Safe House (25 page)

‘Show me.’

Clarke led him away from the beach towards a small dry dock, where several yachts were tilted on their keels in the mud. The street lighting was patchy and easily avoided. A faint drizzle spun in the moist grey air.

Menser followed Clarke through a foul-smelling lane bordered by timber fencing. The lane kinked right, running behind a terrace of cottages. Clarke stopped halfway along and ducked behind a slatted fence, beckoning Menser to join him.

‘This it?’ Menser asked. It wasn’t much. A neglected back yard made up of concrete patio slabs, some out-of-control weeds and a rusted barbecue set. A narrow, squat property with a patched roof, two upstairs windows (one with the privacy glass of a bathroom), and a sliding glass door fitted downstairs. There was no sign of an alarm. A frayed wire hung loosely from a security lamp above the door.

‘Simple, right?’

Menser unzipped his rucksack and removed his picking gun. He placed a hand on Clarke’s shoulder, then deftly worked the latch on the garden gate and eased it open. The picking gun was mechanical, operated by a ratchet mechanism connected to a retractable trigger. It was slower than a battery version, but less intrusive, and it made fast work of the cheap lock on the sliding door.

The runners were smooth, well used, and emitted almost no sound. Menser stepped inside a cramped living room and found himself standing on a foam exercise mat. He waved for Clarke to follow and made his way into the hall. There was a door on his right, opening into a tiny kitchen, and a flight of carpeted stairs on his left.

Menser tested the treads for creaks and groans before committing his weight. In his mind, he saw an image of Detective Sergeant Jacqueline Teare lying alone in her bed. Unconscious. Unsuspecting.

Vulnerable.

*

Jackie Teare was in a bad mood. She always got in a funk when she couldn’t sleep. She’d tut and curse and flail around, as if there was somebody lying alongside her, ready to ask what was wrong. But there was no one, and that was part of the problem. She knew how tough the job could be on a relationship, but she was sure it was harder being on your own. Especially when something was chewing on your conscience and you had nobody to talk to.

Laura Hale’s death. The unexplained events up at the cottage in Arrasey plantation. Shimmin’s handling of both incidents. She’d had doubts, plenty of them, and when she’d broached the subject with Shimmin, it had landed her in trouble. But the doubts remained, nagging at her, and now Laura’s brother was poking around with that stuck-up investigator, raising awkward questions.

Exercise hadn’t helped. Neither had half a bottle of white wine. And now sleep had eluded her, too.

She knew what she had to do, she just didn’t know if she had the guts to do it. If Shimmin had received her message, he’d be round within a few hours. Then she’d have to make her decision. She could demand an explanation and make her own assessment of his motives. Or she could tell him that she was going to speak up, go above his head. It would mean risking her job. Her career. The only thing she’d ever truly cared about.

She groaned at her alarm clock. 6.20 a.m. She was an early riser, always had been, and she couldn’t think of one good reason to stay in bed.

The bathroom was across the hall. She stumbled through and slumped on the chilly toilet seat. No need to close the door. That was one small advantage of living on her own.

The bathroom was tiny. From the toilet, she could easily reach the bath. She twirled the hot tap around and the water bathed her hand as she fitted the plug into the hole. Then she finished up on the toilet and considered her reflection in the mirror above the sink.

That was the problem. Right there. She wanted to be able to look herself in the eyes and know she’d done the right thing for the right reasons. Shimmin would tell her there were shades of grey in everything. Maybe give her that whole moral spectrum speech she’d heard around the station before. But she didn’t see how that could apply to Laura Hale’s accident. And there was no grey in what had occurred up at the cottage. Walking away from what she’d recognised as a series of obvious inconsistencies had been a black-and-white thing to do. And then there was the brother. He was grieving, in pain, looking for answers. Looking for the missing girl she’d tried very hard to block from her mind.

She couldn’t do it any more. She knew that now.

Decision made.

The bath was filling. Steam was rising from the water, wafting across the mirror.

Then something moved in the glass. A dark blur.

She span around and that was when she saw them. Two men. One framed in the doorway, the other emerging from the top of the stairs.

The man in the doorway was short, but stocky. Rainwater had settled on his bald head and his craggy face and the shoulders of his black roll-neck sweater. There was a rucksack over his shoulder. Leather gloves on his hands.

Jackie stared at him. It seemed to take forever for her brain to send a message to her muscles. Her right hand twitched for the door and she drew a breath as if to scream.

Her breath was cut off fast. The man lashed out, slicing at her throat with a savage backhand blow. She dropped to her knees and clutched her throat. She tried to inhale. Failed. Tried again and made only a dry, croaking gasp.

The man snatched at her hair. He yanked her head back, exposing her throat, his free hand primed for a follow-up strike.

Jackie’s eyes bulged. She felt the constriction in her throat. The flush of blood in her face.

Her eyes flicked sideways, towards the second man. He was young and muscular, with a puff of facial hair below his lip.

‘We have questions,’ said the man who’d hit her. ‘The bike crash. The missing girl. You’re going to tell us everything.’

It seemed to take a long time until she was able to speak. But once she started, she couldn’t stop.

Chapter Thirty-six

The policewoman slumped in Menser’s arms at the side of the bath. She was wet and bedraggled and only barely alive. Her eyes were glassy and roved uselessly in her head. Her lips and her nostrils were blue.

Menser was sure that she had nothing more to share. She’d told them plenty already, and he’d had no reason to doubt anything that she’d said. She wasn’t the woman who’d spoken to him on Clarke’s phone about the bike crash, but she thought she knew who it must have been – a private investigator by the name of Rebecca Lewis. She was working for Laura Hale’s family, raising questions about her death.

By itself, that would have been enough to concern Menser. But there had been much worse still to come. The man on the bike‚ the plumber who’d visited the cottage‚ was Laura Hale’s brother. And that nugget of information ignited Menser’s fears.

The uneasiness he’d felt in Lena’s company rushed back at him. The tingle of doubt he’d experienced, the drip-drip of apprehension, was becoming a flood. The brother’s involvement had to mean something. He had to have been helping Lena in some way. That would explain her attitude on the trawler. It would explain the look on her face – the superior smile that seemed to suggest she was holding on to a precious secret that could wreck everything.

The policewoman was gazing blankly upwards, unable to focus. She mumbled incoherently. He tightened his hand around her neck, heaved her torso over the side of the bath and submerged her face again. This time, she didn’t fight or moan or buck against him. He stared at the off-white tiles on the wall and counted to thirty, then turned her face sideways. A string of bubbles floated out from her nostrils. Her eyes were open and sightless.

Menser turned from the bath, shaking water from his forearms. Clarke was leaning against the door frame, watching.

‘Your turn,’ Menser said. He rested his hands on his thighs, catching his breath. ‘I’m getting too old for this. Lift her out of the bath. Carry her through to the landing.’

‘What for?’

‘I want you to throw her down the stairs. Break her neck. I want it to look like she fell.’

Doubt twisted Clarke’s face. ‘But you just drowned her.’

‘I want to create confusion. A small island like this, with a low crime rate, they might convince themselves it was an accident.’

Clarke just looked at him.

Menser yanked the plug out of the bath. Watched the water begin to drain. The body begin to sink.

‘Jesus, Clarke. You have gloves on, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

Still Clarke didn’t move.

‘Listen, don’t make me call him and tell him you didn’t help to clear up your own mess.’

At last, Clarke stepped away from the door. He bent over the bath and grabbed the policewoman by her armpits. Water trickled out of her hair and nostrils and mouth. It seeped from her T-shirt, leaving a soggy trail along the floor as Clarke dragged her limp body towards the top of the stairs. He grunted as he shifted her weight around and adjusted his grip and fought to raise her up to her feet. The muscles in his arms quivered. He was struggling to keep his balance.

Menser waited until he judged that Clarke was about to let go. Then he surged forwards very fast and cupped a hand under Clarke’s chin and forced his head backwards until he was staring at the ceiling. He wrenched his neck hard one way, then the other. He heard the awful
crack
and whipped his neck sideways one last time, to make certain that the spinal cord was fully severed.

Clarke dropped from his hands and the woman dropped, too. The pair of them tumbled down the stairs like a couple of rag dolls, their limbs tangled, bodies knotted.

Menser stepped over them and moved through into the kitchen. There was a phone fixed to the wall, a freestanding unit below it. He opened a drawer and removed a telephone directory and began to flick through the pages. He needed to find an address for Laura Hale’s brother. He needed to find out what he knew.

Chapter Thirty-seven

I woke with a start to the ringing of my doorbell. I squinted at the time on my bedside clock. Almost 9.30 a.m.

The doorbell was ringing in short, repeated bursts, like someone was banging their head against it. I put on my dressing gown, then my sling. Rocky was curled up at the foot of my bed and I shut him inside my bedroom as I staggered through my lounge, clumped down the stairs and unlocked the door to find DI Shimmin propped against the frame. He barged inside, then snatched the door from me and slammed it closed behind him.

‘We need to talk.’ He leaned into my face. ‘But if anyone asks, this conversation never happened.’

‘What conversation?’

‘Follow me.’ He started up my stairs, his shoes tramping last night’s rainwater on my carpet and his grubby mackintosh spread around the backs of his legs like a bedraggled cape. ‘Where’s your coffee?’ he called, from over his shoulder.

By the time I got upstairs, he was opening and closing cupboards in my kitchen. It didn’t take him long to find what he was searching for. He grabbed the jar of instant granules and slammed two mugs down on to the counter.

‘You can’t just barge in like this,’ I said. ‘I think you should leave.’

He felt the side of the kettle. Snorted when he discovered it was cold. Filled it with water and clicked it on.

‘You don’t want me to leave.’ He shook his head. ‘Believe me, lad. Asking me to leave is about the worst thing you could do right now.’

There was a low grumble to his voice. A hard intensity. It threw me. I didn’t know what to do with it.

‘Teaspoons,’ he snapped.

‘What?’

‘Teaspoons.’ He snatched at a drawer in the island unit between us. Slammed it closed and swivelled and tried the drawer under the sink. ‘Never mind,’ he said, digging through the cutlery. ‘Take milk?’

‘What’s going on?’

‘No milk, then. Black’s good. I need you to wake up. Need you to pay attention.’

‘Detective Shimmin, I have to have an explanation for what’s going on here.’

‘Detective
Inspector
Shimmin. And I have to have an explanation, too. Where were you last night?’

‘What?’

‘Say
what
again. See where it gets you.’

He was angry now. I realised he’d been angry all along. His knuckles were bunched around the teaspoon he was holding, like he was planning to stab me with it.

‘Your movements. Last night. I need to know them.’

I hesitated, wondering what exactly I should say. This couldn’t be about my meeting with Erik and Anderson, I didn’t think.

I knuckled my eye. Faked a yawn.

‘I went to Marine Drive.’

He paused. Lightened his tone just a shade. ‘Time?’

‘I don’t know. Around ten thirty?’

‘And before that?’

Now I got it. Before that was the visit Rebecca and I had paid to Jackie Teare. How had he found out? And what did he plan to do about it? I could understand why he was angry. He thought we’d gone behind his back. That we’d questioned his professionalism. Which we had.

‘Why?’

He snatched up the coffee jar. Unscrewed the lid like he was wringing my neck. ‘I know where you were,’ he said. ‘All I need is for you to tell me.’

‘But if you already know . . .’

‘Teare called me,’ he said. ‘On my home number, after you’d left. She got my machine. Told me you’d been there. I don’t care why. I care about times. What time were you there?’

I steadied myself against the back of one of the kitchen stools. I thought about asking him to wait while I got changed. His attitude told me he wouldn’t be likely to entertain the request.

‘I don’t know exactly,’ I told him. ‘Around nine, I guess.’

‘She called my home number at nine forty-five. That about the time you left?’

I nodded. ‘I think so.’

‘You go back?’

‘What?’

‘After you left Teare’s house. Did you go back?’

‘No. I went to Marine Drive. Then I came here.’

‘Anyone confirm that?’

‘Rebecca Lewis was with me. She was here until about midnight. Then she left.’

Shimmin watched me, as if hunting for anything that might raise a doubt‚ then dunked two heaped teaspoons of coffee into each mug. He grabbed for the kettle before it had finished boiling. Poured steaming water into the mugs and slid one across to me.