The Catch (35 page)

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Stemper said, and he might have been addressing the tall man nearby who seemed to have tripped on the rack of clothing, or perhaps it was the young couple into whose path he stepped as he danced sideways across the red-brick pavement, away from the puddle of blood that was already beginning to spread into the street.

Immersed in the crowd, he turned his head at the sound of a scream: it would look odd not to. But where others stopped or responded, Stemper pushed on, ignoring the subsequent cries of horror, upping his pace as he turned left, into Gloucester Road, then right. This was Tidy Street, a name that prompted a grim smile. Stemper dipped his head and with one hand kept adjusting his glasses or gently touching his moustache. If he was unfortunate enough to be noticed, these were the details he wanted people to remember.

A couple of minutes later he’d gone far enough to seek a temporary refuge. In the empty doorway of an office block he stopped, his back to the road, appearing to study a list of the businesses within the building. He removed the glasses and the false moustache, then slipped off his raincoat and casually reversed it. Folding the coat over his arm, he put a handkerchief to his face and kept it there as he walked away.

Turning the next corner, he put the coat back on – now blue – and added a flat cap. Even nature was coming to his assistance: it had started to rain. Everyone in his vicinity began to fiddle with umbrellas or quicken their pace.

Invisible, Stemper walked briskly to his car. He couldn’t pretend that this development was anything other than deeply unfortunate, and there were many searching questions arising from it: chiefly, was it a sign of age, of failing powers, that he’d been caught unawares?

But that was for later. Right now he consoled himself with the knowledge that he’d dealt with a serious threat to his liberty. He was safe, and so was the mission with which the Blakes had entrusted him.

In fact, he reasoned, Gordon and Patricia didn’t have to know about this at all.

****

They heard shouts and screams while Cate was deliberating over a rather splendid 1960s shift dress. Her mother thought it was perfect; Cate felt it would be indecently tight.

‘Maybe if I could get rid of my lumpy bits.’

‘Lumpy bits? Please! In twenty years you’ll look back and be amazed at how slim you were.’

Cate shrugged. ‘Still. It’s not for me.’ She replaced the dress on the rack and frowned. ‘What do you think that is?’

They moved towards the doorway, where other customers were peering into the street. As Cate and her mother fought their way through, they could see a gathering outside a clothing store across the way. Beyond the outer cordon of spectators there seemed to be an inner group who were bending or kneeling. A few people were talking in urgent, indistinct voices, but the main crowd seemed strangely silent.

‘Heart attack?’ said a man in the shop.

A woman on the pavement turned to him. ‘There’s a man bleeding. They say he’s been stabbed.’

Others overheard, and there were gasps and frightened murmurs. Cate shivered but Teresa, always a little prurient, took a step towards the crowd. ‘Shall we have a look?’

‘Not unless you’ve got medical training you never told me about.’ Cate took her mother’s arm and jerked her forward.

‘What’s the hurry?’

‘It’s ghoulish. We can’t help, so we shouldn’t just stand and gawp.’

‘Spoilsport.’ She tutted. ‘Probably kids. They all carry knives nowadays, apparently.’

‘I hope he’s all right, whoever he is.’ There were sirens now, as harsh and insistent as a crying child. Cate imagined what a nightmare it must be for the paramedics, having to fight their way through the city-centre traffic.

Teresa grunted, then said, ‘I’m getting peckish – uh.’ She twitched, and Cate did, too, as a drop of rain caught her in the face.

‘That seals it,’ her mother declared. ‘Time for coffee and cake.’

Robbie knew that the afternoon was destined to stay imprinted on his memory for ever. The feel of the cold, rough wooden floor, the smell of mildew, the sound of the rain beating on the roof and drip-drip-dripping in the corner: these things would always be associated with the magical thrill of his discovery.

Each box was stuffed full of paperwork in different shapes and sizes, as well as half a dozen notebooks and a couple of plastic document wallets. A quick perusal revealed that one letterhead was predominant: Templeton Wynne. The name was vaguely familiar to Robbie, but his lack of knowledge wasn’t critical. Easily remedied by Google.

There were reports, memos, printouts of long back-and-forth conversations by email, even some handwritten notes that looked to have been photocopied in a hurry, the paper curling away from the light. Robbie didn’t stop to read anything in detail. Better to sift through it quickly and try to understand what he had.

Then he took a peek inside one of the document wallets and roared with laughter. No problem understanding this.

****

He upended it, and a cascade of banknotes fluttered out. Pounds, dollars, euros, yen, some in thick bundles secured with rubber bands, others loose. All used notes, and mostly large denominations.

So Hank O’Brien in some respects was a man after his own heart, Robbie thought. He too had a fighting fund.

He made some quick calculations and was stunned by the result. There had to be at least twenty grand here. It certainly put the money he’d lost during the week into perspective.

He stared at it for so long that he went into a kind of trance, lulled by the rain and nearly hypnotised by the possibilities that were opening up to him. Hank was a man with secrets, all right. Every instinct told Robbie that the contents of all this paperwork would make the cash almost irrelevant by comparison.

A gust of wind slammed the door, then sucked it open again. It was enough to break the spell. He thought about the man who’d photographed them on Wednesday night, and Cheryl’s description of a break-in where nothing appeared to have been taken. He shivered.

Someone else is looking for this.

****

But they hadn’t found it. And Cheryl can’t have known about the hiding place, or she’d have emptied it herself. It was here for the taking—

Robbie’s phone buzzed softly. He would have ignored it, but for the feeling that it had buzzed maybe once or twice before, while he was sorting through the papers.

It was Bree. A missed call, following up on a text:
Where r u? Call me x

No chance, he thought, although he was astonished to find it was half past two. How had that happened?

Maureen Heath was waiting for him, but the gold mine here in the shed changed everything. He didn’t have to whore himself out.

He was ready to call Maureen and cancel the meeting when the ‘Dan’ voice spoke up again.
Don’t be so impulsive. You need Bree’s alibi, remember
.

Buy some time, that was the best option. So he made the call, Maureen Heath answering the moment it rang.

‘You ain’t baling out on me, are you?’

Robbie was taken aback by the aggression in her voice. ‘Sorry, Maureen. I’ve been called into a meeting. But I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘What?’

‘My other half’s away tomorrow. From Monday he’s in and out all week, so it’s gotta be tomorrow.’

It sounded like an order, rather than a suggestion. Robbie bristled, but made an effort not to let it show.

‘Okay.’

‘Ten o’clock’s good. I hope you’ve got lots of energy.’

‘Plenty,’ he said, thinking about the fresh excuse he would have to find in the morning.

‘How about uniforms?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘For dressing up. A fireman’s sexy. Or a Navy one, like Richard Gere in that film.’

‘Sorry, no. I can wear a suit.’

‘Yeah. But you should get some uniforms. Women like ’em.’

****

Robbie put the phone away, determined that Maureen Heath wasn’t going to sour his mood. With the money back in the folder, he decided it was safe to return the document boxes to their hiding place. Best to leave everything as it was till he’d done his research and understood what he was dealing with here.

As for the cash, it came down to a test of willpower. If he could bear to let the money out of his sight it meant he was strong enough to refrain from spending it. Proof of his maturity.

After he’d shoved the bookcase back into its original position, he rooted round until he found an old tin of creosote. There was an inch or so of the liquid left, enough to pour on the shed floor, obscuring the scuff mark created by the bookcase, so that nobody else could make the connection that he’d made.

Not that anyone was likely to, he thought.

‘Who else can match your genius, Robert?’ he said aloud.

****

It took him ten minutes to finish up, locking doors, setting the alarm. He had another moment of wistful longing for the Range Rover, then he climbed back into the Citroen and drove away. One of the windscreen wipers was playing up, squeaking with every motion, like there was a fucking mouse trapped behind the dashboard.

Robbie was grinning at the image when he turned out of the lane. The visibility was poor enough to need headlights, and as he got up into fifth gear he glanced in the mirror and saw a set of lights on the road behind him. He was sure they hadn’t been there when he’d pulled out.

He didn’t give it much thought at first. There wasn’t a lot of traffic around, so he vaguely noticed when the car made the same left turn on to the A283. He paid a little more attention when it stayed with him across the Henfield roundabout, and he was sitting rigidly in his seat by the time it mimicked his last-second decision to swerve off the slip road for the Shoreham flyover and instead cross the roundabout to take the local road into Shoreham itself.

He was being followed.

After they’d stopped for a snack, Cate found that she wasn’t in the mood for shopping. Everywhere was too busy, too noisy. She felt shaken by her proximity to a violent crime, and realised that she was still emotionally fragile after the bust-up with Martin last night.

All she wanted was to go home and rest for a few hours before the date with DS Thomsett. That too seemed like a bad idea, the more she thought about it. But she knew that her mother would berate her for any hint of a faint heart, so dutifully she traipsed back to Churchill Square and faked enthusiasm for a little black dress that her mother promptly insisted on buying.

‘Mum, it’s lovely but it’s too expensive.’

‘Believe me, I’ve waited so long to hear you’ve got a fella, it’s more than worth it. You’re gonna knock him dead in this.’

Under relentless questioning, Cate had given her mother an accurate description of Guy Thomsett, including the fact that he was divorced, with children. The only thing she changed was his occupation, from policeman to solicitor.

‘Shame he’s in the same line of work as you,’ Teresa said. ‘Still, apart from that he sounds perfect. Have you met his kids yet?’

‘No. This is a casual dinner, that’s all.’

‘Casual!’ her mother scoffed. ‘Well, make sure you get to know them soon. Their impression of you will be vital to what he thinks.’ She sighed to herself, and Cate knew that her mother was about to put her foot in it. ‘A ready-made family, bloody perfect.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘None of the pain of childbirth, or all that stress when they’re little. Sleepless nights and cleaning up shitty nappies. I tell you, if I could’ve had you and Robbie delivered when you were ready to start school I’d have leapt at the chance. Completely overrated, babies—’

‘Janine’s pregnant.’ The words slipped out; painful to say, but not as painful as the message it conveyed:
You can be flippant about babies because you were lucky enough to have them
.

Undaunted, Teresa gave a snort. ‘Oh my God, that won’t last, then. He’ll do another runner soon enough. Line up some other floozy.’

Me
, Cate thought, and had to blink away the threat of tears. ‘Do you think so?’

‘Yep. Commitment-phobic, that’s Martin.’ And then, perhaps to remind Cate that she didn’t have a monopoly on heartbreak, she added, ‘Just like your father.’

****

Robbie drove towards Shoreham and let himself get snarled up in the traffic on the coast road. Queuing for the roundabout by the Giant bike store, he had a feeling that his tail was some four or five cars back. He couldn’t see the driver, but the car kept nudging out into the road, its impatience clear to see.

Or was that just his imagination? The discovery of the cache of documents was bound to have gone to his head. And impatient drivers were hardly rare in Brighton. He was often one himself.

Twenty grand
. Merely picturing the money blotted out his worries. He glanced at a window display of gleaming bikes and thought about treating himself. Get a new mountain bike, top of the range: courtesy of the late Mr O’Brien.

The traffic began to move. Robbie turned left, inched his way along Shoreham High Street and just managed to jump through the pedestrian lights before they turned red. His pursuer – if he existed – wouldn’t catch him now.

He took a convoluted route up into Southwick and through Portslade, dreaming of new bikes and other treats, and by the time he brought the Citroen to a halt in the car park at Wickes in Hove he had pretty much convinced himself that there was nothing to worry about.

****

Working in a shop on a wet Saturday afternoon, it could feel as though time itself had stopped. The heavy rain chased most of Denham’s customers away, and the last hour or two was a slow-burning agony for Dan, as he contemplated having to deliver his damaged car to Robbie’s promised refuge. At the home of the man who had been knocked down and killed by that very car.