Hot Pursuit Page 6

  ‘So you think we should start with his ex-wives, do you?’ he said hesitantly. It sounded a bit too close to home.

  She nodded. ‘Uh huh, and previous lovers. I’ll go right back to the beginning, that way we won’t miss any potential leads; we’ve got lots of his old addresses on file. I’ll chase up all the Fieldings as well. I’ve got a copy of the electoral roll on the computer –’

  Lesley handed him a mug of Cup-a-Soup and as she did Robbie engineered it so their fingertips touched for just an instant. She blushed deliciously, giggled and went to pick up another of the files.

  ‘It’s a real shame that we haven’t got a decent photo of him,’ she said, although Robbie could see that her mind – like his – had at least momentarily moved away from Bernie Fielding and onto something more carnal, more pressing, more immediate. They both knew that moral support wasn’t the only thing that Lesley had stayed behind for.

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ he said in a low purr.

  Eyes glittering like a feral cat, Robbie took the file out of her chubby little fingers and set it down alongside her coffee. A grainy press cutting of Bernie Fielding’s second marriage to some poor unsuspecting girl in Norfolk slipped out onto the desk top. The dots that made up the image were so blurred that it looked as if a giant hat was marrying an Afro with a Mexican bandito moustache. The clipping fluttered with surprising grace into the puddle around the bottom of Robbie’s mug and sucked up the liquid like a parched man, tinting the bride and groom a not unattractive sunbed beige.

  Not that Robbie took a lot of notice. If they were going to pull an all-nighter what was half an hour between friends on the office couch? He picked up his digital camera from the desk and pointed it at her. ‘How about I get a few good close-up shots of you for the album?’ he purred, in what he liked to think was a deep, seductive tone.

  ‘Oh Robbie,’ Lesley giggled furiously as he leant closer and unbuttoned the top of her blouse. As she wriggled like a fish, he pulled her down onto his lap.

  ‘You are such an animal,’ she gasped, as Robbie focused the camera on her cleavage.

  ‘Why don’t you take the rest of your clothes off,’ he said. ‘Get yourself nice and comfortable?’

  Lesley put her hand over the lens, while with the other hand she tried to undo his trousers. ‘No publicity,’ she whispered thickly as the buckle gave way.

  In the small but snug sitting room of a residential caravan at the back of the Old Dairy in Renham, Stella Conker-eyes had pulled off a miracle comparable only to the raising of Lazarus; and so far she had managed it twice. Although it would have been a considerably more erotic encounter if she hadn’t cried the first time and kept telling Bernie what a dear, sweet man he was.

  Not that Bernie had too many problems with the idea of being a charity case in this particular instance, although when she managed it a third time even he was surprised.

  Holding her tight up against him in case she stopped her ministrations, Bernie said, ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this – this relaxed and happy, Stella. It’s been a fantastic evening. You have no idea how good it’s been –’

  ‘Oh James,’ she whispered thickly.

  Bernie froze for an instant, feeling as if he had caught her out in some act of betrayal until it struck him that he was, of course, now James Cook. He really had to get used to the idea, before his face gave him away, although fortunately for him, Stella wasn’t looking at his face at that particular moment.

  On the drive home from the pub he had floated the idea of dropping in for a coffee.

  ‘Oh all right, then,’ Stella said with a giggle. ‘If you insist.’

  Bernie, who, as he was driving had only had a pint of bitter and then gone on to orange juice and was as sober as a Methodist Minister, smiled. ‘Your place or mine?’

  ‘It’d better be yours. Mum will probably still be up. She’s a very light sleeper – get’s a lot of gyp with her back and her sciatica and her waterworks – and besides there’s the two West Highland whites, Nancy and Ronald, and that bloody parrot of hers. The row them three make if she isn’t awake when we get in she soon will be.’

  Bernie nodded and turned off towards the caravan site. The night was dark and warm, the wind rustling through the treetops like indolent fingers.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t like animals,’ Stella was saying, her speech slurred with drink, ‘but them bloody little dogs make such a row, yap-yap-yapping, and the parrot is so messy, seed and bits everywhere. No, as soon Mum passes away, God bless her, or goes into a home, they’ll have to go.’

  Bernie nodded. He knew better than to interrupt a woman when she was rambling. ‘Okay,’ he said when he was certain that she’d finished. ‘Although I have to warn you that the caravan’s a bit of a mess at the moment, but at least it’s nice and quiet and it is only temporary.’

  Stella looked at him slyly and said that she quite understood that it was only temporary, and no, she didn’t mind the mess at all. No, really. It was fine, after all things would be different when he got his new house, wouldn’t they? Maybe she could drop by with a copy of the local paper later in the week; they had a big pull-out housing section at the back and she had always liked house-hunting.

  So here they were, stretched out half-naked on the hearth rug in front of the gas fire, in the wee small hours. Stella moaned softly and crept up towards him.

  ‘Would you like to go to bed, James, only I’m getting terrible carpet burns on my knees.’

  Bernie did his best to look tender and serene, although he did wonder just how much she could see without her glasses. ‘You know, Stella, this really is the best evening I’ve had in – in –’ he began, wondering what constituted a suitable measure of time.

  Fortunately he was saved by Stella pressing her fingertips tightly to his lips. ‘Don’t. It’s perfectly all right. There really is no need to say anything, James,’ she murmured in a low throaty mewl. ‘Let’s not dwell on the past, this is not the time. Why don’t we just go to bed instead?’

  Bernie grinned. It suited him fine; this way he wouldn’t have to try and make up some plausible story for the last best time he’d had; and after the bottle of wine they’d drunk since arriving back at the caravan he’d forgotten his poor dead wife’s name anyway. At the door to the bedroom, while looking back at him over one large creamy-white shoulder, Stella said, ‘Although maybe I ought to go home; I haven’t got a towel or a toothbrush with me.’

  ‘Don’t worry, sweetie. I’m sure I can find you something,’ he said, flicking off the lights.

  ‘Thank you,’ Stella murmured, sounding genuinely touched.

  Bernie grinned. He couldn’t give a stuff whether she brushed her teeth or not.

  It might be very late, but in his office Danny Coleman was still seated at his desk, caught in a jaundiced arc of lamplight and staring fixedly at the computer screen wondering what the hell was going on.

  He was in two minds over what to do; there were all manner of protocols in place within Stiltskin for a variety of situations, but not this one. In theory Nick Lucas’s cover had been compromised, but how and when and by whom? Should Coleman arrange for a Stiltskin recovery team to go in and pick him up, bring him in? Was he in any immediate danger? Or could the joins be papered over and things left as they were?

  Coleman turned a pen between his fingers, still staring at the screen. At this stage he was reluctant to draw attention to Nick Lucas by renaming and moving him. Some part of him still hoped that Bernie Fielding might turn out to be a secure identity after all. Change always made ripples, and ripples, however small, always showed up on the surface. And changes made too hastily – well there was no telling how big those ripples might get if there was a knee-jerk reaction to the Nick Lucas situation. That was the official line from the guys upstairs.

  Coleman puffed out his cheeks thoughtfully; maybe if Lucas just moved area, he mused, doodling on his phone pad, all the while instinctively knowing tha
t there was no way the answer was ever going to be that simple.

  Something was horribly wrong, something was leaking somewhere. His superiors had suspected it for some time. But how, and where? In his gut Coleman knew that things would only get worse, probably much worse before they got any better. The problem with the whole Nick Lucas thing was that it didn’t fit into any pattern that made sense. Stiltskin had never coughed up a real person before. Coleman ran his fingers back through his thinning hair and looked at Nick’s call as it had been transcribed alongside the details of the new identity that had been set up for him.

  Surely it made more sense for anyone who had infiltrated the system to just expose Nick Lucas and shoot him, rather than put him into a house with a real family. Or perhaps he was meant to be linked to…Coleman glanced down at the notes to check the names…Maggie Morgan, or Bernie Fielding, but why, for God’s sake? He made a mental note to run the pair of them through the computer to see if anything came up. Unless they weren’t after Nick Lucas at all but had bigger plans pinned up on the drawing board. Perhaps someone wanted to compromise the whole relocation procedure and Nick Lucas was involved purely by chance.

  Trouble was that Coleman couldn’t get any kind of handle on how that was possible from this piece of nonsense. He closed his eyes, trying to glimpse the big picture, but any connections totally eluded him. He’d get Ms Crow to take a look at the data trail to see if they could find out what had gone wrong, but from where he was sitting this didn’t feel like a leak, it felt more like a total cock-up. Coleman pulled a nasal spray from his inside pocket, squeezed once, twice, sniffing hard as he did, waiting for the moist chemical hit to clear his sinuses and from there his head. First thing in the morning he’d get Ms Crow on the case, and meanwhile he just hoped that the wheel didn’t come off.

  The cold splintery taste of the nasal spray ran down the back of his throat and flooded his taste buds.

  ‘I reckon you’re addicted to them things, you know, Mr Coleman,’ said the security guard, pushing the door to Coleman’s office open a little wider. ‘They rot your nostrils you know, burn through the septum – that little bit in the middle – you’ll end up with a snout like a pillar-box. Saw it in the paper.’

  ‘That’s cocaine, George; you had too many years on the force, you think everything’s bad for you.’

  The older man smiled. ‘In my experience, if you enjoy it, it most probably is. I was about to lock this floor up for the night –’ There was a question hidden in the statement.

  Coleman nodded and stretched, feeling tired bones grate and rub in his back and shoulders. ‘Right-o, I’m on my way then. I know when I’m not wanted.’

  ‘Me, too,’ said the security man. ‘That’s why I’m out here on the bloody night shift, and not tucked up safe and sound in front of the TV or in me bed. Now I’m retired my missus can’t abide me being under her feet messing the place up.’ He sniffed. ‘Working on something important are you?’ The man spoke casually, his gaze apparently without any real intention drawn towards the neat rows of names and addresses currently displayed on Coleman’s machine.

  Coleman smiled indulgently and then, unhurriedly, leant forward and switched his terminal off before getting stiffly to his feet. ‘No, George, just another bloody glitch in the admin, too many light bulbs and toilet rolls again, you know how it is.’

  The old man laughed. ‘I’ll have to start taking more home, then.’

  Stiffly Coleman got to his feet and pulled on his jacket. The trouble with a leak was that everyone got wet.

  Maggie Morgan couldn’t sleep either. Uneasy now the night had fallen. She had wedged a chair up under the handle of her bedroom door and then thought better of it. What if the man currently tucked up in the back bedroom was waiting until everyone was asleep and then got up and attacked the boys and she couldn’t get to them fast enough? Maybe she should have them in her bed, or maybe she should have gone and slept in theirs.

  ‘Or maybe you should go and get in with him,’ whispered a wicked little voice somewhere in the back of her head. ‘What? What did I say?’ the voice protested when Maggie growled at it. ‘I only meant then at least you would know for certain exactly where he was.’ There was a pause and then the voice added, ‘And what he was doing.’

  Maggie blushed and pulled the duvet up over her head while her brain continued to torment her. ‘He’s good-looking in a nicely rumpled kind of way; and let’s face it, it’s been a long, long time, Maggie. Think about it. How many times have you said if only someone nice would turn up, just drop into your life. He’s a gift. It would be a terrible shame – rude even – to turn him down. He’s like manna from heaven. It’s fate, he was delivered right to your door – into your hall, for God’s sake, what more do you want?’

  Maggie groaned, rolled over and glanced again at the bedside clock with eyes that felt as if they had been back filled with fine sand and wood ash. It was nearly half past two in the morning. What had seemed reasonable two or three hours earlier – Nick Lucas’s heartfelt plea to stay for a couple of days until he could get himself sorted out – now seemed like taking the pen from the devil and signing her soul away.

  It was totally crazy. Madness. Maggie knew absolutely nothing about the man. She had no idea who he was or what he was or where he came from; his story could be a complete fabrication. If only she had thought of those things earlier – like when she had met the other Bernie Fielding – her life might have turned out very differently. Talking of which, why was he using Bernie’s name, of all names? Maybe the voices in his head had told him to do it. What if Nick Lucas was really an axe murderer, what if he had escaped from an asylum or worse? Maggie’s mind, ever helpful, scurried around the dusty corners of her skull trying to come up with something worse, much worse.

  Finally conceding defeat, Maggie sat up. Outside in the garden the wind had steadily begun to rise, bringing with it the promise of a summer storm. The ropes on the swing hummed out the harmonies. Maggie grimaced, resisting the temptation to put her fingers in her ears as a gust whined melodramatically in and out of the chimney pots; trust Mother Nature to cash in on her paranoia.

  In the distance through the windows she saw the first white-hot glow of lightning illuminate the night sky, followed moments later by a drum roll of thunder and then something, somewhere close by, creaked.

  Maggie shuddered and then held her breath. She had been straining so hard to pick out the sounds of Nick Lucas creeping across the landing carrying a carving knife, drooling, his eyes wide and vacant, that she had given herself a terrible headache. And now she really could hear something. There it was again, louder now.

  Cold and nervous and wrapped tight with unspeakable fear and panic, Maggie crept out of bed, tiptoed across the bedroom floor and pressed her ear to the door. There. There it was again, something low and ominous rattling right there on the periphery of her hearing. Was it bare feet creeping across the floorboards? Or the sound of a door creaking murderously on its hinges?

  Maggie’s mind reached out through the darkness, feeling its way around the sound to try and hear more clearly. And then all at once she knew exactly what it was and pulled back in disgust. It was someone snoring. A man, a grown man, snoring contentedly, curled up fast asleep, totally unaware of the storm or her spiralling terror.

  Like water draining out of a bath, the tension trickled out of her shoulders and stomach. Exhausted now and on the edge of tears, Maggie stumbled back to bed and dragged the duvet up over her head. Typical that while she fretted and tossed and turned, the axe murderer down the corridor was sound asleep. It was instincts like that which had got her tangled up with the real Bernie Fielding in the first place. Outside, it began to rain furiously.

  In the hotel near Heathrow, Nimrod was also tucked up in bed. ‘You gonna turn that bleeding TV off soon, then, are yer?’ he growled wearily. ‘Only we ought to make an early start in the morning, I want to miss the worst of the traffic. Makes me very tense getting snarled up in
a jam and you know that I like to be calm. Zen; deep breaths, at one with all things.’

  Turning his palms uppermost Nimrod pressed the thumb and index finger of each hand together to form a yoga-style circle gesture, although he drew the line at actually chanting in front of Cain who tended to laugh and pull faces.

  Cain sniffed. ‘I won’t be long; I like this procelebrity fishing.’

  ‘Well at least turn the bloody sound down then and God help you if you can’t get up in the morning. When that alarm goes off I want you up; bright, sharp and on the ball – got that?’

  Caught in the flickering light from the TV screen, Cain – sipping a piña colada – nodded just as someone from Slade pulled a fish the size of a corgi up over the side of a boat.

  Nimrod groaned, closed his eyes and pulled the pillow over his head. Within minutes he was sound asleep.

  While Robbie Hughes snored peacefully on the Gotcha office sofa Lesley poured over the telephone directories she’d brought up from the in-house library and busied herself making lists from the books and the database she’d pulled up on the computer, as well as from the Internet. Lesley had always been very good at cryptic clues and puzzles and games of logic – so far she had made all sorts of connections to all sorts of names on her list. First thing tomorrow she’d start ringing round to see how many more pieces she could slot into place. She liked puzzles. Maggie Morgan’s name was right up under Bernie’s mum and his first wife.

  Lesley looked over at Robbie. His mouth was open, head thrown back, a little trail of drool glistening on his chin. She smiled indulgently. He wasn’t an easy man to work with but then was anyone of his calibre?

  Some days she saw Robbie Hughes as a natural leader; fiery, quixotic, one of life’s visionaries, while on others he struck her as a grumpy little man with an ego the size of an emerging African nation. She suspected, with a wisdom far beyond her years, that he most probably was a subtle combination of the two and that one side fuelled the other. Whichever it was, working with Robbie had to hold more of a future than answering phone calls from women worried about the brown mould on their pot plants on the family channel. Getting up from the desk, Lesley very carefully pulled a woolly blanket off one of the chairs and covered Robbie up. Couldn’t have him getting cold, now, could she?