Authors: Chris Ewan
A scratched wooden workbench extended to his right, covered in tools and machinery. There were colourful posters on the wall of men on motorbikes and some kind of trophy cabinet below them. Down on the floor, the component parts of a motorbike had been laid out on a canvas sheet. The bike looked as if it had been in an accident. The frame was dented and heavily scratched and the front forks and wheel were buckled and bent out of shape.
Lukas backed away and bumped into the handlebars of another motorbike. It had no wheels and was balanced on a metal frame. Two more bikes with a matching colour scheme – black, with orange flashes – were assembled towards the end of the garage, beyond a stack of spare tyres. The tyre rubber was smooth and jet-black, fresh from the production line.
Lukas hobbled towards a wooden door at the end of the room. The door gave no indication of what lay behind it. Not reassuring. But not something he could ignore.
He was going to have to open it.
*
By the time I got back to my place, Rocky could barely summon the energy to greet me. He’d conked out at the top of the stairs, his head hanging limply over the riser, and I had to step over him. Time was running short. Rebecca would arrive to collect me soon. I went into my bathroom and swallowed a couple of painkillers, then washed my face one-handed – something that was harder than I might have expected – and was just drying myself with a towel when I heard movement downstairs.
‘Grandpa?’
He didn’t answer me. I could have sworn someone had come in through the door.
‘Grandpa, it’s OK. I could use your help getting dressed.’
I listened closely, waiting for him to shuffle into view, but he didn’t appear.
I kicked off my shoes, then squirmed out of my jogging trousers and went in search of a pair of beige chinos hanging at the back of my wardrobe. Getting them on wasn’t easy but I managed it in the end, opting to go without a belt. I stuck with the shirt I was already wearing, then pushed my feet into some brown leather shoes that could have done with a clean but weren’t going to receive it. I checked my watch. Still a few minutes. I scooped up Rocky’s bed in my good arm and walked through to the lounge to nudge him on the backside with my toe.
‘Come on, Rock. Sleepover time.’
He staggered to his feet and stretched his back, groaning loudly. Then he bundled down the stairs in what could have passed for a fall and sniffed hard at the base of the door leading into my bike workshop.
‘Cut it out,’ I told him, following a lot more steadily. He was squatting on his forepaws, pressing his nose against the gap. ‘Hey. I said cut it out.’ I opened the front door. ‘Go on. Go find Grandpa.’
Finally, a command Rocky was happy to obey. He bolted through the yard and made his way up to Grandpa’s room long before I got over there myself.
Grandpa was playing it innocent when I entered, sitting in his armchair with Rocky by his feet, acting as if he’d been labouring over one of the puzzles in his crossword book for most of the afternoon. He was holding his magnifying glass close to the page, gripping a biro between his lips. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen him holding this pose. When we were kids, Laura and I used to try and help him with the clues, but our suggestions were always way off the mark. Eventually, he’d grow frustrated with us and hand the book over, telling us we could tackle one of the puzzles in the back. We’d do exactly that, filling squares with the right number of letters but completely the wrong answers, until we were forced to invent words of our own devising to get anywhere close to completing the thing. If Grandpa minded, he rarely said, and sometimes I used to picture him late at night, turning to the back of his puzzle books and chortling at the rude words and exotic phrases we’d scribbled down.
I dropped Rocky’s bed on to the floor beneath the window and watched him clamber across it, pawing at the foam until he had it just how he liked. ‘OK if Rocky stays with you tonight?’ I asked Grandpa. ‘I have to go out and I’m not sure what time I’ll be back.’
Grandpa set his magnifying glass down on the crossword book. His eyes glimmered with mischief. ‘That detective sure is pretty.’
‘It’s not like that, Grandpa.’
He winked. ‘Would be if I was your age, my boy.’
I didn’t doubt it.
‘Make sure Rocky sleeps in his own bed this time, will you?’ I said.
Even Rocky rolled his eyes at that one. I’m not sure why I bothered. We all knew Rocky would be snoring the night away curled up on Grandpa’s toes.
*
Lukas was spooked by how close he’d come to being caught. He’d barely opened the door from the garage and glimpsed the staircase on the other side when the man had called down from above. He’d jerked backwards. Lost his grip on the door handle. Watched in terror as it tapped against the frame.
He’d expected the man to investigate – to find him crouched below the porcelain sink, his ruined leg poking straight out from his hip – but nothing had happened until the furious drumming on the stair treads. Footsteps followed. Slower this time. And then there was a rasping, rustling noise at the base of the door. The dog. Sniffing the air for him.
An odd calm had crept over Lukas then. Relief at being caught. An end to his botched rescue attempt. But no, the man had addressed the dog in a sharp tone and the front door had opened and closed.
Was it a trick? Was the man still there? Lukas spent so long waiting that he was sure he’d blown whatever opportunity had come his way. But when, at last, he gathered the courage to crack open the door, he was surprised to find that the hallway was empty.
The staircase was carpeted and steep. Lukas approached it at a stoop, then dropped his backside on to a tread. He laboured up, one step at a time, the weighty handgun pointed down at the front door.
Perhaps the man in the sling really was gone. Perhaps he’d find Lena, after all.
Chapter Nineteen
Rebecca was running late. I’d been standing outside the care home for ten minutes, asking myself if meeting Erik was a good idea or a terrible mistake, when she swung the Fiesta into the driveway and slewed to a halt in front of me.
I opened the door and climbed inside. ‘We’re going to be cutting it fine,’ I said. ‘What kept you?’
She shook her head. ‘Directions first. Tell me the fastest route.’
I had her turn right out of the care home and then I led her down beyond the Quarterbridge roundabout – one of the most famous points on the TT course – until she was accelerating hard along the A road heading south. If traffic was on our side, I thought we’d just about make it to the airport for 7 p.m. What I was less sure of was how I felt about the woman who happened to be driving me.
Mum had said that Rebecca had taken on the investigation into Laura’s death on a cost-free basis. From what Rebecca had told me, she’d been working on the case for a fortnight already. And now she was helping me look into the situation with Lena, on what I assumed were the same terms. Why was she doing it, I wondered? What was in it for her?
I looked across, searching for clues. A pair of dark aviator sunglasses concealed her eyes and she was focusing hard through the windscreen at the road ahead. Her fingers flexed and tightened around the steering wheel. She chewed her lip and shook her head at the ponderous speed of the passenger bus in front of us, then consulted her side mirror.
‘Who are you?’ I asked. ‘Why are you helping me?’
Her forehead creased in thought. ‘I told you.’ She scowled at her speedometer. Checked her rear-view mirror. ‘Your parents hired me.’
‘They said you’re not charging them anything.’
She dropped her head to one side, lowered her chin and pulled out around the bus.
And immediately swerved back in again.
A minicab had been coming straight for us. I braced my palm on the dashboard. Gritted my teeth. I like to race motorbikes. I enjoy the sensation of speed, the thrill I get from grazing my knee on a sweeping curve at well over 100 mph. But I didn’t appreciate Rebecca’s driving style. Not one bit.
‘Oops,’ she said.
‘Are you going to answer my question?’
Rebecca adjusted her hands on the steering wheel. ‘Which one? First, you wanted to know why I was late picking you up. Now you want to know why I’m doing this.’
‘Both. But you can start by telling me why you agreed to look into Laura’s death.’
Rebecca turned to me and I saw two shrunken versions of myself in the dark lenses of her sunglasses. It made me uncomfortable. She should have been concentrating on the road. The rear of the bus was only metres ahead.
‘Call it a favour to your sister.’
‘You knew her?’
‘In a way.’
I felt myself sag. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected her to say. Was even less sure which outcome I’d have preferred.
‘Can you watch the road?’
Rebecca turned back to the windscreen and immediately veered out around the bus. This time, the road was clear. She overtook on the wrong side of a safety bollard. The bus driver wasn’t impressed. He let her know it by leaning on his horn.
‘You’re a really awful driver,’ I said.
‘Just making up time.’
‘Are you going to tell me about Laura?’
‘Later, OK?’
‘She was my sister, Rebecca.’
‘I know that. And we’ll talk. I promise. But we don’t have a lot of time, and there are some things I need to tell you.’
‘Just like that.’
She didn’t say anything. I don’t suppose there was much to be said.
‘I’m not a robot,’ I told her. ‘I can’t just switch off from this.’
‘You can for a little while.’ She glanced across at me again. ‘I said I promise, OK? But this is about priorities, right now. And I need you focused when we meet Erik. Not distracted by anything I might tell you about Laura.’
I wanted to tell her my dead sister was a priority. That she was more than just an item on an agenda that we’d get to when it suited her. But I didn’t. I just sat there, staring at the road ahead, the blur of hedgerows, the licence plate of a passing car.
‘You asked what I’d been doing,’ Rebecca said. ‘Well, I took your suggestion and I went to police headquarters in Douglas to speak with DS Teare.’
‘And?’ I heard myself ask. ‘What did she have to say?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘She was unavailable to speak with me.’
‘Unavailable?’
‘Some uniformed prick on the front desk called her internal line. He was listening for a good two minutes before he hung up and told me it was a no-go. I asked if she was sick. Apparently, that was none of my business. So I told him I was working on behalf of your family in connection with the botched investigation into your road traffic accident and the suicide of your sister. My voice must have been pretty loud, because it carried all the way upstairs. To DI Shimmin’s desk.’
‘He came down?’
‘He did.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing. He told me to leave. Not asked, mind.
Told
. He even escorted me from the premises.’
‘And you let him?’
‘What would you have had me do?’
‘I don’t know. The way you were talking, about working on behalf of my family, it sounded like maybe you could have demanded to speak with Teare.’
She pursed her lips. ‘I decided I didn’t need to. Not yet, anyway. The fact Shimmin didn’t want me to speak to her had already told me more than I was expecting. And besides, I had other things to do.’
I studied her, waiting for more. She pretended to be absorbed by the rush of tarmac ahead of us, the flickering white line vanishing beneath our front bumper like milk through a straw.
‘Are you going to explain?’
‘Happy to. You remember we talked about how somebody must have reported your accident? They would have called 999, right?’
‘Makes sense.’
‘Well, a place like the Isle of Man, you only have one emergency control centre. I did some research and I found that it’s located right behind the police station. So once Shimmin had guided me out to my car, I drove around the block, and came back again. Then I hung around until I found somebody to speak to.’
‘An officer?’
She shook her head. ‘When you dial 999, what you’re basically put through to is a call centre staffed by civilians.’
‘So?’
‘So I met a guy called Matt. He’s a smoker. And a chatty one. Being a practical kind of girl, I took some of the expenses your family aren’t exactly paying me, and I gave them to Matt. And in return, he checked some records and gave me some information.’
‘Go on.’
‘The caller was a man. Refused to give his name. But the system they use in the control centre has caller ID.’ Rebecca reached two fingers inside the chest pocket of the leather jacket she had on. She removed a square of yellow paper. ‘This is the telephone number of whoever reported your accident.’
I took the scrap of paper from her and studied the number that had been scrawled on it in black biro. It was for a mobile phone. There was no international code, but the number didn’t begin with the prefix for a Manx mobile. It had to originate from the UK.
‘What do we do with this?’ I asked.
‘It’s five to seven. How far are we from the airport?’
We were approaching the outskirts of Ballasalla. Grey, pebble-dashed bungalows lined either side of the road. A Mercedes dealership was on our right, a family pub further ahead at the mini roundabout.
‘Two minutes,’ I said. ‘Maybe less.’
‘Good.’ Rebecca veered across the road and swooped into the forecourt of the Mercedes garage. She yanked the handbrake on. Cut the engine. Removed her sunglasses and folded them away. ‘Then I suggest we call that number.’
‘And say what exactly? We don’t know who this person is. And we can’t tell them how we came by their telephone number. They’d have no reason to talk to us.’
‘Not us, no,’ she said, and delved inside her jacket for her phone. ‘But they might talk to a friend of ours.’
*
Menser was perched on a metal container stuffed with life jackets and buoyancy aids, his hands buried in his pockets, his feet planted on the greasy deck. A thick, wet rope was coiled nearby, discoloured with tar and gunge, the end formed into a gaping loop like a hangman’s noose. So this was what it came down to. The end of his assignment. Toss a rope on to a quay, wait for it to be secured and tied off. Release the girl from below deck and hand her over to the men who were expecting her.