See How They Run (21 page)

A
fter arriving at Victoria
, Harry took the underground to King’s Cross, where he boarded the 8.44 train to Ely. An hour’s journey across the flat green and brown agricultural landscapes of East Anglia: England’s own little slice of Iowa.

The day grew milder but not much lighter. All traces of last night’s frost had vanished, and the sky wore a caul of grey cloud. A day as dull and flat as his own spirit.

He rang Renshaw’s phone several times, with no success. Same with Ruth’s. Then he noticed his battery level was fast reducing. Having no way to recharge it, he was forced to give up. He shut his eyes and tried to relax into the rhythm of the train’s motion, telling himself that this whole experience was a wrong turning. Soon he would back up, rejoin Alice and Evie and resume life as normal.

At Ely, waiting for the connection to Thetford, he found a quiet spot on the platform and made the call to Keri. The phone rang for a long time, and when she answered she sounded distinctly cool.

‘I suggested you phone at eleven.’

‘Sorry, I just—’

‘I prefer my clients to follow instructions. That’s better for us both.’

‘Yes, I’m sure. Uh, I rang because I’m going to be in Thetford sooner than I thought. I wondered if we could meet an hour earlier?’

She sucked in a breath, prompting him to add: ‘Look, I can pay extra if—’

‘The rate’s the rate. I’m not a rip-off merchant.’

‘No. Sorry.’ He snorted. ‘I’m making a total hash of this.’

‘You sound nervous. Is it your first time?’

‘God, no! I’m thirty-two. I have—’ He stopped, unwilling to mention Alice.

Keri was laughing softly. ‘I mean, your first time with an escort. I didn’t expect you to be a virgin – although I can cater for that, if you are.’

‘Oh. Right. No, I’m not. But yes, it is my first time.’

Another pause, but he sensed he’d won her over.

‘I’m in a block called Milton Place, just off Painter Street. It’s not far from the centre.’ She gave him directions. ‘I’ll text you a few minutes before eleven with the apartment number.’

‘Okay. Are you always this careful with your address? Only it seems a bit … long-winded.’

‘Maybe it does. But you’re not me. This is the way I work, and it’s not negotiable. See you at eleven.’

H
e was
in Thetford by ten forty. His paranoia had receded just enough that he could walk through the station and not feel that everyone was looking at him, but it had changed how he viewed the world. All he saw now were traps, threats, danger.

There was a biting wind from the North Sea, cutting through his jacket with ease. He set off along a quiet residential street, and nearly missed the turning he needed to reach Painter Street.

By ten to eleven he was waiting by a short terrace of stone-built cottages. Across the road, Milton Place was a more recent development of several three-storey buildings, almost but not quite brutalist in design, painted an unappealing cream and brown.

Harry tried not to look conspicuous, but felt his purpose must be blatantly obvious:
Man visiting prostitute! Man visiting prostitute!

Or maybe he wasn’t. Maybe she’d rumbled him and had no intention of responding—

The phone buzzed.
Flat 14.

H
e practically ran
to the main entrance and pressed the button for number 14. The double glass doors clicked and he pushed one open and walked inside. The communal area felt freshly painted, the carpet thick and springy: a new conversion, maybe.

The third floor was whisper-quiet, as if the whole place was empty. Harry couldn’t decide whether that should reassure him or exacerbate his nerves. He imagined unseen eyes tracking him along the corridor. It felt like a terrible error, now, to visit this woman under false pretences. He wasn’t at all sure that his acting skills were up to the task.

He knocked on her door and faced the spyhole, trying to wear a relaxed, guileless expression. The door opened and he was greeted by an attractive woman in her late twenties, wearing a black cocktail dress with just a hint of cleavage on display.

Keri was slim and extremely tall, thanks in part to a pair of six-inch platform heels. Her hair was long and wavy, light brown in colour, and her make-up was subtle and effective. In short, she was a world away from Harry’s preconceptions. Take a couple of inches off the heels and she could be a City lawyer at a high-powered function.

She smiled. ‘Come on in, Harry. How did you hear about me?’

‘Uh, a friend.’

He stepped into a narrow hallway, and was hoping he wouldn’t have to elaborate when he heard a trilling noise. It took a quizzical look from Keri to make him realise it was his own phone.

He fumbled it from his pocket. The number was the one Ruth had used last night.

‘I’m really sorry, I have to take this.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Keri indicated a door behind him. ‘I thought you might want to freshen up.’

Nodding, he entered a small but immaculate bathroom, and shut the door before answering the phone.

‘Ruth?’ he hissed.

‘Yeah, sorry I had to run out—’

‘Where the hell did you go?’

‘I spotted one of their cars and went after them. Then my phone ran out of juice and I’ve only just had a chance to power it up. Let me come and get you now.’

‘I’m not in Crawley. I came to Norfolk.’

‘Why?’ It took her only a second to work it out. ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to see Keri?’

‘What else could I do? Yesterday that was what you wanted.’

‘The plan was to get her address. But I don’t actually need her any more, so don’t bother with a meeting.’

‘Ruth, you owe me an—’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know. I can be there in about an hour. Meet by the statue of Thomas Paine, in King Street.’

She rang off, leaving him angry and bewildered. How was he going to explain this to Keri? It was bad enough that he’d deceived his way into the flat in the first place. Then he thought:
Huh
.

Why should he listen to Ruth, after the way she’d treated him?

H
e joined
Keri in the living room, where she was sitting on a long L-shaped sofa. The room was tidy but characterless, predominantly beige and sparsely furnished, with no photographs or personal items on view. Keri’s posture seemed quite guarded: legs crossed, her hands clamped at her sides, as if to stop herself from fidgeting.

‘I assume we settle the, er, financial aspect first?’

‘Please,’ she said, a little tightly.

Harry counted out a hundred and fifty pounds, his hands trembling. When he held the money out to her, she sprang up and swiped at him, a weapon suddenly in her right hand. It was a telescopic steel baton, and it struck a glancing blow to his arm. He dropped the money, stumbling back out of range. What a fool: he was being robbed. The oldest trick in the book …

‘You bastard! Ruth Monroe sent you here, didn’t she?’

‘What?’ Now he understood: she must have been listening at the door. ‘No, look. I’m sorry—’

‘Where is she, waiting outside? You know she’s a fucking lunatic, don’t you?’

Her eyes were bright with tears. She maintained an aggressive stance, the baton raised to strike. Harry had no idea how to pacify her, so he took the blunt approach instead.

‘She says you had an affair with her husband. But she’s not waiting outside, and she doesn’t have your address. I promise.’

He kept his hands up, palms out, until Keri relaxed slightly. She lowered the baton, then kicked off her shoes, instantly becoming six inches shorter, as well as more human, somehow.

‘What else did she tell you?’

‘That her husband had been a police officer. He was investigating a man called Nathan Laird, and because of that he was murdered.’ He faltered, only now thinking of Ruth’s attempt to dissuade him from seeing Keri. ‘Or is any of that not true?’

‘Greg was killed. Nobody knows for sure who did it.’

‘But Laird might have been responsible?’

‘Maybe. I prefer not to dwell on it, thanks.’

Harry scrutinised her carefully. ‘Okay … so what am I missing?’

With a scornful sigh, Keri dropped back on to the sofa. ‘There’s a lot she hasn’t told you.’

‘Really?’

‘For one thing, at the time of his death Greg wasn’t her husband. They’d split up years before.’ A lot of emotion in her voice now: bitterness and grief. ‘And I doubt if Ruth happened to mention
why
they split, did she? Or what
she
was doing while Greg was risking his life on her behalf?’

‘No. She didn’t.’ He waited.

And waited.

‘Please, Keri. What?’

‘She was in prison.’

E
vie
, for once, might have slept the morning away. She looked sublimely relaxed, motionless but for her bottom lip, which trembled with each exhalation.

She’d had about twenty-five minutes when there was a tap on the door. Alice opened it to find Renshaw, looking like the Michelin man in a quilted jacket over a thick sweater.

‘Oh!’ Alice exclaimed. ‘I’m not ready.’

‘Leave the baby if you must, or bring her in the papoose. Either way …’ He tapped his watch. This was the short-tempered, impatient Renshaw back again.

So what had caused the change of mood? Alice pondered that question while she carefully dressed Evie in her pramsuit and placed her in the carrier. Evie grumbled and squealed, but didn’t quite wake up. Suspecting that a bowel movement was due, Alice picked up a nappy and a pack of wipes, and put them in a nappy sack.

She followed Renshaw downstairs, wishing they were leaving for good. She’d toyed with the idea of asking Michael to take her and Evie to Gloucester station, but was deterred by the thought of what it might signify if he refused.

There was no sign of Nerys and Michael, although she could hear someone moving in the kitchen. The Range Rover was still on the drive. Spotting a couple of winter coats on a stand by the door, Alice decided to borrow a Barbour waxed jacket, large enough to give Evie some extra protection from the elements, and with a pocket for the nappy and wipes.

She was glad of the coat as soon as they stepped outside. The sky was filling with high cloud and the wind had a moist, raw feel to it, blowing in gusts from the west.

Without saying a word, Renshaw tramped into the lane, then turned on to a footpath leading across the fields that she’d seen from the nursery window. Alice followed, abruptly deciding that she’d had enough of his moods.

‘I should have heard from Harry by now. There’s no way he wouldn’t be trying to get in touch with me.’

‘I told you—’ he began, but she spoke over him.

‘To my mind it means one of two things. Either you’re lying to me and not passing on his messages, or, for some reason, he isn’t able to communicate.’ She paused to let this sink in, and saw him nodding gravely.

‘The woman he was with,’ he muttered. ‘Perhaps she was not to be trusted.’

‘In that case, he’s in danger. You have to let me call the police.’

‘Impossible. No police.’

‘How did I know you were going to say that?’ She laughed, coldly. Renshaw strode on, skirting a puddle with a thin crust of ice on the surface. He was breathing hard, staring at the ground as if he wanted to forget she existed.

‘Why are you so anxious this morning?’ she asked him. ‘Were you aware that the landline doesn’t work?’

At this, he jerked upright. ‘No. But it does not surprise me.’

‘I assumed you were scared of the gang finding you here. But that look you gave me at breakfast … it’s Nerys you’re worried about, isn’t it?’

Again, Renshaw said nothing, but he wore a sombre expression.

‘I don’t get it,’ Alice said. ‘If Nerys was up to something, why let us come out like this?’

Renshaw indicated the ploughed field to their right, a meadow to their left; a lonely copse of tall thin trees up ahead. ‘To reassure us, perhaps? There is nowhere we can go from here.’

‘All right, but …’ Alice bit her lip for a second. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but after what happened yesterday, aren’t we both likely to be prone to paranoia?’

‘Possibly. But my instincts say otherwise.’ He hesitated, struggling to put his thoughts into words. Evie started squirming in her carrier, screwing up her face.
Right on cue
, Alice thought.

Renshaw said, ‘If I had come to Nerys alone, I believe she would have helped me, and asked for nothing in return. But the presence of her son …’ He narrowed his eyes, not maliciously; almost with regret. ‘Your presence, too. It changes things.’

‘I don’t understand. In what way?’

But Renshaw only shook his head. ‘No. Forget I said this.’

B
y kneeling
on a chest of drawers in one of the spare bedrooms, Michael was able to follow their progress along the track. He thought their body language might tell him something, but there wasn’t much to discern from this pair of roly-polys: Renshaw waddling along in his padded winter coat, Alice bulked out by the presence of the baby carrier.

The door creaked. Michael didn’t look round until his mother chuckled.

‘Very dignified.’

‘I want to see where they go. She’s taken your coat, cheeky bitch.’ No comment from Nerys, so he said, ‘What did you find?’

‘Nothing. Clothes, most of them in a horrendous state. No paperwork. And no money.’

‘So he’s hidden it somewhere?’

‘Or he’s got it on him.’

The coat
. With a groan, Michael gently butted his forehead against the glass. Renshaw and Alice were almost lost from sight now, heading for the wood that marked the boundary between two farms.

‘What if they’re doing a runner?’ he said.

‘Calm down. He’s got no reason to leave the car behind. If he’s kept the money with him it’s only ’cause he knows we’ll search his room.’

‘So why go out in the first place?’

‘Could be a test, to see how we react. And that’s not a problem, really. Anything to keep them relaxed.’

Probably right, Michael thought. He could no longer see them so he climbed down, bruising his knee in the process.

‘Did you find the number for this Vickers, or whatever his name is?’

‘Vickery. I have a number, but I’m not calling till I’ve worked out how to play it. Ideally I need a bit more out of Edward first. If we just knew the
nature
of the leverage that he’s got over Laird.’

‘But if you push him, surely he’ll guess what we’re up to?’

‘The bigger problem is handling Vickery and Laird.’ She sighed. ‘We’re tapdancing on a tightrope. The last thing we want is to make an enemy out of Laird, and yet we’ve got to know something about Edward’s little scheme, because that’s where his value lies.’

Michael spotted a glint in her eye. ‘I take it you’re hatching a brilliant plan?’

‘Not really. But when they come back, it’d be a lot better if you weren’t here – at least, not officially.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You make him nervous. Like I said last night, he’s more, what is it …
pliable
if he thinks I’m on my own.’ She saw he was wounded by this, and pouted back at him. ‘Don’t worry, there’ll still be a chance for you to have your little pleasure, I dare say.’

Now he had to fake incomprehension. ‘What are you implying?’

‘I’m not stupid. I’ve seen the way you look at her.’ She was grinning – fortunately – as if her disapproval was based only on the fact that he’d made it so obvious.

‘Why? How
do
I look at her?’

‘Like a wolf, Michael. A ravenous wolf.’