‘Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I’m working.’
A scuff mark. In a kind of semicircle. A shape that looked like—
‘Robbie ...’
‘I’ve gotta go. I’ll text you directions – meet you here at eight?’
‘Make it nine.’
‘Okay.’ He nearly added:
And bring a sledgehammer
. But this past week Dan had suffered a complete sense-of-humour bypass, and Robbie’s plan for tonight certainly wasn’t going to reverse it.
Dan regarded it as an act of insanity to take his car anywhere near Hank O’Brien’s house. But try as he might, he couldn’t come up with a better alternative. He had to move the Fiesta before Joan or his brother discovered the damage.
He’d made the call from the office. As he emerged, Hayley was heading into the rest room. He caught up with her as she reached the fridge and took out a bottle of Diet Coke. Her face was flushed, her cheeks red and creased as if they’d been saturated with tears and wiped dry a bit too aggressively.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked. The service manager, Tim Masters, was sitting at a table, reading the
Express
and no doubt listening keenly to every word.
‘Fine.’ Hayley found a glass, poured out some Coke and put the bottle back in the fridge.
‘Where did you go?’
She shrugged. Looking up from his paper, Tim gave Dan a lazy smile. Hayley smiled, too, but at Tim. Then she walked out as though Dan wasn’t there.
He followed her into the corridor. ‘What’s happened now?’
She turned, glaring. ‘Not here, remember? What did the boss have to say?’
‘I got a dressing-down. I assured him it wouldn’t happen again.’
Hayley gave a caustic laugh. ‘And that’s all?’
‘Pretty much.’ His frustration growing, Dan said, ‘You can tell me where you’ve been, can’t you? Or is this just to give me a taste of my own medicine?’
It was the wrong thing to say. She blinked away fresh tears, shaking her head as if appalled by the suggestion.
‘I would never treat you the way ...’
Her voice choked up. Dan knew he should be consoling her, but even reaching out to touch her seemed beyond him.
‘Tonight,’ she said. ‘Can we meet tonight?’
He started to nod, then remembered. ‘Oh, no. I can’t.’
Her mouth twitched; it was almost a smile. ‘Let me guess. You’re seeing Robbie?’
‘I’m sorry. I’ve got to.’ He felt like he was staggering under the weight of deception. ‘There’s all kinds of stuff going on. Believe me, I wouldn’t if it wasn’t so important—’
‘More important than us, obviously.’
‘No, but ...’ Dan stopped her from turning away, his hands on her arms for a second. ‘Let’s go somewhere tomorrow.’
Hayley arched an eyebrow. ‘The wedding fair?’
‘Oh, shit. I’d totally forgotten.’
‘I’m joking. What would be the point?’
Nothing he could say to that. ‘How about Saltdean? A walk on the beach?’
She considered for a moment. ‘I suppose.’
****
Robbie shoved his phone in his pocket and ran from the house. He tore across the lawn, nearly losing his footing on the wet grass. The rain was pouring down now. Once in the shed, he pulled the door shut but that made it too dark to see, so he let it swing open in the wind, not caring if water blew inside.
The mark on the floor occupied his full attention. It was exactly the shape he remembered, and it made perfect sense.
Robbie hadn’t much liked school, at least not the academic aspects of it, and he’d reserved a particular loathing for maths. But this was easy enough. Basic geometry.
He moved across to the bookcase, brushing off cobwebs and spitting as a long strand drifted from the roof and clung to his face. Good job he wasn’t squeamish.
The bookcase was made of walnut, good solid wood, and it took some shifting. Using all his strength, he was able to manoeuvre it away from the wall. To lift it properly you’d need two people at least. One person alone could only hope to drag it, one end at a time, and as it moved the feet would scrape over the wooden floor.
As he brought the bookcase out from the wall, he could see that its course exactly matched the scuff marks on the timber. Wishing again for better light, he leaned over and peered behind the bookcase. The floor here was subtly different. He had to kneel down before he could see why.
Some of the boards had been cut and glued to form a hatch, complete with two small screw eyes acting as handles.
Robbie pushed and dragged the bookcase another foot or so until it was clear of the hatch. It left him out of breath. His suit was filthy with grime, and there was rain blowing in on him. But he didn’t care about any of that.
He knelt down again and lifted the hatch to reveal a narrow void beneath the shed. It was two feet deep, lined with a damp-proof membrane, and it contained two document boxes, resistant to fire and water, each one large enough to accommodate a ream of A4 paper.
For Robbie, the excitement was immense. It felt like a hit of cocaine, like the first big one of the night, the one that chased a couple of drinks – a beer and a vodka, say – when he was set up nicely in some plush lively venue where a fit young woman or two had already caught his eye and given him that special sultry look that the boyfriend never saw:
I’m here for the taking, baby ...
He had no idea what lay inside those boxes, but they’d been extremely well hidden. For now that was all he needed to know.
What it meant for Robbie, if he had to sum it up in one word, was
Jackpot
.
Cate had expected to spend the afternoon dodging conversational grenades, and in that sense she wasn’t disappointed. Her mother wasted little time in revealing what was on her mind.
‘When did you last see Robbie?’ she said, mumbling around an unlit cigarette.
‘A couple of days ago. Oh, Mum. Do you have to smoke?’
‘Just this one. Did he say what he’s up to?’
‘Not really. You won’t be able to go into the shops.’
‘It’ll be finished by then. Only he’s being even more slippery than usual. I was hoping you could shed some light on his behaviour.’
‘Sorry, no.’
Thankfully they were almost on Western Road, where the crowds would hamper any kind of serious conversation – or so Cate hoped.
‘I know one thing. If he wasn’t my son, I’d have made him redundant by now.’
‘If he wasn’t your son he wouldn’t have been able to take so many liberties in the first place.’
Teresa’s rueful humming noise signalled that her daughter had a point.
‘Things haven’t picked up, then?’ Cate asked.
‘Treading water, no better than that.’ She brightened. ‘There’s a nice place near Steyning that’s coming back on the books. One of Robbie’s, actually.’
‘Oh?’ Cate felt a cold tingling along her spine.
‘A farmhouse, should rent for at least twenty-five hundred a month. The original client died in a road accident and the executor decided to hand it back to us.’
‘Did Robbie tell you that?’
Stupid, Cate, stupid.
Her mother gave her a pointed look. ‘No, Indira. But Robbie’s handling it. Why?’
Cate shrugged, said nothing. They turned on to Western Road, into a swarm of shoppers. She felt a nudge on her arm: hoped it was a passer-by, and not her mother.
‘Come on, lady. Do you know something I don’t?’
‘No. Of course not.’ Nearly crumbling under the force of her mother’s gaze, Cate found salvation: ‘Ooh, Topshop! Let’s start there.’
****
Stemper had to move closer once they reached the shops. Even from a few yards away it was a struggle to keep them in sight. And it was pointless following them inside – he could hardly remain unobtrusive in ladies’ fashion – so he had to be content with loitering on the pavement.
Not that he was complaining. The morning had yielded some impressive results. Jerry had identified one of the men who’d returned to the accident scene. From what Stemper had learned, he was confident that the man worked for Compton Property Services – and might well be the owner’s son.
And now, having just spotted that the young woman was wearing a distinctive green enamel bracelet, Stemper knew that he’d found another piece of the puzzle: the woman who’d been with Hank on the night he died. Easy to understand why she’d lied about knowing the two men, if one of them was her brother.
But why had they murdered Hank? That continued to perplex him, although the money that had been discovered on Thursday morning had to figure somewhere, he thought.
Still, the woman would know. Stemper looked forward to making her tell him.
****
Cate couldn’t begin to fathom Robbie’s motives for taking on O’Brien’s property. To divert her mother’s attention from it, she raised the only subject that could hope to compete with Robbie’s shenanigans: her love life.
‘I’m on the hunt for a new outfit,’ she said as they crossed the road towards Churchill Square. ‘Something for the evening that I can also wear to work. Not too glamorous or sexy.’
‘Not vampish.’
‘No. But still a
bit
sexy.’
That earned an incredulous sidelong glance. ‘You’ve got a date?’
Cate responded with a mysterious smile. Her mother whooped.
‘About bloody time, that’s all I can say. So who is he?’
‘Just somebody I met through work.’ After what Cate had been through this week, lying had never come so easy to her. She said nothing more as she eased past an elderly couple, entering the indoor mall a pace or two ahead of her mother.
‘Not so fast, madam.’ Teresa manoeuvred alongside. ‘When are you seeing him?’
‘Tonight.’
‘Tonight! Why the chuff didn’t you say? You haven’t even had your hair done. Or your nails. Now you’ve only got a few hours—’
‘Mum, calm down. It’s just dinner. It might not come to anything.’
‘It probably won’t, if you’re not going to make an effort.’ Teresa huffed, as only a mother could.
Playing the role that was expected of her, Cate said, ‘I wish I’d never mentioned it now.’
Teresa wasn’t listening. ‘Do you need shoes? Huh. Silly question.’ She steered her towards ALDO. ‘Let’s start here.’
****
Stemper followed them for over an hour. Once or twice he came perilously close to attracting the attention of the centre’s security guards. It was only the density of the crowd that kept him safe. The needless risk to which he was exposing himself nearly convinced him to abandon the mission – never mind the brain-rotting tedium of watching women shop. All that time and they hadn’t made a single purchase.
But he couldn’t give up yet. There was one more thing that he wanted.
He got it, at last, once they left the indoor centre and made their way over to North Laine, a district of narrow streets, some of them pedestrian-only, crammed with small boutiques selling esoteric art and sculpture, idiosyncratic fashion, rare books and classic vinyl. This was the bohemian heart of Brighton, and here among the shoppers there were tourists in their droves. No one would think it untoward if Stemper took a few photographs with his phone.
He timed it perfectly, just as the two women moved slowly past the gable end of a building which hosted a stunning mural in comic-book style. He managed to get three shots, and reviewed them as he walked. One of them wasn’t bad, but none had caught the younger woman’s face as clearly as he would have liked.
He followed them into Kensington Gardens, a densely packed thoroughfare where many of the traders had outside displays, leaving only a narrow channel for hundreds of people to negotiate. Stemper decided to stay with them for another five or ten minutes, in the hope that a better shot would present itself.
The women had fought their way into a vintage-clothing store when Stemper became conscious of a presence behind him. In the hubbub of passing shoppers he didn’t register the voice until a hand grabbed his shoulder.
‘I said, what the
fuck
are you doing?’
He turned to find a man looming over him: in his thirties, tall and heavy. He had bloodshot eyes and a pudgy face, flushed with a degree of anger that seemed quite out of proportion to the offence.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You’ve been following my w— Caitlin. I saw you taking her photo.’
‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken.’
‘It’s no mistake. I want to know what the hell you’re playing at. Who are you?’
He was virtually shouting, but there was enough noise around them to make it unremarkable. Even so, it wouldn’t be long before he drew a crowd. Stemper couldn’t let that happen.
The man was still gripping his shoulder. He had a considerable advantage in height, weight and age. In a straight fight Stemper was likely to end up pinned to the ground while a helpful spectator summoned the police.
‘Listen to me,’ he said, and instead of trying to break free he moved in towards his assailant, easing him against a rack of second-hand leather jackets. He angled his body in a way that concealed his right hand as it slipped into his pocket.
As a rule, Stemper avoided the use of knives. Although they had all sorts of advantages – they were quick, silent, effective – these were outweighed by one colossal disadvantage: they made a lot of mess.
Stemper carried one, an illegal switchblade, to be used only in emergencies. And this certainly qualified. He couldn’t let the woman see him; nor could he face questioning from the police as to why he had taken photographs of her.
He stumbled against the larger man, blurting an apology to mask the tiny click as the blade emerged. Bending slightly, he drove the knife into the man’s inner thigh, burying it deep before withdrawing it in a slashing motion. A jet of blood spurted out and hit the display of jackets. Stemper dropped the knife into his coat and was turning as the man started to collapse, making no sound other than a gasp of shock.