The Distance: A Thriller
Page 27
Step out. Close the door. That’s good, don’t hurry it. Mechanical, careful, even though the blood’s beating in my throat so hard it could choke me. But it’s the little details that matter. There will be no prints.
I turn. On the far side of the damp lawn, the evergreens rock.
Someone there?
Go. Just go.
I drive, on minor rural roads, for six miles. Six miles with the image of Graves in my head, as if it’s on a loop that I’m being forced to watch again and again. My hands are clammy on the wheel. You shouldn’t have phoned. You shouldn’t have given them a chance.
At last I come to a possible spot: a gateway, a copse. The winter trees are bare, skeletal, but there’s an evergreen holly, some scrubby brambles, a thickening of undergrowth. The ground is soft: the tire marks will be there tomorrow. Nothing I can do about that.
I get out, retrieve the spare set of plates from its hidden compartment, and set about changing them. My hands are cold and stiff, and filthy by the time I’ve finished, but Graves’s village is the sort where retired civil servants pass the time jotting down the vehicle registration numbers of strangers. For all I know the woman walking the fat Labrador has a photographic memory. Every major road into London has license-plate-recognition cameras. I won’t lay a trail for them.
Then I pull off Elizabeth Crow’s brown wig and stuff it into a bag, along with her shoes and coat: I’m Karla again, in lipstick and heels, though I have to fight the shakes in my hand as I apply the lipstick.
I check the map, then I make one call to Robbie—precise, practical instructions with no explanation—and finally I look around, in door pockets and under seats, for anything I wouldn’t want to leave behind.
I get back into the car, start the engine again, and move off.
On the way back into London the shock uncoils on me. Sometimes I’m fine. Sometimes I’m shaking. I’m cold, but when I turn the heater up it makes no difference.
I want to curl into a ball. I want to shut it all out. Then I want to talk to someone—anyone—tell them everything. It’s shock, I know, this need to make a story of it: as if that will make sense of it, make it safe. I’m in shock. Ridiculous. Then I want to laugh, and that’s shock, too. I set my jaw: the effort makes my muscles ache.
Get a grip. Bloody well get a grip.
I can’t tell anyone. Robbie, Sean … The less they know, the better. Because once you start to explain, it becomes a habit, or an obligation. And once they know they’ll be part of it: presented with decisions they shouldn’t be asked to make. They don’t want that. They’re just doing their jobs.
Instead I stare through the windscreen at the lights of the other vehicles on the road, flashing past at coded intervals: there’s a message out there that I can’t decipher.
I want to forget Graves’s face, and I can’t.
I hit the outskirts of West London: the sodium lighting flattens the buildings into a two-dimensional frieze like a cardboard stage set.
At last I take a left and pull over, leave the engine running, and get out. Robbie’s waiting on the curb, hands in pockets. As we pass on the pavement, I say, “Get it off the road. Make it disappear.” The calm in my voice belongs to someone else.
“Plates?”
“Already done.”
Robbie just nods and slides into the driver’s seat, and the car accelerates away. But I’ve read his big quiet features. He’s trying not to look too hard at any of this, trying to take it one step at a time, but he knows something dark’s lurking just out of sight: something bad has happened, and we’re covering our tracks. How much does he guess?
He’ll know for certain tomorrow. The TV news will see to that.
I hurry back to the main road. The traffic’s a steady stream belching fumes, three lanes in and three out, separated by a barrier: I have to descend to a tunnel to cross. The lighting’s yellowish gray, and the air down here is cold and damp and smells of urine. The steps at the far end are half blocked by a group of kids, aged thirteen or fourteen at most, smoking and talking and pulling at one another. Tinny tunes jangle out of their mobile phones. They watch me as I edge round them, assessing my vulnerability: their confidence is frightening. One of them says something to my back as I scuttle away, but I don’t make out the words, and right now I don’t care.
As I surface it starts to rain.
The next car is waiting for me in a side road, hazards blinking, Sean behind the wheel. It pulls away before I’ve got my door closed.
It hits me: Sean doesn’t know the mess he’s in.
We weave across the city, taking the least direct route. Corner shops and pubs are open. People are picking up groceries, meeting friends, heading out for a Sunday-night drink … The midevening normality of it all jolts me. I’ve been robbed of my bearings, knocked out of place. The last two hours seem like a sickbed dream, stained with fever: I’m not sure what time it is, and when I look at my watch, the numbers and the hands are meaningless.
Halfway back to Docklands I say suddenly, “Graves is dead.”
Sean looks sideways at me, briefly, then back to the road. His hands tighten on the steering wheel. He breathes out, once. His face is still.
“He was murdered at his mother’s house this evening. You spoke to his neighbors, they told you where to find him. You’ll be a suspect. Dump the car, then go home. Craigie will contact you with a cover story and an alibi. As soon as the news breaks, go to the police. They’ll question you, but your cover will hold, I promise. I’m sorry. I didn’t know this was going to happen.”
He’s silent: driving mechanically, absorbing all this. Finally he asks, “Does Dad know?” and he sounds so young.
Up in my apartment I want Scotch, but instead I make myself tea with two sugars: the cliché for shock. It’s almost undrinkable, but I force it down like medicine.
Then I log on and send Finn details of the two calls, one to the unknown mobile, the other from it.
When the phone rings I jump so hard the tea slops into my lap.
It’s Charlotte’s phone, but I don’t pick up, and the caller hangs up. The message light winks at me. One message. I hit play, and Mark Devlin starts talking, but he isn’t talking to me, he’s talking to another woman, and tonight she has ceased to exist.
I phone Robbie, on a safe line. It’s not a good call. I hear it in his silences, and in the way his voice goes up and down when he speaks: he’s fighting his fears. Sean in a police interview room, Sean’s face in some copper’s memory … “He knew the risks,” he says. “Had to happen sooner or later, I s’pose. Sometimes you’re just unlucky.” But his stoicism’s tissue thin; a word could puncture it.
“How was Sean?” he asks, and I say, “Sean was great. He’s a good lad. We’ll look after him.” And I mean it: whatever it costs, whoever I have to bribe or smear, I’ll see Sean isn’t harmed by this. Somehow it’s still not enough.
Then finally: Craigie.
That first meeting with Graves, lifting the file, the confrontation over the phone, Graves dead … So many things withheld from him till now. I can feel his resentment growing on the other end of the line, but when I get to Sean’s alibi he says, “I’ll get on to it.” Business first; recriminations later.
When I finally put the phone down, I feel drained.
Graves faked Catherine’s suicide. Graves phoned someone. Graves is dead.
I need to make sense of this. I need to pull it all together, and I need to do so now. But the image of the man cuts through every chain of thought: glassy eyed, bloody, wedged between the toilet and the tiles, always with that expression of mild protest on his face.
I have to put some distance between myself and that memory. Sleep. I must sleep.
I
pull off my clothes and crawl under the duvet. I’m cold again.
Tomorrow everything will be different. Tomorrow I’ll understand all this. Tomorrow I’ll know what to do.
Sleep feels like plunging into darkness. Somewhere in that darkness Graves sits watching, making notes I cannot see.
I wake dry mouthed to a phone ringing. The safe-line handset’s on the pillow beside me. I can’t even remember putting it there. The bedside clock tells me it’s just gone 4:00 a.m.
“Yes?”
A voice says, “What the fuck’s going on?”
Ellis.
“My arse is on fire here. Remember Ian Graves? The psychiatrist who reported Catherine Gallagher missing? The one we talked to? Well, he’s dead, and a woman visited him just before he died. Tell me it wasn’t you.”
I pull myself upright, reach for my robe. I’m shaky, as if I’m convalescing after a long and draining illness.
“Where are you calling from? Home?”
“Jesus.” As if I’ve accused him of rank stupidity: his domestic line is off-limits. “No, the phone you gave me, the scrambled one, okay?”
No point in trying to placate him. “I had to talk to Graves again.”
“So it was you. Christ.”
“He was dead when I got there.”
“You sure about that?”
“Are you saying I killed him? Ellis?”
“Oh, if you’d found him dying you’d have called it in, would you? Your voice on a police tape?”
“I wouldn’t have just left him if he was alive.”
Silence from Ellis. He doesn’t know if it’s true.
“You were spotted,” he says at last.
“Not me. Elizabeth Crow. And it was pitch dark. She didn’t get that good a look.”
“You sure about that? What if they put together an e-fit composite?”
“Then there’s a risk that Graves’s receptionist will ID me as the woman who came with you to interview Graves. Where does that leave you?”
That hits him. “Shit,” he says. “Shit.” He’s sweating now, I can tell.
“She didn’t get that good a look,” I say again, stonily.
For a moment he’s silent. When he next speaks, he’s got it under control, though the anger’s still there, just beneath the surface. “So why’d you go back, Karla?”
Tell the truth? I can’t do that. He’s a copper, with a copper’s instincts, and he’s hungry for a collar, always hungry, and once he’s got hold of this there may be no stopping him—
Don’t be stupid. It’s already too late. The situation’s racing beyond my control. The most I can do is try to stay with it, and for that I need Ellis.
“I discovered he’d lied about Catherine Gallagher.”
“What d’you mean?”
“I got hold of a copy of her notes.”
“She told him something. And he kept it to himself—”
“Ellis, the notes are fake. And that’s an expert opinion. He made it all up. She was never a patient of his. Where’s the evidence to tie her to him? She self-referred, she paid cash. He never even wrote a prescription for her. All we’ve got are the notes, and I’ve had them checked. Signs are he wrote them in one sitting. Fifteen months’ worth of appointments, all at his office, and I’ll bet none within office hours. His receptionist won’t be able to pick Catherine Gallagher out of a photo lineup.”
“And you confronted him with this?”
“I phoned him yesterday. Told him I knew he was lying. Demanded a meeting. He was going to roll. I spoke to him at five. He was dead by seven thirty.”
“You phoned him? Can they trace the call?”
“I used a safe landline. They won’t be able to track it back.” I’m not going to tell him about Graves’s mobile. Let Thames Valley Police work out it’s missing. I’m not going to tell him about the other call either.
“What about prints? You leave anything for the SOCOs to find?”
“I was careful. And they won’t find the car either. Have they spoken to you yet?”
“No, but how long’s it going to take? I accessed Catherine Gallagher’s file, I talked to her colleagues, I interviewed Graves. They’re going to be all over me in hours, asking what I know. But I’m going to get my story in first. So what do I tell ’em, Karla?” The sarcasm in his voice is corrosive.
“It was made to look like a burglary,” I say. “He surprised someone turning over the house, he started shouting, they panicked, they stabbed him, they fled. For now, let Thames Valley run with that. Tell them nothing.”
“Nothing? With my name in Graves’s diary? My log-in against Catherine Gallagher’s file? Nothing?”
“You heard a rumor that Catherine Gallagher’s disappearance was worth another look. That’s all. There’s nothing else.”
“So as far as Thames Valley’s concerned, Graves’s death is a coincidence.”
He says it as if he can’t believe I’m asking; it’ll never work. “You want me to kill the Catherine Gallagher link.”
“For now. Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because we don’t know where it leads.”
“Or because if anyone starts looking they’ll find you all over this case?”
“They won’t find me. And if they do, we’re both in trouble, aren’t we?”
A silence. Then he says, “Yeah, but who’s got most to lose?” and the line goes dead.
DAY 20: MONDAY
JOHANSSEN
On Saturday night he didn’t work: when he came down to the clinic at 5:30 p.m. for the shift, Cate sent him back upstairs. At three in the morning shouts from below roused him again, but by the time he got downstairs it was all over, the patient strapped down, Vinnie cleaning up the mess … Vinnie glanced fearfully at him as if he’d come to make trouble. Drill just stared at him. Wondering about the wound, probably: what Brice had done, and how much it hurt.
Cate said, “We don’t need you. Go back to bed.”
An hour later Riley came up and smoked half a cigarette, sitting on Drill’s bunk.
Johanssen said, “She told you then?”
Riley drew on his cigarette, flicked ash onto the floor. “Brice. He’s going round shouting about it.”
“What’s he saying?”
“First he marked you, then he got into you.” Riley shook his head.
Marked. You’ve been marked.
And then at the end of the shift: feet on the stairs, and the big man with the damaged face of a boxer lumbering in. “Mr. Quillan wants a word.”
Quillan in his sitting room, in his usual armchair, hands folded in his lap. He’d heard. Of course he’d heard. “You’ve had … trouble with Mr. Brice. Do you wish to make a complaint?”
Johanssen said, “No.”
“He thinks the Ryan Jackson who killed those two people was a different man. He’s going round the Program with your card. You know that, don’t you? ’Course, no one knows your face, or your name. You don’t have a past, not in this world. But did you think that would satisfy Brice? Was he really going to shrug and walk away? You humiliated him. And then you let him live. I’m doing my best, Mr. Jackson, but even I can hold him in check for only so long.” Quillan leaned forward in his seat. “So what will you do?”
Johanssen said nothing.
“You think simply ignoring him will work?”
Silence between them. The clock ticking in the china cabinet. A look from Quillan: long, slow, cold. “You have a problem, Mr. Jackson. Want to know what it is? I’ll tell you.” A tilt of the head. “It’s emotion—you weren’t expecting that, were you?
“Because you could be forgiven for hating Brice—think what he tried to do to you; think what he’ll still do—but you don’t. You’re Mr. Rational, you’re always in control. And you think that’s a strength. You think that’s how you’ll stay alive in this place.
“Well, contemplate the idea that you might be wrong. Contemplate the idea that your rational approach isn’t a stren
gth at all, but a weakness.
“Because you don’t hate him. But he hates you. And he dreams of making you suffer, he longs for it, and he’ll work harder and go further and endure more to achieve it. Does that make him weaker than you? Do you really think so?”
Finish it.
On Sunday, for the first time since he reentered the Program, he didn’t go out: he stayed in his bunk, listening while the others slept, ignoring the pain in his head and the prickling of the wound in his back, gathering his strength, thinking about what’s to come. Playing it and replaying it in his mind. And all Sunday night in the clinic, while he fetched and carried and strapped and held and watched, he ran through it again and again: the process, with all its little variations, all its potential hitches.
Now nothing else remains but to do it.
He doesn’t need to go back to the workshop. Once you’ve scoped out a site you don’t go back. Returning sets a pattern, and you want to avoid that, especially if you’re being watched. But today’s dawn brought fog, reducing everyone on the streets to featureless outlines, like people made of clay. Ideal conditions for losing a tail. The two men are running around out there, panicking, cursing him. Can’t be helped.
So here he is.
He stands in the main room and looks up at the broken window.
One more time. Pace it out. Make it real.
Do it while the clinic’s closed.
Come here first. Sabotage the camera. (Overhead it’s watching. He doesn’t look up.) Then back to the compound. She’s in the clinic, with her blades, or upstairs in her room, pacing, or counting the saved—
She must come because she wants to.
A message will do it: someone needing her help, something bad, something no one else can handle. And a woman. An injured woman who’s hiding here, among the broken prefabs, too frightened to leave … Already she’ll be reaching for her medical kit and asking for details: where’s the wound, is it bleeding heavily, is anyone with her, do they know how to stop the bleeding? She’ll be focused, businesslike. She trusts him. It will never occur to her that he might be lying.