‘Cover me,’ Dan told Lucy. He moved to the other side of the car while Lucy took up position by the passenger door.
Her adrenaline spiked when she heard him yell, ‘On your knees! Hands behind your head!’
There was a brief silence and then Dan called, ‘Lucy.’
Lucy walked to the back of the car to see Dan was standing behind a woman, gun aimed at the back of her head.
‘This is the woman who held me. The one who… questioned me.’
The woman who’d tortured him.
She was medium height, medium build, middle-aged. Her features were soft and bland. No freckles or moles. She was older than in the photographs Lucy had seen of her but she was definitely the same woman.
Helen Flowers.
The inventor of the BlackShark Sniffer. The person who had sold the fake bomb detectors to the Moroccans. The person responsible for flight EG220 blowing up. The person Kaitlyn had wanted to bring to justice.
‘Lucy,’ Dan said. ‘I need you to bring Amari here so I can cover them both…’
But Amari was already stumbling towards them. She was clutching her arm and shouting at Helen Flowers. ‘You bitch! You fucking bitch!’
‘Stop there!’ said Dan but it was as though he hadn’t spoken. As though Lucy and Dan weren’t armed. Amari stormed past them and lashed out at the woman on the ground, kicking her in the ribs.
‘You were going to fucking leave me here!’ Amari yelled.
‘Baby, I would have come back for you. That was the plan. I’d never leave you.’
‘Don’t “baby” me!’ Amari roared. ‘You let this fucker shoot me!’
‘Lucy,’ Dan said urgently. ‘Find something to bind them with. Quick smart. Have a look in the van.’
Lucy ran to the van. Found a handful of plastic cable ties. On her way back, she saw her father had captured Amari and had imprisoned her in a bear’s embrace. Together, Lucy and her father forced her to the ground, where they tied her hands together.
‘I should never have trusted you,’ Amari spat at Helen Flowers. Her voice was shaking with rage. ‘You got me to try and kill Ricky so it was me caught on CCTV. You got me to be your frontwoman so you could stay in hiding. I loved you.’
‘You loved the lifestyle, you mean,’ Flowers said. Her tone was cold. ‘You would do anything for money, remember?’
Dan tied Helen Flowers’s hands behind her back. Hauled her to her feet. Turned her around. She looked Lucy up and down.
‘You’re prettier in real life.’ She sounded surprised.
Lucy was taken aback.
‘John’s always showing me photographs of you.’
‘John?’ Lucy repeated dumbly.
‘John Flowers,’ she said. ‘Your father. My brother.’
Ten days later
Lucy stood at the bar in the King’s Arms waiting for Tomas. He was late but at least he’d sent a text message apologising. He’d be here soon. Reg had given her a bottle of wine on the house, which she was working her way through. He hadn’t said why, but she guessed it was a form of apology for never coming clean over her father.
Everyone in the area had thought they’d known Carl Davies. They’d seen him as he’d portrayed himself when he’d been under cover: a genial man, popular, fun to be with. A salesman who was an anti-racist activist in his spare time. They’d swallowed her mother’s story that she’d kicked him out for being faithless and Lucy thanked the heavens that it wasn’t going to come out that he used to be a cop informing against them, or he’d never survive jail. Someone, somewhere would know someone else, and he’d end up dead in the shower block, the exercise yard, and nobody would know who’d done it but they’d feel it was justified.
As it was, everyone knew Carl as Carl with the gift of the gab, who was everyone’s friend and who ran on the wrong side of the tracks. From Stan Featherstone to his son Tomas, to Ricky and Reg, Carl was one of them. Which was why they’d kept their mouths shut when Lucy came asking questions.
Lucy had asked her mother if she’d encouraged her to become a police officer.
‘Not at all. You just saw that patrol car at school, heard the radio crackling away, and you were hooked. Nothing to do with me but I was ever so proud.’
Perhaps she’d subconsciously known her dad was a cop? Or had she realised he was dishonest, and had wanted to redress the balance? As far as her dad was concerned, he didn’t care, and nor did he have any desire to self-analyse. When she’d visited him in jail, he’d said simply, ‘I loved your mum, I loved you. I wanted the best for you.’ Then his eyes gleamed. ‘Checked your bank account yet?’
She hadn’t, but after her visit she’d looked on her phone to see her current account held an amount with so many zeroes she felt a bubble of shocked laughter erupt. Dear God, if she was caught with all this she’d be thrown out of the police! Straight away she reported it to the SIO who then arranged for it to go into an escrow account until the court decided what should be done with it. Dad, she thought, shaking her head in a combination of disbelief and exasperation. Honestly.
She’d asked him what led him to choose the criminal world and he’d shrugged. ‘It wasn’t a conscious thing,’ he said. ‘I do remember trying to help my sister out, though. When I was in the police, I found myself tipping Helen off, trying to keep her safe. When she got chucked out of the MoD for stealing, she came up with this idea of how we could get really rich. It just seemed so easy…’
‘What about your childhood?’
‘I came into care at the age of six months. Through child endangerment and neglect, I’ve been told. Not that I remember it…’ His gaze was distant. ‘Helen’s four years older but she’s never talked about it. We both had multiple foster homes.
