Secrets (6 page)

The doors had bent, rather than opened and it was now possible to see inside. Two men lay slumped in the rear of the van.

‘Can you hear me?' Bill shouted. ‘The ambulance is on its way, we're going to get you out of there.' He glanced at Prentiss. ‘What the hell is going on?' He stepped back from the vehicle and radioed his partner, fending off the anxious questions. ‘Tony, do we still have that angle grinder? Right, I'm coming to get it, anything else you can find that might be useful for breaking into a van too, oh, and we'll need the genny.' He broke off. ‘Be quicker if someone could drive me round,' he said. ‘We've got a small generator; we got it when we had all those power cuts last winter.'

Prentiss's younger partner opened the car door and Bill slid into the passenger seat. ‘Stay,' he told Fred. ‘I'll be right back.'

‘How long had the van been there?' the police officer asked.

‘I'm certain it wasn't there last time I patrolled,' Bill told him. ‘So it arrived in the hour between. There's a camera on that corner post, it should have caught something.'

They turned into the factory gate. Bill could see Tony coming down the front steps with the grinder in one hand and a portable power pack in the other. The generator stood at the top of the steps. Tony handed Bill the power pack. ‘I've been keeping this in the car,' he said. ‘My battery ain't so hot and I can't get another, not till next month. There might be enough juice in it for the angle grinder.'

Bill nodded and they loaded the equipment into the car. ‘See if you can find when this van arrived,' Bill said. ‘It weren't there the last time I went out.'

‘Will do.' Tony disappeared inside. Bill could hear the ambulance, now, sirens on this time. It was almost light, the pale dawn reminding him that he ought to have been heading for home. He must call. Sheila would be worried if he came in late.

Back at the van he plugged the grinder into the power pack while the police officers hauled the generator out of the car and got it going. The draw would be too great, Bill thought, to keep the angle grinder going for long on the little inverter he was using. He started on the weld down on the bottom sill, going for the metal above and below, rather than cut through what looked like quite an efficient weld. The metal gave under the onslaught and Bill reached up to attack the weld at the top of the door. The power gave out as he'd almost finished, but the three of them hauling on the door broke what was left. They made way for the paramedics who clambered into the van through the one open door.

‘Are they dead?' Bill wanted to know.

‘No, but I think it was a close thing.' One of the paramedics crawled back out of the van and went to fetch a gurney. Bill peered into the space he had left. The man closest to him looked about mid-forties, Bill guessed. He was dressed in a suit and tie and polished shoes, like he'd been on the way to the office. His skin was ash grey and his lips blue. The paramedic fitted a mask over the man's face and Bill switched his attention to the rear of the van. It had been modified, he realized; a solid box created inside the body of the van. One small break in the blank interior attracted his attention. A valve of some sort. Metal flanges had been welded around the opening where the doors fitted so that when they were closed they fitted tightly against the frame. The external welding finished the job of holding them in place. The padlock, Bill realized, was really just for show. Just to slow down the rescue even more.

‘They made it air tight,' he said.

‘What?' PC Prentiss looked at what Bill was indicating.

‘Poor buggers would have run out of air even if the gas hadn't got them first.'

Prentiss looked quizzically at him and then went round to the front of the van, opened the door. The two men peered inside.

‘Look, that's where the valve goes through into the back,' Bill said, pointing. ‘There's a pipe, leads somewhere to the front of the van, under the dash. We turned the valve off, but who knows how long it had been on for.'

‘You're thinking carbon monoxide poisoning?'

Bill shook his head. ‘No, their skin's the wrong colour.' He shrugged. ‘Sheila, the wife, she's into all this crime drama stuff on the telly.'

Prentiss scooted back round to the rear. ‘Best get them out fast,' he told the paramedic. ‘I don't like the look of this.'

He got on to the radio and Bill got the impression he was trying to get the bomb squad called out. Bill moved back, away from the action. This was rum, very rum and Bill felt he was missing something. He radioed Tony back in the control room. No response.

‘Fred,' he called to the dog, who got up reluctantly and nosed at his hand. ‘Reckon you can give us another lift back round,' he asked, not really bothered which of the officers responded.

‘Something up?' The young female officer looked up hopefully, like she'd welcome something to do.

‘I can't raise my partner on the radio and … I don't know, I've just got a bad feeling.'

She shrugged, then led the way to the car. Another patrol had arrived, making her even more superfluous. She drove fast and Bill was grateful for that. He'd tried Tony again; still no response.

Man, woman and dog made their way into the building. ‘What do you do here?' she asked.

‘Not a lot. Most of it's been given over to storage. We sublet to one of those companies that charges people to keep their stuff here between house moves and what have you. Round the other side there's a couple of little industrial units. This was all one big engineering plant, back in the day, that folded and the owners subdivided. It's been up for sale this past year, but no one's even come to look.'

He led the way up the stairs to their little control room. ‘We've got CCTV feeds from all over the industrial estate,' he said. ‘Most people can't afford much in the way of security, we've got excess capacity now, so the owners repositioned and now rent out the other cameras. We watch it all from up—' He broke off, stopped dead at the door. Tony lay slumped half on and half off his chair, his head a mess of blood and bone.

S
licing rain, the cold kind that felt like iced buckshot when it hit.

Adam thought, not for the first time, that he really ought to find somewhere warmer. Escape to the sun. Southern France, Spain, maybe. Anywhere but endure months of the fickle-minded British weather. It was still only late September but the rain was wintry. Although, he argued, if he did leave, he would miss the hard, lustrous frosts and those precious mornings when he woke to find that snow had fallen and that the world was bright with it.

Adam quickened his pace, almost running along the narrow high street, pulling his coat collar high and wishing he remembered where he'd left his umbrella.

Traffic roared by, much too close for comfort, showering the filthy rain from the overloaded gutters over Adam's polished shoes and already too wet trousers.

He swore, irritably and miserably as the icy wetness soaked though his socks and into his shoes, then quickened his pace again.

Almost there now, a few more paces, then Adam Carmodie dived rapidly through a shop doorway and stood, slightly breathless, just inside the door.

‘My God! Just look at you, you're soaked through. Get yourself into the back there before you catch your death and I'll make coffee.'

The woman bustled from behind the counter, all hands and good intentions, flicking his wet hair back from his broad forehead and fumbling with the large black buttons on his sodden overcoat.

Adam chuckled warmly and allowed himself to be relieved of his coat and ushered through to the back office. Billie had been with him for years and fussed over him like a mother with a rather wayward child, despite her being a good deal younger than himself.

‘It's filthy weather,' he complained. ‘I've only come from where I parked the car and look at me.'

Billie nodded sympathetically, and smiled a smile that framed her grey eyes in deep, upsweeping lines. She hung Adam's coat, lengthwise, over the backs of two swivel chairs placed close to the radiator and then turned to switch on the already filled kettle.

‘You sit and get warm again,' she told him. ‘I'll be back to make a coffee in a moment.'

Adam sat down and settled back with a deep sigh.

He was still at his happiest here. This tiny shop had been his first business and still, despite all of his success, the only part of Carmodie Electronics he felt to be truly his.

He glanced around him. Things hadn't changed much in all the years he'd owned the place. The little shop out front; the poky back room office and the storeroom beyond, filled with stock, mainly for the mail order side of the business.

Billie ran the place, really. Had been there long enough to view it as her own domain and, since last Christmas, had held a quarter share of the stock on her own behalf. A gift from Adam.

She knew the business back to front and inside out. Had a couple of part timers to help with the office work and packaging and Adam himself, though officially retired, came in on several days a week to keep his hand in.

He looked up as Billie bustled in to see to the kettle. Picking up, as she did so, the thread of a conversation with him she had been carrying on in her head since leaving the room.

‘So the last ad in that new monthly, it's done us a power of good and there's been terrific interest in the catalogue.'

She filled the mugs and turned to him again. ‘So you see, we were all telling you the truth, folk don't mind paying for a good-sized catalogue, especially if they get their cash back off the first order and even our Internet customers like something physical they can browse through.'

She paused and perched herself on the desk edge, handing him his coffee as she did so.

‘There's a pile of new catalogue requests in the in tray. Do them, if you get around to it, will you. Judy phoned in sick this morning and I know I won't have time. And there are a few general enquiries, one about the range of those new transmitters. Oh, and there was this …'

She reached across to the other desk and picked up a plain, Manila envelope, handed it to Adam.

‘I didn't open it,' she said. ‘If you look at the address, it looks kind of personal.' She paused, as though about to say some more but then the doorbell rang and the shop door clanked noisily. Someone else in a hurry to escape the rain.

‘Customers!' Billie announced with deep satisfaction, put her coffee down and left Adam to the mail.

Adam laughed softly to himself and drew the in tray close, preparing to work his way through the morning mail. Whoever it was who'd just come into the shop, they were likely to be there for quite some time. They might have come in only for a fuse, but they'd be sure to leave with a good deal more, even if it was only the memory of friendly conversation. Billie was just like that. It was as well, he reflected, for the sake of the business that mail orders didn't need any talking to.

He rifled quickly through the catalogue requests, separated out the more specific queries and then turned back to the Manila envelope Billie had handed to him.

The address was, to say the least, a little vague.

Adam Carmodie, Carmodie Electronics, Lentonstone. And that was all.

He slit it open and thoughtfully extracted the single sheet of headed notepaper inside.

A hospice? A request for charity, perhaps.

But no.

A letter that began, ‘Dear Mr Carmodie, you don't know me, but I'm writing on behalf of …'

Curious now, Adam began to read, a small frown creasing between his eyes.

He read the letter twice and then, the frown deepened and he laid the page aside.

Joseph Bern. After all this time. Joseph Bern.

For several minutes, Adam stared blindly into space, his mind flooded with old memories.

It had been, what, ten years since they had last met. Their contact even before that had at best been inconsistent and erratic; sometimes, almost the closest of friends, then parting for months when some irritation had pushed them apart or Joseph had once more decided to travel.

And now this.

For moments more, Adam hesitated, his mind filled with the memories of their first meeting. The heat of the sun, the bright blue afternoon filled with green scents and the sounds of birds and buzzing insects. Joseph staggering on to the road and falling in front of Adam's car, blood oozing from a deep gash in his left cheek, his right arm cradled against his side and bloody footprints from bare feet, torn and abraded from long walking over hard terrain, marking the roadway.

Adam closed his eyes, all of those things as clear as morning, in his memory.

Then he reached out for the phone and dialled the number on the hospice letter head.

B
ill sat in the front seat of the police car and watched the ambulance take Tony away. He was alive, they said, but no one was very hopeful. There were police everywhere and Bill felt like a spare part, watching them scurrying here and there, looking purposeful.

Fred snuffled sleepily in the rear seat and Bill wondered for a moment what would have happened if he'd been with Tony when his friend had been attacked. He had no doubt that Fred would have done his bit, but anyone capable of hitting someone as hard as they had obviously hit Tony, would probably have dealt with the dog just as harshly and efficiently. Bill could not help himself; he was glad that Fred hadn't been there and guilty because he felt like that.

He thought also about those two men in the van. Whoever they were, whoever had organized this, those men had been considered expendable too. Someone had sealed them into that van, known that when they woke up from whatever gas had been pumped into the space through that little valve in the bulkhead, they'd be sure to make a racket, sure to try and get out. They'd counted on someone hearing the noise and on someone going to help. They'd counted, specifically, on Bill hearing them and calling for help. On Bill and probably Tony as well, leaving the building so that whoever it was would have had access. If Tony had been with Bill and Fred and the police officers on the outside of the fence, he wouldn't have been hurt. Whoever it was would have gone in, got what they wanted and that would have been that.