Bleed Like Me (17 page)

Gill went to the door, peeped through the spy hole and saw Chris. Chris! She opened the door. ‘Not today, ta,’ she said, keeping a straight face.

‘I come bearing dinner.’ He hoisted a large plastic cooler box in one hand and a sturdy shopping bag in the other. ‘You haven’t eaten?’

‘No.’ She was smiling. ‘Come in. How come you’re not in Italy or Croatia or somewhere?’

‘Prefer this.’ He grinned. Put the box and bag down and held up his hands. ‘I know you’re in the middle of a huge inquiry and you’ll need your sleep so you can turf me out whenever you like. I’ve reserved a room at the hotel on the ring road, in case.’

‘Oh, no.’ She moved closer to him. ‘You’re going nowhere, mister.’ Reached up to kiss him. He put his arms round her, kissing her slowly, softly, until she was dizzy. Gill was half tempted to skip the food and take him straight to bed but he had gone to so much trouble. And besides, if she ate she’d have even more energy for what would come after.

He began getting things out on to the counter: a hot chicken, croquette potatoes, a mixed leaf salad. Cheesecake, a bottle of white.

Gill’s mouth was watering. She opened the wine, found glasses. ‘Cheers. Here.’ She fetched a candelabra and lit it. Swapped the radio for the CD player and found paper napkins.

He raised his glass again as she sat down, clinked hers. ‘Happy holiday.’ Merriment dancing in his eyes.

‘Happy holiday,’ she echoed. And started to eat.

‘Keep your coat on,’ Gill snapped as Rachel arrived at work. ‘We’ve a report just in of a stolen car, red Hyundai Accent, registered keeper Mr Howard Wesley at Rose Cottage, Lundfell.’ She tapped the map on the monitor screen.

Rachel saw the significance immediately. ‘Just down the road from Gallows Wood, where he dumped the Mondeo.’

‘Literally. Dogs and CSIs on their way. We’ve now a mobile incident unit in place at the lay-by near the wood. The search is continuing. Base yourselves there and follow up on the car theft. Any whisper of a breakthrough and I want to know before you draw breath. Yes?’

There was a stiff, brittle way to her this morning. Obviously got the hump. Maybe the toy boy was mucking her about? Maybe it was the investigation. A second night shortening the odds on the chance of a happy ending. Happy being a very relative term, right? Anyway, Rachel read the signs and said the minimum.
Yes ma’am, no ma’am
. Avoided eye contact. Bit like dealing with a wild dog: no direct challenge. Her Maj could be a right cow when she’d got a mood on and Rachel knew she was still in the shit for nipping off yesterday and blagging about the reason.

‘Where the hell is Janet?’

‘Don’t know, boss,’ like she was Janet’s keeper. Not like Janet to be late.

‘Christ! If it’s not one of you, it’s the other. If she’s not in in the next five minutes you pair up with Pete and talk to this Mr Wesley.’

‘Yes, boss.’
Please, no!
Pete was okay, a steady copper, but not at all the same as working in harness with Janet.

Janet pitched up within the given time and Rachel said she’d meet her downstairs. She took the chance to make some calls. The pub opposite the crem was straightforward: they could do sandwiches, sausage rolls, tea and cake for five pounds a head. ‘Ten of us tops,’ Rachel said. Fifty quid the lot. She’d get back to them with a date.

The funeral parlour was more of a shock. ‘No, nothing fancy, just the basic package,’ Rachel said after she’d told the man it was her father and they wanted cremation. The man started wittering on about options until she interrupted him. ‘I don’t care if it’s chipboard with plastic handles. Just give me a price. Bottom line.’

How long before someone spotted a gap in the market for a budget service? Funerals 2 Go, Deaths R Us?’ She had heard of cardboard coffins but reckoned Alison wouldn’t like that notion. She was funny like that, wanted to be seen to be doing the right thing all the time as if the rest of Middleton were standing on the sidelines giving the Bailey family marks out of ten for style and execution. You could decorate the cardboard coffins, too. His could have been covered in bar mats, or painted like a giant Special Brew can or plastered with pages from the
Racing Times
.

‘In the region of two thousand pounds,’ the funeral director said.

‘Two grand!’
Jesus!
‘And that’s it, no VAT on top? Right. I’ll let you know later today.’

‘You lashing out?’ Janet must have caught the tail end of the conversation. Rachel’s mind scrabbled about, mouth open but no words coming out, and then she said, ‘New kitchen.’

Janet laughed. ‘What for? When do you ever cook? Can’t be that old anyway.’

‘Don’t like the colour. Just getting some estimates,’ Rachel said. ‘So we going or what?’

It was raining heavily, drumming on the roof of the car and streaming down the windscreen. Lorries sent up great waves of water and visibility was down to twenty yards, forcing traffic to a crawl.

Janet was at the wheel, had offered to drive. Rachel knew Janet still mistrusted her driving in anything but peachy conditions because Rachel liked to travel at a decent speed and because of a small incident when they first met and she had pursued a suspect’s vehicle with Janet in the passenger seat. Pranged the car . . . well, okay, rammed it then, but got her man, and Janet acted as though she had driven the wrong way down the M6 or something. So the downpour meant Janet would drive.

Rachel got a call from Alison, let it go to voicemail, then listened:
Dom can get a pass a week on Friday. I thought Friday would be better than Thursday.
Why the day of the week should make any difference Rachel didn’t know.
If that’s no good let me know. And I’ve been thinking, you know, I probably will say something, maybe a poem.
Good God, spare me, Rachel thought.

Janet glanced at her. Curious. Rachel put her phone away.

‘Did Gill seem a bit off to you?’ Janet said.

‘Yeah,’ Rachel said. ‘She was bitching even before she noticed you were late.’

‘Wonder what’s going on.’

‘Search me. I’m the last person who’d know.’

‘None of the lads say anything?’

‘No.’

‘Rachel . . .’ Janet said, and just the way she said it, slow, as if she was broaching something, put Rachel on alert, ‘you thought any more about seeing someone, talking it through?’

For one God-awful moment Rachel thought Janet had found out about her dad, and all the associated crap – broken home, hand to mouth, sink estate, brother inside – and then it struck her that Janet was on about Nick, about the great betrayal.

‘No, I’m fine,’ she said.

‘You’re spooked,’ Janet said. ‘Yesterday you practically hit the ground, and it’s not the first time either. You having flashbacks, trouble sleeping?’

‘Now you’re a shrink,’ Rachel said.

‘I’m just saying—’

‘I don’t need counselling. You didn’t have any and you got a lot closer to the pearly gates than I did.’
The terror when Janet had screamed down the phone, the race to reach her, Janet clutching her belly, blood everywhere.

‘That’s different,’ Janet said.

‘How?’

‘That was business. Yours was personal.’

‘No.’ Rachel tried to dismiss the distinction. ‘You’re talking shite, Janet.’

Janet sighed, said, emphatically, ‘I wasn’t in love with Geoff Hastings.’

‘Not even the tiniest bit?’ Rachel joked. Hastings was a slimy tosspot, something deeply creepy in his poor-quiet-little-me act. And that something was a deranged serial killer.

Janet laughed but wouldn’t be put off, which annoyed the hell out of Rachel. ‘Rachel, he was your boyfriend and what
he did was unforgivable. It’s too big to deal with on your own. Counselling’s not an admission of weakness. And in the long run—’

‘I’m fine,’ Rachel said firmly. ‘Leave it.’

‘Really?’ Janet said hotly. ‘No nightmares, no flashbacks, no overwhelming emotions . . .’ ticking off Rachel’s symptoms as if she’d been given a list, ‘sudden rages, tears, nausea? If you don’t address it—’

‘Just knock it on the head, will you? I’m okay and coming from you this is a bit rich.’

‘How do you make that out?’ Janet said, affronted. ‘I’ve told you Geoff Hastings is a stone cold killer and I’m going to get my chance to nail him. Not just for what he did to me,’ Janet was suddenly shouting, red-faced, and Rachel was freaked, ‘and for what he nearly did to my kids, but for all those others.’

There was a pause, the shush of the rain quiet after Janet’s outburst.

‘Sudden overwhelming emotions?’ Rachel said.

‘Sod off.’

‘All I’m saying is you’re off colour and pretending everything’s fine. I’m not the only one.’

‘Ah, so you are struggling,’ Janet said triumphantly.

‘No, I’m not,’ Rachel said. ‘Pull in at the services.’

‘Why?’

‘Comfort break. Cigarette. Calm my shattered nerves.’

Janet mouthed
fuck off
but there was a smile tugging at her mouth which meant things were okay again. For now.

They met the local officers at the mobile incident van now parked up at Gallows Wood, where teams were continuing the search. Janet introduced herself and Rachel. ‘Found anything?’ she asked, but the officer in charge shook his head. He
confirmed that the address for the stolen car was a mile and a half along the road to the north.

‘That’s the direction the dog went in yesterday,’ Rachel said.

‘Think it through,’ Janet said. ‘You’ve two kids and a car, you want another car, what d’you do? Lug the kids with you to steal the car and risk it going pear shaped? Then you’ve two kids hampering a quick getaway. I don’t think so. I think it makes more sense to leave the kids in your car, lock them in and go off and try to nick another vehicle. If that’s a success you can just drive back and pick up the kids.’

‘He’d walk it from here in half an hour,’ Rachel said. ‘Less if he shifted it.’

‘Do we know when the car went missing?’ Janet said.

‘No,’ one of the uniformed officers told them. ‘I’ll take you down there now. You’ll want to speak to the owner in person?’

Mr Wesley was mid to late sixties, Janet estimated. A fact confirmed when he gave his full name and date of birth as 1946. Mr Wesley had been working in London the previous day. He was a computer programmer who worked from home so he could care for his disabled wife. Once a month he attended meetings at head office, using a taxi to and from the main railway station in Wigan, nine miles to the east.

The house was a low-roofed cottage, three knocked into one he told them, with a car port at the left reached by the side door. The front door was in the centre of the building and as Mr Wesley had returned home by taxi, in the dark, he had entered by the front door so was unable to tell them when his car had been taken. He only noticed it was no longer parked in its allotted space under the canopy when he glanced out of the window in the side door this morning while making breakfast. Mrs Wesley had heard nothing.

Glass on the driveway showed that whoever had stolen the car had smashed a window to get into the vehicle.

‘Are your keys accounted for?’ Janet asked him.

‘Yes, both sets.’

‘Any security devices in the car? Crook lock? Immobilizer? Alarm?’

Mr Wesley shook his head.

‘He worked for his father as a mechanic,’ Rachel said of Cottam. ‘He’d have no problem starting the car.’

‘How much petrol was in it?’ Janet asked.

‘Not very much at all. I was planning to put some in at the weekend.’

‘How far would it have taken you?’ Janet said.

‘Perhaps thirty miles or so. It was low.’

Janet looked about at the stone walls and the carefully trimmed conifer hedging. After the incident at the petrol station Janet couldn’t imagine Cottam would want to fill up a new vehicle. But he couldn’t travel very far unless he did. Was his journey almost over, or was the new car a stop-gap until he found something better? It certainly wouldn’t serve him long now the description and registration number had been circulated to all the neighbouring forces. And with ANPR and CCTV, a car was a lot easier to find than a person. When they did, would Cottam be the one driving it?

The search dogs unit arrived then. Gareth, the handler, said there could be a problem because of the rain. ‘Washes the scent away, see?’ Janet and Rachel watched while he put the dog through her paces. Giving her a T-shirt of Cottam’s to smell, brought from the laundry basket in his bedroom at the inn, before letting her off the lead. The dog ran along the edge of the road, head dipping this way and that, nose close to the ground. She went straight to the main entrance to the cottage then doubled back and went up the side of the
house. Under the car port she barked loudly and sat to attention.

‘That’ll be a yes, then,’ Rachel said.

‘Sheltered here, see,’ Gareth said, stroking the dog and shaking the ruff of her neck. ‘Stronger scent.’

Rachel gave a nod to Janet, a smile on her face, happy that they’d got a firm lead.

They waited while Mr Wesley made a list of items that were left in the car, everything from a road atlas and torch to CDs, screen wash and motor oil, tartan picnic blanket, wellies and a cotton sun hat. Where would Cottam go, Janet wondered for the umpteenth time. None of the locations familiar to Cottam were near here. But surely if you were looking to end it all you’d go somewhere familiar, somewhere you knew suited your purposes.

The day had not started well for Gill. She had risen at five thirty. She always was an early riser but today anticipated the alarm, switching it off. Chris stirred as she got up and she put out a hand to cup his shoulder. ‘Stay there,’ she whispered.

By the time she had showered any remnants of sleepiness had gone and she was feeling more ready to meet the day, buoyed up by the pleasure of Chris’s visit: the food, the sex, the intimacy. The fact that he’d chosen to snatch a few hours with her rather than jet off to some island paradise made her glow with pleasure. They spent so little time together, his job even more impossibly antisocial than hers, and she’d worried that the whole thing would peter out, never really get off the ground. She’d almost resigned herself to that and had decided to be philosophical, take what she could while it was on offer. But Chris seemed ever more interested, eager to carve out opportunities to meet, always talking about things they should do together, see together, places he’d like to visit with
her. Likelihood was one of them would have to stop work to make even a fraction of it happen. And she was a helluva lot closer to retirement then he was. She found her thoughts running on and yanked them back. Live in the present. Or maybe dwell on last night instead, and the way he’d made love to her.