Safe Read online

  It was there she found him. He was dead, as she had known he would be. He was lying on the spare bed, limbs stretched out and pulled taut by ropes that held them to the legs of the bed. The sheets and mattress were soaked with his blood, as was the carpet. She checked to make sure she hadn’t trodden in any of it. She flashed the torch across his body to try and get some sense of his injuries. The body had been laid out as though on a mortuary table. Whatever information he had known, she reckoned, whoever had killed him knew it now. But how long had they known? How long had he been dead? And how specific had he been? Did they know about her?

  Careful not to step in any of the blood, she approached the bed. His skin was still warm. From the look of the wounds all over his body, he’d taken a long time to die. Whoever had tortured him knew exactly how to prolong agony.

  Reason told Petra that if they knew about her, someone would have come for her already. Chances were, then, that Gus Perrin now knew that there was an undercover within his operation but not specifically who.

  She switched off her torch, went back the way she’d come and retreated just as carefully. Now was not the time to be stupid or to let panic rush her but she was relieved when she reached her car and drove away. It never entered her mind that she should go back to the house she shared with Billy. That life was gone now, her cover irrevocably blown.

  In the boot of the car was a bag packed with essential clothes. Hidden in the lining of her camera bag was money. She drove out of town, stopping only when she needed to refill the tank with petrol. She called Clarke.

  “My cover is blown. Frankland is dead. Tortured. Whoever did it to him, chances are they know everything by now. Maybe not exactly who I am, but certainly that there is a UC involved.”

  “I’m just about to text Lauren. I’m about half an hour away from the hotel,” he told her. “Call me in an hour and we’ll arrange a rendezvous.”

  She agreed. She smiled. She liked the fact that he was cautious enough not to suggest she come with them to the safe house. They must meet on neutral ground, somewhere he could check her out.

  * * *

  Clarke walked in through the lobby as though he knew where he was going, found the lifts and went up to the thirteenth floor. He walked along the corridor to Lauren’s room, was startled to find that the door ajar. He pushed it open. The room was empty, stripped bare. Had she run? Had she panicked?

  He went in, examined the wardrobe, the drawers, the bathroom. He could see the indentation in the quilt from where Lauren had been sitting on the bed watching television, but that was the only sign of the girl.

  The door creaked open. He spun around. A dark-haired waif stood in the doorway. She had a gun in her hand and she looked as though she was prepared to use it.

  Chapter 38

  Carole answered the loud knock at the door. She opened it and was then pushed rudely aside by three of her father’s men coming in. A fourth followed, dragging Marty with him. Marty’s face was bruised.

  “What the fuck?” Carole followed the men into her kitchen. “What is this? What the fuck is going on?”

  “Where’s Sam?”

  Carole hesitated for the briefest moment, but then Sam herself appeared next to her in the doorway. She took in the scene, her face pale. “Marty! What happened? Have you had an accident?” One of the men laughed.

  Carole took Sam’s arm and held her back. “I want an explanation.” These were three men she did not know well. They worked for her father but she had no real dealings with them. And that scared her more than anything. Her father had deliberately sent strangers into her home. She could see that one of them had blood on his shirt. Marty’s blood, she assumed. This man came forward and grabbed Sam’s other arm, pulling her away from Carole.

  “You’re coming with us.”

  “Oh no, she’s not, Sam works for me. She’s got nothing to do with you.”

  “The boss wants her, she comes with us.”

  Carole glanced across at Marty. He was clearly terrified and totally at a loss. “What’s all this about? Sam is my assistant, that’s all. Nothing she does has anything to do with you lot or my father.”

  The big man with blood on his shirt leaned in, his face practically touching hers. “And what if she’s an undercover cop. What then?”

  “What?” Carole could not believe what she was hearing. “Why the hell would he think that? He had her checked out when she came to work for me. She’s clean, all the way back.”

  “Well, it would look like that, wouldn’t it?” He pushed Carole away. Clearly, the fact that she was his boss’s daughter cut no ice. She could see the anger in his gaze, and the bloodlust. She was suddenly terribly afraid. This was no longer absurd. This was dangerous.

  “That’s nonsense. We can sort this out. Where did you get this idea from, anyway?”

  The man smiled, clearly enjoying this. She remembered his name now, Ben something or other. He was one of those who only came to the farm occasionally, when her dad needed extra muscle.

  “Found out from the horse’s mouth, didn’t we? Old boy didn’t want to tell, but he did in the end.”

  Carole’s thoughts were racing now. They must have found out about an undercover from a police informant. She didn’t like the sound of any of this. What had they done to that informant? Or had that informant sent them to interrogate someone else? She knew how this worked — undercover officers had a handler, so had they got to the handler? What had they done to him to make him tell?

  “You attacked a police officer?” She looked from Sam to Marty and then back again. Sam looked petrified.

  “I didn’t do anything. I’m just your assistant. I don’t have anything to do with the police.” Sam was shaking, visibly trembling and she was crying now.

  Carole found that she believed her. “Of course you didn’t. This is all just so much stupidity.”

  So they must have gone to Sam’s house and found Marty on his own there. He must have told them that Sam was working late here. And they’d dragged him here, just in case he phoned and gave warning. And, Carole realized now, she would have moved mountains to have got Sam out of this safely before they could get to her.

  The men were moving towards the door now, hauling Sam with them. They’d lost interest in her partner. Marty rose, eager to follow, but Carole put a hand on his shoulder. “There’s money in my bag, take it. Take my car and get out of here.”

  “You think I’d leave Sam?” He was furious, she could see that. Furious because he didn’t want to leave Sam and furious with himself because he didn’t know if he had the nerve to stay.

  “Nothing you can do. I’ll go. I don’t believe she’s undercover, I don’t believe she’s anything apart from what she says she is. I will sort this out. I will get her out of this. But in the meantime, we need one less person to worry about. So you get out of here. Now.”

  She didn’t hang around to see if he was going to obey the instruction. She ran out after the three men who were now frogmarching Sam up to the main house.

  As Carole stepped across the threshold of her father’s home, two other cars arrived and two other accused — both women, she noted — were dragged past her and into the house. They weren’t women she knew. So they were obviously associated with her father’s business, but not high enough up in the pecking order for them to live at the farm.

  The only one she was interested in the moment, though, was Sam. Another car pulled up. She recognized one of the guys getting out as Freddie, who ran one of her father’s casinos.

  She grabbed his sleeve as he stormed by. “Freddie, what the hell is going on?”

  “Not now, love, not now.” He paused and turned. “Carole, best thing for you now is to stay out of your dad’s way.”

  “He’s accused Sam of being an undercover officer. They just brought two other women in, as well. Freddie, I don’t understand, what the fuck is happening?”

  Freddie indicated that his companion should go ahead of him. “We went for
Pat, but she’s not there. House is in darkness, no sign of her. She went out the back way.”

  “Pat? No, no, no, not Pat.” Pat was her friend. Pat and Sam had been her closest friends for the last three years. No, this was a nightmare.

  Freddie hurried on, leaving her standing in the hallway, stunned. Out on the drive, she heard the familiar sound of her own car go by and knew Marty had at least followed her advice. She hoped they’d let him out through the gate and wondered if she should have told him to go to the police. But even now, that went against the grain. Besides, what would the consequences be? Carole may not care about her husband or her father, but she still had a son to think about, and that son was away at boarding school, away from either her protection or influence.

  The sight that greeted her when she entered the main living room was surreal. The room was only used on special occasions or when her father had a lot of guests. Usually he settled himself in the small snug at the back of the house with his television and his comfortable chair. Sam had been watching the door, and Carole could see the slight relief in her eyes when she saw her come in. She went over to her friend and put an arm around her shoulders. The men who’d escorted her had moved aside, though were still within reach should Sam try to make a run for it. Freddie was telling Gus that they’d gone to get Pat, but that she wasn’t there.

  “Must have gone out the patio doors and through the back gate.”

  “No one saw her go?” Gus Perrin demanded.

  “No one thought . . . I mean, she’d settled in for the night, and we all thought that was it. I mean—”

  Gus Perrin held up a hand for silence. He looked at the three women who’d been brought before him. One had a black eye, the other was cradling an arm across her chest. From where Carole stood, she could see it was broken. They whimpered softly, leaning into one another for comfort. Carole held her breath. She could almost see the gears whirring in her father’s head. Pat’s guilt was not proved but it wasn’t looking good.

  She tightened her grip around Sam’s shoulders. “It’ll be all right,” she whispered.

  “Marty?” Sam said, in little more than a breath.

  “I told him to take my car and get the fuck out of here.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  Gus turned his head to stare at them both. Carole didn’t reply. She hugged Sam tighter.

  “Her, her and her.” He pointed to the women, then turned his attention to one of the men who had brought them in. “Take them upstairs, put them in a guestroom, lock the door.”

  “That arm looks broken,” Carole said. She released Sam and stepped forward. She knew that her father did sometimes listen to her. “She needs medical attention. Let me call the doctor.”

  A dark look crossed her father’s face. But then he nodded and waved her away. “Get on with it, then.”

  Carole beckoned Sam and urged all three women out of the door before her father could change his mind. This could go one of two ways now. They could focus all their efforts on Pat, or they could decide that other people might be implicated and turn their attentions back to Sam and these other two poor unfortunates. The best chance she could give them was to get them out of her father’s sight. One of the men had followed her out, and she was relieved to see that it was Freddie.

  “Gus says they’ve got to be locked in,” he told her.

  Carole nodded. She herded the women upstairs and to the back of the house, where there was a twin-bedded guestroom. “Freddie, there’s a first aid kit in the bathroom. Bring it, will you? And then give the doctor a call.”

  Freddie hesitated. Carole sighed. “Freddie, where the hell do you think we’re going to run off to? The house is full of my father’s thugs. Just get the medical kit, please, and get a doctor here.”

  She glanced at her watch. It was just past midnight. She found herself hoping that Pat was far away by now. And then she felt the tears begin at the thought that a friend had betrayed her. Impatiently, she wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. Freddie returned with the first aid kit and she set it down on one of the beds. “Here,” she said to Sam. “You clean up that eye, while I take a look at the arm.”

  She settled the injured woman in a chair. “What’s your name?” she asked. “Don’t be scared, no one’s going to hurt you now, and the doctor will be here soon.”

  The woman, tears streaming down her face, just looked at her. She thinks I’m mad, Carole thought. She could well be right.

  * * *

  “You must be Lauren.” Clarke tried to keep his voice steady. She was clearly scared, but she had a determined look in her eye and he realized that she would shoot him if she had to. He raised his hands slowly. “I’m here on my own. Your friend sent me, just like she said she would. I suggest we leave here now.”

  She came forward and placed the gun against his right temple. With her left hand she patted him down, checking for weapons, fingers delving into his pockets. He got the feeling that this was something she had seen done, but wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. He stood still and did nothing threatening. Finally, she stepped back.

  “Have you seen the news?” she said.

  “News? Not recently. Why?”

  “Because that bastard has reported me missing. It’s gone out on the national news. My picture. So I’ve got my dad after me, I’ve got Gus Perrin after me, and now every fucker in the world after me.”

  Clarke absorbed that. “I’m a little surprised he didn’t do that before,” he said. “Your dad has a tendency to let other people do his work for him, so that would have been kind of logical.”

  For a moment, she glared at him and then she sighed, put the safety back on and put the gun back in her pocket. “Best be going then, hadn’t we?” she said. She looked apologetic. “Sorry about that, I waited in the stairwell and watched. I wasn’t sure you’d keep the promise to be alone. I needed to know, you understand that?”

  “I understand that,” he told her. “Look, maybe you’d better give me the gun.”

  She laughed. “Not going to happen.”

  Clarke knew he should press the point, but he also felt anxious about the fact that Kyle Sykes had reported her missing, had got the publicity that would activate social media, people in the street, hotel staff. This was bad news. “We’d best use the stairs,” he said.

  She nodded. She opened the door and checked the corridor before going out and scooping up the overnight bag that she had dropped in the doorway. She looped the strap over her shoulder, wearing it across her body so that she had both hands free, and headed towards the double doors at the end of the corridor. On the landing was a wheeled suitcase. Clarke reached for it.

  “Leave it,” she said. “It’s empty and I wiped it down. I used hand cleaner, the alcohol’s good at degrading DNA and fingerprints and I’ve been very careful. Everything I need’s in my bag or my pockets. Where did you leave your car?”

  He told her that it was in a side road a couple of streets from the hotel and she nodded approval. Clarke felt oddly pleased about that and then laughed at himself. He was a detective inspector, she was a seventeen-year-old girl on the run — why should he want her approval? But he found that he did. He could sense her nervousness, her underlying anxiety, and yet she was still keeping on, thinking clearly, making all the right moves.

  They went down ten floors, and then she paused and pointed to a door. “If we go through there, then we can go out of the rear exit. There’s a second set of doors into another stairwell and that avoids the lobby completely. It’s a service entrance for the kitchen. And there are no CCTV cameras down that way. The only camera is on the loading bay, and we can avoid that one.”

  “You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?”

  “I’d rather not die,” she said calmly. “If I die, then it will be like letting Harry down, and I can’t do that. You understand that, don’t you?”

  He nodded. “I understand that,” he said. “You do know that Harry’s—�
��

  “Dead? Yes, I know. I went to the cottage, after my father’s men had gone. I needed to know. If there was anything I could have done for Harry, I swear I would have done it. But he was dead. Really dead.”

  She led him down the corridor and out of the double doors at the end. She stood listening at the top, and only when she was satisfied did they begin to descend.

  I should be taking the lead, Clarke thought. But then, she knew the route better than he did. She paused again at the bottom of the stairs, opening the door a crack and peering through. There was no one around. She ushered Clarke to the end of the short hallway, past storage cupboards and empty offices. It was dark down here, daytime staff having long gone, their route lit only by two small bulkhead lights that he guessed were operated on a separate system and left on in case of power cuts. At the end was a small door with a keypad. Without hesitation, she pressed four keys in sequence and opened the door.

  “How do you know the code?”

  “I watched. I hid behind the cleaning trolley and I watched. You always need to know your escape routes.”

  She led Clarke across the yard and out into the street, then turned left towards where he had parked his car. She paused frequently to glance back the way they’d come. She moved carefully from one area of dense shadow to the next, keeping back from the street lights. He had a strange feeling that she had probably been planning escape routes for a very long time, that this was not a new thing, probably not even something she’d learned from Harry. This was a kid who had grown up being scared, grown up not knowing when she would need to run, or hide, or simply disappear.

  She halted and pulled him back into a shop doorway, her attention caught by something at the end of the narrow street.

  “What?”

  “Shh!” She pointed towards the end of the road, to the corner that would have brought them back round to the front of the hotel. Was that a movement? At first, he wasn’t certain, but then a shape appeared briefly. A man, then a second. They stood on the corner looking down the street towards the shop doorway.