Night Vision Page 13

  There was pain attached to the memory – searing, sharp, stabbing pain that rent him.

  ‘Nick, you said that Gregory wasn’t dead. Can you tell me what you meant? Was it Gregory that attacked you?’

  ‘Gregory,’ Nick said, then realized he might be answering a question. That he might be getting it wrong. ‘He was my friend.’

  ‘Gregory who?’ Maureen demanded. ‘You don’t have a friend called Gregory.’ She sounded hurt and impatient, as she always did when he talked about things she didn’t know or understand. But whenever he did try and explain, she didn’t want to know. She found it too hard, too distasteful, he thought. Much too real.

  Nick closed his eyes and drifted away from her. She doesn’t really want to know, he thought. She never really wants to know . . .

  Susan Moran left the little side room. DI Travers had been moved this morning; no longer in the main high dependency unit, he’d been shifted off to one side so the armed guard was less visible and fewer visitors could be upset. She walked to the end of the hallway and dialled out, calling Eddison.

  ‘He’s been talking about Gregory again. He says this Gregory was a friend, but Maureen doesn’t recognize the name. I did what you asked and put it to Nick that this Gregory was the one that attacked him.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, he’s still pretty much out of it, but I think—’

  Eddison thanked her when she had finished and rang off. No, he thought, Gregory would mean nothing to Maureen. He wasn’t even sure she knew about Travers’ stint in the army. He knew it was something Travers didn’t talk about, not unless he was among . . . ‘friends’ was putting it too strongly. People who had shared that time. Everyone, Charlie Eddison thought, had bits and pieces of their lives they’d prefer not to be reminded of. For most it was often a simple matter of embarrassment. They’d cocked up, behaved like a prize prat, or simply been screwed over by someone they thought should have been trustworthy. No one likes to admit to those moments, Charlie Eddison reflected. At least, no one likes to be publicly reminded of them.

  Among friends, close friends, those same moments can become the ties which bind, the bonds of stupidity admitted to with those you come closest to knowing.

  Though, in Travers’ case, he hadn’t really cocked up. He couldn’t really have prevented any of it. When folk with guns go up against other folk with guns, someone is going to be on the receiving end of the bullets.

  SIXTEEN

  Ordinarily, Paul Thompson would have felt exposed on a deserted beach, but it was strange how your perceptions were changed by circumstance. And the girls loved it here, that was the thing. They felt free and safe, and thankfully they had not been at the house when the men came and so had no memory to carry with them out into the sunshine.

  They had seen their father’s bruises, of course. Or rather, they had seen the marks on his face, and they knew he’d hurt his ribs and that he’d been in pain when he’d driven the car, but, as kids do when told with conviction, they had accepted his story of a fall at work.

  Paul watched them run, hair flying loose, summer dresses belled by the strong wind. Barefoot on the sand.

  They had discovered this funny little headland one summer when he and Clara had just met. More than once, Tilly, who owned the nearest farm, had let them camp up on the bank overlooking the beach, first in a tatty little tent they had bought from a charity shop, and later, as lives and incomes improved, she let them park their caravan in the hollow behind the bank that held back the dunes. This time, Paul had pulled the caravan right in beneath the trees and tucked the car close behind it, pointing back towards the track, ready for a swift departure. He tried not to think that the track was barely wide enough for a single vehicle, and the idea of escaping from someone coming the other way was therefore a little pointless.

  ‘You here without yer woman?’ Tilly had questioned when they’d arrived unexpectedly the week before.

  ‘I’m in trouble, Tilly. Clara sent us out of the way.’ He knew better than to try and lie to Tilly. He had known how it sounded, though, and would not have been surprised if Tilly’d sent him away. Instead, she looked at his face, marked the bruises and the pain he was in, and told him to get his van parked up.

  ‘You got food?’ she asked.

  ‘Some.’

  ‘I’ll see to it you’re provided for. Who am I to expect come looking for you?’

  ‘I don’t know, Tilly. I don’t know who they are.’

  She nodded and then ducked back inside the door, came back with a shotgun. ‘You know how to handle this? Your woman do.’

  Clara could handle a gun? Paul didn’t know that; he wondered how or why Tilly should. As if she read his mind, she said, ‘She brought him over once, bid me look out for him.’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘That brother on ’ers. Stupid bugger if you ask me.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Paul said.

  She nodded as though that was to be expected, him being a stupid bugger, handed him the shotgun and a handful of cartridges. He took them without a word.

  ‘Don’t you leave it round them kids loaded,’ she warned.

  ‘When did Clara bring her brother here?’ Paul was curious now. He didn’t yet have the energy to be angry, he was far too bruised and battered for that – though that would surely come later, he thought.

  Tilly shrugged. ‘Be once about four year ago,’ she said. ‘Once again about three year ago. He look like you do that time.’

  ‘Like me?’

  She gestured towards his bruises. ‘No one come ’ere we don’t know about,’ she said and with that went back inside.

  So far as Paul could make out, no one had come here at all. No one except Bryn who worked for Tilly and who brought them food and other supplies and helped Paul set up the aerial for the portable TV, but he wasn’t what anyone would call talkative. In fact, the worst thing about the entire stay, Paul thought wryly, was that once he’d stopped being balls out scared, he’d started to be bored.

  What now, he thought as he watched the girls running along the beach. They couldn’t stay here forever. Oddly, after the first couple of days the girls had stopped asking when mum would be coming or when they would be going home. And he’d stopped worrying about what could happen to Clara.

  He knew that was wrong, but he just couldn’t help himself. The anger he had anticipated would eventually come had arrived sometime on the second day, along with a new fear that she might guess where he had gone and tell them if they came back. When they came back.

  She’d brought this down on them all, Clara and that brother of hers. Let her deal with it.

  ‘Daddy, Daddy, we’ve found a jellyfish!’

  Slowly, he limped down to where Jilly danced and Kay crouched, peering at their find. Tanned and sandy faces grinned at him. He noticed that their clothes were dirty, the summer dresses grimed with sand and seaweed and stained with sea salt.

  Painfully, Paul bent down to examine the transparent creature.

  ‘Can we put it back in the water?’

  ‘We can try.’ He took the spade from Kay and slid it carefully beneath the jelly, and together they carried it to the water and Paul lowered it into the shallows.

  ‘Will it be OK?’

  ‘I don’t know, Jilly. It might have been out of the water too long.’

  They watched it drift in the clear water, and Paul convinced himself, as it was sucked back by the wave, that it had swum away.

  ‘Did Mummy phone again?’ Jilly asked.

  ‘No, not again. I think the signal is bad here.’ He waited for the questions – is she coming? When are we going home? – but his daughter just looked at him with her summer-blue eyes, and he knew, somehow, that she understood. Mummy wouldn’t come; they would not be going home. Not even after all this was over would they be going home.

  It was always strange sorting through the debris of an earlier life, neatly packed away in boxes or slipped between the pages of albums. It remind
ed you, Naomi thought, both of how far you’d come and also how little you’d really changed.

  Harry was working in his home office. Patrick and Alec had spread letters and cards and albums across the dining room table and were talking Naomi through what was there. Patrick, predictably, was fascinated by the photograph albums, especially when he discovered images of his father as a young man and a few precious snaps of a very young Naomi standing with her friend Helen.

  ‘I must have been about nine,’ she said as Patrick described them to her. ‘There was some big festival to celebrate the reopening of the canal basin. They’d spent the spring dredging. God, it stank to high heaven, we were all so glad it didn’t stretch on into summer. We went with Mari, and I’m sure Harry was there, though he’d probably have been the one taking the pictures. He was never without a camera, your dad.’

  ‘Really?’ Patrick laughed. ‘I wonder why he stopped.’

  ‘He used to seal up his bedroom and develop the photos in there. That stank too,’ Naomi recalled. ‘It was quite an important hobby for a while. I think he even belonged to a camera club.’

  ‘I never knew that. I wonder if he still has his pictures.’

  More poignant still, in the present circumstances, were the pictures of the old gang and Jamie. Snaps taken on nights out and holidays and even on the job. Alec and Naomi attending an industrial dispute; Jamie interviewing workers. The local press photographer capturing them all in a quiet moment.

  ‘She had four – no, five – different address in the first couple of years away,’ Alec said. The days when she slept in spare rooms or on sofas, before she started to pick up regular work and could finally get a place of her own. A bedsit above a shop, if Naomi remembered right.

  ‘Ah,’ Alec said. ‘I’ve found it. The last Christmas card.’

  ‘With the last address?’

  ‘In St Albans. I was right, and there’s a phone number . . .’ He trailed off, fetched his notebook from his jacket pocket. Swore softly.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The number. You know, I had a feeling it looked familiar, but without the dialling code it just didn’t click.’

  ‘Familiar?’ Naomi asked, but he was already on the phone, asking for Eddison, telling him:

  ‘The number the prisoner, Griffin, gave me. It was the same as for the last address Jamie gave us. Some shop or other in St Albans where she collected her mail and—’ He broke off. ‘You already know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Not the connection to Jamie Dale, no. The shop is registered to Madigor. Same company that owns the truck our perp escaped in.’

  ‘Madigor. That can’t be coincidence. Anything on the lorry yet?’

  ‘Oh, still interested are we?’ Eddison’s tone was sarcastic. ‘The truck was found this morning at services fifty miles away. The SOCOs have just arrived. Parks and Munroe are on scene.’ He paused. ‘How’s your wife?’

  ‘OK, she’s OK, but we think someone’s been to the house.’ He told Eddison about the address book, half expecting ridicule. After all, it was the only thing missing; it could easily have been misplaced. Except that Alec just knew that wasn’t the case. But there was no comment from Eddison.

  ‘Keep me posted,’ was all he said, and Alec was dismissed.

  Madigor, Alec thought. The assumption so far had been that the truck had been used without the owner’s knowledge. This put a different slant on things. Why had Jamie been using Madigor’s office as her letter drop? Had she and the company’s owner been friends, colleagues? What?

  And was the theft of the book someone’s attempt to cover that up? Something in that didn’t quite ring true, but Alec couldn’t put his finger on exactly what.

  ‘Alec?’ Naomi, reminding him she didn’t know what was going on.

  ‘Sorry,’ he apologized. ‘They’ve found the truck Trav’s attacker escaped in. That and the address Jamie was using, they belong to the same man.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Parks and Munroe had collected their coffee and settled into the control room to begin the long task of examining the CCTV footage. The two security officers on duty had been co-opted to help, and through the control room window, Munroe could see the car park, the lorry and the Scientific Support Crew, who were now unpacking their gear and donning white coveralls. Munroe estimated it would be half an hour or so until they’d be allowed anywhere near the truck; longer, probably until they could get inside. He glanced at the two motorway staff and then at Parks. He hated this bit of the job. Necessary, but tedious in the extreme.

  ‘Look,’ he said, depositing cups of placatory coffee on the desk. ‘You two pinpoint the time when the truck arrived, and we’ll go and talk to the CSIs. Give us a call when you’re ready.’

  Parks rose with alacrity. Resigned looks from the security guys. Munroe led the way out before anyone could object.

  Across in the lorry park, Denver Moore had just taken preliminary photos of the truck cab. It had rained in the night, and the exterior of the vehicle had washed streakily clean. The step was still lightly puddled with the remnants of the shower. Denver stood back and watched as his colleague brushed the wing mirror with dark grey powder and checked for prints. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Nothing worth having, I think,’ she said. She took the partials anyway, lifting the prints with tape and folding the cover closed. She moved on to the door handle. ‘Going anywhere this weekend?’

  Denver shook his head. ‘Only the parentals, both sets.’

  Ellen laughed at him. ‘Oh joy, oh rapture,’ she said. ‘What did the pair of you do to deserve that?’

  ‘We’ve both got the weekend off,’ he said wryly. ‘And everyone and his cat wants a hand in planning the wedding.’

  ‘Painful,’ Ellen said.

  ‘Oh, girl, you don’t know the half of it. Ready for me?’ he asked as she moved off the footplate. He hopped up and took pictures of the window and cab interior, context shots before the door was opened. ‘It isn’t locked,’ he said, surprised. ‘Ellie, girl, you won’t get to do your clever bit with the naughty keys.’

  He leaned back, pulling on the handle.

  The world shook.

  Munroe was running now, Parks close behind. He was across the car park even before the blast had receded and the flames taken hold. A woman lay on the floor, knocked back by the explosion, he couldn’t see how badly she was hurt. Flames blasted from the cab of the truck. The door had landed on a car fifty yards distant, and he could see nothing of the other CSI.

  Parks was on the ground next to the fallen woman, speaking into his phone. He was calling for the ambulance, but as he looked up and met Munroe’s questioning gaze he shook his head. Munroe ran to the Scientific Support van. It had been knocked on its side by the blast, and he prayed that there’d just been the team of two on board. A quick glance told him it was empty, and that they had a small fire extinguisher on board. He grasped it and then looked back at the truck, the flames spreading now through the cab and into the rear.

  It would take more than the mini extinguisher to put out the developing inferno. Dropping it, he ran back to Parks. ‘Move,’ he yelled. ‘Move before the whole damn lot goes up.’

  ‘What about her?’

  Swearing to himself, Munroe helped Parks scoop up the dead CSI and run from the flames. ‘I don’t see the other one,’ Parks yelled. The roar of flames was now unbelievably loud.

  Glancing back, Munroe took in the scene. If the lorry went up, how big would the blast site be? Was there more explosive on board?

  A man stumbled out of a nearby cab. Dazed and confused he gaped at Munroe, who was now yelling at him to run. Munroe gave him a push in the direction of the services. ‘Get as far away as you can, tell everyone, just get the hell out.’

  Others had needed no instruction. Motorists ran from cars, others accelerated away. Munroe thanked the god of designers that whoever worked on these services had positioned the lorry park well away from the petrol pumps.

  ‘Oh my God
,’ Parks said. ‘Shit, Christ!’

  Munroe looked to where Parks was pointing. The right hand of the missing CSI lay on the ground. There’d be more, Munroe knew. But he doubted there’d be any bit of him as large as the hand.

  ‘Move,’ he commanded. They carried the woman between them and half ran, half stumbled away.

  Munroe dropped the body behind a low wall that separated the car park from a small picnic area. He sprinted off, calling to Parks to follow.

  ‘What now?’ Parks yelled. ‘What the hell happened? That could have been us!’

  Munroe grabbed Parks by the arms. He could see the first signs of shock in the other man’s eyes. ‘But it wasn’t, was it? So just be bloody thankful. What now is we get inside, get everyone to the back of the building, as far away from all that glass as we can.’

  Parks looked. People crowded against the massive windows of the restaurant, staring, pointing, crying out.

  ‘Christ,’ he said again.

  At Munroe’s heels he sped inside, shouting to the crowd to get away, to get back. For a moment he thought they were going to ignore what must seem like two madmen yelling and gesticulating, but then someone took up the call, and then another someone, and then the crowd began to move and the stampede started. Parks was almost swept along. Instead, with a massive effort, he pulled himself out of the crush and helped to herd people, as Munroe was doing.

  ‘Get out of the back, far away as you can.’

  And then it happened. A bang, like a firework, and then a roar and then another bang and then the sound of glass shattering and crashing down and a wave of screaming that seemed to break over Parks’ head as he fell and curled tight on the floor waiting for the noise to stop.

  EIGHTEEN

  Alec had to go back. The news broke on the radio only minutes after the explosion and was on the television within half an hour. A helicopter circling the scene carried journalists, who speculated about terrorist plots and many dead.

  He spoke to Eddison, to Munroe. Parks was hurt, but not badly, and was refusing to leave the scene, so Munroe had patched him up and set him to taking names and addresses of the walking wounded and the merely shocked.