“No. My boss. Charlie’s father.”
“Charlie?”
“Charlotte.” She pulled the small girl closer if that were possible giving her a squeeze. “She didn’t see… anything.”
I instantly understood. The kid had not witnessed her father being gunned down and I was being told not to talk about it in front of her. I saw it again inside my head, though. A stark re-run every bit as clear and defined as the original.
“Who… who are you?” The woman asked. “What do you want with us?”
For a brief moment, I failed to understand what she meant. Then it occurred to me that she might not have seen everything that had taken place back at the lay-by, and may now be wondering exactly where this man who had raced off with the car fitted in. It was even possible that she believed I was part of it, that I had abducted the two of them.
Again, I glanced at the child. Her eyes were large and round, unblinking, more curious than fearful.
“My name is Lynch,” I told them, raising a tentative smile at both. “Mike Lynch. And believe me, I want nothing from either of you. I know as much as you do about what happened back there. Probably less. I’d pulled off the road because I was tired, and honestly I was just minding my own business when it all kicked off.”
“Why were you outside in the rain?”
It was a fair question.
“I’d got out of my own motor to take a… I needed to go to the toilet. I heard a sharp crack that even then I think I knew wasn’t thunder, came back to the lay-by and…” I finished with a shrug. She knew the rest.
Her eyes bore holes into mine. I saw a deep mistrust there; both suspicion and fear. I could hardly blame her. For a few seconds neither of us spoke, then I asked for her name.
“Melissa,” she replied. She offered no surname. “Where are we?”
“I have absolutely no idea. I drove around until I thought I’d lost whoever was behind us.”
The woman stared at me for several seconds, and then seemed to come to a decision. She looked down at the girl. “Charlie, when I take my hand away from your mouth I don’t want you to scream or cry out. Do you understand me?”
The girl nodded, her gaze never leaving my face.
“I mean it, Charlie. I will be very angry with you if you disobey me.” Her accent was northern, I thought. Lancashire, perhaps.
As the sound of her voice died away she removed her hand. I felt tension grip my shoulders, but the kid did as she had been told. “Good girl,” Melissa told her. “I’m proud of you.” She ran her fingers through the kid’s long fair hair.
The child looked up at her. “Where’s daddy?” she asked. Her voice was soft and sweet. I still couldn’t see her clearly, certainly not enough to appraise her features, but she sounded so much like my own daughter when she was a kid that I felt a swift jab of recognition.
“Daddy had to go somewhere,” Melissa said. The casual way she spoke suggested this might be something the kid was used to.
“But why? And why did you pull me out of my seat and keep me on the floor?”
Melissa smiled and rubbed her nose against the girl’s. “I was just playing, silly. I’m sorry if I frightened you, Charlie. It was a game, that’s all.”
I knew children to be a lot smarter than they were given credit for, but at this girl’s age they still trust adults implicitly. Her look suggested disapproval, but then she turned her attention to me once again. “Are you my daddy’s friend?”
“This is your daddy’s new driver,” Melissa said quickly, shooting me a look.
“That’s me.” I flashed the fake grin one more time.
“Where’s Roger?”
I looked to Melissa for a way out. She provided it. “Roger is still unwell, sweetheart. That’s why Daddy drove today, remember?”
“I like Roger.”
Melissa laughed. “And I like him, too.”
She glanced at me as if expecting me to join in and inject a little humour for the kid’s sake. I wasn’t ready for that. I just wanted out of whatever mess I had blundered into.
“I want to go home,” the kid said, echoing my own thoughts. She turned to the woman. “I don’t like it here.” Then she let out a long, wide yawn.
“Me neither.” Melissa’s eyes found mine. “How about it, Mr Lynch? Shall we get out of here?”
“I’m not at all sure we should be going anywhere right now. There are some dangerous drivers on the road tonight, if you catch my drift.”
“I realise that. But I also know that Charlie is very tired and needs her bed, plus looking at this place I’m not sure it would be good to be found here by one of those dangerous drivers you mentioned.”
I nodded. Then a thought occurred. “Do you have a phone on you?” I asked her.
Her hand started to reach for her jacket pocket, then jerked back as if something distasteful might be tucked away inside. She shook her head and raised her eyes upward. “No. I left it at home this morning. Forgot it because we were in such a hurry I just snatched up my jacket and left my mobile beside my bed.”
I closed my eyes. Of course. There was that Mike Lynch luck again. Usually you’d have to go a long way to find two people who didn’t have a single mobile phone between them. Tonight there were two of us in the same vehicle. Then I remembered the kid.
“How about you, Charlie? I don’t suppose you have a phone with you?”
The kid giggled as if the question were absurd. She shook her head. “You’re funny.”
“Yeah. Right.” I turned to Melissa again. “Where is home?” I asked her.
“Blackwell. South London.”
Impressive. I knew the suburb well. There was some prime real estate in that area. The BMW X3 would fit right in. “So, what are you doing all the way out here?”
“We had to visit someone in Devon. Usually we would stay overnight, but Ray, my boss, also had a meeting close to home first thing this morning.”
I blew out my cheeks. I felt exhausted, and the kid’s yawn hadn’t helped with that. “Look, I think maybe the best thing we can do is find the closest twenty-four-hour service station and have them call the police on our behalf.”
Melissa pulled her head back and frowned.
“To report those dangerous drivers,” I added quickly.
Melissa looked down at the kid. “Sweetie, do you mind if I have a chat with Mike outside the car. I want to get some fresh air and I think Mike would like that as well before we move on.”
“Don’t leave me, Mel,” the kid said, sinking into her arm.
“I’m not leaving you, silly. I’ll be right outside the car. You’ll be able to see me all the time. I promise.”
Once again, an adult pledge proved good enough.
Melissa opened up her door. “Mike?”
She nodded outside. I took the hint.
The air was a little cooler now, the storm having sucked all the moisture from it before depositing it back all over the countryside. The rain had stopped for the time being, and a light westerly breeze had taken its place. Melissa wore a waist-length denim jacket with button-down pockets, from which she took a pack of cigarettes. With a deft flick, she expertly tapped one out, then lit it with a fluorescent green disposable lighter. She took a long drag and allowed the smoke to filter out of her nostrils. She didn’t offer one, which bothered me more than it ought to have done considering smoking wasn’t one of my myriad vices.
There wasn’t much else to see back here. The ramshackle outbuilding overlooked the rear of what appeared to be a derelict factory, and off to the right there was an area of open land that people had used as a dumping ground for old mattresses, scraps of furniture and the obligatory fridge.
“So, what’s this all about?” I asked, keeping my voice low and my head turned away from the kid. “Why the chat out here?”
The only light was whatever was spilling out of the night sky and from the glow of Melissa’s cigarette. Even so, I could see she was in her late-twenties a litt
le younger than my initial estimate. She wore a thin light-coloured sweater beneath the jacket, a patterned skirt down to her ankles, and even in flat shoes she was nearly as tall as me. She took another pull before replying in a hushed voice.
“Listen, Mike, it is way past Charlie’s bed time. She is over-tired and extremely confused, and I really don’t think I want to tell her that her father is dead right now.”
“Fair enough. I can understand that. So let the police tell her. They’ll have a trained cop for that sort of thing. You know, some sort of family liaison officer.”
“I see. So, you think having a complete stranger tell her is better?” She looked at me with no small measure of contempt.
“She’s going to find out sooner or later.”
“And I think later is better. I think letting her get some sleep will make it easier on her. There’s no good time to tell her, I know that, but to have Charlie find out in the middle of the night, surrounded by strangers in a strange place, followed by all the commotion that will result from it… We can do better than that for her.”
I felt my irritation move up a gear. This had nothing to do with me. I had accidentally got caught up in something dreadful, and being a witness I knew I was now inexorably involved with the shooting, but how and when this kid discovered that her father had been murdered was not something I was about to include in my ever-increasing list of concerns. Then something occurred to me.
“What if her father’s not dead? We know he was shot, but we don’t know he’s actually dead.”
“I heard two more quick shots just after you jumped into our car and drove off. If someone wanted him dead, I think they would have finished the job before coming after us, don’t you?”
I remembered the man lying on the floor, the shot that had forced him down onto his face. The one that then flipped him onto his side. She was probably right. In fact, I had almost certainly seen the shot that killed Charlie’s father.
“Okay. You may be right. Fact is, we could probably both do with getting our heads around this shit.”
“That we can agree on.”
“So, do you know who was doing the shooting?” I asked her.
Melissa shook her head and took a long hard drag on her cigarette before responding. “No. Of course not. No idea.”
The response sounded rehearsed. I wanted to ask her more about it, but learning who was responsible did not seem as important as finding a way out of the mess we were in.
“So, who are you to these people?” I asked. “Family? A friend?”
“I’m Charlie’s nanny.”
I glanced at the BMW. Big car, big money. It figured that the driver would have someone else taking care of his kid.
“I see. And what do you suggest we do right now? What exactly is your plan?”
She sucked on the cigarette a couple of times, one elbow resting on the other arm that seemed to be hugging herself. Then she flicked the stub away, and it fell to the floor in a trail of sparks.
“I think we should just drive on and get as far away from here as possible during the next thirty minutes or so. Then we can find somewhere suitable to pull over and think more about when to go to the police and what to say to them when we do.”
“You don’t think they might wonder why we didn’t report this to them immediately?”
“Actually, I don’t really care what they might wonder. Ray is dead, and Charlie isn’t. Nothing we do now is going to alter the first part of that statement. I just don’t want that poor little girl having to go through all that crap, having to deal with a place as cold and impersonal as a police station. We can let her sleep for a while and make the call later, and then you and I can talk to the police. Is that all right by you, Mike?”
It wasn’t. And I didn’t see why it should be, either. This was someone else’s problem. I was just the poor bastard who happened to see a shooting and then somehow got swept up by the aftermath.
“All I want to do is go home,” I told her honestly. “It’s all I’ve wanted to do since last evening. So how about this: why don’t I drop you and the kid off somewhere, leave you with my name and address, and then I’ll speak to the police when I get home.”
“You’re forgetting one important thing, Mike.”
“And that is?”
“You’re driving my boss’s car. It goes only as far as we do.”
She was right. I had forgotten.
“Then we go straight to a police station.”
“You keep coming back to that, and I keep telling you no. I do have another suggestion. How about I drive it and leave you stuck out here on your own. Of the two of us, I am the only one insured to drive this car. Plus, I don’t know you, and I may not even want you back in the car with us.”
I hadn’t thought of it that way, either. In fact, I wasn’t thinking clearly at all. “Look, you’re right,” I admitted. “But let’s not be hasty. We should stick together for the time being, but I still think we should go to the police.”
“I don’t. Charlie is my responsibility and is my only concern right now. But as a compromise, we could stay here for a little while longer if you want. You’re not the only one who doesn’t want to stray across that man’s path again tonight.”
It had been one lousy day. But then I thought about the man lying dead in a sodden lay-by, the bullet that had flashed past my own head, the ensuing car chase. All things considered, it could have been a great deal worse. Also, remaining with Melissa and the kid was a whole lot better than being dumped at the roadside like a bag of rubbish.
When my shoulders slumped, I knew I had lost the battle.
“You win,” I told her.
The glint in Melissa’s eyes told me she had come to that conclusion long before I had.
4
We sat in relative silence for a further half hour. The kid whined for a few minutes about not having her father there, but she soon drifted off the sleep. Other than making soothing noises towards the girl, Melissa did not speak at all. Eventually I grew restless, anxious about the potential for being discovered and hemmed in. The more the notion tumbled around inside my head the more likely and more horrifying it seemed. At a few minutes before three we were back on the road.
I had used some of the time spent waiting to figure out how to get the satnav switched on, but having never used one before I had no idea whether the GPS could tell me exactly where we were. I felt like a Luddite; my daughter Wendy would have figured the thing out in seconds. In the end, I decided to just keep on heading away from the scene of the shooting, because eventually we would come upon a town.
I pushed the BMW as hard as I could on the narrow and twisting roads, and finally came upon a decent surface followed shortly by the main A303 and a set of signposts that allowed me to get my bearings. I hung a left and set off on the road that would eventually lead us in the direction of home. I started to relax now that a few more vehicles were around.
We had travelled less than five more miles when a sign for a Best Inn Town motel came up on the nearside. I decided it was as good a place as any to pull over again to rest up and debate our next move. The car park adjoined a McDonald’s and a Shell petrol station, both of which were in darkness, and extended beyond the back of the main hotel building. I tucked the car around there, out of sight of the main road as well as the motel’s lobby.
“Can we get a room rather than sit out here?” Melissa asked. “This is no place for me or you to sleep, let alone Charlie. Perhaps this will all seem more manageable once we’ve had some proper rest.”
It wasn’t a bad idea. “I can sort that. Shall I pop over and come back for you when I have a door key? Probably better than you hanging around in the reception area.”
“Okay. Leave the engine on if there’s enough fuel. It’s clammy and I’d like to keep the A/C on.”
“No problem. There’s about half a tank in there.” I turned to look back at her. “Don’t shoot me down in flames again, Melissa, but are you ab
solutely sure you want to delay the inevitable? I was thinking that instead of hiding out as if we were guilty of something, there’s probably a pay phone I can use right here. The kid’s had some sleep.”
“Sure. Why not? Let’s throw her to the wolves now. In the dead of night.”
“All right.” I held up my hands, frustrated at the young woman’s inability to grasp the reality of our situation. “I was just providing options.”
Melissa gave a long sigh, and glanced to her right. The kid was fast asleep in her seat. “Fair enough. I do understand your concerns, Mike. Really, I do. I just want to do whatever’s best for Charlie.”
Despite the fact that things were not going my way, I admired her taking a stand. Melissa’s protective instincts were more like those of a mother than a nanny, always putting the kid first. It had been a long time since I’d had to do anything that wasn’t best for Mike Lynch. It didn’t come naturally now.
“I’ll go and check in, then come and get you. That way you can carry her straight to the room.”
“That sounds good.” She gave a weak smile. “Maybe you’re not quite as superficial as I thought.”
“Me?” I touched a hand to my chest. “Shallow as a worm’s grave, love. Frankly, I just want to get this over with. But right now, I’m far too tired and way too stressed to think straight or argue with you again.”
I got out of the car and walked around to the well-lit entrance which led to the reception area. What I had just told Melissa wasn’t exactly true. I did want to get it over with; that much was accurate. But I wasn’t looking forward to the moment we had to bring the police into this. It was inevitable, certainly. Just not an experience I was relishing.
Pushing open the glass swing door, I realised that in leaving the air-conditioning on I’d had to leave the car keys in the BMW’s ignition. I wondered if it had been Melissa’s intention to drive off without me. Thinking about it now, I wasn’t sure if I cared either way.
Scream Blue Murder: an action-packed thriller Page 3