Chapter 42
Half an hour later I was in a holding cell.
It was painted a sickly pale lime green. An inset concrete bed with a thin pallet on it. No windows. I had checked the door – it was locked.
Kirsty hadn’t said a single word to me on the journey over. It would have been hard to – she’d been travelling in a separate car. I had been bundled unceremoniously into the back seat of a modified Range Rover with caged partitions. It felt like I’d been picked up by the police dog-handling unit. Maybe I had been.
I’d taken my jacket and shirt off. Kept my white cotton T-shirt on to spare the blushes of any visitors, and was doing press-ups. I had done about a hundred and twenty when I heard the viewing hatch slide open and a voice announce, ‘You got a visitor, Carter.’
I got a faint hint of perfume, something floral and musky, and considered moving on to finger-and-thumb press-ups, but thought better of the idea.
Was I any fitter now than I’d been before an Iraqi roadside bomb and a couple of well-aimed insurgent bullets had seen me hospitalised for two months all those years ago? The truth was that I probably was.
I didn’t take my immortality for granted any more, that was for damn sure. And I kept my body in as fit a condition as I could manage. Doing press-ups in the cell gave me something to do other than think of Hannah and Chloe. Didn’t work, but when you get dealt a crap hand you’ve got to play it the best you can.
The door opened and I stood up.
It was Alison Chambers. Black suit, white silk blouse. Her make-up perfectly applied and the perfume as heady as that from a field of poppies.
‘What the fuck have you done now, Dan?’ she said, kind of spoiling the moment.
I shrugged as the thickset uniform shut the door on us. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t offer you tea,’ I said as I sat down on the pallet and patted the space beside me for her to join me.
She folded her arms and gave me the kind of look my beloved ex had given me earlier. You know the kind – the sort a judge might give you before slamming down the gavel and sending you off to the colonies for fifteen years’ hard labour.
‘Just tell me what’s going on,’ she said.
‘Alison,’ I said. ‘I honestly don’t know.’
And I honestly didn’t.
Chapter 43
I took a sip of tea.
It was awful. Too much sugar, too much milk. I made a tutting sound and got a reproachful look from Alison Chambers.
She was now sitting next to me on the bed. A businesslike notebook open on her lap, on the pages of which she was writing businesslike notes, I assumed. The nib of her Mont Blanc fountain pen appeared to scratch into the paper a tad deeper than was probably necessary.
‘The tea not to your satisfaction?’ she asked coolly.
‘It’s not PG Tips, I can tell you that much,’ I said.
‘And this isn’t the Ritz either, if you hadn’t noticed. It’s the Paddington Green nick.’
‘Yeah, I did notice that. The last time Kirsty took my trouser belt off on our wedding anniversary she didn’t take the shoelaces as well!’
I looked down at my brogues. Without the laces the tongues of both shoes flopped out like those of overheated dogs.
‘You don’t seem to be taking this seriously, Dan. So I am not sure I can help you.’
‘Oh, I’m taking this deadly seriously, I can assure you.’
‘You bring a woman into this country under a false passport. You enter your so-called god-daughter into the same college as her, also under a false name, but at least that’s not a crime so far as I know.’
‘Nor me,’ I agreed.
‘But you had Chloe working for you, didn’t you?’ Alison pressed angrily.
I didn’t respond.
‘And now the girl you smuggled in illegally,’ she continued, ‘has been kidnapped and you refuse to tell the police a damn thing.’
‘I’m taking the Fifth.’
She sighed, exasperated. ‘This is Paddington Green, Carter! Not Prairie Fart, Idaho. You don’t have the option to take the Fifth. There is no Fifth!’
‘You know, your eyes really do go green when you’re angry.’
‘For God’s sake! Are you even listening to me?’
‘Like they said when I was arrested, Alison, I don’t have to say anything.’
‘Well, you bloody do to me! And stop with the flip bloody act, Dan. I know you’re beating yourself up about what happened to those girls. I know you’re angry and want to get out there and do something about it.’
Alison knew me pretty well. ‘I do.’
‘And I am trying to help you do that. So why don’t you throw me a bone here?’
I sighed and shook my head. ‘If you don’t know then you can’t be compromised.’
‘Then what am I supposed to do?’
‘Nothing. I’ll take care of it.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know.’
The door opened and Kirsty walked in. She looked at us both for a moment without speaking.
‘Isn’t this cosy?’ she said finally. ‘The Thin Man and his lawyer. All we need now is a little dog and it would be a perfect picture.’
Kirsty was a big fan of old black-and-white films.
‘Are you going to charge my client?’ asked Alison, a degree of frost creeping into her voice.
Kirsty smiled but there wasn’t a lot of warmth in it, either. ‘Client?’ she said, rolling the word around on her tongue as if trying it on for size and not finding it to her liking.
‘If you have something to say, how about we expedite matters and simply say it, Kirsty?’ said Alison.
Kirsty looked at me, ignoring her. ‘Just so you know. It was never my idea to arrest you in the first place.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘The second murder and now this abduction. My hands were tied. The big guns were wheeled in and my boss DSI Andrew Harrington ordered you brought in. There’s promotion written all over this case.’
‘I see.’
‘No way around it. You brought her here under a false passport, Dan. There’s stuff going on that you know and we don’t. And that’s not right.’
I nodded. Hard to argue with her. ‘Sorry.’ I said simply.
‘So… is there anything you want to tell us?’
I shook my head. The message had been very clear. If the police became involved then Hannah would be hurt. Hurt in ways that did not bear thinking about. There was no option.
‘Then you leave me no choice…’ said DI Webb.
‘Than to do what?’ asked Alison Chambers.
‘Than to let you go,’ said Kirsty. Surprising the pair of us.
