She’d been wondering if she should consider a career elsewhere, but quite what, she wasn’t sure. Mac had told her not to do anything hasty, but when she’d mentioned it to Dan, his eyes had glinted.
‘You remember that job I suggested to you when we first met?’ he said. ‘They’d love to have you.’
She laughed so hard tears came to her eyes.
‘I’d make a crap spook,’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘You’d be terrific.’
She hadn’t told Mac. She’d simply stepped into his arms when she arrived home and let him lift her, and carry her to bed.
Epilogue
Dan was sitting in the sun on the garden bench half watching Aimee play with Poppy the dog, half reading the BBC news on his phone, when Khatabi called him back.
‘It is done,’ he said.
Dan hadn’t realised how tense he’d been until he felt the muscles relax from the top of his head down to his feet.
‘Thank God.’
‘Alhamdulillah.’ All praise is due to God alone.
It was thanks to Lucy’s father’s love for her that he’d turned witness against his own sister, otherwise known as Shaitan. John – also known as Carl – had given the police everything they’d needed to wrap up two fraudulent industries as well as give Interpol enough information to liaise between the British and the Moroccans and bring Jibran Bouzid, the Defence Minister, to justice.
‘He has been arrested,’ Hafid Khatabi went on. ‘He will never be released. He will die in prison.’ He paused before adding fiercely, ‘You did it. I knew you would.’
‘I nearly didn’t.’
‘If you had no doubts, you wouldn’t be the man you are.’
‘How is Naima?’ Dan asked after Khatabi’s daughter.
‘She is getting married!’ He sounded delighted.
‘Congratulations.’ Dan was pleased for him. Khatabi was a good man who’d been caught up in something dark and dangerous by trying to do the right thing, and now he could put it all behind him, and walk ahead, into the light.
They talked about Mehdi and Mohammed, who sent their best and their deepest thanks to Dan for freeing them from the tyranny of Bouzid, and then as the conversation began to wind up, Khatabi said, ‘Oh, Daniel, wait. I have someone here for you…’
‘Hello!’ a bright voice greeted him.
‘Naziha?’
‘Yes, it is me!’
‘How are you?’
‘I am very well. I am studying very hard at school. I am going to be a lawyer!’
‘That is excellent news indeed. I am so glad.’
‘Commissaire Khatabi is sponsoring me.’
‘He’s a very good man. He will be a great mentor.’
‘One day, I will come and visit you in England.’
‘I shall look forward to that very much.’
After Dan had hung up, he went and picked some daffodils, and brought them into the kitchen. He was wrapping them in brown paper when Jenny came into the room.
‘You’re taking them with you?’
‘Yes.’
She went and fetched some ribbon and made a pretty bow for them. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to come too?’
He kissed her lips. ‘You stay with the kids. I won’t be long.’
He put the flowers on the passenger’s seat, next to the urn. Drove down the hill and to the bridge. Crossed the River Severn, sluggish and brown in the spring sunshine.
He thought about Isla as he drove, who he’d seen last week. Her tumour had been removed, and her sight partially regained, but not enough for her to be independent.
‘I can get a guide dog,’ she’d told him. ‘I love dogs,’ she added bravely. ‘So that’s a positive.’
Isla had helped with the case against BreatheZero. ‘Amina Amari seemed so nice, but she wasn’t, was she? And nor was her friend, Helen Flowers. She was the one who got me to sign that contract by threatening to tell the airline I’d called that journalist myself. She even admitted she wanted to scare everyone to death over aerotoxicity so she could sell millions of masks. What an evil woman!’
Lucy had called him yesterday to tell him that Amina Amari had decided to direct her venom onto Helen Flowers, turning against her ex-lover for a lesser sentence herself. Fine by him. Like Bouzid, Flowers could die in jail as far as he was concerned for her role in the EG220 bombing. The same went for so-called Professor Gerald Dunsfold, who had also been arrested. Good riddance to the lot of them.
Dan parked his car next to a grey Vauxhall. A cop’s car. He climbed outside into a stiff wind. He saw Mac and Lucy waiting ahead, and the bulky figure of Ricky too. Mick and Julie from Mick’s Motorsport were there, along with Jon Banks, Lucy’s SIO, and Sergeant Karen Milton.
All there to pay their respects.
They walked with Dan as he carried the urn to the circuit. He put down the flowers and unscrewed the lid on the urn. Checked the wind direction. Then he upended Kaitlyn’s ashes on the corner of her favourite racing bend: Tower.
He wished Josh could have been here too but it wasn’t possible. He and Jenny had taken on the role of Josh’s guardians, for as long as they lived. It was the least they could do.
‘She used to blat down here,’ Mick said, looking down the track. ‘God, she was fast. Crazy girl on her crazy motorbike.’
‘We loved her,’ Julie added. ‘She was incredibly special.’
‘She was beautiful,’ Ricky choked.
‘Courageous.’ This from Lucy.
Dan looked at the flowers in his hand and then into the sky.
‘I wish she was still here.’
THE END
Author’s Note
I finished this book during the Covid-19 lockdown in the UK. Personally, I found it very odd working on a thriller during such calamitous
