I Know You (DI Emma Locke)

by Louise Mullins

  ‘We’ve got money.’ Plenty.

  ‘Yes, I’m aware of that but he decided to withhold the extent of his debt from me, his wife, so I doubt the thought of asking his mother for a loan to repay a shark lender crossed his mind.’

  ‘Why are you having financial trouble?’

  ‘We’re not.’ I can feel my voice becoming sharper by the second. ‘It was a business decision he decided not to involve me in the making of. He screwed up. But he’s apologised so apparently it’s all okay.’

  ‘Well, it’s not good to hold on to resentments.’

  And, so it begins. Another argument. Another reason for me to regret answering the phone to the old witch. And I’ll look forward to another lecture from Aeron when he returns home later this evening, annoyed for having been disturbed at work during his forty-five-minute lunch break by Cynthia’s phone call to relay an edited version of our conversation.

  ‘Are you having problems?’

  I imagine her positioned comfortably in her newly decorated, four-bedroom, detached London abode that’s now worth almost a million pounds, and inwardly seethe.

  ‘If you’re insinuating marital, no. He just likes to keep things from me it seems.’

  ‘I mean, why borrow more if you’re not having financial issues?’

  ‘Are you saying this isn’t the first time he’s done this?’

  ‘You must have your head up your arse, Sinead.’ Her insult is like a stab wound, silencing me. ‘I mean why re-mortgage the house if—’

  ‘What?’

  By the end of our phone call I’m disinclined to believe a word that leaves my so-called husband’s mouth the moment he steps through the front door and I’m starting to think my distrust of him is justified.

  Cynthia acted as guarantor. The loan was agreed on the basis (without my consent) that the forty thousand pounds in equity would be used to renovate our house (that’s already worth more than what we paid for it), thus increasing its value in preparation for sale despite the fact we’ve not discussed putting the house on the market, moving home, or even re-mortgaging the house I bought for us only three years ago ever occurred.

  Though I can’t see her I can envision Cynthia gloating. I squeeze the phone so tightly in my hand that I feel the pinch of plastic trapped flesh as the cover snaps in my palm, Cynthia’s droning voice dying as the signal cuts out and the batteries fall from their casing and clatter onto the floor, skidding along the laminate and disappearing beneath the sofa.

  Now I have a huge fucking problem I may not have known existed unless Mr Unknown hadn’t chosen to attempt to take my life on that winding country road. And I wonder who else my husband has upset, let down, or driven to the point of wanting to harm his family, and why.

  ‘Forty thousand pounds!’

  What the hell would he need such a large amount of money for?

  *

  I’ve been brooding for hours. Ideas circling one another. Being drawn time and again to the same conclusion: Aeron used the money to pay someone to kill me off.

  I considered the possibility the original loan from Terry the Shark was a larger amount than Aeron felt comfortable in admitting to borrowing. I even contemplated blackmail. Had Aeron paid off the three male customers he was concerned would damage his business’ reputation after refusing to cover the invoice on the extension he completed for them?

  But whichever theory I dream up, the way he held my hand in the hospital, the guilt and shame flickering across his eyes, the way his grip tightened on my fingers when he asked me what secrets I was keeping from him hold the most weight.

  Could it be that my own husband wants me dead?

  Had he orchestrated the vehicle collision to appear as though it were a case of accidental death?

  Had he become so wound up by my lack of injury that he’d paid Terry to finish me off?

  Am I going to die for my disloyalty with Gareth?

  I shake my head. No. Not with our children in the back of the car. He wouldn’t risk hurting them to get back at me. Would he? Despite his flaws as a husband, he’s a good father.

  And besides, even if he had that doesn’t explain who deposited the dog shit through the letterbox, nor why the individual is emulating one of the many things that forced us from our home in the middle of the night just three years ago, turning our backs on our jobs, school, friends, and family in fear of our lives.

  DI LOCKE

  Newport, Wales

  Jones approaches me clutching a Big Mac in one hand and a large gingerbread latte in the other. He hands a cup to me, the froth spills out of the small lip and down my hand. I lick it off and he turns his gaze away in feigned disgust.

  ‘What did Rawlings say about his predecessor?’ I take a sip of the cinnamon sweet coffee.

  ‘Not much. And it seems no one else who knew Evesham, aside from Pierce, was around at the time he was fronting the unit. Since Sinead was booted out of the Met most of the original investigative team have dispersed.’

  ‘Requested a transfer elsewhere you mean?’

  ‘Retired, or otherwise left the force.’

  ‘Suspended and jailed then?’

  ‘You must have the same psychic skillset as Logan’s mum,’ he says with a wink.

  I tilt my head to the side and wait for him to clarify. ‘Two. Both jailed. Detective Constable Collins was shanked in prison a month into his five-year sentence. He was imprisoned for failing to declare confiscated items during a seizure of various contraband, including cannabis. The same batch found in Sinead’s locker that caused her to lose her position. Collins’ colleague, Detective Constable Peters, got three years for bribery in relation to the same case involving the possession of cocaine. Peters was granted parole…’ He drums his fingers along the desk in a roll-call. ‘Duh, duh, duh… Two weeks ago.’ He looks across to me and back to the screen of his computer and I catch the flicker of a jigsaw piece sliding into place inside his head. ‘The man’s release address is in Swindon.’

  Midway between Croydon and Newport.

  ‘How odd that the Met didn’t divulge any of this information to us before.’

  ‘My thoughts exactly.’

  I pick up the desk phone. ‘I’ll arrange for two of the DSs to have a word with Peters’ probation officer to see what he thinks about his client’s motivations for the future, and then to the man himself to establish how he feels about his prison sentence.’

  Before I have time to analyse whether the corruption within the force extended beyond Evesham and his underlings – Peters, Collins, and although I haven’t got proof the cannabis fiasco suggests Pierce’s involvement – Evans barges into the office with a smarmy grin on his pudgy face. ‘The Beemer has been found.’

  ‘The one that hit Sinead’s car?’ I slam my coffee down onto the desk and put the telephone receiver back into its sleeve. ‘Are you sure? It’s the same three number plate digits?’

  He nods. ‘It’s smashed up pretty bad, but the full number plate is a definite match to the VIN plate on the black Golf wanted in connection to Steven and Natalie’s murders.’

  ‘Now we know the number plates on the BMW are cloned from the Golf, what does the VIN plate suggest regarding the BMW’s manufactured registration?’

  ‘I’ve put a DC in charge of sifting through the DVLA database to locate all logbook signatories, as well as the vehicles insurance history to ascertain a list of previous owners.’

  I stand. ‘Where is the car?’

  ‘Newport. On the ring-road opposite the car auction, just off Portland Street being photographed and swabbed as we speak. Uniform chased it until it hit a lamppost. Two young lads legged it from the vehicle through the industrial estate and onto the lane backing East Dock Road. One of them got stuck in someone’s garden. The resident caught his ankle as he tried unsuccessfully to gain traction on the wall. The other didn’t want to leave his pal behind. Morals and all that.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Getting booked in. Thou
gh neither of them is our man unfortunately. Christ, they only look about fifteen.’ He shakes his head. ‘I doubt they even remember which house they nicked it from.’ I raise my eyebrows, and he adds, ‘It looks like they tried another property before they successfully stole the Beemer. A couple reported a break-in from their farm backing Usk Way, a few roads down from where we found the car. Luckily they kept their keys on them when they went next door to visit their elderly neighbour.’

  ‘Good Samaritans. I wish there were more like that.’

  ‘Thanks to the joyriding, risk-taking, reckless thieves we’ve got enough evidence to charge them for burglary as well as Taking Without Consent. Because there were a few carrier bags containing jewellery, pocket change, and a pair of brand-new Reeboks parked beside a crowbar in the boot, which I suspect they used to force the back door of the property open with.’

  Me and Jones traipse the corridor side by side. Evans points to the door of Interview Room 3. ‘The mouthy one’s in there.’

  ‘I’ll take him.’

  Jones nods his agreement and wishes me good luck.

  I’m surprised when the lad chooses to exercise his right to silence the moment I enter the room, despite the fact I heard him gobbing off to his mum even as I opened the door. His sneer tells me there are a lot of things he’d like to say.

  I sit first, staring intently at the hoody-wearing lad. He smirks, looks away. His mum at least has the decency to look down at her lap in shame. He, though, doesn’t appear to give a shit about the upset and hurt he’s caused the couple who are waiting to hear from us to find out when they can collect their stolen belongings from the station.

  ‘Can you tell me the address of the property from where you stole the BMW?’

  He slouches in his seat, widens his legs, inhales, and stares vacantly at the closed door over my shoulder as though he has nothing better to do all day than to sit for hours opposite me. After several minutes of this his mum nudges his elbow, and he huffs in impatience, shuffles, and glares at her. I note a split-second look of fear on her face, and wonder if at home he’s aggressive or even violent towards her. The thought makes my blood boil and it takes every ounce of energy I have not to tell him just what I think of him. But Jones enters the room asking for a quick word in the corridor forcing me back to a professional mindset.

  He tilts his head towards the closed door of Interview Room 4. ‘The Quiet One gave me the address.’ He hands me a slip of paper with his barely legible scrawl written in black ink, too small to identify without a magnifying glass.

  ‘I think you need your lenses altering.’

  ‘Or you need an eye test.’ He smiles. ‘The Ashes on Sycamore Avenue in Maindee. The only house on the cul-de-sac that’s named not numbered.’

  And fifty minutes later, once we’ve vacated HQ with an arrest warrant, leaving the two youths to wait in their separate holding cells until called to Newport Magistrates for a bail hearing later this afternoon, we arrive outside The Ashes.

  ‘Rather an apt name wouldn’t you say?’ Jones gives me a quizzical look and I add, ‘It looks like the place should have been burned to cinders years ago.’

  ‘It probably very nearly was. These houses were built as post-war accommodation for soldiers. Many of them rest on the foundations of bombed buildings.’

  A tingle of ice winds around me at the thought of stepping over the bones of a house that once existed during World War Two as I tread along the cracked pavement. The history of the ground below my feet seeping through my bones.

  There is a car parked in the overgrown garden of a property a few houses down from Ashleigh’s, the registered owner of the metallic blue BMW, that’s been painted across the doors with the house number and resident’s name. And as we walk past, the two rottweilers roaming the weed-riddled garden tell me why the vehicle is being used as a temporary post box. They dribble from snarling jowls, their sharp teeth set in evil scowls as though salivating at the thought of ripping through our flesh. I doubt the postman would dare risk opening the gate to deliver a couple of envelopes and would prefer to toss them inside the windowless heap of junk than risk losing his or her limbs.

  The dogs bark loudly, and I have to fight the urge to yelp in fright as we pass in front of them. The most vicious-looking of the two rottweilers jumps as high as the rickety fence separating us, dropping back to earth with a thud and pacing the gate while snarling.

  Ashleigh is home when we cross the boundary to the house once we’re sure the garden is dog-free. I knock on the door of the council owned property she shares with her ailing mum and unemployed brother and wait for her slight form to appear through the cracked half-moon shaped window in the UPVC door. I show her my ID card, introduce myself and Jones and she steps back to allow us entry without bothering to ask why we’re here.

  In the living room, stifling hot and scented with stale cigarettes and an underlying odour that reminds me of overcooked school meals, I find her mother asleep on the sofa beneath a fluffy pink fleece.

  ‘He’s upstairs,’ Ashleigh says to Jones, glancing quickly back to me and catching the questioning look in my eyes. ‘My brother, Josh. He’s who you want, isn’t he?’

  ‘Actually, no. We’re here to speak to you, Ashleigh.’ Her eyes widen, and she straightens her posture. ‘We need to ask you a few questions concerning the ownership of the vehicle you have registered in your name to an address in St Julian’s. Ronald Road,’ says Jones, detecting a flicker of recognition from her face.

  ‘We moved from there months ago.’

  ‘We know,’ says Jones. ‘It’s an offence not to declare an address change to the DVLA. The maximum penalty is a thousand pound fine.’

  ‘I don’t own a car. I don’t even drive. My brother does. He’s got a BMW. But why would he register it in my n—’

  ‘There he is,’ says Jones, turning and heading for the front door as I catch a man in a bright red sweater running away from the house.

  ‘Stop, police!’ I pass Jones at the threshold to give chase, glancing at the house, to where I figure Josh must have heard us arrive, panicked, and dropped from the open window above the living room to make his run for it. I forge onward but by the time I reach the lane at the end of the road, Josh has already legged it from the estate. Panting and pumped up, I press my phone to my ear and the moment it’s answered shout down the line for back-up as Jones legs it past me. ‘Take the car and follow him. I’ll chase him on foot. One of us will get him.’

  I nod to Jones and jump into the unmarked car, sparking the engine to life and rolling out of the road.

  I speed down side streets where rubbish bags have been left on the pavement beside overflowing refuse bins and circuit the immediate area that has a bleak vibe to it. I circle the main road passing several learner motorcyclists in convoy and hit a line of traffic opposite the Tool Station rental shop, before travelling back to the estate.

  Jones calls me as I enter a one-way street. ‘Any luck?’

  ‘No. You?’ he says.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I’m going to head back to the house and see if I can pin anything down that could tell us where he’s gone to hide out. Ashleigh must know some of his nearby friends or relatives and should be able to tell me where they live.’

  Leaving the car parked up and locked safe I meander along side streets and through lanes backing the terraces. I hop over three-foot high walls at the rear of some suspect houses on the corner of Hawthorne Avenue to inspect their outbuildings and sheds, hoping Josh is crouched inside one of them, but they’re all empty except for power tools, gardening equipment, or bags of crap they’ve no room to store inside their loft spaces.

  ‘The fucker’s gone,’ I spit, turning out of the lane to return to the car parked on the cul-de-sac roadside, coming face to face with Ashleigh, her eyes glistening, her face ghostly white and almost luminous in the early evening streetlight.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I… went looking for
Josh… didn’t want him to get into trouble.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘He… ran… into the road. The van. It didn’t stop in time. I-I think he’s dead.’

  Chasing down a suspect will always come with risks, but the unintended consequences for Joshua Owen were unprecedented.

  ‘Stay here.’

  I run to the car, and bark orders through the phone for uniform to head to where Ashleigh stands bent forward, hands on her knees, retching over the kerb.

  I reverse hard, smack the front end of the car onto the concrete protruding upward between two deep pot holes in the road where the tyres skid and send thick grey mud up into the air, landing like a wet slap against Ashleigh’s light blue jeans as I speed away.

  I find Josh lying in the middle of the left lane of the dual carriageway opposite The Tool Station. There are several vehicles with their hazards sending amber light to streak the surface of the slick tarmac, doors open, drivers running hands through their hair or shaking their heads. Passers-by stood around him, on phones to the emergency services, or talking in hushed voices among themselves. ‘Poor lad… dead… so fast… didn’t stop…’

  I run over to check his pulse, ignoring the man knelt over Josh, continuing his chest compressions while panting ‘breathe,’ over and again.

  I kneel beside him and lean close, my heart pounding, limbs shaking, listening for the sound of an inhalation, feeling helpless. The tired looking man has beads of sweat running down his face, voice strained as he begs the universe not to allow Josh to die.

  Several minutes pass, but there are still no signs of life. An ambulance screeches onto the scene, and paramedics storm from the vehicle, carrying green and red bags filled with equipment. I watch them, as though outside of myself, try to restart Josh’s heart using a defibrillator. But after a further three minutes they stop. I hear a faint cry, a gasp, and a lone tear trickles down my cheek. I lick it away, barely tasting the salt, and step back to give Josh’s soul room to leave his body.