Secrets Read online

  Molly had almost told him something, Alec thought, but he’d made a wrong response and she had shut him out.

  TWO

  There were three teams of five. Each team had minimal contact with the others and also limited contact with the controller. In the event of anything going wrong each member had been issued with a passport, a legend and money in an offshore account. However it went down, immediately their part in the game was all over, they would disperse and, in all likelihood, that would be it. They would not see one another again and control would effectively erase their involvement from what few records had been kept. This was the way it had been organized for more years than Bud could guess at. He had been recalled twice, so far, so three very profitable jobs in total. He had no idea and didn’t really care if this would be the last time or not. He’d be quite content to be forgotten after this.

  Not that anything was ever truly forgotten, of course, Bud knew that. There were always those few record-keepers who had oversight of everything. The collators and gatekeepers whose sole purpose, the focus of whose existence was to keep the books on everything and everyone. They would not forget.

  But this job was not going to go wrong. Months of planning, Bud had begun to suspect even years of pre-planning had gone into this and though he had never worked with any of his team of five before, they had gelled quickly. Even Ryan, with his sandy hair and freckles and ready grin, who looked like he should still be in school, operated with the same cool and efficiency as the rest of them.

  Ryan was the only one of the team that he wondered about. He seemed too young to be this good at the game. But, then, Bud thought, you never knew about people, not really.

  The road was narrow here, and midway between the two villages. Upper and Lower Stow were pretty but unremarkable locations, built in the local, Cotswold stone and Upper Stow still having a pub and a post office. Lower Stow was little more than a hamlet.

  At this point between the villages the road narrowed and curved so any vehicle coming upon them would be unable to see the road works sign until they had turned the corner. Then they’d come up, suddenly, upon a young man with a stop-go sign and a reflective jacket and see the road half closed off with cones.

  They’d been there about a half hour before the right car arrived. One of the local cars that had passed by had stopped and asked Ryan, the stop-go man, what they were going to dig up.

  ‘Not digging up, mate, filling in. Council’s sent us out to deal with some of the pot holes.’

  ‘About time too.’ The driver left with a cheerful wave at Ryan and Bud and the rest of them unloading the van. He was followed by a tractor and a blue hatchback.

  Bud frowned at the little procession of vehicles as they passed him by. They were all on his mental list, all residents living within a few miles of the roadblock and just out on regular business, their activities having been checked and tagged over the preceding weeks, but he was still far from happy. They could do without additional traffic. He was relieved when the radio call came in a few minutes later, from a member of the second team telling them that their target was on its way and that there was nothing else on the road.

  The unassuming black estate car came around the bend a few minutes later, right on schedule. It stopped obediently at the sign, the driver staring through the windscreen and down the road at the clearly empty lane ahead.

  The boy with the sign grinned at him and then followed his gaze as though he too was checking to see the absence of traffic coming the other way.

  Impatient, now, the driver lowered his window.

  ‘Come on, man, let us through. There’s nothing there.’

  Ryan, still grinning, turned his sign around and the driver prepared to move away. The sight of Bud, pointing a gun at him through the side window changed his mind.

  ‘Drive on, just drive on!’ The rear seat passenger yelled at the driver and then shrank back into his seat as Bud glanced at him.

  ‘If you’ll be kind enough to get out, now.’ Ryan was still smiling, but he had dropped his sign and he too held a gun.

  The driver lifted his hands from the steering wheel and slowly eased himself out of the vehicle as Bud, helpfully, opened the door. The passenger needed a little more persuasion, but a few seconds later, he too had been herded into the rear of the van. The stop sign was thrown in after them. Bud closed the door and nodded to Ryan. A third member of the team now drove the car slowly forward, while the remaining two gathered the cones and stowed them in the boot. Bud hopped into the passenger seat of the van and belted up, glancing across as Ryan opened the valve that would bleed the gas into the sealed rear compartment.

  It wouldn’t kill anyone, but it would shut them up for a while.

  Seconds later the van moved off, the car with the remaining three of the team following on behind.

  A mile further on, at a T-junction, the car went left and the van right. Bud and Ryan passed through Upper Stow at two thirty in the afternoon and drove on, out into open country once again. Ryan fiddled with the radio, trying to find a classical station, crunching the gears as he changed down.

  ‘Crap gearbox on this thing,’ he complained cheerfully. ‘Right, another few minutes and we say goodbye.’

  Bud nodded. There was no sound from the back of the van. He assumed the two passengers were still alive, but wasn’t that interested. He wasn’t paid to speculate. He could feel Ryan looking at him, maybe indulging in a little bit of his own speculation, but the younger man said nothing and after a moment, returned his focus to the road ahead.

  Bud slipped on a pair of thin, latex gloves and took a bottle of gel cleanser from his pocket. He poured a little into the palms of his gloved hands and rubbed it over everything he might have touched.

  Ryan laughed. ‘You know they’re going to torch this thing, don’cha?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You always this cautious, man?’

  ‘Twice your age and still around, Ryan boy. Work it out for yourself.’

  Ryan laughed, but he glanced uneasily at the little bottle of gel. Pointedly, Bud placed it on the dashboard.

  ‘It’s there if you want it,’ he said. Yes, he was always this cautious, he thought. In fact, he didn’t think he was cautious enough. There would still be trace, still be something he’d not thought of.

  They drove on in silence, Bud comfortable with that, but he could sense that Ryan, now the excitement was nearly over, wanted to talk. That was understandable. Ryan was young, like as not, this was his first big job, but talking, even with another member of the team, that was a bad thing. It could be a very bad thing.

  ‘Mind if I offer you some advice?’

  ‘You can offer.’

  ‘Don’t get drunk, don’t pick up any girls and don’t talk to strangers. Not tonight. Not for the next week or so. Get yourself on a train or a boat or a bus, buy yourself a ticket to somewhere you’ve never been and you’re never likely to go again. Give yourself three or four clear days before you pick up any plans you might have had. Then whatever plans you might have had, even if you’ve mentioned them to no one, even if you’ve not even thought them through in your own head, change them. Do something else.’

  Ryan laughed, a short, sharp uneasy sound. ‘Man, but you’re paranoid.’

  Bud smiled. ‘This is where we get off,’ he said, indicating the sign for a lay-by up ahead. Two cars had been parked, the keys to both lay in Bud’s pocket. He took them out, now, and offered them both to Ryan as the young man pulled the van in behind the parked cars. Ryan took a set without looking and Bud, getting out of the van, was satisfied to note that he had pulled on a pair of gloves and was cleaning down as Bud had done.

  Bud paused before moving out from behind the van, wondering where the next team was located. They’d be close by, take the van as soon as Bud and Ryan moved away. He glanced at the key in his hand, matched it to the ageing Mondeo. Ryan was out of the van now, glancing back inside as though to check he’d not forgotten anything.
His smile had faded, the first faint traces of anxiety showing in his eyes.

  Bud nodded at him. ‘Watch yourself,’ he said and then strode off towards his designated car, checking the petrol gauge as he turned on the ignition. As expected, it was full. He still wore the rubber gloves he’d put on in the van and he left them on now. Flesh-coloured, no one would notice them at a casual glance. Not that his fingerprints were in the police system. They had been, once, a very long time ago, when he’d been Ryan’s age or maybe a bit younger. He saw Ryan getting into his own car as he pulled away and turned back the way they’d come and, as he drove further down the road, saw, or thought he saw a figure slip into the van.

  But he shrugged his shoulders and put the whole thing out of his mind. Ten miles on and he was drinking coffee and eating a burger and making use of the free WiFi to check his designated bank account. By the time he’d drained his coffee cup, the designated account had been emptied, the money shifting out into a dozen other accounts, each one a part of a shell company with more layers to their business than the average onion. One thing he’d learnt back when he was Ryan’s age was to employ a good accountant.

  Bud got up, tipped the remainder of his meal into the bin, his mind already elsewhere. Scotland was lovely at this time of the year, he thought, he could pick up his gear and lose himself up there for a few weeks. After that? Well after that would take care of itself.

  THREE

  It hadn’t taken long for Alec to track down DI Barnes and the sergeant called Delia. He told the desk sergeant he was a relative of Molly Chambers – an almost truth – and that he was former DI Friedman, rather than just plain Mr – a definite truth, but not necessarily a helpful one. After a half-hour wait in reception, a young woman came through the glass doors and introduced herself as Sergeant Myers.

  ‘You must be Delia?’ Alec guessed.

  She nodded, eyeing him thoughtfully as they shook hands. ‘Mrs Chambers preferred to keep things formal,’ she said.

  ‘She would. I’m Alec Friedman. I was DI Friedman until about a month ago.’

  She nodded again and Alec guessed that she’d already looked him up. She confirmed this by saying, ‘You’ve had an interesting time this past year. I’m not surprised you went.’

  Alec wasn’t sure if that was sympathy or reprimand. This woman was an embryonic Molly, he thought. He followed her through to the back office and into a side room where a man with greying hair and dark brown eyes sat behind a desk. A kettle rattled as though it was about to boil. The man half rose and reached across the desk to shake Alec’s hand. ‘DI Barnes,’ he said. ‘Take a seat. So you’re related to Mrs Chambers?’

  ‘An honorary nephew,’ Alec said. ‘I think my mother is a second cousin once removed or some such. You know how it is with families?’

  Barnes nodded, but Alec could feel that he still wasn’t sure. ‘So, what can I do for you?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you take sugar? We’ve got reasonable tea or bloody awful instant coffee,’ Delia Myers asked.

  Alec went for the tea. ‘Any progress on identification?’

  ‘No. Nothing. He appeared, shot himself. That’s all we knew on the night it happened and apart from a few vital statistics that’s all we have now.’

  ‘Molly said he was a young man.’

  ‘Best guess, from forensic analysis is older than twenty-five and less than forty. If asked to guess I’d say late twenties, but it was hard to tell. There was almost nothing left of the face. He was fit, looked like he worked out, had broken his collar bone at some point, probably as a child and his left arm in the past year or so. He’d had a tooth filled with an amalgam that’s popular in Eastern Europe, but no longer in use here, other than that … well as I say, there wasn’t a lot left that could be useful to us.’

  ‘One small tattoo on his right arm.’ Delia Myers sat down next to Alec.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Don’t get excited. Just some sort of Celtic knotwork. It could mean anything and nothing. Oh and he had a scar on his right forearm, on the inside. Long and rather jagged, like it had needed stitching but hadn’t been according to the doc.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s about it.’

  Alec sipped at his tea. He was a little surprised at the detail they had surrendered to him. Usually investigators were a little chary of talking so openly, even if the other party did happen to be an ex-policeman. The tone of the conversation chimed with the odd tone he had noted from Molly’s earlier.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘What’s really bothering you then? Apart from the obvious violent death.’

  He saw the exchange of glances, but knew they’d made up their mind to tell him even before he’d entered the room.

  ‘Did Mrs Chambers give any indication that she might have known the man?’

  Alec looked from one to the other. ‘What makes you think that? Did she say so?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ DI Barnes told him, ‘but there is this.’

  He reached for a digital recorder that Alec had noticed lying on the desk and pressed play. Alec listened to what he realized must have been Molly’s call to the police. ‘There’s a man with a gun standing in my garden,’ Molly said.

  Alec listened as the call unfolded, the initial disbelief of the call controller and Molly’s calm voice, edged with impatience that she wasn’t being listened to. The controller calling her name as Molly must have lowered the receiver, a sound of something being said on Molly’s end of the phone and then a bang, followed by silence.

  The call seemed to end after that, with only the controller’s voice on the line.

  ‘She hung up?’ Alec asked, puzzled.

  ‘She says she dropped the phone, then kicked it under the bed as she panicked and ran down the stairs. The first officer attending found it broken on the floor,’ DI Barnes told him.

  ‘We’ve had the latter part of the call cleaned up,’ Delia said. ‘And Molly’s voice isolated.’

  Barnes pressed the play button again. At first all Alec could hear was the controller’s voice trying to get her back on the line and then he heard Molly, not clearly but nevertheless unmistakably.

  ‘Oh,’ Molly said. ‘It’s you.’

  ‘It’s you,’ Delia repeated, just in case Alec had missed the point. ‘She recognizes him.’

  Alec sat back and frowned at the little recording device. ‘You’ve asked her what she meant?’

  ‘And she told us she just thought she recognized him for a moment. That he looked like someone she had known when she was young and that she was shaken and scared and she got mixed up.’

  ‘And that could be the case,’ Alec said.

  ‘Yes it could,’ DI Barnes agreed. ‘I can understand a moment of confusion when someone points a gun at you. But—’ He shrugged.

  Alec nodded. Molly had sounded so calm. Surprised, yes, but suddenly unafraid as though she’d been expecting something terrible to happen and was abruptly relieved. Molly had known the young man who had broken into her house and killed himself in such dramatic fashion. Alec was certain of that.

  So why wouldn’t she say who he was? Why the prevarication? Molly was direct to the point of bluntness; sometimes painfully honest. Why would she lie?

  He was aware of the other two watching him carefully.

  ‘She’s withholding evidence,’ DI Barnes said.

  Alec was momentarily nonplussed. ‘Maybe so, but this is a suicide. He killed himself, so—’

  ‘So he killed himself. But it occurred to us that men with guns rarely just appear in someone’s garden. They usually have history and so we looked for that history. The weapon had been used before. Twice – and those two incidents are definitely not suicides. There are two open murder enquiries, Alec, both linked to the same weapon so possibly to the same man. If he was the killer then we’d like to know; that way at least we know we can stop looking. If he’s not, well.’

  ‘And if your aunt is withholding evidence pertinent to two murder investigations, then that’s a whole new ball game,�
� Delia said quietly. ‘Alec, if you could get her to talk to you?’

  ‘I don’t know anyone that can get Molly to talk when she has decided not to,’ Alec said. ‘But I can try.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Look, I know I’m a civilian now, but if I could have access to the files, if I could know what I’m actually talking about, I might be able to put some pressure on.’

  Again that exchange of glances, but again Alec knew that the decision had already been made. DI Barnes got up and indicated the now vacant chair. He produced a laptop computer from the desk drawer and set it on the desktop.

  ‘Help yourself to tea or coffee,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a sandwich sent in. Obviously, nothing can leave this office, but—’

  Alec nodded his thanks and settled himself behind the desk. Oh, Molly, he thought, just what have you got yourself into?

  FOUR

  It was late afternoon when Alec returned to the hotel he and Naomi had been staying in, much later than he had expected to be and long enough after his expected return to make him feel guilty. As he had reminded Molly, Naomi was extremely independent and she and her big black guide dog well able to look after one another but still, he thought, she was in a strange place and didn’t know anyone.

  He and Naomi – and Napoleon, her big black guide dog – had been essentially nomadic for the past couple of months. Their house had attracted a few viewings and did have someone willing to make a cash offer – for somewhat less than they wanted. Alec was pretty sure they would agree to take it in the end; a house with the history theirs now had wasn’t the easiest to sell at any time and the market wasn’t exactly buoyant at the moment. They had stayed at a friend’s place for a while and then decided to travel, without any clear aim in mind. The past six weeks had been a slow meander west, then south, then north again, visiting stately homes and antique shops – Naomi had a love of small silver, tactile pieces – and visiting friends and even acquaintances they’d not seen in years. House hunting too, in a random sort of way. If Alec spotted something interesting in an estate agent’s window, they had gone to view it, but nothing had really felt right yet. The truth was, he thought, they didn’t really know where they wanted to be. Apart from friends and family, they had nothing tying them to any specific place.