by A J Waines
How do I feel about it all? Honestly, I’m not sure yet. Our sessions have ended and she doesn’t want me to contact her, she’s made that very clear, so it’s all over from her point of view. But it isn’t over for me. I can’t stop thinking about her, I can’t let her go, just like that.
Thankfully, I’ve had other stuff on my mind. When Sam said she recognised ‘Teddy Spense’, I pretended not to see it. But Sam was right. She thinks we’ve reached a blind alley – but I lied. I know exactly who he is. He was at that party fifteen years ago, but I had my reasons for not coming clean. I didn’t tell her that I remembered the whole registration on the motorbike number plate either, not just part of it.
She thinks the mystery has dried up, but she doesn’t know the half of it – in fact, it’s alive and kicking, so at least some good came of this trip.
I’m not going to the police, though. I don’t want them getting to him before I do. I didn’t tell Sam either, because the next stage means breaking the law and she wouldn’t approve. I’ll deal with this first, then I’ll sort out the situation with Sam, once and for all.
It wasn’t hard to find his address. Number one in a small block of flats in Tooting Bec. It’s right there beside his name in the phone book. I remembered Richard telling me, at some point, that both he and his brother had been given stupid middle names – Oakley and Yorath – so the initial in the listing gave him away.
I spot the motorbike through the wrought iron gate at the side. The same number plate; he’d been in the Lakes all right. I keep walking, past the flats and down to the end of the road, and sit on the wall to think.
As soon as I’d put two and two together, I realised I’d actually met him a few times in passing, but was never particularly impressed. He’s the kind of guy who wants you to think he’s ‘cool’, with his finger on the pulse, doing well for himself, but I’m not sure he’s smart at all. Streetwise, maybe, in a superficial kind of way, but not adept enough to work out a seamless plan and foresee the consequences. Hence the business with Max’s watch. He hadn’t considered that someone might recognise it. That was pathetic.
I walk up the path and press the buzzer not for number one, but number four. No reply. I wait and press again. I try flat three and there’s a crackle and a woman’s reedy voice.
‘I’m so sorry to bother you,’ I say. ‘I’ve been ringing Mr White’s bell, on the ground floor, and he doesn’t seem to be answering. You haven’t seen him today have you? I’m his sister.’
‘Oh…erm…let me think…no, I think I saw him go out this morning.’
‘His bike’s still here.’
‘Yeah…that’s right. He was on foot. He was with someone. About ten o’clock, I think it was.’
‘Not to worry, he must have forgotten.’ There are four buttons on the intercom and four floors to the house. Luckily he’s on the ground floor. I know what to do next. ‘Thanks very much. I’ll try round the back, just in case. Bye.’
The block has a small back yard with access via a narrow alleyway. I retrace my steps and count the houses along the back alley until I reach the right house. There’s a wheelie bin outside a sturdy locked gate, so I climb onto it and clamber over. It’s second nature. Smart move, I think, warning the tenant I’ll try round the back; she won’t freak out if she spots me.
As I’d hoped, one small window at the back is open a fraction. I find a barrel in the yard, upturn it in front of the window ledge and trail my fingers inside. I find the latch and lift it. The window makes a sticky click and opens freely. I pull it wide and climb through onto the draining board, trying not to knock a pile of unwashed mugs and pans onto the floor.
The kitchen is a disgrace; mouldy takeaway cartons, age-old plates with fried egg and crusty baked beans strewn over the surfaces. My first thought is Don’t touch anything, more out of self-preservation than to avoid leaving evidence. There’s no way I’m going to take my gloves off.
I take a quick look around and then creep out into the hallway. I stop and listen for sounds. The woman in flat three saw him go out, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t come back in again. I can’t hear anything, though.
There’s a row of hooks by the front door; one with a few loose keys and one with a leather BMW logo on it. The hook nearest the door itself is empty.
The sitting room door is ajar; I slide up to the crack beside the doorframe and look for any signs of movement. Nothing. I slip inside and look around. I know what I’m looking for, I just don’t know where he’d be keeping it. Surely not out in the open: under the bed maybe or beneath the floorboards, perhaps. I recoil at having to snoop – everything about the place – the dank smell, the torn wallpaper, the bare carpets – makes me think ‘squalor’.
I creep reluctantly into a bedroom. It looks like someone has got here first and trashed the place: pillows on the floor, drawers left open, a guitar leaning precariously against the wardrobe, an upturned laundry basket on the mattress. I kneel down and look under the bed. It’s stuffed with boxes. I pull a few out; they’re filled with CDs and computer games. I check the wardrobe and a built-in cupboard. A jumble of clothes fall out. I leave them. I don’t suppose he’s going to notice.
I reach the box room when I hear a noise. A click. The front door. Bugger. He’s back. The door slams and something heavy lands on the floor. He swears. I look desperately for somewhere to hide, but there’s no space; there are clothes, boxes and damp washing everywhere.
I change my mind and decide on a different tack altogether. I walk openly towards him as he bends over a large box on the doormat, making no attempt to soften the sound of my footsteps.
‘What the f—’ he says, snapping upright like a jack-knife.
‘Hi, Greg,’ I say nonchalantly. ‘Surprise, seeing me?’
He clears his throat and brushes past me into the kitchen. ‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ I say, on his heels. ‘Could do with a cleaner.’
‘How the hell did you get in?’
I point to the kitchen window. ‘It wasn’t rocket science. You should put security higher up your list of priorities, especially when you’re hiding priceless stuff about the place.’
His eyes narrow. He can’t tell whether or not I’ve found it yet.
‘What the hell,’ he says, opening his hands by way of a forced welcome, pretending to be all laid back. ‘Actually, I was expecting you earlier. What took you so long?’
His comment throws me for a second. Was he really expecting me to drop by?
‘Well…’ I say, forcing my eyes to meet his. ‘Aren’t you going to fill me in?’
‘Fill you in?’ He looks at me oddly.
‘How you did it.’ I lean casually against the fridge, trying to look more confident than I feel. He might be stupid but he’s bigger than me. ‘You took a hell of a risk trying to sell Max’s watch.’
‘Yeah, well. Didn’t get caught though, did I?’
‘Come on, then. Tell me everything.’
‘You want to know what happened?’ His eyelid twitches.
‘That would be nice.’
‘Are you for real?’ he says. He’s chewing gum, trying to look mean and hard. ‘You got a wire on you or somefin’?’ He’s inches from my face.
‘What? No…’
He makes me put out my arms and pats me down like we’re in airport security. He tips my bag up on the table and tosses through my belongings.
‘Can’t be too careful,’ he says, as I stuff everything back in. ‘Okay, what do you wanna know?’ He pushes his sleeves up.
‘From the beginning.’
He shrugs. ‘Well…we all knew dear old Rickie was in need of a buck or two…you knew that right?’
It’s my turn to shrug. ‘If you say so.’
‘When the second gig came up, he let it slip about Max Raeger’s expensive piece of kit and I suggested we go fifty-fifty.’ He scratched his stubble. ‘But Rickie wasn’t having that. Told me to fuck off. So I followed him up to the Lakes on my bike. Once
I got there I knew my way around. I’d been there that first time, hadn’t I?’
‘Yeah, yeah, I remember you driving us up there in 2001, before Richard had passed his test.’
Greg is leaning against the sink, playing with a piece of foil from a bottle top. ‘You know all this.’ He looks at me quizzically.
‘Just carry on, will you?’
A frown burrows into his forehead, then he shrugs. ‘While you lot were scraping away, I messed with the brakes, loosened a bolt here and there and started a slow puncture in the front tyre – nothing so radical that the police could say for certain it was deliberate.’
My knee twitches, but I force myself to stay still, refusing to react.
‘Rickie’s original plan was to “skid” off the road and sink into the mud on the bank of the lake. In the kafuffle, he was going to take the violin from the back, hide it in the bushes and chuck the case in the water. He wanted to make it look like the instrument had got lost in the lake. At that stage, he knew everyone’s main concern would be getting out. But someone had a better idea.’ He screws his eyes up, giving me a look that implies I ought to be familiar with all this.
‘Go on,’ I say coolly.
‘If you insist.’ He half laughs and carries on. ‘Rickie was soft. He only meant for you all to get your feet wet. He hadn’t worked out that everyone’d be straight out of the van as soon as it touched the water: Max desperate to save his violin, not letting it out of his sight. I knew it’d work far better if the van went high speed straight into the lake and down to the bottom.’
I gulp down the knot of outrage in my throat.
‘I stuffed a mix of cardboard and glue in the seatbelt clips so they’d jam. It meant the three in the front seats would waste precious time and effort trying to get out, so I had time to get my hands on the violin.’ He wraps one fist around the other and crunches his knuckles loudly.
My heartbeat shoots off the scale and every muscle in my body is telling me to run. He’s talking about it like he sabotaged a cricket match, yet he wanted us all to drown. He didn’t give a toss. He’s a total psycho; he didn’t even care if he killed his own brother.
‘So it was you behind us. You weren’t “just passing”, you ran us off the road. It was you Richard saw?’
He yawns, but he’s faking it. ‘The van needed to go in the water at just the right spot where it was deep close to the edge, it wasn’t going to work otherwise.’ He’s revelling in this; it makes me sick. ‘You got out pretty sharpish as it happened. Bit of a Houdini, aren’t you?’ He rubs his hands together. ‘You heard enough yet?’
Greg is prowling around the kitchen. He’s picked up an empty bottle from somewhere and is slapping it rhythmically into his palm.
Richard said they’d never got on as siblings. He’d described Greg as a waster, involved in petty crime and drug peddling. Lucy said he’d sponged off Richard, even stolen from him. Once he’s told his story, he isn’t going to wave me a cute goodbye and let me wander back onto the street to tell everyone what he’s done. I make a quick calculation. The front door is further away, but the kitchen window involves a climb. It will have to be the front.
‘I need the toilet,’ I say, turning towards the doorway.
‘Oh, no you don’t,’ he says, manhandling me into a wooden chair. He kicks the door to the hall shut. ‘Sit and listen. I thought that’s what you wanted. You’re the one person I can share the whole story with.’ I squeeze my knees together. I’m going to have to be really careful not to end up trapped with him in here. ‘At least take your gloves off,’ he adds.
‘No, it’s all right, thanks. I’m cold,’ I reply.
He shrugs and stays standing. ‘Once the van had been under for a few minutes, stuff started floating to the surface. I took various wallets and the little coin pouch holding Max’s watch, of course,’ he says. ‘It was too late for him. I let his body float away.’
I snatch a breath. ‘You saw him? You never said that at the auction house. You could have saved him…you just let him drown?’
‘He was already a goner by then and I had a job to do. I let you scramble out with a case, because I thought you’d got the violin, then I realised Max’s case was the big rectangular one. I watched you get to the bank and then pass out. It was too deep to dive down, but there was no one else around, so I hung around and before long the violin case came up.’
‘Yeah - it was super special,’ I tell him, ‘designed to float and keep the violin dry.’
‘That was lucky, wasn’t it? I grabbed your case too, and hid them both behind a pile of rocks, further along in the undergrowth.’
‘You took my viola? You’ve got it?!’ Instinctively, my hand springs to my chest. He’d saved it!
‘I reckoned if you’d bothered to risk your neck getting it out, it must be worth somefin’, too.’ He tosses back his greasy fringe. ‘I strapped one case to my front, one to my back and drove back to my B&B. I mean, everyone assumed it was a terrible accident, no one was lookin’ for stolen instruments. Max’s case was locked, so I had to bust it open, then I went back to the lake the next day and chucked it into the water at the far end, to make the police think the violin itself was down in the depths somewhere. Smart move, huh?’
As Greg is talking, I’m back there revisiting the scene from his perspective and a new memory pops up from nowhere, loud and clear. Sam was right, when you try to recall a situation from someone else’s point of view, fresh memories come out of the woodwork.
There’s a man on the phone in the hallway…It’s worth a fortune and it’s under the bridge, he’s saying. And suddenly I know that it’s Karl Hinds’ voice.
That’s when I realise Greg doesn’t know the half of it.
Chapter 41
Rosie
Greg walks over to the bin and spits out his gum.
‘Where are they?’ I say. ‘Where’s my viola? Max’s violin?’
I get up from the kitchen table, but Greg shoves me back down again. He gives me a calculating grin.
‘Did you know someone else was after the violin – right behind us, that day?’
I shrug.
‘When I got back up to the road who did I see, but Karl Hinds, driving off in a fast car. Richard was convinced Karl was a sly devil. He didn’t know what the deal was, but he thought he was connected to the guy who fell off the drainpipe at that first party. You know who I mean?’
‘Mick Blain.’
The one who’d got his hands on my viola and had very nearly broken it.
‘Yeah, him.’
It’s worth a fortune and it’s under the bridge…
A new piece of the puzzle snaps into place. Greg’s got the wrong end of the stick with this part. Karl wasn’t after the violin – he wasn’t stupid enough to go for something he didn’t know how to sell. He was after the same thing Mick Blain had been interested in at that first party. Something under a bridge. Whatever it was.
‘Where’s my viola?’ I snapped.
‘Just hold your horses,’ he says. ‘The violin’s the real deal here and I want the hard cash. I mean, I’m not in the know about a blinkin’ Gru…Gran—’
‘Guarneri,’ I correct him.
‘Yeah, whatever. I knew it was bloody rare – but that’s where you come in.’ He puts his hands on the table in front of me, stares into my face, expecting, waiting for something. ‘You don’t remember, do you?’
‘Remember what?’
‘Any of it. I’ve been watching you as I’ve been going through it all, point by point, and you don’t remember a frickin’ thing.’ He folds his arms, a secretive expression on his face. ‘You haven’t got a clue about the chat we had in the pub – the pact we made in my room at the B&B…’ Again, he scrutinises my face for signs.
I don’t know what he’s talking about.
‘You were IN on it, darlin’…every step of the way.’
‘What?’ I let out an incredulous huff, trying to look disdainful, but I’m actually
totally thrown by what he’s suggesting. I make myself think. The night we arrived in the Lakes I’d spoken to Richard in the pub. I try to flag up that memory – the one with him teasing me about stealing the violin, but I can’t find it any more. I can’t see Richard’s face. And now Greg is saying I had that conversation with him.
‘We planned it together,’ he persists.
He’s lying.
‘When?’
‘The night you turned up from London. We were all in the pub: Rickie, you, that Steph bird. Max wasn’t there – he was doin’ yoga or some bollocks…’
I’m trying to go back there. ‘In the pub…’ I’m unable to reach it. It’s like I’m clawing at layers of curtains, but as I peel each one away another drops in its place. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘The others had gone and it was just you and me. I asked you if you were interested in the idea. It was all a bit of a laugh at first, I wanted to know what your reaction would be.’
I’m grasping to reach into the past, but there’s nothing there. ‘I thought that was Richard…’
‘I don’t know what you talked about with him, but this was with me.’ He winks. ‘Let me show you.’ He reaches into a tall food cupboard beside the freezer and fishes about in a carrier bag.
‘Here…’
It’s a sketch on lined paper of the road from the Hinds’ place to the lakeside, with all the road names labelled. There’s a red cross at the exact spot where the van left the road. It’s in my handwriting. My eyes follow the line of the pen; I can tell it belongs to me and yet it feels alien. I can’t recall putting the pen on the paper.
‘You were meant to grab the violin,’ he says.
He scratches his head. I’m barely hearing him. Questions are firing off like canons inside my head: Could I have been involved? Is he messing with my mind?
‘I would never have agreed to kill anyone,’ I say with conviction.