Safe House (2 page)

Family friends had told me how well my parents were doing. That time would heal. Things would improve. But I saw it differently. It was obvious to me that a light had gone out of them. They bore the loss in their eyes most of all, and when they met my gaze straight on, which wasn’t often any more, it was like looking at precious stones that had been worn down until there was no glimmer left. Their pupils were dull and flat. Letting nothing inside.

Maybe the change wouldn’t have been so hard to take if their spark hadn’t been so bright before. Cheesy as it sounds, my parents were a living, breathing romance novel. Mum, the vibrant, red-haired Scouse girl, who’d ignored her father’s wishes at the age of nineteen to take up with a strange Manxman on a windswept rock in the middle of the Irish Sea. And not just any strange Manxman, but one with a death wish – a daredevil motorbike racer who’d won the Senior TT two years on the bounce. A guy who liked a drink. Liked a girl. Who lived his life at speed. Or at least, he did until he fell headlong in love with the woman he’d now been married to for the best part of forty years.

Grandpa had disowned my parents in the early stages of their marriage. Nowadays, he lived with them in Snaefell View, the residential care home they own and manage, and he couldn’t have a kinder word to say about my father if you handed him a thesaurus and a magnifying glass. I live there too, in a converted barn out back, with a garage on the side where Dad and I can strip down and rebuild my racing bikes. Amazing, really, that we’d become this perfect,
Waltons
-style unit. Maybe that was why we’d suffered so much just recently. Cosmic payback.

The police entered my room shortly before noon. There were two of them, a man and a woman, both wearing dark suits.

The man had an engorged head that was shaped like a pumpkin, a swollen, ruddy face and a generous belly. His grey hair was grown long over his ears and at the back of his wide neck. A navy-blue tie was knotted carelessly around his collar, like he resented it being there.

The woman was younger, mid-to-late forties, with fine black hair cut short in a boyish style, no make-up, and a biro stain on the front of her faded blue blouse. Lean and angular, her movements had a gawky, abrupt quality. She carried a can of diet coke in one hand, a black raincoat folded over her arm.

Dad knew them, of course. He knows everyone on the island. Or everyone knows him. I’m never sure which way round it should be. But the last time they’d spoken hadn’t been at some friendly get-together in a local pub, or at a Rotary dinner, and it showed. My father was slow in standing to accept the hand the man offered him, as if touching it might come at a price.

‘Jimmy.’ The man used the sombre tone of voice people had chosen to adopt with Dad just recently. ‘Sorry to see you back here.’ He spoke in a calm, measured way, like so many Manxmen of his generation. It was an easy quirk to misinterpret. Slow words for a slow thinker, you might imagine. And more often than not, you’d be wrong.

He snuck a look at me. His crimson cheeks were puffed up, reducing his deep-set eyes to slits. It made it hard to read his expression. But there was something accusing back there.

‘Mick.’ Dad accepted his palm, pressing his free hand over the top, like a politician. ‘And Jackie.’ He stretched over my bed to pull the same move with the woman.

‘Mr Hale.’ She dropped Dad’s hand like a contagious disease. ‘And Mrs Hale. How are you?’

I swear I could almost see the shutters flip closed across Mum’s eyes.

‘I’m fine,’ she replied, tight-lipped. ‘Thank you for asking, Detective Sergeant Teare.’ She found her feet now, but she was sluggish. Even standing up, she looked as if she was slowly deflating. ‘And Detective Inspector Shimmin. How’s Jude?’

‘Fine, fine,’ Pumpkin-head said, but he was watching me the entire time. ‘Took a fair old bump on the skull there, hey Robbie?’

Talking like we’d met before. Like we were old friends.

‘Need to speak with you about this accident of yours. Now a good time?’

As if I had any choice in the matter.

‘We’ll stay too,’ Dad said, clenching my foot through the bed covers.

Pumpkin-head sucked air through his teeth and rose up on his toes, like a mechanic about to deliver unwanted news about a cooked engine. ‘Afraid we’re going to need to speak with the boy alone, Jimmy.’

The boy.
Like I was some kind of troublesome teen all set for a dressing-down.

‘But if it’s just a chat, Mick.’ Dad tilted his head to one side. ‘No harm us staying, is there?’

Shimmin was easily a foot taller than my father, and this time, when he drew a sharp breath through his teeth, he rocked back on his heels, as if he was afraid of accidentally inhaling him. I’m tall myself, six feet two in my socks, so I understand the feeling of authority a little extra height can give a man. And Dad was shorter than he should have been, the result of the metal plates and pins that had once been used to knit the shattered bones of his lower legs back together. His racing career had been ended by a horrific crash along the Mountain section of the TT course, when he was cruising at well over 100 mph. He was lucky the incident hadn’t claimed his life.

‘No can do, Jimmy. Procedure, see?’ Shimmin shook his bloated head, as if he was powerless to concede the point, even to a man as remarkable as my father. ‘How about you take Tess downstairs for one of those fancy coffees? We’ll come and find you when we’re finished. Won’t be long.’

Dad was all set to try again. I could feel it in the tightening of his fingers on my toes. He was used to getting special treatment on the island. The best table in a restaurant. A handsome discount in a shop. A forgiving smile when he parked on double yellow lines. It was the outcome of a combination of factors. His reputation as a local sporting legend. The swagger that came from riding away from certain death. And I don’t suppose it hurt that he was handsome. Square jaw. High forehead. Unruly, tousled hair. A powerful, muscular physique, gone a little soft in later years.

‘It’s OK, Dad,’ I said. ‘It’s not as if I have anything to hide.’

My father looked at me then, a broken expression on his slackened face. Mum reached for his arm. The ghost of a smile I hadn’t seen in a long time tugged at her lips.

‘Come on, Jim. Let them ask their questions. Rob will still be here when we get back. Right love?’

‘Yeah, Mum. I’ll be here.’

But it still scared me that she’d felt the need to ask.

*

‘Now then Robbie, why don’t you tell us about this mystery blonde of yours?’

Pumpkin-head had taken my father’s seat. He was reclined with his hands behind his fat neck and his crossed heels resting on the end of my bed.

‘It’s Robert,’ I said.

‘Eh?’

‘Or Rob. Not Robbie. I might be Jimmy Hale’s son, but I have my own identity. Some people respect that.’

Shimmin let go of a low whistle and glanced over his shoulder towards his colleague. Teare had taken up a position with her back against the wall, one leg bent at the knee, the sole of her shoe marking the beige paint. She took a long pull on her Coke, tapping an unpainted nail on the aluminium casing.

‘Chip on the shoulder there, young Robbie?’ Shimmin asked.

I rocked my head to the right, feeling the pull of the foam sling that had been wrapped around my neck and left wrist. There was a small porthole of glass in the door to my room, but all I could see on the other side was more beige.

‘Hey fella, come on. I’m a friend of your father’s, see?’

They were all friends of my father. Or so they told themselves.

‘And I know you and he are different.’ Shimmin snapped his fingers and I turned to find a dark shimmering in the pouched slits where his eyes lurked. ‘Anyone who’s watched you race these past three years can tell that easily enough, eh? Guess the acorn fell further from the tree than maybe you’d like to believe, young Robbie. Or maybe you remember it differently. Something else caused by that crack on your noggin.’

The blow to my head was something the neurologist had already discussed with me. I’d been fortunate, apparently. Early tests indicated there was no secondary swelling and the chances of it developing were said to be slim. I’d need to undergo more tests in a week or so, and watch for anything out of the ordinary – mood swings, difficulty keeping my balance, a change in my sleep patterns. I also had to take care to avoid any follow-up blows until the bruising had healed. But all things considered, it could have been worse.

‘So come on, lad.’ Shimmin tugged the knot of his tie away from his yellowing collar. ‘Tell us what you told the good doctors.’

Chapter Three

When I’d first picked the message up on my answer-machine, I’d wondered if it could be a hoax. It wasn’t every day I was called to a job in the middle of a plantation, and the customer hadn’t left a number. Then I’d spoken to Dad and he’d told me there used to be a Forestry Board cottage in the woods. Rumour was it had been sold to a private buyer a decade or so ago. I guessed that had to be the foreign-sounding man who’d phoned me, and since I could use the distraction, I decided to check it out.

A closed wooden gate blocked the entrance to the woods, beside a sign that read Arrasey Plantation. The gate was secured with a rusted metal chain and a shiny combination lock. The locked gate didn’t strike me as unusual. Access is restricted to a lot of the island’s plantations to prevent people tearing through them on off-road bikes. There are ways around that, of course, but none of them apply when you’re driving a panel van.

I climbed down out of my van into the falling rain, leaving my dog, Rocky, to watch me from the warmth of the front bench. I dialled in the combination the customer had left on my machine and the lock came free in my hands. I wrapped the chain around the gate post, taking a moment to clear the beads of water from a laminated flyer that had been nailed to it.

Please help us to find Chester. Missing 5 April in this plantation.

There was a telephone number to call and a photograph of a scrawny-looking terrier with a blue collar. The dog’s pink tongue was hanging out the side of his mouth, eyes squinting against bright sunshine. I hated seeing posters like this. Fifth April. Almost a month had passed but I couldn’t help peering out the misted windows of the van, hoping for some glimpse of poor Chester as we drove slowly up the rutted track.

If he was out here somewhere, the weather wasn’t being kind to him. A chill, grey fog was hanging low over the tops of the spruce, larch and pine trees, and the rain was faint but persistent. The narrow path curved steeply to the right and the van wheels slipped on greasy stones and mud. A smell of wet, rotting vegetation came in through the crack in my window, and as the trees pressed in around us, branches scratching along the sides of the van, Rocky turned to me with a doleful look in his nut-brown eyes that seemed to ask just what crazy adventure I’d taken us on this time.

Rocky is a pedigree golden retriever. He weighs somewhere between thirty and thirty-five kilograms, depending on which phase of his diet cycle we’re currently disagreeing on, and I’m yet to find anything besides asparagus that he isn’t prepared to eat. And that includes furniture, soft furnishings and van interiors. The passenger bench he was squatting on was a case in point. The vinyl upholstery had passed through his digestive system some months back now, and I didn’t doubt that he had plans to chow down on the yellow foam in the not too distant future. Rocky didn’t just eat me out of house and home. He ate
through
my home. But I loved him more than most things in life, and he loved me back with a force and loyalty that was beyond anything I could readily explain.

‘What?’ I asked him. ‘You don’t think this is a good idea?’

Rocky threw his head back and considered me with plaintive eyes that seemed to expect something more. I ruffled the hairs of his neck.

‘They might have cake, right? Wouldn’t that make this worthwhile?’

He blinked at me and parted his jaws in what I like to call his toothy-smile. It’s one of his key moves. Believe me, it always slays the ladies.

We were up on a rise by now, the ground falling away sharply on our left. I looked down over the sodden gorse and treetops at a scattering of fields that sloped towards a valley stream, a collection of ramshackle farm buildings and the ruins of an old tin mine. In the distance, the swell of South Barrule hill was shrouded in the watery mist, the brake lights of a passing car shining like sea beacons.

The narrow track forked in three directions and I followed the middle path, plunging deeper into the tree cover. Water ticked off the pine needles, exploding against the windscreen, and the van pitched and rolled from side to side. A stringy grass had grown up in the middle of the path, leaving two thin bands of earth for me to follow.

The woods were dense all around and so black that I couldn’t see into them for more than a few feet. The ground was knotted with fallen branches, brush and a thick brown carpet of dried pine needles and mulch. If little Chester had come this far on his own, he’d have scared himself half to death.

Ahead was another gate, open this time. A rectangle of glistening slate had been fixed to the post, two words etched into it in startling white.
Yn Dorraghys
. My grasp of Manx Gaelic is only basic, but this was one phrase I recognised.
The Darkness
.

Fitting.

The track petered out after another twenty feet and I swung the van around in a boggy turning circle, beaching it alongside a bank of brambles and a red Nissan Micra. The wheel arches and side panels of the Micra were splattered with mud and I could see an Avis rental sticker in the rear window.

I dropped out of my van on to the marshy soil, closed the door on Rocky and paced through the rain with my vinyl clipboard in my hand.

The property was a tumbledown cottage with a sloping slate roof, clotted with moss. The once white walls were leaning towards shades of green, as if they were soaking the moisture out of the foliage that surrounded the place. Tufts of grass blocked the gutters and a collection of wonky shutters had been thrown back from the aged sash windows. A small lawn lay to one side. The grass was as high as my knees and knotted with thorns.