Safe House (18 page)

‘So why you?’ I asked. ‘If you didn’t work with Laura for long, why did she want Mum to contact you in particular?’

‘I’ve wondered that myself.’

‘And?’

Rebecca made a humming noise, as if what she was about to tell me was a little shaky. ‘We worked an assignment together when she first started. I wouldn’t say we were close, but I gave her some responsibility and I think she appreciated it. It’s never easy when you join. Especially as a woman.’

‘That’s it?’

‘No. That’s not it. There was one time in particular. We had a conversation. Admitted to each other we were scared. It’s not something I’d have ever said to a male colleague. But I could say it to Laura. I trusted her. Looks like she trusted me, too.’

A man in a hooded coat was approaching. He was walking a dog. Some kind of boxer. The dog had a tennis ball in its mouth and when he unhooked its lead it went tearing off along the slipway to the beach. I thought of Rocky and of how much I’d have preferred to be walking him right now.

‘So why did Anderson mention Melanie Fleming to me?’ I asked. ‘How would he know that I was related to her?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did he mention her because there’s some kind of a connection between my sister and Lena?’

‘I don’t know that, either.’

‘You don’t know a lot.’

‘You’re angry with me.’ Rebecca circled her finger around the top of the juice bottle. Considered the view of the ocean through the windscreen. ‘But look at it from my point of view. You’re hurt, yes? You feel deceived, maybe. I suppose I didn’t see any reason to expose you or your parents to that unless it became necessary.’

I stayed silent.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Truly.’

I could feel a stinging in my eyes. Tears pricking the surface. I clenched my jaw.

‘Tell me your best guess,’ I managed. ‘My sister. Lena. Is there a link?’

‘It makes sense.’

‘How?’

‘The cottage. I found wires, yes? Surveillance equipment. But the gear wasn’t new. It had been there five, maybe ten years. My guess is that cottage was some kind of safe house. Probably established and wired by British Intelligence. But not used recently. So not completely abandoned, but at least halfway forgotten.’ She swirled the juice around. ‘A place like that – in Laura’s backyard – I reckon she’d know about it.’

‘Suppose you’re right,’ I said. ‘Does that mean she was over here spying on Lena?’

Rebecca shook her head. ‘I think maybe she was helping to
hide
Lena. Think about it. The Isle of Man. Why would it occur to Erik to put Lena here of all places? Unless, maybe, your sister was involved in the decision.’

A memory flashed through my mind. My first meeting with Lena, in the garage. The way she’d talked about the island. The scornful tone in her voice when she’d asked me what there was to do here to have fun. As if it was somewhere she couldn’t quite believe in. As if it was nowhere.

‘So the British intelligence services were helping to hide Lena,’ I said, like I was fitting it all together in my mind. ‘Working with Anderson and Erik. And that’s how they knew my sister.’

‘Maybe. It would certainly help to explain something else. Erik told us he worked to smother media coverage of Lena’s disappearance from London, and from the few scraps I could find on the web, I’d say the strategy was pretty successful. But I doubt he was capable of it alone. The Met are still looking to arrest Lena. They would have needed help from the press. So stopping the story from running would take more than just cash.’

‘What would it take?’

‘Influence. Power. The sort of influence and power that British Intelligence possess.’

‘
OK
,’ I said, trying to gather my thoughts. ‘But we still don’t know why Anderson mentioned the name Melanie Fleming to me.’ A burst of movement captured my attention. The boxer dog was streaking across the beach towards the sea. He plunged into the surf with a reckless leap. ‘Could the situation with Lena have had something to do with Laura’s death?’

‘Almost certainly.’

I drew a halting breath. Closed my hand and pressed my nails into my palm. ‘Is it possible she didn’t kill herself?’

‘That’s what I plan to find out.’

Chapter Twenty-five

The dinghy’s engine was coarse and stank of petrol. A gassy plume hovered above the indigo water, curling in the chilly breeze.

Ten long minutes, then the crunch of loose stones beneath the hull. Lena watched the younger man vault over the side. The water was up to his thighs, soaking his cargo pants. He waded forwards, dragging the boat behind him. The bald man waited until the dinghy was beached, then stepped cautiously into the foam of a fading wave. He turned to Lena and beckoned at her with the gun. She levered herself up from the floor and followed mutely.

They lurked in silence in the cramped, dilapidated hut for what felt like half an hour, until the car arrived. Lena was careful to note that it was a blue Vauxhall Insignia with a UK number plate. Functional in design. No metallic paint or alloy wheels or tinted glass. The younger man pushed her forwards with one hand in her hair, pressing her head down, until she was forced into the rear.

The man behind the wheel was as unremarkable as his car. Medium height, medium build. Short dark hair. A blue Oxford shirt over grey casual trousers.

He drove in silence with the radio on low. Talk radio. The talk was about football.

The older man was watching her from the corner of his eye. Looking for some form of engagement. She buried her fear deep inside herself and gave him nothing. She was sitting on the back seat between her two captors, peering hard through the windscreen, searching for markers she might remember. The gun was pressed into her side.

It was warm in the car. The bald man sipped from a bottle of water. He offered some to Lena. She accepted and drank the whole thing. Tipped her head right back and held her mouth open beneath the bottle to catch the very last drop. Feeling pleased with herself, she gazed ahead through the glass at the two-lane road they were cruising along. The cars they were passing. The lighted road signs.

Time passed. Then the car began to slow and veer off into a lay-by that was shielded by a copse of trees. Another Vauxhall Insignia. Another faceless man. He was leaning against the rear of the car, legs concealing the number plate. He moved aside as they pulled close and the boot lid popped up.

A lamp blinked on. Lena could see a duvet. The cover was bright pink.

She stiffened and leaned forwards, pressing her face between the front seats. Her shirt rode up at the base of her spine and she felt hands on her skin. The younger guy punched something sharp into her side. Lena gasped and turned to scratch at him. The man caught her by the wrist and started to count down from ten, that stupid leering grin fixed on to his face.

Lena was out cold before he reached seven.

*

Lukas tucked the laptop under his sweater and hobbled away from the man’s home into the gathering dusk. The gravel beneath his feet sounded too loud to his ears. His movement was laboured and he was afraid of being challenged. He kept his head down and shied away from the big house to his side. He could feel eyes on him. Watching him. But he muttered encouragement to himself and shuffled on. The exit lurched closer with each awkward step. And then, almost before he knew it, the exit was behind him and he was hobbling away along a residential street.

Lukas didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know how long it would take him to reach the hotel Anderson had mentioned, or even if he was heading in the right direction. There was a bus stop farther along the road, beneath a yellow street light, but Lukas had no cash in his wallet. He realised now that he should have searched the man’s home for money. Not that it helped. He couldn’t go back. He would have to go on.

The walking wasn’t easy. His leg wound burned and itched beneath his makeshift dressing. His muscles were weak, his balance unsteady, and he hadn’t eaten a solid meal in days. He slowed and tried to control his palsied movements. Considered his reflection in the tinted glass of the bus shelter. A man with long hair, in need of a cut, grubby and unwashed, sheened in sweat. Dirt-smeared jeans and a worn sweatshirt. The bulge in his clothes from where he cradled the laptop. He looked like a tramp and he’d be certain to draw attention. Couldn’t avoid it. But he was lucky with the time. Mid-evening, when traffic was quiet.

He followed the curving road downwards for half a mile. The neighbourhood was up on a rise and he could see the sea far below, stretching away from him like a vast, dark pool. He limped between the splashes of light from the street lamps, counting them off one after the other. A car passed. He imagined that he heard the driver slow, his passengers watching him closely. But the car didn’t stop. Nobody approached.

He walked until the road opened up on his left. Some kind of shopping precinct. A lot of concrete and bricks and rusted metal bollards. Multiple parking spaces, most of them empty. There was a supermarket, too, lit brightly from within.

A taxi was parked outside, close to a cash machine. It was a white Japanese minivan and the driver was a middle-aged woman. She was reading a tabloid newspaper. Lukas lowered his head and approached the cash machine. He withdrew a wad of notes and made his way inside the supermarket for a snack bar and water. When he came out, the taxi was still there. Lukas tapped on the window and waited for it to slide down. He said the name of the hotel he needed, pronouncing it like a question, and the woman backed off for a moment, as if doubtful, before nodding reluctantly and folding her newspaper away.

Chapter Twenty-six

Rebecca turned sideways in her car seat and scrutinised me. Her dark-brown hair coiled around her neck and over her shoulder. Her neck was delicate. The skin lightly freckled.

She asked, ‘How far do you want to go with this?’

‘I want to get to the truth.’

‘About Laura’s death?’

‘About everything.’

She nodded, as if she’d expected me to say that. ‘And if I told you that you might not like what you hear?’

‘I already don’t like what I know. How much worse can it get?’

She waited a beat, searching for something in my face. It didn’t take her long to find it. She reached inside her jacket for her mobile and tapped the keys with her thumb.

‘We should speak to Teare,’ she said, nodding to herself like she was agreeing with her own decision.

‘Shimmin won’t like that.’

‘Shimmin needn’t know. He told me Teare wasn’t working today. So we’ll go to her home.’

I thought about that for a moment. The Isle of Man was small, but it wasn’t so small that I knew where everyone lived. ‘You have an address?’

She shook her head. Raised her phone to her ear.

‘Directory enquiries won’t help,’ I told her. ‘She’s a police officer. Probably ex-directory.’

She lifted her finger, hushing me. ‘Matt?’ Her face broke into a flirtatious smile. ‘It’s Rebecca Lewis. How would you like to make me even happier?’

*

Rebecca’s contact at the control centre came up with an address in Laxey, a small seaside village on the north-east coast. It was a half-hour drive from Castletown, from the south of the island up past Douglas towards Ramsey in the north. I barely talked during the journey. I wanted to run through recent events in my mind and try to come to terms with the revelations about my sister’s secret life. It was easier said than done. Understanding the path Laura had followed was going to take a lot longer than thirty minutes. Figuring out where that path had led her in the last days of her life might be even tougher.

Rebecca was quiet, too. She only talked to ask me for directions. She didn’t expand on the nature of her relationship with my sister or their shared career in intelligence. She didn’t throw around ideas about Lena’s whereabouts, or our meeting with Erik and Anderson, or the circumstances surrounding Laura’s death. I didn’t doubt that she was thinking about some of those things. Maybe all of them. And it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that she had some theories about what had happened. She was a few steps ahead of me – had been all along – and I just hoped that speaking with Detective Sergeant Teare would lead us towards some kind of conclusion.

The address was for a place on Shore Road. It turned out to be a small terraced cottage on a side street leading away from the beach. The cottage was a pale yellow and the front door was split in two horizontally, with the top half folded back like a stable door to let in the noise of the waves shuffling against the beach. Next to the door was a large window. There was a light on inside. It revealed a cramped kitchen with a circular cafe table positioned just behind the window glass. The table was big enough for two people, but only one of them would have a view towards the sea.

As a kid, I’d spent plenty of summer days on Laxey beach. It’s a mixture of pebble and sand, and when the tide is out, you can walk beyond the cliffs at the end of the promenade into a separate cove filled with rock pools. Nowadays, the beach is somewhere I walk Rocky out of season. There’s an ice-cream stall nearby, and the mint choc chip still tastes every bit as good as it did when I was a child.

Somehow, I didn’t think we’d be enjoying an evening stroll and an ice cream with DS Teare. From the look on her face when she came to the door to answer Rebecca’s knock, and her swift double-take when she first saw me, I didn’t think we’d be enjoying much at all.

Teare was dressed in a long-sleeved white T-shirt over black tracksuit bottoms. The T-shirt looked old. It gaped around her neck and at the ends of her arms, and there was a faded orange stain down by her waist. The tracksuit bottoms were shapeless and too long for her, the fabric rolled up to reveal her bare feet. Her thin hair was scraped back from her forehead and held in place by a plastic hairband. She gripped a small dumbbell covered in pink neoprene in each fist – the kind some women use when they’re jogging or exercising. It occurred to me that the top half of the door had probably been left open to draw a breeze inside while she worked out.