‘An educated guess,’ said Nick.
‘Adrian, any neighbours have anything to say?’
Adrian Wren stood up. ‘A woman opposite does say she saw two men loading a carpet into the back of a van in The Beijing car park.’ The house was next to a Chinese takeaway with a piece of waste ground between that the fast food outlet liked to call a car park.
‘That sounds like our team. Make? Model?’
He shook his head. ‘Just something dark. Quite small. Not a big one. No descriptions either. Both in some kind of work clothes, apparently. Woolly hats and sunglasses.’
‘Comedy Blues Brothers,’ said Phil, no humour in his voice. ‘Brilliant.’
‘The van fits with what Mickey’s been following up, boss,’ said Anni. ‘Black Citroen Nemo.’
‘Get some photos, Adrian. Ask her again.’
He nodded, made a note.
‘Fiona Welch,’ said Phil. ‘One of Ben Fenwick’s innovations, I’m afraid. I never rated her, never liked her, never wanted her here. And after that profile, never trusted her.’ He looked round the room. ‘Please feel free to join in with her character assassination.’
‘Mickey felt the same way, boss,’ said Anni. ‘Spoke to me about her earlier. Said there was something about her he didn’t like.’
‘Why didn’t he mention it to me?’
‘Because you’d said you were going to get rid of her. So that, he probably thought, was that. But he did say something else interesting about her, though.’
Phil listened.
‘He said she went to see Anthony Howe last night. After you’d finished questioning him. In his cell.’
Phil frowned. ‘What about?’
‘Don’t know. No record of that. Only of her visit.’
Phil thought for a moment, glancing round the restaurant. It looked comfortable, the kind of place you’d be happy to spend a few hours in if you were away from home. The bar looked the same. It was yet another glimpse into that other world, the safe, comfortable one, the one he could never inhabit.
‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘we’re jumping to conclusions to say that whatever she said to him contributed to his suicide attempt.’
Anni frowned. ‘Why, boss?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe he taught her at university. Maybe he made a pass at her. Some grudge or other.’ He sighed. ‘Why wasn’t her background checked into? Why wasn’t she properly vetted?’
No one answered. The only person who could was fighting for his life in hospital.
‘OK,’ said Phil. ‘In the meantime we keep an eye on the Greenstead Road house. It’s a long shot, but they may return. We’re also still going through it looking for any clue as to where they might be now.’
‘Don’t forget the boat, boss,’ said Anni.
‘I’m not.’
Anni’s phone rang. Phil stared at her, clearly unhappy with the interruption. She checked the display. ‘Mickey,’ she said. ‘I’d better take it.’
She got up from her seat, crossed into the bar.
Phil wanted to keep talking but knew as well as Anni that Mickey wouldn’t be phoning unless it was something important. ‘We’ll just wait a moment,’ he said. ‘This might be urgent.’
Anni returned, pocketing her phone. She sat down. Phil could sense the energy, the adrenalin, coming off her.
‘What you got?’
‘That was Mickey,’ she said, ‘he’s at the boat. There’s been developments.’ She told the team what he had seen, relaying it in almost as breathless a fashion as he clearly had to her.
‘Oh, lucky,’ said Phil, feeling that familiar tingle pass through him. He knew the others would be feeling it too. ‘A breakthrough. Anni, phone him back and tell him to keep tailing and we’ll get back up to him as quickly as possible. I’m guessing that’s Rose Martin on the boat. We’ll get an armed response unit down there as quickly as possible. Even if it’s not Rose, whoever it is we need to get them out safely. I’ll get down there right now.’ He looked round the room. ‘The rest of you get back to your jobs.’ He sighed. ‘Most of you, if not all of you, know that Ben Fenwick and I didn’t always see eye to eye. Or hardly ever, if I’m being honest.’
A small amount of laughter could be heard, breaking the tension.
Phil continued. ‘But that doesn’t mean I wanted this to happen to him. Or anything like it. It’s awful. What’s happened is absolutely, bloody awful. So let’s get out there and avenge him. Let’s do this for him.’
The meeting broke up.
81
Rose was terrified.
She lay on her back, on the filthy floor of some falling apart boat, eyes wide open, not daring to move or even to breathe. Like an animal freezing before a predator, hoping that if she stayed still long enough she would be ignored.
His hands were on her. His breath in her ear, raw, ragged grunts. His hands getting faster, moving quickly over her body, roughly tugging at her clothes…
She closed her eyes, trying to expel the vision of his face from her mind, take herself to somewhere she could think. Tried to make some sense of what had happened to her and how best to deal with it, thought back to how she had ended up in this situation.
She hadn’t seen him coming. That much was obvious. If she had, she would have been prepared. And then seeing what happened to Ben, watching him collapse like that. Was he dead? Oh God… All that blood, so much blood…
And now this. She had lain there, terrified, while he spoke to her. At least, she assumed that was what he was doing. She could barely make out any of his words. But that was no surprise. His mouth – his face – was ruined. She had studied him in close up all the time he was ‘talking’ to her. Clearly not Mark Turner. This man had suffered. His face was smooth in parts, pitted and wrinkled in others. Sometimes dead white, sometimes pink and red.
Burns, Rose thought. Bad ones.
As he moved closer she could see veins and arteries below the surface. They looked like fiery little red lines, networked, red hot pipes ready to burst and burn and spray at any moment.
His eyebrows were gone, as was half of his mouth. His teeth were pulled back in a perpetual, grimacing snarl. No wonder she couldn’t understand what he was saying. She understood why he wore the woollen cap, too. When he took it off his head had the same kind of smooth and uneven look as his face. What hair there was left had been razored down to nothing, leaving him looking like an angry, red skull.
He reminded her of a character in one of her little brother’s comics that he used to read. Ghost Rider, a demon biker with a flaming skull. He had terrified her then.
This one terrified her now.
And then that voice… deep, raw and wasted, all breath and pain, but with attempts at precision and diction. Like a horror-film zombie trying to articulate enough to get a job in a call centre.
He grunted loudly. She opened her eyes.
And wished she hadn’t.
He was on top of her now, pulling at her jeans, trying to get his lumpen, misshapen hand down the front. Grunting even more, his other hand pulling at the waist of his army trousers.
Oh God…
She closed her eyes tight shut once more, lay completely still, hands by her side, legs as rigid as possible.
And then she felt something. Her handbag.
Still on her shoulder from when she had been grabbed, it had been tight to her body when she had been wrapped in the rug and was with her now. And in the front pocket…
