by Penny Grubb
On the bottom of the page was a handwritten scrawl:
When I said keep this off the bloody computer I meant no e-mails stupid cow. And I don’t give a damn if he’s legit I said find me something.
The page was a copy of what had been a well-folded sheet of paper, no hint as to how the written reply had been delivered. Annie held it out to Pat. ‘Did Barbara tell you about this?’
Pat shook her head. ‘I knew she was furious with Vince over something. I’ll bet that’s when she took copies for the archive.’
‘But is this anything to do with what’s been happening this last week?’
‘I don’t see how. As far as I know, Vince lost interest in the guy, or maybe he set someone else on to him.’
‘Well, I suppose it’d be something to keep Christa out of our hair. She’s good if you can keep her focused and stop her running away with things. Look how she ferreted this out. Let’s see how the land lies, then we’ll get her to find out all Barbara’s live cases. For now, if we can make out that this guy’s at the heart of the case, she’ll be happy chasing him while we go out and about. She can check up online, then go and follow him. In fact, she can find out why Vince was after him; that’ll be a reason not to blab to any of the Sleemans if they catch up with her.’
‘And what are we going to do? Shall I get on to Carl again and set up a meeting?’
Their stares locked for a second as though Pat dared Annie to say any more about a trip to the farmhouse. Annie noted the bait but ignored it. She wasn’t ready to have that battle with Pat just yet, and there were other things that had begun to bug her. ‘There’s another line of enquiry I’d like us to try first. I want to chase up that stuff Scott Kerridge told me. He was pulled into something dodgy with a guy called Greaves.’
‘That thing about them picking up some woman off the beach?’
‘Yeah, but I can’t see Scott overstepping the line voluntarily and he seems convinced this Greaves guy is straight, too. How do you fancy taking a trip out to talk to Scott’s wife? It has to be you. She sure as hell won’t talk to me.’
‘OK, but what am I after?’
Annie shrugged. ‘Whatever you can get out of her; her views on Greaves; whether she knows about it at all.’
‘I suppose she might let slip exactly where this so-called woman was picked up from. That’s if she’ll talk to me at all.’
‘I don’t see why not. It was me she had the problem with.’
‘So what will you do?’
‘See if I can follow it up from another angle, and then …’
Annie paused at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. She raised her hand to quash further discussion as Pat said, ‘She’s never been all the way down there and back by now.’
Christa marched through the door, coffee shop carriers swinging from her hand, bringing the tang of fresh coffee and the aroma of warm pastry. Pat sniffed appreciatively as Christa handed round the polystyrene cups.
‘I told you she’s good,’ Annie murmured to Pat. ‘And quick. Too bloody quick sometimes.’
But not this time, she added to herself as she smiled at Christa preparatory to explaining her surveillance role on the unwitting Aker Hassan. Christa’s reappearance had been perfectly timed. Annie hadn’t wanted to go into the detail of her own intended part in checking Scott’s story. Far better that everyone, including Pat, should assume she had no idea where Scott’s strange tale had played out.
CHAPTER 15
Forty minutes later, Annie drove along a thick tarmac ribbon of a road that had passing places every few metres. It was wide enough for two cars to pass, but only just. The frequent passing places and the extra thick surface were for the lorries and heavier vehicles that plied their trade along it. This Friday afternoon, with barely a hint of dusk in the sky, it was quiet. Acres of fields stretched out either side, boundary ditches invisible from the road, their course marked by changes in the colour of the crop and an occasional ragged stretch of hedgerow. The breeze held the sharp tang of salt, though the gentle rise of the landscape blocked the sea from view. She clicked the button to close the window, seeing a combine harvester cough a cloud of dust in the field beside her, just as an orange and red striped police Range Rover swept past in the other direction. Annie glimpsed a man and a woman in uniform, the woman flapping her hand at a cloud of harvest flies and throwing an irritated glance at the field. Annie caught a glimpse of an automatic weapon, the sight of which gave her a jolt. She knew the plant was heavily guarded, that they had no interest in her, but it pulled her up to see them, made her feel guilty as though her errand was blazoned on the sides of her car.
The forty-minute journey, a familiar route from years ago, should have been long enough for her to relax. Hedon Road had taken her east out of the city, where less of an industrial wasteland than she remembered bordered the docks along the Humber. Changes on the inland side of the road had been more marked. Where memory told her there would be a run-down terrace, she’d driven past a row of smartly renovated dwellings, and further along, where she recalled large square houses standing back from the road alongside bustling factories, she’d seen only derelict shells.
Christa had seemed happy enough to go after Hassan. Vince’s apparent malice towards the guy might have meant he’d had a hand in the treatment of Vince’s recent illness. Pat didn’t know. She’d pulled herself out of that moment of despair, but Annie wondered how long she would be able to function normally if Barbara took a turn for the worse or they couldn’t find any answers. Annie herself felt dazed by the events of the past week. For Pat it was all so much closer to home.
Vince’s condition was long-standing and had recently become worse. Pat had muttered that Vince wouldn’t buy or threaten his way out of this one, but Annie wondered if that was exactly what he’d tried, and the legit Dr Hassan had earned his wrath by giving him the wrong answer.
After she’d passed the familiar skyline of the Salt End chemical works that marked the transition from urban to rural, Annie found her mind turning to Jean and her gang at the racecourse. She had toyed with the idea that they were in on things with Carl Sleeman. After all, it was the job set up by Crazy Carl and one of them had taken her phone, maybe not by accident. But she couldn’t make the theory stick. Her gut instinct was rarely quite so wrong. Those people were wrapped up in their own world of ponies and the plethora of trouble and vexation that that world seemed to carry with it, even when amateur poisoners weren’t involved. They had no time for pacts with people like the Sleemans.
Following the twists of the road through the villages and hamlets towards the seaside town of Withernsea, she’d fought back a wave of frustration. From being an irrelevant nuisance at the edge of her thoughts, Scott’s intervention had begun to stand out as more significant. The link with Carl Sleeman via his pseudonym, Lance Malers … his going to the trouble of warning her off … then breaking into Pat’s office.
Get back to the source or as close as you can; a prime rule of the job. She wondered how Pat was getting on with Scott’s wife.
Withernsea had been quiet as she’d bounced through the speed bumps of the main street and out beyond the town, heading south down a road that ended with Spurn Point at the tip of the Humber, except she wasn’t going that far.
She’d driven towards Hollym, past the neat grasslands of an air strip, incongruous here at the edge of the sea, its orange windsock flapping, on through the village itself and out to a landscape of ploughed earth, the sea occasionally visible over the undulations of the fields to her left, until an abrupt turn brought the ocean head on, its crashing waves surprisingly close. The blades of a single wind turbine reached up ahead of her, becoming one in a cluster of half a dozen or so spinning lazily as she drew nearer. She passed the road to RAF Holmpton with a feeling of officialdom closing in. Ahead lay the vast acreage of the gas plant at Easington, with its high wire fences and ever-circling armed guards. The road drew her closer and closer to the heart of it until she drove with well-maintained doub
le fences either side, electric wires standing ready to catch anyone who made it across the rolled barbed wire of the outer defence. The shiny eyes of multiple CCTV cameras watched her and she heard the low rumble of the rotor blades of a helicopter overhead.
The bright silver of the armoured boundaries turned abruptly into an ordinary street; a village with a picture postcard pub, village store and red telephone box, overseen by a tall church. With a single sharp twist, the road whipped away all sign of the vast complex from her rear view mirror.
Barely a stone’s throw from here lay a small cove that must have been a haven for smugglers long before officialdom and big business laid down roots across the area. That it had continued to run a low-level operation almost under the noses of the tight security at Easington seemed to Annie to mirror the tiny flies that plagued the area at harvest time – ever-present, a universal source of annoyance and no respecter of heavy weaponry.
She’d never heard of anything more lethal than skunk weed changing hands, but then she’d made sure not to enquire too deeply. It was a hazard of the job that people confided more than they should, more than they would have given to an investigator with a warrant card rather than a licence. It was all about perception. The PI was the slightly shady character who dealt in matters not entirely legal. She wondered how it was in the States where private investigation had a far higher standing. Maybe it was the uniformed police who heard the impromptu confessions.
What she knew of the cove was that it was a low-volume concern, dealing only in resin and skunk. But trafficking people? If it were the same crew that she’d known before, and Scott’s descriptions had fitted, then it just wasn’t credible.
But here was the source of Scott’s strange tale and Annie intended to rekindle some old contacts.
CHAPTER 16
Annie pulled the car off the road well before her destination and tucked it as close as she could under a stubby hedge, flinching as the hawthorn screeched on the paintwork. Easington’s security would already have matched her identity with the vehicle and stashed it in a database somewhere, but she had to hope these were not sources that Sleeman could access. As far as anyone connected with the case was concerned, she intended to keep her identity unconnected with this car for as long as possible.
The headland was uneven, the ground stony; her feet tipped this way and that on the large clods of earth. She squeezed through the thin remnants of a hedgerow that bordered the seaward end and used the tough dune grasses as handholds as she slithered down the drop, letting go and taking the final metre in one jump, careful to land on her good leg on a smooth patch of shale. The mini cliff behind her cut off the rest of the world. She was alone on the beach, a stiff breeze ruffling her hair, the steady swish of the waves sucking the shale up the beach and dragging it back out. Ignoring the track to the cottage that was her goal, she walked down to the edge of the sea and along towards the rise over which Scott and Greaves would have come.
She passed by a well-blackened patch above the reach of all but the spring tides and kicked out at the remains of burnt driftwood. This was where the guys lit their barbecue. Scott had talked about a man and a woman, woollen caps, well wrapped against the night air. It fitted her memories, but maybe it was a new firm, a new operation. It had been a long time. Far out to sea was the indistinct outline of some sort of vessel, possibly a passenger ferry. At night, it would only be visible by its lights. A boat could come in close without being seen if it kept itself dark. Scott had described a string of lanterns that Annie had recognized as the signal for don’t land. Someone either hadn’t understood or hadn’t cared when they’d dropped the woman in the shallows … if that was what had happened. Just beyond the reach of the waves, looking out to sea, she tried to imagine the beach on a dark night four weeks ago. Maybe it wasn’t a landing at all. Had the woman waded into the water that night to get into a boat, not out of one? Had she seen the vessel turn away as the lanterns flared to life, and then had no choice but to wade ashore? She glanced towards the cottage, knowing that anyone up there would be able to see her, expecting someone to wander down as though by accident. That was how meetings used to happen. But no one came and after almost ten minutes of walking up and down on the shale, she headed for the path that would take her up there.
As she pushed open the garden gate, she could see a shadow through the frosted glass. Someone sat in the kitchen where the window overlooked the shore, and must have seen her. The door swung wide at her knock and she walked inside, to be met by the sweet tang of cannabis although the windows gaped open and a draught blew through. The man at the table looked at her. She took in his tattered jumper, the frayed tartan collar of an old shirt, the woollen hat pulled tight over his head. He looked thinner than she remembered, and frailer.
‘Hi. Do you remember me?’
His shrug was noncommittal. ‘What do you want?’
‘Just to talk.’
‘I’ve nothing for you, whatever you’re after.’ He lifted a cracked cup to his lips.
‘I’m not here to buy.’
He shot her a glare. ‘Good job, because I’ve nothing to sell.’
Abruptly, he stood up. Annie moved aside as he pushed past her and peered out through the door as though to check she was alone. ‘Where’s your car?’
She told him.
Coming back in, he stopped close to her and stared into her eyes; close enough that she could smell the mustiness from the old jumper. It was hard to tell if his skin was grimy or if the shadows were healing bruises. If the latter, he’d taken quite a beating not too long ago.
‘Yeah, I do know you, don’t I?’ He turned away, eyes screwed up in thought and went to sit down again. ‘Were you the private eye or the one who came to score for—’
‘The private eye. I didn’t come to score for anyone. And I’m not here for that now.’
‘Just as well, because we’ve nothing to sell,’ he repeated. ‘I’ve not seen you in years. What are you after?’ The suspicion in his voice had ebbed, but not altogether.
‘I’ve been working down south. How’s things?’
‘You’ll get nothing here just now.’
‘Why not?’
‘We’re taking things easy. Letting things settle.’ These statements were made with more weary resignation than suspicion, so Annie risked getting to the heart of the matter.
‘You mean after that woman was picked up by those two coppers?’
‘What do you know about that?’
‘Nothing. I’m trying to find out. Can you show me where?’
He tipped his half-empty cup towards him, stared into its depths for a moment, then drained it and stood up, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
As they left the cottage and made for the path down to the shore, Annie felt the buzz of her phone in her pocket and slid it half out to snatch a look. She remembered these guys of old. Whether it was a background level of chemicals in their blood or something else, they acted on the whim of the moment. He’d decided to walk with her to the beach, to show her where the strange events had played out. This was not the moment to break his mood. She clicked off the phone, noting that it was a number on the screen and not a name. If it were someone she didn’t know, they could wait. The man took the steep slope with the sure steps of someone who could walk this path in his sleep. Annie scrambled behind him, grabbing at the roots and grasses to avoid tumbling down on top of him. Back at the sea’s edge with the shale crunching beneath her shoes, Annie felt a fresh breeze ruffle her hair and watched the man kick out at the remains of the barbecue, just as she had done.
‘Everyone knows we don’t do that sort of stuff. But you run the risk in a game like this that someone’ll come along and make you say yes to something.’
‘Someone threatened you to deal with the woman. Who?’
He gave her what she read as an old-fashioned look, so she prompted, ‘Sleeman?’
He nodded.
‘Which Sleeman?’
‘Oh, t
hey sent the runner with the orders first time round, but we said, “no way”. Then next thing they’ve brought in the big guns. We stood our ground. We know what’ll happen if we push the boundaries. We’ve a good thing going here. Why would we wreck it? They weren’t even offering good money. We told them to piss off, and they did.’ He paused, looking out to sea, then bent to pick up a flat stone which he skimmed out across the incoming waves with an expert flick of his wrist. Annie watched as it bounced over the water’s surface and thought back to the heavies who’d leapt out of that car in pursuit of her when they failed to run her down. Had they been here, too? She’d never know for sure. She turned back to the man beside her. He’d never been this talkative before, but she sensed his need to get this off his chest.
‘Then we learnt they weren’t going to take no for an answer. They … well, let’s just say they got in touch with someone else, so it wasn’t us they were threatening. They’re a dirty lot. They’d target a kid just to get their own way.’
‘D’you want to give me any detail? It might be something I can help with.’
‘No.’
‘So what was supposed to happen? The woman was with you and there was a boat coming in to collect her?’
‘Hell, no. She was to be dropped and we were to keep her up there,’ he nodded back towards the cottage, ‘until she was picked up. We had a call to say she’d be ashore in minutes. We watched the road like we always do and the signal came that a cop car’s pulled up so we light the lanterns and get the old barbie going. I never saw any boat, big or small, but she was only wet from the legs down so they’d got her in close. Couldn’t see a thing that night.’
‘But who was she?’
‘Don’t know. Don’t want to know.’
Annie looked into the man’s face. She saw residual fear and frustration but nothing to make her think he was hiding much, though he’d clearly kept back some personal details. Here was yet another story that didn’t add up. She felt her own frustration well up again.