The Stranger You Know (46 page)

Further down the road, the truck had stopped, hazard lights flashing, and the driver climbed down from his cab. A couple of officers had gone down to speak him. He looked agitated, one hand to his head, one to his mouth.

‘Better tell the driver not to worry about it,’ I said. ‘No one’s going to miss this one.’

‘I’d have liked the chance to arrest him,’ Godley said softly. ‘I’d have liked to hear what he had to say.’

‘He’d just have lied.’ I was starting to shiver as the shock kicked in. ‘They all lie. You never really get near the truth.’

‘That’s truer than you know,’ he said, so quietly only I could hear it, and I looked up at him, wondering what he meant. He didn’t add anything else, striding off to speak to the lorry driver as a couple of response cars arrived, lights and siren on, to take over the traffic duties. An ambulance was right behind them, also on blues, and I wondered why they were bothering to hurry. Sinclair was far beyond anyone’s help now.

Maitland finally made it to my side. He was looking anguished. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Never better.’ I tried to stop my teeth from chattering. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Good.’ He still looked upset.

‘Really, I’m okay.’

‘I believe you. But you need to come with me.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘You were right. He did have a knife.’

I stared at him, waiting, and I could see him decide there was no good way to break the news, given what it was. Two words were enough.

‘It’s Liv.’

MONDAY

Chapter 38

‘Knock knock.’

I looked up from my work and gasped. ‘No way.’

‘Oh, there was a way. It just involved buying a new ticket.’ Rob slung his bag on the floor and came across the deserted waiting room as I jumped up and ran into his arms. ‘How are you doing?’

‘I’m okay,’ I said, my mouth muffled against his chest. ‘I can’t believe you came.’

‘As soon as I could. I was away for a week and you almost got shot. And strangled.’

‘Don’t forget I almost got run over too.’

‘I was getting to that.’ He held me even closer. ‘Then there was Swain. He’s enough to get me on a plane on his own. Who knows what would have happened if I’d stayed the full two weeks?’

‘Nothing good,’ I said, shivering. ‘But I’m not hurt. And I’m not scared of Chris Swain.’

‘This again.’ He shook me gently. ‘You should be.’

‘But then he wins.’

‘So he wins. Be a good loser and live a long life. For me.’

‘For you,’ I said. I hadn’t let go of him. It was still sinking in that he was really there. ‘How come you were able to leave early? Did Debbie agree?’

‘Not really.’

‘Rob!’

‘Look, I told her it was important. She’ll get over it.’

‘She doesn’t even like me,’ I said. ‘She’ll be furious.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘You can’t destroy your career for me.’ I was really worried now.

‘I didn’t destroy anything. I promise, she’ll be fine.’ He ran his thumb down my cheek, then bent his head and kissed me. I shivered in sheer pleasure this time and pressed against him, my arms around his neck. When we came up for air, he looked into my eyes. ‘Let’s be clear. If I have a choice to make between work and you, I’ll always pick you. You come first for me.’

‘I love you.’

His face went blank. Shock. ‘What did you say?’

‘You heard.’

‘I don’t know that I did.’

‘I love you,’ I said slowly and clearly.

He grinned, delighted. ‘A hospital waiting room. Not the most romantic setting you could have chosen but I’ll take it. I love you too.’

‘I know.’ I leaned my head on his shoulder, my cheek against his neck. I’d missed him more than I could have thought possible.

‘Are you really okay? How’s Liv?’

Tears caught at the back of my throat. ‘Not great.’

For three agonising days we had been waiting to hear if Liv was going to pull through after emergency surgery to repair the damage Stuart Sinclair had done to her with the knife he had been carrying, the knife no one had seen, the knife I’d warned them about. He’d stabbed her in the stomach, almost casually, as he passed, leaving the knife in her as he ran on. She’d been wearing her protective stab vest but it had ridden up, as they tended to, and Sinclair had got lucky. Although the surgeons had been able to stitch her back together, she’d developed a post-operative infection that was causing a lot of headshaking and concern. I felt paralysed, desperate to help but with no way of doing anything useful.

‘Have you been here since it happened?’

‘Most of the time,’ I admitted. ‘How did you guess?’

‘You look as if you’ve just come off a long-haul flight.’

‘Whereas you look just fine. How do you do it?’

‘I make these things look good,’ he said. ‘But I am starving. I slept through the meal on the plane and I didn’t stop for anything on my way here.’

‘The café on the third floor is all right.’

‘Not a rave review, but okay. I’ll go and find it in a bit.’ He pulled me a little bit closer. ‘All this excitement. Your mum must be a wreck.’

‘I think she’s quite proud of me, for once. But she made me promise not to do it again.’

‘Sensible woman. That was my next move.’

I leaned my head against him. ‘Oh, Rob.’

‘Very touching.’ Derwent let the door slam behind him and limped towards us. ‘Welcome home, lover.’

‘Thanks,’ Rob said drily, letting go of me. ‘Good to see you too.’

Derwent was looking around. ‘This place is like a morgue.’

‘That remark is in poor taste,’ I snapped.

‘Sorry.’ He didn’t look it.

‘I know you don’t like Liv much but she’s in intensive care. She’s fighting for her life. The least you could do is show some respect.’

‘I’m showing plenty of respect,’ he protested. ‘I’m here, for one thing. And I’ve just been along to see how she’s doing.’

My heart jumped. ‘Any news?’

Godley had come in behind him and answered for him. ‘She’s the same.’ He nodded to Rob. ‘Good to see you. How’s the Flying Squad?’

‘Fun and games.’

Godley grinned. ‘Do you mind if we borrow Maeve for a minute? Just to catch up?’

‘No problem. I was going to find something to eat anyway. I’ll stay out of your way. Does anyone want anything from the café?’

‘I need a coffee,’ Derwent announced. ‘I’ll come with you.’

Rob looked at me. ‘Coffee?’

I shook my head, and the two of them headed off together. I missed one of them before the door had even closed behind them. The other was welcome to stay away as long as he liked.

‘You need to go home. Get some rest,’ Godley said, sitting down.

‘I’m fine.’ I could work well enough in the hospital with my phone, which had at long last been returned, and my paperwork, and I wasn’t going anywhere until I knew what was happening with Liv.

‘You look tired.’

‘I am. But I’ll be okay.’

‘I know the two of you are close.’ He reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. I was surprised that he did it, but comforted by it too. ‘You know, you’ve put us through this in the past.’

‘It’s easier to be the one who’s out cold.’

‘Very true.’ He sat back.

‘Do I have to talk to Derwent? Does he have to be here?’

Godley looked surprised. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘I can’t deal with him at the moment. Not with Liv the way she is. He doesn’t even care.’

‘He’s been here every day, even if you haven’t seen him. He’s got the nurses eating out of his hand.’

‘Am I supposed to be impressed just because he’s flirting with the nurses?’

‘They’ve been extra-nice to Joanne and Liv’s family. It all helps.’

‘He’s totally motivated by self-interest.’

‘He got here an hour ago. He’s been sitting with Joanne, letting her talk about Liv. When I got there, he was making her laugh.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Absolutely.’

I swallowed. ‘How did I not know this?’

‘He keeps his good side well hidden, but it’s there.’

‘If you say so.’

Godley shifted in his seat. ‘While Josh isn’t here, I want to apologise.’

‘For what?’

‘For giving you a hard time. I don’t want you to leave the team, Maeve. You’re an asset I don’t want to lose.’ Godley looked at me. ‘I don’t know why you still want to work for me, given what you know about me, but for as long as you do, you have a job on my team.’

I could have wept. ‘Sir—’

‘It’s not money. I want you to know that.’

I stared at him. ‘I don’t—’

‘He didn’t give me a choice. I try not to tell him anything he’ll find useful. I take the view that if I wasn’t doing it, someone else would be. At least this way I know what he knows.’

‘You don’t have to explain.’

‘I want to.’ He looked down at his hands, his expression rueful. ‘You know, you’re the last person I would have wanted to find out about it.’

‘Why? I haven’t told anyone.’

He looked back at me. ‘Because you’d have said no and taken the consequences.’

Before I could put together a cogent reply, the door swung open as Derwent returned alone, except for a hospital orderly carrying two coffees on a tray, since the crutches meant he couldn’t manage one. He had a genius for getting people to do things for him for nothing more than a smile.

‘Thanks, darling,’ he said, and winked at her as he lowered himself into a seat. The smile turned into a wince.

‘How’s your leg?’ I asked.

‘Agony. How’s your neck?’

‘Better.’

‘For the record,’ Derwent said, stirring his coffee, ‘I’m glad you didn’t fall under a truck the other day. But I wish you’d run a bit faster.’

‘I did my best.’

‘And it wasn’t good enough.’

‘I’m aware of that,’ I snapped.

Godley cleared his throat. ‘No one blames you, Maeve. You did a good job.’

‘It pisses me off, though,’ Derwent said. ‘Twenty years I’ve been waiting to find out what really happened to Ange. Twenty years. And you’re just a couple of seconds too slow, so now I’ll never know.’

I took a deep breath before I replied. I needed some sort of mantra to cope with Derwent, something soothing and centring so that he didn’t get to me any more, but the only things I could think of were swear words. ‘Well, actually, I’ve been doing some digging while I’ve been sitting around here and I think I’ve worked out what happened. And almost all of this information was openly available, so you could have found it out for yourself at any point in the last twenty years. It’s not my fault that you couldn’t see the wood for the trees.’

‘Hey,’ Derwent said, hurt, and Godley shut him up with a look.

‘Go on, Maeve.’

‘Okay. Well, during the original investigation, the only people who told the truth were you and Angela’s dad, and the two of you cancelled each other out as suspects. Orpen was a disaster. He kept really bad records of the interviews he did, and he had everyone running scared so they didn’t tell him what he actually needed to know.’ The next bit was mildly tricky. I hoped Derwent was concentrating on what I’d found out rather than how I’d done it. ‘One of the witnesses I traced mentioned a guy named Craig – first name or last name, she didn’t know – who’d been hanging around a couple of weeks before Angela died. He was a drifter, passing through on his way from somewhere in the north of England to France. He was a good source of quality dope and he liked to hang around with teenage girls although he was probably in his late twenties or thirties.’

‘I don’t remember him,’ Derwent said, frowning.

‘He might have only spoken to Angela once before she died, according to the witness. He seemed to disappear. He never came up in the original inquiry because no one ever told Orpen about him.’

‘What makes you think he’s relevant?’ Godley asked.

‘Because the night Angela died, Shane was smoking dope with people he described as friends, but they were really people he barely knew. I got in touch with him yesterday to see if he remembered anyone matching the description of Craig and he said he did, that the guy had given them the drugs and chatted to them for a bit. He’d never seen him before and he never saw him again. The guy wandered off halfway through the evening and I pressed Shane for the details but he really doesn’t remember.’

‘Drugs will do that to you.’ Derwent sounded like his usual sanctimonious self but his eyes were fixed on me and he was very still, paying close attention.

‘I think Craig was on the lookout for a girl to kill that night. I think he was hoping to get someone stoned and then take her somewhere private to kill her, but it didn’t work out. He gave up on the teenagers in the park when no one suitable showed up, and went for a wander. He must have seen Angela walking home alone and followed her.’ I laid a couple of sheets of paper out on the table in front of me so Godley and Derwent could see. ‘He said he’d been up north before so I had a look through the records. Here’s an unsolved murder in Bradford two months before Angela died – Laurie Morrows, aged sixteen. She was a drug addict and worked as a prostitute from time to time. She was raped and strangled and her face was mutilated. That case has just been sitting in West Yorkshire Police’s files and no one ever thought it could be relevant until I went looking for cases that might be connected. Laurie’s job confused the issue – they were looking for a client. Angela wasn’t a prostitute, obviously, so that didn’t ring any bells for West Yorkshire, and no one down here knew about Laurie’s death in the first place. And this case: Coventry, the month before Angela’s death. A teenage girl walking her dog was choked but managed to get away from her attacker. The description is patchy but it could be Craig.’

‘Bit different from Angela.’

‘Yes, it is. But after Angela, there are three murders in France.’ I’d marked them on a map, in a curve that ran from the Pas de Calais to the Pyrenees. ‘One, two, three. All teenage girls. All strangled. All sexually assaulted. All mutilated facially in various horrible ways – teeth knocked out, eyes removed. One had her nose and ears cut off. No one was ever caught for them though the French did make the connection between the three killings. They got DNA but they’ve never matched it to anyone.’