I show them back to the front desk and stand there, watching them out through the door and down the street. That comment about the DNA wasn’t a throwaway remark or a lucky guess. It was a message, and not a very subtle one: these people have backchannels and they’re going to use them. They’re giving me a choice: I can do this the hard way or the easy way, but if I know what’s good for me I’ll shut up and play nice.
They’re getting into a car now, a black Merc with tinted windows that’s just stopped on the yellow line a few yards up. As it pulls away into the buses and the bikes, I realize suddenly that there’s someone else in the street. Someone I recognize.
I hesitate a moment, wondering if it’s just a coincidence. But you know by now what I think about coincidences. And as our eyes meet across the traffic, I know I’m right.
We have to wait for a bus to pass, but a few moments later we’re standing face to face on the crowded pavement.
‘Hello, Adam,’ she says.
* * *
Alex Fawley has reached the point in her pregnancy where her baby is a good deal more active than she is. She’s always so tired now, and it’s not just the heat. When Adam’s at work she spends most of the day lying on the bed with the blinds down. She can’t even summon the energy to read, just plugs in her headphones or has the TV on in the background, treating it like radio.
She pours herself a glass of iced water and wanders back into the sitting room. There’s no one parked outside. No one unfamiliar, anyway. Just the Hamiltons’ SUV and the grey Fiat Uno owned by that woman a bit further down whose name Alex still doesn’t know. The white van hasn’t been back. Or at least she doesn’t think it has. But would he really be stupid enough to use a vehicle he knew she’d be looking for? If it was her, she’d go to a rental place. Get something bland and forgettable. And a different one each time, just to make sure. This man isn’t stupid; if he’s using a white van it’s intentional. Because he wants her to know he’s there. To scare her – deliberately scare her –
Her heart quickens and the baby turns, uneasy. She sits down slowly, willing her pulse to slow. Adam keeps asking her if everything’s OK – if she’s seen the van again – and she keeps just smiling and saying no. She doesn’t want him worrying – or starting to think she’s losing her mind. Because it makes no sense, she knows that: Gavin Parrie is miles from here, tagged, monitored, curfewed. But her fear just won’t go away.
She cradles her body now, feeling the baby settle.
‘Don’t worry, sweet one,’ she whispers, the tears gathering in her eyes. ‘You’re safe. Daddy would never let anyone hurt us. You and I are his whole world.’
* * *
Adam Fawley
9 July 2018
14.25
Reynolds can’t see me till gone two. The PA tells me he ‘has a lunch’ so would I ‘come to the Lodgings’. No doubt they want to keep the likes of me from contaminating their hallowed turf. Given I have time on my hands, I opt to walk. Up St Aldate’s and through Cornmarket. The sun is bringing them all out – Jehovah’s Witnesses, a choir of Seventh Day Adventists, the local Islamic centre and a kiosk informing me that ‘The Message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing’. Though parching might be a better word, given the temperature. And all of it jumbled up any-old-how with the payday lenders, a stall selling sunglasses and smiley-face cushions, and that carrot-haired regular who plays the bagpipes. (There’s a furious-looking little old lady standing right opposite him with a knotted handkerchief on her head and a placard that says REBUILD HADRIAN’S WALL. That’s Oxford for you – never knowingly under-nuttered.) It’s six-deep in tourist groups most of the way so progress is slow, though at least most of those are managing to keep their clothes on. Unlike the locals, who are going hell for leather into another round of the Great British Kit-Off. If there was a law against raw bloke moobs in a built-up area I’d need to send for reinforcements.
When I get to the lodgings the flunkey at the door shows me through to the garden. Which is, of course, glorious – a green half-acre of lawns and honeysuckle and rose beds tended to within an inch of their lives. There are a couple of blokes there now, weeding and dead-heading. Needless to say, these chaps are keeping their shirts firmly on. As is Reynolds, who’s in a white linen number, sitting under an umbrella with a laptop open in front of him on a mosaic table. He gestures to an adjacent chair.
‘Take a seat, Inspector. I won’t be a moment. Do help yourself to lemonade. My wife makes it – an old family recipe.’
Forcing me to watch him fiddle about with emails is pretty low-grade stuff as power plays go, but the lemonade isn’t bad, so I content myself with the view. Somewhere nearby someone’s playing the piano. Mozart. That’s not bad, either.
‘Right,’ says Reynolds a few moments later, taking off his glasses and pushing the laptop slightly to one side. Though he doesn’t – I note – close it altogether. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘We’re making headway with the inquiry, sir, but I could do with some more background. A clearer picture of both Morgan and Fisher.’
He reaches for his glass. ‘Off the record, you mean.’
‘I’m not a journalist – we don’t work by those rules. I can’t guarantee that anything you tell me won’t end up
