See How They Run (26 page)

A
lice was
cold and hungry and miserable. An hour, Renshaw had said. He was twenty minutes late. Based on his agreement earlier, she was free to do what she wanted.

Except that her phone was nearly dead, she had no car, and no money other than a bag of high-denomination euros. If the police found her now, they might well take her for a drug smuggler.

The peculiar stillness of the wood was playing on her nerves. Both light and sound were eerily muted. Occasionally she made out some far distant engine, or a dog barking, but mostly there was silence, punctuated by sudden tiny noises from close by: a snap or click or rustle that her jittery mind perceived as someone sneaking up on her.

It took her some time to identify the sounds as the soft patter of rain. Another minute or two before the first drop made it through the trees and landed on her head.

She shivered. It seemed ludicrous to be sitting here, getting wet, just to indulge Renshaw’s paranoia. Why on earth would Nerys want to rob him, anyway? She and her son had pots of money.

From behind her came the snap of a twig breaking. Startled, Alice stood up and peered into the trees. No one there, as far as she could see.

The rainfall grew more intense, a busy chatter of noise. Like a whole crowd was whispering to her: a warning, or a threat.

She tried to focus on positive thoughts. Harry was on his way here, so she didn’t have to rely on Renshaw or Michael Baxter to give her a lift to the station. Another couple of hours and Harry could drive them home.

The brief conversation had made her all the more desperate to be reunited with him. Together, as a family, they would meet DI Thomsett and tell him everything, and hope that he could offer the help they needed to stay safe.

In a new, decisive frame of mind she grabbed the bag of money and set off along the path. It was ridiculous to stay out any longer. She would return to the house: at the first sign of danger she’d give Renshaw his money back, then walk into the village. Even a bus shelter would be a better place to wait than here.

The rain was tumbling down when she reached the edge of the wood. It woke Evie, who let out a thin cry of displeasure. Alice faltered, beset once again by doubts. Why hadn’t Renshaw come back? He’d said it himself: the money guaranteed his return.

So where was he?

Something was wrong. In that instant Alice knew it, with a certainty as cold and unpleasant as the rain.

At the edge of the tree line she peered across the muddy field. It wasn’t long before she spotted movement in the bushes at the rear of Beech House. A figure stepped into view, clad in a long coat and a headscarf.

Nerys. It had to be. But she’d emerged from her garden as furtively as a burglar, glancing around as if worried about being seen. Alice couldn’t think of any reason for Nerys to act that way, unless—

The woman’s head came up. Her body stiffened with concentration as her gaze locked on the path into the wood: there was a moment of distant but unmistakable eye contact, before Alice turned and fled.

M
ichael had sprinted all
the way back to the Range Rover, and even managed to enjoy the exertion: so much more satisfying than the sterile, comfortably tailored environment of a gym, having to adjust to the uneven surface, his movement hampered by his bulky winter clothes, cold air in his lungs and rain on his face. Exhilarating.

Truth be told, he was in remarkably good spirits all round. It made him wonder if he should have given free rein to the darker side of his character years ago.

Women were his obsession, and had been for as long as he could remember. In his teens and twenties he had been driven by lust, the thrill of the chase; the triumph of conquest. But then it became a compulsion, almost beyond his control. He’d slept with one of the bridesmaids the night before his wedding. He slept with his wife’s cousin. He slept with the women he employed, and the women he met during the course of his working day. He slept with women at his gym and women he picked up in bars and hotels, both away on business and only a few miles from home.

Most of the time, it was absurdly easy. He had a gift for it. But over the years, he noticed how the pleasure was diminishing for precisely that reason. To increase the challenge, he started targeting women who weren’t interested. Who
really
weren’t interested. And a few times – the frequency escalating in recent years – he’d fucked women who hadn’t in any way, shape or form consented to being fucked.

He unlocked the car, flung his jacket on the back seat and drove away. He was tempted to go flat out but made a conscious effort not to draw attention to himself. And thoughts of self-preservation led to the question he hadn’t yet asked his mother. Once they caught Alice – and Evie –
what happened then?

Nerys had virtually conceded that he could unleash that dark side of his, hadn’t she? It made him wonder what she’d gleaned from their past conversations. He often talked to her of his exploits – it was no fun to bottle it up, but his male friends only got jealous, and Robyn couldn’t really be expected to listen. He’d never even hinted at the ‘
no means yes
’ side of things, but perhaps he hadn’t had to: it was clear now that Nerys was a woman of supreme gifts.

If he had his fun and afterwards there were … complications, well, he guessed that Mother would know what to do. But the idea of having her there, as an accomplice. Wouldn’t that make him feel … hmm …
uncomfortable
?

Maybe. Maybe not.

‘Don’t go there,’ he muttered aloud. But it lingered at the back of his mind, a disquieting fantasy where Nerys was in the room with him and Alice – watching them, at least. On some level the concept still appalled him, but he sensed that by frequently revisiting the idea he could acquire tolerance to it, the way that taking rapid sips of scalding hot coffee soon makes it bearable, then acceptable, and finally delicious.

Delicious
. That was the perfect word.

Michael licked his lips.

A
lice didn’t really know
why she was running. A voice inside her head kept appealing for reason. This was a pretty stupid reaction, wasn’t it, to be blundering through the trees, her feet slippery on the wet ground, no purpose or destination other than to get away from Nerys; no reason beyond an instinct that the older woman had been moving with some vaguely sinister intent.

But there was Renshaw, don’t forget. He was long overdue to retrieve his precious money.

That was when Alice remembered the bag. In her panic she’d dropped it as she began to move. Its loss troubled her for a second or two; then her foot caught on a protruding root and she almost went down. She recovered only by hitting the ground with one hand, badly jarring her wrist. Poor Evie was pitched into a violent descent and then wrenched upright again. She wailed, not unreasonably, and a couple of birds took flight nearby.

In her desperation Alice had left the path, figuring that the trees offered her better concealment. But it also made the going a lot tougher, and the weight of Evie in the carrier was a factor she hadn’t considered, especially on rough terrain made treacherous by tree roots and fallen branches.

And then Michael appeared in front of her, almost from nowhere. Only later did she consider the noise they’d been making, especially with Evie sobbing. It must have been ridiculously easy to find them.

She slithered to a halt, then tried to change direction; dodging sideways, as though she were some kind of agile teenage gymnast, rather than a thirty-one-year-old woman weighed down with a baby. But she pushed off too quickly and nearly ran headlong into a tree. She swerved to avoid it but lost her footing and slid into a shallow ditch, a natural hollow that, if you scooped out the mulchy leaves and loose earth, would have been just about the perfect size for a grave.

H
arry checked
the wing mirror for the fourth or fifth time. Still nothing.

‘Okay, we lost the Audi. But what about the other car, the Mercedes?’

‘I suppose they could get a message to the driver, but they won’t pick up the route I intend to take.’

As Ruth spoke she was turning off the main road, into what seemed little more than a track through the forest. Harry sighed.

‘How do I know this isn’t just another trick to gain my trust?’

‘I guess that’s a decision only you can make, Harry. But do it quickly.’

Moments later, she pulled up in a shallow lay-by. Harry wondered if she was intending to kick him out if he didn’t give her the information she wanted. But she simply reached across him to the glove compartment and took out a road atlas.

‘Gloucester’s not an easy place to reach from here. We’re crossing the spine of the country, so all the major routes run north–south.’

Harry had a look for himself. She was right, but he doubted if a train would be any quicker. Short of commandeering a helicopter, they were looking at two or three hours to get there – by which time Alice and Evie should, with any luck, be on their way home.

‘Head towards Cirencester,’ he told her.

‘Thank you.’ She handed him the atlas and pulled out of the lay-by.

‘I want some proper answers now. For a start, why have you only been pursuing Laird for the last few months?’

Ruth kept her eyes on the road, but she looked bemused. ‘I haven’t. What do you mean?’

‘Prior to this year, tell me what you were doing.’

He crossed his arms and waited, studying her face for any indication that she was about to lie to him. After a long pause, Ruth exhaled slowly.

‘I was behind bars, Harry. Is that what you wanted to hear?’

I
t threw
him that she gave up the truth so freely. Trying not to bluster, he said, ‘You committed a serious attack on someone, according to Keri. Is that true?’

‘You are
so
far out of your depth here, Harry. And I’m not saying that to be rude, or to hurt you.’

‘Just tell me, please.’

‘Okay. Okay.’ She sighed. ‘A long time ago I worked for the security services. My area of expertise was organised crime. There’s a lot of crossover with terrorism, especially in the area of money laundering, identity theft and so on. As a result of that work, and particularly an undercover operation that I was involved in, I made a series of very bad –
incredibly
bad – decisions that led, years later, to all this.’

‘The feud with Laird, or whatever it is?’

‘Feud?’ She tapped the steering wheel with one hand. ‘Good a word as any, I suppose.’

Her attention seemed to drift away, but he was too impatient to allow her more than a few seconds.

‘And the person you attacked? Was that to do with Laird?’

‘Not directly. It happened years after the … the flashpoint with Laird.’ A dark glance told Harry he wasn’t welcome to interrupt. ‘I’d gone through a tough time. What I should have done was resign, or retire on health grounds, but instead I took a less stressful job, working on a surveillance team. A watcher.’

She sketched out the basics of a long, complex operation to monitor the activities of a man suspected of smuggling gold coins to finance terrorism.

‘In the course of our surveillance, it became apparent that the man was also a violent and prolific paedophile. There was evidence that he’d been abusing children for more than twenty years, but our lords and masters ruled that this couldn’t be allowed to jeopardise the enquiry. I was assured that these crimes would be investigated in due course, but only when they’d gathered every crumb of information on the gold smuggling.’ She snorted. ‘Priorities, eh?’

‘What did you do?’

‘Took matters into my own hands. I made certain that he was never able to contemplate sex with anyone, ever again.’

Harry nodded, as neutrally as he could. ‘And did you get caught?’

‘I thought I’d engineered a little window in the surveillance, but it turned out I was wrong. One of my diligent colleagues spotted me, and felt obliged to “do the right thing”.’ There was heavy irony in her voice.

‘I’m surprised I don’t remember this being in the news. The media would have gone crazy.’

‘They never got the chance. Officially, I was a mentally unstable citizen who’d attacked a man after a drunken argument about money. The victim went along with that, of course, and so did his lawyers. All the evidence of his paedophilia was quietly spirited away, and I spent the next four-and-a-half years at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.’

H
arry let
her take a break from what was obviously a difficult subject to discuss. They’d passed through several villages and were now on the A142, heading south to join the A14. The sky overhead was growing darker, a few spots of rain appearing on the windscreen. Miserable weather. He thought of Alice, stuck in a house with people she didn’t like. What had she said?
They make me uncomfortable
.

‘Tell me about Greg,’ he said. ‘I can’t understand why he risked so much, digging into the affairs of a man like Laird. Keri says he went on with his enquiries while you were in prison.’

‘That’s right.’

‘But why, when you two had split up?’

‘Because he was a good man. Genuinely a good man.’

‘Okay.’ Harry waited. And couldn’t help but laugh at her failure to elaborate. ‘Please, Ruth. I only want to know what he was trying to find.’

She shook her head. Struggling with frustration, Harry aimed what he knew was a low blow.

‘Keri suggested there might have been a relationship once.’

‘What?’

‘Between you and Laird.’

‘Did she?’ Ruth sounded intrigued, rather than offended. ‘I always thought there was an element of competition in her attitude towards me. Part of the reason she seduced Greg.’

‘Hold on.’ Harry was confused, not least because she seemed to be admitting to the relationship. ‘Competition for what?’

‘She was Laird’s favourite for a time. She probably didn’t admit that, did she? As with most guys in his position, Laird liked to sample the merchandise. In Keri’s case it became quite serious – until Laird lost interest. That was why Greg worked so hard to befriend her. He thought she’d know more than the other girls.’

‘
He
thought? Don’t you mean
you
thought?’ Harry, annoyed by Ruth’s attitude to Keri, was in no mood to go easy on her. ‘Because Greg was doing all this for you, wasn’t he? A favour that cost him his life. So there must have been a very good reason.’

‘There was,’ Ruth conceded. ‘Laird took something from me.’

‘Okay.’
Now we’re getting somewhere
, he thought. ‘I know I keep pressing, but given what’s at stake here – the danger my family are in – I have to understand what’s motivating you.’

‘My son,’ Ruth said brusquely. ‘That’s what motivates me, all right? Nathan Laird took my son from me.’