Fatal Liaison (28 page)

Perhaps one of Sam’s friends or workmates might recognize the man
whom his sister had been dating. Not that he held out a lot of hope. Earlier
questioning of the people who he knew Sam had been fruitless. Most hadn’t been
aware that she’d joined up with a dating agency, let alone been actively
dating. But, and it was a big but, there might be something in one of the
photos that would trigger a memory.

Megan pushed
through the supermarket turnstile, flinching as it clanged behind her. The
aroma of fresh bread and spice filled the air. After collecting a shopping
basket from the stack, she headed down the first aisle. Her stomach growled.

For days, she’d subsisted on cups of tea and not much else. The
afternoon before when she left Greg’s office, she’d been asleep on her feet.
Keeping her eyes open for the drive home had zapped the last remnants of her
energy. Once home, she’d headed straight for her bed, pausing only long enough
to pull her clothes off, before climbing in naked between the sheets. Within
seconds, she’d been out cold, deep in a dreamless sleep.

Sleeping for eighteen hours straight, she’d awoken ravenous and with
a renewed sense of hope. The empty pit in her stomach was the size of a
watermelon and growing.

First stop: fruit and vegetables. She picked up a small golden mango
and sniffed it, inhaling its distinctive tropical sweetness. She replaced it
and moved on to the crates of oranges and apples. Her body needed sustenance
not indulgence.

The real world had to be faced. She’d almost used up all of her
annual leave entitlements and unless she suddenly came into some money, she’d
have to return to work, and soon. The bills still had to be paid and no matter
what happened, life had to go on. With these thoughts ringing in her head, she
continued with her shopping.

She was just rounding the aisle when she spotted Lawson Green. Her
first impulse was to confront him. How long had she been waiting for this
chance? But instead of charging down the aisle and ramming his trolley, she
pulled back. Peering around the corner, she watched as Lawson, too engrossed in
what he was doing to have noticed her, continued to stack up bottles of water
from the shelf. There was no sign of Pauline Meyer.

The nearness of him frightened her. Megan reached a hand out to
steady herself against the supermarket’s sturdy shelving. Her rubbery legs felt
like they belonged to somebody else, her breathing ragged.

So close but so far.

With the help of a few deep breaths, she managed to slow her
breathing. Feeling a little more in control, she looked down the aisle again
only to see Lawson disappearing around the corner. A fresh wave of panic
flooded her. Whatever happened, she couldn’t afford to lose track of him.

Decision made, she abandoned her half-filled shopping basket and,
keeping her head down, headed straight for the express checkout. If she could
get outside without Lawson spotting her and be in her car waiting for him,
she’d have a better chance of staying on his tail.

The supermarket’s automatic glass doors opened. And even though the
temptation to turn around and see if Lawson was at one of the checkout counters
was intense, she exited without a backward glance. Eye contact of any sort
would wreck any chance she had of trailing him.

Only when she was ensconced in her car, sunglasses shielding her
eyes, did she allow herself the satisfaction of looking back. The day was
overcast and the dark glasses didn’t help, but she felt certain she’d be able
to pick Lawson out of the people leaving the supermarket without any trouble.

For fifteen long minutes, she sat buckled into her seat, staring at
the supermarket’s doors. A frazzled mother trying to cope with a toddler and a
heavily laden wayward trolley exited first. Then there was the young couple,
each lugging green shopping bags. Lawson Green was the last in a straggle of
single shoppers.

Megan’s gaze followed him as he pushed his trolley across the car
park. Not knowing what Lawson drove, she prayed his car wouldn’t be the white
Toyota Camry or something equally as nondescript. She almost whooped for joy
when she saw him stop and open the back of a bright aqua-colored Kia Sportage
four-wheel drive. Not only was the Kia’s color distinctive, but the vehicle’s
profile would make it much easier to tail.

Adjusting the peak of the grungy red cap she had unearthed from
under her seat, she turned the key, letting the car idle while Lawson finished
transferring the bags of shopping from the trolley to the back of his vehicle.
Her heart pounded against the inside of her ribcage, and not for the first
time, she wondered if she really was cut out for all the cloak and dagger
stuff.

Before she had time to give it any more thought, the brightly colored
four-wheel drive backed out of the supermarket car park space and merged with
the traffic. Horns tooted and she received a couple of one-finger salutes as
she bulldozed her way into the traffic. Thankfully, the traffic lights at the
next intersection were in her favor, allowing her to gain on her quarry.

The way Lawson zigzagged through the suburbs it was as if he
suspected he was being followed. Somehow, Megan managed to keep him within her
sights. It was a fine line between being too close and losing him.

She had no idea where they were heading, but factories and
warehouses soon replaced residential developments. Trucks and vans predominated
on the roads. And then suddenly, without indicating, Lawson turned right into
what appeared to be an industrial estate of some sort.

Megan slowed, every nerve on edge, but continued driving past the corner.
A little further down the road, she did a U-turn and pulled over. What was
Lawson doing with groceries in an industrial estate?

For a fleeting moment, she contemplated phoning Greg, but then just
as fleetingly decided against it. Time was of the essence. Taking her foot off
the brake pedal, she edged closer to the street corner. Should she park the car
and continue on foot or risk driving into the industrial estate?

Leaning forward over the steering wheel, she peered through the
windscreen, scanning the landscape for a flash of bright aqua. Nothing. He’d
disappeared down one of the estate’s maze-like roads.

Her heart sunk. What the hell do I do now? she asked herself. When
there was no answer forthcoming, she put the car in gear and took the road where
she’d last sighted the four-wheel drive. It was either that or go home.

She drove slowly, following the road as it meandered its way around
the assorted factory units and warehouses. Fortunately, it was a business day
and her black Nissan Pulsar wasn’t too conspicuous. She’d just rounded a bend
and passed a group of white concrete-block units when she spied Lawson only meters
in front of her. She kept driving.

Pretending she knew what she was doing, she pulled across the road
into the car park of, according to the sign, a lawnmower repair factory. With
her heart hammering, she angled the rear-view mirror to watch what Lawson was
doing.

His was the only vehicle in the warehouse’s front car park. There
were no signs anywhere that Megan could see from her position to tell her what
the stand-alone brick building housed or what it was supposed to be. Fallen
tree branches and sun-bleached rubbish blown by the wind into overgrown, weedy
garden plots suggested the place hadn’t been operational for some time.

Lawson had unloaded his shopping from the back of the Kia. The
shopping bags sat in a heap on the ground, their plastic tops fluttering in the
breeze. He gathered up all the bags in two hands and made his way towards the
building’s large double doors. Every few seconds, he would pause and glance
furtively around him. Then he was gone, out of sight somewhere inside the
warehouse.

Now what? Megan sat staring into the rear-view mirror, gnawing on
her bottom lip as she pondered her next move. Something was definitely going on
in that warehouse and she was going to find out what.

Her phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID, hesitated, then
answered it.

“Greg, hi.”

“You okay? You sound a bit tense.”

She blinked. Two words: that’s all it took? “I know where Lawson Green
is.” In as few a words as possible, Megan described where she was and how she’d
come to be there. She wasn’t able to provide him with an actual street address,
but at least she was able to give him the name and phone number of the
lawnmower repair business where she was parked.

“On my way. Stay in the car.” Greg hung up before she had a chance
to protest.

If he expected her to sit around until he arrived, he didn’t know
her as well as he thought. At least three of the shopping bags Lawson had been
carrying contained bottled water. Why would you buy bottled water if not to
drink? But what if the water was for someone else? Someone else who for
whatever reason couldn’t get to water? Could that someone else be Brenda?

Reaching through the gap between the two front seats, she grabbed
the black vinyl clipboard folder she sometimes used when she visited clients
onsite. She then rummaged in her handbag for a pen.

A quick glance in the rear-view mirror confirmed that the
combination of the red baseball cap pulled low over her eyes and the large
sunglasses made her look like a moron. All she needed to complete the image was
a plastic bulbous nose and fake moustache.

She opened the car door and without stopping to think about what she
was doing, jumped out. Endeavoring to appear as businesslike as possible, she
walked out towards the road, following the concrete curb to the next property.
She stopped in front of the vacant lot, made a few nonsensical marks on the
clipboard page, looked up as if she was sizing up the bare plot of land, and
then scrawled a few more squiggles on the page.

At that stage, she still had her back to the warehouse building
Lawson had entered. Feeling less than brave, she took a deep breath and turned,
strolling as nonchalantly as possible across the road to a clone of the complex
of white concrete-block units she’d passed earlier. She repeated the exercise
of surveying the property, pretending to take notes.

But she couldn’t loiter for too long. Someone was bound to grow
curious. Her breathing became tighter and shallower with each step closer to
the neighboring brick warehouse. She stopped breathing altogether when Lawson
suddenly emerged through one of the double doors. With no more than a cursory
glance in her direction, he hurriedly locked the doors behind him, strode to
his car, got in and drove off. He seemed distracted, agitated and indifferent
to her presence. Quite a contrast to his earlier demeanor.

For a time, Megan could do nothing but stand shaking on the curb,
eyes closed with the clipboard clutched to her chest, waiting for the surge of
adrenaline to dissipate. Talk about a close shave.

More than ever, she was determined to find out what those brick
walls housed. Before she approached the double doors where Lawson had exited,
she scanned the road and nearby properties to check the coast was clear. The
solid wooden doors were large, but up close, they appeared positively massive.
A large rusted metal bar pinned across both doors was secured by a shiny new
heavy-duty padlock.

Knowing there was no way she could break in through the front doors,
she explored her other options. First, she tried the loading bay’s roller door.
It rattled, but moved less than a centimeter when she tried raising it. Walking
around the warehouse’s perimeter, the only windows she saw were small and high
up. The metal-clad back door was double-bolted and padlocked.

What would a computer systems programmer be doing leasing, owning or
otherwise a commercial warehouse? Inside the building was something Lawson evidently
wanted kept secure. Megan was becoming increasingly desperate to find out what
that something was. She was also terrified Lawson would return before she could
check it out.

She was busy yanking on one of the back door’s padlocks in the slim
hope it would give, when the sound of footsteps startled her. She almost had a
heart attack on the spot, but recovered enough to throw herself into the shrubs
bounding the back wall. Shaking and huddled close to the ground under the
scratchy vegetation, she didn’t even give a thought to the spiders and other
creepy-crawlies that might be lurking there.

Within seconds of
Megan’s phone call, Greg had looked up the address for Saul’s Lawnmower
Maintenance, called Neville Crooke to alert him to what was happening and
grabbed his car keys.

He strode out the door, continuing to talk to Neville as well as
trying to maneuver his free arm into his jacket sleeve.

“Forget the heroics,” the private investigator said. “Under no
circumstances, approach Green. Keep your distance from him and the warehouse
until the police arrive. Both you and your lady friend.”

Personally, Greg saw a lot of wisdom in that. His qualms, however,
lay with what Megan might or might not do. Driving as fast as he could without
risking being pulled over for speeding, he followed the BMW’s onboard
navigator’s directions, opting for the slightly longer distance but more
straightforward route.