Frankie (31 page)

Carter knocked on the door, then he and Taylor walked back into the room where Frankie was now fully dressed, her arm in a sling over her jacket. ‘Are you ready?'

Frankie nodded. She picked Jasper out of the cot, then handed him to Carter. Taylor took her good arm, then clipped some handcuffs around the wrist, attaching the other link to his own. ‘Let's go,' he said.

The three of them walked through the busy corridors of the hospital, a curious-looking trio. Carter was aware of Frankie staring straight ahead, ignoring the stares of doctors and patients alike who had noticed the fact that
she was handcuffed to a man who, although not in uniform, clearly had the demeanour of a police officer. He had to hand it to her – she seemed to be keeping it together despite everything.

Carter blinked as they walked out of the hospital into the bright sunlight, and he felt Jasper move his head away from the glare as he did so. Amazing kid, he thought to himself. Good as gold, considering what he'd been through. He felt good about what he was about to do.

They approached the car. Wordlessly, Taylor removed his key fob from his pocket and clicked the central-locking system open. Then he undid the handcuffs and opened up the back door for Frankie. She climbed in, and Carter handed Jasper gently over to her. ‘Thank you,' she said, and even allowed herself to smile nervously at him. Carter returned the smile with encouragement, then shut the door and walked round to take his place in the passenger seat next to Taylor. Within seconds the door had been locked again and they were driving off.

As they pulled out of the car park and onto Lambeth Palace Road, Carter looked over his shoulder to the back seat. ‘Do you have everything?' he asked Frankie.

She nodded, and patted the inside pocket of her jacket where she had stashed all the documents.

‘Good. Remember to lay low for a while. It's unlikely the Met will put too many resources into finding you, but if you crop up doing anything out of the ordinary, they'll have no choice but to follow it up. So no mugging defenceless women and stealing their jewellery, OK?' He winked at her.

Frankie looked a bit sheepish. ‘OK,' she replied. Her face turned serious again. ‘What about my stepfather?'

‘If what you say is true,' Taylor answered her question, ‘he'll be in custody before the end of the day. I'll see to it personally.'

Frankie slowly nodded her head, her face a picture of mixed emotions, but she said nothing as the car made its way over Westminster Bridge. She looked out of the window and saw the grand sight of the Houses of Parliament. The sun sparkled and danced on the water of the Thames flowing in front of it, and Frankie drank in the sight that she knew she wouldn't see again for a very long time, if at all.

The car pulled up at a set of traffic lights by the side of St James's Park. Around them were crowds of people – tourists, mostly, with their cameras and rucksacks, there to experience the postcard delights of London. The traffic was busy, and she heard the occasional beep from drivers frustrated by the increasingly oppressive heat of the day. ‘OK, Francesca,' Carter said, looking straight ahead. ‘Now!'

In the vanity mirror he saw Frankie gently moving Jasper off her lap and into the seat next to her. She pulled out her dark glasses, put them on, took a deep breath, then sharply jerked her good elbow, protected by the sleeve of her jacket, against the window.

Nothing happened.

She did it again.

And again. This time the glass shattered, some of it falling onto her sleeve, but most tinkling in shards onto the road. Frankie put her arm out and opened the door from the outside, shook the glass from her sleeve, then gently picked up Jasper and eased out of the car. She didn't say a word.

‘Good luck,' Carter said under his breath, but by that time Frankie was already pacing purposefully away. She didn't look back as she headed west along the side of the park.

Taylor switched his police radio on and it crackled into life. ‘DI Taylor,' he said urgently into the radio. ‘Request assistance. Suspect escaped, woman, early twenties, short dark hair, carrying a small child.'

‘Copy that,' the operator crackled back. ‘Suspect last seen headed in which direction?'

Taylor and Carter looked at each other. Sean nodded at him encouragingly. ‘Suspect last seen headed east. We are in pursuit now.' He switched his siren on, pulled the car out, and did a U-turn across the width of the road.

They screamed off in the opposite direction, and as they did so Carter looked back over his shoulder through the rear windscreen. He thought he could just make her out, taller than most people around her, head held high and a confident stride in her step that made her stand out from the summer crowd.

Then she turned a corner, and was gone from sight.

A Year Later

Sean Carter was eating chocolate and glancing through a sheaf of photographs when the door opened and Mark Taylor burst in. ‘It's customary to knock,' he said mildly.

‘It's customary to share the bloody chocolate.' Taylor's face showed no sign of humour; Carter smiled anyway. Gradually, tentatively, the old friendship had started to return. And although Taylor had been his grumpy old self ever since moving to the SFO, bloody rude to him on an almost daily basis, Sean had known him for long enough to spot the telltale signs that the world felt a little less heavy on his shoulders. Taylor had never said thank you to Sean for his part in getting him moved to the SFO, but you couldn't expect miracles. He was content with the odd offer of a pint, the occasional reminiscence about old times. And to be fair to Taylor, he had blossomed in his job. Meeken seemed genuinely pleased with his new appointment, and Carter had been glad to have the company of somebody a bit more on his wavelength, especially during the rigorous process of preparing the Ainsley Cooper case for trial. But now it looked as if the government were hanging Cooper out to dry – he and Morgan Tunney were both facing the rest of their lives behind bars, and the SFO were smelling of roses. Deep down, Carter knew that Taylor enjoyed being part of that.

‘You wanted to see me?' Taylor asked cursorily. ‘I'm about to leave – I don't keep your hours.'

‘Heard any news about William Johnson?' Carter asked conversationally, breaking off another piece of chocolate and popping it into his mouth before offering a piece to his friend.

‘Sentenced last week to eight years.'

‘Where?'

‘Transferred from Maidstone to the Scrubs upon sentence.'

The Scrubs was the name all police gave to one of the hardest prisons in the country: Wormwood Scrubs.

Carter winced. ‘Nasty.'

‘My heart bleeds for him.'

‘What about the wife?'

Taylor shrugged. ‘Not my business. Is that all you dragged me down the corridor to ask?'

‘No, actually. I thought you might like to see these.' He handed the photographs he had been flicking through to his colleague, then sat back in his chair and watched Taylor's face as he looked at the images. He was expressionless, but his lack of acerbic commentary told Carter a great deal. Wordlessly Taylor handed the pictures back.

‘Bit risky, isn't it? Having her watched, I mean.'

‘It's OK, Mark. I was very discreet, and I just wanted to keep an eye on her. She's settling in nicely, don't you think? Looks like the Mediterranean sunshine agrees with her.' Carter sounded almost proud of himself as he looked through the photographs once again. Francesca Mills looked a lot different to how she had a year ago. Her short black hair had grown long again, and had been
allowed to revert to its original blonde colour. Some of the grainy surveillance pictures showed her pottering around in the little flower shop Carter knew she owned in the square of a picturesque village hidden deep in the hills of Provence, in the south of France; others showed her playing with a delightful little boy and a small crowd of other children. There was a look on her face that Carter couldn't quite identify. Not happiness, exactly, but … serenity. That was it. She looked serene.

‘So are you going to carry on stalking her,' Taylor interrupted his thoughts, ‘or are you just going to let her be?'

The two policemen looked at each other for a moment. ‘I think I'm just going to let her be, Mark,' Carter said finally. ‘I don't think she needs anything else from us, do you?'

And without waiting for an answer, he stood up and walked to the side of the room where a small document shredder sat on a table next to a fax machine. He switched the shredder on and, one by one, passed the photographs through its grinding teeth. Then he turned back to his colleague and smiled.

‘Time to go home, I think.'

Let the conversation begin…

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First published 2007

Copyright © Kevin Lewis, 2007

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-141-91163-2