Safe Read online

  Chapter 19

  The funeral of Charlie Perrin took place on the Thursday afternoon. Local press were in attendance, and the crematorium was full, with people standing outside. Clarke and his spotters logged those they knew and added those they did not to a growing database. Lauren Sykes was still conspicuous by her absence.

  Clarke’s orders were to stay back, to keep a respectful distance from the funeral party, which was attended by representatives from every OCG he could name from up and down the country, and probably a few he could not, alongside local civic dignitaries who had benefited from Gus Perrin’s largesse.

  Clarke wondered how many of them were fully in Perrin’s pocket and how many just didn’t want to risk causing offence.

  Kyle Sykes was there, of course. Pausing on the crematorium steps to survey the onlookers, he caught Clarke’s eye and nodded before going on inside with three of his sharp-suited thugs. He had refused point blank to say where Lauren might be, telling Clarke it was none of his business. None of her school friends or teachers had any clue as to where she might have gone either, but Clarke was building up a picture of a rather lonely young woman. He hoped she’d done a runner for no better reason than that she was sick of her father, but common sense told him that was hardly likely. The fact that Harry Prentice was also nowhere to be seen was also interesting. Day after day, Clarke had been expecting the body to turn up but so far Harry Prentice was not definitively dead and no one was saying anything about his whereabouts.

  The service over, everyone disappeared off to the wake, which was being held at one of the hotel and golf course complexes in which Gus Perrin was a major investor. Clarke’s task of the day was over.

  Out of idle curiosity as much as anything, he followed the main funeral party to the golf course, parked up on a grass verge and watched as the rest of the cars went by. This, he thought, was a major social event. He had spotted Sam Barker at the funeral, but noticed that she and a few others had left and headed in a different direction. Their status was perhaps not high enough for them to be invited to the wake. He noted also that some of the local dignitaries had departed after the funeral service. Was that significant? Did it speak of a connection or a lack thereof, or was it simply that they had meetings to go to? Or were they heading home to family, having put in a strictly formal and expected appearance?

  The final car drove through the gate, the gates closed and Clarke was left outside looking in.

  Chapter 20

  Joe Messenger had not expected visitors that night. He’d watched the funeral on the local news and seen his boss standing on the crematorium steps. Now his boss was standing on his own doorstep. Joe went cold inside.

  There were two identical cars outside the house, at least one running on false plates. Joe had been around the organization long enough to recognize that.

  “Get your coat,” Kyle Sykes said. “It’s cold where we’re going.”

  Joe’s wife came out into the hall. She looked from Joe to Sykes and the colour faded from her lips and cheeks. “Just nipping out for a bit,” Joe told her with as much cheerful conviction as he could muster.

  She opened her mouth to speak but he shook his head. There was nothing she could do and he didn’t want her involved in whatever this was. Inwardly he cursed Harry — this had something to do with him going off with the girl. No one had told him that’s what Harry had done, but he’d asked around and it didn’t take a genius to work it out.

  Sykes directed Joe to the lead car and Joe sat alone in the back seat. Kyle Sykes liked to travel up front with the driver. The four-by-four following contained five men. They pulled out of the end of the road and then headed straight towards the motorway.

  It was dark. All the street lights were on and it began to rain, that fine mizzly rain that’s almost fog and soaks you to the skin in no time.

  “Have you any idea how many Red Lion pubs there are in the country?” Kyle Sykes asked Joe. “Even when you’re only looking up north, and on the coast. Dozens of the fuckers.”

  Joe knew he didn’t need to answer that one. Harry, he thought. You’ve gone and got us both dead.

  * * *

  In the last couple of days, things had fallen into a sort of routine for Lauren and Harry. They’d watched the news religiously, had eaten regularly, at Harry’s insistence, and Lauren had studied the map, familiarized herself with the lay of the land and practised stripping, cleaning and firing the weapons that Harry had brought. He’d dared only let her use silenced pistols and even they, to Lauren’s ears, seemed absurdly loud.

  “Who the hell called them ‘silencers?’” she had asked. “They’re more like just-a-bit-quieters.”

  Mostly it was just aiming and dry firing, something Harry really didn’t like to do, but he didn’t think they’d got much option.

  Lauren had ventured out on her own on a number of occasions, generally staying within sight of the cottage. She needed thinking time and knew that Harry did too. She sensed that Harry needed this time to make peace with whatever he believed in, and she also caught him on occasions talking to his dead wife. She wasn’t surprised he still talked to Jeanie — she did it herself. She’d loved Harry’s wife almost more than she loved Harry and certainly more than she loved either of her parents. She wasn’t sure that she’d actually ever felt anything much for her father, but much as she had wanted to be close to her mother, she had often been cool, distant and, Lauren now recognized, often profoundly depressed.

  Lauren had gone beachcombing and had found some sea glass on her first foray away from the cottage. Now she went looking for more, loving the subtle colours, greens and blues of the glass washed smooth by the ocean. She found the occasional fossil and picked up shells just as she had when she was a tiny child. Twice she had seen dog walkers in the distance and had beaten a hasty retreat, concealing herself in the dunes and watching them go by. Beyond that, there had just been the sound of the gulls and waves and sometimes the pounding rain to break the monotony of waiting.

  They had talked twice about moving on. But where to? Harry had mentioned Scotland. He had contacts there who might shelter them for a while. Lauren had agreed, but had asked, “And where after that? What if my dad threatens them, too?”

  It had struck her that the more people who were involved the more likely her dad would find out where she was, even if they were in Scotland. He had contacts everywhere.

  Harry had agreed that might be an issue. But, more of an issue, she’d come to realize, was that Harry simply didn’t have the energy to keep on running. Harry had come here to hole up, decided this was where they would make their stand, and that was that. It disturbed her that she’d found this weakness in him, but at the same time she understood it. Once or twice, she’d thought about taking his Land Rover and leaving him. She’d analysed her motives for doing this and found they were twofold and neither of them made a hell of a lot of sense. On the one hand was the speculation that if she left him, she could perhaps draw her father away. But she knew her father would never forgive Harry and that his life would be forfeited anyway, whether she was with him not. The second motivation was anger. She was occasionally furious with Harry that he had decided that they would stay in this one place when what she wanted to do was keep on running. This anger bubbled beneath the surface and threatened to burst out when things got too much. When this happened, she would come down to the ocean and throw stones and rocks and anything she could find into the sea. The sea didn’t care, but she knew Harry would if she said even half the things that were going through her head, and one thing she had decided on was that she was not going to hurt Harry. She couldn’t prevent Harry from being hurt, but she wasn’t going to add to it. After all, he was all she had. The one person left in the world who loved her.

  When she got in from beachcombing, they checked the internet briefly on their phones, and found footage of Charlie Perrin’s funeral on the local news from back home. Lauren saw a fleeting image of her father and the sight of him
chilled her to the core. He was looking around as though expecting to see someone, surveying the scene much as Harry did when they went outside the cottage.

  That night, it took her a long time to get to sleep and it felt as though she’d only been asleep a very short while when she started awake, aware of a presence in her room. Harry stood over her, his finger on his lips. “Get dressed,” he whispered.

  Lauren’s eyes widened and she felt panic rising in her chest. But it’s the middle of the night, she wanted to say. Surely her father would not arrive in the middle of the night? And yet when she thought about it, it made perfect sense.

  She got out of bed. Pulled on her clothes, her shoes, her coat. Checked the pockets for the gun, the phone, the money . . . the little fragments of sea glass. Harry was in the kitchen. He was listening intently.

  He pointed back towards her room and Lauren knew that he wanted her to go out of the window. “Oh, Harry,” Lauren breathed. “Come with me.”

  “Go.” His expression told her that he would brook no argument. “You’re wasting time, girl.”

  He was right. If her father really was here, with however many men he had brought with him, there would be no time for hesitation. In the distance, she heard a car engine approaching. She wondered what sound it was that had woken Harry. Obviously, something much more subtle — she, too, would have been roused by the sound of an approaching car. It never occurred to her that Harry might be mistaken and that this might be a false alarm. Harry was too good for that.

  In the darkness of her bedroom, she felt for the window catch and slid the window open very, very slowly, then she slid herself through and crouched down. For a moment, she did not move. Harry had told her that she must observe the scene first, that she was to keep in the deep shadows and use her senses. If she couldn’t see, then she must listen. Her heart was thumping so loudly and so fast, it made her tremble. It took a few seconds for her to make out the sounds that were not just the pounding of blood in her ears.

  Harry had been right. They were here. An advanced guard must have come up the track on foot. They were moving slowly and quietly, but she was still aware of them. Her father specialized in deploying big men and big men had big feet. Big men with big feet found it hard to move as silently as a small and frightened teenager. And now she could hear the vehicles clearly too, coming up the track towards the cottage.

  Harry had bought her time — she had to use that.

  She made to go round the side of the house, towards the beach and the dunes but almost immediately realized that way was blocked. She saw a shadow move and turned back the way she had come, keeping as close to the side of the house as a rat running against a wall. The Land Rover had been parked under the tarpaulin only a step away from the wall, and she slipped softly into that new shadow. Another tiny movement startled her and she slipped beneath the tarpaulin and held her breath, mouth open so that she could hear better, straining to interpret the sounds. A scuff of shoes on gravel — Lauren was so grateful for that gravel. She suspected now that this was what had alerted Harry. The sound of shoes on shingle.

  She crept out from beneath the tarpaulin. There would be a few steps in the open before she was in the dunes and she gathered up her courage to make that brief run. She paused, listening intently, and it was then that she heard the first shot. It had come from inside the cottage. Harry had fired out. He was giving her a chance. She couldn’t waste it. She heard shouts and she leaped for the cover of the dunes, hoping that in the dark, no one would see the few footsteps she might have made before she got onto the grassy bank. Crouching low, she slithered away.

  Gunfire was returned now. Muzzle flashes that lit the night and sounds that burst the silence. Lauren was only about a hundred metres from the house but she dared not move further for fear of being seen by the two men who had stormed round the side of the cottage. There were louder shouts in the night, more gunfire and the sound of someone breaking down the door. There was only one of Harry, he couldn’t cover everywhere. She tried to count the voices, the moving shadows, to work out how many men her father might have brought with him and where they might be, and guessed there were perhaps half a dozen. That seemed a large number to send after an old man and a young girl, but then her father never went anywhere unprepared.

  Lauren knew she had to try and put a bit more distance between herself and the cottage but something else had occurred to her that momentarily froze her in place. She was on the wrong side of the house. She had been forced to turn left instead of right and now she was on the beach on the side that led only to the cliff. The cliff that blocked her way. Lauren knew that her only chance lay in hiding and keeping still and in calling for help from whoever the hell it was that Harry had instructed her to phone.

  She took advantage of the noise and the darkness beyond the cottage in a place where the lights couldn’t reach. A strong wind was blowing now and she knew from experience over the past week that any footstep she did make would be obliterated quickly. The rain had also started to fall, which, though unpleasant, would actually work in her favour. So she took a chance and she put about another hundred metres between her and the cottage, then another, before suddenly bright lights flooded the little house and the surrounding beach. The headlights of a car, and then a second car behind it. Lauren flattened herself against the ground and burrowed into the sand as deep she could go.

  * * *

  Inside the cottage, Harry slumped in the corner of what had been Lauren’s bedroom. He was bleeding from a head wound where a bullet had grazed his scalp and from another bullet wound in his side. It was through-and-through and he didn’t think it had done too much damage. It was eminently survivable — in other circumstances. Sykes stood in the doorway. Joe just inside the room. Joe was shaking as though he would fall apart and looking down at Harry. “I never told him,” Joe stammered.

  “Oh yes, you did,” Sykes said. “You told me enough.”

  “We’re a bit beyond playing the blame game,” Harry said quietly.

  “You think? I blame you for filling my kid’s head with ideas she shouldn’t be having. I blame you for bringing her here. Now, where is she?”

  Harry shrugged. Shrugging hurt. “I don’t know. I hope she’s over the hills and far away by now.” He laughed. That hurt too.

  Sykes stepped aside. Two men came in, lifted Harry to his feet and hustled him through to the living room. His hands were zip-tied behind his back, a rope was put around his neck and thrown over the top of the living-room door. On the other side, someone took the strain, pulling Harry’s head up and back and exposing his throat. His feet were now just touching the ground. Harry tried to prepare himself for what was going to come next. He could see Joe, his arms pinioned by another of Sykes’s men. Joe could hardly stand, he was so scared. Harry hoped that he’d given Lauren enough time to get away. With a bit of luck, she should be part way along the beach heading towards the Red Lion by now. She would call the number he’d given her, and rescue would come. She just had to hold her nerve and do what he had told her. Believing that Lauren was safe was all he had to hang on to now, even now he knew Sykes had sent out men looking for her. But she knew the territory, this was her ground and not theirs. She would be all right, Harry convinced himself of that, and then when a little bit of doubt crept in, he convinced himself again. Then he stopped convincing himself about anything because the pain began.

  Sykes drove the hook deep into Harry’s flesh and pulled. Harry screamed.

  “Where is she?” Sykes asked him.

  “I told you — I don’t know.” With his head pulled back, chin forced high by the rope, Harry was struggling to breathe. He had managed to scream, but he couldn’t figure out how. Surely there wasn’t enough breath in his body for so much sound to come out. The hook swung again, into Harry’s side this time and again he managed to make that wailing, keening sound, the sound an animal makes when despair is absolute and it knows it is about to die.

  He knew that Sykes
would ask him again and again and again until the screaming stopped, and it was a relief in Harry’s mind, the only little tiny bit of relief, that he really didn’t know were Lauren was and so couldn’t tell.

  * * *

  Shadows passed in front of the headlights and then out of view. The firing of guns had ceased but, carried on the still night air, Lauren could hear as Harry cried out over and over again. She put her hands over her ears, pulled her hat down tight, but it couldn’t shut out the noise. “Harry, Harry, Harry,” she whispered over and over again, as though by saying his name she could somehow relieve him of the agony. What could she do? She had a gun, and for a moment she had a wild idea about storming into the house just firing randomly and hoping she hit something. Hoping she hit her father. Harry had taught her how to aim, had taught her well — surely there was something she could do — but she had figured out by now that there were at least half a dozen men. She had seen at least three of them out looking for her. Big men, armed men, men who might be merciful and shoot her in the head or, more likely, would shoot her in the belly and take her back for her father to finish off. But what really hit home, what really stopped her in her tracks, was the idea that Harry might still be alive when they did that. That Harry would die knowing she had failed him.

  So she had to make that phone call. She was terrified of someone hearing but she dared not move further into the dunes because the lights from the vehicles might pick her up if she did.

  Curling as tight as she could in her hiding place, Lauren found the number Harry had programmed into the phone and held her breath. Would anyone answer at this time of the night? What would she do if they didn’t?

  “Hello?” The voice sounded cautious and Lauren realized with a shock that it was a woman. “How did you get this number?”