Gregory's Game (13 page)

Naomi laughed. ‘And I should tell you, because …? No, forget that, silly question.' She'd tell him because she owed him, Naomi knew that.

‘She's good,' she said reluctantly. ‘Thorough, efficient and imaginative and that often tips things. She can put herself in the position of the victim, the perpetrator, imagine what they would do. She's very young for a DI and she's very new, only got the promotion about eight months or so ago, but from what you're telling me, she's the least of your worries.'

‘Why?'

‘Because she'll be sidelined. This is too big for the locals to handle. Her superiors will already be creating a Major Incident Team. They'll pull in experts from wherever they need them. Tess will still work the case, but she won't be the senior investigating officer; she just doesn't have the experience or the clout.'

‘We thought that might be the case.' Gregory said. ‘But she'll still know what's going on.'

‘And she still won't tell me.'

‘But she might talk to Alec? You said they were friendly?'

Naomi groaned. ‘Gregory, what do you want from me? Look, they are friends, once they were even close friends, but she won't divulge—'

‘Not even if he's involved.'

‘Involved? How? What do you mean?'

‘Naomi, she's looking for Nathan; she's already spoken to Annie Raven; she'll dig and dig deep and it won't take long before Clay's name comes up, before Alec's name comes up. True, he was peripheral, but he was still involved; his aunt was still involved.'

Damn Molly Chambers, Naomi thought.

‘She'll see him as a source, an opportunity …'

‘And you want to do the same,' Naomi said flatly.

‘We all want the same thing,' Gregory said. ‘To get Katherine Marsh and her kid back safely.'

‘And the likelihood of that is …?'

‘We believe it's still possible. A dead wife and murdered kid aren't such good leverage as a wife and kid you can hurt and maim. The dead don't suffer.'

Naomi felt the chill of his words penetrate. ‘That's awfully close to emotional blackmail,' she said.

She sensed him shrug his shoulders. ‘Whatever it takes,' Gregory said.

By the time Alec returned home, Naomi had made up her mind. She would help if she could, but there was no way she was going to force Alec's involvement in anything. If Tess made the connection and came asking questions, then so be it, but she'd had enough of the worry, the danger, the violence that people like Gregory brought with them.

At least, that's what she told herself.

But the ghosts of her past crowded around her after Gregory had left. Her best friend from childhood, taken and murdered; those she had encountered in her working life whose lost voices and lost lives called out to her. Those dead and wounded she had adopted on behalf of others.

‘Those we have lost are the ones who shape our lives the most,' Molly Chambers had once told her. ‘They make us fearful and they fill us with courage because we know what we have already faced and therefore what we can face again.'

About that, Naomi was not so sure, but then Alec's adopted aunt was a tough old bird. Tough and brave and compassionate and Naomi knew she would have no hesitation. For Molly there would be no debate. Gregory would ask and she would help in any way she could, no matter what the potential cost.

‘Well I'm not Molly Bloody Chambers, am I?' Naomi stated angrily. Her voice seemed to bounce around the empty room and Napoleon came over to her and laid his head against her knee. She stroked him, absently, her mind drifting.

They'll be so scared, Naomi thought, and she knew then that any resolution made would just fall apart when it came down to it. She could not just stand aside if there was a way of helping to find Katherine and her baby girl and she wasn't much bothered which side of the law that involved.

‘S
o, what do we have?' Nathan said.

‘Resource wise, not a lot. We can access computer equipment and there are about half a dozen people I figure might help out at short notice. But you say you don't want anyone involved … Nathan, the two of us can only do so much.'

Nathan paced, his forehead deeply furrowed. ‘We have to assume that we can't trust anyone,' he said. ‘That everything is compromised.'

‘You're trusting me,' Gregory pointed out. ‘A lot of people would think you are off your head for doing that. And you can trust Annie.'

‘No, leave Annie out of this. I've almost got Bob killed once; I'm not about to risk that again.'

‘As I remember it, that wasn't exactly your fault, and besides, that's for her to decide, not you.'

Nathan waved his words away.

‘I still have contacts,' Gregory said. ‘So do you. Anything we get we treat with extreme prejudice, check it out before we move, but like I say, we can't cover the ground alone.'

Nathan dropped into the old armchair beside the bed. They were using one of the old safe houses Clay's organization had set up. Only a handful of people had ever known of its existence and most of them were now dead. Even so, Gregory knew they couldn't risk staying here for long. There were still threads linking this place back to other times and other actions and spider-web thin though they were, he and Nathan now both had a price on their heads and it wasn't just the authorities that were after them. The police didn't bother Gregory; at most he viewed them as an inconvenience. But having allied himself with Nathan, Gregory had become a target; the big question was, who were the potential shooters?

As though reading his thoughts, Nathan said, ‘I have no claim on you. If you upped and left, I'd not hold it against you.'

‘I know. But that's not what I do.'

Nathan nodded and Gregory knew it would not be mentioned again. Gregory had made his decision. ‘The woman in the photographs you were sent,' he said. ‘That's all we've got so far. We start with her and work back to the source. Someone's leaving you a trail. The question is, who? And are they friend or enemy or something in between? Or just shit stirring?'

Nathan smiled. ‘There's a hell of a lot of shit to stir,' he agreed. ‘But you're right; we start with Michelle Williamson, or Mae Tourino or whatever she's calling herself now, start with what we know and who might have sent those pictures to me and what they are trying to tell me.'

‘Pity they couldn't have included a note,' Gregory said. ‘I hate bloody cryptic clues.' He picked up his coat and started for the door. ‘We need food,' he said, ‘and I want to get a look at the newspapers and I'll pick us up a laptop and a wi-fi dongle. I can't be doing with those little phone screens.' He paused and turned. ‘Incidentally, whose picture did Annie give them?'

‘Mine,' Nathan said.

‘What? For real?'

‘It was the wisest move,' Nathan said. ‘Why aggravate the situation? Ian Marsh has pictures of me, so do half a dozen other people. Usually I'm off in the crowd somewhere, but remember, I've got a respectable side, Gregory. I live my life in plain sight most of the time.'

Gregory nodded briefly and then left. He often forgot that about Nathan and Annie, that they had public faces. He was so used to being the invisible man that it was an odd thought to be otherwise. He closed the door quietly and stood in the dark outside of the little cottage. The curtains had been drawn and no light escaped from the blackout linings. From the air, it would be possible to pick up an infrared signature that would define the cottage as being warmer than the surrounding air, but nothing would be visible from the ground unless you got up really close and it was so remote, up the winding little lane, that few would come anywhere near. The farm a couple of miles distant might realize someone was in residence, but it was understood that there were always people mad enough to holiday there, even late in the season.

Even so, Gregory was uneasy. The threads were there. Once upon a time this had been a safe house for other organizations; anyone digging might just find a reference to it. Or was that being paranoid?

Gregory got into the car and started the engine. It seemed far too loud in the twilight silence. Had he always been paranoid, Gregory wondered, and then knew the answer to that was probably yes. He also knew that paranoia was what had kept him alive this far, and he was not about to drop the habit any time soon.

Two things really bothered him and he felt they were starting to bother Nathan too. He hoped so, but realized that the young man was presently too personally embroiled to have the perspective Gregory would normally have expected. One thing that was niggling at Gregory was the photograph. Who had sent it and why? On its own, Gregory might have dismissed it as just one of the random bits of intel that fed back from informants all the time. Someone saw someone, noticed something unusual, remembered something and they forwarded it on. But then the same woman had been referenced in the kidnapping. The little slip of paper left beside the photograph of Kat and Desiree.

Gregory didn't like it. To his eyes, it was almost like overkill; someone was ensuring Nathan would see the right clues, take note of the right scraps of information. And Nathan was emotionally entrapped enough that it was working.

Someone knew all the right buttons to press and was currently pressing them all at once.

He drove slowly towards the main road, pausing at the junction. The road was clear; empty at this time of night. He wondered where he'd manage to find a takeaway at this time of night and in such a godforsaken spot. Turned left, just because.

Nathan, Gregory decided, was in no fit state to be playing this particular game. Had he been in a combat situation, Gregory would have sent the younger man back, well behind the lines, authorized some compulsory R & R, while those with clearer, more detached heads sorted the problem. But he didn't have that luxury right now. Nathan was right at the heart of the situation – involved, emotional, unreliable – and Gregory would have to compensate for that, create his own game plan and focus on harm minimization, not just for the victims but also for the operatives.

Having made up his mind, Gregory felt better. He'd raise his suspicions with Nathan, of course, and he felt certain that Nathan would agree with him; that it all looked too easy, too suspicious. But Gregory was also aware that reason would not be Nathan's greatest strength right now and no matter how much he agreed that Gregory was right, it might not be a consideration when it came to play.

Gregory shrugged. That was fine. He could compensate. He'd been doing this sort of thing forever. His mind wandered back to his dream. Not to the bodies in the room now, but to that moment when he had lain on that thyme-fragrant hill and had been momentarily distracted by the hawk as it began to swoop.

It had been the blink of an eye, less than a heartbeat, but still too much; still too long.

‘Focus,' Gregory said. ‘One of us has to keep the goal in focus. Otherwise, the way I figure it, we'll all end up bloody dead.'

B
eyond all expectation, Kat had fallen asleep. She woke when the door opened again and something was dropped on to the floor. By the time she'd moved, the door had closed.

Kat stared at the bag that had landed close to her mattress. It was a standard black dustbin bag, knotted at the neck. In the dim light shed by the lantern, it was impossible to make out more.

Beside her, Desi snuffled and showed signs of waking up. Kat pulled the other blanket over her and went to investigate. Inside there was bottled water, food, disposable nappies. Pyjamas for the child.

Kat picked up the lantern and searched for the door. She could just discern the outline, black against black, but there was no handle, no means of opening, no sign of a lock. She clawed at the edge, but there was nothing to get hold of and reason told her it would be fastened tight from the outside anyway. Glancing back at Desiree, horribly aware that the child would be left in darkness if she moved far from the mattress, Kat stepped cautiously past the door and along the walls, again trying to define the edges of this new world. In the corner of the room was a chemical toilet and she thought she felt a flow of air from somewhere above her head, but could not be sure.

At least, she thought, whoever was holding her and her baby, they weren't planning on starving them and she didn't have to pee on the floor or in a bucket.

Why the hell, she wondered next, was that so important? But somehow it was. She had to look for hopeful signs, had to be convinced that they would get out of here, alive and unharmed. Had to stay strong. Ian would have realized they weren't home; he'd have raised the alarm. People would be looking for them. She tried not to think that Ian wouldn't even know where to start looking; no one would.

Desi started to cry, a thin pained wail that had Kat flying to her side. She grasped the child close, rocking her gently. Desi was wet and her nappy was also soiled.

Kat felt in the plastic bag and found the nappies and, to her relief, a pack of wet wipes. She cleaned her child up and changed her, discarding the wet tights and the dress. Desi had vomited, she now realized. It horrified Kat to think that her child might have choked on her own vomit, been unconscious and unable to turn her head or sit up.

The anger somehow made her feel better, for a brief moment. The reality crashed in on her again. Where were they? How long was the food meant to last for? Had they been left alone in this place? The thought of that scared her almost more than the idea that someone was watching, spying on them. The men who had grabbed her and manhandled them both. Drugged them and brought them to this cell.

She looked at the food in the bag. Sandwiches, some fruit, some chocolate bars. Water. When would they be fed again?

‘Okay.' Kat breathed. She had to think, she had to be ready, she had to listen and try and work out a pattern, should anyone come back and open the door again. She had to try and work out where that voice had come from and if the little draft she thought she had felt was real or just imagined.