by Penny Grubb
She found it in the box captioned Date of Appointment.
A pause, breath held in, heart suddenly thumping.
On the new copy, the figure eleven sat at the left of the box, its European-style arrowheads making it imitate seventy-seven to the English-reading eye.
On the old copy, the second digit had a line through it making it a seven.
Annie breathed out slowly, her fingers tight on the figures. Her hands moved once again from letter to letter, box to box. She reached the end. Everything else was the same.
She pulled the file in front of her and went over the chronology. The date of appointment had been altered from the eleventh to the seventeenth.
This wasn’t the time to rush and she stepped through the story bit by bit, event by event. Eventually, when there could be no shadow of a doubt, she stood up. ‘Sorry, Mrs BA.’ she murmured.
In Pieternel’s office she went through what she’d found.
‘I have to unravel all the detail, but it won’t take much now we know what to look for. Maybe they pulled the biker into it to stage some sort of crash with Mrs BA, maybe it happened for real. Whatever the original accident was, it didn’t happen to her. She wasn’t in the country on the eleventh.’
‘But the injuries are real enough. They can’t have faked that.’
‘Yeah, sure. One of them’s badly injured and my bet is that it’s the sister and there was no insurance to cover what happened.’
‘You’d better see how last minute the booking was. The whole holiday thing might have been so they could swap and make a packet on the holiday insurance.’
‘They’ll be devastated, you know.’
‘It’s their own fault. Let’s tell Dean. It’ll cheer him up.’
‘No, wait. Let me tell him quietly. This is not going to make it better for Dean.’
Annie told Dean later in the morning, kept her voice low, dropped it into the conversation as though it was nothing. He received the news as routine.
‘I knew you’d crack it, Annie.’
At lunchtime, she hurried home to be there before her father. The sight that greeted her as she opened the door stopped her in her tracks. It was so different it might have been the wrong flat. Mike and his wonder-workers had done their magic, but it was too much. The place was absurdly tidy, surfaces gleamed, uncomfortably like Mrs Latimer’s work.
Not a dishcloth was out of place in the kitchen, not even a teaspoon by the sink. A bunch of flowers stood in a vase on the table. An antiseptic smell hung over everything.
Her father would think she’d gone mad. She grabbed the vase and rushed it through to the bedroom. The wardrobe doors not only shone, they shut. She thumped the vase down on the bedside table, and raced back to the kitchen to search the cupboards for coffee and cups. On impulse, she flung open a couple of cupboards and plucked random tins and jars out to stand on the work surface. Then she stopped herself. Plenty to worry about without manufacturing extras.
Annie saw her father’s amazed double-take as he stepped inside, but unless he said anything about it, she would keep quiet and let him think what he liked.
They sat over coffee and the sandwiches she’d bought on her way home. ‘They’ve confirmed it as Casey Lane,’ he told her.
‘That’s quick.’
‘Did you know she had a criminal record?’
She nodded. ‘Why are you here, Dad? I mean, I know why you came, but why have you stayed? Why are you involved in the inquiry?’
He looked at her, surprised. ‘I thought you’d worked it out, Annie. The way she died …’
It came at her in a rush. There was nothing left of the body to ID. ‘What did they find of her after the fire? Exactly what?’
His gaze wouldn’t meet hers. ‘Just her lower legs.’
The picture in her mind showed a sunny day by the loch-side. ‘But, Dad,’ she pleaded, ‘they can’t be linked.’
‘It’s so hard to tell with fire. It destroys so much. But you see … The accelerant was an unusual mixture.’
‘But was the other body burnt? The one in the loch? Have you found the rest of it?’
He nodded, but said nothing.
A memory came to her. The suffocating smell of the aftermath of fire; the acrid odour that seeped through all attempts to disguise it. A killer had tried to burn her mother. The fire had barely touched her, but the sickly-bitter tang filled her nostrils from two decades ago. She saw her own thin child’s arms, almost doll-like, reach out towards the lifesize but lifeless form in the coffin. Strong hands clasped themselves round hers, dragged her away. No, no. Let me. I need … I need … The memory snapped, fractured. She was back at her kitchen table watching her father who sat, eyes lowered, waiting for his wayward daughter to demand the detail of what he’d found.
She mustn’t force these twenty-year-old echoes of violence and estrangement on him; didn’t want to face them herself.
‘I suppose I shouldn’t ask you for any detail.’
He looked relieved, but surprised as though he expected her to demand information from him. She didn’t need to. If they’d found the rest of the body, her aunt would have all the detail she needed.
‘Dad, you know about Casey and Dean. It’s been hard for him, especially that we know so little. Is there anything I can tell him? How she died, for instance? Anything’s better than not knowing and … well, it’s awful to think that she might have burnt to death.’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you. I only wish we knew. With just the lower legs to go on, it’s all speculation.’
After she saw him off, Annie sat down to take a moment to herself before she returned to the office. It was time to look face on at the fact that Dean had been right all along. He knew the connection went from Casey alive, through the work of the firm, to Casey murdered. He hadn’t found the link, but Annie had. Had her father worked it out too? On some level he must have, but maybe he couldn’t bear to face it.
Her skin tingled as invisible mites crawled over her body.
Casey hurrying off to Annie’s meeting, in Annie’s coat, under a hat that hid her face. It was no random killing. The killer knew just who he was after, but in the rain and the dark, he’d hit the wrong target.
Chapter 20
Annie made her way back to the office. Casey’s photo had been in the paper today. If the killer hadn’t realized his mistake before, he would know now. Her gaze darted left and right, a wary eye on every face in the crowd.
Dad, I’ve got bad news …
She arrived at the office knowing she couldn’t share this. Not yet. How could she tell Dean that it was her fault Casey had died? She could only make amends if she could find answers, and to do that she needed his skills.
Whatever the strand that led from the loch-side to a deserted warehouse near the Thames, it was a tenuous one. The overwhelming temptation was to hand it all on to her father and let him mobilize official channels, but she couldn’t give him enough to stop the real evidence being spirited away, whatever and wherever it was. She needed more, something solid, to put in front of him, and there was only one place she knew where the trail might be picked up.
Dean gave her a sideways glance. She returned it with a quick look, unsmiling, a jerk of her head, as she strode towards the bank of filing cabinets. He leapt to his feet and scurried after her. ‘You got something?’
A curt nod. ‘I’ve found the case. What we’re going after now is the hard evidence. But make no mistake, the minute we find it … the second … we take it to the official inquiry. OK?’
He nodded.
‘I want a proper look at some electronic files. I’m not going to get legitimate access.’
The smile he gave her was the first she’d seen on his face since Casey died. She’d led him back inside his comfort zone where logic held sway and targets bled silicon.
Dean narrowed his eyes as she lifted the paperwork from the drawer. ‘That wasn’t one of Casey’s.’
‘It’s the one th
at’ll give us the answers, trust me.’
She set the folder labelled Charlotte Grainger on her desk.
That evening, Annie rang the guesthouse. Her aunt’s grapevine might not give her the contents of the forensic reports, but she’d get close to a full story.
The clack-clack of Mrs Watson’s footsteps receded as she stalked off to get Aunt Marian. Annie heard them return together, voices an indistinct buzz that cleared to individual words as they neared the phone. She heard her aunt say, ‘Annie’s father told me how busy she was, but I knew she’d find time to call.’
At once, a rubber-stamp slammed down on her forehead, Ungrateful Niece of the Year blazoned for all to see.
She’d planned it as a quick call; even run through the excuse of a mock appointment to bring it to an end. Now she sat and batted the conversational ball back and forth, dredging her memory for things to say about the minutiae of life at Mrs Watson’s. ‘And how’s that nephew of hers? Does he still call in at weekends?’
‘Fancy you knowing Mrs Watson’s nephew. When did you meet him?’
‘You told me about him seeing … uh … the guy Charlotte hung about with. Remember? It gave him an alibi for the break-in.’ And the murder.
‘Oh yes. I remember. Do you know, Annie, they wouldn’t pay her for that whisky she lost. Isn’t it a disgrace?’
As she murmured sympathy, Annie shook her head to clear an image of herself and Jak as they lolled in that awful room and toasted each other in what must have been Mrs Watson’s good single malt. She must email her father about Dish.
‘Any news on the leg in the loch?’
‘Och yes, dear. It’s terribly exciting. It definitely went in from just down the way. The police haven’t said anything. You know how they are, but we all know. It fits the tides and the times. We’ve worked it out.’
‘Yes, you told me before.’
‘Just fancy, if we’d looked out of the window in the box room, we might have seen the killer.’
‘Do you think he threw in the whole body?’
‘That’s rather’ – Aunt Marian cleared her throat and spoke self-consciously – ‘rather sexist, isn’t it, dear? The killer might have been a woman.’
‘Aunt Marian!’
‘It’s all right, dear. I’ve found out what it means.’
‘I could have told you what it meant! I had that X on a triple-letter score. Anyway … yes, you’re right, I suppose. So … uh … have you worked out if the rest of it will wash up?’
‘Oh no. They’ve found the remains of a body in the forest. Burnt to ash. They haven’t said, but one of Mrs Watson’s nephew’s friends who was staying over at …’
Annie covered the mouthpiece and took some deep breaths … in and out. She wanted to dive in with questions, but her aunt would get to the point eventually, and it would be a fuller account for letting her get there in her own time. ‘… they haven’t said, of course. You know what they’re like, but we all know it was the body.’
‘Where did they find it?’
‘Up in the hills. It was all cordoned off. It was just the other week. The day you borrowed my tape recorder, the little one with earplugs.’
A chill rippled through Annie. She was back on that exposed hillside with the sun blazing down. She’d retreated under the trees for shade. And to wait. She remembered the aimless milling about of that group whose presence prevented her going just where she wanted to go. They hadn’t seemed to move one way or another. Orienteers, she’d thought. But no. They’d been securing a crime scene. Her father had been called out in such a rush he’d left papers on his desk. If she’d waited, she’d have seen him arrive to join them.
She thought back to her odd encounter with Beth; later that day, her meeting with Jak, the way he’d blundered in with his unsubtle questions about Charlotte and the leg in the loch. He was the link, the one who’d made her a target. Anger was pointless. His body probably lay rotting in a basement somewhere and might never be found. Who’d notice when a drifter like Jak disappeared?
‘Aunt Marian, was it Charlotte’s room that was ransacked in the break-in?’
‘Yes, dear, of course it was. They were after those tapes.’
Her aunt had been right all along. Someone had been desperate to get at those tapes.
Lorraine had witnessed a real murder. The body had been burnt to ash. And the leg that had been fished out of the loch had belonged to Charlotte’s sister, Julia Lee.
Saturday morning, Annie arranged to meet Dean and sketched out for him what she knew of Margot’s operation.
‘I need a look at her client database.’
‘Get me some unsupervised time with one of her networked machines,’ Dean said, ‘and I’ll get everything off for you.’
‘It’s an open plan office with CCTV all over the place and it’s busy, but let’s give it a shot. If you can’t get anything, see if you can figure out how I can do it if I get myself in there one night after hours.’
‘How will you do that?’
‘They run evening courses. Not Margot’s outfit, but it means the building stays open and the ground floor’s heaving with punters so there’s some cover.’
‘So you want timings, distances, camera blackspots, all that?’
She nodded. ‘Everything we can get.’
Janice was surprised to see them, and put no warmth into her professional smile of welcome.
‘Margot’s not in today, Annie. I don’t believe she was expecting you.’
‘No, she wasn’t. We were passing. I had a business proposition to put to her. Maybe there’s someone else I could have a word with?’
‘Take a seat; I’ll see who’s available.’
Annie slipped a gold-coloured hooped ear-ring from her pocket as she and Dean stepped towards the reception’s seating area. As Janice turned away from them to speak into her phone, Dean sidled out into the corridor. Annie saw him head towards the open plan office. She sat briefly, just long enough to slip the ear-ring down the side of the chair, then stood again and moved over to the window where she was in Janice’s peripheral vision, and feigned interest in the view over the city.
‘Annie?’ Janice looked up at her. ‘Can you give me a rough idea what this is about?’
‘Margot and I were talking about a security problem you’d had. Off-site, I mean, not here. It occurred to me that we might be able to help out with that sort of stuff. I know it doesn’t happen often, but it’s as well to be prepared.’
Janice spoke into the phone again, voice low.
Annie craned her neck as though to see some distant feature of the cityscape and wandered to the rear of the reception area. Through an open archway was a back entrance to the big office next door. As she glanced in, she saw Dean deep in conversation with a woman sitting at one of the PCs. She couldn’t hope for him to get at any data in that crowd, but he was clearly pulling out the stops.
‘Annie.’ Janice’s voice grabbed her attention again. ‘Do take a seat. Someone’ll be along to have a word in a moment.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Where’s your colleague?’
‘Oh, he just nipped to the loo.’ She saw suspicion flare in Janice’s eye and gave her a smile.
Footsteps in the corridor. Annie turned to the entranceway to see a mountain of a man stride in, tall, broad and solid muscle. He wore a uniform with discreet silver braid edging the lapels.
‘Ms Raymond?’ He held out his hand to engulf Annie’s and give it a bone-crunching shake. ‘I’m head of security here. I understand you have a security problem.’
‘Not exactly.’ She outlined her wafer-thin story, mentioned Charlotte and the conversation she’d had with Margot. ‘We’re experts in insurance fraud, and it struck me that with the work you do here, you need to be absolutely sure of your data integrity.’
The words meant nothing and he gave her a condescending smile.
‘Annie?’ Janice’s voice cut across them. ‘Your colleague’s not back.’
‘No worries. He’s probably got talking to someone.’
Janice stalked out of the room and returned with Dean at her side. ‘I’m sorry,’ Annie heard her say, ‘but we’re very busy. If there’s anything you want to know, you must make an appointment and we’ll do our best to help you.’
The uniformed man-mountain escorted them back to the lift, going as far as to reach in and press the ground floor button before giving them a curt, ‘Good day’.
Back downstairs, Annie collected brochures about the evening courses. She waited until they were across the road in the coffee shop before turning to Dean.
‘Any luck?’
‘Too many people about to get at anything, but it’s a piece of piss, Annie. Their whole system’s geriatric. They’ve no security at all.’
‘So if I can get in there on my own, you can give me the tools to do the job?’
‘No sweat. It’ll be a bit of a bull-in-china-shop job because they use bespoke software. I’ll write you something that’ll just trawl everything up, then we can sort it out when you get it back.’
‘Does bull-in-china-shop mean it’ll take longer?’
‘Yeah, probably minutes rather than seconds. But if you can give me anything to narrow it, I can cut that down.’
‘I want Charlotte Grainger’s personnel records and the client files of someone called Lorraine.’
‘OK, depends if the data’s encrypted or not. If not … quick sweep of the system … copy … thirty seconds tops.’
‘Thirty seconds? Isn’t there any way we can grab thirty seconds while the office is open? Some sort of diversion?’
‘Not that I could see. Too many eyes in the place, not to mention cameras. Did you know they deal with the money from all the smaller outlets? Be great for money-laundering.’
‘Or blackmail.’
‘When are you going in? You’ll need to practise to get these timings right.’
‘Sooner the better. I shoved an old ear-ring down the side of one of their chairs. It’ll be my reason to go back.’