48
After Lucy had left the BreatheZero factory, she’d walked to the next street, where she called the Sikh taxi driver, and showed him her warrant card.
‘I want to follow a man who works at BreatheZero.’
He squinted as he thought. ‘It’s not dangerous, is it? I’ve got four kids.’
‘I just want to see where he goes, that’s all.’
‘All right. I suppose it’s more interesting than dropping commuters home.’
‘He might not leave until late,’ she warned.
‘My meter’s running.’
‘And I’m on a strict budget.’
‘Forty quid an hour.’
‘Thirty and not a penny more or I’ll order an Uber.’
He sighed noisily. ‘Don’t you cops get expenses?’
She just looked at him.
‘Oh, I get it.’ He sighed again. ‘Public money and all that.’
Lucy got him to park where she could see the office door across the forecourt. She hadn’t seen a rear exit during her tour and crossed her fingers that there wasn’t one or she could be waiting a very long time.
In the back of the cab, she called Dan – who’d apparently just seen Professor Gerald Dunsfold, who wasn’t a professor at all – then she rang Mac but he was interviewing so she sent him a text. A quick look at the news websites showed that aerotoxicity, an unforgivable scandal, according to a prominent government official, was gaining traction. Just about every news outlet had a variation on the headline Lucy had read at the weekend: One Flight Can Change Your Life.
She wondered if the media would have taken to the story quite so fast if Isla hadn’t been so beautiful. Clever BreatheZero to use her but not so clever since, according to Dan, Isla hadn’t signed a contract and apparently wasn’t going to either. Would she sue? Good luck to her, Lucy thought, except if Amina Amari was as ruthless as Lucy suspected, Isla had better watch her step.
Leaning back in her seat, she gazed at the steady flow of delivery vans toing and froing through the BreatheZero gates like worker bees. Was her father really undercover? It made sense, especially since Colin Pearson had talked about Neil Greenhill – Dad – as a weird customer. No family at all. Didn’t socialise… We never found out where he lived.
Had he really lied to protect her and Mum?
The sick feeling in her stomach increased when she realised he hadn’t answered when she’d asked which police force he was attached to.
Steadily, the minutes ticked past. The taxi driver made a couple of calls. Switched on Radio 5 Live. They chatted a bit. Lucy learned his name was Teg and that he supported Birmingham City FC.
It was just after five when the flow of vans ceased and the factory workers started leaving. Lucy’s senses sharpened. Teg turned off the radio when the first car left the factory. She watched as people began leaving, climbing into their cars, driving away. An hour later darkness began to fall. Amina Amari was walking outside. Lucy’s father was with her.
She stared at him, the face that she knew and the child in her loved. He lied to protect us, she told herself. He’s on a job. He’s working. I’ve been after this lot since kingdom come, and I am so close I can’t tell you.
She watched as her father climbed into the driver’s seat of the Jaguar. Amina Amari took the passenger’s side.
‘He’s in the Jag,’ she told Teg.
‘Okeydokey.’ He started the engine and when the Jag pulled out into the street, followed them. As they drove out of Wolverhampton, Lucy switched on Google Maps and followed their journey along Compton Road and onto the A454 to Bridgnorth. Traffic was heavy with commuters and short queues of cars where people were turning off the road. Barely half an hour into the journey the Jag turned right, signed to the village of Worfield, but when they came to a fork in the road, it switched right again. Teg’s headlights showed a much narrower road. It was unsigned.
Four hundred yards further, the Jag slowed down, indicating left. Teg slowed with them. When Lucy saw the start of a driveway, she said, ‘Drive past them. I don’t want them to know they’ve been followed.’
As they passed, Lucy saw a pair of tall, wrought-iron gates already beginning to open onto a drive with little LED lights glowing on each side of the gravel. At the end stood a house, also artfully lit. From the briefest glimpse she could see it was huge. Absolutely massive. Half-timbered above a red-brick base… and then it was gone, swallowed by the encroaching darkness.
‘Pull over,’ she told Teg.
He slowed the taxi, coming to rest half on the verge, half off. Quickly, she rang Dan and told him where she was. He was obviously sensitive to her tone because he asked for her safety code. God, the man was canny. She’d thought she sounded completely normal but obviously not. When she put her hand on the car door Teg said, ‘I thought you just wanted to see where he went?’
‘I won’t be long.’
She climbed out of the taxi and walked back to the gates, checking out the laurel hedge for any weak spots. She passed the gates, which were now closed, and kept walking. There! Well below eye level, really low, was a gap between the trunks. Not for the first time, she was glad she was small. On hands and knees, she scrabbled through the hole, grazing her wrists and muddying her jeans, but she was through. Swiftly she jogged alongside the drive. Skirted the house. It was pitch dark but the house was ablaze, lighting the swathes of lawn. She smelled wood smoke, indicating someone had lit a fire. She heard a door open somewhere and shrank behind a low wall covered in ivy.
‘Out you go,’ a woman said. ‘Have a pee before dinner.’
Lucy’s worst nightmare had just started. She knew that tone of voice. She knew pets got fed when their owners returned home. Please God it’s not a Rottweiler or a German Shepherd. She
