He’s going to kill me, she thought. He’d made no attempt to hide his face. He didn’t care that she might recognize him again.
He left her in the kitchen. He’d taken a small device from his pocket, and now he walked back down the hall, listening to the small hum it made and watching a tiny screen.
Since there was nothing to be gained by screaming, Clara shut up and watched and tried to work out how she could escape. The ties cut into her wrists when she tried to move them, and she was now so tense she could hardly breathe.
She watched as the man bent down to look beneath her telephone table and take something that had been concealed there. She watched as he went upstairs, strained to hear him moving about and struggled against her bonds so hard she could feel her hands begin to bleed.
He came back down, and she watched again as he went into the front room and then the big room in the extension. In all that time he never made a sound, never uttered a word.
Then he came back into the kitchen and laid what he had found on the table. Curious, in spite of her terror, Clara leaned forward and looked. ‘What the hell are they?’
Tiny round disks, each with a little pin wire extending on one side.
The man did not reply, but glanced around the room. He noticed the tenderizing mallet in the rack hanging beside the knives and ladles and slotted spoons, and for a moment Clara thought he was going to use it on her. She screamed again and then once more as he brought the mallet down on the small black objects resting on the table, crushing them like insects.
‘Off-the-shelf product,’ he said. ‘You can get them on the Internet or in half a dozen real world shops up and down the country. They work, but their range is short. I doubt if there’s anyone out there still listening, and if they are, I doubt very much that they are concerned with your welfare, Clara. Certainly, no one came running when they heard you scream, did they?’
‘What?’ The information coalesced in Clara’s mind. ‘Someone bugged my house? Oh, my God, when? Who, and who the hell are you?’
He dealt with the final question first. ‘Many people would consider me their worst nightmare,’ he said. ‘But for you, Clara, I’ll only be a very bad dream. I’ve no wish to hurt you, but that doesn’t mean I won’t, not if you don’t tell me what I need to know.’
She stared at him, stunned.
‘As to who planted these, well, you can tell me that. Who has been here? What did they want to know, and when did they come?’
‘Why should I tell you?’
‘Because I’ll hurt you if you don’t. It’s what I do, one of the things I have a talent for. Clara, I’ve no grudge against you, no reason to want you dead or even severely maimed, so I will promise to do no lasting harm. But I will hurt you all the same, so how about we make this easy?’
He gave her time to think. Like Munroe, he, too, knew the value of silence. Of non-action.
‘I don’t know who they were,’ she said. ‘Some thugs came here and beat Paul. They wanted to know about Neil, what he’d told us about that journalist.’
‘Jamie Dale?’
‘Yes, her.’
‘And what had he told you?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Paul wasn’t even here when Neil called. He was working late that night. Neil just wanted me to phone her and pass a message on. It wasn’t even a message. Just to call her.’
‘And it was about? She was to contact him about what?’
That rapid head-shake again. She was twisting her hands against the ties, and the plastic dug into her wrists. He could see the blood dripping to the floor, but she seemed unaware.
‘About what?’ he prompted.
‘It was just one word. A one-word message.’
She thought that must be too simple an answer, he could see that. She thought it wasn’t a big enough secret to warrant all this death, all this trouble. She thought he wouldn’t believe her when she told him how simple it was.
‘And the word?’
‘Gregory. Just a name. Just Gregory.’
He nodded and could see the relief in her eyes that he seemed satisfied. It would be easy now; she wouldn’t fight him any more. ‘Who else came here?’
‘Just the police.’
‘The police?’
‘Yes. To tell me Neil was dead, and then they came back. One of the original policemen came back, and another one, a different one.’
‘Their names were?’
She shook her head. She was trying to remember. ‘They left a card,’ she said. ‘One was called Munroe, and the other left a card.’
‘You still have it?’
‘Yes, in the big room. On the bookshelf. Behind the television. I was going to throw it away but—’
He went through and found it. One glance at the name confirmed who had been responsible for the listening devices. Though it wasn’t like Charlie Eddison to buy off the shelf. He must have been in a hurry.
He returned to the kitchen and took a pair of cutters from his pocket. She flinched when he touched her, convinced this was going to be the promised pain. He released her hands, but not her feet.
‘Tell me, did you call anyone after they had gone? Straight after they had gone?’
He saw the look of horror in her eyes. She stared at the remnants of the bugs still on the table. ‘I called my husband,’ she whispered. ‘I called Paul.’
He nodded. He had expected that. ‘And how long were you on the phone to him?’
‘Less than a minute. He hung up on me. He said I was stupid to be calling him.’
She bit at her lower lip. He could see little flecks of dry skin and small red weals where others had been chewed off.
‘Have you called him since?’
An emphatic no. She had not. ‘They were listening in, is that what you’re telling me? They listened to my call. They’ll know where Paul is, where the kids are.’
‘If you didn’t stay on for longer than you told me, then no. Not from that. The danger is that they may try and contact him again.’
‘His phone’s been off since!’
‘So you did try?’
A rapid rush of blood to her cheeks as she was caught in the half lie, followed swiftly by an equally rapid draining of colour as she realized what she might have done. ‘You hear about it in films, don’t you? People being traced by their mobile phones. Oh God, he didn’t even tell me where they’d gone. He didn’t want me to know in case those thugs came back and—’
‘Clara, listen to me. Paul and your children, they will not be safe. They never were.’
‘What do you mean? He didn’t tell me anything! Paul didn’t tell me where they were!’
He sighed. How best to explain this? Few people were actually good at disappearing. They always left a trail, they always left too many links in the chain.
‘Clara, Paul isn’t me, he isn’t even you. If you’d wanted to give your kids the best chance, then you should have taken them, far away from here. You’d likely have done a far better job. He’ll have gone somewhere he feels safe, somewhere he knows. Somewhere familiar, Clara, and it won’t take much working out where that is. Not for you, not for me, not for them.’
‘How do I know you aren’t them too?’
He decided to forgive her for the grammatical error. ‘Some other time I might well be, but not just now. For a little time our interests run side by side. And you can trust me.’
‘Trust you?’ She laughed harshly. ‘I don’t think so.’ She paused, considering, her eyes wide and her mouth tight. ‘And if that changes?’
‘If that changes you will never know.’
‘Why?’ But she knew the answer.
He leant close, deciding he would say it anyway. ‘Because, Clara, you and yours would already be dead.’
Leaving her in the kitchen he went back to examine the house room by room. He could hear her sobbing. It occurred to him that now she had her hands free she might try and prepare herself for when he returned, get a knife from the
rack, or the mallet from the table. He had left her feet tied to the chair, but it was possible she’d have freed herself by the time he returned.
He thought it unlikely though. He’d filled her mind with doubt, with renewed fears, and for a while she would be numb, inactive until the shock diminished.
The little girls obviously shared a room. Large, square and airy and decorated in pink and a rather acid green, as though they both been allowed to choose a colour. Green and pink also on the beds. Books, boxes of toys, a small desk on which drawings and pencils had been spread. He opened the wardrobe door and tried to guess what had been taken. The hangers had been spaced across the rail as though to give an impression of fullness, when in fact half the clothes were missing. He opened drawers and found their sparseness similarly disguised. Clara had thought this through as best she could. He was right – she should have been the one to take the children. Fierce mothers were always a dangerous animal.
The master bedroom was tidy, clean, undistinguished. Pale lavender on the walls, and cream everywhere else apart from a splash of colour in the duvet. Family photos by the bed. The four of them in happier times, and the little girls. He took the picture of the children and put it in his pocket. The larger photo had clearly previously been hanging on the wall – a loop of string had been threaded through the little metal hook on the back of the cheap frame – but it now stood on the bedside cabinet, supported by the strut.
So she still cared for him, he thought. Paul, not just the children, figured in her fears. He wondered how the husband now felt. If he blamed his wife for having such an errant brother.
The third room had been converted to a home office. He spent a little time examining the paperwork, but it seemed to be a mix of household bills and items relating to the car dealership.
He took the laptop anyway and a stick drive he found in a drawer.
Downstairs, in the hall, a space where the larger photograph had hung. He checked the two rooms, noticing that there were several pictures taken on a long sweeping beach. A closer look revealed a ruined cottage on the headland. He took that picture with him back to the kitchen and laid it on the table. Clara hadn’t moved.
‘Where is this?’ he asked quietly.
‘I won’t tell you.’
Carefully, he took the back off the frame and slipped the picture out. There was nothing written on the reverse, and he saw her relief and little triumph and then her shock as he put the picture in his pocket with the first one.
‘Neil sent something to you,’ he said.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘He sent you something not long before he died.’
He saw her eyes flick towards the doorway and the big room. ‘I’d like it, Clara.’ Until that moment he had been guessing. It was good to have confirmation. ‘And I’d like to know where this picture was taken.’
No response.
‘Clara, I can look, but that would just involve a mess and would take some time. Do you really want me in your house longer than is strictly necessary?’
She tensed, and he saw she had some of her fight back. He could admire that, he thought, but her timing really wasn’t all that good. He didn’t have the time or the patience today.
He gave her one last chance. ‘What did he send you?’ Then he took her hand. She tried to pull away, then tried harder as he placed a thumb on the pressure point on her wrist and twisted the hand. He felt the joint give way, the wrist bend beyond what nature had intended for it. He released the pressure slowly. He could see in her face that she was close to passing out, and he didn’t want to have to wait for her to recover.
But it was enough. He brought the envelope through to the kitchen and laid the contents on the kitchen table. Three postcards, one of a vessel he recognized.
‘What are these?’
‘You should frigging know. You sent them to him.’
She was cradling the injured wrist, glaring at him, trying not to let the tears come. Clara, he thought, was a tough woman.
‘Why do you think I sent them, Clara?’
She swallowed nervously. ‘I don’t know. He said I had to keep them but he didn’t say why. I was supposed to keep them and give them to Jamie Dale, he said they were something to do with this Gregory.’ Her eyes widened as a thought struck her. ‘Are you Gregory?’ she said.
He didn’t reply. Instead, he turned the postcards over and looked at the brief messages. ‘They are signed with an F,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘Neil thought they were from Freddie. Freddie Gains, they were friends. Then he realized – realized they were something else.’
‘Something else? What did he tell you about them?’
‘Nothing. Really nothing. He just got someone out on day release to post them for him and asked me to give them to Jamie Dale. But then he died, and then she was in that car crash and—’
‘Who else did you tell? About the cards. Or about Gregory?’
‘No one. I wouldn’t lie to you. No one. I told no one.’
He believed her. She’d gone beyond the will to lie; now all she wanted was him to be satisfied and then to go.
He left the house a few minutes later with the laptop and the pictures and the postcards, satisfied that he had learnt all he could.
He had placed a knife on the table, close enough for her to reach, and advised her how to look after the damaged wrist. She could free herself now, though he knew it would take her a while to gather enough momentum to do that, when the nausea had passed.
Leave here, he had told her. Pack a bag and go. But he didn’t think she would.
And he had gained one other thing. She had given him a description of those who had come to beat her husband. From the way she had described them and what they had done, Gregory was almost sure they would turn out to be just local thugs, paid by the job and knowing nothing about why they were commissioned to do it. His local contacts would soon come up with a name or two, he was pretty sure of that. And he would not be as gentle with them as he had been with Clara Thompson.
TWENTY-ONE
Suddenly, the tension had seemed to diminish. Nothing happened – no phone calls, no threats, nothing to fear – and it was odd the way this only seemed to add to the sense of menace. It was as though someone or something was drawing deep breath before returning to the attack.
Naomi had been surprised to be invited to Jamie’s funeral and very surprised to find that her body had come home to Pinsent for burial. Somehow she had expected Jamie to be buried down south, where she had worked and lived for the past decade. To Naomi’s knowledge only her sister now lived close to their old home; her father had died while the girls were still young, and the mother – a woman Naomi had met only a couple of times – had moved back to Wales, where she had spent her girlhood.
The invitation had come from Jamie’s sister, Belinda, delivered via a mutual friend.
Jamie Dale had been dead for almost three weeks. It was five days since the attack on Travers, and four since the last phone call: Jamie’s voice calling Naomi’s name. Three since the explosion they now knew had killed five and injured many more.
She had barely slept in the intervening time, even though there had been no more calls, no more drama. The lack of contact, absence of continuity, getting to her almost as much as the calls had done. Anticipation frayed her nerves.
As Munroe had observed: never underestimate the value of silence.
Although the rolling news regarding the explosion had now ceased, every news bulletin still led with it, though as far as Naomi could tell, there had been no new developments. In the absence of facts, folklore manifested, and the number of terrorist organizations either claiming responsibility or denying involvement, dizzying as it was, only added to the sense of ongoing drama. Among the wild theories were that it was Al Qaeda, Irish terrorists, animal rights activists, anarchists . . .
The police denied each claim, each conspiracy, but replaced it with nothing concrete. Alec could tell
her little more; alternating between being stuck in the office, following the Madigor paper trail and interviewing witnesses, he felt peripheral.
And now there was Jamie’s funeral.
‘Should I go?’ she asked Alec when he phoned.
‘Any reason why not?’
‘I suppose not. Will you be there? I just feel so . . .’
‘I think we all feel like that. Yes, I’ll be there. Munroe too.’
He didn’t sound very happy about that, she thought. ‘I’ll ask Harry to take me then.’
‘Do that. I’ll see you there.’
And so she had. Harry drove her to the service at St Anne’s church and then to the graveside at the local cemetery out on the main coast road. The day was warm, but a harsh wind blew off the sea as it always did and Naomi was glad she’d worn a jacket over her summer dress, a grey print she hoped was suitable for such an occasion. Black seemed too sombre for the Jamie she had known, but she didn’t quite have the courage to wear the bright colours her one-time friend had so loved.
Alec and Munroe had not come into the church. They had arrived late, he explained briefly as everyone filed out and he met her by the door.
‘If you want to go with your wife to the cemetery, I’ll follow on,’ Munroe said.
He had an interesting voice, Naomi thought. Such an odd mix of accents, as if he had lived in a great many paces and assimilated just a smidgen of local colour in each one.
‘Thanks,’ Alec said briefly. He took her arm tightly, and they walked with Harry to his car. ‘Napoleon not with you?’
‘He’s stayed home with Patrick. They’re at Mari’s house helping paint the back bedroom.’
Night Vision Page 15