The Siren (17 page)

He plugged in his jukebox and let the Bel Ami warm up before leaving it to run on the random free-play setting. He knew he needed to go to bed, but made coffee instead, opening his last two
days’ post as the kettle boiled. Three bills and two offers of credit cards. At the bottom of the pile was the envelope his grandmother had passed to him. He took all the correspondence and
the coffee back to the window seat. The envelope was A4 size and made of an off-white vellum with a woven texture more than strong enough to hold its weighty contents. It was the kind of envelope
only ever used for documents connected to death or property or family provenance. Or in this case all three.

His grandmother called him money-phobic. He was sure he wasn’t, but just holding the envelope left him slightly nauseous. He drank half his coffee before looking inside.

What his grandmother had called ‘a letter’ consisted of a quarter-inch-thick sheaf of papers each bearing the letterhead of his grandparents’ solicitors, Mason, Willis and
Wollaston. Just as she’d said, it did confirm the final transfer of assets from his grandfather’s estate into his own name.

News of that inheritance had been a recent and complete shock; until then he’d believed that everything had passed to his parents when he was eleven; that it had long since been spent on
everything from his unhappy private education to the social-climbing stint that had eventually wrecked their marriage. In fact their inheritance had been only a fraction of his, and the idea that
he’d inherited far more than it had taken to destroy his childhood was now proving too much for him to assimilate.

He flicked through the pages: the items ranged from a box of ‘sundry books’ held in storage to his flat and the entire building beneath it. All he wanted was some clue that might
explain the origins of it all. There was nothing which seemed remotely personal until he reached the bottom of the pile. Pinned to the final sheet was a square, white notecard, and he knew, before
he detached it, that it was one of his grandmother’s. He turned it over. There was just one sentence written in her artistic hand:
Don’t worry about where it came from, it’s
nothing bad, just enjoy
.

It wasn’t long before his thoughts were drawn back to Rachel Golinski. He then wondered who else might still be awake and what tomorrow would bring. Behind him the jukebox hummed, and in
front of him Cambridge slept. He closed his eyes and let the day fade away. His post slid from his lap to the floor, but he didn’t stir.

Sleep was finally reaching Stefan Golinski.

He spat and the result hit the floor like a dead jellyfish. He thought of Rachel’s expression. At least Mule had shown fear, but she had just looked insolent. His anger was slipping away
but he still believed she was a bitch. A treacherous, deceitful slag.

He’d loved her like she was a goddess, set her on a pedestal so high that falling from it was bound to be fatal. And, when that pedestal was constructed of nothing but a teetering pile of
filthy banknotes the collapse was inevitable.

And from this he understood one thing: life was about money, always about money. No one was above it or immune from it.

Right now he regretted the day he’d met her.

And her fuck-up of a mate.

But right now was all he had, and his anger extended far beyond Rachel and Kimberly. His head hurt; it thumped and felt heavy. He wanted to sleep.

He didn’t know whether there was enough time left to settle every score.

He tried to think what he’d achieved, and which bits he regretted. Only time would tell. It just might not tell him. Inside his own head he grinned at himself. Hadn’t he always known
it would end like this? Not exactly like this, but in this way – like Butch Cassidy, like Harrelson’s Mickey Know, like Vincent Vega.

He wanted to go out fighting, to see death reflected on the faces of those that betrayed him. And it didn’t matter whether his own death followed instantly.

He closed his eyes and slept, with his teeth gritted into an expression that merely resembled a smile.

DC Michael Kincaide was asleep in front of the TV when Jan Kincaide arrived home. She sat on the other settee and used the remote to silently catch up on the news headlines via
Teletext. A couple of times she glanced across at her husband, as if expecting to see there the answer to a question she hadn’t yet put into words. There was no revelation, though; just that
same old niggle of discontent and the ongoing puzzle of whether he was part of the problem or part of the solution.

She turned off the TV by kicking the wall switch with the toe of her boot.

She considered waking him and urging him to go to bed, but in the end she threw the spare duvet over him, killed the lights and left him there.

Once Kimberly was certain that PC Gully’s replacement was asleep, she dialled the numbers, pressing each digit firmly and without haste.

Anita answered straight away. ‘You shouldn’t be calling.’

‘It doesn’t matter, we’ve made a mistake.’

‘What mistake?’

‘The whole thing. We should have trusted them.’

‘We can’t change things now.’

‘Listen to me. We
have
to.’

‘You’ll never keep him. They’ll take him away from you, I know they will.’

‘But you never thought of how we were going to end it. We don’t have a plan.’

‘I told you, I’ll go forward when it’s safe.’

‘It won’t work.’

‘Go to sleep, Kim. You’ll feel differently tomorrow.’

Riley Guyver lay on his blanket. His earlier ill-temper had long since subsided into a broken pattern of sobs and sniffs. Once every few minutes he had repeated his order,
‘I want Mummy.’

But the once robust demand had faded, and was now no more than a whisper, the last gasp of rebellion: ‘I want Mummy. I want Mummy. I want Mummy . . .’ Until the whisper faded into
nothing, and anyone listening would have thought he’d already gone to sleep.

TWENTY-TWO

Goodhew woke with a start, the only sound was the amplified scrape of the stylus on the run-out of whatever the last track had been. He rose quickly and turned the jukebox off,
before it could select the next single, then returned to the window and stooped to collect the scattering of post which lay on the floor.

He put the pages in the right order then checked there were none missing before sliding them back into the vellum envelope. Stupid, really, since they couldn’t have gone anywhere while he
slept; but he knew that checking and rechecking was part of his MO.

Like now glancing down the lens of the telescope and making a quick survey of Marks’ office.

He frowned and pulled back, then looked over towards the station with his naked eye. He peered back through the sight, shut one eye and nudged the scope around by a couple of degrees.

Yes, he had seen it right: Gully was there in Marks’ office. And he knew, from her swift and purposeful moves, that whatever she was up to wasn’t happening with her boss’s
consent. She’d switched on the overhead lights. That was a sensible move; far quicker and less suspicious than fumbling around in the gloom.

She tried the filing cabinet first, found it was locked. She spun round and he guessed she was looking for the key. For once, the tension had drained her face of all colour, no hint of blushing.
Her lips were pressed together in determination.

And his instincts told Goodhew that this scenario added up to very bad news.

DI Marks had a single filing cabinet and Gully guessed that if there were any personal files in Marks’ office, that’s where she’d find them.

She’d pulled at the handle but wasn’t surprised to find it locked, even so, she didn’t hesitate. Though drawn to the idea of stepping back out into the corridor and shutting
the door quietly behind her, she’d made a rational decision to do this and backing out wasn’t now an option.

She could picture Marks’ car key, which hung on a ring along with a lone house key, so if he didn’t carry the one for the filing cabinet with him, she figured there were high odds of
finding it here in his office. It wasn’t lying on top of the cabinet itself, so she turned to the desk and immediately found it hanging by an elastic band from the desk key which still sat in
its lock.

Obviously DI Marks was not the head of crime prevention.

Gully’s heart began to thump. She wondered why nature generated such a distracting noise at the moment she needed to concentrate and hear clearly.

She slid the key from the desk and turned back to the filing cabinet. Her trembling fingers fumbled to grip the other key, and her heart beat harder as she stabbed it into the lock.

The drawer rattled open, creaking and groaning along its ten-inch journey to the front of the runner. She glanced over her shoulder at the door then dragged her gaze back to the files. No one
would come in.

She found Goodhew’s file in the third drawer down; it hung at the front of about ten others. His file was the fattest: not quite the encyclopaedia that Kincaide had hinted at, but very
large, especially for a DC of only a few months’ standing.

Afterwards she would wonder why she hadn’t just left it there, why this proof of its existence wasn’t enough to convince her that Kincaide was telling the truth. Perhaps it was human
nature or a kind of Pandora instinct that made her pull it out.

She held it with the spine resting in the palm of one hand, then opened the front cover so she could see the first page. It was a photocopy of Goodhew’s initial application, and the
following pages were copies of training evaluations and exam results.

The originals would be held by HR, but it seemed that Marks had decided to keep his own complete set of records. Did this mean he did so for all the staff, or just Goodhew? She slid open the
drawer again and checked the names on the first couple of files; no one she knew. There weren’t enough files there for one per member of Marks’ team, in any case.

She held her breath as she thumbed through the tabs. She checked each name and still recognized no one.

So there had to be some reason that Goodhew was the only one to be monitored this closely. Her heart resumed its thump-thump-thumping. She’d found nothing that proved Kincaide right,
though. She knew she should leave now, come back when Marks was alone and unburden her suspicions. Risk looking stupid. Risk making serious allegations that could damage someone’s career.

She knew someone could walk in at any moment. She also knew that she’d seen a file that she was not supposed to know existed. And it was there for a reason.

If she was going to get caught, it may as well be red-handed. She opened the file with a decisive flick that revealed the pages at random. It fell open at a section filled with sealed manila
envelopes.

She rested the open file on the top of Marks’ desk. Each envelope was stuck in the middle only. A tingle ran across her scalp and darted down her neck as she considered whether she should
open it. She glanced towards the window.
It’s the third floor, Sue. No one’s watching
, she told herself.

Gary Goodhew hadn’t taken his eyes off her.

She had pulled out a thick folder and begun to read an enclosed file.

Goodhew had squinted harder and managed to pick out the shape of a familiar name.

Goodhew
.

As he watched her looking at his notes, he had caught a fleeting glimpse of his initial job application and personnel photograph. Gully frowned as she flicked further through the pages.

Goodhew didn’t understand why Marks kept staff files in his office. In fact that puzzled Goodhew even more than seeing Gully having a sly read of his personal information. And, of course,
he was curious to know what she was looking for. He kept his own illicit information-hunting exercises strictly crime-related, and the results had frequently been sent to Marks in the form of an
anonymous tip-off sealed in a plain envelope. He couldn’t think of any reason for her search – especially one linked to their current case – and he certainly hadn’t expected
to see anyone else follow his personal covert methods.

It was a weird thing for Gully to be doing, but he supposed she must have a reason. Good luck to her. He gave a wry smile, doubting that Marks would see it in quite the same indulgent light.

He checked his watch. Damn, she’d been in there nearly ten minutes already. Surely there should be a bit more urgency? Perhaps she knew where Marks was and felt safe.

Goodhew swung the telescope down towards the road leading to the car park, just in time to catch sight of what appeared to be the tail light configuration of Marks’ dark-red Mazda 406
swing into view. It disappeared towards its parking slot, but not before Goodhew had picked out the first four digits of its plate and positively identified it.

He swung the telescope back up to Marks’ office. Gully had returned to the filing cabinet and was flicking through more files. Then, instead of closing the drawer, she turned back to his
folder.

‘No,’ he hissed. ‘What are you doing? Shut the file, Sue.’ She turned slowly towards the desk and broke open the file midway through. This wasn’t the time for her
to start reading anything new.

He swung the telescope on to the brightly lit stairs. Marks was trudging up them towards his office.

‘Shut the fucking file and put it away,’ he shouted.

But she’d taken out an envelope. And not any envelope but one of those he’d sent to Marks. He recognized the typeface and the white label positioned symmetrically on the front.

On several levels this was now not a good situation.

Goodhew grabbed his mobile and retrieved Gully’s number from its memory. He heard it ring as he watched her, but she didn’t move except to run her finger under the lip of the lightly
sealed envelope. Shit. Her phone was off, or on silent. He kept it ringing, and willed her to pick it up. Suddenly she stirred, and pulled her mobile from her pocket. He watched her as she looked
at the display. She saw his number, but clearly failed to recognize it. Then, finally, she answered.

He forced a relaxed tone into his voice. ‘I was wondering whether you’re back at the station yet?’