‘Old and feeble, young and athletic, ain’t neither of them that’s bulletproof, Stan. Don’t you start beating yourself up now. Your night’s been bad enough.’
‘It would have been different when I was younger. You have to trust me on that.’
George smiled again. ‘Quite the formidable one, I bet.’
‘A farmer. Man and boy. I used to be able to look after myself. And my family.’
‘Stan, I want to find the bastards that did this and now I need your help and all of that fighting spirit you’ve got. I know you’ve spoken to my uniform colleagues already, but I want to go through it again with you, because I’m the one who’s going to find them. I’ll ask you for every detail, Stan. It won’t be easy, but I know you’re strong enough. Does that sound like something you can do?’
Stan had been back peering at the floor. He lifted his head again and looked right at George but it was like he was looking into him. ‘Nothing matters anymore, Inspector, none of this. What is there left for me to talk about?’
‘The men that did this . . . let’s make them our focus, you and me. There’s nothing else worth talking about Stan, not right now. But those men, they’re out there somewhere and between us we can find them and we can lose them their freedom.’
George heard movement behind him. He had been leaning in, the intensity between him and Stan bringing them closer. The noise broke it like a spell. George turned to where Paul Bearn was standing at the door.
‘You okay, Paul?’
‘Yeah. I need a word is all. Nothing urgent.’
George looked back toward Stan. His head had sagged again. George reached out and took hold of his hand. Stan reacted to the touch.
‘Stan, I’m gonna pop out to my car and get something to write on, okay? I want to take that detail from you. It gives me a place to start at least. I want you to know, Stan, I’m a fucking good detective.’ George jerked a thumb at Paul. ‘Me and him . . . we’re good at what we do. And what we are doing from this moment until it is done is finding the bastards that came to your home early this morning. We need your help, Stan, okay? You up for that?’
Stan nodded. His jaw creased, just for an instant, but he held his head up this time. George stood and let go of the old man, about to move away. But he stopped as Stan started talking.
‘You see that.’ Stan gestured towards the fireplace. It was huge, the entire bottom half of one wall cut out. A double-doored, cast iron wood burner stood in its centre. The top of the brickwork ran with a knotted beam of beautiful oak that had bronzed horseshoes dotted along its length. It was in keeping with the room as a whole. Above it, the white ceiling ran with dark wood beams. George’s eye fell on a picture rail hung with memories — all of them smiling. To George, the house smacked of a family home that had been built around its occupants, and had grown as they had. Now it was just the pictures that were left. And Stan.
‘It’s beautiful, Stan. You don’t see fireplaces like that anymore, most new-builds these days don’t even have—’
‘Not the fireplace, the floor. The mark.’
George looked down at the floor. The fireplace had a brick hearth that finished against a wooden floor. They looked to George like original floorboards, polished and worn by centuries of use. ‘What mark, Stan?’
‘In front of the fire. Me and Janice. We met at a barn dance, George. Back then, it really was a dance in a barn. Her dad’s barn. The one right outside our back door. We didn’t really have the opportunities to go out on the town that young people have now. That was how you met the women when you were a farmhand. I danced with Janice that night. It was the first thing we did. She could see I was shy, I was sat on a hay bale with my brother and I was watching her but I couldn’t move towards her. I just couldn’t think of anything to say. And you know, it was like my legs wouldn’t work. She was so beautiful, everything about her. Then she walked over to me and she took my hand and we walked out into the middle of the barn and we just started dancing. We didn’t speak, not for a minute or more. And do you know what I realised, George, in that first minute before we had spoken to each other?’
‘What’s that, Stan?’
‘I realised that this was the woman that I was going to be dancing with for the rest of my life. And suddenly I didn’t feel shy at all, suddenly I felt like I was dancing with my oldest friend. And of course I was.’
George beamed. ‘I love that story, Stan. Beautiful.’
‘Janice thought it was too. And we kept it up. We’ve been married sixty-two years, George. Not a cross word. And every Sunday evening, no matter what, we would come in here and we would dance in front of that fire. Those marks on the floor are where we’ve damned near worn the boards through. I used to rush the Sunday jobs to get back. Janice talked about fixing it once. I couldn’t think of anything worse. Sixty-two years, Inspector. Now those marks are all I have left.’
George looked closer. He knew what he was looking for now. The marks were clear — tiny scuff marks, but it was more than that, the boards were worn down, there was an almost circular dip in the floor, the wood slightly lighter. ‘I can see it. I can see exactly where it is!’
Stan was looking over at it too. His head dropped again. ‘Sixty-two years married. She was everything, George. What do I do now? What do I do now?’
George exhaled in a loud sigh. ‘What can I say to that, Stan? Me and Paul here . . . we can’t possibly understand what you are going through. We can’t know how you’re feeling. All I want to do, Stan, is to appeal to that angry, stubborn, tough old bastard that lives inside of you. I want that man to shake this morning off for just an hour or so and to tell me exactly what happened. And I want to see you angry when you do it and sad by the end. I just want to know that you are still feeling something, Stan, because right now I’ve never seen a man more empty. Life will go on, you know — even after what’s happened. I know you can’t see that right now and I don’t know how long it takes to get there, but life goes on. The little bit I do know about you mentions that you have children, right? Have you called them?’
‘One daughter. Just one. My Louise. I haven’t even thought about what I might say. She lives in Europe. She has her own life now, George.’
‘We can help. Let me take the strain with that a bit. I’ll take some details from you in a minute and, with your permission, I can make those calls. Or I can get someone round to speak to her in person — whatever you think is best.’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’
‘Okay, Stan. We’ve made a start though. There are things that need to be done and we’ll take you through them. We’ll get your girl here and we’ll start to piece together what we can. What you’re feeling right now, it is going to get better. I know it’s easy for me to say that, but trust me. And helping us . . . that’s a big part of how it gets better. Do you think you can summon that tough old bastard for me? I just need him for an hour.’
Stan might have smiled. It was weak and his eyes lit for just a second. ‘Yeah, I know he’s in there somewhere.’
‘You can’t keep that man down, Stan. Let me go and get my paperwork, okay?’
George left the room; Paul had pushed out ahead of him. They stepped down onto the gravel drive. Allesandra was leaning into the side door of her van and back in full forensic garb. She pulled her mask away to speak to them.
‘How’s it going? With Mr Wingmore, I mean?’
‘Okay. As well as can be expected at least. The poor fella’s a bit of a shell in there. It’s going to take a bit of time to build him back up before we can even start to find out what went on.’
‘I spoke briefly with the uniform skipper,’ Ali said. ‘They have really scant details. He said that three blokes turned up in a van and demanded money. Stan in there tells them he doesn’t have any. They get a bit more insistent and he loses his temper, gets his gun out of his cabinet and they get it off him. The rest is laid out for us in the kitchen.’
‘Horrible, isn�
��t it? I’m conscious I’ve left him in there on his own, Ali. I’m only getting some paperwork and then I’ll be back in to make sure he doesn’t move around the house.’
Ali smiled. ‘You’re alright. I’ll keep my eye on him. I had a chat with him earlier. I reckon the last place in the world he wants to be right now is in that kitchen.’ She pulled her mask back over her face. ‘It’s not high on my list either to be honest!’ She stepped back towards the house.
‘Paul, where are we with the FLO?’ George asked.
‘A couple of minutes and I’ll have a name for certain. I’ve been waiting for the coordinator to call me back. It looks like Tim Betts is next in line. They’re just checking he’s able.’
‘Okay, that would be good. Tim’s one of the better ones.’
‘Yeah, I agree. He would be perfect for this one too, he’s good with people like our Stan.’ Paul gestured at his vibrating phone. ‘Ah, that’ll be him.’
George opened the boot of the car, pulled out the black folder with his blank statement forms and walked back into the house. He stopped to wipe his feet on the mat — habit when entering someone else’s home. He could hear some soft music and the sound of movement. It was coming from the living room where he had left Stan. Silently he peered round the door. Stan was still in there. He was at the fireplace, gliding in a rough circle over his worn mark, his arms outstretched as though they were still wrapped around his wife of sixty-two years. His eyes were shut tightly, accentuating his wrinkles, as if he had aged a decade since George had left. But his lips were pursed tightly together in a kind of smile. It was growing, spreading over his face as the music quickened. His slippers scuffed against the floor as his strides got longer.
George slipped back into the hallway. He could see the big kitchen, through internal doors with glass inserts. He could see Ali in her full, white forensic suit. She was dusting surfaces, trying to piece together who had come here in the middle of the night for the sake of their savings and then gone, taking everything but fading memories.
George stepped back out onto the gravel. Paul was just coming in.
‘Is he not doing the statement?’
‘He will,’ George said. ‘Let’s just give him a minute.’
Chapter 7
Jenny stood at the window where she had been for most of the night. She had kept the light off in her hotel room and peeked around the thick curtain, or pulled it back and stood behind the net curtains when the night had been at its blackest and she had been at her most confident. Now, the sun was back up and she was hidden again, just one eye checking for movement on the street below. There was a lot more of it now, mostly cars queuing in two solid rows for the port of Dover that was just off to her left. There was some movement from people out on foot, but their heads were bent into the driving rain, their hoods pulled up and their chins dug into scarves or collars. No one seemed to be taking any notice of the hotel. Hotel didn’t really describe it. It was a drab B&B. The night before it had displayed No Vacancies in a stern black font in the window. But Jenny had run as far as she could away from the town. She was by the sea and more and more desperate. She didn’t know where else to go. Yesterday afternoon the weather had been better. A group of tanned foreign-looking people had been out on the forecourt when she’d approached, gathered around an old black car with the bonnet up. They’d all stopped to look at her as she walked to the door. More than once she nearly turned and ran away again. But it was practically the last building before the port. She was out of options.
An elderly woman eventually came out of the ground floor flat. She’d looked Jenny up and down and then said in the slowest English she could muster that they were full. Her body language relaxed a little when Jenny spoke back in English. She told her she was in trouble, that she just needed somewhere to stay. The old woman admitted that she did have a spare room, but said she wasn’t allowed to put guests in it anymore. It was a converted loft and new fire regs meant that it was no longer deemed safe enough. She could lose her licence. Jenny practically begged her. The woman folded, she said she could put her in there for cash, but if anyone asked, she was staying there as a non-paying guest. This had suited Jenny more than she would admit. The woman hadn’t even taken her name.
It was the very top floor. She could see that it had once been a fully functioning suite, but it smelled as if it had been closed up for a while. The woman had warned her that it was used for storage. There were stacks of old towels and linen, and piles of plates and cutlery. The stuff had been in the middle of the room when Jenny went in and she’d spent the first twenty minutes pushing it all over to the side. The bathroom was the worst for the closed-up smell; it didn’t have a window. The bath was covered in a layer of dust. The bath water popped and burped when she’d first turned it on, but eventually it did run and it got warm. She crushed up a bar of soap that had hardened edges but was good enough to produce a thin lather. A bath was the first thing she’d thought of once she’d felt safe enough. The room felt like a million miles from civilisation. Surely no one could find her here.
Her paranoia came back, though. It snuck in with the shadows that replaced the daylight. The other residents were noisy too, most of the time it sounded like they were angry, like they were shouting at one another. At one point she considered the fact that she might have to leave to get something to eat. The thought of going outside was terrifying, but her hunger pains were getting stronger. Among the piles of linen and cutlery, she found a wicker basket full of individually packed biscuits, the sort you would find resting against your coffee. She devoured eight or nine. She would offer payment for them when she saw the proprietor in the morning.
Much of her evening was spent cleaning and dressing her arm. She’d soaked it in the bath and picked out the tiny little bits of black metal that had penetrated the skin. It was slow going and painful. She’d had to keep stopping, she couldn’t see to work through her tears. When the pain got so bad, she would curse Joseph, a man she hadn’t known much more than eighteen months and who had always had an air of mystery about him. That was a big part of what she had found so damned irresistible. But she cursed him still, for whatever he had done to bring this on her and for staying in that car while she had run away with their daughter.
And what of Isobel? The room had an old portable-sized tube television with a stiff piece of wire looping from the top for an aerial. She had manipulated it to get BBC 1, the national news. The shooting in Dover was the headline piece. The report had confirmed two men dead but said they believed there to be more. They hadn’t named anyone yet. Jenny accepted that Joseph was one of them. She was surprisingly numb about that. There had been no mention of Isobel in the early reports. The ten o’clock headlines, however, were shown live and displayed a sombre row of police officers. The one in the middle introduced himself as a chief inspector. He was appealing for the mother of a young baby left at the scene to get in touch.
‘We want you to know that your baby is safe and well and being looked after by appropriately trained officers and staff. There is round-the-clock protection. I can’t imagine the stress you were under, the pressure, when you decided to leave your child in the care of our officers and to flee the scene, but we know you did that for your child. Now we want you to get in touch. Just to tell us that you are safe. And from there we can work with you to make sure you stay safe. Please, there is a number on your screen . . . Please, just give us a call or come into any police station and make yourself known. I will personally guarantee your safety. Just a phone call.’
It took Jenny a little while to recover from knowing that Isobel was safe. The relief ebbed out of her and with it all of her energy. She had fallen to her knees in front of the television and sobbed Isobel’s name. She managed to note down the number on a napkin taken from a pile. It was only three numbers in truth: 1-0-1. When she was calmer, she considered the inspector’s offer — just a phone call. That could wait for the morning. The last time she had thought the police we
re there to help her hadn’t worked out so well. And she was so exhausted. But she could not sleep a wink.
The morning light and the driving rain seemed to come together and she was awake to see them both. She had no idea how long she had stood at the window; she wasn’t wearing a watch, and though the time was shown on the rolling news channel it was too small to make out from where she stood. The television was on very low as she still didn’t want to draw any attention to her room. Then, suddenly there was a knock at the door. She froze and let the curtain fall back shut. She moved over to the television and flicked it off. The room was suddenly as dark as it had been. She moved to the door and stumbled on some boxes.
‘You in there, love?’
Muffled as it was through the door, Jenny still recognised the voice as belonging to the proprietor, the elderly lady who had given her the room. Jenny rested her right hand on the handle. ‘Yeah, I’m in here.’
‘I do breakfast, love. At least I used to. You can come down to my flat and have some if you want. There’s no one about.’
Jenny still held the door handle. Her hunger pains were far worse than last night and she couldn’t face another biscuit meal.
‘It’s included, see. You pay for the room, you get your breakfast. I was going to do some bacon for me anyway.’
Jenny pulled the door open, just enough to be able to see out. The woman’s features were softer than Jenny remembered. She smiled, her hair was long and dyed dark, the roots were grey. She had pulled it back into a tight bun. She wore a fleece top over leggings and rubber Croc shoes with socks. Jenny smiled back. ‘Sounds lovely, thank you.’
Jenny had to walk from top to bottom, past every door of every room to get to the woman’s flat and she heard nothing, not a peep.
THEN SHE RAN an absolutely gripping crime thriller with a massive twist Page 5