Way Beyond A Lie, page 29
His passenger sighed as he too adjusted his position. The SQ5 was undoubtedly a comfortable car but designed for driving in, not as a hide for two grown men. ‘Because, my dear boy,’ said Martin, ‘I couldn’t possibly have stayed home doing my knitting while you were travelling the country having such a blast. I mean, Tuesday night in some tacky housing estate in Durham. What more could a chap ask for?’
‘Nobody calls them “housing estates” any more, Martin. Executive developments, at the very least.’
‘Aye, right.’ Martin jerked a thumb towards a house to his immediate left. The front garden was strewn with brightly-coloured plastic and ceramic paraphernalia so beloved of the terminally tasteless: windmills, bridges, water features, a life-sized crane, two foxes and more gnomes than the first audition for Snow White. ‘Thank fuck we’re not here at Christmas. We’d need bloody sunglasses.’
Ross smiled at the image. ‘I guess at some point we should call it a night and check in somewhere.’ He pointed at the car’s satnav. ‘Can this gizmo show hotels nearby?’
When Martin had outlined his plan to Ross and the twins a couple of Sundays previously, after the part where he said there was no way Ross was going on his own, he said it was pointless buying a car specifically for the purpose. Martin described his recently-purchased top of the range SQ5. ‘It’s the perfect motor for this sort of stuff. Privacy glass all round, high up for peeking over hedges, loads of bells and whistles. Just the job.’
Ross could see sense in Martin’s suggestion, and warmed more to the plan when he heard what else his friend had to say. ‘If you’re likely to be away for three or four days on the trot, especially if it’s during the week, you’ll need a good reason. So, here’s what I’m thinking.’
Martin explained it was common knowledge amongst the staff that he was planning to expand his business into other locations in the UK. England, in particular. Therefore, a few fact-finding missions with his in-house accountant shouldn’t raise any eyebrows. Reminded about the GPS tracking app on Ross’s phone, he said, ‘Leave it on your desk under some papers or something. Once we’re on the road, we’ll call the office and tell them Ross the plonker has left his phone behind, and could they put it somewhere safe until we get back.’ Ross pointed out that excuse would only work once but Martin just shrugged. They would come up with another reason the next time.
It had then occurred to Gail that perhaps her father’s phone had also been bugged but they checked it out thoroughly and found nothing untoward. They did the same with his iPad, and she visited Ross a few nights later to check his tablet was also clean. Both men beefed up the access security codes on their devices. They knew that was only a deterrent but the girls promised to check them all at frequent intervals.
A young couple had just walked past the car, dragging a reluctant puppy intent on sniffing leaves when Ross tapped his watch. ‘Almost eleven o’clock. We can’t sit here much longer.’ He gestured his impatience. ‘Where the hell do people go ’til this time on a school night?’
‘I don’t know. The theatre or the cinema, maybe?’ Martin shuffled in his seat. ‘Let’s leave it ’til half eleven, and if no one turns up by then, we’ll call it quits.’ He’d just begun pushing buttons and twirling dials to configure the satnav when Ross poked a stiff finger at his arm.
‘Martin, there’s a car pulling up behind us.’
Sure enough, a dark saloon was manoeuvring slowly around their car to allow the driver the widest possible turn into the bungalow’s driveway. As it passed the gates, the motion of the vehicle triggered a pattern of lights sunk into the lock-bloc. Between those and the glow from a nearby streetlamp, they could see a man was driving but his passenger was merely a shadow on the far side.
They both leaned forward in anticipation. ‘Let’s be realistic,’ said Ross. ‘It’ll never be her. Not at the first house.’
The saloon pulled to a halt in front of a wide white double garage door, integral to the house and topped off by what was probably a bedroom or a study.
‘Come on, dear,’ said Martin. ‘Out you pop, and let’s have a wee look at you.’
What happened next left the two men stunned, looking at each other in open-mouthed disbelief. The garage door opened automatically, the car was driven inside, and the doors slid slowly down over the boot of the car, swallowing it like a lizard taking an unwary cricket.
Martin slumped back in the passenger’s seat. ‘Oh, that’s just fucking wonderful.’
Chapter Fifty-Four
Wednesday
Ross gave out a long exhale. ‘One down, thirty-six to go.’
It had just turned eight o’clock the next morning. They were driving south, away from Durham in the direction of Pocklington, a market town about fifteen miles east of York. Martin checked his mirrors and accelerated past a delivery van and a double-decker bus making heavy weather of a long, steady incline. They were on the lookout for a breakfast stop having checked out of their hotel before the restaurant opened.
Before they’d gone to bed the previous night, they agreed to be back at the house by seven at the latest, reasoning not many people left for work much earlier than that, especially given the time Bob and Brenda Kelly had arrived home the night before. That logic had been rewarded at five to eight when the front door opened and a short dumpy woman, followed by a similarly proportioned man and a decrepit English springer spaniel, toddled off for a walk in the pale morning sunshine. Arm in arm, the couple crossed right in front of the SQ5. They were still in sight when Martin hit the ignition and moved off. Ross had taken a couple of photos, and fully expected Oliver’s database would contain one fewer name by the end of the day.
When the car disappeared into their garage, Ross had said, ‘Well, that really caught us out, didn’t it? We’ll need to plan our approach in a bit more detail from now on.’ Martin had no choice but to agree and, talking about it on the short drive to their hotel, both men held their hands up. They had been naïve and ill-prepared. They didn’t have any strategy to speak of, and they’d expected the answers simply to fall into their laps.
They discussed what would be the best time to be on watch at each house. Although, in theory, the lady of the house might be spotted at any time depending on her routine, if she had a full-time job there was precious little point in them sitting outside all day. And, as Ross pointed out, ‘Most people work.’ Because they hadn’t left Edinburgh until gone four o’clock on the Tuesday afternoon, they hadn’t arrived here until just after eight, by which time the couple had already gone out for the evening. So step one of the new plan was to try to be at each house by 07:00 if they were already in the vicinity, or by 16:00 if they had been travelling.
They had laughed at the irony of the couple driving straight into the garage but then they couldn’t come up with a plausible excuse to knock on the door, given how late it was. As a result they’d dithered, and the opportunity was lost. They resolved that in similar circumstances at another house, whoever was the passenger would shift his backside out of the car to try to establish if the woman arriving home was Carla. A similar occurrence was probably unlikely but they were trying to cover all bases.
Suitably breakfasted, they’d set off again down the A1 towards York when Martin said, ‘I’ve been thinking.’
Ross was reclined in the passenger seat with his eyes closed. ‘Go on, then. What?’
‘Let’s say we are outside a house at the times we agreed, the woman might already be home, so who’s to say that’s not her in for the day, especially if the weather’s pish. We could sit there for hours. She’s inside, we’re outside, and ne’er the twain shall meet. Then, when she does come out, and we discover she isn’t Carla, we’ve wasted all that time.’
Ross nodded his agreement as he watched the gently undulating North Yorkshire countryside rolling by. ‘Fair point. So what are you thinking? We just march up to the front door and ask if the missus is in?’
He glanced over at Martin, who was concentrating on the road. The A1(M) it may have been, but this stretch was only dual carriageway, and choc-a-bloc with articulated lorries heading south.
Martin paused to think. ‘Let’s work on the assumption that, more or less as soon as we arrive at a house, we do knock on the door so we don’t waste time unnecessarily.’
‘Unless we’re there first thing in the morning. In which case, sometime after, say, nine o’clock?’
‘Aye. Can’t be before that,’ Martin acknowledged. ‘But either way, we’d need a damn good reason. Something plausible.’
Ross adopted a Jack-the-lad accent. ‘We’ve noticed your windows are a bit dodgy, madam. Would you be interested in double glazing?’
‘And perhaps we could tidy up your soffits at the same time, darlin’.’ They both cackled like schoolboys, and would have kept up the sleazy salesman banter but Martin had to slow down to negotiate a busy roundabout.
‘We’re canvassing on behalf of the Conservative Party?’ was Ross’s next offering.
‘Fuck right off.’
They eventually settled on the idea of a consumer survey but were struggling to come up with a realistic subject. ‘It needs to be something that will bring the missus to the door,’ said Martin. ‘So, even if it’s the old man we speak to first, he’ll have to ask her to come out and talk to us.’ He pondered the problem as they cruised along in the outside lane. ‘What about internet shopping habits? We can ask if she shops online. How many times a week? Is it for clothes, groceries, blah blah blah? Even if the husband says he can give us the answers, we just say it’s the female demographic we’re aiming at, we’re not allowed to record second hand information, and what time will your wife be home.’
Ross picked up on the theme. ‘I think that’ll work. With it being internet related, it won’t matter where we’re canvassing. Rural, urban, suburban. It all fits. And if the woman isn’t Carla, we can pretend the answers aren’t what we’re looking for and move on quickly. Do you shop online? If she says no, that’s easy. If she says yes, we ask how many times a week? And whatever she says, it’s the wrong number. We say thanks anyway, and bugger off.’
They both fell silent while they mulled over the idea but their nodding heads confirmed they were on to something. ‘Hang on,’ said Ross. ‘What about ID? Canvassers always have a badge or a card or something, to prove they’re genuine.’
‘Hmmm. That’s true.’ Martin glanced at his watch. ‘It’s only half ten so we’ve got time to pop into York. We’ll find a business centre or a stationery shop, and we can knock something up. We just need to print off a card and stick it in one of those Perspex holder things.’ He thumped the steering wheel with the heel of his right hand. ‘Bloody hell! You’d think one of us would have thought of this back in the office. No worries, we’ll blag it this time and come up with something more professional in time for next week.’
Ross threw him a glance that said, What do you mean, next week? But Martin was oblivious. He took both hands off the wheel for a second to raise his palms skywards. ‘We should’ve brought a clipboard.’
Ross laughed out loud. ‘A clipboard?’ He lifted his iPad from the pocket in the passenger door and waggled it in the driver’s direction. Martin had the good grace to look embarrassed as his friend made an elaborate show of licking his index finger and drawing a large imaginary number one on the windscreen. Ross flipped the tablet open. ‘You just keep driving, Grandpa. I’ll make us one of them newfangled online questionnaires.’
‘Aye, you’re right chuffed with yourself, aren’t you? But, being serious for a minute, have you even considered what we’ll do if one of these women is Carla?’
Ross took a few moments before replying. ‘I guess if we spot her from the car, we’ll have time to think about what to do. I’d probably phone Mel back in Edinburgh and tell her. If we’re not too far away, she and Andrew might even come down to make the arrest. But if it’s a case of bumping into her on a doorstep then I think I’ll just grab her and dial 999.’
‘And what’s the husband doing while you’re grappling with his missus?’
‘I’ll leave you to sort that out.’
‘Thanks a bunch, mate.’ Martin didn’t mean it.
As things turned out, their fake internet consumer survey wasn’t required for the couple in Pocklington. The house belonging to Harris and Lindsey Matthewson sat up on a large corner site with beautifully tended front and side gardens sloping down to the pavement. Two men were working hard, surrounded by gardening implements, bags of compost and an array of plants and shrubs. The older man was probably in his fifties and the other was his spitting image, almost certainly his son. As Ross and Martin sat watching from a couple of houses away, a woman appeared carrying a tray with three coffee mugs. The two men removed their gloves, the older man kissed her cheek, and the son gave his mum a shoulder-hug.
‘They have to be family,’ said Ross, just as a silver hatchback came along the road and parked outside the house. Two small boys aged about eight and six, and dressed in pale blue school uniforms, piled out the back and ran up the garden path. A young woman followed on, lugging a shoulder bag and three jackets. A bout of kissing, hugging and ruffling of hair then ensued before the women and the boys left the men to their coffees and vanished inside the house.
Martin tutted. ‘I thought one of the criteria for being on Leona’s list was no close family.’
‘It is. But Oliver also said the list couldn’t be one hundred per cent accurate, and I guess that’s what we’re seeing here.’
Martin had taken photos just in case so there was nothing left for them to do but turn the car round and head for their next location. Bainbridge: a typically picturesque village more or less smack in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales.
Thirty-five to go.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Thursday
A serious crash on the motorway a few miles north of York caused a diabolical snarl-up of traffic, meaning Ross and Martin didn’t reach Bainbridge until almost nine o’clock in the evening. Instead of going straight to the next address they booked into a hotel, enjoyed a bar supper and a couple of the local ales before hitting the sack early.
Apart from a teenage boy who cycled off to school at about eight o’clock, no one else crossed the threshold of Joyce and David Nisbet’s Victorian detached villa before 09:30 on a cold and misty morning. Feeling more than a little apprehensive, Martin led the way with their consumer survey dodge. It turned out Mrs Nisbet, who was wearing a t-shirt with the logo: Dont misuse apostrophe’s, was something of an internet shopping demon. And that was proved when a delivery driver turned up just as they were making their excuses. Joyce took great delight in ripping open the parcel to show them her latest purchase. She told them it was a birthday gift for her eleven-year-old nephew, a three inch thick hardback copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
Martin could hardly stop laughing. ‘I’d love to see the poor wee sod’s face when he opens his present.’
They’d pointed the car in the direction of home when Martin spotted one of the addresses was on the edge of the Lake District village of Ambleside. He declared it, ‘Ten minutes out of our way, so we may as well pop in.’ They did, found the house all boarded up with a For Sale sign, and were standing outside wondering what to do when an elderly neighbour ambled by. Without any need for subterfuge, the lady told them poor old Mr O’Neill had passed away in the spring, Annabel had gone to live with her sister in Dorking, and the house was on offer at £395,000. But, to date, there had been no interest. They thanked her, had a late lunch in the village, and were back in Edinburgh by six o’clock.
The following week they set off on another supposed fact-finding mission. Ross couldn’t pretend he’d forgotten his phone again so Martin faked an email to all staff advising of an impending audit of all mobile devices to upgrade software and antivirus, and remove obsolete or unauthorised apps. He knew the premise was thin but figured if he sent out a second email a few days later deferring the audit, the team would be relieved more than anything else. Then he’d just let it slide.
So Ross left his phone with Gloria just in case the ‘audit’ took place while he was away. He texted Alex to let her know, saving any potentially awkward conversations about his rather strange behaviour a few nights earlier.
On this trip they whittled Leona’s list of addresses down to twenty-four. They knocked off five on a whistle-stop tour of Lancashire and Cheshire, one in the Peak District, another in the Lincolnshire town of Grantham, and finally, a memorable escapade in Stafford ticked off that particular box. They’d arrived at the address just as a Mercedes SUV turned out of the driveway, heading in the opposite direction. Neither man was able to identify the passenger. It could have been a man, a woman or possibly just the headrest. Ross was driving, and Martin uttered the immortal words: ‘Follow that car!’ Ross could barely speak for laughing and managed to stall the Audi in the middle of the road, no mean feat in an automatic. He broke several speed limits while trying to catch the Merc, eventually pulling into a restaurant car park on the outskirts of town, right on the bumper of the suspect vehicle.
‘What now?’ asked Ross. But Martin seized the day by following the couple inside and hovering behind them as they were welcomed by the Maître D’. Luckily, the man said something about, ‘My wife,’ which was enough for Martin.
He’d just relaxed when the somewhat pompous Maître D’ turned to him and asked if he had a reservation, looking him up and down as if to say, I don’t care if you have. No way on earth are you coming in here. As always, Martin displayed his propensity for quick thinking by asking for directions to the town centre but would have been shocked if the Maître D’ had believed him.
Finally, Martin checked a house in the Finsbury park area of North London while he was on a business jolly to watch Arsenal playing West Ham. Unfortunately, the wife was wheelchair-bound and not even he could find anything amusing to say about that.
