KILL ME IF YOU CAN (Dave Cunane Book 8) (23 page)

25

Wednesday: Midday

By nine o’clock the wheels were in motion.

Lee and Tony left separately on foot before eight. They’d both promised to use counter-surveillance methods coming and going.

There was a moan from Lee. He complained that his contacts in the ‘mugging community’ would all still be in their beds until after twelve if not later.

‘Fair enough, but I don’t want you here,’ I said. ‘Think of somewhere else to go.’

He screwed his eyes up. I wasn’t being nice but then who said I had to be? Did I want to spend what might be my last few hours on this earth in his company?

‘He can come with me,’ Tony said. ‘I’ll get some clothes for you and he can bring them back here.’

‘OK,’ I agreed after a moment’s thought, ‘but I don’t want you hanging round here, Lee.’

‘Loosen up Boss, there’s some guys I know that’s doing community service. The poor sods have to be up early. I can start with them.’

‘Nice to see that some muggers actually get caught but good thinking Lee, you’re improving.’

‘Yeah, well I’ll leave your clothes in the gazebo if seeing me is too heavy for you.’

‘Don’t be like that, Lee. You know I like you really and there’s five hundred pounds waiting to prove it when you find the Fothergill woman.’

‘Yeah, chill man, but this Fothergill bird, she don’t sound like no African to me.’

‘Just find her Lee. She may have changed her name but she can’t change how she looks.’

‘Yeah, maybe, maybe not.’

‘Don’t leave the stuff in the gazebo. Bang on the back door and I’ll take the risk of looking at you. Joke, Lee …’

He nodded and his face was more relaxed than I’d seen it so far. He must need to be insulted and threatened before he felt comfortable with someone. I decided I was making progress with him.

Tony whined a bit at not being allowed to have the Beamer but I didn’t want the neighbours to see too much of him and Lee. Anyway I might need it myself. I sent them off down the cinder track.

Before he left I told Tony to write down my instructions but he tapped his forehead and said he could remember what I’d said: the reconditioned brain in action.

When they’d gone my un-reconditioned brain turned to Brendan Cullen and also to my father’s message about the vegetable patch. I struggled to come to a decision. To phone, or not to phone, that was the question.

Whatever I did the story seemed to end with me getting a bullet in my head. In the end I decided that if the police were as ‘penetrated’ as Lew Greene had claimed, Bren might be under very close observation. I couldn’t afford to compromise him.

That left the problem of how to retrieve whatever was at Paddy and Eileen’s cottage, in the vegetable patch specifically.

I knew my parents were friendly with a local doctor who lived a short way down the lane from them in a converted barn. I’d been introduced to him and his wife but I couldn’t remember either of their names.

I knew it was one of those names derived from a trade.

Finally I was reduced to flicking through the telephone directory in the hope that the name might pop up; Slater, Smith, Thatcher, Tyler. It wasn’t one of them. It was only when I went into Bob’s drinks lounge that something clicked. Tom Brewer: that was the name, Doctor Tom Brewer.

I phoned directory inquiries on an unregistered mobile.

As expected, Tom Brewer wasn’t listed but there was a Lindsay Brewer listed on Sheepfold Lane, West Pennine Hills. This was the lane where Paddy and Eileen lived.

I picked up the phone and then put it down. Phoning a stranger made it highly likely that I’d have to use my name, tipping the spy in the sky about my location. Dad should have been called Smith or Jones. Also was it possible that all the phones close to the Brewer’s house on Sheepfold Lane were being monitored? I decided it was. In this case a touch of paranoia was more than justified.

Unfortunately the trouble with suspicion is that there’s no end to it. A phone call from anywhere in Altrincham might lead the searchers to Bob’s house in Ridley Close. It all just depended on how badly the security service or Lew’s
certain individual
wanted to find me. The evidence was that one or both of them wanted to very badly indeed.

I shook my head. I had to get a grip. I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. I couldn’t just sit around and wait for Appleyard and Co. to sort things out. Going by the man’s witness intimidation tactics they never would.

It was raining so I slung on my black hooded jacket over my ripped trousers and one of Bob’s pullovers and left via the back of the house onto the cinder lane. I quickly discovered that the river running to one side was the Bollin, which also flowed near Topfield Farm. I’d no idea where the lane led but in the direction I chose civilisation wasn’t far. After a stroll I came to the A538 which led me back into the centre of the small dormitory town. After my experience of looking for a coin operated phone after the helicopter attack I bought a charge card at the main post office and then found a card operated phone at the bus station.

When I rang Brewer’s wife, if that’s who Lindsay was, answered immediately.

‘Er, this is Dave,’ I said awkwardly. I was certain that even if all phones in Sheepfold Lane weren’t being bugged the word ‘Cunane’ would be red-flagged by GCHQ.  Surely there were millions more Daves in the world than Cunanes?

‘I don’t know if you remember me but I’m Paddy and Eileen’s son. I think we met at a party at their house when Paddy had finished his major restoration but I spoke mainly to your husband Tom.’

‘Of course I remember. You’re …’

My heart gave a painful throb while I waited for her to drop the fatal surname but she didn’t finish the sentence.

‘Yes, it’s good you’ve called. We were wondering if we should get in touch with someone about your parents. Hang on, I’ll get Tom.’

I drew in a deep breath.

‘Tom Brewer, here Dave,’ the doctor said a moment later.

‘Yes, it’s Dave. I’m just a bit worried about my parents. They’re not answering the phone.’

‘They won’t be. I saw them both trundling off on Tuesday morning at sparrow-fart,’ he said breezily. ‘That Volvo of theirs was loaded to the gunnels as if they were off on a long holiday. They seemed all right, but I thought it was a bit odd as Eileen was supposed to be helping Lindsay mount a local history display for the children at the local primary. Both of them have talked about nothing else for weeks. I wondered if one of your folks was ill.’

‘No, they’re both fine. You’ve put my mind at rest. I have this vision of Paddy falling off a ladder and Mum having a stroke or something when she tries to help him.’

‘I should think Paddy would be the last man in England to fall off a ladder. Regular steeple-jack he is, some of the things he does on that beloved house of his, and mine too, I might add. He cleared out all our gutters last spring, remarkable for a man of his age. Still, it’s unlike Eileen to let Lindsay down like this. Planning it for weeks they were.’

‘Sorry, but you know how Paddy is. He probably got an idea into his head of taking a short holiday and decided to clear off without telling anyone.’

‘Mmmmm, he’s getting old I suppose, though you wouldn’t think it if you saw him in action. Probably has his mobile switched off too?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wouldn’t say Paddy’s getting Old Timer’s Disease or anything – Alzheimer’s that is.’

I hate it when people explain their jokes as if I’m an idiot but I made no comment.

‘Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary along the lane, people wandering around and having a look at the house and so on?’

This suggestion produced a lengthy pause.

‘How do you mean?’ Brewer asked eventually. ‘You don’t think he’s in any sort of trouble do you? I know he was a high ranking copper.’

‘No, just wondering if they’d locked the house up, and whatnot. You know, wondering if I might have to come up to Sheepfold Lane and secure the place.’

‘No one ever comes down here. The local mad farmer puts them off, what with savage dogs and rampaging bulls, it’s more than a hiker’s life’s worth to wander past that farmyard. Your dad and I are always at daggers drawn with Farmer Wilberforce.’

‘Yeah, I know all about that. I’ve had one or two run-ins with that bugger.’

‘There is one thing. There’s a white van parked at the corner of the lane near Paddy and Eileen’s place. I noticed it when I was walking our dogs on Tuesday, but there’s no one in it. Probably down to our slovenly farm friends again. Your dad would make Wilberforce shift it if he was around.’

My heart missed a beat again.

I thought about the hen house at Topfield. Was the van relaying a signal from those cute little cameras they were so well equipped with?

‘Thanks Tom,’ I said, ‘you’ve put my mind at rest. I’ll give the old man a piece of my mind for clearing off like this. Thanks again.’

I wiped my fingerprints and then put the receiver down.

I wandered to the nearby railway station and found another BT phone box that took cards and called Jan on the mobile number she’d used last night.

‘Dave! I’ve been waiting for you to call for hours. I hardly slept a wink last night …’

‘Worrying will do no one any good.’

‘It wasn’t that. Junior’s kicking like mad. Between you and him my insides are turning to jelly. He’s bound to be a footballer.  I kept thinking the worst. Are you all right?’

‘You know me. Hope springs eternal, etc, etc. I think I’m making some progress with the name and when I do I’ll find a solution to all this. It’s not going to be easy or quick and I won’t be able to keep in touch as much as I’d like. How’re the children and your mum?’

‘Oh, we’re all coping Dave. It’s you I’m worried about. Has there been another you-know-what? You know … bang, bang.’

‘No, no,’ I lied.

‘That’s something, maybe they’ve forgotten about you.’

‘Maybe they have, but what about you?’

‘We stayed with our driver’s mother last night and she just happens to have a holiday cottage, well really more like a farmhouse, to let. It’s at …’

‘No, don’t tell me.’

‘I wasn’t saying the place. It’s near a lake and she lets if for fishing.’

‘You should take that up. It’ll calm you.’

‘They’re still after you, aren’t they?’

‘I told you, I’m OK.’

‘I’m coming over. I’ll leave the kids with mum.’

‘You’re not coming because I won’t tell you where I am. I can’t do anything if I have to worry about you. Listen, I’ve got to go and I’m hanging up now because it’s better to keep things short and sweet. Text me early tomorrow. I love you, love the kids, love your mum and love Man … love our dog.’

She wailed a protest but I gritted my teeth and put the phone down. Call me a cold hearted bastard if you like but the longer we spoke the more chance of detection there was. It was possible that some supercomputer was matching my voice pattern to some previous call they’d recorded.

I wanted to be out of all this.

A call to Barney Beasley and I could be on the next cabbage lorry to the west of Ireland but I knew that the people who were after me wouldn’t let up. Distance meant nothing to killers who mounted attacks from helicopters. We might be safe on a remote South Sea island for a while but Ireland meant nothing to them. It was the first place they’d look. Hadn’t Harry Hudson-Piggott made a big point about my Irish surname?

I wasn’t being paranoid, simply aware and alert. These people really were out to get me.

I wiped the phone and shuffled off back to Ridley Close. It was gloomy and I didn’t stand out in my anorak but to be on the safe side I bought an umbrella. As long as it kept raining it would shield me from CCTV cameras.

Lee arrived with my change of clothes. I’d been so pressured that I hadn’t given detailed instructions. The large bag with the logo of a posh second hands clothes shop contained a charcoal coloured suit. I looked at the label. It was Austin Reed. Normally I mock the second hand shop. Brendan Cullen was always singing its praises at one time but I’ve never liked wearing someone else’s clothes. Still, beggars can’t be choosers. I tried the suit on. It was a good fit. There was also a pair of dark army style camouflage trousers, two denim shirts, a heavy, navy blue pullover and a pair of boots.

‘He couldn’t guess your shoe size but as your dad was a flatfoot he reckoned you could get your feet into those,’ Lee explained with a cheeky grin. ‘They’re size ten.’

‘Thanks,’ I said curtly and pointed to the cinder lane.

He left without argument. Actually the boots fit well and as my shoes were soaked and leaking I put them and the camo outfit on.

Now all I had to do was pass the rest of the day until my agents came home. It was hardly James Bond. I used the computer to see if there was anything more on the killings and the helicopter crash. There wasn’t. News of any interest to me was in short supply. I spent some time in the gym.

Tony was back first.

He’d located four more bugs but hadn’t removed them because he thought it was better to let our listeners think they were undetected.