What You Left Behind (26 page)

A
DAM AGREED TO
stay with Jo and the others at the Manor while Lorraine made the short walk to the Old Dog and Fox. It was early afternoon, she hadn’t eaten, and the smell of real ale and chips doused in salt and vinegar made her mouth water.

She went up to the bar. It was cool inside the low-ceilinged building, even on a day as hot as this one.

“What can I get you?” a young girl about Grace’s age said. She was wearing a cropped T-shirt and skinny jeans. A tea towel was slung over one shoulder.

“I’d like to see the landlord if he’s around,” Lorraine said.

“He’s upstairs,” the girl replied. “Asleep.”

Lorraine held out her warrant card.

“Oh,” the girl said, staring at Lorraine as if she didn’t believe her. She turned, went round the corner of the bar, and opened a latched door. It was small and creaked as she pulled it open, revealing a narrow twisting staircase behind it. “Da-
ad
!” she yelled up it. “It’s the police!”

Heads turned in Lorraine’s direction, but she kept her eyes fixed on the rack of optics in front of her, not wanting to cause a stir. Jo would hate that.

“He’ll be down in a tick,” the girl said. “He gets tired.”

Her father emerged through the small doorway five minutes later wearing an untucked white shirt and black trousers. His gray hair, swept to one side, was clumped in misplaced strands across his crown.

“Sorry to bother you,” Lorraine said, and introduced herself.

The man came out from behind the bar and they sat at a small oak table beside the unlit fireplace.

“I noticed you have a CCTV camera in the car park,” she said. “Is it operational?”

“That old thing?” he said, shaking his head. “It’s just meant to
scare ’em off. Doesn’t seem to work though. But if people will leave valuables in their cars.” He wiped his hands down his face.

“I’m here about the stolen motorbike last month.”

“Thought you were done with all that. I told them back then the camera wasn’t real, that they ought to speak to Jim across the street.”

“Jim?” she asked.

“He’s at number forty-two across the way. Place is like Fort Knox.”

“And did they ask Jim?” Lorraine said.

“No idea,” the landlord said. “Ain’t going to bring that poor lad back though, is it?”

“No,” Lorraine said, standing up to leave. “It’s not.”

J
IM WAS PARTIALLY
deaf. “It’s why I have all this stuff,” he said, silencing the screeching alarm as Lorraine stepped across the threshold of his bungalow. “You can’t be too careful these days, even in a place as sleepy as Radcote.” He was yelling until his wife told him to quiet down.

Lorraine asked if any of his cameras—she’d seen at least three on the front of his property—caught footage of the pub car park opposite.

“Not really,” he answered. “But I get a bit of the road between my drive and the pub’s.”

“Have you still got footage from a month or so ago?”

“Of course,” Jim said, riffling through a well-organized book of labeled CDs after Lorraine had told him the date of Dean’s death. “I keep it all, you know. They call me obsessive, but you never know when something will come in handy.”

“Exactly,” Lorraine said, glancing round the room. His wife had made her a cup of tea, balancing it on the edge of a dresser that was crowded with meticulously organized miniature china houses. The whole place seemed to be brimming with neat clutter.

“Right, let’s see …” Jim plucked out a disc and inserted it into the drive of a desktop computer. A few moments later a grainy black-and-white image of his front drive was flickering on the screen. “Late evening, you say? I can fast-forward it from here.”

Lorraine watched as the evening in question played out before them. The pub seemed busy and she could make out customers coming and going by the slowing of cars and the flaring of indicator lights as they turned into the car park, even though the camera had captured only the lower half of the vehicles, being mainly aimed at Jim’s front garden. The legs of a few pedestrians, some with dogs, some in groups, were also visible as they walked past at top speed. The evening flashed past in minutes, turning from daylight to dusk to darkness. A couple of cats shot across the front garden.

“Stop,” Lorraine suddenly said. “Go back a bit, will you?”

Jim rewound and played the footage again, this time at normal speed. A motorbike went into the pub car park. There was one person on it.

Jim sped the footage up again.

“Right, there, go back again.”

Jim did as he was instructed, his wife looming over his shoulder. They both seemed pleased to help.

Lorraine watched as the same motorbike slowly left the pub car park.

“Is the clock display set correctly?” she asked.

Jim nodded.

She told him to rewind and play it even slower. There it was again, the motorbike being stolen, at 11:12 p.m. She squinted at the screen, trying to improve the grainy resolution. There was no doubt about it, she could see two pairs of legs on the bike—a male wearing shorts sitting at the front, and a slim female, also with exposed legs, sitting to the rear.

“I’ll need to take this with me,” Lorraine said.

Jim ejected the disc and slipped it into its protective sleeve.

As she was leaving, thanking them both, she said, “Out of interest, have the police ever asked you for this footage before?”

Jim and his wife shook their heads decisively.

“Thanks again,” Lorraine said, thinking how much she despised Greg Burnley.

22

Freddie had exhaled with relief when they’d all left Gil’s cottage earlier. He’d hidden himself beneath the pile of old clothes, bedding, and curtains that had been dumped in the far corner of Gil’s mezzanine sleeping area. It was a dump up there, but that had worked to his advantage: if anyone had peeked up, he’d have been well concealed within the mess. Every cell in his body had buzzed from lack of oxygen—he reckoned he’d pretty much not breathed properly the whole time they were there. His fingers had crept out first, reaching out from under the fusty fabric. Once he was fully out he’d stretched his back, cat-like, and pulled his pack out of the nest. He had no idea where Gil had gone, but was just glad that the place was finally empty after all the fuss.

Now, an hour later and still alone, Freddie was sitting on the edge
of Gil’s low bed. He took a bottle of water from his bag and drank half of it.

On the one hand, Gil had been a savior, taking him in earlier, giving him food, keeping quiet when everyone had burst into the tack room. But on the other, he’d been a liability, causing such a commotion with his ridiculous antics. Freddie had thankfully already been upstairs when it happened, snoozing, exhausted from the goings-on. He’d heard all the fuss and had been about to go downstairs to help Gil, but quickly retreated at the sound of someone running outside, and then Sonia had come bursting into the cottage, followed not long after that by the others. They’d immediately got Gil down, not realizing Freddie was nearby. It would only have taken one wrong or careless word from Gil to reveal his whereabouts. He couldn’t get caught yet.

After he’d left New Hope, he’d sat in an anonymous greasy spoon café at the other end of town, drinking tea and wondering whether running away was the answer. He’d spent the next two hours ambling back toward Radcote, but as he approached the village he’d ducked into a field and hid behind a hedge. That gang of lads was hanging out again, the same lot from the previous night. Were they waiting for him? He’d watched as they smoked weed, sitting on a gate.

Freddie had turned, unseen, and cut across the field that was bordered on one side by the railway line. It was then that Gil emerged from a small group of trees.

“I am out searching for you,” he’d said matter-of-factly. “But Tony would be cross if he knew I’d gone wandering off.”

Freddie had stared at him. “Then perhaps you shouldn’t tell anyone you’ve found me.”

Gil was nodding. “Would you like me to help you hide?” His face lit up like a full moon. “I am good at keeping secrets.”

Freddie had bitten his lip, glanced back across the field at those boys, then turned back to Gil. “OK,” he’d said reluctantly. He didn’t think he had any choice.

Now, alone in the tack room, Freddie took the stolen laptop from his pack. There was a power socket at the base of the eaves, so he plugged it in with the cable Lana had given him.

He stared at the ceiling as the computer started up.
Lana
. For her sake, he prayed he wouldn’t find anything.

He picked up where he’d left off. He’d already changed the computer’s settings to reveal all folders, hidden or otherwise, as it had been previously set to conceal. The laptop clearly wasn’t a hospital machine—Freddie was grateful for that—but it did contain records of files pertaining to patients that Tony had obviously viewed at home. He checked through them, and everything else that seemed to be related to work. There was nothing out of the ordinary.

He lingered over the family’s Christmas snaps from the previous year. He stroked the cursor over Lana’s face as she forced a smile for her father’s camera—Simon had killed himself the Christmas before. The family had been setting off on a winter break. Freddie imagined, as these pictures showed, that it would forevermore be a somber time of year for them.

It was as Freddie was idly moving the cursor around the laptop, wondering where to check next, that it showed up, tucked away in the top right corner of the screen. A small ghost-like square of transparent white appeared, then disappeared as the cursor touched it, giving itself away only to someone who knew what they were looking for.

“An
invisible
file,” Freddie whispered to himself, knowing they were quite different from hidden files.

Swallowing, he double-clicked it.

At first it appeared to contain nothing, but Freddie could see what Tony had done. Another invisible folder was concealed within the original, to put off anyone who’d stumbled across the first one accidentally.

He opened the second folder, which revealed three image files. Freddie double-clicked on the first, which automatically started up
the picture-viewing software. He stared blankly at the color image. He went cold and numb. Then he opened the other two.

His eyes closed and tears pooled under his lids.

He needed to talk to Lana. He was about to call her, arrange a time to meet, when he heard a noise. It was coming from downstairs. He prayed it was just Gil coming back, but he shut the laptop lid and crawled under the pile of bedding and clothes to be safe. When he was well and truly hidden, he realized that his backpack was still on the bed.

“Hello, anyone here?” came the man’s voice.

It was loud and authoritative, and Freddie recognized it instantly. It was Tony, and he was inside Gil’s home.

He heard his footsteps clicking across the tiles, a grunt as he picked something up then put it down again.

Why had he come back? Had Gil revealed he was hiding here?

Freddie held his breath again, listening for sounds as Tony moved about. After what he’d just seen on the computer he couldn’t face him ever again. He wasn’t sure how Lana would be able to either. He knew how much she loved her dad, but this would change everything.

His nails dug into his palms as he fought to stay calm and still. Malc and his mum swept through his thoughts as he heard the first creak on the steps that led up to the mezzanine.

“Hello?” Tony said again.

Freddie could tell his voice was getting close. Another couple of creaks and he reckoned he was halfway up the narrow stairs, almost high enough to see into the sleeping area.

“Anyone up here?”

This time Freddie felt the floorboards shake and he knew that Tony was standing only a couple of feet away from him. Right beside his backpack on the bed.

23