
‘The older one is the guy who tackled me in the sports centre. The one who claimed to work for the security services.’
‘So no surprise that he wanted you to hand him the memory stick.’
‘None at all.’
‘They worked as a team.’ Rebecca seemed oddly disconnected. Almost robotic. I guess it didn’t help that she was still talking in a pained, halting tempo, gasping air wetly through her mouth, her busted nose making her sound badly congested. ‘They worked together to kill Alex Tyler and fit Lena up for his murder. Then they worked together to snatch Lena from this cottage.’
‘And?’
‘It’s a pattern. And now the young one is dead. But it stands to reason that your man from the sports centre would have been involved in the mess at Teare’s house.’
Rebecca turned to me. I searched for her eyes behind the swelling and the bruising. Her liquid brown irises seemed to pulsate.
‘And Laura?’ I asked, straining to kill the quaver in my voice.
‘It looked to me as if she left the room before those men came in.’
It had looked the same way to me. ‘You think they were waiting until she was gone?’
‘Either that, or she signalled for them to go in.’
I tried not to flinch. I wasn’t entirely successful.
‘It’s a possibility.’ Rebecca shrugged. ‘And we can’t ignore it completely. But,’ she added, tapping the laptop screen with her fingernail, ‘this video file suggests otherwise.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Those men didn’t know they were being filmed. If they had, their first move would have been to disable the camera. And they wouldn’t have removed their masks.’
‘So?’
‘So Laura did know. She was able to record and download the camera feed. And if she knew about it, and they didn’t, I don’t think they were working as a unit.’ Rebecca paused. Regained her breath and turned her mouth down at the corners. ‘You realise that if those two men really were acting on behalf of the security services, then Alex Tyler was killed by British Intelligence.’
‘Laura’s employer.’
‘Yes, but remember why she wanted my help? I’m outside the organisation. The threat she was worried about was coming from inside. And she got this video file to you. She did it for a reason.’
‘Then she’s a whistleblower?’
‘No.’ Rebecca shook her head. ‘This file would be with the press if that was the case. I think Laura was trying to find her own solution. She was buying time by hiding Lena here, but she needed freedom to work. So she faked her own death and she got the two of us involved.’
I tried to let Rebecca’s words sink in, but they wouldn’t settle. What she was suggesting seemed impossible to me. Difficult to believe in. Even harder to hope for.
‘There’s one more thing,’ she said. ‘There was a sedative in the vodka. You saw that, right?’
‘It was hard to miss.’
‘And the younger guy used a syringe to inject Alex with the poison that killed him. He seemed comfortable with the move. As if it was something he’d done before.’
‘OK.’
‘And if it was something he’d done before, it’s something he could have done again.’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘Your crash. You said he was the guy who approached you as a paramedic. He talked to you, and then you lost consciousness.’
‘Because I’d banged my head.’
‘Maybe. It’s highly likely, I don’t deny that. But isn’t it also possible that he could have stuck you with a needle?’ She swallowed thickly, raising her hand for my patience until she’d cleared her airways and composed herself. ‘You were unconscious for a long time. But from what your dad told me, the doctors who treated you in the hospital didn’t find any real swelling to your brain. You were discharged about as quickly as you could have been.’ She gripped my chin and turned my head to one side. Grimaced as she saw the bloody gash at the top of my skull. ‘And now you’ve taken a big hit only a few days later, but you’re coping OK.’
I cast my mind back to the crash itself. I’d definitely banged my head, because my helmet had been badly damaged. But I could also remember how the paramedic had crouched down next to me. He’d squeezed my gloved hand. And then . . . something snagged against the skin of my wrist. Had that something been the point of a syringe?
‘But surely my doctors would have noticed?’
‘Not necessarily.’ Rebecca shook her head. ‘You presented with all the signs of a bad brain injury. They treated you that way once you reached ICU. And even if they carried out a tox screen, if the guy had used a drug routinely administered in A&E, it could have been overlooked. I’m thinking of a long-acting benzodiazepine such as diazepam. Given in the right dosage, it could knock you out for hours. You’d present with all the symptoms they’d be anticipating. And meantime, the guys who took Lena would know for sure that you’d be out long enough for them to get her off this rock before any kind of alarm was raised.’
‘You really think so?’
‘Hey, I learned a long time ago not to rule anything out. Speaking of which.’ Rebecca lifted the poster for the missing dog from my lap. She scanned the printed information. Laughed faintly.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Do you recognise this number?’
I looked at the telephone number she was pointing to at the bottom of the poster. It wasn’t familiar to me. I told her as much.
‘I think you should dial it,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Because I think Laura might answer.’
My heart stopped.
I felt a lump in my throat. A dryness in my mouth.
‘Would you like me to do it?’ Rebecca asked.
I shook my head as I fumbled with my mobile. My hands were hamfisted. I jabbed at the keypad with clumsy fingers. Raised the phone to my ear.
It rang. Then it rang some more. It kept ringing for close to a minute before it was answered.
‘Hello,’ said a voice I recognised.
It wasn’t Laura.
It was much, much worse than that.
Chapter Fifty-four
I didn’t talk with Rebecca during the drive. There wasn’t much to be said. My mind was racing, but my thoughts were scrambled and incoherent. I jumped from one concern to the next. One worry to another. Pretty soon, my fears began to cancel each other out, leaving me in a state of uneasy calm, like listening to white noise for so long that it becomes possible to mistake it for silence.
The mid-afternoon suburban streets of Onchan seemed strangely unfamiliar to me. Mothers pushed babies in strollers. Pensioners queued for double-decker buses. People mowed lawns, or washed cars, or perused newspapers in sun-bathed conservatories. It was like driving through a film set. An unreal world on the other side of the windscreen. One where no one would believe that there was a man gagged and bound in the back of my van, and where nobody would understand what it was like to feel the pulse fade from the neck of a man who’d had designs on killing you.
My parents’ care home looked just as it always has. Solid. Unremarkable. Calm.
We parked in the gravel yard outside my front door. There was an unfamiliar car parked there. A blue Vauxhall Insignia. It looked fairly new. A recent purchase. But it could have used a wash. There was dirt on the paintwork. Dust and grime on the windows.
Rebecca squirmed forwards in her seat. Under cover of the dashboard, she inspected the Beretta. She dropped the magazine out and counted the number of rounds that were left. Once she was satisfied, she reassembled the pistol, applied the safety and returned it to the small of her back, covering the bulge with her leather jacket.
‘Ready?’
‘Nope.’
She smiled, then winced. I could see that the pain from her facial injuries was very bad. Probably the skin was tightening as it healed.
I closed my hand around the purple memory stick. Squeezed hard.
‘We should go in,’ Rebecca said. ‘Time’s nearly up.’
I dropped out of the cab and approached my front door, glancing inside the Vauxhall on my way, but not seeing anything of importance. I fitted my key in the lock and passed on through. Just like normal. Just like coming home on any other day.
Except for the way my heart was punching against my chest. The way my scalp was itching and my palms were sweating.
I climbed the stairs. Fourteen of them. My legs shook like I was scaling a mountain.
Rebecca climbed behind me. I could feel her presence close by.
I turned at the top of the stairs and that was when I finally saw them. It took everything I had not to drop to my knees.
Dad was perched on one of my straight-backed dining chairs in the middle of the room. He was sitting on his hands, palms down, with his feet close together and his face bowed so that his chin brushed his chest.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, in a dry voice.
‘It’s OK,’ I told him.
It wasn’t true. Things were a very long way from OK.
Dad’s head was bowed because he had a pistol pressed against the back of his skull. The pistol was being held by the man with the cue-ball head who’d confronted me in the sports centre.
The man’s temple was yellowed and grazed from where I’d struck him with my knee. His eyes were bloodshot, puffy and weeping, and his nostrils were red, like he was recovering from a bad cold. The after-effects of the chemical spray I’d blasted him with.
He was holding the pistol in his left hand. His right hand was hanging down by his side, bent at a sickening angle on the end of his arm. I remembered the sensation of stamping on his elbow and driving his wrist into the ground. The nauseating crack. He didn’t seem preoccupied by the injury. He was focused on the task he was engaged in.