Long Time Lost (26 page)

Miller braced a hand against the scaffold. His throat felt swollen, his Adam’s apple crushed. His eye was already starting to puff up, restricting his vision. He probed at it with his finger. His skin felt tight and rubbery, and there was a deep ache in the back of his head from where Wade had clubbed him. A dull ringing in his ears.

He looked at Wade and had a sudden urge to kick him hard in the ribs. But something stopped him. Not decency, exactly. It was more a fear that once he started he might not be able to stop.

Hanson had said that the tranquiliser would knock a racehorse cold for a minimum of two hours. Miller guessed it would be at least double that, and very possibly longer, before Wade came round.

Pushing off from the scaffold, he weaved towards the nearest ladder and laboured down many more until he could see the outline of Darren’s body pushing against the tarpaulin halfway between two levels of decking. He had no way of getting to him. He had no knife. But he had the vague beginnings of an idea, and so he made his way down the rest of the ladders to the ground, where he grabbed for the shovel that was leaning against the cement mixer and started the long climb back up.

He was out of breath and sweating profusely by the time he returned to the deck that was in line with Darren’s lower legs and his feet but he didn’t pause, lifting the shovel up by his shoulder, jabbing it forwards, the blade barely sharp enough for Miller to puncture the tarp and work a new hole.

Darren was still conscious, just, but he was gripped by terror, moaning and trembling, and Miller had to poke his head and shoulders out and shout several times before he processed his instructions and began to flail his head and upper body, building momentum, generating enough swing so that Miller could grab for his trouser leg and haul him towards him, bracing his heels against the scaffold and heaving him through the split tarpaulin on to the deck.

Darren flipped on his side, digging his head into the splintered planking, fighting his restraints. Miller dug a nail under the tape on his mouth, ripping it away, pinpricks of blood erupting across his skin.

‘Easy,’ Miller told him. ‘Take a moment. Catch your breath.’

He squatted and set about stretching the duct tape coiled around Darren’s wrists, nicking at it with the shovel blade, freeing Darren’s hands.

Darren cried out, snatching his arms in front of him, his face wracked with pain as the blood began to flow.

‘Where is he?’ he asked, through the blockage in his nose.

‘Don’t worry about that now.’

‘He’ll kill us both. He’s a psychopath.’

Miller shook his head.

‘Just breathe.’ He shuffled down to Darren’s ankles. Beneath the chains, his jeans were wet and stiff with blood. ‘This is going to hurt.’

It hurt plenty. The chains had bitten deep into Darren’s lower legs. There were friction burns around his shins. One gash in his left calf was especially bad, blood gushing between Miller’s fingers as he compressed the wound.

‘Tell me about Agata. Do you trust her?’

Tears were springing from Darren’s eyes. His lips were peeled back, his face contorted with pain.

‘Darren, do you trust her?’

Finally he nodded.

‘Is she a light sleeper?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because we need to wake her. She has to come take a look at your legs.’

Agata slipped in through the door at the back of the veterinary surgery, an olive raincoat belted around her waist, a leather medical bag at her side. Her blonde hair was mussed from her pillow, dampened down by the misty drizzle outside. Her face was pale and sleep-stung, lips puckered as she took in the scene.

First there was Darren, laid back on the metal treatment table in the middle of the room. He was propped on his elbows, his bare legs covered in a patchwork of sterile pads, his blood-soaked socks and jeans dumped on the floor. And then there was Miller, sitting on the counter with his legs dangling freely, one eye swollen shut, dabbing at the cuts on his hand and arm with pads of cotton wool dipped in a bowl of antiseptic.

Agata set her bag on the counter among the litter of vials Miller had pulled from the cupboards.

‘You are not Darren’s friend,’ she told him. ‘A friend would take him to the hospital.’

‘That’s not an option.’ Miller squeezed the cotton wool he was holding over the bowl. Scarlet threads drained down, blooming in the oily liquid.

Agata tutted and grabbed for his wrists, inspecting his hand.

‘You’re lucky you don’t need stitches.’

She glanced at his eye, then released him and approached Darren’s legs, pausing a moment before peeling away a corner of a bloody, puss-stained pad.

‘Who did this to you?’

‘Better you don’t know,’ Miller told her.

‘And if I help?’

‘We’ll talk about that afterwards.’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘You talk now.’

With his good eye, he could see the muscles bunch in her jaw as she reached a finger towards the back of Darren’s hand, stroking it lightly, looking up at him, seeing the wretched truth on his face.

‘I’m sorry,’ he croaked.

‘You’ll have to leave the city,’ Miller told her. ‘At least for a few weeks. Possibly longer. The men looking for Darren could come for you. He can never come back.’

‘So this is how it is.’

But it wasn’t all of it. Not by a long way. Miller had been preoccupied with thinking about what Wade might try when he came round from the sedative, but there was Renner to consider, too. Kate had got Pete and Emily away from him in Arles, but Renner could stick around and try to work some leads. Perhaps he’d threaten Pete and Emily’s friends or find a way to search their home before the police got to it. Unlikely, but possible. And Wade would attempt something similar in Prague. He’d want to know for sure if there was anything that might lead them to Anna Brooks.

Miller didn’t think there could be. He’d always been uniquely careful with his very first client. He was cautious by nature but he’d been extra cautious where she was concerned. It was why he hadn’t stored any details about her online. It was also why he hadn’t needed to. She was the beginning of it all for Miller. He knew everything connected to her safety and security by heart.

Agata touched Darren’s face. ‘This is what you would not tell me.’

‘Some of it.’

‘And the rest?’

‘We don’t have much time,’ Miller pressed.

‘The rest?’

There was a dignity to her that shamed Miller for what he was asking of her, for what he was making Darren ask of her, too.

‘We’ll talk,’ Darren muttered. ‘I promise. After we get away from here.’

And for once, though he was aware of the possible repercussions of that decision, of the unseen risks and future pitfalls, Miller didn’t feel any urge to intervene.

Later, he stood in the damp chill of the alley and watched the tail lights of Agata’s car until they were swallowed up by the rain and the murk, and then he turned and walked away from the surgery, eager to leave Malá Strana and the memories that had ambushed him here.

The wounds to his hand and arm had been swabbed and dressed, wrapped carefully in cotton bandages that smelled of the astringent lotion Agata had applied to his skin. The bruising to his eye was so severe that he could barely see out of it.

Agata had cleaned and stitched Darren’s wounds, tearing open more sterile patches and dressings, leaving the wax paper wrappers scattered across the floor. There were yellowing contusions across his ribs and abdomen and abrasive marks around his wrists. His lips were cracked and bloodied, his mouth ringed by a pink crescent-shaped discolouration from the duct-tape gag.

‘I didn’t tell him much,’ Darren had said, as Miller had helped him off the treatment table, Darren’s arm draped around his neck, his left leg bent at the knee, too painful to set down. ‘You didn’t ask, but I wanted you to know. I told him a little about you. About what you’d done for me. That’s all.’

‘Did he ask you about someone called Anna?’

Darren nodded. ‘But I couldn’t tell him anything. I kept saying I didn’t know about anyone else.’

‘Did he believe you?’

‘I think so. But I don’t think it mattered all that much. I’m not even sure he was really listening. I think he just enjoyed hurting me.’

Together, they’d made their way out to Agata’s dated Nissan and Miller had opened the passenger door, easing Darren inside, his face straining beneath the glow of the courtesy light. Agata had clambered into the driver’s seat, fingers tapping the steering wheel restlessly as Miller squeezed Darren’s shoulder and told him to take care, to be cautious, to heal up and wait for him to get in touch.

Back on Karmelitská, alone once more, Miller paused and stared at the entrance to the three-star hotel across the street, at the revolving doors and the alternative worlds they might once have led to, then he raised an arm and flagged down a cab, the driver contemplating his injuries for a prolonged moment before finally beckoning him in, leaving him to stare out the window in silence as the sad fairy-tale city glided by.

At the train station, Miller hobbled through the hushed late-night calm to a bank of public payphones, where he snatched up a handset and looked out through the scratched bubble of Perspex at a trio of backpackers sprawled on the floor, listening to a platform announcement in Czech, then English, about a sleeper train that was due to depart for Vienna.

‘Kate,’ he whispered, when his call was connected, and then he had to pause and gather himself, clinging on to the metal cradle, mashing his head against the Perspex dome. ‘Darren’s OK. I got him out. But I’m calling because there’s someone I’d like you to meet. Somewhere I need you to come. Will you do it?’

‘Come where?’

He swallowed against the rising lump in his throat – a lump he wasn’t sure would ever go away – until finally he said it, letting her all the way in.

‘Switzerland, Kate. It’s Switzerland. Will you meet me there?’

Lake Brienz was long and vast, ringed by mountains, surrounded by trees. Miller propped his forearms on a low stone wall and squinted across the windswept waters. He’d heard talk that the lake was as deep as the mountains were high. Glancing up at the jagged tips of the most distant glaciers – ice white against massed banks of low grey cloud – the notion seemed inconceivable to him. But then, many things had appeared almost impossible to Miller just lately. Like, for instance, how to begin to tell Kate what he needed to say.

He heard footsteps on gravel and turned to find her coming towards him, her movements hesitant and unbalanced, her face white as bone beneath whipped tendrils of red hair. She had on a hooded top over faded jeans. Her arms were folded tightly, her shoulders hunched.

‘You made it.’

She stopped many metres away and considered him without speaking. She looked cold and worn out and he felt a sudden need to go to her, to hold her, but something in her demeanour, in the awkward way she was standing there, watching him, made him hold back.

‘Where are the others?’

‘Nearby.’ Her voice was cracked and wavering. ‘Emily needed to sleep. They’re checking in to a hotel. I thought we should talk alone.’

Miller nodded. It was what he had wanted, too.

‘What happened to your face?’

He shrugged, and showed her his bandaged hand also. ‘Aaron Wade happened to it.’

‘Looks painful.’

‘I think that was the general idea.’

He half smiled and the sliver of sight in his bad eye blurred and merged. Behind him, yellow storm lights blinked from the villages on the far shores. He could sense a tightening of the air, a friction all around him, and the particular smell he associated with the coming of thunder and lightning – of woodsmoke and metal and match strikes.

He was wearing a flannel shirt and a vest under a corduroy hunting jacket but still he felt chilled.

Kate said, ‘It’s beautiful here.’

Miller was glad that she was seeing Brienz when the weather was raw and fierce, when the light faded unnaturally fast with the coming of a rainstorm and the mountains pressed in, making the tangle of twee wooden chalets clustered around them seem somehow vital and primitive.

‘I missed you,’ he told her.

She didn’t respond, and Miller could almost have believed that he hadn’t spoken at all. For a big man, he felt suddenly small.

‘I’ve been waiting here thinking of what to say to you. Of how to start.’

Kate took a half-step closer.

‘There are so many things to talk about. Rome, for one.’

She raised a hand. ‘You said there was somebody you wanted me to meet.’

‘I’m getting to that.’

‘I want to hear it, Miller. I don’t want any more secrets between us.’

There was a strained, robotic quality to her speech, almost as if she was repeating lines she’d rehearsed too many times. Miller sensed some kind of disconnect between her eyes and mouth. Did she regret sleeping with him? Was that what he was seeing in her expression? How else to explain the strange way she was holding herself, or the distance she was keeping between them?

‘Is she here?’

‘Who?’

‘Anna. That’s who you want me to meet, isn’t it?’

There were several answers to that question, but none that were simple.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And no.’

‘Enough riddles.’ She was crying now, shaking her head, the line of dark stitches on her brow contrasting with her bloodless face. ‘Tell me the truth.’

‘The truth.’ He held her gaze. ‘The truth is there is somebody here I want you to meet. But it’s not Anna.’

‘Who then?’

Miller took a deep breath and opened his mouth to begin.

‘We need to talk.’

DS Lloyd barged past Fiona Grainger and through the front door of her house, heading for the kitchen.

‘Hey!’ Fiona called after her. ‘You can’t just come in here like this.’

‘Tell me about the coroner’s report into Melanie’s death. Tell me why you requested access to the file.’

Fiona rushed to catch up with Lloyd. Her hair was a mess and her clothes were rumpled. An empty bottle of red wine was open on the counter, next to a stained wine glass.

Over by the back door, down on the floor, Lloyd could see a suitcase with a passport resting on top. Fiona caught her looking and dived towards it but Lloyd got there first. She snatched the passport up, flipping it open.

Fiona’s image was in the back but the name printed on the document was not her own.

‘What is this?’ Lloyd asked. ‘What’s going on?’

But Fiona didn’t respond. She was too busy trying to get the passport back.

‘Nick’s behind this, isn’t he?’ Lloyd held her away, lifting the passport beyond her reach. ‘Nick’s behind all of it. He’s been in touch with you all along. He asked you to get access to that file.’

Fiona stretched until the frustration became too much for her and she stepped back, glaring.

‘You might as well tell me now. I can’t let you leave. You understand that, don’t you?’

Fiona didn’t say anything.

‘Where are the records from the coroner’s file? Why did you take them?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Then who did?’

She shook her head, breathing hard.

‘I’m not talking to you about this. I can’t. Just go. Please.’

‘I can arrest you. Obstruction of justice.’

‘Then do it.’ Fiona looked at her with defiance in her eyes. ‘Do it and end this for me. The hope has been killing me, anyway.’

‘Hope for what? Fiona? Hope for what?’

But before she could reply, Lloyd’s mobile began to ring, the bright electronic tune sounding crass and misplaced in the charged silence of the room.

Lloyd fixed a warning look on her face as she answered the call.

 ‘DS Lloyd? It’s Julia Summerhayes. I have some news for you, though I’m afraid I’m not sure what to make of it just yet.’

Lloyd maintained watchful eye contact with Fiona.

‘Go on.’

‘My assistant managed to track down the missing documents from the Melanie Adams file. Not directly. The records have been wiped from our master system entirely. IT couldn’t retrieve them at all. But my assistant thought to check email correspondence. The electronic file was attached as a PDF to an email my predecessor sent to himself. He sent it to his private email address.’

‘And that’s unusual?’

‘It’s not something that has ever been allowed. I took a quick look at the records before calling you.’

‘And?’

‘At first glance everything seemed to be in order.’

‘But at second glance?’

‘I noticed something. Something I can’t explain. A mix-up of some kind.’

‘Yes?’

‘The path lab ran a tox screen on Melanie. The results don’t make any logical sense. There were traces of drugs in her system that shouldn’t have been there.’

Lloyd’s heart was banging in her chest. Fiona was studying her intently, looking panicked, almost as if she could hear the coroner’s words for herself.

‘What drugs?’

But Lloyd knew. She knew before the coroner said it.

‘One was perampanel. The other was—’

‘Oxcarbazepine. Used to treat epilepsy. And not a common combination.’

‘How on earth did you know that?’

‘Because you just confirmed something I really didn’t want to believe.’

Lloyd thanked her and ended the call. She pocketed her phone and allowed her hand to linger by her hip. She was wearing one of her formless grey trouser suits and clipped to her waist was a can of CS spray. She pushed back the tails of her suit jacket and unclipped the leather strap holding the spray in place.

‘Melanie didn’t die in that fire,’ Lloyd said. ‘She wasn’t shot and killed. Your sister was. I believe that and I’m sorry for it. But Melanie got away, somehow. The girl who perished was Anna Brooks.’

Lloyd felt an itch in her fingers, the desire to take out the spray and aim it. But she held her nerve. Held on.

‘You left a link to the truth, Fiona. You didn’t shred every copy of the records. Nick faked his daughter’s death, using the body of a teen runaway. I guess his friends and contacts at the path labs and the coroner’s office helped him to get away with it. I bet if I look I’ll find that he worked with them on plenty of cases. Or maybe he bribed them. Doesn’t matter, either way. The part I’d really like to know is when did
you
know, Fiona? Was it before you cried in my arms, here in this room, or was it afterwards? Was it all just an act?’

Fiona stumbled backwards, grasping for the backrest of a kitchen chair.

‘Tell me the truth right now or so help me I’ll call Manchester CID and you can explain it all to them under caution. You can start right from the beginning. You can incriminate yourself a hundred different ways.’

Fiona turned her head slowly and stared at the suitcase down on the floor.

‘Tell me now. I’ll help you if I can. I
want
to be able to help you.’

‘It was that night,’ she said quietly. ‘The night of the fire.’

She looked off towards the kitchen window, staring blindly out at the straggly woods and the void in space and time where her sister’s house had once stood.

‘I heard the shots. A scream. My sister’s voice. Then I saw the flames and I knew. I knew they’d been taken from me.

‘I went out into the garden and I stood there, looking. And then there she was. A miracle. Melanie, running towards me, covered in soot and grime. And Nick, just behind. A man had come into their house. Melanie had heard him shoot Sarah. She’d heard her scream. Then he’d rushed upstairs and shot Anna, in the darkness on the landing outside Mel’s bedroom. They looked similar, you know, Melanie and Anna. Both had brown hair, both sixteen. The killer made a mistake. He didn’t search the house for anyone else. Melanie hid in the bathroom. Then the fire started. The flames became too much. So she climbed out of a window and there was Nick, below her, yelling at her to jump, leading her off through the woods to me.’

‘Why was Anna even there?’

Fiona blinked, as though coming round from a daze.

‘She visited sometimes to hang out with Melanie. To watch movies. To sleep over. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Sarah wasn’t supposed to allow it. But sometimes she turned a blind eye.’

‘And Nick?’

‘He reached the house too late. There was nothing he could do. The place was an inferno by then. The killer had used something to speed the fire. Nick tried to get inside the house and he couldn’t. He saw Sarah dead on the floor, the flames taking her. Then he looked up and saw Melanie. Alive.’

The fire inspector’s report into the blaze had identified the accelerant as lighter fuel. Lloyd had wasted countless hours trying to find a local shop that might have sold some to Nick in the build-up to that night.

‘Nick made us come in here and he started telling us what we needed to do. He saw it all right away – before the police and the fire service and the ambulance showed up – and he swore me to secrecy. That sickened me. I hated him for it. He was trying to protect Melanie. He was scared for her. I can see that now. But back then I was angry. With him, and with myself. I should have stopped him. I should have said no to what he had in mind.’

‘Telling the world that Melanie was the dead girl.’

‘It was the fire. The fire made it all possible. He said it would . . . conceal what needed to be concealed.’

‘And the rest?’

‘He had friends, like you said. Someone at the hospital. The coroner. They’d helped Nick with hiding people before. Officially. This time, they agreed to hide Melanie for him.’

‘Because Anna was disposable. Because she was just a runaway. You people.’ Lloyd did nothing to temper the revulsion she was feeling. ‘How do you think Sarah would have felt about that? Some legacy.’

Fiona shook her head, bewildered, unable to confront it.

‘I visited Anna’s parents just yesterday,’ Lloyd continued. ‘Good people. They still live for the day they’ll see their daughter again. They still hope. And now I’m going to have to end that for them. I’m going to have to tell them Anna died four years ago. That her remains were cremated. That they’ll never get to say goodbye.’

Fiona clutched at her chest, tugging on her blouse.

‘Don’t you think I hate myself for it? Hate what was done?’

‘I’m not sure that matters, Fiona. I don’t think that counts for anything right now.’

‘I hated Nick for it. I hated being a part of it.
That’s
why I was so angry with him. Why I said such wicked things to you. I kept thinking about the fire. About those flames. How he turned them to his advantage so quickly.’

She shuddered, and her voice became small and hollow.

‘Part of me wanted you to find the truth. Part of me dreaded it. That’s why I requested the records.’

‘You could have given them to me, shown them to me.’

‘No, I couldn’t, because there was nothing to show. The coroner, McGuintyre, he came here, to my house. He told me there were no records any more. They were already gone. He’d dealt with it. There was nothing to worry about.’

Lloyd held up the counterfeit passport in front of Fiona’s face. She’d curled it in her hand, bending it into a tube.

‘So where are you going, Fiona? Where are you running to?’

‘It doesn’t matter any more. None of it does.’

‘Where’s Nick? Where’s Melanie?’

‘I don’t know.’

But she did know. She had to. Lloyd shook her head, disgusted, and looked about the room, trying to calm her rage, to think, to see.

And then, quite suddenly, she did.

She moved towards the fridge, extending her hand, ripping the little magnetised frame free and tearing off the backing, removing the pretty Alpine scene.

Fiona had lied about that, too. The image hadn’t come free with a magazine. It was a postcard.

Lloyd flipped it over. There was no message on the back. It was blank aside from Fiona’s address and a stamp and a postmark. The stamp was Swiss. The postmark was dated nine months ago. A line of printed text at the bottom of the card told Lloyd that the image was of a place called Brienzersee, a lake in central Switzerland.