Relentless (32 page)

'I know that, but there's nothing I can do about it. I've
explained the situation.'
Bolt knew there was no point arguing. 'If that's how you want
it,' he said, picking up the coffee.
Evans's mobile rang. 'Excuse me,' he said, looking vaguely
embarrassed.
He was on the phone for maybe a minute, no more. During
that time his expression became progressively more concerned,
and the lines on his face deepened. 'Are you sure?' he asked
once. Then he sighed, cursed, and ended the call.
'What's happening?' asked Bolt, intrigued.

Evans got to his feet. He looked worried and just a little
unsure of himself.
'We've got a situation,' he said. 'A potentially serious one.'

53

DCI Rory Caplin's revelation about Kathy, the latest in a long
line, was the final straw for me. What next? I thought. The news
that she'd been bankrolling al-Qaeda for the past ten years?
That she was hiding Nazi war criminals? For one of the few
times in my life I was shocked into absolute silence.
'I'm sorry,' declared Caplin as we drove through Reading's
deserted town centre in the direction of the M4. 'I suppose you
would have found out sooner or later, but it might have been
easier once you'd recovered from everything else.'

I stared out of the passenger window as we passed the drab,
redbrick Huntley and Palmers biscuit building. The sight of it
seemed to suit my mood.
'You said you discovered correspondence at Vanessa Blake's
house.'
'That's right.'
'What kind of correspondence?'
'Among other things a joint mortgage application in both their
names, which they'd both signed. We checked the signatures.
They were genuine. There were other bits and pieces as well.
Photographs of them together. One or two of them, er . . .' He
cleared his throat for maximum effect. 'Intimate.'
'All right, all right, I get the picture.'
But I didn't. I didn't get the picture at all. I thought that Kathy
had been in love with Jack Calley. That's what she'd admitted to
me the previous night. Their relationship had been so intimate
that he'd entrusted her with that fateful key. She'd even wept
over his passing. But had she? Maybe she'd been weeping not
for Jack but for Vanessa. Maybe she hadn't even been seeing
Jack. The only confirmation I had that she had been was what
she'd told me, but it could just as easily have been a lie. In the
end, it was impossible to know what to believe.
All I knew for certain was that I needed to see my kids, kiss
them both, and then go to sleep for twelve hours. And maybe,
just maybe, I'd feel a lot better about everything when I woke
up.
An unwelcome image of Kathy and Vanessa in bed together
crossed my mind, slowed down and stayed where it was. Vanessa
had never been my cup of tea. Knowing that she couldn't stand
me and wouldn't touch a man if her life depended on it had seen
to that; but in fairness she wasn't unattractive, and unwelcome

or not, for a few moments I couldn't get the sight of the two of
them naked out of my mind.
Shaking my head at the baseness of my instincts, I turned to
Caplin. I wondered if he and his colleagues had had a laugh
about my wife's extra-curricular activities. I suspected that they
had, and felt vaguely embarrassed that I was going to be stuck in
the car with him all the way back to London.
'Have you got a cigarette?' I asked.
'I didn't think you smoked,' he answered, reaching into the
waist pocket of his leather jacket and pulling out a crumpled
pack of Rothmans and a lighter. He pushed them in my direction,
asking me to light one for both of us.
I did, and handed his back to him. He put it to his mouth and
took a long, tight drag that seemed to hollow his cheeks. At the
same time, his jacket sleeve rode up, revealing a thick white
bandage, yellowing in places and still flecked with vivid droplets
of blood, wound around his wrist.
That bandage hadn't been there yesterday afternoon in the
interrogation room.
Caplin moved the cigarette away from his lips. He winced
slightly as if he'd been stung, then, as casually as possible, rested
his hand on his thigh. The sleeve rode back down. I stared at it
for several seconds before looking away. My chest felt tight as
the adrenalin began to kick in.
We came to a set of red lights. There were two cars queueing
in front of us. Caplin dragged again on the cigarette and put his
hand on the wheel. The sleeve rode up for a second time.

The bandage had darkened on one edge.
Drip.
A perfectly rounded droplet of blood fell down from it and landed on his jeans. He looked down at it. So did I. Then we

both looked up and our eyes met. And I knew without a doubt
that he'd been the man Kathy had cut with the kitchen knife at
the holiday cottage last night.
And that was the moment the whole thing came together.
Suddenly I knew who'd killed Vanessa Blake, who'd attacked
me in the library, and very possibly who'd been involved in the
kidnapping of my children.
But it was too late, because the fact that he also knew that I
knew all this was now written all over his face.
Drip. A second drop of blood fell onto his jeans. Once again
we both watched its descent through the stale, smoky air of the
Toyota. Ahead of us, the lights turned green and the first car
pulled away.
I went for the door. Fast, the cigarette falling from my hand.
But not fast enough. He clicked on the central locking and I found myself pulling uselessly at the handle. The car in front of
us moved forward. I turned back towards him and saw that he'd
shoved the cigarette into his mouth and was going for something
in his inside pocket. I'd been through enough to know what it
was going to be. I'd also been through enough to know that I
had to react. So, as he pulled the pistol free, I punched him in
the side of the face with one hand and grabbed his injured wrist
- the one holding the gun - with the other, squeezing with as much force as I could muster.
He let out a squawk of pain and the gun went off with a
deafening blast, putting a hole in the middle of the windscreen.
He reached round with his other arm to land a punch on me
but I didn't give him a chance, hitting him again with an uppercut,
this time in the jaw. His head was knocked to one side,
and he cursed loudly. I punched him a third time, pressing my
advantage, feeling a terrible elation, wanting to knock the living

shit out of the bastard who'd sat interrogating me less than
twenty-four hours ago, even playing the role of good cop, while
all the time knowing that I was completely innocent. I imagined
him taking my kids from Irene's house, and that really got me. I
grabbed at his hair and gave it a vicious tug, then tried to slam
his head into the window, but this time I over-reached myself,
and I wasn't prepared for the way he lurched forward in the seat
and drove his gun arm round in a sudden movement that caught
me off guard.
The gun went off again, and this time I felt the rush of air as
the bullet tore past my face, breaking the window behind me.
The noise was deafening, the smell of cordite intense. My cheek
stung where it had been burned by gunpowder residue. I was
thrown off balance. This time Caplin punched me and the blow
sent my head flying back into the broken passenger window.
Instinctively I relaxed my grip on his gun arm and he jerked his
hand away, freeing it.
The driver in the car behind us, clearly a brave man, tooted his
horn, leaning on it for a good five seconds. At the same time I
blinked against the pain of the blow and saw that Caplin's gun
was now pointed at my midriff. Strangely, I didn't feel any fear,
just a sense of resigned weariness. I no longer had any energy
left to fight. If it was time to die, then so be it.
'You fucking idiot,' he said contemptuously. 'You never know
when to stop, do you?'
'Were you lying about Kathy?' I asked. 'Her affair?'

The guy behind us, who was either very shortsighted or
suicidal, blasted away on the horn again.
Caplin looked at me as though I was mad to ask this question
at such a fateful point in my life. 'No,' he answered. 'I wasn't.'
Then he did a strange thing. He apologized. 'I never wanted to

get your kids involved. You've got to know that. I don't hurt
kids.'
I wasn't sure what to say. Instead, I looked at the gun, which
was still pointed at my midriff. In the end I settled for a heartfelt
plea: 'Don't shoot me.'
'I'm not going to,' he said. Almost to himself, he added,
'Christ, why the fuck did I offer you a lift?'
Then, turning the gun round, he put it in his mouth and pulled
the trigger.

54

'So, where am I taking you to?' he asked.

I had to think about it for a moment. 'Home,' I said, but I
wasn't really sure that it was any more. I asked him if he knew
how to get there.
Bolt nodded, and opened the driver's-side door. 'I was there
last night.'
'Is the place OK? Someone, one of Lench's people, broke in
yesterday afternoon. I saw him inside.'
'It's secure,' he answered, getting in. 'They've had a police
guard on it.'
I got in the other side and he switched on the engine. The
clock on the dashboard said 14.35. As I fastened my seatbelt,
Bolt drove out of the car park and through Hambleden village.
There were more people around than earlier - talking in small

groups, some on doorsteps - and two uniformed police officers
were speaking to someone outside the pub. There'd been a lot of
drama here this morning. You don't expect a gun battle in a
picturesque village, but then things seemed to be changing a lot
these days.
I asked if he minded if I smoked. I'd been given a pack of
Benson and Hedges earlier by a sympathetic detective when I'd
been taken back to the station after the incident with Caplin, and I now found that I was desperate to have another. A bad sign.
Bolt gave me a mildly disapproving sideways look, and sighed.
'I guess after all you've been through it'd be a little bit cruel not
to let you. Can you open the window, though?'
I did as he asked and lit up, taking a long draw. It tasted good,
but I noticed that my hands were still shaking a little. It had
been a long twenty-four hours. They'd released Kathy on unconditional
bail, and without charge, an hour earlier and she'd
driven her car back to London to get the children, telling me
that I could come back to the house later. She'd looked pale and
drawn, the shock of the deaths of her mother and two lovers
carved deep into her face, but remained remarkably lucid and
calm. She hadn't explained herself, just given me a small nod to acknowledge my hurt before turning away with her solicitor in
tow.
I'd had to stay behind to answer questions relating to the
death of DCI Caplin, and had given a lengthy statement. There
was a sense of shock among the officers questioning me that one
of their own could have been involved in the bloody events that
had started a day earlier. This shock had become pronounced
when I'd suggested that I thought Caplin's colleague, DC Ben
Sullivan, might also be involved. It struck me in the midst of my
confrontation with the DCI that Sullivan matched the height and

build of the man who'd attacked me in the library, and who'd
appeared at the holiday cottage the previous night with Lench,
Mantani and Caplin. I didn't know whether anyone had been
sent to interview or arrest him, so I asked Bolt.
'I wouldn't know,' he told me. 'I've been suspended.'
'I'm sorry about that,' I said, and I genuinely was. I owed Bolt
a huge favour, and in the end, suspended or not, he was the only
man I actually trusted to drive me back to London on the second
attempt. The Reading police hadn't been too happy about this,
but I'd insisted, and they'd given us both a lift back to his car in
Hambleden.
I took another draw on the cigarette. I felt like talking. 'You
know, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do now that me
and Kathy are in the situation we're in.'
'Do you think it's redeemable?' he asked. 'You and her?'
'I don't think so. Not after all this. I don't think I even know
her any more.' I sighed, trying to articulate my current emotions.
'It's a strange feeling, you know. Empty. Like my life - everything
I knew, everything I loved, everything - it's like it's all just
ended.'
'It's a shock, Tom. But you'll get over it.'
'Easy for you to say, Mr Bolt.'
'You're not my prisoner. You can call me Mike.'
'Well, Mike, put bluntly, I'm fucked, and I don't think anyone
knows exactly how that feels. Even you.'
Bolt didn't say anything for a few moments as he pulled out
onto the main road, heading north towards High Wycombe and
the M40. The road was busier, filling up with Sunday drivers
enjoying the greenery of this pleasant pocket of England now that
the sun had managed to break through the worst of the clouds.
When the detective next spoke, his words were thoughtful and

tinged with a melancholy I wouldn't have associated with a man
like him. 'The thing about life is that it can run in a smooth line
for years on end, so smooth sometimes that you take the whole thing for granted. Tragedies happen in far-off places, involving
people you don't know. Then, bang, out of the blue you hit a
bend in the road and suddenly your whole life's been turned on
its head. That's what's happened to you, and three years ago
that's exactly what happened to me. So, yeah, take my word for
it, Tom. I know what you're going through.'
We slipped into an uneasy silence. Eventually, my interest
pricked, I asked him what had happened to him.
'My wife was killed in a car crash,' he answered, without
looking at me.
'I'm sorry. I didn't know.'
'The reason I'm telling you this is that life does come back to
you. It takes time, it's a hard, lonely road, but eventually you
learn to get back some normality.'
'I'm sorry,' I said again.

'So am 1.1 was driving.'
I was shocked. 'Jesus, that must have been hard.'
'It was. Even now, three years on, I have no recollection of the
crash itself, or what led up to it. We'd been for dinner at a
friend's place. I remember arriving there, and I remember the
first half an hour or so of the evening, but then the whole thing's
a blank until I woke up in hospital twelve hours later. I had
severe abdominal injuries and inte'rnal bleeding, but my wife was
worse, a lot worse. Her parents agreed to turn off her life
support system three days later. I was too ill to make the
decision. I was too ill even to leave my bed and see her. We'd
been married four years and she was two months pregnant.'
'Christ, Mike, I don't know what to say.'