Secrets (12 page)

‘You really should remember to lock your doors,' she said as she attacked her breakfast. ‘Anyone could just walk in.'

‘No one locks their doors round here,' Bob reminded her. He paused, just looking at her. The thick, wavy black hair was still damp from the shower and her skin was tanned from whatever part of the world her latest adventures had taken her to. A small scar on the back of her hand was new. It stood out, still pink, against the brown skin. Green-grey eyes laughed at him. She had the most perfect, oval face. He'd sketched her so many times over the years but never quite managed to capture her in oils. To freeze Annie in the moment was an impossibility and eventually he had given up on trying. His wild girl, as he thought of her in secret moments. She had come hurtling into his life ten years ago and he, thirty years her senior and a confirmed bachelor – so confirmed that even close friends had assumed he must be gay – had fallen utterly and completely in love.

‘I saw the posters for the new exhibition in the hall,' she said. ‘They look wonderful. You've got to show me the new work after breakfast.'

‘I'm pleased with it,' he admitted. ‘And you'll be here for it.' He smiled.

‘Yep, sure will. Not that I've missed one yet, you know.'

That was true. Sometimes it had been a close run thing, but she'd always returned for the important things in his life. Opening nights, birthdays, anniversaries. ‘You were away a long time,' he said quietly. ‘The longest time yet. I'd begun to think—'

She reached out across the table. ‘I know,' she said. ‘I'm sorry, my love. I stayed away for far too long. It won't happen again.'

‘I didn't mean—'

‘I know. But
I
did. I missed you. Bob, I may never stop being a nomad, but maybe it's time, you know, to try and be a bit less of one.'

He wanted to believe her and he knew she meant it, as far as Annie could ever mean anything like that. He clasped her hand. ‘Good to have you home,' he said. ‘Very, very good.'

T
he drive to Newark took a little over an hour. Dual carriageways gave way to a good, but narrow A road which swung off to bypass the town as Barnes and Alec continued on. The land was flat, here, not quite fenland but smoothing out as if in preparation. In the distance Alec glimpsed the chimneys of the sugar beet processor; they had crossed a river some minutes before with a small marina packed with boats. Off to the left he glimpsed the newer road rising and guessed the river too headed off in that direction.

‘Newark on Trent,' he read on one of the painted signs. ‘Of course, this is Nottinghamshire.'

‘Just,' Barnes confirmed. They were in town now, passing the curtain-walled ruins of a castle which jogged some memory in Alec's brain that a civil war battle had been fought close by.

They turned left and Alec glimpsed the wide space of the market square. A little further on and Barnes pulled in outside a shuttered shop.

‘He lived above the shop,' Barnes said. He nodded a welcome to a woman getting out of a car across the road. ‘Alec, this is DS Tupper. Stevie, this is Alec, I told you about him?'

Stevie Tupper was in her thirties, Alec guessed, noting with interest that her short brown hair had been cut very precisely and she wore a bright red lipstick. Her handshake was firm, but she looked puzzled, even faintly disapproving. Alec felt like apologizing for being there but decided against. It wasn't his fault.

‘We'd better go up,' she said. ‘But I don't know what you expect to find that we haven't seen already. The boss says you can bring him back to look over the notes,' she said to Barnes and Alec figured that the handshake had been the full extent of her acceptance. She probably figured she'd done her duty towards him now. Barnes, obviously recognizing this too, shrugged apologetically.

This was going to be fun, Alec thought, already regretting his decision to come. He followed the officers up the stairs and into the flat above the shop. A door opened from the narrow lobby and he guessed that must be the private entrance into the shop. He decided he'd like to take a look before they left, thinking that the objects Herbert Norris chose to stock in his little shop might shed more light on the man himself. DI Barnes held the door open for him, Alec went inside.

‘There's no lock on this door,' he said. ‘Only a bolt.'

‘Which has been painted over so many times it doesn't work,' Stevie Tupper said. ‘You need a key to undo the downstairs door and there's a dead lock and two bolts. Same as on the shop door. I suppose he felt safe once those were fastened.'

‘So. Whoever shot him, must have, what, rung the bell on the street door, Norris must have come down and let him in, then brought him back up here. Or been forced to bring him back up here. Any CCTV?' he asked hopefully.

Stevie laughed. ‘Two cameras in the shop itself. Nothing inside and nothing in the street. This is not a high crime area.'

‘And the footage from the shop over the past few days?'

She sighed. ‘If you want to waste time looking it over, be my guest. We've had officers on it. Nothing of interest that
we
can see.'

Alec ignored her tone. Slowly, he walked the scene. It had been cleared for entry now, the CSI had collected every scrap of possible evidence and there was no defined path to follow, but Alec walked the perimeter anyway. Hands thrust in his pocket, as they always were when he was deep in thought. A fine dusting of fingerprint powder covered the shelves and coffee table and in the second room, the dining table had been given the same treatment. Kitchen counters, two cups on the draining board … in the bedroom the headboard shimmered with a faint veil of silver grey.

But there were no fingerprints. Only the evidence of the CSI's increasingly frustrated search.

‘The place has been cleaned,' he said. ‘Not just wiped down. Deep cleaned.'

Stevie said nothing; she just glanced non-committally at DI Barnes.

‘What about the shop?' Alec asked.

‘Untouched, so far as we can tell. I mean, there are fingerprints everywhere from customers handling stuff and so on.'

‘So you've dismissed the CCTV.' Alec didn't mean it to sound so judgemental, but that was the way it came out. ‘Because you think the killer would have cleaned up after himself if he'd ever been there as well.'

‘We're assuming nothing,' Stevie Tupper said coldly.

Alec shrugged. He was discovering that there was something liberating about being an essential outsider.

He wandered back into the first room, noting the markers on the floor that defined where the body had lain. ‘One shot,' he confirmed. ‘Can I see the pictures?'

‘Back at the station,' she said.

Alec grimaced. ‘I always like to look at them on scene as well,' he said. ‘It helps get things clear.'

‘Well, I'm very sorry for the inconvenience—' Stevie began.

‘Please,' Barnes interrupted. ‘We're all on the same side. Alec doesn't want to be here any more than you want him, but if there's anything
useful
to come out of this, then I want to hear.'

Alec wondered if he should apologize; decided he didn't want to. Stevie Tupper turned her back on them both and went to stare out of the window.

A long, art deco sideboard took up most of the space along one wall. On it stood a lamp in the shape of a rather extravagantly elongated, deco nude, a few rather pleasing silver boxes and a couple of photo frames lying face down, their backs removed. Alec had noticed them on his first circuit of the room. ‘The CSI did this?' he asked.

‘No,' Stevie said without turning from the window. ‘The photo frames were empty when we first got here. The girlfriend says they were family photos.'

‘Did she say who of?'

‘I don't think she knew. Some aunt or something, I think. And yes, we found that strange too, not just that someone would go to the trouble of removing family photos, but that a long term girlfriend would seem so vague.'

‘Long term.'

‘A year or two, closer to two since they met. She had a key, but didn't live with him. Said they both still needed their space.'

Alec nodded. ‘Any more photographs?' he asked.

She pointed to the sideboard. ‘Some albums in there, we took them. You can look later, but it seemed like the usual stuff to me.'

‘No photographs on show of Norris and the girlfriend out on display? Can I speak to her, do you think?'

For a moment she looked like she'd be saying no, then she shrugged. ‘I've been told to let you do pretty much what you want,' she said. The idea obviously really pissed her off. ‘And no, no pictures on show except the two that are now missing.'

‘Has the girlfriend been offered protection?' Alec asked.

‘What for?' Stevie asked frostily. ‘She's at her mother's, in Grantham. They've got someone checking in with them.'

Grantham, Alec thought. That was Lincolnshire, wasn't it? So a different force, different jurisdiction. Had they been told to cooperate with him too? He wondered who was pulling strings here, then wondered if he really wanted to know.

‘You think the girlfriend might need protection?' Barnes asked.

‘I think this is complicated,' Alec said. ‘OK if we take a look at the shop, now?'

Stevie Tupper sighed and led them back down the stairs.

A
nnie stretched out on the bed, listening to her husband singing in the shower. Welcome home sex was always good, she thought, it left her feeling content and sleepy and reminded her of just how much she was missing when she left him behind.

Bob Taylor was a good man. A loving, funny, talented man and Annie was always troubled by the thought that he deserved more. The truth was, she was more than a little afraid of remaining with anyone. It had taken encouragement on the part of her oldest friends to accept Bob's proposal of marriage because she was afraid.

‘You love him,' Nathan had said. ‘He loves you. What is there to think about?'

‘Because I might lose him. He might …'

‘We all die, Annie. Fact of life.'

She closed her eyes and snuggled back beneath the smooth sheets and warm blankets. Bob didn't like duvets. She knew exactly where the fear sprang from and knew that Nathan was right and as she inhaled Bob's scent on his pillow, knew that she really did want to stay, this time. If she could. That she was ready to try. The memory of the first time she had met Nathan Crow swam into her head and she let it. Time was, she'd have tried hard to push it away, but over the years she'd learnt that Edward – God rest him – and Nathan had been right. Memories are what make you who you are and if you don't acknowledge them they'll rise up and bite you on the bum, just when you least need it and lately, she'd learnt to let the memory come. To acknowledge and even enjoy it, seeing it as the start point, the birth really of the Annie she'd become.

She closed her eyes, remembering. The scene so vivid, even after all these years.

A man in a shabby uniform stood just inside the door, watching her with detached interest. He cradled a gun in his arms. She couldn't tell what it was, only that it was some kind of semi-automatic – she recognized that much from one that had been in her father's collection.

She supposed the man by the doorway must be some kind of soldier, but the word didn't quite fit; she was at a loss to find another.

‘You must be Annie.' It was the man behind the desk that had spoken not the armed man by the door. She swivelled round to look at him. He came around the desk, his hand extended ready to shake hers. It was the first time an adult had ever offered to shake her hand.

‘I'm Edward,' he said. ‘Your father and I were friends, a very long time ago.'

‘Why have you brought me here?' She shook his hand automatically. It seemed impolite not to and her parents had raised her to have good manners.

‘I promised him that I would look after you if ever the need arose. And so I have.'

‘And my mother?'

‘I'm sorry,' Edward glanced at the man beside the door. ‘We didn't get to her in time.'

‘So, they're both dead,' Annie said. She was startled at how flat her own voice sounded. Shouldn't she cry or something? Looking at Edward's face she could see that he thought so. Somehow, she felt too numb to cry. Yet.

Annie took a deep breath and, feeling that something more was required of her she said, ‘Thank you for trying, anyway.'

Edward nodded as if satisfied and returned to his desk. Annie knew that she had been dealt with; this Edward, whoever he was, had done his duty.

‘Annie,' the man beside the door gestured to her to follow and she turned obediently. Why couldn't she cry?

She followed him down a corridor, trying to figure out what kind of building this was. It was underground, that much she'd figured out and they'd arrived in the dark, the sound of gunfire echoing through the city behind them as they drove in. Down here, everything was almost uncannily quiet in contrast, just the vague hum of something electrical in the background and the occasional sound of footsteps.

‘Are we staying here?' Annie wanted to know.

‘For tonight, and tomorrow day. Then I expect we'll be moving on.'

‘On? On to where?'

‘To another safe place. Don't worry, Annie.'

‘I'm not worrying. I just want to know.'

The man opened a door and gestured Annie inside. Two field cots had been made up and placed by opposite walls. Through another door she spied a toilet and washbowl. Clean clothes had been spread out on one of the cots, jeans, T-shirt, what looked like a warm sweatshirt. It suddenly occurred to Annie that she was cold.

On the other cot sat a boy of about her own age. He sat cross-legged, playing some kind of hand-held computer game and barely glanced up as she came into the room. His hair was as dark as her own and needed cutting, sticking out at odd angles from behind his ears. He frowned at the screen he was holding, and his thumbs moved rapidly on the controls.