Long Time Lost

by Chris Ewan

  She kneaded the muscles at the back of her neck and crossed to the nearest window, pulling the net curtain aside. The street below was in darkness, a third-rate amusement arcade closed and shuttered up.

  There was no sign of any faceless men lurking in the shadows. No car parked ominously along the street.

  But she felt anxious all the same.

  ‘Will you come with me?’ she asked Becca.

  ‘I have to stay and keep Hanson awake. Take Miller. You can ignore his strong, silent routine. He could use some rest, too.’

  Kate let go of the curtain and faced him directly. He held her gaze without moving, then finally pushed himself up on the heels of his hands, summoning a crumpled smile.

  ‘I’ll take the couch. Beats listening to Hanson bang on about how terrific he is.’

  Chapter Ten

  The office of the deputy governor of Strangeways prison in Manchester was little bigger than an inmate’s cell. It contained a cheap L-shaped desk with a dusty computer and a telephone to one side, a bank of metal filing cabinets and a wilting money plant. But the cramped space had one thing going for it – in a building designed to keep Category A prisoners under constant supervision, it was one of the few places where privacy could be guaranteed.

  Mike Renner perched on the edge of the desk with an old paperback novel curled into a tube in his hands. By Renner’s watch, he’d been waiting a little over eight minutes, which was eight minutes too long.

  He could feel a damp chill spreading across his shoulder blades, a constriction in his throat. He’d loosened his tie and collar but somehow it still felt as if an invisible noose had been slipped over his neck.

  Three more minutes crawled by before the door was pushed open and Russell was led inside by a guard in uniform. Russell stood slump-shouldered in his dark blue sweater and matching jogging trousers, contemplating his black training shoes as the guard headed for the door.

  ‘Hey,’ Renner called after him. ‘Take off the cuffs.’

  ‘Cuffs stay on. I’m not authorised to undo them.’

  ‘Not authorised. Really?’ Renner reached out a hand and lifted the desk phone from its cradle. ‘What do you think? Will your boss have a problem with me waking him at home to tell him you’re being a prick?’

  The guard wavered a moment, then let out a heavy sigh as he freed his keys from his belt and walked over to loosen Russell’s restraints.

  ‘I’m going to be waiting right outside this door.’

  ‘Sure.’ Renner waved him off. ‘Whatever makes you feel like you’re in control here.’

  Russell waited until he was gone before looking up with a slight smile. He rubbed at his wrists, stepping closer to reach for Renner’s hand and pull him off the desk into an embrace.

  ‘How are you holding up?’ Renner asked, slapping his back, pushing him away so he could search his face.

  But Russell didn’t answer. He just swiped at his nose with a knuckle, then sniffed and pointed at the book. ‘What did you bring me?’

  Renner unfurled the paperback. The colours were faded, the pages yellowed, the spine splintered and cracked.

  ‘Think maybe I’ve read this one before.’

  ‘I think maybe you have, too. But it’s a good one.’

  The book was a Western, taken from the collection Renner stored in a pile of boxes in the shed at the bottom of his garden. Renner had been loaning the books to Russell since the boy was a teenager. In the years after Larry and Diane had disappeared, he’d often walked the grounds of the Lane estate with Russell, or watched over him as he built dens in the nearby woods, talking through the stories together, sharing which parts they liked most, the characters they admired, the women they lusted after.

  Renner missed those days. He’d been blessed with two daughters but the bond he shared with Russell was something beyond that. It felt purer and more profound than his sense of loyalty and responsibility towards Connor. Something more, truth be told, than he’d ever experienced with either of his girls.

  Larry’s vanishing act had given him the precious gift of his relationship with Russell, and there were times when he was shamed by how happy it made him. But to see him here, now – to look at his pallid skin, his sunken cheeks and the dark whorls around his eyes; to hear the broken quality of his voice – was almost too much for Renner to take.

  ‘Anyone giving you trouble?’

  Russell fanned the pages of the book, shaking his head. Connor’s money had paid for his brother’s safety inside. Renner had made sure that word got around Strangeways fast that Russell Lane was off-limits. But there was always the danger that some young punk looking to build a reputation for himself might decide to have a go.

  ‘Your brother says your legal team are really shaping up.’

  Russell gave him a familiar one-eyed squint and tapped the book with his nail. ‘There’s something about the sheriff, isn’t there? A secret in his past?’

  So Renner quit trying to have a real conversation, motioned for Russell to hop up next to him on the desk and started talking about the book instead. But as he gave his take on the plot and the characters, saying how he still thought the sheriff was a fool for setting off to hunt down the crew of bank robbers instead of bunking down with the raven-haired rancher’s girl, all he could really do was think about Russell.

  He thought of Anna Brooks, the teenage runaway who’d accused him of violent rape four years ago; of how he hadn’t believed it then and couldn’t believe it still. And he thought of Helen Knight, the young lawyer who’d been found dead not two months ago now, her bloated body washed up on the shores of Lake Windermere, less than a mile from the Lane estate. Russell was the last person known to have seen her alive. Patrick Leigh had watched Helen get into Russell’s car on the day she went missing. Kate Sutherland had witnessed them arguing.

  Renner sneaked a look at the man sitting beside him, the lost boy he still reminded him of in so many ways, and something in his heart told him that Russell had been unlucky two times over, accused of sickening crimes he didn’t have the capacity to commit.

  But also, deep down, he couldn’t ignore a stirring of unease; the thought that somehow, biologically speaking, the meek lad he knew, the sweet kid who liked to build dens and talk Western stories, might also have inherited Larry’s lust for violence and destruction, just as Connor had inherited his ruthless ambition and drive for success.

  Right now, sitting so close to Russell that he could have reached out and cupped his neck, kissed his head, whispered to him that he was going to do everything necessary to protect him, the thing that scared Renner most in all the world was the idea that twelve complete strangers, the members of a jury called to pass judgement on Russell, might be able to discern that quality in him, too.

  So as Renner talked of the heroes and villains of the Old West, of noble intentions and sacrifice and doomed romantic love, he renewed a vow he’d made to himself and to Connor four years before.

  No trial of Russell Lane would ever take place. Renner refused to allow it. During the past four years, Nick Adams had proved highly adept at disappearing. He was entirely capable of teaching Kate Sutherland to live off the grid. So finding them both was never going to be simple. And if that meant taking an unconventional approach – even an unprecedented gamble, for Renner – then it was something he was more than willing to do.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kate lay in bed, thinking. The last time she’d fallen asleep in a darkened room a man had come to kill her. He’d gotten so close that she’d felt his breath on her face.

  And now this.

  A new room in a new place. A new look and a new identity. New people watching over her.

  Nothing Miller and his team could offer her was legal. She’d have nobody to turn to if things went wrong.

  Kate had never been a risk-taker. She’d always been painfully sensible, almost obsessed with being in control, a trait which had given her the discipline to excel as an athlete. She supposed s
he had her adoptive parents to thank for that. Her upbringing had been loving but strict. She’d been taught to believe in order and justice above all else. It was one reason, among many others, why she’d ultimately become a lawyer.

  And yet she’d killed a man. She was in hiding.

  So who was she now?

  The question was terrifying. So much had changed in such a short space of time that it seemed inconceivable that anything could ever be the same again. Would she recognise herself tomorrow? Or the day after that?

  She threw back her bedcovers and crept over to the door of her room. There was no noise on the other side.

  She eased it open.

  Miller was slouched on the sofa in the light of a fringed standing lamp, looking closely at a slip of paper, rubbing his thumb over the surface.

  Was this a good man? Was he someone she could believe in?

  He looked up sharply, as if somehow he’d heard her thoughts, and Kate glimpsed a flicker of hurt in his eyes, realising too late that she’d trespassed on something private.

  She stepped back to push the door closed but Miller shook his head and beckoned her towards him.

  Kate glanced over her shoulder at her bed, at the fears and the loneliness she might have endured, then bit down on the inside of her cheek and came forward in her T-shirt and panties, cringing at how it must look.

  ‘Can’t sleep?’ he asked. ‘It gets easier over time.’

  ‘Does it? Has it for you?’

  He smiled, caught in the lie. ‘I keep hoping. Here.’ He patted the sofa.

  She positioned herself at the opposite end of the couch, clutching a patterned cushion in front of her waist. She felt very aware of how close Miller was to her; of the space he was occupying, of the shape and size of his body.

  ‘What do you have there?’ she asked him.

  Miller pursed his lips, then shrugged and rocked his head and passed the sheet of paper across to her. The stock was thin, the paper creased and wrinkled from years of handling. The edges were dinged and rounded and dirtied.

  ‘My daughter, Melanie, drew that for me when she was eight years old.’

  ‘I’d never have taken you for a horse rider.’

  ‘I’m not. Maybe she knew something I didn’t.’

  The drawing was in faded crayon. In the foreground, Kate could see a blue man in a cowboy hat sitting on a brown horse. The horse was rearing up in the air and the man was waving to a woman and a young girl standing in front of a storybook house. The girl had brown curls and pink dungarees. She was holding hands with a woman in a green dress with long brown hair. Everyone was smiling, even the horse. The figures were labelled ‘Daddy’, ‘Mummy’, ‘Me’.

  ‘Nice hat.’

  Kate handed the drawing back. The paper was so fragile she was afraid it might tear.

  Families were fragile, too. She’d known that since she was a kid but she was sorry that Miller shared her heartache.

  She wondered how he could bear it – to have had his family taken from him in such harrowing circumstances. She remembered the story being in the papers at the time. His wife and daughter had been shot dead and their home set on fire. There was speculation that the Lane family were involved, but no arrests had followed.

  Until now, she’d assumed it was a tragedy that had hardened and transformed Miller, setting him on a mission to save people like her. But perhaps that interpretation was too simplistic. Maybe everything he was doing was just a distraction from his anguish. Perhaps he hadn’t healed at all.

  Was it harder to have a family that you loved and cherished torn away from you, or, like her, to have never known your real family at all?

  ‘I’ve carried this drawing with me ever since the day Mel gave it to me. Thirteen years ago.’ Miller gave her a sideways look. ‘If I ask you a question, will you answer me truthfully?’

  ‘Depends on the question.’

  ‘Tell me what you think – did she draw me riding away or coming home?’

  Kate gazed down at the drawing, the paper shaking almost imperceptibly in Miller’s hands. She had a sense of the weight of emotion that lay behind his asking and the responsibility her answer bore.

  ‘You don’t know? What did she say when she gave it to you?’

  ‘She didn’t. I was working so hard back then that I was afraid to ask.’

  ‘Coming home,’ Kate said, with confidence.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘She was your little girl. Why would she draw you going away?’

  Miller tilted the sketch, as if considering it from a new angle. He hummed to himself, unconvinced. Then he shifted around on the sofa and removed his wallet from his jeans and tucked the drawing carefully away.

  ‘Do you miss being Nick Adams?’

  ‘Every day. I miss everything about the life I had back then. But that’s gone now. Lane took it all from me.’

  ‘And am I to be your revenge?’

  ‘No. You were a pattern repeating itself. I wanted to break the pattern. That’s all.’

  She plucked at the cushion. She wasn’t sure she could believe him. He’d told her that he’d lost his wife and daughter to Connor Lane and now here she was, a weapon in his possession. He’d want more than simply to protect her, wouldn’t he? He’d want to hurt Lane, too.

  ‘Listen, you haven’t told me how much this is going to cost. I’m guessing your services aren’t cheap. And Hanson has access to my bank accounts. He’ll have seen—’

  ‘He has seen. We all have. But that’s not why we’re helping you, Kate.’

  She was silent for a moment, turning over his words, sifting through them for a deeper meaning.

  ‘So how does it work? You can’t possibly do all this for free.’

  ‘We have a benefactor.’

  ‘Really? Who? Are they part of the programme?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why the interest?’

  ‘Reasons. This is day one for you, Kate. Trust me, you’ll learn more when it’s safe.’

  He yawned and stretched, reaching above his head towards the switch on the lamp.

  ‘What do you say we turn this light off and sit here pretending either one of us might sleep?’

  Darkness.

  Miller rearranged himself against the cushions and Kate heard the clump of his shoes being propped on the low coffee table.

  She sat quietly beside him, tensed, unmoving, thinking of things lost and never found, waiting for morning to come.

  Chapter Twelve

  DS Jennifer Lloyd entered the incident room shortly after 7 a.m. with a take-out cup of hot tea with lemon, no milk. She’d planned to get started on her day before the rest of the unit arrived but two of her colleagues had beaten her to it. Detective Sergeants John Young and Nadine Foster were already seated in front of adjoining computer terminals with take-out cups of their own.

  Lloyd wished them good morning, trying to mask her disappointment.

  Young grunted. Foster nodded. Neither looked up from their screens.

  ‘Anything new?’

  ‘See for yourself.’

  Lloyd carried her tea over to the whiteboards. There was additional information on the middle and left-hand boards. Most of the fresh data was about the set-up on the Isle of Man, but there were also several photographs of the house where Kate Sutherland had been living and the dead man had been found.

  ‘What about witnesses?’

  There was no reply.

  ‘Hello? Witnesses?’

  ‘One neighbour,’ Foster mumbled. ‘If you can call him that. His bungalow is almost half a mile away but he thinks he might have heard a shot.’

  Foster was a couple of years younger than Lloyd, a few inches taller, with fine blonde hair and endless legs. She had a varied selection of stylish outfits and a taste for fashionable handbags and jewellery. She was well liked and respected by her peers, more likely to have a Kate Sutherland type of impact on her male co-workers than Lloyd ever would. She was go
ing places, no doubt about it.

  ‘Time?’

  ‘Around 1 a.m.’

  ‘That could fit with time of death.’

  ‘If the local coroner’s initial assessment holds. We’re still waiting for her full report.’

  Lloyd took a sip from her tea, sneaking a glance at the board on the right. It remained empty aside from the message she’d scrawled in the centre.

  ‘Pretty embarrassing for you.’

  Lloyd turned to find Young smirking at her. His hair was slicked to one side with wet-look gel and he was wearing a dark grey tie over a shirt the same colour. He looked like he should be selling mobile phones in a high-street shop.

  Young was the only member of the team Lloyd had history with. Bad history, inevitably.

  ‘So dramatic,’ he continued. ‘But so embarrassing.’

  ‘I stand by it.’

  ‘That’s a shock. You’re full of terrible suggestions.’ He pushed up from his desk, grabbing a cigarette packet and waggling it at Foster. ‘You coming?’

  ‘Not right now.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ He sniffed. ‘I could use some clean air.’

  Lloyd let him go, waiting until his footsteps had faded along the corridor before toasting Foster with her cup. ‘Not my biggest fan.’

  ‘Oh, he really hates you.’ Foster paused, fingers hovering above her keyboard. ‘Care to explain why?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure he’s already told you. And the rest of the team, for that matter.’

  ‘Maybe I want to hear your side of it.’

  ‘An open mind? Really?’

  ‘So make the most of it. Just know that I probably won’t agree with anything you have to say.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kate woke to find herself curled under a blanket, alone. She levered herself up on her elbow and peered at the note that had been left on the coffee table.

  Breakfast next door when you feel like it. Take your time.