Secrets (19 page)

She crossed to the counter, pulled the child out from behind the crates and boxes.

‘We've got to find a way out of here. Come, now.'

‘My father.'

She couldn't tell him. She couldn't find the words. His eyes widened, and Molly realized that on some level the boy already knew.

‘I promised him I'd keep you safe,' she said. ‘I promised him. We've got to go.'

She could hear the men outside, shouting now, yelling words she could not understand. It was as though the killing had broken the spell and turned up the volume on their rage. She led the boy away from the screams and into the back of the shop, finding a window they could climb out of and then landing in an alley. She turned away from the street and began to run, dragging the child with her, trying to put distance between them and the scene of Adis's death and taking little note of where they were going. Finally pausing to take stock only when she realized they were lost in streets she did not know.

‘Do you know where we are?' she asked the child. He shook his head. ‘Right, then, we'll have to guess.' Squaring her shoulders, Molly took his hand tightly in hers and they began to walk, keeping in the shadows, pacing softly, not daring to speak.

Three hours it took me to find my way home
, Molly recalled and Joseph was there, waiting.

‘Edward?'

‘Safe, but he couldn't get back here. We've got to leave, now.' He looked at the boy who stood beside her.

‘He's coming with us,' Molly said. ‘I gave my word.'

‘Then get him in the truck. We've got to go.'

Molly nodded. She had dived back into their little bungalow and grabbed a few of her possessions and a bag Edward insisted she always kept packed, a habit she maintained lifelong. Moments later and they were off, driving away at speed, the sound of the approaching mob carried on the wind.

N
aomi had an unexpected but rather welcome visit from Liz that morning. A little to her surprise, Liz suggested they go shopping.

‘For anything in particular?' Naomi asked.

‘Well, not really. I do this thing once a month. I take myself into town, have lunch and buy something nice. It might only be a new lipstick, but it makes me feel better.'

‘Oh, I know what you mean and, actually, if you don't mind, that's not a bad idea. Alec is hopeless when it comes to that kind of shopping. My sister usually goes with me, but—'

‘Well that's sorted then. I don't suppose you've seen that friend of yours again, have you? I don't suppose he mentioned me?'

‘You mean Gregory? We saw him last night, as a matter of fact. But I don't know how long he'll be here. He moves around a great deal.'

Naomi wondered, again, if she should warn Liz off, but what should she say? Actually, he's a paid assassin and … well other things as well. The problem was she didn't actually think it would put Liz off.

‘And did he?'

‘Sorry, Liz, we didn't have long to talk and we were a bit involved in something,' Naomi told her. ‘But I'm sure he liked you.'

‘You think so?' Liz sounded hopeful and then Naomi felt her shrug. ‘Oh, well, if it's meant to be, then something will come of it, I suppose. The problem is you reach a certain age and all the good men are taken. I suppose you met Alec when you were both very young?'

‘Youngish. We went through our training together, parted for a bit and then ended up working in the same place. The rest, as they say. You never married?'

‘No, I had my moments, but. Funny, a friend of mine died not long ago. He was older than me, but there was a time when, well, you know?'

His name wasn't Arthur Fields, or something, was it? Naomi thought. ‘What did he die of?' she said.

‘Oh, he had cancer. He went into remission for a while, but in the end, there was nothing anyone could do. It's a common enough story, I suppose, but it still hurts when it happens to someone you know. Right, off to town then,' Liz finished, brightly.

‘I'll get my things,' Naomi said. ‘And get Napoleon's harness on.'

They had touched on something, Naomi thought, that Liz did not want to talk about. Everyone, it seemed, had their secrets; their wounds. She wondered, briefly, what Gregory's were and then decided that she probably didn't want to know.

‘You remember that first night,' Annie said. ‘Down in the bunker beneath the railway station. I was so scared and you just seemed so calm. So –' she laughed – ‘so you.'

‘I remember,' Nathan told her. ‘Bonnie had said I'd probably be getting some company. I didn't want company. I especially didn't want the company of a girl. I just wanted to play my game and be left alone.'

Annie reached for his hand and held it, briefly. Nathan didn't welcome physical contact, even now, but she could get away with it so long as she didn't overstep his boundaries. She wondered if Nathan would ever be able to deal with a normal relationship – whatever that might mean in Nathan's case. He seemed to rejoice when other people settled into some kind of steady pattern; it had pleased him, immensely, when she had found and fallen for Bob, but a Nathan relationship, well that would require a very unusual kind of person to maintain.

‘I was so scared,' she said again. ‘And cold.'

Nathan returned her touch, squeezing her fingers gently and she knew he remembered just as well as she did. Probably even better, in fact. Nathan remembered in almost photographic detail.

‘You were shivering,' he said. ‘But you didn't realize it. Then you went into the other room and put on the clothes they had given you. When you came out, I took one of the blankets from the bunk and wrapped it round you and then I got another, but you were still cold.'

So he had put his game away, Annie recalled. Saving and switching off carefully and then he'd sat down on the bunk beside her and wrapped his long arms around both her and the blankets and he'd held her really tight. Eventually, they'd fallen asleep, curled up together on the narrow bunk and had woken only when, hours later, someone had brought them food. She'd not understood, at the time, just how hard that had been for him, of why Edward had been so surprised. Nathan touched no one. He avoided even casual contact as a rule. But it had been the start of a bond that had lasted ever since that night and Annie figured that she and Nathan probably understood one another better than anyone else in the world. That he probably loved her more than anyone else too, with the possible exception of Bob.

She thought about her parents. Her father, it turned out, had been shot, though it had been a couple of years before she discovered the exact circumstances. And she had never been able to put him in a grave; his body lost among the rubble and debris. Her mother had died in a fire. Their home set alight by insurgents, along with half the other houses in the old town where they'd lived. Annie had always tried to believe her mother had been dead before the flames found her. Annie had been at school when the first of the rockets hit and the teacher had led them all into what shelter could be found. Half her classmates had died in the next blast. Annie had run. She could remember little after that until someone had found her, a man who worked with her father and then there had been Edward and Nathan and Clay. Clay, who had fed her need for revenge, though he had called it justice; Nathan who had shown her that none of that really mattered and Edward, steadfast and quiet, always in the background, always there, always reminding her to question the facts and challenge the opinions. Whoever it was that put them forward.

‘We have to kill him, don't we?' She didn't have to say his name. Nathan knew she meant Clay.

‘I think that's likely,' Nathan said. ‘But it won't be easy, even now.'

M
olly poked around in the storage locker, opening boxes and drawers and going through the motions of a thorough search but it was evident to Alec that she had decided within seconds that nothing was missing and her efforts were just for their benefit.

‘Nothing,' she said finally. ‘There is nothing missing. There wasn't a lot here to start with. Just things I couldn't be bothered with back at the house.'

‘You're sure?' Barnes asked her.

‘Of course I am. You think I don't know what I left here?'

‘It's easy to forget,' Barnes persisted and Alec gave him full marks for nerve. ‘Did you keep an inventory?'

Molly froze him with a look. ‘Have we finished?'

Barnes shrugged. ‘If you're sure.'

‘I'm sure.'

‘A man almost died because someone thought you had something of value here, Mrs Chambers. Perhaps you could look again.'

‘I don't lie and I don't make mistakes,' Molly told him coldly. ‘I spent my life travelling, ergo I spent my life keeping track of my possessions. Can we go now?'

‘Yes, we can go now.'

Molly preceded them and waited impatiently outside beside the car. Alec could see that she was agitated about something.

‘Where now?' he asked.

‘Lunch,' Molly said. ‘Old bones need regular feeding.'

Barnes bristled. ‘How well did you know Joseph Bern?' he asked. ‘And if you knew him, does that also mean you were acquainted with Messrs Hayes and Gilligan?'

Molly eyed him suspiciously. ‘I met them,' she said. ‘Why?'

Barnes seemed to be making up his mind about something. ‘Look,' he said finally. ‘It's not escaped my notice that the pair of you, you and Alec, have certain levels of experience, shall we say, that fall outside of what is normally in the remit of the average copper.'

‘And?'

‘And I could do with that expertise and experience. I'll buy you lunch, but first of all I want you and Alec to come with me.'

‘Come with you, where?'

‘To the offices of Gilligan and Hayes. I want you to take a look, see if anything strikes you as strange.'

Barnes would have missed that half-smile, but Alec did not. He was well used to monitoring those fleeting expressions. Molly wanted that, Alec thought. If Barnes had not suggested it then he was sure she would have done.

‘I'll look,' she said. ‘But I don't know what I'll be able to tell you that your experts couldn't.'

Barnes held the car door open and Molly packed herself inside, setting the bags she carried carefully on her lap.

‘What do you have in there?' Alec asked her, indicating the document case.

‘Oh, for goodness sake, Alec. Look. In case I got bored on the journey.' She half withdrew an arty magazine with a glossy cover. Apparently it featured an article of a restoration in Venice and something about a biennial.

‘And there's this.' She let the magazine slip back and took out a complicated looking knitting pattern. ‘I used to knit, if you remember.'

Alec winced at the memory of itchy, cable knit sweaters and his mother's insistence that he wear them at least once. ‘I remember,' he confirmed.

‘I thought I'd get my old patterns out, have a read through and see if I could still remember how. Some people appreciated my efforts, even when you didn't.'

Alec, put firmly in his place, closed her door and slid into the rear passenger seat.

The offices of Gilligan and Hayes were more impressive than Alec had anticipated. They took up two floors of a Victorian terrace beneath which was a small but expensive-looking antique shop.

Antiques, again, Alec thought. He wondered if they stocked Oriental porcelain.

Barnes led the way up the stairs and into a spacious external office. A modern, but quite expensive-looking desk faced the door, angled slightly so it was set at a diagonal against the corner of the room. Next to that was a wooden filing cabinet and three chairs had been set against the wall, alongside a surprisingly domestic-looking sideboard and a surprisingly cheap-looking coffee table. The sideboard was set out with cups and tall, brushed steel hot water flasks, the sort Alec associated with the worst kind of conference seminars. He glanced out of the window and looked down on to a street busy with cars and shoppers and he wondered how Naomi and Liz were doing with their shopping. He realized that, much as he hated that particular activity, he'd much rather have been selecting the right shade of lipstick with his wife – and, as usual, getting it wrong – than standing here, in this tidy room, with his pretend aunt and a increasingly desperate detective inspector, stuck in the middle of a murder case Alec knew instinctively Barnes was not going to solve.

That random and somewhat illogical thought took Alec by surprise and he wondered where it had come from. It wasn't that he doubted Barnes's competence or his persistence, Alec realized, it was more the sense that this was bigger, more complex and went higher up the pay scale than anything a mere DI was able to get to grips with. He glanced back down at the busy street, and feeling suddenly vertiginous, moved away from the window. The sudden feeling of dizzy dislocation, Alec knew, had nothing to do with the height of the building or the distance, not actually so great, from the street below. It was more to do with the sudden understanding that someone, or a group of someones, were just allowing the likes of Barnes and of Alec himself to go through the motions of an investigation. To satisfy the public and media demand that these things should be solved and dealt with, but that nothing they actually did would make a fractional difference to the shadow world that actually dealt with matters like this. The likes of Gilligan and Hayes and Gregory and even Molly inhabited what Alec was starting to think of as an almost parallel universe. One that occasionally impinged upon the consciousness of the rest; of what Alec thought of as the ordinary world, the normal population. When that happened, it was all a question of damage control. Alec wondered just who was pulling the strings this time, then decided that, unlike Gregory, he really, truly didn't give a damn.