Post Mortem (28 page)

That was it: she had lied. She could try to excuse it as a small lie, but it seemed nevertheless irrefutable that with that lie she had surrendered her sovereignty. She had been at the beck and call of others. She had tried constantly to put it out of her mind. And there was the time afterwards, after she had told Kieran about the phone call from Farah. She thought of it as a gap, an interval, a negative space in which the thing had happened unobserved, the thing that she had perhaps assented to but had turned her face away from.

Kieran had insisted that it wasn't a problem – he had spoken to Hadley and Hadley had been adamant that no recording could damage him because he had never said anything wrong to Farah. Hadley had collared her and, in a hushed, angry conversation in the writing room, insisted it was all just a ploy by Farah, just another attempt to get her to drop the charges.

Lizzie had not been able to face him or herself. Her relationship with Kieran had become strained too. She had sensed him tiring of her. Or perhaps that had just been a part of her paranoia, a facet of the uneasy state in which she had lived since the phone call from Farah. She had changed her number and her phone, and had showed up for work. She had avoided Hadley and Kieran. And it must have been in that gap, that absence, that it happened.

Lizzie fished the new phone out of her bag and switched it on. The cell searched for the satellite and then latched on to it. Kieran picked up after two rings.

‘Yes?'

‘It's me.'

‘Where are you?'

‘I'm coming to Lewes. Whatever the next train is from Eastbourne.'

‘No.'

‘No?'

‘Get off at Polegate. It's the stop just before. Turn down the high street, carry on down Wannock Road. I'll meet you along there. I'll be parked up just beyond the sign. It's about two miles from the station. My phone will be switched off. You should do the same.'

36

B
aillie was talking on the phone, but he gestured for Collins to come in and quickly closed the call.

‘OK, Sarah, what have you got that's so pressing?'

He smiled, and Collins swallowed involuntarily. Her right hand clutched the data she had just taken warm from the printer.

‘Sir, I've interviewed Younes Mehenni and I may have an answer as to what Inspector Shaw was searching for in Hadley's locker.'

Baillie raised his eyebrows. ‘OK?'

‘Mehenni says Farah used her mobile to record Hadley racially abusing her. After Lizzie wrote a statement that supported Hadley's account of the incident, Farah contacted her and tried to use the recording to blackmail her into dropping the charges against her father. Younes alleges that Hadley then took Farah's phone from her. If he's telling the truth, maybe that was what Shaw was looking for.'

Baillie nodded. ‘OK, so Farah threatens Lizzie, then Matthews takes the phone from her and hides it in his locker? And that's what Inspector Shaw is looking for?'

‘Yes, perhaps.'

‘It's a good lead and much better than anything we had yesterday. But isn't it still a bit far-fetched? An officer perverts the course of justice and then hides the evidence in his locker?'

‘I agree. It would be a colossally stupid thing to do . . .'

‘Indeed it would.'

‘. . . but it wouldn't be the first time an officer had been stupid enough to keep evidence in his locker.' Collins stretched out her hand and offered the sheaf of paper. ‘Sir, Jez has come through with a bit more from the phone work.'

Baillie took the papers but did not look at them. He was watching Collins.

‘I'll put it in context, sir. On the tenth of April, Lizzie writes a statement corroborating PC Matthews' account of his conversation with Farah Mehenni. Two days after this, she gets a call from a number that's not on her contacts. Jez has traced the call and it's from a phone box on Shorefield Street, a short walk from Kenley Villas and on the way to Farah's school. The following day Lizzie upgrades her phone and changes her number. When Farah tries to call her before she takes Ben she can't get through. The phone's been disconnected.'

Baillie's face bore a seriousness Collins hadn't seen before. He said, ‘OK. Anything else?'

‘Just one thing. There's another call that looks interesting. At 15:52 hours on the seventeenth of April, Shaw receives a call on his private mobile from Hadley Matthews. So, just after Ben went missing and while the incident was in full swing, Matthews took the time to call his boss. Whatever it was he needed to say must have been important.'

Baillie considered Collins for a moment. His eyes were as hard as little blue pebbles. ‘Good work, Sarah. Very good.'

On the way back to the office, Collins got a call.

‘Steve . . .'

‘Inspector Shaw has just received a short call from a pre-paid mobile. He's called it in – says it was Lizzie and he told her to make herself known. Says he has no idea where she was calling from.'

‘That's his arse covered, then. Do we know anything else about the call?'

‘I'm doing an urgent trace now. The phone was bought in Eastbourne earlier today and that's where the call was made. Shaw picked up in Lewes.'

‘OK. Perhaps she's arranged to meet him. The boss has just agreed surveillance and a warrant for Shaw's home address.'

‘Damn. I've only just got back to London.'

‘Don't worry. I'll blue-light it down to Shaw's house in Lewes and try to keep an eye on him. I reckon I can be there in just over an hour if I put my foot down. Can you get officers on the station at Lewes as quickly as possible, and on any trains going from Eastbourne to Lewes. We need to look at hire cars and taxis too. Hire cars are unlikely – I think, given the time pressure, we should target taxis.'

‘Do you want me to come with you?'

‘I'd love you to, but I need you here to sort all that out. Is that OK? And tell surveillance to get a bloody move on, please. I want backup as quickly as possible.'

37

A
young white woman in a hijab was wheeling the trolley along the train aisle. She paused by Lizzie and smiled. ‘Coffee? Tea?' Lizzie bought a bottle of water and some crisps. The trolley moved on. A group of four women had got their make-up out on the table just a few seats up. They were experimenting with lipstick and different nail varnishes. One of them was complaining.

‘Pocahontas,' she said, examining her recently painted left hand. ‘It looked good in the pictures, but when it arrived, it was really badly made. Pins and Velcro at the back.'

There was a sound of singing from along the corridor. A woman's voice, a lilting nursery rhyme.
A frog he would a-wooing go . . .
Lizzie glanced down the train. By the door, a woman with dyed red hair was rocking a child. Beside her was a pushchair and a large collection of bags. Her nose was pierced with a single stud.

Lizzie stared out of the train window. The Sussex countryside was rushing past, dipping and rising.

You bastards, you think you can get away with anything
.

Mehenni had whispered it to her. She had been taking him through to the custody suite to charge him. Determined to get through the charging process, she remembered, she hadn't even looked at him.

‘Sir, you've made your complaint. That will be addressed. In the meantime, I have to charge you.'

After that, he had been ostensibly calm, courteous even. The charge itself had been entirely without incident. Mehenni had asked to go out and see his daughter to explain to her what was happening. Lizzie remembered her unease. She had said she was too busy to accompany him and so a detention officer had agreed to do it.

There was a corner of the station office where it was possible to watch the CCTV relay of the public area without being seen through the counter glass. Lizzie had stood there and watched Younes Mehenni going over to his daughter. As she remembered Younes' angry gestures, Farah taking the papers and shaking her head, Lizzie imagined herself stepping out into the station office, stopping the chain of events that had been set in motion. She would have had to tell the truth. Even now, after everything that had happened, it was still a daunting thought.

The train was pulling in to Polegate station. The mother at the far end of the carriage had strapped the child into the pushchair and was struggling to gather together her bags and push the buggy with one hand. She was an exact match for Lizzie's new look. She got up and walked towards her.

‘Let me help you. I'm getting off here too.'

The woman gave a broad smile. ‘Thanks. Can you take the pushchair?'

Lizzie asked the name of the baby.

‘Megan.'

‘What a lovely name.'

Chatting with her new friend, she walked along the platform and out of the station.

38

C
ollins drove in a desperate hurry. She came off the A26 and followed country roads before turning right along a narrow lane. There was a ford ahead and she slowed to cross it, dipping into a fast-flowing little brook. The road climbed again. A tractor ahead was ambling along carrying hay in the claw raised above the height of its roof. Collins indicated to overtake but had to pull back: oncoming was a mud-splattered Land Rover Discovery. As it approached, she recognized Shaw as the driver. He saw her too, she was sure of that, and she put her right hand up to wave at him to slow down, but he drove on, barely glancing to his right as he passed her.

After only a moment's hesitation, Collins stuck her siren on. The tractor driver pulled slowly in to the hedge to allow her to pass, the cab rocking as the huge wheels mounted the verge. Briefly she saw a collie in the passenger seat, and as she pulled past, the driver waved.

She turned the car in a lay-by ahead and accelerated back along the narrow lane, siren wailing and blue lights flashing. She hadn't planned for this eventuality, and as she drove, she ran through her mind what she would do if she caught up with Inspector Shaw. She hadn't intended to arrest him; just to park up and wait, to execute the warrant when it had been granted. Still, Shaw was possibly on his way right now to meet up with Lizzie. That would make sense: he had got that phone call. He probably wouldn't agree to
accompany Collins back to his house, and he certainly wouldn't allow her to search him. She would have no option but to arrest.

She braked hard for the ford and then accelerated as the lane climbed back towards the main road. Birds scattered out of hedges as if pursued by an army of fanatical beaters. The road curved back round on itself. Ahead and to her left, she caught sight of the Discovery, its roof showing just above the hedgerow. Then it was lost to sight. She accelerated beyond her instincts, hoping to catch it before the T-junction. To take the bend, she changed down a gear so that the engine roared as the car gripped the road and rounded the curve.

Directly ahead was a teenage girl in a fluorescent waistcoat riding a chestnut horse. Collins braked sharply. The car's wet tyres skidded momentarily before the ABS gripped and the car stopped.

The girl was tall and thin. A strand of red hair escaped from beneath her riding hat. She was holding the horse tightly and it was protesting at the tight bit in its mouth, arching its neck and tapping its front right hoof on the tarmac.

Collins put her hands to her face. She had stopped within fifteen feet of horse and rider.

When she took her hands away, the girl had moved the horse into the hedge and was waving her on. Collins drove slowly past and then accelerated towards the junction. There was no sign of the Land Rover.

39

P
olegate was a place on the way to somewhere else. There were broad-leafed trees and hints of the ancient in the names – Wannock and Weald – something Saxon, lost, something never to be tapped. But the past was surfaced by broad, affluent roads, dormer bungalows with Dutch gable roofs and grand 1930s semi-detacheds with new windows.

Lizzie bought a box of plasters for her blisters at a chemist's on the high street. She walked for a couple of miles, the shoes still rubbing like hell, before she saw the Land Rover. There was a dog in the back: she could see its dark, friendly muzzle smearing at the window. Kieran stepped out of the driver's seat and opened the back of the car. The dog, a chocolate Labrador, lolloped on to the pavement.

Kieran and the dog walked ahead, the dog wagging its tail and jumping from side to side. They took a footpath down a lane that turned into a small wood of oaks and beeches. The land climbed steeply, following the undulation of the chalk beneath. Lizzie lost sight of them, but as she rounded a bend, Kieran was waiting for her by a small stone bridge that ran over a stream. The dog was nosing around in undergrowth.

Kieran was wearing a worn waxed jacket and muddy wellingtons. He looked at her in her new outfit, her scruffy bleached hair. He shook his head and said, ‘Lizzie, really.' She in turn wondered which was real – the countryman with his dog or the London policeman. She had drawn close to him but neither of them knew what to do.
He opened his arms to her, but with something questioning in the gesture. She hesitated, and he reacted swiftly to her uncertainty, tilting his head slightly and saying, ‘OK.' He patted his leg and the dog came running over. He began to walk.

‘Sorry about the dog.'

‘You needed a reason to leave the house.'

‘Yes.' Then, after a pause: ‘And the dog needed a walk.'

They crossed the bridge side by side, the Labrador running ahead. The path became muddier. There was a feeder for pheasants, and the birds scattered away from them as they approached. Kieran called the dog: ‘Pebbles, Pebbles.' It came trotting back, tail wagging broadly. The brook curved round and they came to another bridge. Kieran stopped and took out a package wrapped in kitchen towel. He handed it to Lizzie. She opened it up – a warmed croissant, shiny with oil.