by Tom Bale
Renshaw huffed and puffed a bit, but it couldn’t have escaped his attention that she’d as good as capitulated.
‘There was one particular transaction.’ He said it carefully, as if to avoid incriminating himself. ‘It was not my intention to do so, but I learned the identity of the customer.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ll tell me who it is?’ Nerys asked.
He must have shaken his head. ‘He wanted not just one, but two, three … a regular conveyor belt, to be used for—’
‘I get it,’ said Nerys quickly. She sounded cross, Michael thought, and it struck him that the interruption was to prevent him from overhearing the full details from his position in the pantry. ‘I assume you’ve got proof, otherwise it’s just the kind of rubbish that goes flying round the internet every day.’
‘I have proof. Hidden well, in case you were wondering.’ He sniffed. ‘You will have searched my room, no doubt?’
Nerys made regretful noises. ‘I appreciate why you’ve had to be so suspicious, but to act this way with me, after all the years we’ve known each other …’
There were kitchen drawers opening and closing as she spoke, and she sounded upset but also slightly distracted – occupied with her domestic tasks – to an extent that probably invited Renshaw to pay scant attention to her complaint.
‘I am no fool, Nerys,’ he growled. ‘It is clear your life here is worth everything to you. I am being generous giving you the girl. Now you either take the deal, or answer to Laird.’
From Nerys, a long troubled sigh. Then she said, ‘Well, you certainly strike a hard bargain, Edward.’
What? Michael couldn’t understand why she wasn’t arguing her case more forcefully, but then came a strange scuffling noise, the harsh scrape of a chair, and Renshaw let out a cry. It was cut short by a hard, heavy clonk that was unmistakably an act of violence: the sound of a solid object striking something hard, but also something wet and yielding.
After kicking the pantry door open, there was a second when Michael couldn’t move. He had to force himself to relax, folding his arms in tight before he could pitch forward, but he forgot to duck his head and caught the sharp edge of the shelf as he tried to stand up too soon.
Dizzy and reeling from the pain, he took in the nightmarish scene before him. Nerys was behind Renshaw’s chair, a rolling pin in her hand: the cartoon battle-axe’s weapon of choice. She’d swung at Renshaw’s head but he must have ducked away; his right cheek and eye socket had been smashed and there was blood streaming down his face.
Nevertheless he was still in one piece, still conscious; able and willing to fight back. With an agonised roar he lurched out of his chair and made to grab the rolling pin, but there was blood on the weapon and his hand slipped, giving Nerys time to lift it out of his reach. She smacked it down on his head, a direct strike this time. The noise made Michael think of a pumpkin being hollowed out for Halloween.
Renshaw pitched forward, off the chair, and landed on his knees. His one good eye swivelled and rolled and came to focus on Michael. His mouth opened, perhaps to appeal for mercy, but all that emerged was another thick gout of blood.
‘Mum—’ Michael began, but she didn’t hear him. She swung again. Blood and hair and what might have been skull fragments flew across the room. Spots of blood landed on Michael’s face and he whipped his head away in disgust, spitting and brushing at his cheeks. He heard a thud: Renshaw flopping on to his belly. But he wasn’t lying still. He rolled from side to side, clawing at the kitchen tiles with blood-streaked fingers, his feet making a frantic cycling action as if trying to get away.
Renshaw let out a long, eerie moan, like a wild animal caught in a snare, and somehow managed to get on to his elbows and knees, bumping against Nerys as she rose to land another blow. Her feet slipped in his blood and made her stumble; she grabbed the table for support but dropped the rolling pin. It landed with a noise like a bomb going off, and Michael shouted something but he had no idea what, because it was too much to take in – this was his mother, for Christ’s sake, beating someone to death in front of his eyes – and still Renshaw wouldn’t give up: he went on screeching, trying to lift his ruined head and stay alive another second.
‘Finish it!’ Nerys shrieked. ‘Michael, finish it!’
At first he didn’t have a clue what she meant. Then he understood.
She was asking him to do it.
Stricken, he shook his head.
I can’t.
Her expression, for only a split-second, was one of the purest contempt. With a weary sigh, she bent over to retrieve the rolling pin, then planted a foot on Renshaw’s spine and forced him to lie flat. She pulled a chair alongside him and sat down, taking the weight off her feet while she leaned forward and clubbed him half a dozen times, her fatigue, by the end, making her look almost bored. Michael turned away, gagging at the sudden dreadful smell in the room.
‘He’s soiled himself,’ Nerys muttered. ‘Often happens, at the point of death.’
Michael hurried to the sink and spat, then ran the tap and splashed his face, wiping and wiping until he felt sure he must be clean.
‘He’s dead,’ he murmured in disbelief. ‘He’s really dead?’
He hadn’t intended to phrase it as a question, but there was a short, sarcastic laugh from Nerys.
‘Are you trying to be funny?’ She wiped her own mouth with a long, slow drag of her sleeve, like a workman at the end of a hard day. ‘Look at him. He’s basically lasagne from the neck up.’
Fifty-One
Harry checked the time. Soon, he had to decide whether he was going to meet up with Ruth. But the conversation with Keri had left him more confused than ever.
‘Why do you think they’re chasing Renshaw?’
‘He was a prickly man, had quite an ego. I can easily imagine him feeling he was worth more than they paid him, so maybe he had his hand in the till.’
‘Any idea where he’d have gone?’
‘Sorry, no. It’s ages since he left – well over a year. Vickery’s sister, Sian, took over his role, even though she had no qualifications whatsoever.’ She gave him a cryptic glance. ‘Another good reason for me to get out.’
Harry decided he had nothing to lose in being blunt. He leant forward, placed his hands on his knees and said, ‘I have a feeling there’s something you’re not telling me.’
‘There’s probably a lot,’ she shot back. Then her tone changed, became reflective. ‘You know, I do this because it can be fun, it really can. Being independent means I can pick and choose, and seeing two or three guys a week gives me the income to fund my master’s degree without incurring any debts. Okay?’
Harry nodded. ‘Makes sense, I suppose.’
‘There are some lovely men out there, but also a lot of evil-minded bastards. Hence the precautions today.’ A long pause. ‘Occasionally, when I worked for Laird, there’d be gossip about girls who’d suddenly disappeared. We’d hear that they had gone back home, or run off with a rich client. In some cases it may have been true – or it was a cover story because they’d got pregnant. Some even came back after a while. But other times … it sounded like bullshit.’
‘Didn’t it worry you, what the real reason might be?’
Keri dipped her head, then pushed her hair back, scraping it away from her face. For a moment she looked like she could sleep for a year and it wouldn’t be enough to revive her.
‘Yes and no,’ she said at last. ‘Yes, because here I am, working solo and taking a hell of a lot of care with my personal security. No, because in this game you can’t give in to nerves, rumours, irrational fears.’
‘And is there anyone else – former colleagues of yours – who could say whether there’s any truth to those rumours?’
‘I doubt it. Otherwise Greg would have found out, and acted on it. Instead he ended up dead.’
Harry considered that, and then said, ‘Unless he’s dead because he did find out?’
Keri seemed to pale
at the suggestion. ‘I don’t think so. I—’ she began, and thought better of it. ‘No.’
‘Keri, please. There’s something else. I know there is. What is it?’
She deliberated for a moment, then rose and left the room. She returned with a local newspaper, dated the previous day, folded it to an inside page and thrust it into his hand.
The main headline was: BODY PARTS FOUND ON SUFFOLK BEACH. It described the discovery of a dismembered corpse on a beach near Lowestoft. Subsequent investigations had identified the remains as Hasan Mansur, aged 28, of no fixed address, a low-level criminal with a string of convictions for theft, drug-dealing and assault.
‘He worked for them,’ Keri said. ‘It’s Hasan I thought of when you mentioned Renshaw.’
‘You think there’s a connection?’ Harry inhaled sharply. This was even worse than what Ruth had told him.
‘I hope not. I don’t want to think Laird did that to one of his own people.’ She gulped a mouthful of water and nearly choked. ‘Four or five years ago there was some kind of dispute, with a rival gang. Hasan was brought to Vickery’s one night with a gunshot wound. At death’s door is how I heard it. Renshaw, who’d only trained as a GP, ended up performing surgery on him, and managed to save his life.’
Harry squinted at her, disbelieving. ‘On his own?’
‘Pretty much. There was a woman who worked with him at the time.’ She pursed her lips in thought. ‘Nerys-someone. Nasty old cow.’
‘Either way, this Hasan would have been in debt to Renshaw.’ Harry found himself reliving the ordeal on Thursday morning, and the threat to cut his daughter’s throat. The idea that the same men could be responsible for an atrocity like this made him feel sick. ‘If he wasn’t killed by the people who are hunting Renshaw, who else might have done it?’
She gazed at him, bleakly, and finally shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘And if Laird did this,’ Harry went on, ‘then he must have killed Greg as well.’
Another shrug. Maybe she was numb to it, after years of association with these people, or maybe she truly believed she was safe. But to Harry, these revelations were a terrifying confirmation of the danger that Alice and Evie were in.
He checked his watch again. ‘I need to go.’
‘You’re meeting Ruth?’
‘Yes,’ he admitted. He was unsure whether to mention that Ruth had said she was no longer interested in Keri, and settled for promising not to reveal Keri’s address. ‘After what you’ve told me, I’m kidding myself to think she’s serious about helping me. But it’s not as though I have any other options.’
‘Well, it’s your decision. Either way, I’m sorry about your family,’ Keri said. ‘I hope you find them soon.’
He stood up, stretched, realising how tired he felt. Keri followed him out to the hall, where he stopped abruptly.
‘Ruth gave me the impression that she doesn’t know anything about Renshaw. Would you have mentioned him to Greg?’
‘I think so. It wasn’t a secret that they had a doctor on the payroll.’
Troubling over this, he moved back to let her past him. The door to her apartment boasted a spyhole, a security chain and two hefty bolts.
Keri spoke again, quietly: ‘Please remember what I said about Ruth. All she cares about is herself.’
‘Seems to me that all she cares about is getting even with Laird. If only I knew why …’
Keri hesitated before speaking, then said, ‘This is just my own gut feeling, okay, but sometimes I wondered if it stemmed from an old relationship.’
Confused, Harry said: ‘Between … ?’
‘Ruth and Laird.’
‘Ruth and Laird? No, that can’t be …’
‘Like I say, I have nothing to substantiate it. Just … well, that needle of jealousy you’ll often see in a guy when he’s talking about a rival. I got that from Greg, a little.’
Harry was lost for words. As he stepped over the threshold, Keri placed her hand on his arm.
‘Be careful, Harry. Don’t get caught in the crossfire.’ And she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.
He took the stairs to the lobby, Keri’s warning ringing in his ears. But he was hardly worried for himself: nothing mattered now except locating his family before the gang caught up with them. He was tormented by the thought of being too late, of finding nothing but dismembered bodies.
King Street lay in the centre of town, which meant busier streets. This time it wasn’t the fear of recognition that haunted him so much as the sight of carefree families out enjoying their weekend. Ruth had played him for a fool, and it would have been all too easy to give in to resentment and rage. But for the sake of his wife and daughter he was determined to stay in control.
He checked the time: eleven forty-five. Staring at the phone, he experienced a sudden impulse to call the number he had for Alice. No doubt it was still switched off, but it wouldn’t hurt to try.
His heart lurched when he heard a ringing tone. Then it stopped. Half a second before he realised the line hadn’t gone dead; then an uncertain voice said, ‘Hello?’
Harry nearly dropped the phone.
Fifty-Two
With Renshaw gone, the first thing Alice did was note the time: just after eleven o’clock. The phone’s battery was down to a single bar, and there was only a very weak signal.
She roamed the clearing for a few minutes, testing various locations to see if the signal strengthened. At times it did, but probably not enough to make or receive a call. Kicking through the fallen leaves, she spotted tiny white blobs – mushrooms – and had a crazy image of herself, gone feral, abandoned in the woods and foraging for food.
No, she wouldn’t let it come to that, or anywhere near. But she was skating perilously close to self-pity, until a sudden, vicious voice in her head spoke up: You caused this, remember. This is the choice you made.
She cut off the voice by slapping her own cheek: an act of madness, if anybody had been present to witness it. But it had to be silenced.
For now, preservation was the goal: hers and Evie’s. Preservation at all costs.
Evie was grizzling, refusing to be pacified. Finally, Alice gave in. Making sure she was unobserved, she sat on the driest log she could find and fed her daughter until Evie conceded that, no, she wasn’t hungry any more, and yes, she probably would benefit from a mid-morning sleep.
Alice felt certain that someone would stumble upon them at any moment: a lecherous farmer, or a group of ramblers disgusted by public nudity. But feeding passed the time, at least: once she’d returned Evie to the carrier it was almost twenty to twelve. The phone, when she checked, had no signal whatsoever.
She decided to walk to the edge of the copse. It meant taking the money, the bag heavy enough to drag painfully on her arm. She followed the path until the field came into sight. By leaning to one side she could just make out the hedge that marked the perimeter of Nerys Baxter’s property.
There were a couple of dog walkers in the distance, but no sign of Renshaw. She hoped he wouldn’t make her wait the full hour—
The phone rang. She looked at the number before answering, and couldn’t believe her eyes.
‘Harry?’
One word, then the connection was cut. Had someone grabbed the phone?
Harry stopped dead on a narrow pavement outside a pub, oblivious to the activity around him. In that instant the meeting with Ruth meant nothing. All he could think about was this brief moment of contact with Alice, snatched away from him.
He dialled again, feeling so powerless that it reminded him of dreams where he was horribly late for a meeting and yet his legs refused to move.
Should he call the police? But would they be prepared to launch a search on the basis of a single phone call? And from a fugitive, remember …
He set off, so preoccupied that he almost didn’t realise the phone had been answered.
‘Harry? Are you there? I lost the signal.’
‘Where ar
e you? Are you safe? Is Evie—’
‘Harry, listen! In case the phone dies on me. I’m staying at a friend of Renshaw’s, near Gloucester. Her name is Nerys Baxter. The address is Beech House, Mercombe Lane, Cranstone. But the turning is actually about a mile beyond the village. Have you got that?’
Harry repeated it back to her, terrified that the details wouldn’t stick. ‘I’ll come and get you,’ he said, but she interrupted him again.
‘I’m getting a lift to the station this afternoon. It’ll take about four hours to Brighton.’
‘Not with Renshaw?’
‘No. He’s doing his own thing.’
‘Good. If I’m not there first, take the train and I’ll meet you somewhere en route.’
‘Oh, yes, please.’ The words came out on a long, heartfelt sigh. ‘It’s been okay here, but … they make me uncomfortable.’ She sniffed. ‘Are you really all right? Who was that woman yesterday?’
‘No one, honestly. But there’s a big problem.’ To escape the glares of the pedestrians he was obstructing, he crossed Whitehart Street and took refuge in the entrance to a church. ‘The police came to our house. They’ve somehow got the impression that I might have … done away with you or something.’
‘What? That’s ridiculous.’
‘I know, but right now my face is plastered over the media in the South East. If anyone recognises me I’m going to be hauled into a cell. Can you phone the police and get them off my backs? You need to speak to a DI Thomsett.’
‘I’ll try. What’s his number?’
‘Shit.’ It was on his own phone, which was switched off. Powering it up would take precious seconds, and then there was the risk of being traced …
Alice jumped in with a suggestion: ‘I’ll call my mum. She must be frantic with worry. Just remember, Beech House, Mercombe Lane, Cranst—’ There was a burst of interference. ‘—losing you,’ he heard her cry, and it made him shudder.
‘I’m coming to get you, Alice,’ he yelled, as if his determination could overcome the weakening signal, the hundreds of miles between them. ‘I’m coming—’