Safe Page 7

  “And a lot of loose sand,” said Harry. “You ever bury someone on the beach?”

  “No, I leave that to my dad. I know what you mean, though,” she added as Harry drew a breath that told he wasn’t joking.

  She watched as he bent down and began to scoop loose sand from behind the dune, on the leeward side where it had tipped over, fine and loose. He showed her how she might burrow in, keep out of sight, hide herself. At first, she thought he was joking, but as it became obvious that he wasn’t, she gave it a go. She could understand what he meant, Lauren thought, as she drew the loose sand around her and peered out, seeing nothing but a bit of sky, other dunes, more tussocks of grass. It all looked the same. Every dune looked a bit like every other dune, every clump of grass like every other clump of grass. No doubt if you were used to looking at this stuff, you could orientate yourself, but to Lauren it was much of a muchness, and she began to see how that might be useful.

  “Harry . . . ” she said, as he helped her to her feet and they went on their way once more, “is this the best we’re going to come up with? My dad sends men with guns and we hide in the sand dunes?”

  Harry nodded. “Best I can come up with at the moment, pet. You have a better plan, tell me about it.”

  They walked the rest of the way back in absolute silence, each with their own thoughts. How much would a bullet hurt? Lauren wondered. She’d seen men suffering gunshot wounds on a couple of occasions. Had seen the doctor come, knowing that she shouldn’t have. That, as far as her father was concerned, she hadn’t seen anything. He had told her on both occasions to go to her room and to stay there until he said she could come out. On one of those occasions, she had heard him ranting at his lieutenants for having brought the injured man to his house. He hadn’t seemed as angry the second time around, but then that second time around, the injured man had been Harry. When Harry had stopped a bullet and saved her father’s life in the process.

  She knew it must hurt a lot, but she found that oddly she was not particularly frightened of that part. It was almost as though if she did get shot, that would be the ending of things and there would be nothing she could do about it after that. Her father’s men were all well-trained, all good shots — chances were, she might feel one shot but certainly not the second, because by then she’d be dead.

  No, what scared her far more than that was if she wasn’t shot or at least, not killed outright. If her father had decided that an example needed to be made, Lauren knew full well what he was capable of. She could not forget what Kyle Sykes had done to her own mother when she had crossed him.

  They were almost at the cottage now and Harry paused, observing the scene, checking that nothing seemed out of place. Lauren found that she was looking too, following Harry’s gaze.

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Anything that don’t feel right.”

  She wanted to tell him that nothing felt right just now, so how was she going to tell if anything felt even more not right, but she didn’t. Instead she took a deep breath and looked around as carefully and cautiously as her mentor was doing. At the side of the house she could see the four-by-four still under its tarpaulin. There was no one on the beach, no one anywhere in view. The seagulls still argued and squalled and the tide had receded a little since they had begun their walk. It didn’t appear to go out very far, though obviously at certain times of the year it came up the beach a good deal further. The debris from its furthest reach was clearly visible, just a few yards from where the dunes began. Something in her memory spoke of spring tides but she wasn’t quite sure what that even meant.

  Harry had started to move forward and Lauren relaxed a little as they crossed the pebbles, then the gravel and then the path, and went into the house. She suddenly realized how tired she was and wondered how far they had walked that morning. “Any maps here, Harry? Local maps, I mean.”

  “I think there’s a couple with the tourist information brochures, over on the bookshelf. Behind the television.” His attention was still on the house, on checking anything that was slightly out of place, but eventually he gave up and went into the kitchen, suggesting they have some lunch.

  Lauren retrieved the maps and glanced at her watch. It was too late for the lunchtime news. She wondered if Harry would be OK about her checking her phone again. She really wanted to know what was going on. Knowing felt like power, somehow, even while she was scared of finding out, just in case something came up that frightened her even more. Background terror was becoming almost like a heartbeat. It seemed as though she was operating on some level that overlaid it. It never went away but she was still functioning, even though she was not really quite sure how.

  Harry had shed his jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. He was washing his hands and preparing to make sandwiches. “There’s ham and cheese in the fridge, but we didn’t get any mustard. Which is a shame, because I like a bit of mustard on my ham. You found the maps, then?”

  She nodded. “There’s two OS maps, one of the whole area and one of this bit. I suppose they get a lot of walkers here in the summer.”

  “I suppose they do. You spread it out on the table, the large-scale one, and we’ll take a look while we are eating our sandwiches.”

  Lauren did so, trying to orientate herself. She found the Red Lion pub, the car park and the small cluster of caravans up on the cliff. Someone had stuck a Post-It note to the map with a scribbled message that ‘the pub does good lunches’. Beyond the pub was a narrow track leading back to the main road — if you could call it a main road — that also passed the cottage. Lauren calculated the route they had walked along the beach. It had been a little over nine miles there and back, so no wonder she was feeling it. Her usual lifestyle didn’t include a hell of a lot of walking. For exercise, she played tennis and swam and did a bit of basketball in the winter, when there was no tennis to play. And she had those ridiculous DVDs her dad had given her, some blonde he fancied who had released a set of exercise programmes that mixed some kind of dance moves with boxing. She’d used them a few times just to please him, deliberately leaving them lying around so that he was satisfied his gift had not been ignored.

  “Shift it over a bit,” Harry said, nudging the map. He set the sandwiches and mugs of tea on the table. “So you’ve figured out where we are.”

  She nodded. “Nearest village is Holdsworth,” she said. “That’s about five miles in the opposite direction to where we went today, so further on along the little road out there. The Red Lion and the caravan site are about four and half miles in that direction. So we walked a long way today, Harry. There’s a church stuck on its own on the cliff a bit further along. I suppose it must have had a village at one time, but it looks like there’s only a couple of farms down there now. And on the other side of the cottage, there’s the cliff you were talking about, the one that blocks the route along the beach. If we wanted to head towards Holdsworth, we’d have to go by road or . . . no, look, there is a cliff path. I’m not sure where we’d pick it up, looks like you’d have to go back to the road and start from there. Did you go to Holdsworth when you were here last?”

  Harry thought about it. “I might have done, I really don’t remember.”

  “OK, so the nearest real civilization is about ten miles away.” She was consulting the other map now and pointing to a settlement that looked about the size of a market town. “If we have to drive away from here, that’s probably the best bet.”

  “I should give you some lessons. You’ve not driven anything as big as my Landy.”

  Lauren regarded him steadily. “And I’m likely to attract a lot of attention driving a thing like that. It will be obvious to anyone I’m just a kid.”

  He’s started to object, so she interrupted. “Harry, if I need to drive it, I will drive it, believe me. I’ve no intention of letting my dad or his men get to me, if there’s any way I can avoid it. I’ve seen what he does to traitors, I know better than anyone else what he’s capable of. I won’t
freeze, I won’t make this a waste of your time or your life, if it comes to that. I promise you, Harry.”

  He nodded, accepting her word. “Eat your lunch,” he said. Then, as an afterthought, “Make sure you memorize that map, make sure you know what the satnav location of this place is. If you have to ring that number I gave you, they’ll need to know where to come and get you, and this isn’t exactly an easy place to find.”

  Chapter 16

  “I had to pay a visit to the mortuary this morning,” Toby Clarke said.

  Kyle Sykes nodded. “I saw the news reports. Never a pleasant duty, visiting the mortuary.”

  “Three men who worked for you.”

  “Three men who have done work for me at one time or another,” Sykes corrected him. “It’s not quite the same thing, you understand. Anyone who does work for me is responsible for their own tax and National Insurance. They are freelance. You see the subtle difference, Inspector.”

  They were sitting in Kyle Sykes’s large conservatory. A very new detective constable by the name of Hopkins sat close by, her notebook open in her lap and pen poised. Small, with a mass of dark brown hair that was usually tied up on top of her head with a scrunchie, she seemed to be doing her best to be invisible. She didn’t have to try too hard, Clarke thought. Sykes had ignored her thus far and would probably continue to do so. The conservatory overlooked the green space at the back of the house. It was, Clarke thought, an underutilized space, being mostly lawn with a few trees down at the end. It looked as though Kyle Sykes wanted the space to have a large garden, wanted the status symbol of it, but had never quite got around to creating the garden itself.

  “Not a pleasant task for their relatives, either. Identifying the bodies. They were all badly mutilated.”

  “Identifying the dead is never a pleasant task,” Sykes said. He had a South London accent, all sharp edges and angles. Clarke had noticed that when he was stressed, his accent became more prominent. Today, he sounded relaxed. “I had to go and identify my own wife, if you remember.”

  Clarke nodded. He remembered. He’d been present and it was not something easily wiped from your brain. He put that aside. “I have to say that these three were a random selection of your not-quite employees.”

  “Of my freelancers. Definitely not my employees. Her Majesty’s revenue office makes that distinction very clear.”

  “Nevertheless, they were an odd collection,” Clarke insisted. “Phil Stern — in his day, one of the best wheelmen in the business. Strictly old school. If you were planning a bank job and needed a quick getaway, then Phil was your man. And his son, Davy — David — carved out a nice little niche for himself in your organization.”

  “Davy was an excellent mechanic. He will be missed.”

  “And then Kristy Young. Now he was a bit of an oddball — IT expert, one-time hacker so I’m told. Never actually arrested for that, but his reputation is solid enough. The word is, Harry Prentice brought him to your attention. So, like I say, an odd mix.”

  Kyle Sykes shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands as though weighing what Clarke had said. “What can I tell you? Modern business requires a broad skills base. We pride ourselves on our talent pool.”

  “And how do you advertise these days? Local paper? Online? Word-of-mouth?”

  Sykes smiled. “There’s never a shortage of young men wanting well-paid work.”

  “Young men? So not an equal opportunities employer, then?”

  “As I told you, not an employer at all.”

  “They are freelancers responsible for their own tax and National Insurance, yes, I get it.” Clarke was silent for a few moments. He glanced around the large conservatory as though considering the use of space, the advantages of UPVC framing.

  “A conservatory is a good addition to any home,” Sykes told him.

  “A little difficult when you live in a third-floor flat,” Clarke said.

  Sykes laughed. It was an oddly genuine sound, as though he really did enjoy the small joke. Clarke saw DC Hopkins shift in her seat. She was uncomfortable in Kyle Sykes’s presence and not experienced enough to hide the fact.

  “So, speculate for me, who might want these three men dead? One of them, I could maybe understand. Father and son, perhaps. But that combination, and with that degree of unnecessary violence?”

  “I imagine you are a man who argues any level of violence is unnecessary.” Sykes looked at him with interest. “So when a man regards any level of violence as unnecessary, you have to agree it’s difficult for them to create a meaningful scale. What might be excessive to you is no more than a gentle tap to someone else.”

  “I think even you might agree that these men received more than a gentle tap.”

  Sykes shrugged. “And I can’t tell you who did it to them. I have enemies, I suppose. Every successful man has enemies.”

  “Gus Perrin?”

  “Mr Perrin and I have an agreement. We don’t tread on one another’s toes where business is concerned, that merely complicates matters. We’re both successful men, and there is room for more than one of those in any community.”

  His tone was cold now, Clarke noted. The accent a little more pronounced. So the mention of Perrin had touched a raw nerve. He was unsurprised when Sykes got to his feet, signalling that their interview was at an end. Clarke didn’t argue. He’d expected nothing from Sykes. They were both just going through the motions and Sykes, he suspected, would probably have been a little disappointed if Clarke had not turned up on his doorstep that morning asking questions to which he knew he would receive no proper response.

  There were still very few people around, Clarke thought, as he led Hopkins back to his car. When they pulled out of the drive, he glanced towards Hopkins’s notepad. “I saw you scribbling frantically. Did you actually record anything of any use?” he asked.

  Hopkins looked mortified. “We needed a record, boss.”

  “And so we did. Even if it is a record of empty comments and random information about the desires and requirements of the HMRC.” He glanced at her again and decided that he was being unfair. “Not a criticism,” he assured her. “Kyle Sykes has been playing this game since before I was born. His father and grandfather played it before that. He’s had a lot of practice.”

  “So who do you think killed them? Gus Perrin’s lot? Do you think he believed they had something to do with the death of his son? Should we expect revenge killings?”

  “That’s a lot of questions in one. OK, so who killed them? I wouldn’t put it past Sykes himself. Perrin, no, I don’t think so. I have no reason to think that, mind. Just that it doesn’t sit right. And, no, I don’t think it had anything directly to do with the death of Charlie Perrin. I don’t believe that was an accident — that strains the limits of credibility — though I don’t think any of those three were involved in it anyway. Phil Stern never committed a violent act in his entire life. He drove a lot of very violent people in his car, but his job was to drive them and it was something he was very, very good at. There wasn’t a local route he didn’t know, not a speed limit he wasn’t aware of and not a tactic he couldn’t have taught to the experts on the defensive driving course.”

  He saw her cast a look in his direction that suggested he was naive. In her book, a villain was a villain. “And what about the son? Was he just a mechanic?”

  “Like the man said, you need a broad set of skills when you’re in business and it doesn’t make any difference whether or not that business is legitimate. You still need skilled men. Some are skilled mechanics, some are brilliant drivers, some are very adept killers.”

  She stared at him for a moment as not though not fully comprehending how he could be so flippant. The truth was Toby Clarke, now approaching forty, had been dealing with men like Kyle Sykes and Gus Perrin since he’d been a kid. He had almost become one of them, the option being there to follow in his father’s footsteps rather than follow his mother’s teaching. They’d been an odd match, his parents. It was
no surprise it hadn’t lasted. What was surprising was that he had no complaints about either parent. In their own way, they both cared about him and he suspected his father had been glad that he had not stepped through the doors that were always half open for him. He had come to realize that it was out of something like respect for his father that he had delayed joining the police force until after his father had been dead and gone for a good eighteen months, though he’d been thinking about it for quite a while before. He had, however, put a good distance between himself and home before signing on the dotted line. It was his mother who had been oddly disapproving of the decision.

  “What happened with Sykes’s wife?” Hopkins asked.

  “Murdered.”

  Hopkins glanced at him. “How? What, in a revenge killing or something?”

  “Anyone ever tell you, you have an obsession with revenge killings?”

  She looked slightly huffy. “Well, they do happen.”

  “Of course they do. But you’d be surprised how many times some kind of agreement is made between the families, some other way of resolving things. Believe me, Hopkins, most of the time the OCGs keep off each other’s turf. It’s too much of a hassle, too expensive to do otherwise. It’s often when they join forces that the trouble really starts, because overnight an organization can double or triple in size, resources, knowledge. You have to stop thinking of them as stupid criminals and start thinking of them as businessmen — and a few women for that matter, who strategize and plan and don’t just respond by lashing out with random violence. The stupid and the randomly violent ones, we deal with very quickly. They end up inside. Having said that, when an organization like this decides that violence is required, everything goes tits up very fast and very badly. Most of the time, though, we’re not dealing with the likes of the Krays these days. We are dealing with people who have a finger in so many pies . . . and a hell of a lot of those pies are legitimate businesses, run by people who have no idea who they’re in bed with.”