Single Handed (Gareth Dawson Series Book 3)

by Nathan Burrows

  “Not too bad, I don’t think,” Annette said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “They confirmed that they’re not taking any further action into Philip’s death.”

  “That’s good, I guess. Did they say anything about his little hobby?” Laura asked. Annette stared at her, lost for words. Her face was full of sympathy, and at the same time, anger. She took a couple of steps toward Annette and stopped, putting her hand on Annette’s arm. “I can’t imagine what it must be like for you, Annette. Finding out.”

  Annette took a sharp breath in and held it for a few seconds. The combination of Laura’s directness and sympathetic expression had caught her completely off guard, and she didn’t know what to say.

  “No,” Annette replied a few seconds later, “I don’t imagine you can.”

  “Listen,” Laura said, lowering her voice. “Why don’t we get together one evening for a few glasses and a chat? If you’d like to, that is?”

  “I’d like that very much, Laura.” She pressed her lips together, determined not to break down. “Thank you.”

  “So, what happens next?” Gareth asked. Annette looked at him, not sure whether he was talking to her or Laura, or both of them. He was looking at both of them in turn, and she realised that he was asking them both. Laura replied first.

  “Well, from the legal perspective, it should be pretty plain sailing. If they’re not looking into Philip’s death any more, then it’ll be up to the coroner to rule it as misadventure. Then at least you’ll be able to move on, leave all this sorry mess behind you. If you can, of course.”

  “Will there be an inquest?” Annette asked.

  “Almost certainly, but I can’t imagine it will take long given the circumstances. The key thing really is the police not treating it as suspicious. That should make it a category two verdict, as opposed to a category one or three.”

  “What’s the difference?” Gareth asked. Annette watched Laura as she replied, eager to hear what she had to say.

  “Well, category one is natural causes. Category two covers suicides, accidents and misadventure. That’s almost certainly where Philip’s death will fit.”

  “And category three?” Laura looked at Gareth as he asked this, and Annette saw a look of pain cross her face.

  “Murder.”

  53

  “So how did it really go?” Laura asked Gareth after they climbed into his truck. He looked at her as he started the engine.

  “Difficult to say. My gut feeling is that it was a fishing trip.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “I think they were trying to get her to tell them about Philip’s little hobby, as you called it.”

  “But why?”

  “I’m not sure,” Gareth replied as he put the truck into gear and moved off. “I’m guessing that if they think she doesn’t know, they don’t want to tell her.”

  “Let sleeping dogs lie, you mean?”

  “Yeah, I guess. The bloke’s dead, after all.” Gareth drove on in silence for a few moments. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “I am,” Laura replied. They were heading to his office to look at Philip’s computer. Or heading to his office to watch Dave look at it.

  “Only if you’re sure. You don’t have to.”

  “I want to. But I still think you should give it to the police.” Next to her, Gareth sighed. They’d already had this conversation.

  “Why don’t we see what we find and then decide.” It was the closest Gareth had come to agreeing to involve the police, and Laura was surprised at his change in perspective. “I don’t get why they’ve not just seized it, though. If they’re looking at him for paedophilia, then I would have thought they’d just take it.”

  “It depends how hard they’re looking at him for it,” Laura said. “If they’re just suspicious but don’t actually have any proof, then they might not have a legal basis for seizing it.”

  “Well,” Gareth said with a smile, “you should know.”

  When they arrived at Gareth’s office a few moments later, Laura could see through the plate-glass windows that Charlotte was inside with Dave.

  “This might be a bit tricky,” Gareth muttered. “We need to get rid of her for a while.”

  “She doesn’t know?”

  “God no. If we tell her it’d be like taking out a front page advert in the Eastern Daily News.”

  “But you’re the boss,” Laura said, chuckling. “Just send her off on some fool’s errand somewhere. Paul does it all the time to me when he wants some peace and quiet.”

  “How is he? Have you heard?”

  “His surgery’s scheduled for Friday.”

  “That’s only three days away?”

  “I know. It makes me nervous that they’re doing it so quickly. You know what the NHS is like at the best of times. It’s hardly quick.”

  Laura said hello to Dave and Charlotte as she walked into the office, ignoring the knowing smirk that Charlotte gave her. She obviously wasn’t the only one who couldn’t keep quiet. Laura shot an ominous look at Dave who flinched until she smiled to let him know she was only messing.

  Gareth was standing by his computer, fiddling with the mouse. A few seconds later, the printer in the corner of the office whirred into life. He crossed to it and picked up some papers before stuffing them into an envelope.

  “Charlotte, could you do me a massive favour?” he asked as he scribbled something on the outside of the envelope.

  “Sure. What?”

  “This is the report for Mr Wells. I did an initial assessment for him the other day. Could you drop it round to him?”

  “Why don’t you post it like all the others?” Charlotte replied, looking irritated. Laura hid a smile at her response.

  “Because he’s a new client who I’m trying to impress, and I think that he’d be impressed by you.”

  “You’re such a bullshitter, Gareth Dawson,” Charlotte said, her apparent irritation turning to a broad smile. He frowned and Laura burst out laughing. “How long do you need me out of the way for?”

  “Er, a couple of hours?”

  “Sure. I’ll nip to the gym then.” She plucked the letter out of Gareth’s hand. “After I’ve given Mr Wells a cheeky look down the front of my top.”

  “God, don’t do that, Charlotte,” Dave replied, not looking up from the computer screen that he was engrossed in. “He must be in his eighties. You’ll give him a bloody heart attack and kill him.”

  “At least he would die happy, Dave. You of all people should know that.” Charlotte turned and flounced her way out of the office.

  “Is she always like that?” Laura asked when the door swung shut behind her. She was still laughing, and when both Gareth and Dave said yes at the same time, she laughed even harder. It didn’t last long, though. When Dave got up and retrieved Philip’s laptop from the safe, Laura felt the smile dissolve from her face. She stared at it, suddenly nervous about what they might find on the machine. It looked a lot more menacing than it had before.

  Dave opened the laptop and pressed the power button. The computer chimed as it started up, and Laura moved a chair so she could sit next to him. She looked at him and he gave her a quick smile. Laura knew it was meant to reassure her, but it didn’t. She suddenly wondered if she really wanted to be here.

  “Laura, you don’t have to do this,” Gareth said as if he had read her mind. She shook her head at him and stared at the screen. Laura didn’t want Gareth seeing anything that she had not seen, and if they did find anything on there, then she wanted to know what it was. Her tolerance for not going to the police was pretty low. Any suggestion of child pornography on the thing and that would be that. She would be telling the police, whether Gareth wanted her to or not.

  “No password,” Dave muttered as the home screen appeared. There was the usual windows background—Philip hadn’t changed it from the default one—and a series of icons were lined up neatly. It looked remarkably similar to Laura’s work computer. “I would ha
ve expected there to be something, even if to keep casual browsers away from it.”

  “Like Annette?” Laura asked as Dave’s fingers flew across the keyboard.

  “Yeah, guess so.” He inserted a small thumb drive into a USB slot on the side of the computer. When the laptop recognised it, he clicked on the icon and Laura watched him open up a programme on the thumb drive. A black window appeared and a few seconds later, a bunch of white text appeared and started scrolling its way down the screen. Laura leaned in to the laptop, but she couldn’t understand any of the text as it flashed past. Partly because it was moving so quickly, but predominantly because it was line after line of computer code.

  “What are you doing, Dave?” Laura asked. He didn’t answer, but started humming a tune. Laura had to listen for a few seconds before she recognised it as an old song. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. She started singing along under her breath before stopping. “Dave?”

  “I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all any conscious entity can ever hope to do,” Dave replied, a faint smile on his face. Laura frowned. She had no idea what he was talking about and, as she looked at Gareth, she realised that he hadn’t either.

  “He does this sometimes,” Gareth said in a stage whisper. “Goes all weird.”

  “Philistines,” Dave replied. “The pair of you. No appreciation of true art.” He turned to Laura and grinned, his teeth slightly too white in the bright fluorescent lights of the office. “I am fishing, that’s what I’m doing. And I’m rather good at it.”

  54

  Annette opened a large drawer in her kitchen and started rummaging through it. Philip used to refer to it as his man drawer after a sketch by an overweight British comedian about a drawer in every house full of useless things such as keys to unknown doors and once used tools from flat pack furniture. In Philip’s version of a man drawer were also a selection of old mobile phones and their chargers, no longer needed but kept just in case they were.

  She pulled out an old Nokia phone and, a few seconds later, it's accompanying charger. Annette plugged in and waited for a few seconds to make sure it was charging properly before grabbing her coat and leaving the house.

  The weather outside was a perfect spring day. Annette enjoyed the sun on her face as she walked to the corner shop, realising that apart from the odd run out to Tesco’s for food and booze when she couldn’t get a home delivery slot, she had barely left the house since finding out about Philip’s death. As she walked, Annette thought about maybe going up to Wroxham later that day just to sit by the Norfolk Broads for a while. She had some bread that had gone stale in her kitchen, which the ducks and swans would probably appreciate.

  “Morning,” the Slavic looking man in the corner shop said as she opened the door. Annette returned the greeting and picked up a newspaper from the stand, along with a sandwich and bottle of orangeade for lunch. “Will there be anything else?” the shopkeeper said as he rang up her purchases on the till.

  “Do you sell SIM cards?” Annette asked.

  “Sure, which network?” he replied.

  “I don’t care as long as it works.”

  He huffed and turned to pick up a SIM card for Vodafone from a stand next to the cigarettes.

  “This one okay? It’s only a quid.”

  “Yep, that’ll do,” Annette replied. “I’ll need some credit for it as well.”

  “How much?”

  “A tenner, I guess.”

  When she got back to her house, Annette picked up the phone and disconnected it so she could remove the battery and change the SIM card. As she did so, one of her nails splintered when she was trying to get the plastic covering to the battery loose.

  “For God’s sake,” she muttered under her breath, examining the nail carefully. It was yet another thing to add to the list of things that Philip had caused to piss her off. When she had finally replaced the SIM, she plugged the phone back in and powered it up.

  It took Annette a few minutes to work out how to add the credit to the phone when it finally connected. She wasn’t helped by the fact that the phone actually had buttons as opposed to a touch screen, but she managed it with the help of the cheerful robotic voice on the other end of the line. Then she entered the number that she had been sent and saved it as a contact on the phone under the name R.

  The previous evening, Annette had spent an hour or so going through her finances. She could afford the payment, but only just. It would clear out almost all of her bank accounts, leaving her with a couple of hundred quid until she got paid at the end of the month, but it would be worth it to make all of this go away. It would only be a short term financial problem anyway, as once Philip’s life insurance paid out, she would be sorted. According to her sums, she could probably drop some hours at children’s services if she wanted to, or stay full time and have some fantastic holidays.

  Annette put the phone into her pocket and half-filled a carrier bag with bread. She had decided that she would go to Wroxham and sit by the river to eat her sandwiches. It was a lovely day, and she could do with getting out of the house.

  As she drove to the small town a few miles north of Norwich, her thoughts drifted to the future. When she had realised quite how comfortable she would be, financially speaking, when Philip’s life insurance came through it had almost given her a new lease of life. She laughed when she remembered watching a film a while ago about a middle-aged woman who had run off to Cyprus or Greece or somewhere to start a fresh life.

  “Shirley bloody Valentine!” she exclaimed when she remembered the name of the film. It was Greece, and the woman had ended up with some bronzed local bloke for a while. Annette was hardly middle-aged, but the idea of a bronzed local was very appealing. All she needed to do was to make her current problem go away and leave her to get on with her life. Her new life.

  Annette parked her car outside Roy’s of Wroxham, the large department store that technically wasn’t in Wroxham but Hoveton—the neighbouring village—and made her way through the tourists along Station Road. As she made her way through a small wooded area that bordered the river, the tourists grew fewer until she reached her destination. It was a small cut alongside the River Bure that only locals knew about—much like the fact that Roy’s was actually in Hoveton. She walked down the gravel path to the end of the cut where there was a rarely used bench.

  She ate her sandwiches in solitude, throwing the crusts into the water. It wasn’t long before there were numerous birds fighting over them, so she spent the next few moments throwing the stale bread into the river. Some of it she balled up in her hands to throw to the smaller birds on the fringes of the throng.

  When the birds had dispersed in search of more food elsewhere on the river, Annette reached into her pocket for the Nokia mobile. It was time. She breathed in deeply and composed a text to R.

  This is Annette McGuire.

  55

  Ronnie sighed and rolled over on his bed. The air-conditioning had broken the previous day and, although he had reported it to his landlord, he wasn’t hopeful that it was going to be fixed anytime soon. The temperature was only in the mid-twenties, down from the low thirties earlier that afternoon, but it was the humidity that was irritating Ronnie more than the heat. He was covered from head to toe in a thin sheen of perspiration that turned into a flood at the slightest bit of activity.

  On the other side of the room was a well-worn table kept steady by a small book under one leg. There were two phones lined up on the scarred formica top—his new main phone and a burner. The burner belonged to the bitch McGuire, and in a drawer set under the table were the other disposable phones he’d traded in his iPhone for. All being well, one of them would be set up for the new mark in Chester. Ronnie had agreed a suitable price for the man’s details with the vendor. All he needed now was the money from McGuire.

  If she paid him what he had asked, then he could pay Sukarba his blood money and still have six thousand left. The man in Chester would cost fiv
e grand to start the chase, so his bank balance would increase by a grand. He could survive on that for months in Bali. Ronnie could even move to a better apartment and still have enough to get by on. He might need to lower his standards slightly in terms of entertainment, but seeing as the local police were all over him, probably taking a break from his particular pleasure for a while wouldn’t be a bad idea.

  Ronnie had spent a couple of hours that afternoon in an Internet cafe looking for alternative places to live. He had found a discussion board on TOR that was full of suggestions for potential locations that catered for people with needs like his. Thailand was the obvious one, but the fact that it was so well known for tourists such as Ronnie also made it a target for the authorities. He had briefly looked at other locations. India was up and coming, as was The Gambia with its Smiling Coast, but the appeal wasn’t really there for him in either of those places.

  He had, Ronnie considered, three options. He could stay here, pay Sukarba, and hope for the best. He could pay the bent copper his asking price and then disappear with the rest of the money. It wouldn’t go as far if he had to move location, but he could reappear under the radar of the local authorities. Or he could just take the money and run once the bitch paid up. That was by far the riskiest option.

  Ronnie jumped slightly as one of the phones on the table vibrated. He knew it wasn’t his own phone as he’d not set that to vibrate.

  “You must be fucking psychic,” he muttered as he got to his feet. Assuming it was her that had just messaged him, that was, and not some random marketing text. As he sat down at the table, he moved the mouse to wake up his computer. Ronnie glanced at the phone and saw that it was a text message from McGuire. “Come to Daddy, you little slut.”

  Ronnie clicked on a folder on his desktop. Inside the folder were a series of images, all quite innocent, of his marks. Both previous and present. There was nothing in the photographs to arouse suspicion if anyone else looked at them, not like the others in the cloud. He found the one he’d named McGuire and double clicked on it.