Long Time Lost (6 page)

Kate lay in bed, thinking. The last time she’d fallen asleep in a darkened room a man had come to kill her. He’d gotten so close that she’d felt his breath on her face.

And now this.

A new room in a new place. A new look and a new identity. New people watching over her.

Nothing Miller and his team could offer her was legal. She’d have nobody to turn to if things went wrong.

Kate had never been a risk-taker. She’d always been painfully sensible, almost obsessed with being in control, a trait which had given her the discipline to excel as an athlete. She supposed she had her adoptive parents to thank for that. Her upbringing had been loving but strict. She’d been taught to believe in order and justice above all else. It was one reason, among many others, why she’d ultimately become a lawyer.

And yet she’d killed a man. She was in hiding.

So who was she now?

The question was terrifying. So much had changed in such a short space of time that it seemed inconceivable that anything could ever be the same again. Would she recognise herself tomorrow? Or the day after that?

She threw back her bedcovers and crept over to the door of her room. There was no noise on the other side.

She eased it open.

Miller was slouched on the sofa in the light of a fringed standing lamp, looking closely at a slip of paper, rubbing his thumb over the surface.

Was this a good man? Was he someone she could believe in?

He looked up sharply, as if somehow he’d heard her thoughts, and Kate glimpsed a flicker of hurt in his eyes, realising too late that she’d trespassed on something private.

She stepped back to push the door closed but Miller shook his head and beckoned her towards him.

Kate glanced over her shoulder at her bed, at the fears and the loneliness she might have endured, then bit down on the inside of her cheek and came forward in her T-shirt and panties, cringing at how it must look.

‘Can’t sleep?’ he asked. ‘It gets easier over time.’

‘Does it? Has it for you?’

He smiled, caught in the lie. ‘I keep hoping. Here.’ He patted the sofa.

She positioned herself at the opposite end of the couch, clutching a patterned cushion in front of her waist. She felt very aware of how close Miller was to her; of the space he was occupying, of the shape and size of his body.

‘What do you have there?’ she asked him.

Miller pursed his lips, then shrugged and rocked his head and passed the sheet of paper across to her. The stock was thin, the paper creased and wrinkled from years of handling. The edges were dinged and rounded and dirtied.

‘My daughter, Melanie, drew that for me when she was eight years old.’

‘I’d never have taken you for a horse rider.’

‘I’m not. Maybe she knew something I didn’t.’

The drawing was in faded crayon. In the foreground, Kate could see a blue man in a cowboy hat sitting on a brown horse. The horse was rearing up in the air and the man was waving to a woman and a young girl standing in front of a storybook house. The girl had brown curls and pink dungarees. She was holding hands with a woman in a green dress with long brown hair. Everyone was smiling, even the horse. The figures were labelled ‘Daddy’, ‘Mummy’, ‘Me’.

‘Nice hat.’

Kate handed the drawing back. The paper was so fragile she was afraid it might tear.

Families were fragile, too. She’d known that since she was a kid but she was sorry that Miller shared her heartache.

She wondered how he could bear it – to have had his family taken from him in such harrowing circumstances. She remembered the story being in the papers at the time. His wife and daughter had been shot dead and their home set on fire. There was speculation that the Lane family were involved, but no arrests had followed.

Until now, she’d assumed it was a tragedy that had hardened and transformed Miller, setting him on a mission to save people like her. But perhaps that interpretation was too simplistic. Maybe everything he was doing was just a distraction from his anguish. Perhaps he hadn’t healed at all.

Was it harder to have a family that you loved and cherished torn away from you, or, like her, to have never known your real family at all?

‘I’ve carried this drawing with me ever since the day Mel gave it to me. Thirteen years ago.’ Miller gave her a sideways look. ‘If I ask you a question, will you answer me truthfully?’

‘Depends on the question.’

‘Tell me what you think – did she draw me riding away or coming home?’

Kate gazed down at the drawing, the paper shaking almost imperceptibly in Miller’s hands. She had a sense of the weight of emotion that lay behind his asking and the responsibility her answer bore.

‘You don’t know? What did she say when she gave it to you?’

‘She didn’t. I was working so hard back then that I was afraid to ask.’

‘Coming home,’ Kate said, with confidence.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘She was your little girl. Why would she draw you going away?’

Miller tilted the sketch, as if considering it from a new angle. He hummed to himself, unconvinced. Then he shifted around on the sofa and removed his wallet from his jeans and tucked the drawing carefully away.

‘Do you miss being Nick Adams?’

‘Every day. I miss everything about the life I had back then. But that’s gone now. Lane took it all from me.’

‘And am I to be your revenge?’

‘No. You were a pattern repeating itself. I wanted to break the pattern. That’s all.’

She plucked at the cushion. She wasn’t sure she could believe him. He’d told her that he’d lost his wife and daughter to Connor Lane and now here she was, a weapon in his possession. He’d want more than simply to protect her, wouldn’t he? He’d want to hurt Lane, too.

‘Listen, you haven’t told me how much this is going to cost. I’m guessing your services aren’t cheap. And Hanson has access to my bank accounts. He’ll have seen—’

‘He has seen. We all have. But that’s not why we’re helping you, Kate.’

She was silent for a moment, turning over his words, sifting through them for a deeper meaning.

‘So how does it work? You can’t possibly do all this for free.’

‘We have a benefactor.’

‘Really? Who? Are they part of the programme?’

‘No.’

‘Then why the interest?’

‘Reasons. This is day one for you, Kate. Trust me, you’ll learn more when it’s safe.’

He yawned and stretched, reaching above his head towards the switch on the lamp.

‘What do you say we turn this light off and sit here pretending either one of us might sleep?’

Darkness.

Miller rearranged himself against the cushions and Kate heard the clump of his shoes being propped on the low coffee table.

She sat quietly beside him, tensed, unmoving, thinking of things lost and never found, waiting for morning to come.

DS Jennifer Lloyd entered the incident room shortly after 7 a.m. with a take-out cup of hot tea with lemon, no milk. She’d planned to get started on her day before the rest of the unit arrived but two of her colleagues had beaten her to it. Detective Sergeants John Young and Nadine Foster were already seated in front of adjoining computer terminals with take-out cups of their own.

Lloyd wished them good morning, trying to mask her disappointment.

Young grunted. Foster nodded. Neither looked up from their screens.

‘Anything new?’

‘See for yourself.’

Lloyd carried her tea over to the whiteboards. There was additional information on the middle and left-hand boards. Most of the fresh data was about the set-up on the Isle of Man, but there were also several photographs of the house where Kate Sutherland had been living and the dead man had been found.

‘What about witnesses?’

There was no reply.

‘Hello? Witnesses?’

‘One neighbour,’ Foster mumbled. ‘If you can call him that. His bungalow is almost half a mile away but he thinks he might have heard a shot.’

Foster was a couple of years younger than Lloyd, a few inches taller, with fine blonde hair and endless legs. She had a varied selection of stylish outfits and a taste for fashionable handbags and jewellery. She was well liked and respected by her peers, more likely to have a Kate Sutherland type of impact on her male co-workers than Lloyd ever would. She was going places, no doubt about it.

‘Time?’

‘Around 1 a.m.’

‘That could fit with time of death.’

‘
If
the local coroner’s initial assessment holds. We’re still waiting for her full report.’

Lloyd took a sip from her tea, sneaking a glance at the board on the right. It remained empty aside from the message she’d scrawled in the centre.

‘Pretty embarrassing for you.’

Lloyd turned to find Young smirking at her. His hair was slicked to one side with wet-look gel and he was wearing a dark grey tie over a shirt the same colour. He looked like he should be selling mobile phones in a high-street shop.

Young was the only member of the team Lloyd had history with. Bad history, inevitably.

‘So dramatic,’ he continued. ‘But so embarrassing.’

‘I stand by it.’

‘That’s a shock. You’re full of terrible suggestions.’ He pushed up from his desk, grabbing a cigarette packet and waggling it at Foster. ‘You coming?’

‘Not right now.’

‘Suit yourself.’ He sniffed. ‘I could use some clean air.’

Lloyd let him go, waiting until his footsteps had faded along the corridor before toasting Foster with her cup. ‘Not my biggest fan.’

‘Oh, he
really
hates you.’ Foster paused, fingers hovering above her keyboard. ‘Care to explain why?’

‘I’m pretty sure he’s already told you. And the rest of the team, for that matter.’

‘Maybe I want to hear your side of it.’

‘An open mind? Really?’

‘So make the most of it. Just know that I probably won’t agree with anything you have to say.’

Kate woke to find herself curled under a blanket, alone. She levered herself up on her elbow and peered at the note that had been left on the coffee table.

Throwing back the blanket, she stumbled through to the bathroom and took a fast shower. The cubicle was cramped and mouldy, the water came out in a frothing dribble, but it was hot and there was complimentary soap in a chalk-paper wrapper and a small tube of shampoo. She washed her hair, so short now that it took barely any time to lather and rinse, and then she stepped out and dried herself with a thin, crusty towel, dressing in fresh underwear and yesterday’s new clothes.

Hanson and Becca were waiting for her across the hall. Kate helped herself to a breakfast roll and a mug of black coffee, then perched on one of the kitchen stools and watched Hanson approach.

His hair was matted and flattened down, his polo shirt creased. He’d propped his spectacles up on top of his head and his eyes were puffy, pupils blown.

He smiled blearily as he laid her new banking cards, driver’s licence and passport on the counter in front of her like he was spreading a deck of playing cards. He added an embossed card containing a National Insurance number as well as a birth certificate. Everything was in the name Kate Elizabeth Ryan.

‘Disappearance 101. Consider this your starter pack.’

‘What about money?’

‘I’ve placed a small amount of funds in a current account for you. Your own cash is shuttling between banks and jurisdictions. Once it’s stable, I’ll send you more details.’

Becca leaned a hip against the kitchen counter. She was freshly made up and dressed in a scooped pink blouse and Capri pants, her hair kinking out in lush brown coils.

‘How are you feeling, honey?’

‘Groggy.’

She winked. ‘And how was last night?’

Kate got what she was really asking but she wasn’t about to play the game. She tore off a chunk of breakfast roll and popped it in her mouth.

‘I slept OK.’

‘Uh-huh. Well, once you’re done eating, I’ve picked out some contact lenses for you to try. Brown tint. Right now, your eyes are kind of a pow. We have to dial them down a couple of notches.’

Kate felt the breakfast roll bulge in her throat. She washed it back with coffee, wondering if there was going to be anything of her left before the day was through.

A door swung back at the far side of the room and Miller stepped out of the bathroom. He had on a blue shirt with white stripes over faded blue jeans. There was a towel coiled round his neck, his hair was damp and his head was tilted to one side as he patted his ear dry.

Kate found herself wondering what he’d look like clean-shaven, with his hair clipped short, dressed in a fitted suit. Then she was struck by the realisation that perhaps he used to groom himself that way. He’d told her that he was in hiding, too, so it stood to reason that he’d need his own disguise. Maybe the mountain-man aesthetic was something Becca was responsible for.

‘Hey, you’re up.’

‘Mm-hmm.’ Kate looked down into her coffee. She could feel a burn in her cheeks.

‘Hanson, do you have the information I asked for?’

‘Hey, Hanson,’ Hanson said, in a pretty good imitation of Miller’s gruff baritone. ‘
Great
job on Kate’s new ID. I know you haven’t slept, and I’m being totally unreasonable, but why don’t you show me what else you have?’

He circled behind his tables of computers and tapped a key to wake a desktop, then swivelled the monitor for them all to see. Displayed onscreen was a washed-out photograph of the man Kate had shot. She could tell by the gory hole in the man’s throat and the black balaclava rolled up on his forehead.

She set her breakfast to one side.

‘If I’d had a little longer, I’d have more to go on. But this is definitely our guy.’

Hanson hit another button and a fresh image appeared in a new window. He lined the photographs up next to one another. The second image was a side profile of the same man, showing him in a suit and tie, opening the rear door of a dark saloon car in the middle of a city street. It was fuzzy and looked like it had been cropped from surveillance-camera footage.

‘Ooh, he’s cute,’ Becca said, and when everyone turned to her, she added, ‘What? I’m talking about the
before
image, obviously.’

‘Keep going,’ Miller told Hanson, ‘before she says something distasteful.’

‘His name is Ivan Pavlenko. Russian KGB. An active field agent with multiple kills against his name.’

Kate felt herself teeter on her stool.

‘Nah, just messing with you, Kate.’ Hanson grinned at her stupidly. ‘His real name was Duncan North, an ex-squaddie from Peterborough. Low-level scumbag.’

‘That’s supposed to be funny?’

‘North has served time for GBH. This shot was taken from outside Connor Lane’s central Manchester HQ. North was working a year or two back as a bodyguard for one of Lane’s business associates. Seems he branched out into contract killing. Not very successfully.’

‘Did he have any family?’

‘Survived by a mother and an older brother. No wife. No kids.’

It made Kate feel a little better to hear it. She’d been worrying about that. But still, a mother without a son. A man without a brother. And she was responsible.

‘I checked, by the way.’ Hanson glanced at Miller. ‘North was serving an eighteen-month sentence four years ago. He was locked up when Sarah and Melanie were killed.’

Miller closed his eyes and was silent for a moment. ‘Any concrete link to Lane? Something provable?’

‘I’ll keep looking but it’s unlikely they’ll have been that stupid.’

‘Do it anyway.’

Kate was still reeling but she couldn’t miss the hurt in Miller’s voice. She guessed he was probably haunted by the idea that the man who’d stolen his family from him was still out there, somewhere. She knew she would be.

‘Tell me the rules,’ she blurted, acting on a sudden impulse to distract him from his pain. ‘I’m ready for them now. I have to know what this is going to take.’