Secrets

by Jane A. Adams

  Tariq closed his eyes and allowed his mind to be still. A pattern was emerging, a spider’s web of connections and pathways. So what was happening here? What was Clay trying to do?

  Tariq opened his eyes, suddenly afraid. Suddenly understanding at least the look of the puzzle, even if he could not exactly see the picture. He picked up his phone and called his father, knowing he’d have just come in from work.

  ‘Have dinner with me?’

  ‘I would like that very much. Where shall we meet?’

  Minutes later, Tariq had left the flat; he had money in his wallet and a spare card he kept only for emergencies. It might take a little persuasion to get his father to leave for a few days, but Tariq knew he’d manage it.

  ‘Don’t ask questions,’ he would say, just as Clay had said all of those years before. ‘Don’t go home. We are leaving now. I have to keep you safe.’

  Ironic, he thought, the way the world turned and life circled back again and again. The man you trusted will have you killed, Tariq thought. Maybe Clay was right, there really weren’t such things as friends.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  When Alec hadn’t arrived back by seven p.m., Naomi had called him on his mobile. She wasn’t unduly worried not to get a response; if he was driving and didn’t have his hands-free set up then he simply wouldn’t answer the phone. Half an hour later and the mild anxiety had transformed to full scale worry If he’d been running late he’d have called her. At the latest, he’d have given her a ring when he dropped Molly home. In the unlikely event that he’d stayed with Molly for a while, then he’d definitely have let her know.

  She phoned Molly’s home number and then Molly’s mobile, but there was no response from either. She could hear the rain, pelting against the window. Bad weather, bad road. Anything could have happened.

  In the end she decided she would have to go down to the reception and ask for help. She didn’t know the numbers for the local hospitals or even where the local hospitals were and she had no one she could call, except maybe Liz. Naomi thought about it for a moment and then realized she didn’t have Liz’s number in her phone.

  Who else?

  DI Barnes had left a card with them, but as most of his dealings had been with Alec, Naomi hadn’t put that number in her phone either. Groping around in the drawer of Alec’s bedside table, she found what she hoped was the card and took it downstairs with her.

  ‘Alec isn’t back. He’s really late. I don’t know what to do?’

  The receptionist took charge. She took the card from Naomi, dialled out, put the number into Naomi’s phone. Listened to the one-sided conversation as Naomi explained to DI Barnes that: ‘I’m probably worrying about nothing, but I can’t reach him or Molly and—’

  He promised to do what he could. That he would call her back. Made her promise to ring when Alec turned up as he was sure he would.

  Naomi hung up, unable to shake the feeling of dread that settled upon her.

  ‘I’ll get you a drink,’ someone said and she nodded dumbly.

  She sat in the lobby, willing the phone to ring. Willing Alec to come through the door, her hands clasped tightly around the glass, though she could not have said what spirit she was drinking. His head on her knee, Napoleon whined softly, sensing her mood. She laid her hand on his back, seeking comfort from the warm fur and the soft snuffling as he nosed at her thigh.

  The door opened and closed, a guest returning from a day out, chatting to someone. The door opened again and footsteps turned towards the bar. She waited, willing the phone to ring. Willing Alec to come home.

  The door opened again and she recognized the footsteps this time. Her heart seemed to stop. Barnes took her hand.

  ‘I’m sorry, Naomi, but there’s been an accident. I’ll take you to the hospital. It’s drowning out there, you’ll need a coat.’

  ‘Give me your key, Mrs Friedman. I’ll get it for you.’

  Dumbly, she handed her key over to the receptionist. ‘How bad?’ she said. ‘Please, don’t lie to me.’

  ‘It’s bad,’ he said. ‘Molly has a fractured skull. Alec … is in surgery.’

  He clasped her hand more tightly. ‘It will be all right. I’m sure it will.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Pouring rain, a tight bend. Maybe he took it too fast, we don’t know. He went off the road and rolled the car. Thankfully there was another car following close enough to see it happen. They called the ambulance. The paramedics got there very fast.’

  Naomi nodded. The receptionist had arrived with her coat and she slipped it on, heard Barnes asking if someone could look after Napoleon and then he led her to his car. Her hair was soaked by the time they got inside.

  ‘It’s a filthy night,’ Barnes said. ‘I’m guessing the road was slick, maybe mud, maybe an oil spill or something.’

  ‘Alec wouldn’t drive fast, not in this. The driver in the other car, did they say anything?’

  ‘He was still on the straight when Alec entered the bend. He said he saw the car skid on the first bend, and then lost sight of it. By the time he got there, they’d gone off the road. The driver could see the lights still on and phoned the emergency services, then he went down the slope to see if there was anything he could do. They were both unconscious and trapped in the car, so all he could do was wait on the road, so the ambulance could find them easily. Naomi, he probably saved their lives.’

  She nodded. If they live, she thought.

  ‘It wasn’t an accident. I know it wasn’t.’

  ‘Naomi, it’s a bad road, these things—’

  ‘It wasn’t an accident!’

  Barnes said nothing. Naomi tried hard not to cry but the tears rolled anyway. He reached out and clasped her hand. ‘He’ll be OK,’ Barnes said. ‘They got to him in time.’

  Inside the hospital, the sound of doors and trolleys and footsteps. She had done this before, sat in a corridor waiting for news.

  Barnes had spoken to the doctor. Molly was still unconscious and they were worried about fluid on the brain. Alec was still in surgery. He’d lost a great deal of blood, there were internal injuries … it was too early to tell.

  Barnes had sat with her and then fetched coffee and then, when Naomi had insisted, gone in search of someone who could tell her more.

  ‘They’ve told you all they can,’ Barnes had told her gently.

  ‘I know, but …’

  ‘It’s OK, I’ll go and ask again.’

  She felt calm, now. Far too calm. It would break. But more than that she felt rage. There was no other word for it. It seemed to grow from some point deep in her belly and rise through her until her limbs shook with it and her mind was filled.

  She found her mobile and searched, sound turned down so she could only just hear the electronic voice telling her the names in her phonebook. She found the number she wanted. Gregory answered on the second ring.

  ‘I want him dead,’ Naomi told him. ‘I don’t care how you do it and I don’t care who you take down with him but I want him gone.’

  ‘What happened?’ Gregory asked.

  She managed to tell him, choking on the words. ‘It wasn’t an accident. I know it wasn’t an accident.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Gregory told her softly. ‘Naomi, it’s OK. Leave it with me. It’s all in hand.’

  ‘I just want him dead.’

  She realized that Gregory had gone. That he’d hung up on her and for a moment the rage turned against him too.

  And then she understood. Gregory had heard what she had to say and there was need for nothing more.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Gregory had kept on the move these last weeks, surfacing only to make contact with Alec, Naomi and a few others. He knew he was far from safe; a wanted man and not just by the authorities. Fortunately, he didn’t believe he was top of anyone’s list just now. More people assumed he was dead than knew he was alive and after a lifetime of being ‘not there’, Gregory was comfortable with anonymity.

  N
ow things were shifting and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

  He believed Naomi; the coincidence of the ‘accident’ was just too great. Clay was accelerating, pushing the game on and from what Gregory knew about the man, that was unusual. The one thing Clay was truly comfortable with was time. He played the long con, not the quick return.

  So what had changed, or was changing? He’d make a bet that whatever it was, it had to do with Molly’s file.

  Gregory hadn’t quite figured out Molly’s motivation in putting this back into Clay’s hands – and she must have known that’s where it would end up. Molly was neither stupid, nor naive so she must have had reason for doing this. Reason that seemed good at the time. Maybe she was hoping if Clay acquired this bit of information, he would leave her alone, assume he had it all. Gregory thought about it, putting himself in Clay’s position. Would he believe that? No, not a bit of it.

  He sent a text to Nathan on the safe number – safer number, Gregory corrected himself – that Nathan had given him. The call came back a few moments later.

  ‘How bad?’ Nathan asked.

  ‘Molly Chambers is still unconscious. Alec Friedman is still in surgery. That’s all I know. But she’s convinced Clay is behind this and I wouldn’t be at all surprised.’

  ‘I’ll call you,’ Nathan said. ‘Be ready.’

  Always, Gregory thought. I was born that way.

  Barnes had returned and taken up his station beside her. ‘They can’t tell me much more,’ he said. ‘But they’ve stopped the bleeding. That has to be a good start, doesn’t it?’

  She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

  ‘Is there someone I can contact for you? A friend, family?’

  ‘No, they’re all miles away. My sister … she’s got the kids and her husband works shift, I don’t know if—’

  ‘She’d come to you. They’d arrange something.’

  ‘I know. Look, I know this sounds stupid, paranoid, even, but I don’t want anyone else here. Not anyone I love. I’m scared, for them. Scared someone else might get hurt.’

  ‘I think you may be overreacting, just a little, don’t you?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ She drew in a deep, quavering breath and thought of all the friends and the family who would come running to be with her. She only had to call them. She was lucky, Naomi thought and Gregory was right. She should be back there, just a phone call and a few minutes’ drive away from those she loved and who loved her. What the hell were they doing, chasing around the country like a couple of sixties hippies, trying to find themselves?

  ‘In the morning,’ she said. ‘I’ll call Sam in the morning. Like you said before, it’s a filthy wet night and it’s a long drive. I don’t want anyone rushing down here and risking an accident.’

  ‘OK, if that’s what you want.’ Barnes’s phone rang. He listened and then hung up. ‘Naomi—’

  ‘You have to go.’

  ‘No, I don’t have to. I can stay if you need me. The CSIs at the crash site have found something. They want me out there, but—’

  ‘Go. Please. See what they’ve found. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’ll get someone to come out to you. You’ll be on your own for maybe an hour, I promise no more than that.’

  ‘I’m fine. Wish I had Napoleon here though.’

  ‘You want me to fetch him? They allow guide dogs here.’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘Please, I’ll be fine. Go and do your job.’ She managed a smile. ‘I know how this feels, remember. I hated the hospital shifts, the sitting around knowing there was nothing you could do or say that made it better and that feeling you could do so much more if you could just get out there.’

  He leaned over and clasped her hands, ‘I’ll get someone out to you as soon as I can,’ he said. She heard him talking, presumably to the woman at reception, and then his footsteps receding.

  I know what it’s like, she thought. Just sitting, just being there, feeling you are no damn use at all and it occurred to her, as she heard the door swing closed and she was left alone, that perhaps just being there had been the most valuable thing of all.

  The rain hadn’t eased since the accident. The ambulance crew and paramedics, the police officers, even the CSI themselves had churned up the sodden ground and reduced the grass on the steep bank to a mudslide. Barnes followed the designated path down, picking his way as carefully as he could, nearly ending up on his backside more than once. They’d had to stretcher the injured up this slope, he thought, the narrow valley into which the car had tumbled being far too narrow for the air ambulance to have landed, even if the weather had been clear enough to allow an approach.

  It was fully dark now, the scene lit by powerful lamps that seemed only to illuminate the rain. A shelter had been thrown up over the car; it clung on to the slope, skewed at a precarious angle and the rain poured down from the road above and turned even the semi-protected scene to bog. One white clad figure knelt in the quagmire, another took photographs, a third had set up some kind of makeshift table and was attempting to protect its finds from the worst of the rain by rigging a plastic sheet over a box turned on its side.

  ‘What do you have?’ Barnes asked.

  ‘We’re trying to make sense of things in situ. Every time we move we’re destroying evidence and if we try and move the car we’ll just be mangling even more. But I’ve managed to get this off.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Servo unit from the ABS. It’s a vacuum pump. Essentially it’s what makes the solenoid work that makes the ABS system apply the brakes in little pulses, rather than slamming them on, you know?’

  Barnes nodded. He had a rough idea of how ABS brakes worked.

  ‘OK, I’m not going to get too technical, but this one’s been tampered with. A small hole has been made, weakening the servo unit, preventing the vacuum from operating properly.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘Well, I’m guessing here until we can test things properly, but he’d have still had brakes when he set out. Slowly, over the course of the journey, they’d have become less effective until eventually all he’d have had was the little bit of residual you get via the fluid left in the pipes. He seems to have tried to save the situation by using engine braking. Taking it out of gear and cutting the engine. And he applied the handbrake, but all that was probably too late. He hit the barrier right at the end, spun and tumbled down the slope, so far as we can tell.’

  ‘Any idea how fast he was going?’

  The CSI shook her head. ‘No skid marks that we can make out. We’ll see what’s left after the rain. On a straight bit of road, he might have got away with it. The witness in the car behind says he was already into the bend—’

  ‘But, from what you’ve said, there was no way of ensuring this was where the accident would happen.’

  ‘No, but have you driven this road?’

  ‘Not until tonight.’ Barnes thought about the route he had taken. The road transected two valleys, taking the high ground. There were speed limits and cameras all along it, sweeping bends and tight, unexpected zig zags like this. He nodded, taking the point.

  ‘No possibility that the hole was made during the crash?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m pretty certain not. Someone made this happen. It’s clever and simple and not foolproof. He might have pulled over earlier and called a mechanic when he felt something was not right, but most wouldn’t, most people don’t. They hang on, hoping it’ll be OK. Human nature, I suppose. I’m guessing the brakes would just have felt a bit off, at first, and on a wet road he might have just thought it was, well, weather and stuff.’

  Barnes nodded, knowing he would probably have done the same. Alec would have wanted to get back to Naomi. He would have taken a chance. Barnes hoped fervently he’d not taken too much of one.

  Naomi listened to the ticking of the clock. It was just a quartz movement, she decided, the sound made by the hands shifting across its face. She held her third cup of
unwanted coffee, sipping it at least gave her something to do and holding the cup at least stopped her hands from shaking.

  People passed her. Voices regularly asked if she was OK, if she wanted anything. No one could tell her anything, no one wanted to commit. She’d been asked about Molly’s next of kin; she’d not thought about it before, but assumed that Alec was probably it.

  Someone had said that Molly and Alec would need things from home. Nightclothes, toiletries. Naomi knew this was just an attempt to make things sound normal and hopeful, but she clung to the idea. Tried to work out who she could send to Molly’s house. Wondered who might have a spare key.

  She should call Alec’s parents again. They’d promised to come as quickly as possible, his mother distraught and horrified, but still concerned and even more horrified that Naomi was alone. But they were miles away. Maybe a four-hour drive. She wondered if she was putting them in danger by bringing them here but knew they would never forgive her if she’d not told them what had happened and then Alec—

  She refused even to think about it; truth was she could think about nothing else.

  Footsteps again, this time two pairs. One slow and measured and the other swift and light.

  ‘Naomi! Oh my God, this is terrible.’

  Someone sat down in the chair next to her and Naomi found herself swept into the woman’s arms. It took a moment for her to realize that it was Liz.

  ‘Gregory called me, said you were alone, said you might need a friend. So he brought me over.’

  Gregory? ‘Gregory’s here?’

  ‘I’m here. Don’t worry, everything’s under control. I just wanted to make sure Liz found you and see if there was anything you needed.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. Suddenly overwhelmed by it all. Mostly by relief that she was not alone. But maybe Liz shouldn’t be here, either. Maybe …