‘I’m taking her in for evidence.’
I almost laugh.
‘I’m not sure you’ll get anything out of her.’
‘No. I won’t. Not my bag, dolls. I’m more of a less complicated evidence kind of guy. But thanks Jan. Thanks for tempering that. Never more than on this case. At one point I would have probably had the National Guard out. Not that we would have found her under here.’
I look above us. Solid stone. Not a splinter dislodged by the explosion.
‘Combination of psychology and luck. If I hadn’t been brought up round her I might not have put it together.’
He nods and dusts off the cherub. She’s well-made and obviously carved and not cast.
‘True. But you were. I think that’s why you came back. That’s all part of it. Why we’re all in SMIT, because you have valuable local knowledge. How did that work in London then?’
I return quickly eager to get him off that subject.
‘Easy to get to know London quickly. Not so much round here. This terrain isn’t that welcoming to those who don’t know it.’
Then he asks the million dollar question.
‘So what now?’
He doesn’t look at me. I know his tactics. He’s brought me here to face up to things. To make a decision. Psych 101.
‘I’ll stay around here for a bit.' I think about Salvador and my house and wonder if I can salvage something out of this mess. 'After that, I don’t know.’
‘You can’t keep running forever.’
‘I know.’
I know but I might have to.
‘You know you’ll always have support, Jan. We could bring them in.’
‘On what charge? Sitting in a car watching someone?’
He’s silent for a moment. Like me, he’s struggling with the notion that although someone is committing crime, we can’t arrest them and charge them. We know they’re doing it, but we have to wait for them to slip up so we can move in. It’s almost unthinkable for us. I can see the pulse in his forehead quicken and his skin flush slightly.
‘Threatening behaviour. The text messages. It might send a message to them. That they can’t do it on our patch without consequences.’
He means well and it matters to him. Not just me, but the fact that they’re contaminating his beloved city.
‘It’s not the kind of message they understand. They’ll just send someone else. And it won’t stand up anyway. The guys in the car didn’t send the texts. They came from central London. So they’d walk.’
He’s beginning to see my dilemma. Feel my resignation. Understand why I can’t go home.
‘What did you do to piss them off so badly?’
I almost say that I don’t know but I owe Steve more than that.
‘I broke their code. I pushed one of their crew to the very edge. Until he tried to kill me. Out in the open. Until then no one had been able to pin anything on them. Everything that happened to anyone who crossed them seemed like one big coincidence. But I knew how to press their buttons. I chose the most psychologically vulnerable of them and showed his family who he really was. Nothing illegal. Just constant arrests and questioning, always in the daytime. It broke him and he pointed a gun at me. We did a deal and he grassed them up.’
He looks incredulous, eyebrows raised and mouth slightly open.
‘But why you? Why not someone else in your team?’
‘It was me who did the goading. It was my plan. His wife testified that I had it in for them, always turning up with the arresting officer, always being in on the questioning. And she was right. That’s what I’m here for. To ask the difficult questions.’
He’s shocked. I can see it cross his face.
‘But at what cost, Jan? We all deserve a life and a family.’
I shake my head and walk back up the ravine. He catches up with me and I answer his question with a lie.
‘I was just unlucky that they picked on me. Went after me. You know about the crash. It was played down as an accident because no one was sure it was them. Just a few words in the local paper. The Met were playing the long game with them. Still are. Police DC badly injured in hit and run in Central London. ’
Until they claimed responsibility when they thought I was dead. That’s how I got away. I’d considered witness protection but I decided to take my chances. My death was all part of the plan. Win-win for the Met. They got Lando to formally own up and I got to leave safely. Steve looks alarmed.
‘You’re kidding?’
‘Nope. Even had a funeral. But it didn’t work did it?’
‘Bloody hell. I didn’t know all that. I didn’t think they could do that.’
‘You've no idea how big the Lando thing is. Massive. Involved in most of the crime and protection in London, and here by the looks of it. They're not into operations. They leave that to the minions. They're their own law enforcement. They protect the criminals and dole out punishment to anyone who crosses their projects. Their operatives just disappear, or suffer a mysterious accident. No attribution of blame possible. We needed to get them and I suppose I was just collateral damage.’
‘Jesus. I didn’t realise.’
We’re back at the car now. He drives me back to the station and drops me off.
‘I’m going now, Jan. The operations over but I’ll write it up and send it to you. Where will you be?’
I look at the police station. There’s the black BMW parked farther up Northampton Road. Steve sees it too and I feel the concern he has for me. But he can’t do anything. No matter how much he wants to he can’t do anything.
‘Just send them to my email address. I’ll pick them up.’
I watch as he drives away then consider walking up to the BMW and fronting them. But what good would that do? They’d just deny all knowledge and I’d be back to square one. I linger outside for a while, silently goading them. They’d be able to see me, but couldn’t take action as I was standing outside police headquarters. Maybe they were trying to frighten me into submission? I almost laugh at the thought of it, then a huge wave of relief washes over me as I suddenly realise that we did it. We got Maisie back.
It always takes a while to sink in. It always takes at least a day for the pressure to withdraw and a feeling of triumph to sink in. At one time I would have rushed into town and treated myself for seeing it through. But these days it hardly dents the surface. Even so I lean against the doors and try to prolong the good feeling.
But as I stand outside reception there’s a stream of operations rushing out and towards the car. I move forward to warn them, to tell them to leave it alone – don’t they know who they are dealing with? But I don’t. I stand and watch as they surround it and open the driver’s door surprisingly easily. One of them leans inside and then walks around the car, opening the boot. I watch carefully as he closes it again. He shouts to his colleague.
‘No one in there. Get this sealed off and get SOCO here.’
They walk back towards me and I ask him what’s happened.
‘Some joker phoned in just now and said there was a drunken guy outside HQ in a black beamer. No one in there. Empty.’
As he walks away the comms phone beeps. I’d automatically pushed it under my bra strap with my own phone when I left the hospital. My heartbeat speeds up as I see the familiar number from Lando and a text message appears.
‘You can go home now Rhiannon. Hollywood.’
Pat Knowles. I text back.
‘Confirm ID.’
In a microsecond he’s text back.
‘Silver Bullet Band.’
Definitely him. I text one word.
‘How?’
He returns.
‘Need to know only. Let’s just say I’ve learned my lesson. I think that just about makes us even. But here's some extra. Look out for a character called Connelly. He's behind all this at your end. In Manchester.’
Chapter Twenty Seven
I don’t know if it does make us even. I don’t return
his text. I don’t know if I can ever forgive him. He could have left London and come with me. He could have come up North and lived with me. But in the final analysis he chose not to. He chose spite and mistrust. He chose not to read my heart and not to understand. He chose to think about himself. He threw me away and chose the next DC, someone to sit up the long nights with him and analyse his deepest whiskey-fuelled thoughts.
That day I left he was nowhere to be seen. I’d got a message to him that I was moving out and that he should come and collect his things. There wasn’t much really. A couple of suits, CD’s. His running gear. Most of the stuff to be moved was mine. I watched as the removal men cleared what was left in the flat. My beautiful furniture, all going into storage. Later to be sold as a job lot at auction in my absence. My clothes. Expertly packed by moving professionals and couriered up North to my new home. I’d been careful not to be recognised. Wig. Glasses. After all, I was supposed to be dead.
But he wasn’t there. Neither was his stuff. He’d clearly already been here and taken it. I’d waited for him at the allotted time but he didn’t show. I’d stood outside the flat, looking up and down the road. I walked up to the coffee shop on the corner where we would have our breakfast sometimes to see if he was there. Involved in one of the novels he loved so much, or scanning the papers carefully. My memory of that day was of my being self-conscious. Afraid. Constantly afraid of being recognised, and worried that the people who’d come to know us would see me searching for Pat. But everyone was too wrapped up in their everyday life to see a woman who was displaced from hers. I’d called his mobile five times but he didn’t pick up. Inside the flat I found a letter from him.
‘Dear Jan
It was good while it lasted but I can’t come with you. You agreed to everything without considering me and I deserve more than that. You think you’re the only one hurting but I’ve got feelings too. You chose to disappear just at the time when we needed each other most. I love you, Jan, but it’s too much. If you stay in London there’s a chance for us but if you go it’s over.
I hope you make the right decision.
Pat.
Very formal. Very unlike our relationship had been. There were two kisses on the bottom of the letter. I read it once and turned it over. I sat and thought for a few moments. About his hand over mine as we waited for the tube in the mornings. The warm skin of his back pressed against mine when we wake. Tired eyes and tears at old black and white movies. Our own playlist of early 80’s rock, a decade before our time but something we had in common. An old eyeliner lay on the floor of the nearly empty apartment and I picked it up and wrote on the back.
Pat
You don’t know everything. When you do you’ll understand. I didn’t choose this.
Jan
No kisses. Did I love him? By the strength of the pain of his betrayal, his refusal to understand, maybe I did. Love’s a funny thing. At first, in the heat of steamy passion and lingering kisses you think you are in love. I’d never thought I was in love until I first kissed him. It was as if he’d breathed it into me that feeling of excitement, and missing him when he wasn’t there. But it’s a learning curve. Eventually I came to care for him. I worried when I knew he was on a difficult case. I checked on him when he didn’t phone me. Not because I was jealous or paranoid, but because I was scared that something had happened to him.
That romance turned to care and to love between us. He was exactly the same about me. I knew he was naturally a hard man. He would have made a good criminal if he hadn’t chosen the right side of the law. But he melted when I was around. His expression changed and although we never announced that we were together, everyone knew. It was obvious. But you don’t know if it’s real love until you hit a brick wall. And we’d certainly hit one.
I left the flat with a small brown suitcase, a crammed with mementoes of the only thing that had really mattered to me.
Six months later I received a message from Peter Simpson, the one person in the Met who knew where I was. It was in a brown envelope and it simply said ‘Sorry.’ I knew it was from Pat. He would have been fully briefed on the case when he tried to look for me and realised the situation I was in. They would have shown him the tiny paragraph in the newspaper and explained how I had got away.
Only Pat could ever have understood how painful it was for me. I knew exactly what he would do. He’d sink onto his haunches and pinch the top of his crooked nose to stop himself crying. His nicotine stained fingers would pinch and pinch until the tears retreated. I’d seen him do this a thousand times. Then he’d fully understand that I wasn’t leaving him. I was staying alive when my life was threatened. And saving his.
But now he understands. He redressed that awful balance, because it turned out in the end that he abandoned me. I was never named in the press. I heard that my funeral was low key with just a few professional mourners to make it look real. I was free to reappear whenever I liked, but it wasn’t recommended, because they would be waiting for me. And it would start again.
I thought Pat would have been there. I hoped he would. But it turns out he wasn't, and that hurt more than anything. He knew. He knew it was happening. But Pat would have eventually found all this out anyway, whether he was at the funeral or not. He would have realised that by moving North I was asking him to share my new life, protect me, be with me. He would have known how much it cost me personally to ask him to do that.
He never officially lived with me in London. We had our own apartments, but he stayed most nights with me. Even now the searing pain in my soul when I think about how happy we were makes me feel faint. It went on for years, our affair. And then suddenly it was over. I wasn’t allowed to tell him what had happened at first, but I thought that he knew me so well that he would know I hadn’t left him.
But the circumstances were not normal. We were both devastated. It turned out that we didn’t have our own unspoken language when I’d though we had. He didn’t understand my heart and everything I had ever told him about home. Where I was born. Where I grew up. For a detective he was acutely blind to the clues as to where I had gone. All he could see was his own abandoned soul, and the pain surrounding it.
When I realised that he would be the investigating officer in London on this case I kept up the pretence, just in case I had read the situation wrongly and he didn’t know the full story. Most of the people I worked with in the Met simply thought I had dumped him and left. My secret funeral was for the benefit of Lando and outside a select group of officers no one knew about it. And Pat, obviously, because of what had happened. So it would be no surprise to Sally that I’d reappeared. Everyone else simply thought that I’d run away.
It had worked for a while. On the basis that everyone who needed to know thought I was dead and those who wouldn’t notice I was gone wouldn’t care anyway when they caught a fleeting glimpse of me. There had always been the chance that I would turn up and that was the flaw my superiors refused to recognise. Then it all fucked up. It was a delicate balance of trust and time and all it needed was someone to leak information to Lando about what the police had done. Where I had gone. How I had done it. That, in actual fact, I wasn’t dead. Someone did. Someone from deep in the heart of the enquiry. It would have been impossible to stay in London after that.
As soon as the information got out we all saw what a stupid plan it had been, but there had been a small chance we could pull it off. But we hadn’t and I ran.
Of course Pat knew. Of course he knew the risks. He’d been so professional that I had actually doubted that he sent the note at the apartment or knew about what happened. But he came through in the end. I’ve no doubt that this man who I was so close to will haunt my dreams and that I’ll be tempted to ring him, just to see how he is. Just to see if I can recapture the passion we had. I know that I’ll imagine that I can have that part of me that’s buried so deep, the part that was Pat’s partner in crime. It’s in my blood. The extra. The drive that makes it possible to summon up my
fight and with Pat it was right there, crackling between us. I know that I’ll keen for it, want to go back to the woman I once was. But I won’t, because this isn’t the end of Lando, it’s just a pause in the proceedings. And maybe I do love him too much to get him involved. Even though he is.
I dread to think what he’s done. How he’s dealt with the two guys in the car. How he knows about this Connelly guy. I know Pat. He’s got an evil side that he doesn’t keep hidden too well. It’s a bad combination in a copper, evil and professionalism, but he pulls it off. I collect my things from the empty SMIT suite and call a cab. I go home and push the queasy feeling of fear down as I push the door open. It’s just the same as I left it, save a few instances of over neatness that I see immediately. It’s hard to believe that it’s been turned over. Pat must have been here too. Seeing how I live. Putting it all right for me.
I open the back door and whistle for Kirby. I feel a normality settle over me again as Jean comes to the fence with her.
‘Back sooner than I thought. I thought you’d gone, love.’
Kirby nuzzles my hand and gets her ball.
‘Well I wasn’t sure how long I would be, Jean. Have you and Graham been alright?’
She looks flustered.
‘It was funny, you know, there were a lot of comings and goings at your house and this nice young man came and had some dinner with us. Said he knew you and you’d asked him to come. I made him a chicken dinner.’
I feel a smile coming. Jean always does that to me. She looks put out but I know that secretly she would have enjoyed sitting the officer down and feeding him.
‘Well I’m back now. How’s Kirby been?’
‘Great. Missed you, of course. But she’s only a baby, isn’t she?’
We chat for a while and then Graham joins us.
‘We’re having a bit of a barbecue tonight. We didn’t know if any of your police pals would be popping in so we got enough for quite a few people. Glad to see you back love.’
He leans over the fence and hugs me awkwardly.
What I Left Behind (The gripping prequel to the DS Jan Pearce Crime Fiction Series) Page 25