The Power of One (20 page)

‘And your money would be on?' Rina asked.

‘Well, given the warning passed on via Tim's Uncle Charles, I'm guessing something at least semi-official. Unless, of course, they just want to give him enough rope and see if he saves them the trouble of hiring a hangman.' He frowned. ‘For what it's worth, I think you're probably right, Rina, about there being three distinct parties involved. I'd pretty much reached the same conclusion. I told Hale as much and he argued, but he didn't tell me I was wrong.'

‘And still no sign of Abe Jackson? What did you make of him, Mac?'

‘Well, again for what it's worth, I thought he was an honest-seeming man and I felt, had the circumstances been different we could have got along comfortably enough.' He shrugged. ‘But what do I know, I liked Jimmy Duggan and he was a career criminal, so I'm not so sure you should trust my judgement when it comes to character assessment.'

He got up and stretched wearily. ‘Best be off, early start if we're driving up there. Seven thirty, Tim?'

Tim winced, he was not by nature an early-morning person. ‘So long as you don't want conversation for the first hour,' he said.

Rina waved Mac off and then returned to her little front room. Tim was thoughtful. ‘Not so long ago you'd have been suggesting he stay in the spare room,' Tim said. ‘A lot has changed, Rina.'

‘Mostly for the better,' Rina agreed, ‘though I could do with a little boring routine for a while. It's all been a little too exciting lately. I could do with living in slightly less interesting times.'

Lyndsey had wandered down to a local cafe-bar she and Ian had liked and sat in the window looking out at the quiet street. She missed him so much and the worst of it was, she couldn't tell anyone about him. Few people knew they had been involved. Two people, to be exact. Paul and Ray. It was impossible to keep anything from Ray; she worked far too closely with him and he with Paul for that kind of thing to stay secret for long, but her flatmates didn't know. They guessed she'd had a boyfriend and teased her a bit, but she'd even lied about his name and, to be truthful, wasn't close enough to either to confide. She'd been the third girl, moving into an already long-term agreement, taking the smallest room and, to be fair, the smallest share of the rent. Sisters, Jennifer and Suze, were pleasant enough and as work took up so much of her time anyway, it had been fine. Until she met Ian.

The flat share had been a cheap option when she'd first moved down to work at
Iconograph
, something of a stopgap until she decided whether or not she wanted to stay in Dorset and it had allowed her to save, put a fair bit of her salary aside for the deposit on the house she felt she should be working for, and that her
family
had always told her she should be working for.

‘Why?' Ian had asked. ‘Is that what you really want?'

‘No, I want to chuck it all in, bugger off round the world for a year, meet a nice guy and go to Las Vegas to be married by a Korean Elvis.'

‘Then why don't you? Why don't we?' He had reached across the table and taken her hand almost shyly. ‘You've already met the nice guy and I'd be happy with a Korean Elvis too.'

She had laughed, not sure whether or not it was a real proposal. Not sure either of them was ready for her to accept if it was. She had clasped his hand, happy, content to let things be, see where it led.

A week later he'd been telling her it would be better if they split up for a while, though she could see in his eyes he meant not a word of it.

A week after that he was dead and she understood why he thought they'd be better apart. Understood that he was scared, not of the relationship, not of the commitment, but of something less abstract.

‘What if I'd said yes?' Lyndsey whispered at her own reflection in the window glass. ‘If I'd said yes, would you have gone away with me? Then, right then? Would you still be alive?'

She fumbled in her bag for a tissue, pulled out the small cellophane-wrapped pack and with it the newspaper clipping. For a minute or so, she sat with the clipping on the table, staring at it. She had tried the number twice now, but with little response and was starting to think that she'd have to give it up and let it go … whatever it was. But she had made a promise to Paul. A promise Ian knew nothing about and, more than that, whatever this was all about was, she was certain, what had killed both her lover and her boss.

She searched her bag again, this time for her mobile phone, and dialled the number on the scrap of paper.

‘Look,' Lyndsey said into the empty space that opened up at the other end. ‘I've got something you want. You have to talk to me. Talk to me now or I give it to the police, you understand me?'

No voice, no human sound, just three or four clicks as though something had been pressed or some mechanism engaged. Then the silence closed and her phone went dead.

Angrily, Lyndsey stared at it, then threw it back into her bag in disgust, together with the pack of tissues and the scrap of paper. Ian was gone and her last ephemeral contact with him, with whatever he had been involved in, seemed to be fading too.

Abe Jackson's problem was that he was used to being part of a team and current events had found him rather out on a limb. He had resources he could call upon. Old colleagues or people who owed him favours or had reason to be nervous of offending him, but he didn't want to waste resources he may have need of later.

Of the three categories of potential help, old friends were the most reliable, working down the food chain from that to those too afraid of him to say no. There was, Abe knew from bitter experience, always the chance that, once the habit of fear had become established, there may well be others more frightening or more immediately threatening than Abe himself.

He had set a couple of former colleagues the task of watching Lyndsey. It helped that they'd also known Ian, but was not perfect, neither being able to commit the time and energy to the task that Abe would have liked. They were family men now, and regular civilians.

The value of even such sporadic watchers had proved its worth though. He had left the police station and found two missed calls on his phone. Lyndsey had gone out, he was told and all had seemed quiet but then … ‘Company,' Abe's associate said. ‘One in the building, two outside. You want a hand?'

‘Hopefully not. I'm on my way.'

The drive was no more than twenty minutes but the fear that Lyndsey might return before then made it seem so much longer. He parked at the end of her street and joined his friend, staked out on the ground floor of an empty flat Abe had rented almost opposite the building in which Lyndsey lived.

‘Anything?'

‘She's still out. Green car, three down on the left, parked behind the Mondeo.'

Abe nodded. ‘And the other man?'

‘I saw the ground-floor tenant go in half an hour ago. Everything looked normal. I'm guessing our boy is waiting on the first-floor landing. There's a dogleg in the staircase. That's where I'd be.'

Abe nodded agreement. ‘You know where she went?'

He shook his head. ‘Left ten minutes before I relieved Niall, went down towards the centre of town, so he said.'

‘We need more bodies. It just can't be done with two part-timers.'

His friend took no offence, knowing the truth of that. ‘I'd say it felt like old times,' he said wryly, ‘but even old times were better prepared and equipped than this. So, what now?'

Abe considered. ‘Sit tight,' he said. ‘I'll drive past the flat, see if I can pick her up on the way back. Did she look like she was going for a night out?'

‘Jeans and a blue shirt, nothing out the ordinary. Shoulder bag, no jacket.'

Abe nodded, ‘I'll drive out, circle round, park up again at the end of the road. Bell me if they move.'

He left by the back door and through the entry between houses, turned without glancing down the road and returned to his car. Driving past the watchers, he glanced into his rear-view mirror. Two men, thirties, clean shaven and short haired. One wore a short-sleeved shirt, the other a dark T-shirt. Abe didn't recognise them but he knew the type. Not so long ago he had been one of them. Maybe, he thought, he still was. One of the dispossessed, trying hard to construct a new role after twenty-odd years of having it defined for him.

He drove on down the block, but there was no sight of Lyndsey. He turned left at the end of the road, preparing to swing round and back almost to where he parked before. He dare not make another circuit. He would be noticed;
he
would have noticed and he had no reason to believe they would be any different.

His mobile buzzed. ‘You just missed her.'

Abe swore. ‘Where is she?'

‘Fifty yards, maybe, from the car. They must have seen her. What do you want me to do?'

‘Nothing. Stay put and don't expose yourself. I may need you later.'

He rang off before his friend could argue, accelerated round the last corner and into Lyndsey's street. He could see her now, walking with her head down, shoulders slightly hunched, utterly unaware. The two men were out of the car. He undid his seat belt, knowing it would restrict what he had planned.

Lyndsey paused, preparing to cross the road, hesitating as she saw his car, and waited, perched on the edge of the kerb, for him to go by. Abe put his foot down, passing the two men in the car, aware of their reaction as his vehicle was recognised as one which had passed before. He screeched to a halt next to the young woman, reached across and opened the passenger-side door.

‘Get in!'

She stared stupidly at him. ‘What?'

‘I'm a friend of Ian's. Get in.'

Startled, scared, she began to back away. Abe swore again. ‘Fuck it, girl, look up the street. See those two, you do
not
want to be tangling with them. Now get your bloody arse inside!'

Bewildered, she stared at him, then looked up the street, and saw the men. ‘Who …'

‘In!' The watchers had begun to run, Abe knew it would take only seconds to close the distance.

Suddenly, Lyndsey knew it too. She chose, dived into the car, slamming the door even as Abe accelerated away, turning right this time and speeding down a side road, praying no one would step out from between the parked cars.

‘Put your seatbelt on and hold tight.'

‘Who the hell are you? Who the hell are
they
?'

‘Ian and I served together. Like I said, he was a friend of mine. Now, keep your head down, and pray we can outrun them.'

She stared at him, eyes scared and wide, face pale. Something seemed to occur to her. ‘Was it you I phoned or was it them? Was it them?'

‘Girl, I don't have a clue what you're on about.' He glanced in the rear-view, and swerved the wrong way into a one-way street. Halfway down he pulled into a parking spot between two other cars, cut the engine and slid down in the seat. ‘Keep down!'

‘Why … why have we stopped?' She moved a hand towards the door handle and Abe hit the button on the driver's-side door, engaging the child lock.

‘Don't even think about it.' He watched in the rear-view mirror for their pursuers' car to go by, then started the engine again and pulled out cautiously. He drove down the remainder of the one-way street and out on to another densely residential road, blessing the fact that traffic was almost non-existent and there would be no one to remember a car emerging the wrong way from a one-way street.

He turned right again at the end of the road, heading for the centre of town.

‘Where are we going? Where are you taking me?' Her voice shook, her hands clutched spasmodically at the strap on her bag.

‘Somewhere safe. We'll work it out from there. Look, Ian thought a lot about you. I promised him, if anything happened, I'd do my best to look out for you. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm sorry I had to scare the pants off you to do it, but believe me, you'd be a damn sight more scared by now if I'd not been there.'

‘Should I believe you? How did you know? Who were they and I mean, who the hell are you?'

He was watching the traffic in his mirrors, anxious and wary. So far, they seemed clear, but Abe would be much happier once more distance had been put between them. ‘First, you've no reason to believe me; not much choice, either. Second, I've had a friend keeping an eye on you. He tipped me off, as it was, but it was all a bit too little, too late. Third, my name's Abe Jackson. Ian probably called me Lincoln. His idea of a joke.'

She blinked, nodded, recognising the name. ‘How do I know you're who you say you are?'

‘Right now you don't. You want me to take you home? There's a third man holed up in your place. Sure he'd be happy to meet you.'

‘No! I mean, no. I don't want that. I …' Her eyes widened again. ‘What about Jen and Suze?'

‘Jennifer, as I understand it, doesn't finish work until one. They'll be long gone by then and I'll call the local police, report a prowler, just to be sure. Suze stays over at her boyfriend's house on a Tuesday night. Any reason to expect she won't this week?'

‘How do you know all that?' She had calmed down a bit but now the level of fear had risen again.

‘I know because Ian told me. He said Tuesday was the only evening it was worth meeting at your place. The only evening you had it to yourself. I don't think he was a fan of Suze, though he seemed to think Jen was salvageable.'

‘Salvageable?'

‘Not a complete waste of space. He thought they were both airheads, though that's not quite the adjective he used.'

‘He told you a lot about me,' she said quietly.

‘He liked you. More than liked you. Lyndsey, you were the first woman I'd ever known him be serious about. I was one of his oldest friends, of course he talked about you. I told him he should break it off until the job was over. He said he was going to try, but to tell the truth, I don't think he was doing anything more than humouring me.'