Secrets (2 page)

Molly snorted. ‘Of course not,' she said. ‘I took it straight back once I'd finished with it. But he's a decent sort, Mr Johnson. He'll probably lend it to you if you ask.' She sighed, then, ‘Just look at the state of these floorboards.'

Alec looked. Old boards, wide and long as reflected the age of the house. Someone had taken a sander to sections of them in an effort to remove the stains that had been absorbed into the grain of the wood. Frankly, Alec thought, it would have been better with a good scrub and a pot of wood stain. ‘I think covering them over is your only option,' he agreed. ‘It's a bit of a mess, isn't it? Who sanded them? Surely not the person the CSI suggested?'

‘Oh, that was me,' Molly admitted. ‘I borrowed a little sander thing from Mr Johnson. He had a bigger one, but didn't think I'd be able to handle it. Of course, being a gentleman, he offered to come in and give it a go himself, but I wasn't having any of that. I've always shifted for myself and I'm not going to start accepting charity now.'

Alec was amused. ‘Unless it's from me and it's painting your walls?'

‘Oh,' Molly waved a dismissive hand. ‘That's different. You're practically family and anyway, Mr Johnson goes to work all week, I'm not going to interrupt his weekends.'

Alec let that pass. His gaze travelled from floor to walls – she'd had a good go at those too, scrubbing away at the wallpaper until the stripes had all but disappeared. ‘You must have been scared,' he said thoughtfully, expecting some smart rejoinder. Instead, Molly met his gaze, the blue eyes steely and amused, but the little twitch at the corner of her mouth told him that she had, indeed, been scared and the memory of her own fear disturbed her far more than the strange death on her landing.

Molly didn't
do
scared. Never had. It had come as a shock to her, Alec realized, that she was even capable of such an emotion.

‘Let's go down,' Alec said.

They settled once more at the kitchen table and Molly fetched two glasses and a bottle of brandy from the kitchen drawer. Alec smiled. She'd always kept two glasses and a bottle in her kitchen drawer, whatever house she'd lived in. He remembered as a little boy he'd been allowed to keep his own little brandy bottle, filled with pop, beside her alcoholic beverage and the second glass had temporarily become his.

Molly set the glasses down and splashed rather too generous measures of spirits into them.

‘I'm driving,' Alec reminded her.

‘You can at least make a pretence,' she said. ‘Take a sip or two and make an old woman feel she's not drinking alone.'

‘You aren't old, Molly.'

‘Damned fool. Of course I am. Getting older by the day and resenting it more by the hour.' She lifted her glass. ‘To the lost ones,' she said. As she always had, even in the days when Alec toasted in bright red pop. She waited, expectantly.

‘May they find their way home,' Alec completed. He sipped at his drink, letting it evaporate on his tongue, watching as Molly gulped half of hers down. He had asked only once who the lost ones were. Molly had not replied, but there had been something in her eyes, some pain that even a small boy was capable of understanding and which prevented him from asking ever again. He thought about it now; decided against.

‘You're right,' Molly said. ‘I was scared. When we moved here I thought we'd left those days behind us. I'd seen a lifetime's worth of killing even before I was twenty-five and married Edward. I saw several lifetimes more in the years we had together. I never thought it would come to find me here.'

‘What would come to find you, Molly?'

She shook her head, took another swig of her brandy and laughed. ‘I'd thought the next time the reaper showed up it would be a personal call to collect yours truly,' she said. ‘I never expected him to send an emissary with a gun.'

‘Did he threaten you directly?' Alec asked cautiously, surprised at the sudden frankness and knowing that Molly could clam up without warning.

She swirled the remains of the brandy in the glass. ‘A man with a gun is always a threat to those close to him,' she said obliquely. ‘If you mean, did he point it at me, then yes, but only briefly. I think he wanted me to share the moment with him, to feel what he felt before he blew out his own brains and spared mine.'

Alec frowned. It was an odd thing to say even for Molly. ‘What do you mean?' he asked, knowing even as the words fell out of his mouth that they were the wrong ones.

‘Oh, for goodness' sake, man, I'm not speaking in Swahili. Or do you not comprehend plain English now?'

She got up and stuffed the brandy bottle back into the kitchen drawer. ‘You ought to go,' she said. ‘That wife of yours will be wondering where you've got to.'

‘Naomi will be fine,' Alec said, but he knew he'd been dismissed and that he should obey. He'd overstepped some invisible line and Molly would say no more.

‘Molly,' he asked as they reached the front door. ‘Who's the officer in charge of the investigation?'

‘Oh, someone called Barnes,' she said. ‘Looked far too young to be an inspector. There was an even younger sergeant too, wanted me to call her Delia and kept asking me if I felt all right.' She inclined her cheek towards Alec and received his kiss.

‘You've got my mobile number if you need me,' Alec confirmed.

‘Of course I do.'

‘And I'll call back and see you later in the week.'

‘If you feel the need,' Molly said, but Alec knew she'd be glad to see him if he did. He also knew she'd be back in the kitchen and finishing his brandy before he'd left her drive.

Alec left, his head filled with misgivings. Something wasn't right here, something apart from the fact that a young man, as yet unidentified, had blown out his brains in such spectacular fashion. For the moment, Alec couldn't place what it was, but the sense of unease was stronger than that merely prompted by obvious circumstance.

Molly had almost told him something, Alec thought, but he'd made a wrong response and she had shut him out.

T
here were three teams of five. Each team had minimal contact with the others and also limited contact with the controller. In the event of anything going wrong each member had been issued with a passport, a legend and money in an offshore account. However it went down, immediately their part in the game was all over, they would disperse and, in all likelihood, that would be it. They would not see one another again and control would effectively erase their involvement from what few records had been kept. This was the way it had been organized for more years than Bud could guess at. He had been recalled twice, so far, so three very profitable jobs in total. He had no idea and didn't really care if this would be the last time or not. He'd be quite content to be forgotten after this.

Not that anything was ever truly forgotten, of course, Bud knew that. There were always those few record-keepers who had oversight of everything. The collators and gatekeepers whose sole purpose, the focus of whose existence was to keep the books on everything and everyone.
They
would not forget.

But this job was not going to go wrong. Months of planning, Bud had begun to suspect even years of pre-planning had gone into this and though he had never worked with any of his team of five before, they had gelled quickly. Even Ryan, with his sandy hair and freckles and ready grin, who looked like he should still be in school, operated with the same cool and efficiency as the rest of them.

Ryan was the only one of the team that he wondered about. He seemed too young to be this good at the game. But, then, Bud thought, you never knew about people, not really.

The road was narrow here, and midway between the two villages. Upper and Lower Stow were pretty but unremarkable locations, built in the local, Cotswold stone and Upper Stow still having a pub and a post office. Lower Stow was little more than a hamlet.

At this point between the villages the road narrowed and curved so any vehicle coming upon them would be unable to see the road works sign until they had turned the corner. Then they'd come up, suddenly, upon a young man with a stop-go sign and a reflective jacket and see the road half closed off with cones.

They'd been there about a half hour before the right car arrived. One of the local cars that had passed by had stopped and asked Ryan, the stop-go man, what they were going to dig up.

‘Not digging up, mate, filling in. Council's sent us out to deal with some of the pot holes.'

‘About time too.' The driver left with a cheerful wave at Ryan and Bud and the rest of them unloading the van. He was followed by a tractor and a blue hatchback.

Bud frowned at the little procession of vehicles as they passed him by. They were all on his mental list, all residents living within a few miles of the roadblock and just out on regular business, their activities having been checked and tagged over the preceding weeks, but he was still far from happy. They could do without additional traffic. He was relieved when the radio call came in a few minutes later, from a member of the second team telling them that their target was on its way and that there was nothing else on the road.

The unassuming black estate car came around the bend a few minutes later, right on schedule. It stopped obediently at the sign, the driver staring through the windscreen and down the road at the clearly empty lane ahead.

The boy with the sign grinned at him and then followed his gaze as though he too was checking to see the absence of traffic coming the other way.

Impatient, now, the driver lowered his window.

‘Come on, man, let us through. There's nothing there.'

Ryan, still grinning, turned his sign around and the driver prepared to move away. The sight of Bud, pointing a gun at him through the side window changed his mind.

‘Drive on, just drive on!' The rear seat passenger yelled at the driver and then shrank back into his seat as Bud glanced at him.

‘If you'll be kind enough to get out, now.' Ryan was still smiling, but he had dropped his sign and he too held a gun.

The driver lifted his hands from the steering wheel and slowly eased himself out of the vehicle as Bud, helpfully, opened the door. The passenger needed a little more persuasion, but a few seconds later, he too had been herded into the rear of the van. The stop sign was thrown in after them. Bud closed the door and nodded to Ryan. A third member of the team now drove the car slowly forward, while the remaining two gathered the cones and stowed them in the boot. Bud hopped into the passenger seat of the van and belted up, glancing across as Ryan opened the valve that would bleed the gas into the sealed rear compartment.

It wouldn't kill anyone, but it would shut them up for a while.

Seconds later the van moved off, the car with the remaining three of the team following on behind.

A mile further on, at a T-junction, the car went left and the van right. Bud and Ryan passed through Upper Stow at two thirty in the afternoon and drove on, out into open country once again. Ryan fiddled with the radio, trying to find a classical station, crunching the gears as he changed down.

‘Crap gearbox on this thing,' he complained cheerfully. ‘Right, another few minutes and we say goodbye.'

Bud nodded. There was no sound from the back of the van. He assumed the two passengers were still alive, but wasn't that interested. He wasn't paid to speculate. He could feel Ryan looking at him, maybe indulging in a little bit of his own speculation, but the younger man said nothing and after a moment, returned his focus to the road ahead.

Bud slipped on a pair of thin, latex gloves and took a bottle of gel cleanser from his pocket. He poured a little into the palms of his gloved hands and rubbed it over everything he might have touched.

Ryan laughed. ‘You know they're going to torch this thing, don'cha?'

‘I know.'

‘You always this cautious, man?'

‘Twice your age and still around, Ryan boy. Work it out for yourself.'

Ryan laughed, but he glanced uneasily at the little bottle of gel. Pointedly, Bud placed it on the dashboard.

‘It's there if you want it,' he said. Yes, he was always this cautious, he thought. In fact, he didn't think he was cautious enough. There would still be trace, still be something he'd not thought of.

They drove on in silence, Bud comfortable with that, but he could sense that Ryan, now the excitement was nearly over, wanted to talk. That was understandable. Ryan was young, like as not, this was his first big job, but talking, even with another member of the team, that was a bad thing. It could be a very bad thing.

‘Mind if I offer you some advice?'

‘You can offer.'

‘Don't get drunk, don't pick up any girls and don't talk to strangers. Not tonight. Not for the next week or so. Get yourself on a train or a boat or a bus, buy yourself a ticket to somewhere you've never been and you're never likely to go again. Give yourself three or four clear days before you pick up any plans you might have had. Then whatever plans you might have had, even if you've mentioned them to no one, even if you've not even thought them through in your own head, change them. Do something else.'

Ryan laughed, a short, sharp uneasy sound. ‘Man, but you're paranoid.'

Bud smiled. ‘This is where we get off,' he said, indicating the sign for a lay-by up ahead. Two cars had been parked, the keys to both lay in Bud's pocket. He took them out, now, and offered them both to Ryan as the young man pulled the van in behind the parked cars. Ryan took a set without looking and Bud, getting out of the van, was satisfied to note that he had pulled on a pair of gloves and was cleaning down as Bud had done.

Bud paused before moving out from behind the van, wondering where the next team was located. They'd be close by, take the van as soon as Bud and Ryan moved away. He glanced at the key in his hand, matched it to the ageing Mondeo. Ryan was out of the van now, glancing back inside as though to check he'd not forgotten anything. His smile had faded, the first faint traces of anxiety showing in his eyes.