Single Handed (Gareth Dawson Series Book 3)

by Nathan Burrows

  Annette had drawn the line when Philip had ordered some handcuffs from the internet, suggesting that they would add a new level of fun to their ‘games’. Except they weren’t games. Not for her, anyway.

  “I’m not doing that, Philip,” she had said at the time when he had produced them. He had been to the pub for a drink with his mates, and pulled them out of his pocket with a lewd smile. “I’m drawing the line at that sort of nonsense.” She was standing in the lounge of their house and had turned to walk into the kitchen. When she turned around to see what he was doing, that had been when he had hit her for the first time.

  It wasn’t a punch, but a slap. A hard slap across the cheek with an open hand. The force of it made her gasp in pain, and her hand flew up to her face. As Annette stared at him, open-mouthed and not able to comprehend what he had just done, she felt the handcuffs clicking around her wrist, covering up the small Celtic tattoo she had on the inside of it that he hated. He’d spun her round, wrenching her other hand behind her and cuffing that wrist too, before he manhandled her upstairs and onto the bed. Her biggest mistake, Annette thought as she stared at the ceiling above her trying to wipe the memory of that awful night from her mind, was not leaving him the minute he took the bloody handcuffs off.

  She got to her feet and made her way downstairs to the kitchen to get a drink of water. “Sod it,” she muttered when she reached into a cupboard for a glass. A few seconds later, she was sitting in her lounge, the glass full to the brim with wine.

  As she sipped her drink, Annette’s mind wandered back to the meeting with the police the previous day. The policewoman had been as nervous as anything, and Annette thought that she’d not delivered many messages like the one she’d delivered to her before. Bad news messages. Ones that would change people’s lives forever in an instant.

  Laura had been fantastic. While the police were still in the house, she had made a phone call to a friend of hers who was, according to Laura, quite the expert in cases like this one. Missing presumed dead cases. Her friend was going to e-mail Laura all the details, and Laura would come round at some point in the next few days to go over all the paperwork with Annette.

  When Gareth had come round the other day with the young lawyer in tow, Annette had watched them both closely, despite the circumstances. Working in children’s services meant that Annette had to deal with people day in and day out, and she was very good at reading them. Or so she thought. She’d missed a few tricks with Philip, but maybe he just hid it better than most people did?

  Laura liked Gareth, that much was obvious. She liked him a lot. But her big brother was too stupid to see that, or if he did realise, he was too stupid to do anything about it.

  20

  “Morning, Dave,” Gareth said as he walked into his office first thing on Wednesday morning. It was just after half-past seven in the morning but, as usual, Dave had got in first. One thing Gareth wasn’t was a morning person, but he was trying to be better than he had been.

  “Morning, boss,” Dave replied. He was in his early twenties and could be described as a geek, both in terms of his dress sense and also his natural understanding of computers and all things electronic. The latter was why Gareth employed him, not for his black Pacman t-shirt and ripped jeans.

  “Is Charlotte in yet?” Gareth asked as he made his way to his desk.

  “She’s out the back, putting her war paint on. With a trowel,” Dave replied. Gareth grinned as he pressed the button on the back of the large Mac on his desk, an identical model to the one Dave was staring at.

  “Oi, I heard that,” a woman’s voice came through a door leading to the small kitchenette at the rear of Gareth’s compact office space. He looked at Dave, who had a cheese-eating grin on his face. His teeth were almost too white, and as straight as a movie star’s. They’d not always looked like that, though. Gareth had paid for the lad to have some expensive orthodontic work in return for some favours he had done in the past.

  A few seconds later, Charlotte came through the door to the kitchenette like a miniature whirlwind. She and Dave made an odd couple, but in many ways a perfect one. Charlotte compensated for Dave’s innate shyness by being just over the top about everything. The brightness of the clothes she wore, her high-pitched voice, the rapidity with which she spoke—it was all dialled up to eleven, and Gareth loved her for it.

  “Right then, Mr Big Cheese. Today, the only thing in your diary is an appointment this afternoon with a fish and chip restaurant in Yarmouth. The manager there’s convinced one of his employees is having too many chips from the fryer, so to speak, so he wants some covert surveillance set up. You’ve got to be there before three, though. He opens at six so wants it all in place by then. David’s already got eyes on the tills.” Gareth raised his eyebrows. He always suggested to clients that they allowed his firm access to their electronic till systems when they were investigating this sort of thing, but they rarely agreed.

  “You have got permission, I take it, Dave?” There was no reply from behind the screen. “Dave?”

  “Um, I just thought it would be worth making sure we can access them, just in case they say yes. It’ll save time.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Dave,” Gareth said, irritated. “How many times have I told you? That’s against the bloody law.” He knew that Dave didn’t see it that way, but had to make the point, any way.

  “So, till number three is the interesting one, boss,” Dave continued, almost as if he hadn’t heard Gareth. “There’re a lot of transactions being cancelled. Last night, someone ordered cod and chips twice, three battered sausages with a small chips, and a pickled egg at eight thirty-three. Two seconds later, the void button was pressed.”

  His irritation gone, Gareth walked to look at Dave’s screen. The lad was right, but then again, he usually was.

  “You don’t really need to go all the way to Yarmouth, Gareth,” Dave said, pointing at the screen. “It’s all here.” It was a common enough scam. When the till was counted up at the end of the evening, the money from the cancelled transactions would end up in someone’s back pocket.

  “It won’t stand up in court, Dave. Because you’ve obtained it illegally.”

  “A chippy’s not going to take someone to court for nicking, boss. They’ll just fire the thieving bastard.”

  “Oh,” Charlotte said from her desk. “The Old Bill phoned.”

  “What?” Gareth said, looking up at her. She looked back at him and pouted. “Was it about Annette?”

  “No, it was that Griffiths bloke. He wants you to have a look at a scene in Costessey with one of his coppers.” She pronounced the suburb’s name as Cossy, which caught out many people visiting the area. “I’ve got the address here. I said you’ll be there for half eight. The Old Bill will meet you there.”

  Thirty minutes later, Gareth was behind the wheel of his Hilux truck with Dave in the passenger seat next to him. He’d asked if he could tag along, and Gareth had agreed. At least the lad would get some Vitamin D one day this week.

  “I meant what I said, Dave,” Gareth said as they made their way toward Costessey. The sat-nav dangling from the windscreen told him they were only a few minutes away from the address that Charlotte had given him. “About the tills.”

  “I know, I know,” Dave replied. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” Gareth smiled, knowing the young man was lying through his teeth. “Charlotte’s such a bloody snitch, though.”

  “Dave, what I don’t know about can’t hurt me, can it?” Gareth said, “but you’re right. She’d be no good at poker, would she?”

  “I think it’s this one,” Dave replied, pointing at a semi-detached house with a white van outside. On the side of the van were the words Norfolk Police Forensic Services in discreet black letters. Gareth parked behind it and got out of the truck just as a woman walked toward him.

  “Mr Dawson?” she said. “We met the other day. I’m DC Hunter.”

  “Kate, wasn’t it?”

  “Yep
, that’s me.” She extended a hand for him to shake, and he was surprised at the strength of her grip.

  “This is Dave, my assistant.” Kate shook Dave’s hand and flashed them both a brief smile.

  “It’s this way,” she said, walking toward a path that led down the side of the house.

  “Bloody hell, boss,” Dave whispered as they followed her down the path. “I can’t feel my fingers.”

  A few moments later, they were looking at a broken window in the rear of the house.

  “So, we got a call from the householder,” Kate said, pointing at the window. “He came back from work last night to find this, but claims he was too disturbed to call us until this morning. Spent the night sitting in the kitchen with a poker waiting for the burglars to come back so he could give them the good news. Just mind the flowerbed—there’s a footprint in it.”

  Gareth glanced down to see the footprint the policewoman had just referred to. It was large, the tread of the shoe visible in the soft earth of a flowerbed under the window. Kate opened the back door and led them into the kitchen. On the inside of the broken window, shards of glass littered the worktop.

  “Did they take much?” Gareth asked, inspecting the glass on the worktop.

  “Cleaned him out, allegedly,” Kate replied. “He had a lot of money in the house. Didn’t trust banks is what he’s saying.”

  “I take it you think it’s a setup?”

  “I quite like him for it. Whoever broke in managed to find the money under his mattress straight away and didn’t bother nicking much else apart from a brand new iPhone he’d only bought a few days before.”

  “Was it really under his mattress?” Dave asked, receiving a withering look from Kate in return. Gareth leaned over to inspect the back door to hide the smile on his face.

  “Not literally, no,” the policewoman replied. “It was in a lockbox in the lounge, but the thief went straight to it.”

  “So, it’s either someone who knows the chap keeps his life savings in a box in the lounge, or it’s an insurance job,” Gareth said, looking at Kate. She looked back at him, her eyes piercing and a slight frown on her forehead. One thing Gareth did know is that he wouldn’t want to be on the other side of an interview table from her.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I think you need to have another word with this chap. He’s almost certainly after the insurance money.”

  “Well, he won’t get any. There’ll be limit on the amount of cash that can be claimed for, but what makes you say that?”

  “First, if someone had climbed through that window, they managed to get over all that broken glass on the worktop without any problems. First thing they would have done would be to sweep it on the floor so they could get in.”

  “Noise?”

  “If they’ve just broken a window, they won’t be bothered about that,” Gareth replied. “But why would they break a window?”

  “Sorry, I’m not with you, Gareth,” Kate said, a quizzical expression on her face. Gareth looked at her hair, which was cut into a short bob.

  “I take it you don’t have a hair grip with hair that short?” A slow smile spread across her face as Gareth asked this. “Because if you did, I would show you how easy that lock is to pick.” He pointed at the lock on the back door. “That’s an ERA rim cylinder. Even Dave here could open that with a decent set of picks. Why would you break a window and risk someone hearing when you can go in nice and quietly instead?”

  “Thank you very much, Mr Dawson,” Kate said, her smile fading. Gareth didn’t envy the next person she was going to be speaking to. “That is very useful indeed.”

  21

  Laura opened the door to her office and, after stooping to pick up the mail that had piled up, walked inside. A ray of bright sunshine was flowing through the window, highlighting dust motes in the air. The thick pile carpet on the floor of the office didn’t help, but Paul was insistent that it created the right impression for their clients, as did the antique furniture dotted about the interior. Laura stopped and tilted her head to one side, listening. Something wasn’t quite right. It took her a moment to realise what it was—the grandfather clock that had pride of place in the corner of the room had stopped, its ornate hands stuck on five minutes before three o’clock.

  The air in the office smelt musty, so she crossed to the window and forced it open. Outside, the traffic noise from rush hour in the city centre of Norwich was loud and frantic, but Laura wanted the fresh air more than peace and quiet. She opened the door to the small office that Paul sat in to let some fresh air in there as well, but decided against opening the window in there.

  She flicked on the kettle in the small kitchenette to make a brew for her and Paul, flicking through the post as she did so. Laura separated out the post into two piles—one for Paul and one for her. The pile for Paul was much larger, and not much of the other handful was actually addressed to her, but to the firm.

  As the kettle boiled, she heard the front door to the office open, so Laura peered round the door of the kitchenette.

  “Morning, Paul,” she said as she saw her boss walking into the room. He looked up and gave her a bright smile.

  “Morning, Laura,” he replied. “You’ve got the kettle on, I see. What a star.” She smirked. The only time Paul had ever made her a drink was when he had interviewed her for the position.

  “Everything okay?” Laura asked. “Not like you to have a day off sick.”

  “Right as rain, my dear,” he replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Right as rain. Are those all for me?” He gestured to the larger of the two piles of mail with a look of surprise on his face.

  “I’m afraid so. But any that you don’t need to be dealing with, just sling them my way.” Laura crossed the room and sat down behind her desk, a mahogany captain’s desk that, according to Paul, had once graced the deck of a Royal Navy ship’s wardroom. “Your clock’s stopped, by the way.”

  “Oh, so it has,” Paul replied, still leafing through his letters, “but even a stopped clock shows the right time twice a day. I’ll get the old girl going again, shall I?”

  A few moments later, with the reassuring deep ticktock of the clock echoing around the office, Laura heard Paul sit down in his office with a contented sigh. She smiled, pleased that he was back at work. There was no reason why she couldn’t have reset the time and wound the clock, but she knew how much pleasure Paul took from doing it himself. It was part of his morning routine. That, and pretending to be surprised at how much mail he had.

  Laura was half-way through checking her e-mail when she realised that Paul had come out of his office and was standing next to her.

  “So, Laura,” he said, “tell me what’s happening with the McGuire case?”

  “There’s been a few developments,” she replied. “I was round there yesterday with the police.” Seeing his eyebrows arch, Laura continued. “Gareth was busy, so he asked me to pop round. You were off sick, so I thought…”

  “That’s absolutely fine, Laura,” Paul said with a smile. “What were these developments?”

  “It was Malcolm and Kate,” Laura said. “They said that they’ve only found Mr McGuire’s hand. The rest of him is still at sea somewhere.” Paul’s eyebrows went back up.

  “Really?” he said. “How unfortunate for the poor woman. How did she take it?”

  “She was shocked, obviously,” Laura replied, “but she took it pretty well, all things considered. I am a bit worried about her, though. She looks like she’s lost weight, not taking care of herself properly. That sort of thing.”

  “Hmm. Probably one for Gareth, I suspect. Will you be having a chat with him at some point?”

  “He’s taking me out to dinner on Friday, but I’ll give him a bell today.”

  “Dinner indeed,” Paul said with a smirk. “Anywhere nice?”

  “I’ve not chosen yet.”

  “Roger Hickman’s is rather lovely,” Paul replied. “On St Giles’s.
Or if you want to go a bit further, Morston Hall up on the coast kept their Michelin star this year.” Laura smiled, imagining Gareth’s face if she said she wanted to go there.

  “I was thinking more Wetherspoon’s, to be honest. Lasagne and garlic bread, with a glass of cheap plonk, for a tenner.”

  “You absolute philistine,” Paul said with a deep laugh, “but you absolutely cannot let him take you there. I forbid it. Now, I went to the Adam and Eve on Bishopsgate a few weeks ago. Very good food, and much better than a ‘spoons’.”

  “Check you out, all down with the kids,” Laura replied. “I’ll have a look at their website.”

  “So, are you going to go with a presumption of death for the McGuire fellow, then?” Paul said, back to business already.

  “Yep, Judith’s e-mailed me all the paperwork through.” Laura nodded at her screen. “But there is something else.” Paul perched on the edge of her desk and crossed his arms, just as she had watched him do on many occasions. It was his ‘tell me more’ stance. “I went for a coffee with Kate—the policewoman—yesterday, and she let something slip.”

  “What did she say?”

  “It’s more what she didn’t say,” Laura replied, thinking back to the previous day. “We were having a chat about nothing in particular, and I asked her if there were any other lines of enquiry that they were following into Mr McGuire’s disappearance.”

  “Probably not the best question, my dear. What happened?”

  “She just shut up shop. Like the shutters came down over her face.”

  “She is a copper, Laura,” Paul replied. “Not really surprising. If she’d asked you about one of your clients, that would be your response. At least, I hope it would be.”