Alternative outcome

by Peter Rowlands

  “I don’t know. That’s the weak point of this hypothesis. But just suppose there’s just enough plausible detail to make them think I based it on reality?”

  He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know what to think about you, Stanhope. You get this idea that Janni Noble is responsible for your break-ins, so I go rummaging around looking into his life for you, and now you change tack completely and come up with this even more far-fetched scenario. What do you want me to say?”

  I stretched, pushing my chair back. The metallic feet rasped on the concrete. “I’m sorry about Janni Noble, Dave. I got the wrong end of the stick about that. I should have thought it through properly before I raised it with you.”

  “Amateur detectives.” He smiled dryly.

  “I think this explanation really is much more plausible than the other one was. It just needs an imaginative leap.”

  “Ha! In my world we don’t generally operate on the basis of imaginative leaps.” He reflected a moment. “Not usually, anyway.”

  We sat in silence for a while, then I asked diffidently, “Do you think there really was a stash of loot that was never recovered?”

  “Don’t ask me, mate …” He broke off. “Ha! I get this. You’re expecting me to go and find out for you. What am I, your unpaid researcher?”

  “But it wouldn’t be just for my benefit would it? If this really is true, the implications would go way beyond my book.”

  “So Stanhope cracks a case that defied the massed resources of the Met and the regional forces. Is that what you’re saying? You’ve been reading too many thrillers, mate. Or rather writing them.”

  “I haven’t cracked anything. I’m just thinking out loud, is all.”

  He seemed to consider for a moment. “OK, I’ll grant you there’s a slender thread of logic in what you say.” I started to speak, but he waved a hand in admonition. “A very slender thread.”

  “So what are you thinking?”

  “What am I thinking? Nothing, at this point. You’re the one who set all this in motion. What happens next according to you?”

  I laughed. “I have no idea. All I know is that if this is true, the people who are looking for the money presumably won’t stop. They’ll keep hassling me until they find out what I know. Which doesn’t make me particularly happy, I can tell you.” A new thought struck me. “Did I tell you my ex-wife also had a break-in? Not long after mine?”

  “Coincidence.”

  “Or part of a pattern. I certainly wouldn’t want to inflict any more of this kind of thing on her.”

  He gave me an assessing look. “So, what, you and I lay some kind of trap for them? Catch them red-handed? Is that the plan? I can definitely see that. Is it a scene for your next book?”

  I sipped my coffee and considered. “All I’m thinking is, do you reckon you could find out if there really might be a stash from that robbery that was never recovered? At least that would be a starting point, wouldn’t it? If there isn’t, then this whole idea is a false trail.”

  He gave me a sardonic smile. “So you get what you wanted from me after all.”

  I lifted my arms in exasperation. “Give me a break!”

  Chapter 46

  Days stretched into a week, and there was still no news of Rick Ashton’s new investment. How long was I supposed to wait before contacting him again? I kept giving myself one more day.

  There had been no contact from Hunt Topham about the supposed book deal either. Possibly they were waiting for Annette to return from the US and take the lead, or more uncharitably, they were waiting to find out if I was still on Rick Ashton’s Christmas card list.

  As for my kidnappers, I’d seen no further sign of them. I wanted to believe this meant they’d given up on whatever mission they had, but I couldn’t convince myself of this. Clearly they wanted something from me, and there was nothing to indicate that they’d found it yet. How long did I have to wait before I could feel safe again in my own home? I had no idea, but I had a strong suspicion it must be a lot longer than this.

  My book had sold one more online copy. I wasn’t rushing to celebrate. I’d had another review, too: “Well enough written, but it’s hard to decide if it’s a thriller or a bit of reportage. Underwhelming.” Well, at least it was frank.

  By now I should have been promoting it for all it was worth with tweets, blogs, social media postings – all means at my disposal. That had been my original plan, but I’d been slow off the mark. With the possible book deal now pending, I felt the whole project was in limbo.

  Then Dave Matthews rang.

  “I don’t know why I go to all this trouble for you, but you might find some of this interesting.”

  “Drinks are on me for the foreseeable future then.”

  “Well, wait till you hear and you can judge for yourself. The first thing is yes, seemingly some of the haul from this robbery was never recovered. A lot of it was found at the farm where the arrests were made, but definitely not all of it.

  “The press had a field day speculating about the value of the unrecovered stuff. You presumably know about that. The owners and insurers weren’t saying much, even to the police, but from what I’m picking up, it was probably at least two million, so I think you can take that as fact. It may well have been quite a lot more. Some of it had no value except to the owners, but the thinking is that there will have been diamonds and jewellery amongst it. So the two million is probably just a bottom-end estimate.”

  “Well, it’s a useful start.”

  “Next, I can confirm that one of the suspects disappeared. A man named Liam Stone. But you probably know that already.”

  “Yes, and there were reports that he was arrested in Australia, but got away.”

  “Well, someone who might have been Stone was arrested a few years later. Andrew Franklin. But nothing was proved, and the next thing anyone knew, he’d dropped back off the radar, never to be seen again.”

  “What about Stone’s family?”

  “His wife and daughter? I can’t tell you anything about them.”

  Something about this turn of phrase made me prick up my ears. “You mean there’s nothing to tell, or you’re not allowed to tell me anything?”

  “Read my lips, mate. I can’t tell you anything about them.” He paused meaningfully. “Don’t forget, somebody blew the whistle on the robbers. It was never revealed who that was.”

  I decided to think this over later.

  “Anything else?”

  “The people in the robbery got varying prison sentences, but most of them are out now.”

  I sat for a moment thinking this through. Dave said, “Will that do you for now?”

  “Well, I’m thinking that none of this contradicts my theory about who might be giving me grief. In fact it would fit in with all this.”

  “Yes it would,” he said noncommittally, “but there’s nothing whatever here to suggest that you’re right.”

  “So what’s your thinking?”

  “No thinking at all at the moment. I’m just giving you some facts.”

  I thanked him and disconnected.

  His evasiveness about the wife and daughter intrigued me. Was he implying that he knew what had happened to them, but couldn’t share it? If so, that might suggest that they’d gone into witness protection – which would be logical if in fact it was Stone’s wife who had tipped off the police about the robbery.

  As to why she might have given him away, I could only speculate. Maybe their relationship had already been failing, and the robbery was the last straw.

  Did Dave have enough professional clout to have found out about something as sensitive as this? I had no idea. If it was true, it would be rather different from my story, where the whole family emigrated together. Whether it had any significance for me, I couldn’t decide.

  * * *

  Later the same day I had a call from Ashley. I’d made no attempt to contact her since I’d last seen her, so I was uncertain where our relationship w
as now supposed to be. But her opening gambit was on a rather different topic.

  “Mike, this first press release you’ve written for us.”

  It hadn’t occurred to me that she would be involved directly in the work I was doing for Bob Latimer. I wondered how it might affect the dynamic between us.

  “What about it?”

  “Well, it doesn’t play very well from the point of view of web search optimisation. The repetition would probably mark us down.”

  Cautiously I said, “It’s how I would expect to find it written. I get loads of stuff like this sent to me by other PR people all the time.”

  “Tell you what, I’ll mark it up with the things I think need looking at from the web point of view, and I’ll send it over to you.”

  “You mean you’re giving me back my homework and telling me to have another shot at it?”

  She laughed. “We’re not getting sensitive about this are we, Mr Stanhope?”

  “Huh!”

  We chatted for a while longer, then in a lower voice she said, “I feel I should tell you something’s come up with Jack.”

  Suddenly I was nervous. “What?”

  “Well, he’s broken his ankle quite badly. The poor guy was trying to beat the opposition single-handed at football on Sunday, and he fell awkwardly.”

  I waited. I could feel a punch line looming.

  “The thing is, I’ve moved into his house full-time to help him with the basics. I’ll probably be there for at least a month – maybe more.”

  Up to now I’d been assiduously resisting the thought of Ashley sleeping with Jack. I knew it must happen, but I seemed to take comfort from the fact that she still lived a relatively independent life. Suddenly, I had to confront the notion of her being with him all the time. It made their relationship much more real.

  I said, “What do you want me to say?”

  “Nothing. I just thought I should put you in the picture.”

  Wildly I said, “Don’t get too settled there. You might never leave.”

  “Give me a bit of credit, Mike, for god’s sake.” An unfamiliar burst of impatience.

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

  She was silent for a moment, then said, “Maybe this is a chance for reflection.”

  “I don’t want to reflect.” I could hear the petulance in my voice. I needed to end this call as quickly as I could.

  “I can see that. But I have to.”

  2012

  It was lucky that I was such a hoarder. Football programmes from my childhood, raffle tickets from a dance, funicular rides on a holiday in Austria – I could pin them all down to the exact day: my life charted in ephemera.

  It was months after I saw that woman at St Pancras that I connected her with the robbery. I’d accepted she wasn’t Sasha, the girl from my childhood, but that was simply because she’d said she wasn’t. How short-sighted was that? More to the point, I’d picked up a used ticket that she’d dropped, and the name on it wasn’t hers. That seemed to confirm it. But what if she was using some other name?

  I could scarcely believe my stupidity. I’d simply thrown that ticket away.

  But what if I hadn’t?

  Superfluous junk tended to get cycled through my “system”. It was chucked in a box, then later shuffled and squirreled away in a cupboard. There was no order, no filing system – just junk. Finding that ticket took me two hours. But I found it.

  Sarah Trent. A nice name. And “Sarah” was quite like “Sasha”, wasn’t it? If you wanted to change your identity, it would make good sense to pick a name quite like your real one. Less risk of giving yourself away if you answered to the old name without thinking.

  Mind you, Hawkins didn’t sound much like Trent, did it? But maybe she’d married and changed her surname.

  All I had to do now was track down Sarah Trent.

  Chapter 47

  “It was all going so well,” I told Joanna. “Then suddenly a broken ankle.”

  She smiled sympathetically and flopped down on her sofa. “You should have more faith. Or are you having second thoughts about it all?”

  I’d been babysitting for the two of them. They seldom required this of me; Joanna probably doubted my competence in a child-related crisis. In practice, though, Jeremy had always proved himself splendidly self-reliant. On the rare occasions when I’d been called upon, all I’d had to do was chat to him about football for a while, watch a bit of television with him, then pour myself a glass of wine or two while he went to bed (or more probably went off to play computer games).

  I said, “No, Ashley is fantastic. If I can make something happen with her, I will. It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility.”

  “You seem to have come a long way since last time you talked about her.” Joanna kicked off her shoes. “I thought things had been heading in the right direction since then.”

  “It looked promising – but now this.”

  John wandered in offering coffees, then wandered out again. Joanna said, “This thing with Ashley, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but you and she, you’re not actually, you know …”

  “No, we’re not actually.” I smiled at her in silent exclamation. “In fact come to think of it, we’ve hardly done more than shake hands, to be honest.”

  “How splendidly old fashioned.”

  I didn’t know whether conversations like this were legitimate or helpful, and in my past life I would have been far too precious to get drawn into them. These days I couldn’t be bothered to worry. I simply hoped Ashley had some equivalent friend she could talk to. We hadn’t yet reached the stage of mutual introductions – and perhaps, I thought disconsolately, we never would.

  “What about the Markham family? Have you made any more progress with them?”

  “Aha! Yes I have. Trina replied to my follow-up email.”

  She was impressed. “You should have told us straight away.”

  “Well, I had my doubts about whether it was really from her. I’ve sent her another message, and I’m waiting to see what she comes back with.”

  She nodded, then asked, “Standing back from this, do you feel now that you’ve been looking for this entire family, or is it really only Trina who interests you?”

  It was a good question. After starting off by concentrating my search on the girl herself, I’d gradually persuaded myself I was more intrigued by the investigative puzzle as a whole. To some extent this had actually become the reality. Yet the more I’d relived that fleeting encounter with the girl herself, the more I’d realised just how much of an impact she’d had on me. Now that I’d had some personal contact with her, it was clear that she was once again the main focus of the search.

  “I suppose if I’m honest, I’m more interested I her.”

  “So do you actually want this to be her? What will you do if it is? Do you want to meet her?”

  I didn’t answer that straight away. Finally I said, “In some ways that would be interesting, but I’ve started wondering whether I really do want to turn my memories into real life. I think it’s a big question.”

  “Do you really mean that? After all this trouble and effort?”

  I shrugged. “The trouble with the internet is that it doesn’t let you forget. It prevents you from having your own version of the past. The real version is always there to contradict you. Sometimes it might be best not to dip into it.”

  Joanna, however, merely smiled mischievously. “But surely you must wonder in the back of your mind what became of that girl?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe the back of my mind is where she belongs.”

  “You don’t believe that. You should meet her. I think you’ll regret it if you don’t.”

  “Maybe.”

  Abruptly she changed tack. “Don’t give up on Ashley. She sounds really good for you.”

  “I wasn’t planning to.”

  “It’s just … sometimes it’s hard to change course mid-flight. She needs to work out how to do it.”
/>
  “What makes you so wise?”

  Ignoring that, she added, “And don’t start worrying about her boyfriend. If he’s not the man for her, it’s not going to happen.”

  “If only life were that simple.”

  John came through and we finished our coffees, then I said my goodbyes and headed off home on foot.

  But I didn’t get there.

  Chapter 48

  You’d think after the last time that I would have been wise to it, but it’s hard to keep your guard up all the time. Besides, this time it was very different.

  Two streets away from my house, I was just coming level with the back of a parked Transit van when a figure appeared from the far side of it.

  “Got a light, mate?” It was a youngish man in dark jeans and a sweater. I stopped dead, startled.

  Before I had the chance to speak, two things happened at once. A second figure emerged from my left, perhaps from someone’s front garden, and the rear doors of the van burst open. The two men closed in and grabbed me roughly by the arms, shoving me towards the back of the van, and I was flung on to the bare metal floor. Someone lifted my legs and shoved me all the way inside, and behind me I heard both men scramble in after me and the doors slam shut.

  I tried to stand up, but a foot shoved me down again. “Just stay put, mate.” Someone started the van’s engine, reversed, pulled out and drove off calmly up the street.

  I yelled “What the FUCK now?” but this prompted a savage kick in my side. It was shocking and humiliating, and tears sprung to my eyes.

  “Shut up and speak when you’re spoken to.”

  I shut up and waited.

  The driver negotiated his way through a succession of side streets. I quickly lost all sense of where we were heading. I risked a glance at my captors, who were visible in the dim glow of a single interior light. Two of them were standing, holding themselves steady by the interior ribs of the van walls. A third was sitting on a wooden crate. As last time, they were hatted or hooded and nondescript.