by James Hazel
‘Where have you been?’
‘Thinking.’
Priest decided not to pursue it, but as he caught a glimpse of himself in the wing mirror he was surprised to notice that he was smiling. He was pleased to see her. He thought about bringing up the previous night’s encounter but by now he’d learnt enough about Jessica Ellinder to know that, if she had wanted to talk about it, she would have mentioned it. Didn’t help his state of confusion over it, though. Did she regret it, he wondered? Was she ashamed?
More pertinently, was she likely to repeat the performance? ‘We’re going to see an old friend of mine,’ he said instead. ‘He’s with South Wales police at the moment but right now he’s on some sort of course or something nearby. It’ll be an hour’s drive, tops.’
‘How nice,’ she replied, although her tone suggested the opposite.
‘You got my message about McEwen?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you didn’t tell your father?’
Jessica paused. ‘No.’
‘Good. We don’t need to alert McEwen at this stage.’
There was a traffic jam ahead. Red lights for as far as Priest could see, stretching up the outgoing road. A slow patter of rain tapped on the windscreen, the noise keeping time with Priest’s beating heart.
He continued. ‘When Georgie was searching Wren’s office she came across extracts from a police file relating to a murder in a remote woodland twenty miles north of Cardiff. It was interesting because I couldn’t find any reports of it in the media and yet it was a tabloid golden egg.’ He stopped, suddenly conscious of her scent.
‘And?’ Jessica prompted.
‘Sorry. Got distracted. The report is incomplete but mentioned a wooden cabin hidden in woodland. The police found the victim slumped in a chair. He’d been poisoned.’
‘Poisoned?’
‘Yes, but not with any ordinary poison. Something very specific. The report doesn’t contain any chemical analysis but, whatever it was, it drove the victim mad.’
‘What caused his death?’
Priest thought back to the contents of the report and the thumbnail picture of the victim. The second horrible parody of the human body he had seen in as many days. His stomach churned.
‘He tore his own skin off.’
‘I see.’
Priest waited, his head cocked. ‘I see. Is that it?’
‘What would you consider the correct emotional response to that to be?’
‘Anything other than “I see”. Something more, you know – with a little more empathy.’
‘How do you suggest I show empathy for someone who has torn their own skin off?’
‘I . . .’ A horn sounded from behind him; the traffic had started to move up ahead. The Volvo shuddered into life again and they began to crawl forward. Priest glanced across at Jessica. She was sitting perfectly still, her eyes on the road ahead, her hands on her lap.
Priest shuffled in his seat. What was it about her that he found so disturbing?
‘You said you had recovered the flash drive,’ she prompted.
‘Wren had sent it to my family home, not my flat.’
‘And?’
‘It’s a database of names and addresses.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Do the names mean anything to you?’
‘Nothing. There are a few people I’ve heard of, but nobody of any particular significance, and some of them are dead, according to the Register.’
‘So we’re no further on.’ He could hear the frustration in her voice.
‘That database means something to somebody. Perhaps your father ought to take a look at it? See if there are any names he recognises.’
She nodded. They drove on in silence for a while.
‘Your sister showed me a room in your house.’ He spoke carefully. ‘Where your father keeps his bugs.’
‘She was always very free with her hospitality,’ Jessica said sourly.
‘Maybe that’s something you should have mentioned to me? That your father has a collection of, among other things, mayflies. The same insect that was found in Miles’s throat.’
‘Does that make him a suspect?’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Then why is it relevant? He’s collected them all of his life.’
Priest grimaced. This wasn’t going well. While I’m about it, why don’t I just chuck in a comment about the aggressive sex we had last night to make this even more awkward? It was going to be a long trip. Still, we’re locked in a car. Can she evade the subject for the whole hour we’re on the road? Priest took a deep breath and began. ‘Could I just mention –’
‘The sex we had last night?’ she interrupted.
‘Yes, that.’
‘What about it?’
‘I just wondered whether you wanted to talk about it.’
She shrugged, as if the suggestion was ridiculous. ‘Why? Do you want to analyse it?’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘Then what do you mean?’
‘I mean –’ Priest hesitated. When she put it like that, he had no idea what he meant. He tried again. ‘I mean – how do you . . . feel?’
‘How do I feel?’
He couldn’t tell if she was mocking him or if she had genuinely not understood what he was asking. ‘Can I simplify the question for you in some way?’
‘Do you mean how do I feel about you?’ She looked at him sideways.
He cringed. The awkwardness was overbearing. ‘I guess.’
She seemed to think about it, although he suspected that she was humouring him.
‘The circumstances we find ourselves in,’ she said after a while, ‘mean that our actions last night were ill-advised.’
‘Jessica –’ he said, exasperated. ‘Are you a robot?’
She looked back to the road. Another few minutes of agonising time passed.
‘Maybe we should just talk,’ he finally suggested. ‘Not necessarily about last night but, you know, generally?’
She made a few meaningless hand gestures, as if she was trying to drag a conversation out of thin air. ‘Fine,’ she said eventually. ‘How did your first marriage end?’
‘That’s it?’ he said, aghast. ‘That’s your attempt at general conversation: “How did your first marriage end?”’
She shrugged.
‘It’s to the point,’ he conceded.
Mercifully, the traffic was starting to crawl a little faster up ahead. Beyond the queue, blue lights flashed and, beyond that, Priest saw faster-moving traffic. The stagnation was finite, at least. He felt he should try harder somehow, but he couldn’t find the words. Besides, she had made her position clear: she didn’t want to talk about it.
He decided to change the subject. ‘We’re going to meet Tiff Rowlinson. Detective Chief Inspector for South Wales Police. We worked together in the Met. Tiff’s an excellent policeman and also the officer who was in charge of the poisoning case near Cardiff. I want to try to establish if there’s any connection between it and what happened to Philip Wren and your brother.’
‘You think there might be?’
‘Well there’s Wren, obviously. He’s a connection. So there’s something.’
She nodded.
Priest kept his hands firmly on the wheel. He could smell her scent. He thought of the soft, raspy moans she had emitted the night before, the way her fingers dug into the base of his skull, the way her body shuddered with pleasure under his touch. He shook the image from his mind. There was work to do.
‘My wife walked out,’ he said after half an hour of silence. They had long since left London behind.
‘Why?’
Priest thought about it. ‘Probably because she had developed a deep-rooted hatred of me.’
She nodded. And at last she smiled.
38
Georgie didn’t purchase a first-class ticket. She could have afforded it but didn’t, on princi
ple. The down side was that she only had thirty minutes free Wi-Fi. After that, the saving she’d made on the ticket would be wiped out by the premium for Internet access.
She wasn’t annoyed with Charlie. She understood why he would want to take on the burden alone, why he wouldn’t want any of them in danger, but she wasn’t impressed with him either. She didn’t need protecting! Georgie had put her past behind her. She was a survivor, not a victim. And she didn’t trust Jessica Ellinder. There was something about her. She was cold, emotionless, a mannequin. But Charlie Priest seemed unable to see it. He was under stress, so perhaps that was excusable. Having said that, she hadn’t ruled out the possibility that he was allowing Jessica Ellinder’s undoubted attractions to sway his judgement.
The thought grated on her as sharply as the biting cold wind that swept across the platform. She checked her watch. Fifteen minutes until the train was due; if it was on time. The platform was almost deserted. A few students huddled near the cafe. A family on the other side of the tracks. The only other people in close proximity were two men in suits, sitting on the next bench along. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed one of them glance at her. They weren’t speaking, just sitting. She pulled her coat more tightly around her.
Her mind wandered. She tried not to think of Martin. Tried not to let him seep into her consciousness, contaminate this quiet moment that, were it not for the cold and the suspicious-looking men in suits, she might have enjoyed. The train drew in, only a few minutes past its scheduled departure time. At the last minute she took the door to the carriage furthest away from the men in suits. Obviously, going to Cambridge to check out Hayley Wren’s house was not necessarily consistent with Charlie’s order that she go home and not get involved anymore, but she couldn’t let it go.
Because after all there was Hayley. Who was out looking for her? Wherever she was.
She checked her phone: a number of messages about cases she was working on and a missed call from Li, but that could wait. She spent some time replying to the emails, and by the time her inbox had been emptied London was far behind her. She stared out of the window: the countryside was rolling past quickly and she realised she couldn’t remember pulling away from the platform. Then suddenly there was a voice in her ear.
‘Shit!’ Georgie exclaimed.
The guard made a face. ‘Sorry, love. I said tickets.’
‘Oh – oh. Of course. Sorry for, you know, saying shit.’
She produced her ticket and the guard, a woman with arms thicker than Georgie’s waist, and mountainous buttocks, waddled on down the carriage.
She wondered what she might say to Charlie if he ever challenged her about her little excursion. She could lie but she wasn’t a very accomplished liar and Charlie had a particular aptitude for truth-gathering. Perhaps she could . . . Something made her glance around. She froze. The two men in suits had entered the carriage.
Georgie closed her eyes and counted to ten. From behind her, she heard the sound of luggage scuffing across the holding bay at the back of the carriage – and breathing. She could hear them breathing, she was sure of it.
The train was slowing. An automated voice announced that the next stop was Cambridge. Slowly, Georgie rose from her seat, not daring to look round. Inside her coat pockets, her hands were balled into fists. There was something sharp, too. A bunch of keys. She curled her fingers around them and positioned one of the more jagged-edged keys so that the shank protruded between her second and third fingers. Not by much, but enough to take an eye out if needs be.
She began to make her way down the carriage towards the exit. Behind her, she heard the shuffle of feet. Someone coughed. As she moved, so did they. She felt a burning sensation spread across her chest and up her neck. Charlie had been right. She should have stayed at home. Her grip on the key tightened. She was half-way down the carriage and moving quicker, trying not to run in case they gave chase.
She thought about Miles Ellinder and Vlad the Impaler, the Prince of Wallachia. The key was cutting into her hand.
The train was taking for ever to slow. Out of the window, she caught a glimpse of an industrial estate. Boxlike buildings bearing brands she didn’t recognise. A low wall adorned with tags and graffiti.
The door at the end of the carriage should have opened automatically as she reached it, but it didn’t. There was a pounding in her head, mixed with the sound of footsteps marching robotically behind her. Georgie closed her eyes again. She had been here before. She had known then that she could scratch and bite and use the keys if she had to. But last time there had just been one man; this time there were two. Tears filled her eyes; she wished the floor would swallow her.
She saw Hayley in her mind’s eye – or at least what she thought Hayley might look like. Perhaps Hayley had faced this, perhaps she had cowered in a corner, gripped with terror, perhaps she had been as scared as Georgie was right now. Well, that would not be her; it would not be her. I am a survivor, not a victim.
Georgie spun around. From her coat pocket she produced the keys, ready to tear the flesh of whoever had stalked her down the carriage, ready to stick the blade right through their eyes.
The burning sensation was still there. She gasped for air. Every muscle in her body tensed.
Her arm dropped to her side. Her breathing slowed. The carriage was empty.
39
Tiff Rowlinson had not changed. He seemed to be stuck in a time warp, immune to the ageing process. His hair was still a strawberry blond, still fell longer on one side so it was just above his eye line. He looked like a slightly older member of a boy band.
They found him sitting on a wooden bench staring absently over the countryside into a valley, through which a few isolated farmhouses were scattered. Were it not for the wind turbines punctuating the horizon, the scene might have been unchanged for hundreds of years.
Rowlinson turned briefly to greet them. He had his arm spread across the back of the bench and a coffee mug in his hand. When he saw Jessica, he got up and offered his hand.
‘How do you do. I thought that it was just you and me, Priest. Not that three is any way close to a crowd, Miss . . .?’
‘Ellinder. Jessica Ellinder.’
They shook hands. Priest could tell that, like most people, Jessica was instantly reassured by Rowlinson’s gentle nature. He felt a twinge of annoyance.
‘How’s William, by the way?’ said Rowlinson.
‘Still fucking mad.’
‘And you’re still fucking ugly, Priest.’ Rowlinson grinned. ‘Too ugly to be keeping such exquisite company. If Miss Ellinder is your associate then your fees must have increased substantially.’
‘Client. And it’s nice to see you, too, Tiff.’
‘Client?’ Rowlinson raised an eyebrow. ‘On a business trip this far out? I hope you’re not charging Miss Ellinder an hourly rate.’
They sat on the bench, Priest in the middle, and admired the rolling hillside. Jessica was resting her knee against his, and Priest needed something to distract him. There was a pack of cigarettes in his inside jacket pocket. He thought about taking one out but remembered he’d lost his lighter after he’d used it to burn half his wrist off.
‘So, tell me, Priest,’ Rowlinson said. ‘I don’t hear from you for – what – a year? Then you ring demanding to see me this afternoon in a discreet location to talk about something so secret that you can’t even mention it over the phone. And you bring a client with you. I assume you haven’t come to declare your undying love for me.’
‘It’s been a rough few days, Tiff.’ Priest blinked, eyes scanning the horizon.
‘Tell me more.’
Priest handed him the extract from the police file Georgie had found in Wren’s office. Rowlinson thumbed through it before handing it back. His expression had darkened.
‘Where did you get that?’ he asked quietly.
‘In the office of the late Attorney General,’ Priest replied.
‘Well, well.’
A chill blew across the valley, ruffling the grass. The deep green was patched here and there with purple moss. Jessica pulled her jacket around her. Priest wondered about offering her his coat but he doubted his attempt at chivalry would be well received.
After a while Rowlinson said, ‘I’m guessing that this isn’t a peripheral enquiry for you, Priest.’
‘Fuck, no. We’re caught up right in the eye of the storm.’
‘I see. Consequentially, I recommend you bring out your most sturdy umbrella.’
Priest turned and looked at Rowlinson. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I wish I knew,’ the DCI murmured.
‘This is your case, Tiff. You’re the senior investigating officer.’
‘Was. Was the SIO.’
Priest was perplexed. Rowlinson was a first-class copper. What DSI in their right mind would take him off a case?
‘So who is?’ Priest enquired.
‘No idea,’ said Rowlinson, leaning back on the bench and stretching out his legs. ‘All I know is, it’s not me.’
‘Who took it away from you?’
‘I don’t even know that. My super didn’t know either. All he told me was that the order came directly from the Home Office.’
‘The Home Office doesn’t . . .’
‘Meddle in police domestics? Come on, Priest. Where have you been the last decade?’ Rowlinson sighed and hunched his shoulders. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘the word on the street is that Sir Philip Wren was orchestrating some sort of secret task force to investigate cases like the one I was on.’
Priest felt Jessica shuffle in her seat next to him.
‘Wren was a lawyer, not a police strategist,’ Priest pointed out.
‘He had a military background. Maybe he was diversifying.’
Priest winced. It seemed unlikely. ‘What can you tell me about the homicide?’
Rowlinson shook his head. ‘I was on the scene with SOCO. That’s all. Then our late friend showed up.’
‘Wren?’
‘The very same.’
‘Go on.’
Rowlinson sighed. ‘The victim was strapped to a chair and injected with various chemicals, the effect of which was, over a prolonged period of time, to drive him mad and induce him to mutilate himself. His suffering was unimaginable.’