by Chris Ewan
‘Agata, please. I need your help. So does Darren.’
She paused, looking away from him towards the wedge of gauzy light at the bottom of the stairs.
‘There are people coming for him. People who will hurt him. Here. This man.’ He hurried after her, pulling his phone from his pocket, jabbing it in front of her face so that she could see the grainy picture of Wade he’d taken from the surveillance footage of the luggage counter in Rome. ‘Have you seen him? Has he been here?’
‘No.’ She barely looked.
‘Tell me where Darren is. Tell me where I can find him.’
‘He’s in Kutná Hora. He won’t be home until tonight.’
‘Then let me wait in his apartment.’
‘I don’t have a key.’
She did, and Miller knew it. But she’d started moving again, treading downstairs, nursing her wrist.
‘I can wait in the storeroom,’ he told her. ‘I can protect you both.’
‘No, you leave. Or I call the police.’
‘What time will he be back? Agata? Tell me that, at least.’
‘Late,’ she said, and swerved into her surgery, locking the door behind her.
*
Miller didn’t go far. He crossed over the street to a chain coffee outlet with a specialism in doughnuts. He was so wired from his encounter with Agata that the last thing he needed was a hit of caffeine and sugar, but the location was good, so he ordered a selection box of six doughnuts and a large black coffee from the spotty kid in a peaked cap working behind the till, then took up position on a moulded plastic stool that faced the plate-glass window. He braced his elbows on the raised Formica countertop and stared out through the beads of streaking rain at the pet shop across the street.
One p.m. Many hours to go.
Miller sipped his coffee, pushing the box of doughnuts to one side.
He was worried about the rear entrance to the veterinary surgery. He was concerned that Wade could approach from the dingy alley out back. But he was on his own in the city and low on angles and options, so he played the odds and kept his eyes on the front of the pet shop, staring past the scramble of pedestrians, the bob and weave of umbrellas, the rush of taxis and scooters and trams.
He waited for Wade to show himself. Waited for Darren to return home. He waited to find out what his next move should be.
*
But he was already too late. Because up in that first-floor apartment, slumped in a wilting couch, Aaron Wade was sitting very still and highly alert, his body tensed and poised, ready to spring forwards and attack, just as he’d been ready a few minutes earlier when Miller had beat on the thin plywood door that had separated them both.
Chapter Fifty-Four
It was clear to Miller that the kid with the acne didn’t know how to handle his ongoing presence in the coffee shop. He obviously wasn’t used to having customers spend long hours sheltering from the rain, staring across the road. Every hour or so, the confusion and the frustration would get too much for him, and the kid would wait for a break in customers, circle round from behind the counter and linger for a moment until Miller glanced up. Then he’d ask in broken English if there was anything Miller needed. And Miller would say yes, a matter of fact there was, and he’d order a coffee refill and another box of doughnuts.
By ten to six, Miller had five greasy cardboard boxes stacked on the counter in front of him. He flipped open the top box and ate a raspberry cream. Then he wiped his lips with a paper napkin, sipped a little more coffee and gazed back across the rain-blown street.
The kid was getting antsy again. He’d switched off the coffee percolator, wiped down the counter and had started clearing out trays of unsold doughnuts. It wouldn’t be long until he finally summoned the courage to come over and tell Miller to get out. But that was OK with Miller, because he’d just watched the mousy girl in the glasses step out through the front door of the pet shop and hurry away along the street. Two minutes after that, Agata emerged and locked the business behind her. The shop alarm was primed and it bleated shrilly for several seconds as she put up an umbrella and looked anxiously around before striding away in the opposite direction.
Miller waited until the alarm had fallen silent, then slid off his stool and stretched. He gathered together his boxes of doughnuts and his stained coffee mug and he carried them over to the kid behind the counter.
‘We close now,’ the kid told him. ‘You leave, OK?’
‘No problem.’ Miller patted his gut. ‘But I need to use your bathroom first. There’s a chance I may have drunk a little too much coffee.’
*
Miller took a cab across the city to a modern hostel located behind a grand rococo building in the Old Town, where he walked into the entrance foyer and brushed the rain out of his hair. He didn’t have any luggage with him, though he supposed that wasn’t altogether unusual for someone looking for a cheap bed for the night. Besides, Miller was a familiar face. He’d stayed here many times before.
He recognised the girl sitting on the stool behind the reception counter and from the lazy smile she summoned he could tell that she recognised him. She was late teens, early twenties, with a stud in her nose and her hair tied back in dreadlocks.
‘Hey, you’re back.’
Her English was good, marked with a slight American drawl. She’d told Miller once that she’d spent a season working at a ski chalet in Vermont. She’d told him many things about herself, in fact, but if she’d expected Miller to reciprocate, he never had. He sometimes got the impression she liked that about him.
‘Just for one night. Do you have a bunk free?’
‘For you, always.’
She placed a locker key, a bed sheet and a pillowcase down on the counter.
Miller was already parting his wallet, thumbing through some koruna, trying not to catch the amused, mildly flirtatious look she was giving him. He had no intention of using the bed. He didn’t anticipate coming back. But he didn’t want to cheat the hostel on the bill, either.
‘And I’ll take a six-pack of beer.’
‘No problem.’
The girl’s stool was on castors and she rolled over to a discoloured fridge set against the back wall, grabbed a carton of Budvar and glided back again.
‘Which dorm?’ he asked, setting his cash down, hefting the beers.
‘You decide. It’s not so busy.’
Miller nodded his thanks and scooped up the bedding, backing off towards the stairs. He passed a line of public computers that had seen better days and a noticeboard layered in handwritten notes asking for lifts to Vienna or Budapest, for places to stay, for companions to travel with.
The dorm Miller chose was on the second floor, at the back of the building, beyond the communal showers. He punched a timer switch on the wall as he stepped inside and a series of ceiling lights stuttered to life, revealing a bare wooden floor, eight bunk beds and sixteen metal lockers. Most of the beds were empty. One was draped with drying laundry. Another had a guy laid out on it, barechested, who grunted and rolled on to his side, clamping a pillow over his face.
Miller tossed his bedding on to a low bunk on his right and crossed to the open window next to the dozing guy. He climbed out over the sill, first one leg, then the other, setting his boots down on to the gridded platform of a metal fire escape. A rust-flaked ladder was bolted to the wall and Miller began to climb.
By the time he neared the top, three storeys up, he could hear music and singing, and when he stuck his head over the parapet he saw a gaunt teenager with a shaved head and sleeve tattoos sitting cross-legged on the flat roof, his back resting against a dilapidated timber shed, plucking at the strings of a guitar. Two girls in raincoats were slumped in frayed camping chairs close by, humming along self-consciously.
There was nobody else around and Miller guessed he had the light rain to thank for that. He pulled a Budvar from the six-pack, popped the cap with one of several corroded bottle openers that had been abandoned on the
roof, then took a long pull and set the rest of the beers down by the trio of teens, waving aside their offers to come join them as he paced behind the shed.
The night-time view was spectacular, but to Miller it felt strangely mournful, too. There were pinpricks of light everywhere he looked and countless buildings jostling for space. There were a whole bunch of church towers and spikes and domes jabbing upwards, and he could see the graceful sweep of the Vltava river, its blackened waters shimmering beneath the illuminated spans of an arched bridge. But no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t spot a single identifiable person.
Crouching now, he scraped back a scree of cigarette butts and crushed reefers from the ankle-high parapet until his fingers settled on a loose brick towards the bottom. He dug his nails into powdery mortar, working the brick free, bringing with it a shower of dust and debris and the smell of dead air.
Behind the brick, deep in the cavity, lay a nylon washbag. Miller extracted the bag and unzipped it, removing a clear plastic ziplock bag from within.
The bag contained a number of items. First up was a micro penlight, the kind that came with a key ring fitted to it. Miller clicked it on and aimed the blue-white beam at one thousand euros in cash, rolled into a tight tube, with another ten thousand Czech koruna rolled inside that. Next up was a duplicate British passport bearing the name Nick Miller, as well as a spare passport for Darren. There was also a Swiss Army Knife, the main blade still coated with dust and grit from when he’d used it to carve the brick free more than a year before, as well as a key to the pet shop and another to Darren’s apartment. Miller kept a similar back-up stash in every city where his clients were based.
Checking over his shoulder, he quickly pocketed the knife, peeled off six hundred koruna to replace the cash he’d already spent, and looped both keys on to the ring attached to the penlight. Then he tucked the remaining money and the passports back inside the plastic bag and the washbag, stuffed the package into the cavity again, replaced the brick and packed fresh handfuls of dirt and gravel around it. Finally, he poured the remainder of his beer away before stepping out from behind the shed, waggling his empty bottle at one of the girls, throwing a salute to the guy with the guitar, and starting back down the ladder.
It was only a few minutes later, after he’d climbed through the open window to the unlit dorm and had waved goodbye to the girl on reception as he made his way outside, that his mobile had chirped and he’d answered Hanson’s call, listening carefully as Hanson updated him on events in Arles before, quite suddenly, there was a pause until Kate came on the line and he heard her broken voice for the first time since he’d left her in Rome that morning.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Connor Lane leaned back in his leather desk chair, pinching his lips between his finger and thumb. He felt apprehensive and powerless, and didn’t like it one bit.
His feet were on the corner of his desk, his legs crossed at the ankle, and he was contemplating the bulge of the electronic tag beneath his Argyle socks. He wanted very badly to tear the tag away.
Instead, he reached forwards and put his desk phone on speaker, hitting a number on speed-dial. He was cradling his forehead as Renner picked up.
Renner sounded a long way away, his breathing pinched and ragged, and Connor could hear shouting and live music behind him.
‘I just talked with Russell,’ Connor said. ‘He’s not doing so good. They’re talking about pushing his trial back until they can locate Kate Sutherland. It could mean months of uncertainty. I’m not sure he can take it.’
‘You want me to talk to him?’
‘No, Mike. I want you to tell me this is going to be over soon. I want to be able to tell him that.’
‘We’re making progress.’
‘Progress.’ Connor lowered his hands and mimed squeezing something with his fingers and thumbs. Renner’s throat, perhaps. ‘You do understand what’s at stake here, don’t you, Mike?’
‘I understand.’
‘Well, let me lay it out for you all the same. Let me eradicate any doubt you might be experiencing.’
‘I don’t have any—’
‘Mike, listen to me. Here’s the problem: if Adams can get Kate Sutherland on that witness stand, that’s bad, no question. But if he can get Anna Brooks there, too – if she’s asked to give evidence about Russell and she stands in a courtroom shouting rape, no matter how much we work to discredit her – it’s going to be worse than bad. It’s going to end with a guilty verdict.’
Silence on the other end of the line.
Connor hated waiting. His approach to anything he wanted in life, and especially in business, was to push forwards relentlessly until he secured the outcome he desired.
‘Do you get it, Mike? This is about more than just money to me.’
‘I already said I understand.’
Connor pulled his feet down from the desk and lowered his mouth to the speaker. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Wade’s in Prague now. I’m waiting to hear from him.’
‘See, Mike? This is what I’m talking about. Stop waiting. I want results.’
‘But—’
‘Results, Mike. Russell needs them. I need them. And believe me, you and Wade need them, too. Because I think you know by now how much I hate to be disappointed.’
Chapter Fifty-Six
Miller walked beneath the towering spikes of the Tyn Church and on into the Old Town Square, his shoulders hunched, his hands buried deep in his pockets. Prague felt hostile tonight, the winding streets and Gothic architecture seeming to crowd in on him, mutating into something unpredictable and predatory.
He’d never felt threatened here before. Or watched. On previous visits to check on Darren, Prague had held a bittersweet charm because it was the last place where he’d taken a holiday with Sarah and Melanie before all their troubles began. It had been a spontaneous trip, which was pretty much unheard of for them. Sarah was a planner – the Control Freak, as Melanie had called her – and Miller was away from home so often with work that he disliked travelling when he took time off. But Melanie had just finished her GCSEs and Sarah had spotted a cheap deal with a low-cost airline, and he’d arrived home late one evening, worn down and wrung out, to find a suitcase on his bed, his clothes neatly packed and his passport resting on top.
They flew from Manchester early the following morning. Back then – though it seemed almost impossible to believe it now – he wasn’t widely travelled in Europe, and it had shown. He’d been bewildered by Prague from the moment of their arrival. He’d been ripped off by taxi drivers, insulted by waiters, left disorientated and confused when he’d misread a tourist map on a family outing to Wenceslas Square.
Sarah had taken control before he lost his temper completely. Melanie was sulking by then, caught up in a deep teenage funk, but Sarah had guided them towards a bar overlooking the river, where she’d ordered cold Czech lager and they’d found themselves sitting on a terrace in the sunshine, finally relaxing and beginning to smile. Melanie, high on beer buzz and the uncharted novelty of drinking in front of her parents, had started to goof off about Miller’s gormless tourist routine. They’d laughed, and had kept laughing the rest of the weekend.
He could almost hear the drifting echo of their laughter now as he paced towards the Astronomical Clock where they’d stood so many times because Melanie had begged to watch the mechanical show over and over, an indulgence for the child she’d once been and the adult she was yet to become.
Tonight, he skirted the group of tourists gathered in front of the tower, reluctant to look up at the patterned dial or the ghoulish, skeletal figure of Death, who lurked and waited to begin his next display by jerkily upending the hourglass gripped in his bony fingers.
Miller didn’t want to think about time. He didn’t want to concern himself with its cruel trickery. So he lowered his head and tried to ignore the sensation of the buildings creeping towards him, stretching above him, hemming him in.
At the
Charles Bridge, where a dank breeze skimmed off the surface of the lamp-lit waters, he came close to running through the gauntlet of blackened statues that lined the parapets. He couldn’t stand to look at them – couldn’t stand to be seen by anyone at all – and kept his face averted as he dodged between buskers and portrait painters and young lovers holding hands.
The district of Malá Strana loomed ahead: a raggedy, tumbledown knot of buildings, domes and spires. He swept left, along Hroznová, then over a small bridge where the railings were covered in thousands of locked padlocks, couples leaving them here as a symbol of their everlasting love. Miller had shaken his head at the tradition the first time he’d seen it, waiting impatiently for Sarah and Melanie to catch up to him, bemused at why Sarah felt the need to trace her fingers over the coloured spectrum of rusted and corroded locks.
Then he’d noticed the wistful expression on her face, the faraway gaze that took hold of her as she spun the locks with a dull clatter. And so, very early the following morning, Miller had slipped out of bed and fetched the lock from his own suitcase and walked down to fasten it to the bridge.
He’d experienced a sense of euphoria on his return to their hotel room, but by the time he’d shed his clothes and crept back into bed, with Sarah stirring and murmuring beneath twisted sheets, he felt suddenly embarrassed by the gesture and pretended to be asleep. Only now did he realise what a fool he’d been not to tell her and it stung him anew to think that he could never bring her here to show her what she’d meant to him that day, and every day since.
If he’d felt inclined to linger, perhaps he could have found the very same lock. But the idea of searching for it seemed improper, somehow, after what had happened with Kate in Rome.
He still loved Sarah. He always would. And yet he felt an undeniable pull towards Kate. How much simpler it would be to ignore the attraction, to bury it deep. There was a twisted solace in the hurt that still rankled inside him, in the guilt and fear that walked with him each day. But four years had gone by. Four years to honour the memory of Sarah, to cherish the time they’d had together with Melanie. Four years to find a way to move on with his life.