Safe Read online

  Petra sat down on the bed and stared at her phone. It was three a.m. and the first meeting that was possible in the morning would be at nine thirty, just after the little café opened. She would have to make it there then, set things in motion. Billy being away simplified matters, though she knew that Gus would be keeping an eye. Gus kept an eye on everyone. Fortunately, the café was on the way to the gallery, so she had the perfect excuse. She could say she wanted to go and have a quick check on everything and stop off en route at what everyone knew was one of her favourite coffee shops. That would raise no eyebrows. Having settled that, Petra sought to take her own advice and get some much-needed sleep.

  Chapter 35

  Petra went out straight after breakfast. She didn’t see anybody watching the house, or spot anyone on her walk into town, but that didn’t mean anything. She chose to walk because it was easier to observe anyone following her, Gus’s men tending to prefer cars to feet.

  She popped into the café just after it opened and stood in the short queue chatting to an elderly couple who were also regulars. She sat at a table by the window to drink coffee and eat her croissant and then wandered on towards the gallery. She spent about half an hour there, talking to the manager, checking that everything was in order and gave Carole a ring just to ask if she wanted to be there when she went through the photos later that morning. They arranged to meet up for lunch first, then to go back to the gallery and check through the images there so that the gallery could have first pick for any publicity stuff.

  Anybody who happened to be watching Petra would have seen Pat do all of this, but what they would not have noted was the brush contact with the old couple, the exchange of information. The request for a face-to-face with her handler and a memory stick popped in Pat’s bag.

  After the gallery, she headed to go and see Gail. Gail was a friend and had also been her de facto agent when Pat had been focusing on photographing weddings, christenings and bar mitzvahs. She had contrived to meet Billy at one of these events, a wedding for a distant cousin of the Perrin family. And then again at another social event and after that, well, things had taken their course.

  Although it was Sunday, Gail — being self-employed and living above the shop — was working and welcomed her happily. While Gail was making coffee for them both, Pat asked if she could use her computer to send a quick email. She made her way into the back office, borrowing the spare laptop that was used by the girl who came in to do office admin for a few hours a week. She inserted the memory stick and checked the files very, very quickly. She’d expected just a quick message but instead found that she was looking at case files. That she was looking at several gigs of information spread over a dozen or more folders.

  “Fuck,” Petra breathed. What the hell is all this about? There was evidently more here than she could possibly look at now. She pulled the stick, dropped it back in her handbag and then inserted a second, this being a backup copy of the photographs she taken at the gallery. She turned the laptop so that Gail could see as she came in.

  “Ooh, will you look at those?” Gail pulled up a chair and put both mugs of coffee on the desk. “These are beautiful. Has she seen them yet?”

  “No, I need to forward them over to Mr Perrin and then Carolyn and I are going over them this afternoon. It went really well, Gail. It was a fab evening.”

  For a little while they sat gossiping, examining the photographs and speculating as to which would be selected to go where. But Petra’s mind was racing. Why the hell had Frankland sent her all that stuff? What did he expect her to do with it? Didn’t he know how dangerous it was for her to have this information? Stupid question, of course he did. So what’s going on? She couldn’t help but feel it was a warning of some kind. There had been a message on the stick, a tiny Word file that she’d opened extremely quickly and glanced at. What she had seen disturbed her immensely.

  No meeting, it had said. Compromised. Clarke will help. A phone number followed.

  Compromised? she thought. Who’s compromised? What’s compromised? Her? Frankland? And what about this Clarke?

  She tried to concentrate on what Gail was saying, knowing that after this she had to go and have lunch with Carole and focus on selecting images, on business. There would be nothing she could do until late afternoon. She had hoped to have something sorted out that she could tell Lauren by then. She was pretty sure that the Clarke in question must be DI Clarke. She’d taken the trouble to keep abreast of who was who in the local force and knew that he had transferred about six or seven years ago. She’d heard nothing negative about him. Could he be trusted with this though? Particularly after Petra had spotted the man she was certain was a police officer at Billy’s place the other night.

  She had to think. She had to figure this out, and she had to know what the hell was going on with Frankland. After leaving Gail, she took a chance and called his direct line. The phone was answered by his secretary, who said he had not come in that morning. He hadn’t phoned either to say he was sick. Could she take a message?

  Petra told her no, she’d no doubt catch up with him later. But alarm bells were ringing — this wasn’t right. She walked back to the hotel and was unsurprised to find Carole and Sam in the gallery. Both looked happy. They wandered together back through the glass doors into the atrium and then into the hotel restaurant. Petra was unsurprised to notice a couple of Gus’s men hanging around in the lobby.

  “You’ve got your bodyguards with you today,” she joked.

  Carole rolled her eyes. “Dad’s got a bee in his bonnet about something or other,” she said.

  Petra, or Pat, never questioned Carole about what her dad was up to. She had long since learned that Carole chose not to know and certainly chose not to talk about it. If her father requested she do something, then she did it. Her personal survival strategy was wilful ignorance.

  She was therefore quite surprised when Carole said, “I hear your Billy’s off somewhere. I also hear he is planning to pop the question soon . . .”

  Petra was genuinely shocked by that. “What question?” she asked stupidly.

  Carole laughed. “What question do you think?”

  “I never . . . I mean . . .” For once, she was lost for words. Billy wasn’t the marrying kind, surely? She was saved from further embarrassment by the arrival of the waiter.

  “Now,” Carole said, “Dad’s paying, so what are we ordering?”

  * * *

  The phone rang. Lauren leaped at it. All day, she’d waited. Now at six o’clock in the evening, she’d almost given up. She’d packed her bag, promising herself that if Petra didn’t phone within the next hour, then she would simply catch a train somewhere and that would be that. She remembered she’d promised herself the same thing when she had been waiting for Petra on the beach and that Petra had appeared just as the hour was up. It was almost as though the other woman felt or sensed her deadlines.

  “I thought you’d never phone.”

  “I said I would. It’s difficult, you know that. Right, listen. I’m sending somebody to get you. He’ll let you know when he’s on his way and how long it’s going to take. But his name is Toby Clarke and he is a DI. You can trust him.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just do. Lauren, you’ve got to trust somebody. You trusted me. Keep on trusting me. Clarke is one of the good guys.”

  Lauren hesitated. “OK, so when is he going to be coming?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know. I will get back to you, I will tell you when he’s on his way. You just need to be ready and you need to go with him.”

  Lauren could hear the anxiety in the other woman’s voice. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it?”

  “I don’t know yet. But yes, I think so. Lauren, there are things going on that I haven’t got a handle on yet. Clarke will help us. You just need to be ready to leave.”

  Lauren promised she would be and hung up. She didn’t like the way Petra sounded. What was happening?


  She didn’t want to use the credit on her phone, so she scoured the news channels on the television to try and find what might have spooked the undercover officer. She managed to find snatches of news about the three men found on the waste ground, and that the case was proceeding but there were no new leads. The news report said that Inspector Clarke had been due to give the press conference but had not been available. The journalist speculated that this might indicate a break in the case. Someone called DCI Henderson had made a statement earlier. It was as Lauren expected, full of platitudes that they were following various lines of enquiry. So that’s who Clarke was, she thought. He was local police. Therefore he must know a lot about her father, about Perrin.

  Does he know what I’ve done? For the first time, she really began to think about the consequences of her action. Was she likely to be charged with murder? Surely it had been self-defence? She watched the television for a little longer, hoping that there would be more information, but there wasn’t. It occurred to her that she’d spent most of her life being told what to do and she was still being told. But she was no longer certain that she was prepared to put up with that.

  She got up and went to the window. Outside it was dark, just street lights and the sparkle of Christmas lanterns. If she left now, it would mean travelling through the dark. Travelling to where? She had a few ideas in mind and no solid conclusions as yet.

  Chapter 36

  Toby Clarke listened as the woman with the soft, almost accentless voice told him that she knew where Lauren Sykes was holed up and that she needed help to get her out of harm’s way. She wanted to know that he was alone, that no one could overhear, so he drifted out into the corridor and stood beside the window that looked down into the police car park. He listened for about ten minutes, asking the occasional question, growing more and more concerned.

  By the time he’d hung up, he knew how Lauren Sykes had made it off the beach and where she had gone to after that. He still had no idea who this woman was — but he now understood that she must be an undercover officer. She was, he thought, taking the most terrible risks.

  He was as concerned as she sounded that she could not reach Frankland and he gave him a try as soon as he got off the phone to her. No response. He tried mobile, home phone and office, but by this time of day even the secretary had gone and the phone rang out into emptiness.

  He had been given Lauren’s phone number but had been told not to ring it yet. This woman would do that and prepare the girl to be picked up. Lauren would be scared, he thought. For a moment, he regretted his decision to send Hopkins back home, feeling that a reassuring female presence would have been a good thing. But there was nothing to be done about that. He had promised this woman that he would arrange a safe house and that he would not go through his own force to do so. So he contacted his old boss and explained the situation briefly. Crenshaw took a little convincing but agreed to help.

  “And did your contact say why she didn’t want you to go through your own division?”

  “She claims to have seen a DCI at the house of Billy Hunter. Billy Hunter is a known associate of the Perrin family. Been working for them since he was a teenager, climbed up through the ranks. He’s now very close to Gus Perrin and he is among the group that Gus sent to find the Sykes girl.”

  Crenshaw told him to head down to collect the witness and that he would send an address to Clarke while he was en route. The woman had managed to transmit her fear to Clarke, and Clarke had evidently now done the same for Crenshaw. The sense of urgency was palpable.

  He returned to the office aware that he been gone for quite a while. Mark Reynolds looked up from his desk. “Trouble?” he asked.

  “Possibly. I’ve got to head back down, probably be back up here in a day or two if you need me. Apparently, there have been developments, but I’m not sure what they are yet. Everyone’s being a bit cagey.”

  Reynolds raised an eyebrow but made no comment. They both knew that it was often wise not to speculate too much about unfolding events. That could block your thinking, just at the point when you needed to look at it with fresh eyes.

  The office was quiet at this time of the evening and Clarke asked Reynolds to say his goodbyes for him. And then he was off, stopping briefly to collect his things from the hotel.

  He did not notice the car that pulled out of a sideroad as he left his hotel. It kept its distance as he reached the main road but overtook him as soon as he joined the motorway. Finally it settled two cars behind, matching Clarke’s speed as he headed south once more.

  * * *

  Lauren did not have to wait too long for her phone call. Petra called her back at eight and explained what was happening. That a safe house was being arranged and DI Clarke would come and get her later that night. That he would text to let her know when he was about half an hour away and that he would come to her room. To not worry about checking out because Petra would deal with that over the phone.

  “Are you sure you can trust him?” Lauren asked.

  “I’m sure. Text me when he arrives, OK?”

  Lauren agreed. “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t how this is all going to turn out, but I hope I can meet you properly one day. One day when we’re not both scared shitless.”

  Chapter 37

  It was dark outside, and Petra had made up her mind. She had to know what had happened to Frankland. It was out of character for him not to let work know that he wasn’t coming in and her sense of dread had risen through the afternoon and into the evening. Something was not right. She had taken a chance to look at the USB drive that the old couple had delivered to her that morning. She hadn’t worked her way through everything but what she’d already read had frightened her considerably. It seemed that her handler had already had suspicions about the DCI she had spotted coming out of Billy’s kitchen that night. His suspicions had been reported higher up the chain of command, but he seemed to be getting nowhere. Much in the reports stemmed from intelligence that she had obtained, and this had clearly been followed up. She had known that Kyle Sykes had contacts inside the force, had guessed that Perrin did, too, but what she had read was positive proof of this.

  She took a backpack from the cupboard. It was designed for camera equipment but it was black and had multiple pockets. She added a camera with an infrared lens and some other equipment, just in case Gus Perrin had people out ‘watching over’ her. She pulled on dark jeans and a dark sweatshirt and topped that off with a thick, padded jacket. She stuffed the stick drive into an inner pocket, then tugged a knitted hat down over her hair. She left the house via the patio doors and went out through the back gate. Ducking down immediately behind a parked car, she checked down the road but could not see anything obvious that suggested she was being observed. Two streets away was a garage and inside that lock-up was an innocuous-looking little hatchback. She waited for five minutes before unlocking the door to the garage, but there was no sign of anyone. She kept the car carefully maintained, never knowing when she might need it. It started first time. She backed out of the lock-up and pulled off without bothering to close the door again. There was nothing to steal in there and she suddenly did not want to run the risk of getting out of the car.

  She drove out of the end of the street without anybody obviously following, and it would have been obvious this time of night. Of course, that didn’t mean that surveillance couldn’t have called ahead and there might be a car waiting to pick her up at the next junction. She didn’t think so, but took a circuitous route just in case, changing lanes frequently on the dual carriageway leading out of town and circling back round on herself, taking almost an hour to do what was in fact only a ten-minute journey. She parked a street away from her destination and walked down a narrow cycle path between the houses to get to where she needed to be.

  Again she waited. It was past ten o’clock at night. Everyone was inside in this quiet residential area. The faint sound of televisions leaking out through windows was the only thing that broke the
silence.

  Frankland’s house was in darkness. She knew he had lived alone since his divorce a few years before. The house was a modest semi-detached with two bedrooms, but she knew it had a long garden and that she could get into the garden by climbing the next-door wall and going over the fence into his. She knew this because she’d done her reconnaissance. Her earlier military training had prepared her for the idea that she must always be ready, always know her ground. It was an attitude she had shared with Harry. She had liked him. Harry had always joked that she would be the one to get him killed. He would never have thought it would be his seventeen-year-old charge.

  She was over the fence. Keeping in the shadow of the fence and then the privet hedge, she approached the house. No lights in the windows. No sound of television. No security light, even though she knew he had one that was sensitive enough to be triggered by next door’s cat. He hadn’t switched on his light this evening, then, as was his habit. Usually, once it started to get dark, the security lights were activated. Then the curtains were drawn, the doors were locked and he settled himself in for the evening. This is just what he did, unless he was working late elsewhere, in which case, he would switch his security system on before leaving and a timer would automatically deal with the lights.

  He either wasn’t there or something bad had happened.

  She paused, listening. Someone in the adjoining house opened the back door and she heard a dustbin lid open and close again. Then the back door shut. She waited again and then turned on her torch, keeping the beam pointed down. It took her a little while to pick the lock but as soon as she entered the house, she knew that there was nothing living in there. It had that empty, soulless feeling that houses get when the occupants are gone. The curtains gaped open. And the smell of butcher’s shop hanging in the air warned her of what she would find. She moved slowly from room to room, finishing in the spare bedroom that was the furthest away from the adjoining house.