[Alicia Friend 01.0] His First His Second Page 6

  “That’s not true,” Katie said. “I can love you, and I’m not patronising you…”

  The man swung a fist at her head, but pulled up short of actually hitting her.

  “Don’t do that.” He seemed angry at first, but this melted as he lowered his arm. “Don’t ever do that again.” He backed away and continued. “Rachel is free to wander but not speak. She may not approach you, touch you, or communicate with you in any way. Does Rachel understand?”

  Rachel nodded without looking up.

  “Good. Katie, you may explore as far as your chain will allow. I would ask you not to speak to Rachel, but I know you will, as I know Rachel will not respond.”

  “Please tell me what you’re doing,” Katie said.

  “In time. But for now, get your shoulders working again. Move your legs. You have a few hours yet.” He walked to the edge of the spotlight. From out of the darkness came his final words of the evening: “Get some rest.”

  And now Katie wondered if her dad could talk his way out of this. Maybe not, but he would certainly try. She decided she should follow his example. She wouldn’t give up. She would stay alive, she told herself.

  She would stay alive, and make her dad proud.

  Alicia closed her apartment door, took off her coat, kicked off her shoes, and replaced them with fluffy black and white slippers with a blue foam police light on each. She worried her weary sigh would wake Roberta, but she needn’t have. In the living room, Roberta was wide awake, watching a DVD of Lethal Weapon; the first one, the best. Half a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon sat open, waiting on the coffee table alongside two full glasses—the vino equivalent of a go-go girl flashing her garter.

  Roberta beamed at Alicia. “Hey.” Her dark brown skin reflected nothing, her eyes standing out like happy seashells. “Get over here and knock this down your skinny throat.”

  “You are an angel.” Alicia snatched up a glass and gulped. She sat on the deep couch next to Roberta, its softness snuggling all around her.

  Roberta was once a schoolteacher on the island of Montserrat, though she was working her father’s bar through the holidays when Alicia met her. Alicia’s boyfriend had treated Roberta like some skivvy, and the relationship ended there and then, Alicia moving out of the five-star hotel and into a room above the bar, quaintly called The Spunki Munki. She and Roberta spent the rest of the holiday hanging out with the locals, eating seafood, drinking and dancing. They wrote to one another for three years, until the island’s volcano spewed to life yet again, and scattered the inhabitants into the sea and mostly to America. Alicia insisted Roberta come live with her. It was supposed to be for a couple of months, which became a couple of years, and would probably now last a whole lot longer.

  “Tough day?” Roberta said.

  “There’s a nasty man out there kidnapping girls and I’m partnered with a bog-standard detective. Dull suit, miserable, even has a moustache.”

  “Not one of your usual British CIA cases?”

  “FBI is closer. But no. I have to work with this Murphy chappy and he’s just so … so … I don’t know. He’s boring. But he has potential.”

  Roberta laughed with her mouth wider than most humans can actually manage. “You think everyone is boring.”

  “You aren’t.” Alicia scrunched her fluffy-wrapped feet under her and leaned on the sofa’s arm. The furniture was so soft, so deep, so warm, that Alicia didn’t want to ever move again. She dribbled a little wine and laughed at herself, not really caring that the blouse would stain. “Thanks, Robbie.”

  Roberta curled her arm around Alicia, and she cuddled in close. “No probs. Didn’t want to start without you. Anyway, what else you gotta tell me? Don’t pretend there’s nothing.”

  Alicia told Roberta about her encounter with Richard Hague, how it was only as she shot past her exit on the M1 that she realised he’d been occupying so many of her thoughts. Katie held captive. The longest a victim lasted was seven days. Tomorrow was Katie’s third. And yet Alicia was more concerned with the father.

  Roberta smiled. “He’s vulnerable and you wanna take good care of him. Am I right?”

  “I don’t hold much faith in Freud, Robbie, you know that.” She closed her eyes and saw Richard’s face. “But yes. I sensed something … different about him. Something… good.”

  “You sensed that about the last guy. And the one before him. Oh, and the one before—”

  “So I don’t always pick a winner.” Alicia considered her most recent boyfriends, unable to hate any of them, even the ones who treated her like crap. “That’s why I’m being so careful lately.”

  “Barren is more than careful.

  She thought about it. Six months since Mr. Sexy Pants moved to Scotland.

  “Go to bed,” Roberta said, taking the glass from her. “I’m just gonna finish up with Mel and Danny and I’ll be shutting down myself.”

  Alicia rose and padded across the floor to her room. “Thanks again, Robbie.”

  Then she went inside, closed the door, and did something she hadn’t done since a long night of good wine and better food in Italy: she fell asleep in her clothes.

  Donald Murphy had a cat. Her name was Tinker. She was ginger. And when he got in, she purred at first, then curled around his leg, tail winding up his shin. When he didn’t go instantly to the cupboard to serve her tea (which was four hours late already) the cat mewled and reached up Murphy’s trousers, clawing the material. He shook his leg and Tinker disengaged, watching him leave the kitchen with a surprised expression. She soon realised he was not coming back and followed him into the living room.

  Murphy opened a bottle of scotch which he selected from the bar he built six months after Susan left. Tinker leapt onto the drinks cabinet and he nearly dropped the bottle. He tried to ignore her, but the mewling grated down his spine. She pushed against his hand as he poured a drink into a crystal tumbler, and splashed half the measure on the counter. Bloody thing.

  He acquired a cat partly for the company, sad as it sounds. A companion until Susan returned, although that possibility was now pretty much sucked out of existence. But he kept the cat anyway. Tinker also forced him home on nights like tonight, to feed the little madam, otherwise he’d work until the unexpected brightening of the day, grab a cat-nap in an unoccupied cell, and start all over again. Not long ago, he was making himself ill. More-so after Susan left. The thought of a hungry cat helped. He’d considered a dog, but it’d need walking and he could never guarantee he’d be home in time to prevent dog shit cascading over his carpet. Cat flaps were a great invention.

  He surrendered, hands in the air, and led Tinker back into the kitchen. As he emptied the packet of fishy meat into the cat’s bowl, she stood on her hind legs, pawing at him, jumping backwards when he lifted the bowl from the counter. He set it down and she dug in. He stroked her and she shot him a look that said, “Yes. Thank you. That will be all.”

  On his sofa, he allowed the scotch to comfort him while fish-breathed Tinker finished up. The drink warmed his throat, settling in a pleasant pool in his stomach. He thought about cheese on toast or something simple to eat. When he realised he’d have to move again, he vetoed the idea. Once finished, Murphy refilled his glass.

  Tinker mooched along eventually, sat on his lap, clawed herself comfortable, and curled up while Murphy stroked her. She purred until she was asleep.

  Murphy’s last coherent thoughts before sleep took him too were of Detective Sergeant Friend. She was clever. She was annoying. But looking on the bright side, she had given Murphy hope. He felt it, warm as the scotch in his belly, rising in him. They would get this guy, free Katie, alive and as unharmed.

  And with the right amount of luck, they were going to do it tomorrow.

  There are many ways in which a man can act when he experiences a full-on midlife crisis. Some will buy a sports car in which he looks utterly ridiculous, but he knows all his mates will envy him; others will take up squash or some activity to stem the tide of
flesh pouring over his belt; but others, like Wilcox, might already be active down the gym, and might already own the sports car, and have always driven sports cars from back in the 80s when he made his first million. So he might not have anywhere else to turn but the arms of a sweet-seeming gym bunny that genuinely likes him for who he is and not, repeat not, the oodles of cash at his disposal. So it’s bye-bye wifey of thirty-five years and hello loft conversion in the city, wall-to-wall sex, and a subscription to Little-Blue-Pill Weekly.

  But when Freddie’s bubble of newfound happiness burst upon the discovery of his gym bunny naked on the sofa with a gym bear, in a position Freddie couldn’t hope to get into without an overdose of cod liver oil and yoga, he faced reality and returned to the woman who stuck by him from long before he even thought about a Porsche. Only now she didn’t want him, and he was all alone, as he now believed he deserved.

  There are many ways to react when your wife doesn’t want you and your mistress replaces you and your friends think you’re a total bastard and have sided with your wife. Some would throw themselves into work and booze; some might forgive the gym bunny and bribe her to be faithful; but others, again like Freddie, might choose simply to isolate himself as much as physically possible.

  So leaving his wife-cum-ex-wife half his liquid assets and the whole house in Surrey, Freddie returned via train to his native north with a holdall full of cash, a pinstripe suit, and his childhood dream of living off the land, like Tom and Barbara in The Good Life. He put his money into a Post Office account, got himself a plot of dirt which even boasted a well upon it, and turned his hand to carpentry, knocking together a nice little hut in which to live while he constructed his simple, self-sufficient house. The land, in addition to the well, bore the husk of an old farmhouse, which Freddie intended to tear down and rebuild and live in until he died.

  Yet, when he spoke to the builders, to the architect, to the planners, all he could do was mumble. He had plans, but these plans were too abstract, too undefined to verbalise. For each person he met, he rearranged four meetings, and every plan he made he put on hold. Until, now, five years later, his hut was a damp pile of wood, and he was living in a makeshift shelter in the husk of the old farmhouse.

  One of the shelter’s walls was solid brick. Several planks of wood created a kind of triangle with the floor, and he’d waterproofed it with the sealant people use for sheds and garages. He slept on a mattress with a winter sleeping bag and wore striped pyjamas as he had all his life. When there was a breeze he pulled a plastic tarpaulin over his shelter, but tonight was breeze-free, albeit bitterly cold. The beard he’d grown helped, as did the thermal underwear, but mostly it was the sleeping bag, which encased him completely, allowing only a small hole for him to breathe through. Despite all his plans going awry, he was actually pretty happy, snug, under his little shelter.

  Until, that is, a car engine awoke him.

  Reluctant to de-cocoon himself into the cold winter night, he shifted his body to where the headlights were pointing. He should be angry, yelling “Get off my land” at this intruder, but the fact he’d not had a single visitor since he chased that smart-arsed architect away four years ago made him pause. The headlights pointed directly at his well. A round wall four feet high protected people from falling in, and although there was no picturesque roof with a bucket hanging from it, it was still the prettiest little object on Freddie’s land.

  Freddie’s well descended thirty feet to an underground stream, and had existed for a good hundred-and-fifty years or more. How they discovered water all the way down there, he’d never know. It flowed down from the Pennines, through Ribblehead and under Skipton, to here, in the hills between Leeds and Harrogate, providing Freddie with constant fresh water. He was enormously proud of his well; it set him apart from most of humanity. How many people these days had wells, after all?

  But in the white beams of the headlights, the well seemed anything but inviting. And when the footsteps crunched, Freddie confirmed he was right to stay hidden. He soon saw a man. He was carrying something. Something long and heavy. The man grunted as he hefted the object onto the wall of the well. He was well-built, Freddie thought, like himself when he was a gym regular, but it required visible effort to tip the plastic bundle through the well’s mouth.

  A litterbug, Freddie thought. Fly-tipping bastard.

  He was so angry he had no choice but to give this prick a piece of his mind. So with a huge effort, Freddie manoeuvred his arm out of its snug position, up through the sleeping bag to the zip. By God, he was gonna unleash some hell on this guy. It’s one thing people wanting to look at his pretty well, but dumping crap in it, that was another matter entirely.

  He gripped the zip and pulled it down, struggled out of it, arms and legs flying. In a burst of anger, he threw the roof off his shelter and strode out of the wreckage of the farmhouse, and—

  Bollocks.

  Freddie scanned the empty land. Moonlight was sparse. Taillights receded into the distance. He was too late. The litterbug had fled. Shame he didn’t even get the guy’s licence.

  Probably not worth reporting to the police, Freddie thought. But then, what if they could get fingerprints off the bag of rubbish? Perhaps it was possible. But would they? For such a small crime? If they showed him a list of known fly-tippers and/or their accomplices Freddie could pick him out of a line-up or something.

  He had, after all, got a good, clean look at the man’s face.

  Chapter Seven

  At 7.30 a.m. Alicia entered the new operations room that Graham Rapshaw arranged early that morning, along with the transfer of all files pertaining to the case. No windows. A sense of darkness, even with the strip lights burning. It reminded her of a hospital ward whose patients had all died.

  “Oh, this will never do.”

  She moved eight files from their positions strewn across the larger of six desks to a neat pile on one of the others. She did this with all the paperwork she could find. Two computer terminals using software from 2010 looked indiscriminately dumped in the middle of a desk each. She was about to move them when the uneven desk legs wobbled, and for a moment she thought the desks themselves might collapse in a cloud of wood and gigabytes.

  She transferred biros to plastic boxes, and left the boxes open at jaunty angles. She stood markers on end next to the whiteboard so their colourful lids acted like hats. One lid was missing, and she felt sorry for that one pen, all alone, hatless.

  “There,” she said. “Much better.”

  “If you’ve touched my stuff, I’m going to hurl you round the room by that cute little ponytail.”

  Okay, so Murphy had entered.

  “Hi, Donny. I’ve put it all in a neat and tidy pile.”

  He wore a dark blue suit, smarter, snappier than the grey one, which looked like he hadn’t worn it for some time; too tight at the shoulders. And his hair was tidier than yesterday. He flicked through the neat pile of manila files, frowning.

  Alicia held out her hand. “You owe me something.”

  Murphy looked at her a moment, taking time to glance at the stationery in its new home, and when he met her eyes a brief smile flashed under his moustache.

  “Okay, you got me.” He slapped a twenty into her hand.

  “So we’re friends now?” Alicia said.

  “Wouldn’t go that far.” He sat down. “But I appreciate your insight last night.”

  Alicia didn’t know what to say. She wanted to clap, but settled for a professionally sombre nod of the head. “Ready?”

  “For what?”

  “Well we can’t sit around here all day waiting for a clue to leap up and say ‘look at me, I’m a clue’.” She put on her jacket with a flourish, flashing a handwritten note at Murphy. “Ball did his job well last night. We’re off to see John Wellington.”

  John Wellington—detective chief inspector, retired—shook hands with Alicia and Murphy in turn. He was tanned a deep brown, wore a bright red tracksuit top and shorts whil
e his face sported a neatly trimmed goatee beard; white, almost silver. The older man looked in better shape than Murphy, especially when he first appeared to them: a head and shoulders poking out from high on a rocky outcrop, wind blowing the stray hair from under his helmet. He abseiled down smoothly, disengaged the ropes, and jogged away from the throng of sixty-plus-year-olds that greeted him at the bottom.

  “Last year,” he said when Murphy asked about his retirement. “Best thing I ever did. The group’s a bit fuddy-duddy but I get to do things I haven’t done before. Like this.”

  He sucked in air rather ostentatiously, then out louder than necessary. His gaze hardly settled on anything but the view. Alicia understood why.

  She used to come up here, to the Cow and Calf rocks, when she was a teenager. Sometimes it was for rude reasons, but mostly to read or work. The two rocks—a large one that John Wellington whooshed down, and a smaller one—protruded from the top of a steep hill half a mile outside Ilkley, overlooking fields and farmland and houses for miles around. There was a nice pub here too, also called the Cow and Calf, which unless you knew specifically, you wouldn’t guess was a part of a chain. Hard to believe they were less than an hour’s drive from Leeds.

  “Mr. Wellington, we need to ask about an investigation you headed up,” Alicia said.

  “Yes, Sergeant Ball said so on the phone. The Tanya one. Unfortunate business that. I never closed it.”

  Murphy said, “It may be connected to my current case.”

  My current case, Alicia noted.

  “A second kidnapping?” Wellington said.

  “Second, third and fourth.”

  “Oh.”

  “If you could help with any information …”

  Alicia fiddled with one of Wellington’s buckles, tugging it hard. “I used to do a bit of this.”