Keep Calm

by Mike Binder

  “They’ve killed Richard? No, no … who were they?”

  “Heaton. They’re with Heaton. They work for him.” She pulled back. That made no sense to her, no more sense than Richard being dead and gone could possibly make.

  “Kate, we have to leave. I want to hide the rental car. We’ll take Richard’s aunt’s car, the one in the garage, but we have to be quick.” He pulled the pistol out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. She took the weapon in a daze, not sure what it was until she felt its weight.

  “You stay in the room. If anyone comes in that door but me, you point this straight at him and fire. Keep firing.”

  “Wait … what? Don’t leave.”

  “I’ll be back. Five minutes. No more. Be ready. We’ll take the kids and go.”

  He sprinted through the dark up the road again, then crossed the field to the west and through to the back trail where he had abandoned the rental car in the scrub. He drove it back to the mill house and pulled into the motor court, right up to Richard’s body. He lifted the corpse and put it in the back of the Ford wagon. He found a tarp in the garage and covered the corpse. He picked up Richard’s wallet from the ground and exchanged it with his own. He wasn’t going to get very far being Adam Tatum in the days ahead. He thought he’d at least let Richard sub for him when the car was found and maybe throw whoever came looking off the trail for a beat. Lord knows, given the condition of Richard’s face, no one was going to be recognizing him for a long time.

  It was cold, calculated thinking, but he had no choice. Every move from here on in would be forged by a burning desire to keep himself and his family alive. He drove the rental car back into the brush and hustled up the road to the house. He pulled the old Volvo from the garage, went into the kitchen, got as many of the supplies as he could carry, and threw them into the back of the car.

  Kate brought the kids down; they were groggy and scared. Both of them wanted to know where they were going.

  “We’re taking a ride. I’ll tell you where when we get in the car.” Trudy stopped him and spoke to him with a maturity he hadn’t heard before.

  “Daddy, are you going to be okay?”

  “I am, yes. Thank you.”

  “I love you and know that you’re innocent. Billy does, too. He’s just sad, that’s all. But I really know it. I know you’d never do something like that. You know I do, right?”

  “I do, sweetheart. Thank you for saying that. It means a lot to me.”

  They led the kids out to the Volvo. Adam had parked right over the large and gory pool of blood so Kate wouldn’t see it. She whispered to him and wanted to know where Richard’s body was. He shook his head; he didn’t want to discuss it.

  They pulled out of the cobbled drive, went in the direction opposite the one in which Harris and Peet had fled.

  After a few minutes and a long round of groggy questions, Billy finally fell back asleep. Adam picked up speed. They sailed up and down lonely wooded roads for forty frigid minutes. It was quiet enough now for Kate to think about the reality of Richard Lyle being dead, of all the memories, all the joy, all the pain, all the idiosyncrasies that made up the man she’d known. He was gone now and why? Because he had helped her.

  She wished for a quick second she had let him take her in the bathroom the night before. She made another wish—that those images wouldn’t be the ones that she came back to for the rest of her life: the foggy way his eyes met hers in the damp bathroom mirror; the hungry, longing look on his face. She let it go unformed; she didn’t have the energy to allow it to percolate. The idea of Richard dead was a darker, more encompassing pain than any specific notion would hold. He was over. There was no room for “if I had’’ and “I wish I hadn’t.” Richard Lyle’s larger-than-life story was finished now, closed out, because of her.

  “Where will we go, Adam?”

  I don’t know. I don’t know, he thought to himself. It’s a goddamn island.

  He didn’t answer, just kept driving.

  They drove a bit longer, until he finally pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. He took a deep, troubled breath and turned to face his frightened wife. He wanted to soothe her, but no words sprang to mind. He had no idea what to do or where to go next, no sense of whom to turn to, only whom to turn from, which was everyone. Her lips quivered in a way that told him that she needed to hear a reassuring word, so he did something that he had resolutely promised never to do again: he lied to his wife.

  “Give me a beat, Kate. I know exactly what we need to do.”

  ON THE HUNT ■ 6

  Steel and a contingent of officers took the mill house early in the morning. It was eight days now since the bombing and she was more than bothered. Her face bore a full-time fretful glaze. She had let whoever was behind him, whoever was chasing him, put too much time in between herself and Adam Tatum.

  Adam and his family were an essential piece of the puzzle. They would know the who and the why, the truth of how he came to be involved in a bombing of Number 10. She had seen the evidence taken from his home computer firsthand now: the website comments he had made, the sick photos in his hard drive of Roland Lassiter. She didn’t believe they were real. Everyone else did—all the forensic gods and goddesses at Scotland Yard and on the home secretary’s team. They swore to a person that it was all verifiably Tatum. Steel didn’t buy it.

  As the uniformed officers tackled the historic-looking stone walls of the driveway’s courtyard, she leaned against the squad car that had brought her. She knew there would be no one inside, knew the house would be empty. There would be no one present to flash the warrant to. The Tatums, if they were alive, would be long gone, she was sure of it.

  The blood work had come back on the body from the ditched rental car. It had been found, sadly, two days earlier, not an eighth of a mile from here. It belonged to Richard Desmond Lyle, Tatum’s wife’s boyfriend from years back. Two .30-caliber bullets straight into his forehead had felled Mr. Lyle. It had taken time to run his blood, which had no matches, until the connection was made from his calling the cell phones of Kate Tatum and Gordon Thompson, and his place near Paddington was gone through and DNA samples had been collected. Memorabilia had been found linking Lyle to Tatum’s wife. Richard Lyle had lived a clean life as far as the law was concerned.

  His wasn’t an easy trail to walk back. The mill house wasn’t even in his name; it was in the name of an aunt, a Penelope Ann Jordan.

  Forensics estimated that Mr. Lyle had been dead almost four days. The way that the body was hidden, away from the house, told Steel that Tatum hadn’t done the killing. If Tatum had killed Richard Lyle, he would have hid the body on the property and laid low. There would be no point in moving on. This remote country shack would have been a perfect place to sit tight. Someone else did this, someone who was also on Tatum’s trail, someone who had gotten there before Steel had.

  She was guessing that the Tatums left right after Lyle was killed, which meant that she was at least four days behind. Why else would Tatum have placed his own wallet on the dead man if he wasn’t trying to purchase time? Scheming to confuse the next group to come along? The former police detective knew better than to stay around after Mr. Lyle’s killing.

  A large, faded bloodstain was found seeped into the center of the brick courtyard. It was sampled, logged, and sent to the Yard. Steel was certain it was from Richard Lyle. He had been killed there in the courtyard. Shotgun shells were found in the motor court and in the ditch heading out to the road. Tatum had stood his ground somehow, run whoever killed Lyle off, then hid Lyle’s body in the rental car and taken another car, leaving immediately with his family.

  Steel phoned Edwina Wells and had her put someone on finding out what kind of car Richard Lyle drove. Again, nothing came up. She then had them find out what kind of car the aunt drove. Finally, within twenty minutes, there was a vehicle worth tracking: a 1969 Volvo, registered to Lyle’s aunt. Tire tracks coming into and out of the garage seemed to suggest tha
t the Volvo had been there recently. DPG shot a loud flare through the system. Somewhere in Britain, someone would have seen that old Volvo.

  Steel slowly walked the road and found another spent shell in the grizzled brush off to the side. As she called the others, she saw something else—a steady dripping trail of blood that had seeped deep into the road and soil, coming off the vine-covered stone gate by the side of the road. She overturned four more spent shells, all leading to scattered bits of broken taillights on and off the asphalt. She found a battered piece of metal that she deduced was once the keyhole to the lock on the trunk of a car. She paced the road, saw it all in her mind, second by second, like a flipbook at a gum shop. Tatum had hit one of them. He had hit the car twice, a third time, maybe. One of them would have a bullet wound. That would help. So would piecing together the taillight and lock for a make and a model. Tire marks squealing out in a long line of desperation raced away from the area around the broken taillights like a junkyard dog whose foot had been stepped on, then kicked with a steel boot in the head. The tire tracks told Steel that the car more or less tried to leap away.

  Tatum. He had sent them running for their lives. Of course the family had to leave. He was sure they’d be back.

  Steel knew who the men that killed Richard Lyle were. She saw them there in the courtyard, as if she were watching overhead as they snuffed out Lyle’s life four mornings earlier. They were Heaton’s men, the men who were in her bedroom. She knew firsthand that they could sneak up in the cloak of night and make the pitch-black even darker still. She would play it out in her mind with a near-perfect clarity, the stumpy redhead and the lanky baldy, driving away up the road, sweaty wide eyes, shotgun sober, silently praying that they made it out of Tatum’s range before the backside of one of their heads exploded.

  She smiled to herself. It would all lead back to Heaton. She was sure of it now. It was time to sit Georgia and the others down—time to draft warrants.

  * * *

  LESS THAN THREE hours later Steel was presenting her identification at the stuffy little security box at Downing Street. She met in the Cabinet Room with Darling, Munroe, Burnlee, Edwina Wells, and several Scotland Yard detectives and the foreign secretary. They were waiting for the chancellor. She had been upstairs in the private residence after a long morning of meetings.

  Up in her bedroom, Georgia changed once again for Steel. She redid her hair. What was it that made her do this? Every time she thought of Steel, she harshly judged her own clothing choices. She reminded herself how she dressed like an old woman already. She thought back to how easily Steel seemed to present herself, how her skirts just seemed to hang off her little body in a perfect drop. She had put on a light blue pantsuit, frustratingly combed her hair out for a third time, and was putting a little red on her cheeks when Early knocked and told her they were ready for her in the Cabinet Room.

  The now daily meeting went as well as could be expected. They were starting to have a “gang that couldn’t shoot straight” feeling as a group; Georgia could feel their confidence on the wane, especially Steel, who oddly seemed to have the most to lose, the most on the line. The ever-rigid Darling was calmer; he had a comfortable manner, as if it was only a matter of time before they found the Tatums and what was at the bottom of the box. Munroe was on edge, though, particularly at the suggestion that now was the time to release Tatum’s image and name to the press.

  “Until we know more about this man, about what his motives are, about who is behind him, I don’t want to run off and blame an American because that’s all every front page will say. ‘It’s a Goddamn American!’ Believe me, we will hear from the White House on that, straight off,” Darling scoffed openly.

  “And what if we do? It clearly is an American. That doesn’t mean America. It means one American.” Burnlee wasn’t on the same page. He stood up and faced the room.

  “It won’t end well if we look like we’re rushing into calling this out on an American. I don’t need to remind everyone in this room how dicey our relationships are with the US these days. We don’t need to give the British people another reason to hate America unless we absolutely have to.”

  Georgia weighed in now. “Should we at least let the White House know? Give them a window on this?”

  “I don’t think we can afford the time,” Steel said, agreeing with Darling. Tatum needed to be found. They weren’t the only ones looking for him. Tea was served. Georgia pondered. She read through the reports, the file on the mill house, and the events in Kent. She sipped her tea as she read, and fiddled with her hair.

  Davina sensed her apprehension. Going public would make it all very international. Adam Tatum from someplace as all-American as Michigan would change the fabric of the story in a profound way. The volume level would make everything harder to hear through, even if, yes, it would make it harder for Tatum to hide. Georgia had to think like a politician, like a head of state. Steel had a thought toward a compromise.

  “Maybe we can buy you some time. Release the nonrelated story of the discovery of Lyle’s death, his car, and the incident in Kent. Use the press from that to see if we can get the public to help us find the Volvo. It would give you the time to deal with the White House and the American embassy.” Georgia looked across the table. She wanted, once again, to wink, thank her, but knew to Darling and Burnlee and the others that it would look as if Steel had crossed a line and had dabbled in politics, in direct violation of her role as an investigator on a case of dire importance. She shot a darkened look across the table, as if the idea were distasteful at first, as if she, too, thought her tail had been stepped on.

  Major Darling, however, liked the idea.

  “I say yes. We need to go public, and we will soon. We can’t hold this back much longer. I can promise you that in a blink the press will get on to Tatum and it’ll make our one big problem several much bigger problems. Let’s give Burnlee the day to deal with the White House, and let’s get the public tracking that Volvo for us.”

  It was time to speak of the elephant in the room. What was Heaton’s involvement? How could it be possible? Steel tried to explain it as fact. She was sure that Heaton’s men had murdered Richard Lyle. Other than the fact that the broken taillights and trunk lock were sure to be from a new model Mercedes, she had no evidence, but her gift, if she had one, was a God-given, highly developed sense of intuition.

  Lyle had died in the center of the courtyard. The blood work on the broken bricks confirmed it: two bullets to his forehead from close range. He hadn’t been running, hadn’t been hiding. He was killed by either someone he knew or someone he didn’t consider to be a threat. She was sure it was Heaton’s two men.

  Heaton was at the back of the theater of this entire shit show, watching with a proud smirk as all of the actors ran his lines. This wasn’t detective work; this was just plain sense. The chancellor and the others had to see that. She wanted a warrant. She wanted to have him brought into the Yard for a proper sit-down. The home secretary led the side of the group that urged restraint.

  “David’s a very connected man, and very public. To go after him now, without a shred of evidence that he’s involved in any way other than one that’s as distasteful to him as can be, is foolish. It would only get the pans pounding out there in exactly the way we don’t want them to. It will turn this all into a lurid twenty-four-hour soap opera and will not bring us one beat closer to capturing our bomber. Yes, Tatum did work for him: it doesn’t make David guilty. We’ve all known him for too many years to believe he would ever be involved with something like this.”

  Georgia suggested a second compromise.

  “I want to call him in. Right here. In the den. Sit with him as a fellow member of government. As a man of Britain. Ask him his assessment of the situation. Go from there. Major Darling, Sir Melvin, you’ll both join with us. We three will take a measure of David’s view on this. I can’t think of another way. I agree with the home secretary. We can’t go riding off toward him. He�
�s done too much for this country, as has his family. He deserves the benefit of the doubt, and we will give it to him.”

  Steel piped in with a request.

  “I would like to sit in as well, please, Madam Chancellor. I need to hear his take, if it’s at all possible.”

  Burnlee answered for the room. “At this point, that would be a breach of Sir David’s confidence. This will be a talk and nothing more, not an inquiry.” Everyone in the room knew what the HS was really saying. It wouldn’t be the time for cheap theatrics, and that’s what they would presumably get with Steel in the room. A loose firecracker. She’d labeled herself early on. The sit-down was above her pay grade. There was nothing she could do but nod in unpleasant acceptance. Georgia tried to soften the response.

  “I will personally fill you in on every detail, Inspector Steel. You have my word. I understand your need to have this file, and I’ll be sure you get it.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate that.” Georgia gave a friendly smile. She didn’t care what Burnlee and the others thought about how much attention she did and didn’t pay to Steel. She wanted Steel to know that the pushback was from the others and had nothing to do with her.

  * * *

  GORDON THOMPSON READ the news of Richard Lyle’s death in a copy of the Daily Mail someone had left behind at the Potted Cobbler, an old Tudor pub he regularly stopped at in Tewkesbury on his way to and from Heaton’s stables where he’d been up feeding the dogs. The news of Richard’s death, the police manhunt for his aunt’s Volvo: it was too much for Gordon. He was well aware who had done this and knew what it meant.

  It had been years since Gordon had cried—maybe as far back as when Helen, his vivacious wife, Kate’s mother, had passed. Maybe it was when he realized once and for all that Kate was staying in America, that he was indeed a man alone. It had been that long. Yet now, here, he felt like bawling.

  He blamed himself. He had done this; he had killed Richard Lyle. He had adored him, for years. Richard had become his link to Kate, who was his link to Helen, who was his last bond to his mother, his final connection to his father, now both gone so long that Gordon some days couldn’t even remember what they sounded like or even looked like.