‘Fucking hell,’ she muttered, wondering whether she was allowing herself to be duped yet again.
‘Stella?’ Potter asked in concern.
She looked up at the DSI and realised in that moment that the alternative to springing whatever trap Brandt might have laid for her would be to do nothing. In comparison to that, even if there was a slightest chance that the email sent to her was genuine, then it was a chance worth taking.
‘I guess we’re about to find out!’ she declared, marching out of Potter’s office.
* * *
‘Half an hour?!’ Johnson shouted at Hardy a few minutes later as they descended from the CID floor.
‘At best, ma’am. North Wales doesn’t have many specialist firearm units,’ he replied, having to take the stairs two at a time in order to keep up with the DCI.
‘Can’t they just send the local plod in?’ But she knew the answer to that and, anyway, she’d rather risk having to wait than get there to find the place littered with corpses and Brandt nowhere to be seen. In any case, it would give them a chance to get nearer.
‘Why couldn’t he have been hiding out in Derby or somewhere else local?’ Hardy offered, and Johnson could detect a hint of excitement in his voice.
‘What’s the weather like outside?’ she asked, heading for where the keys to all the unmarked cars were.
‘I, er…’ Hardy mumbled.
‘Dry but cloudy.’ Sergeant Andrews called across from the duty desk.
How he knew, cooped up all day, filling out his log book, she didn’t know. ‘Rough temperature?’
‘A balmy 7 degrees Celsius I’d say,’ he replied, still seemingly engrossed in his writing.
‘Perfect,’ Johnson said, grabbing a particular set of keys.
‘Er, why’s that, ma’am,’ Hardy enquired, spinning round to now follow her in the direction of the car park.
‘It means we can go for the poise, precision and, not to mention, power of the BMW M4 rather than the all-wheel drive security of the Audi S4.’
‘Oh,’ he responded, clearly not understanding a word she had said.
‘What car do you drive, Hardy?’ she asked as they entered the car park, with the inky black of night already covering the sky.
‘A VW Polo, ma’am.’
‘The GTI?’
‘Er, no, it’s a diesel of some sort.’
‘Then you’d better strap yourself in tight,’ she said, flinging open the driver’s door.
Chapter Forty-nine
What have I done? Kath felt sick to her stomach. The part of her that was convinced she didn’t deserve the love of this good man was telling her that it didn’t matter if he was chatting to other women online, as long it was her bed he was warming at night. Her more rational side was suggesting that she had every right to feel affronted, but she had gone about dealing with it in completely the wrong way.
If some brazen hussy was bold enough to cavort with a man she didn’t know online, no doubt sending him naked pictures and videos of herself doing God-knows-what, she was hardly likely to back off just because someone told her to. No, the first thing she would do would be to message Gregori, her Greggy, and tell him what had happened.
Almost as soon as she had sent the email to this random stranger, Kath had regretted it. She had to do something to intervene before he found out. All this time she had been fussing about what an enormous breach of trust his behaviour had been, and she had chosen to deal with it by doing something equally as bad. There was every chance he would leave her when he found out, and she would be back to her hollow existence of planning her life around the various places in North Wales where she could get a nice pot of tea.
So, what to do? The first thing that had sprung to mind was to smash the laptop. But how could she make it look like some kind of unfortunate accident? She could say she was dusting and bumped into it.
But Kath knew that was a stupid idea; pathetic even. Acting in haste had got her into this mess. What she really needed to do was to buy herself some time to think. She would have to find a way to distract Greggy from checking his emails for a while.
Kath watched day turn to night through the gap in her curtains whilst he snored peacefully beside her. That she felt cheap for using sex as a weapon was nothing compared to the agony of indecision. She knew she had been lucky that he had slept as long as he had, and that he was bound to wake soon. Similarly, it was inevitable that he would seek to use the computer again before the evening was out.
With Gregori now beginning to stir from his slumber, she made her decision, even though she knew there was every chance she would come to regret it. Yet she had learned in the course of her life that the best way wasn’t always the easiest. She would not compound her mistake from earlier by persisting with deception. As soon as he was fully awake, she would tell him the truth. It was the right thing to do and she would just have to hope that finding out from her rather than his… his lady friend might cause him to forgive her.
As she watched the man she loved slowly coming back to consciousness, she wondered whether this was the last time he would share her bed.
Chapter Fifty
Johnson and Hardy were most of the way towards Stoke-on-Trent before they managed to establish a direct line with the specialist firearms team moving in on the location they’d been given. When Hardy had first punched their route into the M4’s sat nav it had estimated the total journey time to be 3 hours and 10 minutes. In only half an hour Johnson had managed to knock their remaining time down to 2 hours. She had rejected the most direct route for the one that would see the majority of their journey on motorways and dual carriages. That way she could keep her foot down and trust that most of the other drivers on the road would see the unmistakable pulse of blue from the light bar suctioned onto the carbon fibre roof and get themselves well out of the way before the BMW’s snarling grill filled up their rear-view mirror.
‘Sergeant, I want you to maintain open comms throughout. I want to see what you see. Understand?’
‘Received, five minutes out,’ came the clear, flat response.
The wait felt like an eternity.
Johnson was about to check whether a problem had developed with the line when suddenly the radio crackled back into life. ‘This is Sierra Tango Three, opening constant line with Whisky Foxtrot One. Whisky Foxtrot One, are you receiving, over?’
‘This is Whisky Foxtrot One. We are receiving you Sierra Tango Three. Proceed, over,’ Hardy responded.
This was it. Johnson’s speed was unconsciously dropping as she diverted some of her attention to the steady stream of information coming over the airwaves. She would have dearly loved to be there, if for nothing else than watching the SFOs in operation was a sight to behold. She could imagine them all sat calmly in the back of the speeding van, carrying out their final equipment checks before making ready their Heckler and Koch MP5 or G36 sub-machine guns. Even McNeil, who nearly found himself run over by the unit she had deployed to Sarah Donovan’s place, had been otherwise impressed by the calm and efficient way they had stormed the block of flats.
How Brandt had wound up living up some dirt track on the outskirts of Betws-y-Coed, she had no idea, but was encouraged that the remoteness of the house itself gave him little chance of escaping by vehicle. A helicopter had been scrambled but was being kept back so as not to be heard before the officers on the ground arrived. It would be moved into position if their assailant were to flee on foot, where their infrared cameras were sure to pick him up in a matter of minutes.
The description of the property might have been perfunctory and merely there to highlight potential points of entry and exit but it was precise enough to allow Johnson to picture the ex-farmhouse. There was little chance their arrival would go unnoticed but the speed with which they disembarked and, with half the force flanking either side of the house, they would ensure that they maintained a sufficient element of surprise.
The steady thud of the commanding officer�
�s boots was audible and there was only the briefest of pauses when they stopped before a single blow from the big red key, loud enough to cause Johnson and Hardy to wince, gained them entry through the front door.
From there on, it was all noise as each of the officers shouted instructions to the occupants as they swept the house quickly and methodically. The contrast to the calm hushed tones from before was distinct but it did not signify a loss of control, being as it was deliberately designed to intimidate and subdue. Over the steady calls of Clear! as each room was checked Johnson could hear a woman screaming.
‘What is it, Sergeant?’ Johnson demanded, as soon as she felt it safe to do so.
‘IC1 female located and secured,’ came the response, delivered without the slightest suggestion of breathlessness, despite the recent flurry of activity. ‘No further occupants, over.’
‘Repeat that last, over,’ Johnson barked back.
‘IC1 female. Sole occupant of property. Commencing search of the surroundings, over.’
‘Shit!’ Johnson roared, not caring in the slightest who heard this outburst. ‘Proceed with search.’ Not that they wouldn’t anyway, but Johnson already knew that, somehow, Brandt had managed to evade her once more. ‘I want that woman calm and ready to speak to me in one minute. Oh, and good work, Sergeant, over.’ Her tone was enough to suggest the apparent gratitude in her last statement was somewhat forced.
‘What now, ma’am?’ Hardy whispered so his words were only heard by their intended recipient.
‘I’m not sure,’ she replied honestly. ‘But I still want to get there as quickly as possible,’ she added, clicking the left-hand paddle on the M4’s steering wheel to kick it down a gear before she planted the accelerator pedal to the floor.
Chapter Fifty-one
‘I… I don’t understand,’ said Brandt, his voice croaky from sleep. He didn’t yet feel properly awake but, even though his brain wasn’t processing properly what Kath was saying, he could tell from her tone that it was something serious.
‘I’m really sorry, it’s just that I was so… so jealous.’ Her voice was now shrill with anguish.
‘Sorry about what? Jealous?’ He sat up and rubbed his eyes.
‘You were just spending so much time on there and I started to worry, and I did bring it up, but then you told me not to worry, but I couldn’t get it out of my head, and so I tried to find out, but then I couldn’t, and so I waited and then you…’
‘Enough!’ Brandt barked, grabbing her shoulders in an effort to calm her down and get her to stop the incomprehensible babble. ‘Just tell me what’s happened,’ he said, kindlier now that he had her attention.
Kath took a deep breath. ‘First, I just need you to know that what I did was wrong but that I only did it because I love you.’
‘Okay,’ he responded impatiently. He still didn’t know what she was talking about, but a sense of foreboding was gradually enveloping him.
‘I sent her a message.’ Kath had now gone completely the other way, replacing her raving with an inadequately short, unqualified statement.
‘Who?’
‘The woman you have been emailing…’
There was only one person Kath could be referring to, but it just didn’t seem possible. Even if she had remained suspicious about his internet use, there was no way she could have found out about his contact with Johnson. At the end of each session, he left no trace of their conversation.
‘How?’
‘I guessed you were deleting your history or whatever, so I waited until you went to the bathroom.’ Her cheeks were flushed with shame.
‘Shit!’ Brandt cursed loudly. He hadn’t locked the computer when he went to the toilet, but he had only been gone for a two-minute piss and she was meant to still be out in the garden.
‘I’m sorry, Greggy,’ Kath wailed, tears running down her cheeks.
Brandt completely ignored this latest attempt to apologise; his mind was busy trying to think through the implications of what he had been told. It was bad, but not necessarily disastrous.
‘And you emailed her straight away?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Kath repeated burying her head in her hands.
Brandt yanked her arms away with such force that Kath immediately looked up in shock. ‘Yes or no. Did you email her straight away?’
‘Yes,’ she blurted out.
‘What did you say?’
‘I… I told her to back off.’
Brandt laughed, it might have only been a brief outburst, but it was enough to raise a hopeful smile on Kath’s face.
‘And you didn’t tell her your name or anything else – like where we live?’
‘Er, no.’
‘And what did she respond?’
‘I… I don’t know.’
Brandt sat back against the headboard, feeling decidedly better. He knew he should be angry about this clear breach of trust, but it was nothing as bad as it might have been and, besides, it was nice to have someone care enough about him to be jealous. Nevertheless, he was also aware that at some point soon Kath would be expecting an explanation as to whom he had been messaging and why. Perhaps it would be best not to let her off the hook too soon and allow himself some time to think of a plausible excuse.
‘So, let me just get this straight,’ he said in a more serious tone than he actually felt, given the wave of relief that was still sweeping over him. ‘You’ve been worried about what I’m up to on the computer, so you waited until I went to the toilet and you had a sneaky look. You saw an email from a woman so you replied, telling her to back off, and you then crept away before I came back?’
‘Yes,’ Kath replied guiltily, lowering her head in shame.
Brandt smiled. This should be easy to cover up. Perhaps he could claim he was emailing his sister back home in Georgia to see how things were going under the current political regime, or some such bullshit he could make up about social unrest there.
‘Well, sort of…’ Kath added before he had finally made up his mind.
‘What do you mean, sort of?’
‘Well, I was so scared you would return and find me there. It had taken me so long to get my gardening shoes off but then the email address was just random letters and numbers and I…’
She was off again, and Brandt could already feel his impatience return, along with a pang of worry. ‘Be clearer, Kath!’ he scalded, provoking a jolt of surprise.
‘I wrote her email address down on a piece of paper and messaged her from my phone.’
There were a few moments of silence whilst Brandt let these terrible words crash down on him. It was as bad as he had originally feared. If she had simply replied to the email she’d found, it would have been sent with the same IP encryption he had installed on the laptop. But she hadn’t. She had sent Detective Chief Inspector Stella Johnson, the woman who had been tasked to stop his serial killing, whom he then stripped and tied to her bed before killing her boyfriend, only to then reappear at her house a few weeks later to burn it down with her still in it, a message that would take approximately two minutes to trace.
‘What time is it?’ he roared, finally leaping from the bed.
‘I… I don’t know,’ she replied, leaning over to check the alarm clock. ‘A little after five.’
‘Shit!’ It was hours since he had left the laptop unlocked whilst he went to the toilet. As if to emphasise the point, his bladder started complaining that it was full again. But it would have to wait. By some stroke of good fortune Brandt wasn’t already staring down the barrel of a police-issue firearm, but he couldn’t afford to push his luck a moment longer.
‘Where are you going?’ Kath asked, fresh tears beginning to fall.
He stopped for a moment to look at her. He would have expected to feel anger, but here there was just loss. Realisation of how much he had changed thanks to her only made the situation he was now in more painful. He had arrived in North Wales unsure whether his decision to fake his suicide rather than actual
ly carry it out was just plain belligerence. Nevertheless, there was one thing of which he had been certain. This was to be his very last attempt to find a way of carrying on. All he had been looking for was an existence, and he had never dared hope that he might achieve something more than that, much less find a love to rival anything he had ever felt for Susan. But he should have known that after what he had done, there could be no redemption, even if it was just to make one person’s life happier than it would otherwise have been. He had learned through past, bitter experience that if something seemed too good to be true, it was. He had no doubt that the love he and Kath shared was real but that, equally, he had been a fool to think it would last.
Brandt opened his mouth to speak to Kath but couldn’t think where to begin. An apology seemed like an appropriate start, but to condense all he had done and now all he would fail to do into two simple words just seemed crass. The coward inside him suggested that she was hurt enough, and he should spare her the details of the awful truth but then, much to his surprise, his more confident side concurred. However, his argument was based on the idea that he would be a fool to throw everything away unless it was strictly necessary. It reminded him that it was many hours since Kath had sent that message to Johnson. Of course, the delay was likely to be down to Johnson just not seeing it straight away; Brandt knew better than anyone else what she was currently involved in and it was highly unlikely that she was sat in her office waiting for his emails.
Smoke and Mirrors Page 21