Gatecrasher (20 page)

He started through to the kitchen where Sarah had begun to unpack the shopping. She straightened quickly and looked tense.

‘Plenty of food,’ he said.

Sarah blushed slightly and turned away.
Campbell
frowned and started to wonder if he was just being paranoid.

‘Hope you’re hungry.’

‘I hope so too. Wouldn’t want this to go to waste.’

Sarah turned and looked at him again. She opened her mouth and then closed it.
Campbell
looked at her for a moment and decided that he wasn’t being paranoid. Before he could speak she did.

‘I, uh, don’t suppose you really have anything to do this evening… I thought that I might keep you company for a bit.’

Campbell
noticed that as she spoke she seemed to draw herself up again, to dispel the nerves and awkwardness that he’d seen there before and now looked full of the calm self-assurance that seemed so much a part of her.

‘I got enough for two…’ she said with a shrug as if that settled it, she might as well stay now.

‘Well I hadn’t really got round to making plans yet,’ he replied with a hint of a smile.

‘Don’t over do it will you? I could go if you’d rather…’

‘No, no. I’m kidding Sarah… That’s very kind of you. Thank you.’

There was a moment of silence that was broken by Sarah busying herself with the groceries, rustling bags and tossing things into the refrigerator.

‘Oh I put the boiler on when I left so there should be hot water.’

‘OK. Great.’

‘I thought you could use a shower or a bath or something,’ she added by way of an explanation.

Suddenly
Campbell
could think of nothing else in the whole world that he would rather do to soothe the aches and pains that seemed to cover him from his head down through to his feet. He thanked her again and turned and made for the stairs, grabbing his bag on the way through where he had had the presence of mind that morning to throw in a few toiletries.

He drew a hot bath and sank slowly into it, the water stinging the more tender bruising on his ribs and the graze on his knee that he had noticed that morning and one on his elbow that he hadn’t. He must have picked those up sprawling across the tube platform.

With weary surprise he noted that had only been around twelve hours beforehand. How much had happened in so short a period?
Campbell
could barely take it in even now. When he had recounted things to Sarah it didn't seem as if this had all started only five days previously. It had taken almost no time at all to have come so far, for his life to unravel so completely. How long would it be before he could get back to normal he wondered. More to the point, was that even likely?

He closed his eyes and slid right under the water for a moment pushing away the thoughts and the pain and just trying to relax. The hot water gradually began to do its work and the aching started slowly to subside.

In thirty minutes he was back in the living room where Sarah was looking through a newspaper at the table. She looked up as he walked in.

‘Better?’

He nodded. ‘Yes thanks. Much.’

‘You look better.’

‘I needed that.’

‘Dinner’s cooking. Hungry?’

‘I should be,
’ he said. ‘But I don’t feel that hungry really. Sorry.’

Sarah looked a little disappointed but did well to hide it. ‘Well it will be ready in about half an hour anyway. Maybe you’ll have an appetite then.’

Campbell
felt stupid all of a sudden. She had gone well out of her way for him already and didn’t need to be here at all, let alone making him dinner. The least he could do was feign enthusiasm, even if he didn’t actually feel it.

He opted to say nothing else rather than risk making it worse and he moved to the sofa and sat down quietly and closed his eyes.

For ten minutes neither said a word. Sarah read the paper and Campbell sat wondering whether he should make polite conversation but then stopped himself, worried that she would think he was doing it just to make up for the previous comment.

Finally Sarah closed the paper and turned in her chair. ‘So. What’s on your mind? You’re very quiet. Still a bit shaken up I guess?’

‘A bit, yeah,’ he replied but he couldn’t hide the distance in his eyes. He wasn’t sure about telling her what he had been looking at whilst she had gone out before he fell asleep.

‘Something else?’

Campbell
was staring into space across the room. He nodded vaguely.

‘Something important?’

He nodded again. ‘Think so.’

‘Come on Daniel, what’s up? Tell me.’

He ran his hands over his face and inhaled deeply. ‘I think…’ he started. ‘I think I know who’s behind all this. And why.’

Thursday
.
11pm
.

She could see little through the window of the bus as it swept through the wet
London
night but she stared at the glass all the same, determined to avoid eye contact with the drunk young men who sat nearby and stared over regularly looking for an excuse to speak to her.

Normally she would take a cab, but cabs were hard to find on a wet night and she wasn’t too far from home and anyway, until the last stop she had been sat with two friends. Now she was alone and trying hard to look preoccupied and unapproachable and she wished away the five minutes until it was her stop.

Her flatmate would probably be up and was a nice enough guy that he would come and meet her at the bus stop if she rang and asked him to. She toyed with the idea but watching the rain sheet down against the tarmac she decided not to be so cruel to drag him out in this. It wasn’t a long walk. It wasn’t that late.

A red haired young man that she guessed was barely out of his teens and certainly not in her league stood and took a step toward her but the bus rounded a corner fast and hard and he lost his footing and stumbled awkwardly to the noisy delight of his friends.

It didn’t put him off though and he walked over to her and asked if he could sit next to her. She shrugged and then regretted not saying no.

‘What’s your name?’ he slurred.

‘Sorry?’ she replied turning to him. He wasn’t attractive and the effect of alcohol did nothing to help that as his eyelids drooped and his mouth hung open.

‘Your name love.’

‘Well its not love for a start,
’ she said flatly.

‘Could
be if you give it a chance,
’ he replied and grinned.

She bit back a laugh. That had amused her but there was no good reason to encourage this and she
turned away from him. ‘Doubtful,
’ she said.

‘Eh, come on.
I’m just trying to be friendly,
’ he kept on, his words slurring.

‘Thanks. But we don’t even know each other.’

‘We can soon put that right.’

She looked him in the eye for a moment and her silence and expression said most of what she wanted it to but she spoke as well, just to make sure. ‘No. We can’t.’

He looked at her for a moment, no quick response this time.

‘Ple
ase, I get off at the next stop,
’ she said politely and her tone made it clear that the conversation was over and that he had been let off without humiliation in front of his watching friends.

‘Well
it was nice to meet you anyway,
he smiled sheepishly and stood.

Smiling to herself she turned back to the window and noticed that she was near her stop now and she stood and made her way along the aisle to the stairs.

‘See you later gorgeous,
’ the redhead called out and she flashed him a quick smile from the top of the steps before dropping from sight and bouncing off the bus.

The rain had begun to fall more heavily now, plump drops of cold water splashed down on her and she pulled the compact umbrella from her bag and opened it quickly before she started walking.

The street was well lit and lined with shops, most of which were shielded now behind metal barriers drawn down at closing time. Some were still open and shone bright neon across the wet pavement which reflected the light back up from beneath her feet. Off-licences and all night convenience stores and take-away shops manned by dark skinned men and the smell of frying onions and cooked meat mingled with the pungent scent of the display of fresh vegetables outside one shop with a sign in Turkish above the door.

Few cars rolled past at this time but the noisy hiss of tires on wet tarmac was still pervasive and she looked up to see if there might be one with a large orange light on the top. It was only a five-minute walk to her flat but this weather was disgusting.

Another burst of wind and cold rain pushed itself under her umbrella as she surveyed the street and she dropped it back down against the oncoming bluster and picked up her pace.

Soon she had turned off this road and
into more residential one; fewer lights
here, more shadows. The wind barrelled down at her along the high narrow channel created by the terraced houses on each side and she dropped the umbrella lower again and kept on, pushing against the wind.

From behind, a car slid past and the horn sounded a short sharp blast and three young men whooped and wolf-whistled at her through the window. She ignored them and breathed deeply trying to settle the surge of adrenaline in her chest that the shock had brought. Wankers, she thought as the car rounded the corner at the end of the street ahead of her.

She didn’t really hear the sound of a car door opening then. The footsteps she heard were just footsteps and though on edge she wasn’t about to jump at every sound she heard and start imagining rapists and killers out of the shadows.

She definitely felt the thick arm wrap around her chest though and the big hand close solidly over her mouth before any sound could escape. And she certainly felt the ground disappear from beneath her feet as she was plucked from the pavement and stuffed into the black back seat of the car.

Her face was pressed into the stale smelling fabric of the seat and the crushing weight of the body on top of her pinned her utterly motionless where she lay. The adrenaline already in her veins served only to heighten the rising, suffocating panic she felt as the engine tone rose and the car began to move.

Somewhere, less than a mile away through the rain, a phone would soon ring in George Gresham’s home. He would be told, as he tried to blink away the sleep from his eyes, that his debt would be paid and that to make sure he was adequately motivated he would not be hearing from his only daughter for some time since she would be unable to speak properly through the rag in her mouth.

Thursday
.
11.30pm
.

The fire was dying now and there were only two small logs in the basket, hot orange embers glowing in the grate. The two of them shared a sofa,
Camp
b
ell
sunk low in the corner against the arm with his legs thrust out across the rug toward the hearth. Sarah sat at the other end with her legs curled up beneath her and a glass in her hand. Her hair was tied back into a ponytail and she wore jeans and a white scoop-necked t-shirt.

Outside, the blustery afternoon had worsened into a stormy evening. They had listened as the wind picked up and the rain went from a pattering on the windows to a rattle against the glass to a full-blown hammering on the roof tiles above them. The wind whistled loudly and the windows and doors rumbled every so often as they shook in their frames.

The wine and the food had relaxed them both immensely and
Campbell
drew himself up to place the last logs onto the fire. He arranged the wood on the embers and shifted them with the poker to let air in underneath until the flames were jumping up beneath the logs. He stood, slowly and stiffly and moved back to the sofa where Sarah sat staring into space.

‘How the hell are you going to pull this off then? I mean, how are you going to get hold of a senior member of HM government? You don’t just pop in to the office in
Whitehall
and ask if he can spare five minutes.’

Campbell
looked back at her for a long moment. ‘I realise that
,
’ he said.

‘And what are you going to say? How on earth are you going to make him listen to you or even believe you?’

‘I know Sarah,
’ he said running a hand through his short hair and shaking his head. ‘I know. Its impossible. I don’t even have any proof really, just a lot of connections. Some of them pretty tenuous at that. I just have no idea. Need to think this through.’