Hot Pursuit Read online

  Inside the hallway it was still and cool. Maggie let out a sigh of relief. She always enjoyed the first few seconds when she arrived home, when the house seemed slightly unfamiliar and she could view it with new eyes; except that this time the sensation lingered a second or two longer than usual. There was something wrong, something out of kilter that Maggie couldn’t quite put her finger on. The two boys, bearing black bags, pushed in behind her and dropped them on the flagstone floor.

  Ben picked up the milk. ‘Is it all right if I have some cereal, I’m starving.’

  ‘Of course, love, there should be some in the cupboard. Can you put the kettle on while you’re in the kitchen?’

  Joe bolted upstairs to add his new holiday dinosaur to the collection on his bedroom windowsill. Still the strange feeling remained. Maggie shook her head. It was probably just that she was exhausted; the traffic on the way home had been terrible.

  Ben came out of the kitchen as she piled the rest of the bags up in the hall.

  ‘Mum,’ he said accusingly, holding out a box towards her. ‘Somebody’s been eating my cereal.’

  A split second later Joe glared at her over the banister. ‘And somebody’s been sleeping in my bed,’ he said before vanishing.

  Maggie laughed and threw her handbag onto the hall stand.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said, clutching her chest theatrically. ‘Don’t tell me. We’ve accidentally wandered into a police reconstruction of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.’

  As she spoke, the door to the study opened very, very slowly and a tall, rangy man wrapped in a bath towel stepped, dripping, into the hall.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ he said, clutching the skimpy towel tight around his belly.

  Maggie blinked, once, twice, strangling the scream that threatened. ‘I’m sorry?’ she mumbled. Her first thoughts were muddled; this couldn’t be happening. Next come shock, then fear, then surprise; a startled, bright, primary palette of emotions.

  ‘What are you doing in my house?’ he barked furiously.

  Maggie settled on outrage, an unfamiliar scarlet glow, and looked round for something to defend herself and the boys with. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, everything sharp and clear and crisp.

  Across the hall the man’s face contorted, and his body, already wound tight, hunched as if he meant to spring. ‘I said –’ he began.

  ‘I heard what you said,’ Maggie snapped, easing herself towards the hall stand. Her heart began to tango under her tee shirt. She could hear the reverberation in her ears as if reassuring her she was still alive and well. But for how long? She was acutely aware that Ben’s baseball bat stood amongst the umbrellas no more than an arm’s length away.

  ‘Well?’ demanded the man, the colour rising on his face and chest.

  Maggie nodded towards her eldest son. ‘Quickly, love, go into the kitchen and phone the police,’ she called, and, as the man turned to watch Ben scurry away, she lunged forward. Grabbing the bat, she hefted it up to shoulder height.

  The man took a step back, lifting one hand to ward her off, as Maggie settled into a batter’s stance.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ he yelped, as she took a practise swing in his direction, his other hand still clutching at the towel. ‘Are you mad? You nearly hit me with that. And there’s no point ringing the police.’

  What did he mean? Was he going to kill them? Had he cut off the phone lines? Maggie narrowed her eyes, wondering just how hard she would have to hit him to subdue him. ‘I don’t know who you are, or what you want, but this is my house –’ She swung the bat again. ‘And I want you out. Now.’

  Ben appeared in the doorway with the phone and began to tap in the number.

  ‘There has to have been some sort of mistake’ the man said, his voice still tight. ‘They brought me here.’

  ‘They? Who’s they? Little green men?’ Maggie said, more aggressively now, the adrenaline coursing through her veins like molten lava. She gestured towards the door. ‘Come on. Out.’

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘You heard me,’ she said, sidestepping towards the front door.

  ‘What? Like this?’ He sounded incredulous.

  Maggie nodded. Once he was out she could lock the door, and throw his clothes out of a window. Let the police sort him out. Ideas spiralled through her mind like crows.

  ‘Here Mum,’ said Ben, waving the phone at her.

  ‘I’ve already told you, there’s no point ringing the police,’ the man protested.

  Maggie felt another little plume of fear rising, her stomach contracting sharply as her fingers tightened around the hickory shaft.

  ‘Why not?’ she said, licking bone-dry lips, watching his every move. ‘Did you cut the wires?’

  He sighed and ran his fingers back through his wet hair. ‘No, of course I didn’t cut the wires – don’t be so melodramatic. It’s just that the police know that I’m here already, they were the ones who brought me here in the first place,’ he said quietly. ‘How many burglars do you know who break in to take a shower, for God’s sake?’

  Joe thundered halfway down the stairs two at a time and then froze when he spotted their unexpected guest. Maggie shooed him towards the kitchen. ‘Keep back, Joe. It’s all right – don’t worry. He’s just leaving.’

  The man groaned. There was a look of total disbelief on his face. ‘Look, I’m not going to hurt anyone. There has to have been some sort of mix-up somewhere –’

  Maggie balanced herself on the balls of her feet. She was ready for him if he made a move. ‘So what are you doing in my house?’

  ‘As far as I was – am – concerned, this is my house. The lady next door gave me the key –’ He waved towards Mrs Eliot’s house.

  Maggie suddenly understood. ‘That’s because she thought you were the gasman.’

  The man looked hurt. ‘She said that she was expecting me.’

  Maggie swung the head of the bat back and forth speculatively. ‘She was – at least she was expecting someone from the gas board. It’s taken them six weeks to get around to repairing my boiler, although actually – unless you are the gasman, they still haven’t made it.’ The bat was getting heavy. ‘Now, can you explain what’s going on?’

  ‘They’ve never been the same since they were privatised,’ he said.

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant and you know it,’ Maggie hissed. She was having trouble sustaining her sense of outrage.

  The man looked down at his damp belly. ‘Would you mind very much if I just nipped back upstairs and got dressed? I was getting out of the shower when the car pulled up and as I wasn’t expecting anyone I came down to see who it was.’

  ‘And then I opened the door?’

  ‘Yes – I thought I’d better hide. I wasn’t sure who you were. I won’t be a minute –’

  Maggie watched him turn and hurry upstairs still clutching one of her best fluffy white towels around his midriff. He wasn’t the only one who wasn’t sure who was who.

  Ben, still carrying the cordless phone, looked at her from the kitchen doorway. ‘Do you still want me to ring the police, Mum?’

  Maggie shook her head, feeling vaguely ridiculous standing in the hall brandishing a baseball bat, all wound up and ready to go.

  ‘No, love – just go into the kitchen and make us some tea, will you?’

  ‘Oh, go on, Mum, let me, please,’ Ben whined. ‘I know the number and everything.’

  ‘No,’ Maggie snapped.

  Standing beside Ben, Joe pulled a face. ‘You told Mrs Eliot that you were going to go round hers for tea. You promised and she’s got chocolate biscuits.’

  Maggie sighed. ‘I did, didn’t I? Just nip across the garden and tell her the gasman is still here and I’ll try and get round later if I can. And then come straight back.’

  It didn’t take the honorary gasman more than ten minutes to reappear, dressed in faded jeans and a sun-bleached blue cotton shirt. Maggie couldn’t help but notice that his shirt had four o
dd buttons. One wasn’t sewn on in quite the right place, revealing an interesting glimpse of tanned, hairy chest. His feet were bare, his dark hair slick and damp. He was still rolling up his sleeves as he loped into the kitchen.

  ‘Now,’ she said, across the kitchen table, still holding the baseball bat as she handed him a mug. ‘How about we take this from the beginning? Is tea all right?’ she asked, thawing slightly.

  The man looked uncomfortable but pulled out a chair. ‘Tea’s fine. I don’t know what to say really.’ He bit his lip thoughtfully. ‘As far as I’m concerned this was – my new start,’ he said. ‘I belong here. I don’t understand what’s happened. This is my place –’

  Maggie tucked the bat under her arm and opened the biscuit tin. There was a two-week-old Jammy Dodger and a half-eaten Wagon Wheel inside.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly, closing the lid and looking up to meet his gaze. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. You don’t belong here. If you belonged here I’m quite certain I would have remembered. Tell you what, let’s start with something simple, shall we? How about you tell me your name?’

  He pulled another face and then said, ‘Hang on a minute,’ extricated a wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and opened it. ‘Oh yes,’ he said brightly, taking out a driving licence and handing it to her. ‘There we are, I’m Bernie Fielding.’

  Maggie suddenly felt dizzy, as if somehow she had managed to wander into a waking dream – or perhaps a nightmare.

  ‘No,’ she said again, but more firmly this time. ‘That isn’t true either. You see, I was married to Bernie Fielding for eight years and believe me, unless he’s had a personality transplant and a lot of plastic surgery you are most definitely not him.’

  The man glanced back into the hall, where Ben was watching him with all the concentration of a trained sniper. ‘Bloody hell – the boys, your boys, I mean, are they my boys, too?’

  Maggie took a long pull on her tea. ‘No, that’s something else I’m sure I would have remembered, and no, before you ask, they’re not Bernie’s either. I married Bernie when I was eighteen, which seems like a very long time ago now. I’ve been married again since then.’

  ‘Oh my God, this is a total bloody disaster,’ said the man uneasily, clambering to his feet, his colour draining rapidly. ‘Where is he? Is he parking the car, walking the dog? On his way home from work? Oh my God. Bloody hell, this is such a mess.’

  Maggie waved the bat in his direction, encouraging him back to his seat. ‘Relax, I’ve got the most terrible taste in men. I asked him to leave a couple of years ago and, surprise, surprise, he did.’

  The man ran his fingers back through his dark wavy, still damp-hair. ‘Thank God for that.’

  Maggie sniffed. ‘I know. I don’t understand what I ever saw in him,’ she said, and then, smiling, continued briskly, ‘Right, I’m going to get the kids some crisps and fruit out of the car. Then I’m going to park them in front of the TV, and while I’m away –’ she glanced at her watch ‘– that gives you about five minutes. I’d like you to come up with a persuasive and, if possible, plausible argument for exactly what you’re doing in my house and why I shouldn’t call the law and have you dragged out of here.’

  Maggie picked up her car keys. ‘Oh, and it had better be good, Ben’s still got the mobile phone with him. One squeak from me and the Old Bill will be round here before you can pack your shower gel.’

  ‘Actually, I think I’ve probably been using yours. I thought it was really odd that the house had so many personal things in it. I was going to get some boxes, pack it all away – the policeman said I should just chuck out what I didn’t want.’

  Maggie shivered, wondering what might have happened to her possessions if she had been gone another week.

  Meanwhile, in a small sub-post office in an Oxfordshire village, the real Bernie Fielding was busy pushing a large pile of envelopes across the counter.

  The woman smiled up at him. ‘Wedding?’

  Bernie, dragged away from an entirely different train of thought, peered at her.

  ‘Sorry? What? Whose wedding?’ he said.

  The envelopes contained a bevy of application forms for all the documents he’d need for his new identity, everything from a birth certificate through to a duplicate driving licence and American Express card. Numbers and account details all courtesy of Stiltskin. Courtesy of Stiltskin, James Cook also had a very healthy bank balance. Bernie had already been to the bank in Banbury to pick up his temporary cheque book and some cash.

  ‘Yours?’ she asked, nodding down at the thick bundle over the top of her horn-rimmed spectacles. ‘Or are you throwing a party?’

  Bernie sighed. God save him from women with tongues.

  ‘Change of address actually. Can I have a dozen, er…’ he peered at the handful of change he had in his hand. ‘Second class, please.’

  The woman opened the stamp book and counted them out.

  ‘Not local, are you?’

  Bernie puffed thoughtfully and looked at his inquisitor. She had a great tumble of teased blonde hair, while behind the horn-rims, rather attractive fiery conker-brown eyes watched him with barely concealed curiosity. What the hell, he had nothing to hide, at least not now he didn’t.

  Bernie warmed up his smile a degree or two. ‘No, actually I’ve just moved onto the caravan site at the back of the Old Dairy.’ He saw the fleeting glint of disapproval in her eyes as he plummeted earthwards in her estimation.

  ‘Although,’ he added hastily, clawing himself back from the brink of social-security oblivion, ‘it’s only temporary, obviously, just until I can find myself a decent house to buy. I was pipped at the post for the last one – I’ve already sold mine and needed somewhere to stay fast, you know how it is. I’ve been to see several others but…’ Bernie hesitated, tangled up in the strings of his own lie. He backtracked, wondering if he was finally losing his touch. He really needed to concentrate more.

  Over the counter the woman was watching him wriggle like a cat watches a baby bird that’s fallen from the nest.

  ‘To be perfectly honest I haven’t seen anything else that’s quite me yet. You need to like the feel of a place – feel like it could be home – you know what I’m saying? One man’s inglenook is another man’s naff old fireplace.’ The lie dropped down a gear and accelerated away so fast that Bernie could barely keep up with it.

  ‘And besides, I’m looking for something a little bit special, double garage for the BMW and my four-by-four, obviously. Stables would be nice; livery is so expensive. But there’s just nothing on the market at the moment that really takes my fancy. Trouble is I have to move around a lot with my job and I’ve always hated hotels. I was going to rent a house, but all the fuss –’ Bernie lifted his hands to imply some enormous complex puzzle that he hadn’t the time to unravel. ‘Whereas I could just walk into a caravan, no problem, pay the deposit pick up the key and wham bam, thank you, ma’am – there we are, in like Flynn. And they’re fun, aren’t they – caravans?’

  Bernie knew he was waffling but he didn’t seem able to stem the flow. ‘My new contract starts next week, so it all fell into place. Hadn’t got time to hang about. Nice secure little number, three years…bloody good salary.’ Lungs empty, right down to the red line Bernie hastily drew in a long, calming breath.

  Thoughtfully, Conker-eyes tipped her head on one side and looked him up and down.

  ‘Sounds interesting,’ she said in a low voice. ‘My name’s Stella; Stella Ramsey.’ She left a little breathy pause at the end of the introduction, a pause that invited a wild variety of possibilities.

  Bernie coughed. ‘I’m new to this area, I was really hoping to find someone to show me all the sights.’

  Stella smiled lazily. ‘There’s not a lot to see in Renham, to be honest.’

  He grinned. ‘Well, how about we go out for a little drink instead, then?’

  She lifted her eyebrows. ‘The local pub is a right dump.’

  He leant on the cou
nter, enjoying the show of token resistance. ‘Well, in that case, perhaps you’d like to show me another one, somewhere…’ he hesitated, ‘somewhere nice, tasteful, and expensive. I’ve always had very expensive tastes.’

  Conker-eyes ran her tongue around the end of her well-chewed Biro. ‘Oh, have you?’ she said slyly. ‘Well, in that case, there’s always the Lark and Buzzard over at Highwell. They do a lovely chilli con carne, chicken in a basket, tikka marsala – very international cuisine, is the Lark.’

  Bernie grinned, feeling a nice little buzz in the bottom of his belly as their eyes met. ‘Really? I don’t suppose I could tempt you to show me where this place is, could I? Only I’m at a loose end this evening –’

  This time she hesitated, batting long eyelashes coquettishly. ‘But I don’t even know your name.’

  Bernie smiled, pausing long enough to check that he remembered his new name before wheeling out a well-worn 007 impression. ‘Cook,’ he said, in a very poor imitation of Sean Connery, ‘James Cook.’

  Conker-eyes blushed furiously. ‘Well, Mr James Cook, in that case, what time do you want to pick me up?’ she asked.

  Bernie glanced up at the clock above the counter. ‘Shall we say about eight?’

  She nodded. ‘Why not? I’ll meet you out the front.’

  Bernie smiled, and without another word made his way to the door, opened it and lifted his hand in salute. As the shop bell rang to announce his departure, Stella Ramsey was licking his stamps and putting them on the envelopes that would secure all the things he needed for his new life. Her tongue was very, very pink.

  In Maggie Morgan’s kitchen, the new Bernie Fielding, alias Nick Lucas, was watching with fascination as the woman who had burst into what he had truly believed was his new life and new home, went about cooking him and the boys supper. As she worked, the two lads ran a relay race of surveillance between the cottage kitchen and the sitting room.

  Maggie had set the baseball bat down alongside the chopping board and was busily hacking an onion into uneven lumps with a large kitchen knife.

  ‘So, you can have some supper with us,’ she was saying, ‘and then you can go home.’