White Gold (5 page)

Dan sat on the sofa opposite Sarah. As he set his coffee mug down on the table between them, he noticed a thin layer of dust had gathered through mournful neglect. A log fire burned in a fireplace, throwing out warmth around the small living area and casting shadows on the walls.

He looked up, caught Sarah watching him and smiled nervously. She looked worn down, her light brown hair tied back in a ponytail and her face devoid of any make-up. Tall and naturally slim, she appeared to have lost a lot of weight in a short space of time.

Leaning forward on his elbows, Dan took a breath and began.

‘Sarah, I know we’ve never met before, and you have no reason to trust me, but I was a friend of Peter’s. I don’t know what you’ve discussed with the police but I don’t believe the story they’re giving the newspapers. There’s just too much that doesn’t make sense to me and I’ve got to find out for myself what really happened.’

He stopped and looked up. Sarah continued to watch him silently for what seemed an age. When she spoke, her words were quiet and Dan had to lean forward to hear.

‘I’m so glad someone else thinks the same as me – they think I’m being paranoid but I just know something isn’t right…,’ she drifted off and gazed out the patio windows before turning to him again.

‘Peter knew that short-cut behind the college inside out – he used to walk there after lectures to unwind – there’s no way… ’ she said fiercely. ‘They say it was a mugger – an unprovoked attack.’

Dan picked up his coffee mug and studied the surface of the liquid. ‘Sarah, I know this may sound a bit weird in the circumstances but was Peter working longer hours or perhaps on days when he was usually at home?’ he asked, taking a tentative sip of the hot drink.

‘Not that I know of – we only talked occasionally. He used to get so wrapped up in his research and lectures, it was just impossible sometimes.’ She folded her hands under her chin, leaning her elbows on her knees, lost in thought. After a while, she looked straight at Dan. ‘Why should I trust you?’

‘Because I’m a friend of Peter’s – we went to university together but lost touch for a few years until he phoned me from Berlin last week. He sounded really excited, something about a discovery. Then, a few days ago, he phoned again – from Paris. I wasn’t in, so he left a message on my phone. He seemed in a hurry, the message was really garbled – something about a package he was sending you and wanted to make sure it arrived safely. He sounded afraid – he even said that he thought his life was in danger.’

Dan jumped as a log on the fire popped loudly in the heat. He swallowed and waited for his heart rate to calm down. He glanced into the flames, then back at Sarah. ‘He wanted me to make sure you were okay. I tried to phone him back the day after he left the message but I couldn’t get through. I left messages for him but he never returned my calls. Then I read in the local newspaper this morning he’s been killed. I’d like to know why. I don’t know what he was up to but I think it got him in to a hell of a lot of trouble.’

He broke off and looked down at his hands.

‘And now you’re here,’ said Sarah.

‘Yes.’

She reached out for her coffee mug, raised it to her lips, then seemed to change her mind. She placed it back on the low table and looked at him.

‘Stay here.’

Dan watched her leave the room. He could hear her walking down the hallway towards the rear of the house. He stood up and wandered over to a desk in the corner. The computer screen was blank, the machine switched off. He glanced up to check Sarah was still out of the room and then lifted up some of the documents on her desk. All the paperwork related to her work at the newspaper – nothing that appeared to have been sent by Peter. Moving over to the patio windows, Dan gazed out at the small garden. He wondered what Peter could have known that would threaten his life. He turned as Sarah came back into the room.

‘I think you should have this,’ she said as she handed him a large padded envelope.

‘What’s inside?’

‘Take a look. It’s addressed to you.’ She sat back down on the sofa and took a gulp of her coffee before staring at Dan. ‘Well, what are you waiting for? Open it.’

Dan sat on the sofa and inspected the package. It was a white A4-sized padded envelope with Sarah’s address scrawled across the front in a hasty script. He turned the package over in his hands and raised an eyebrow, looking at Sarah.

‘It’s already been opened,’ he said, pointing to the tape stuck to the back of the envelope.

Sarah smiled faintly. ‘I’m a journalist – what did you expect? How was I to know you’d actually turn up?’

Dan shrugged, conceding the point. He tore open the package, noticing the airmail label and foreign stamps. He reached inside and pulled out the contents – a bundle of documents, and Peter’s handwritten notes. He flicked through the loose research papers, turning photographs over, reading the transcriptions on the back and inspected the newspaper cuttings and hastily-drawn diagrams.

‘How come you haven’t done anything with this stuff?’

Sarah shrugged. ‘To be honest, I didn’t know what to make of half of it.’ She gestured to the laptop set up in the corner. ‘I’d made a start, but there was part of me that wanted to know if you’d actually turn up.’ She sighed. ‘I know me and Peter didn’t always see eye to eye, but I remembered him saying a couple of years ago he wondered if he could count on you in an emergency. After you came back from the Middle East, he was really worried about you but you never returned his calls.’ She smiled. ‘I figured I’d give you a couple of days and if you didn’t turn up, I’d take some time off work and find out for myself what was going on.’

Dan turned the document he was holding towards Sarah. ‘Well, if I’m going to be able to find out what’s going on, I’m going to need someone who can help me translate this god-awful handwriting of his.’

Sarah smiled. ‘It didn’t improve with age then?’

‘You’ve got to be joking. This just reminds me why I could never rely on stealing Peter’s notes for assignments at university.’

He looked across the coffee table at Sarah. ‘What are you thinking?’

She held his gaze, and smiled. ‘That we should find out what’s going on. I’ll phone Gus, my editor, and get that time off. Then tomorrow, I’ll go over to Peter’s house and see what else I can find there.’

Oxford, England

Sarah vigorously attacked the layer of ice on her car windscreen with her credit card. Every winter she swore she’d buy a proper ice scraper, and every winter she managed to forget.

She cursed as her thumbnail tore, then wiped the plastic card free of ice and began on the side windows. She stamped her feet while she worked, trying to get some warmth into her toes as she methodically worked round the car.

Finally, it was done and she jumped into the driver’s seat. As she pulled the door shut, she turned up the heating, relishing the warm, cocooned space. She turned up the radio while she waited for the circulation to return to her numb fingers.

The radio news spat out the usual coverage – petrol prices up, energy companies struggling with the winter demand on gas, and electricity supplies threatened. Sarah shook her head as she listened – the politicians never seemed to get themselves sorted out.

She pulled out of her driveway and was on the main road into Oxford within fifteen minutes, heading towards her destination. She hummed along to the radio as she drove and drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, impatient to reach the house. After a while, she pulled off the main road and began to weave through the suburban streets until she found the road she was looking for.

Sarah pulled the car up to the kerb on a tree-lined avenue.  An affluent area, large houses hid behind well-pruned privet hedgerows or fenced-off gardens. Turning off the engine, she looked at the house a few metres down the road to her right and sighed. They’d been so happy here, once. It felt like a lifetime ago.

The early morning sunlight glinted through the mature trees, early signs of new shoots beginning to show already. In a couple of months or so, the wide street would be framed with pale pink and white flowers, alternating down the avenue. The road was quiet, the commuter rush and school run over with an hour ago. The occasional car passed her where she’d parked, and rocked her vehicle gently as she sat and gathered her thoughts.

A man walked towards her car, away from the houses in front of her, and polished his glasses before replacing them on his nose. Sarah glanced in her rear view mirror as he went by. He appeared to slow as he passed her car, then changed his mind and continued along the road before he disappeared down a side street.

She reached down for the package which lay on the passenger seat. She’d have recognised Peter’s handwriting anywhere – four years of marriage and six years of typing up his hastily scribbled lecture notes put paid to any doubt as to who had scrawled her address across the padded envelope. Fondly, she ran her hand over the writing and then pulled out the contents. She’d organised them a bit better after Dan had left – a full set of Peter’s most recent lecture notes, clipped together with newspaper cuttings, photographs and a list of bibliographical references in date order.

‘Who were you after, Pete?’ Sarah whispered softly to herself.

Unfastening her seatbelt, she reached for the door handle and pushed the car door open. Stepping out onto the road, she leaned into the car to get her bag.

The explosion caused her to instinctively duck behind the car door, using it as a shield. A gust of warm, debris-filled air fled past her as she tucked her feet back up into the car, trying to get out of the way. Closing her eyes tightly, she gasped as the air from her lungs was forced out.

Sarah felt the whole vehicle shift backwards with the blast, dragging her with it, the tyres squealing in protest as the force of the explosion fought the parking brake, while Sarah fought to keep her balance.

As the roar of the explosion died away, Sarah climbed out of the car and lifted her head above the car door, surveying the scene in disbelief.  Paper and other debris, still burning, fluttered through the air. A car alarm shrieked further along the street. Sarah pushed her hair out of her eyes, blinking. Her ears were ringing, a high-pitched whistle that reverberated in her skull.

The right-hand side of the house had disappeared. Glass from the windows had peppered the street, shrapnel sticking out of the telephone pole that now arched precariously into the road. The force of the blast had destroyed the front wall, flattening it onto the pavement. Behind it a scorched lawn smouldered, debris strewn over the garden. Flames and black smoke billowed from the front of the house where the study had once been, while hot ash fell through the air. A siren sounded in the distance. Sarah started at the sound of it, and glanced around her.

Then she saw him.

The man with the glasses stood watching her from the side street. Suddenly, he began to walk towards her, never taking his eyes off her. Sarah’s heart began to race. Instinct took over. She climbed into her car and turned the key in the ignition. The car turned over once, and then stalled. Sarah glanced in the rear view mirror – the man was beginning to run towards her car. Heart pounding, Sarah turned the key again.

‘
Come on
!’ she urged the car, hands shaking.

With a choke, the car started, blue smoke belching from the exhaust. Sarah turned the vehicle around in the street, glass and debris tumbling from its roof and bonnet as she fought to keep the vehicle under control. She swerved to avoid the man who had now stepped out onto the road. Sarah screamed, pushing her foot down hard on the accelerator as he tried to grab hold of the car as it drove by. The sound of his fingers scratching against the paintwork, scrabbling for a hand-hold made Sarah’s skin crawl before she shot past him.

At the end of the avenue, she turned left, forcing herself to slow down so any police cars didn’t stop her. Somehow, she didn’t think they’d be able to protect her from the stranger in the street. Catching a flash in the mirror, she looked up to see a fire engine and police car entering the road – both too late to save the house, while the stranger stood on the pavement and watched her, polishing his glasses, before he turned and ran back to a parked car.

Slamming her foot on the accelerator, she drove a weaving course through the suburb and, when she could no longer hear the sirens, she pulled over and took out her phone.

Bright shafts of sunlight broke through the window blinds as a crow cawed noisily from the tree outside. A van drove past, the tyres splashing through puddles of water from the melting ice. A car engine was being choked to death in the background, the sound of kids playing in a school yard carrying a mile down the road. The phone rang, loudly, coarsely.

Dan moved slightly and groaned, buried under a blanket thrown messily across the bed. The pub was always a bad idea. It was just so hard to leave.

‘Whoever it is, go away.’

The phone ignored him, persistent in its attempt to gain his attention.

‘For fuck’s sake!’ He threw back the covers and swung his legs onto the floor. He stood up, slowly, carefully, staggered over to the desk in the corner and reached over for the telephone. ‘What?’

‘Dan, it’s Sarah – I need your help.’ She sounded like she was out of breath, traffic going past in the background. Dan grabbed hold of the receiver tight, sobering up in an instant.

‘Slow down. Where are you? What happened? Are you alright?’

‘The man who killed Peter – Dan, I know it was him! The house exploded – there’s nothing left!’ Sarah broke off, choking back a sob. ‘He saw me – he tried to stop me!’ she broke off. ‘I think he’s looking for me.’

Dan thought quickly. ‘Sarah, listen to me. Listen to me! Twenty-seven Coltsfoot Street – got that? Right – I’m here. You can park on the driveway – it’s sheltered from the street and the car won’t be seen.’

‘I can’t!’

‘You can, Sarah. You have to. You’ve got to get out of there. He’s got a car too and he’s going to be looking for you. He must’ve realised you have a connection with that house.’

‘I know, I know. Okay Dan. I’ll leave now. Please don’t go anywhere – wait for me!’

‘I will. Now, get going.’ Dan replaced the receiver.

After a thirty-second shower, he dressed in faded jeans, black t-shirt, black sweater and his favourite boots. He walked down the hallway and into the spare bedroom. Opening a walk-in wardrobe, he groped around on the top shelf until his fingers found what they were looking for. Pulling the box closer, he reached up and pulled it towards him, lowering it to the ground. Lifting the lid, he pulled out his passport and looked at the fading immigration stamps on the yellowed pages. He put it back, lifted up a bundle of papers and checked – the gun was still there, unloaded, oiled and ready, the bullets wrapped in cotton wool at the bottom of the box.

The sound of a car pulling into the gravel driveway interrupted his thoughts. He put the gun back in the box, closed the wardrobe door, then hurried downstairs to open the front door.

Sarah stopped the engine and got out. She closed her car door, ran across the driveway and into the house in one fluid movement. She was shaking. Dan wasn’t sure whether she was frightened or angry.

‘He nearly got me, Dan! Oh my god, the bastard nearly got me too!’

He squeezed her arm. ‘It’s okay, you’re alive, you’re safe here,’ he said.

He looked over her head at the car. The bonnet and front panels were peppered with shrapnel from the blast – pieces of red brick, glass, wooden splinters from a telegraph pole. The driver’s side window was completely shattered, shards of glass hanging loosely in the frame. A headlamp hung from its fitting, the clear plastic casing torn from its setting from the force of the explosion.

He let go of Sarah and stood back from her, looking. ‘Are you hurt anywhere? Any blood?’

Sarah looked down at herself. ‘No – no, I think I’m alright. A few scratches on my leg.’

Dan moved closer. Taking her face in his hands, he looked down at her. ‘It’s alright. Come on, let’s get some antiseptic and clean you up,’ he added, leading her into the house and closing the door.

Sarah followed him through to the kitchen. Dan gestured to the breakfast bar. ‘Grab one of those chairs and sit down. I’ll make something strong for you to drink.’ He slid a box of tissues across to her. ‘And you look like you could use those.’

Sarah managed a small smile. ‘I can only imagine what I look like,’ she mumbled, blowing her nose.

‘Not too bad for someone who just avoided getting herself blown up.’ Dan grinned. ‘Have something strong to drink, and then you can freshen up.’

Sarah nodded. ‘That sounds good.’

Dan stood up. ‘Hang on – I’ll stick the news on, find out what they’re reporting.’ He flicked on an old battered radio perched on a shelf and turned up the volume. The station was playing a series of commercials. He wandered over to the sink and began to fill the kettle with water. Switching it on, he turned back to Sarah. ‘The news should come on after those commercials. I’m going to get that antiseptic. Yell if they report anything.’

Sarah nodded and watched him as he left the room. He walked through the hallway and ran up the stairs to the bathroom. As he pulled out cotton wool and antiseptic lotion from his first aid kit, his mind wandered. First, Peter is mugged – almost certainly murdered. Then, his study is blown up, nearly taking down the whole house and destroying any documents that might have been lying around.

He tugged at the cotton wool, pulling it apart. ‘What the hell did you find out, Peter?’ he muttered, ‘and what am I getting myself into?’

A shout from downstairs made him jump.

‘Dan, the news – it’s on!’

Dan picked up the antiseptic and ran back down to the kitchen. The sonorous tones of a radio announcer, placid in the line of duty, finished reading from a mediocre script. ‘…and now we cross to our reporter, Jan Newbury, who’s at the scene.’

‘Thank you, John. The street here is a scene of complete devastation. Fire crews arrived at the house soon after the blast and had the blaze under control very quickly. Police have joined them here and a forensic team is currently searching the premises for the cause of the fire. They have confirmed no-one was in the property when the explosion occurred and no injuries are reported.’

The radio announcer interrupted. ‘Jan, are the police giving any indication as to what may have caused the explosion?’

‘John, at the moment the police say it’s very early on in their investigation but so far, the evidence leads to a gas leak.’

‘Bullshit!’ exclaimed Dan. ‘That wasn’t a gas explosion!’ He turned down the radio and handed the cotton wool and lotion to Sarah.

‘What makes you say that?’ she asked.

‘It was too controlled.’

She held his gaze steadily. ‘Go on.’

‘If it was a gas explosion, the whole front of the house would have blown outwards. From how you described the scene, if it was caused by gas, the upstairs would have collapsed – there would have been more debris, more damage. What you saw points to a controlled explosion, although I’d put money on our bomb-maker turning the gas on to give the impression that’s the cause.’

He sat down opposite Sarah and watched as she dabbed at the scratches on her legs, wincing as the antiseptic touched the raw skin.

Sarah glanced at him. ‘When you went away, Peter would read the newspapers every day to make sure your name never appeared. He was worried sick about you when you signed up and then joined the bomb disposal team.’ She sighed, put the cap back on the antiseptic and stood up carefully. Gathering up the cotton wool, she wandered over to the kitchen waste bin.

‘Do you think the police actually believe it’s a gas explosion?’ she asked, as she sat back down.

Dan stood up and began to make the coffee. ‘I’m sure that’s what they’re going to tell everyone it was, even if they think otherwise. After all, they don’t want the residents of Oxford starting to panic thinking there’s a madman going around planting bombs.’

He reached up into a cupboard and brought out a bottle. ‘Right,’ he said, and turned to Sarah, waving the bottle at her, ‘I know it’s early but I think this is justified in the circumstances.’

Sarah smiled. ‘You won’t hear any complaints from me.’

Dan splashed a generous measure of the brandy into each coffee and wandered back to the table.

‘Here you go. Now, if you start feeling cold or begin to shake, you tell me straight away. You seem like you’re doing okay to me but I’ve seen delayed shock before – it’s not pretty.’

Sarah took a sip of her coffee and then choked as the brandy hit the back of her throat. ‘I don’t think there’s any chance of that – my god, how much did you put in this?’ she spluttered.

Dan grinned. ‘Just enough.’